Challenge to a true Thanks-giving

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. Largely, I think, because it is what I so want Christmas to be: a holiday centered on a feast, on gratitude, on family and friends and spending time with one another, undistracted by notions of material obligations. Abraham Lincoln made Thanksgiving an official national holiday during the Civil War because he felt it necessary that we should pause and give thanks for our many blessings even among (maybe especially among) our worst trials. That there are always things to be grateful for. This Thanksgiving is challenging me to actually focus on thanks; to live up to Mr. Lincoln's original intent.

This year I will be spending Thanksgiving in my hospital bed, with my wonderful husband by my side. I won't get to overstuff myself and then go sprawl on the couch and shoot the breeze with whatever family I'm surrounded by. I won't have my favorite pecan pie; the only dessert I anticipate is the pumpkin mousse the hospital will provide. Honey has the turkey ready and will bring it and some sides from Boston Market. We'll probably play a game on my computer and maybe a card game; watch a movie and just hang out. Sadness washed over me this afternoon around dinner time as my hospital dinner sat before me. All my family will be spending Thanksgiving surrounded by loved ones, except for me. My brother with his in-laws, my parents with aunts and uncles, my in-laws with Honey's extended family at a wedding in Texas we couldn't attend. And I haven't even left my side of the room since last Thursday. Last Thursday since I've crossed this curtain. I've had exceptionally high spirits since I arrived here 10 or 11 days ago, but they suddenly began to crumble when I pondered how different this Thanksgiving would be from all the others in my past.

I began to cheer up when Honey came by for his (near) nightly visit. Honestly, he's all I need. And it's only one Thanksgiving. Next Thanksgiving will be completely different. And what an extraordinary opportunity to really think about what I'm thankful for and offer genuine thanks for those blessings. It's better than do what I usually do, which is to give my blessings a perfunctory blip of a thought and then dive into the traditional meal!

So what am I thankful for this year? In no particular order:

• That we are going to have a baby.
• That the complications with this pregnancy have been spotted early enough to mitigate them.
• That we have a delivery plan for this baby in the face of these complications.
• That if, heaven forbid, we have to deliver this baby this week, it is viable and would most likely survive and hopefully, eventually, thrive.
• That I have wonderful doctors.
• That I have a great nursing staff.
• That I have the window side of the hospital room.
• That I have a friendly roommate.
• That we have so many generous and amazing friends who love Honey and me so much.
• That this child will probably be one of the most-loved in history when he or she arrives.
• That I have great health insurance. That I have insurance at all! (Seriously glad for this.)
• That I have, at most, another 7 weeks here. (There are other women on this floor here for far longer.)
• That I live in an area where great health care is available to me.
• That I have a dog at home who loves me.
• That Honey and I have loving families.
• That the baby, by all available standards, is healthy.
• That my health has stabilized.
• That the baby likes to have dance parties in the morning and random parkour practices during the day.
• That I'm just an elevator ride away from delivery if we have a genuine "must do now" emergency.
• That we have clothes for the baby to grow into, at home.
• That we got a dresser for free and a co-sleeper for a steal.
• That, despite my irritations with my job, I know they want to keep me on-tap, even though I don't qualify for FMLA. I feel less in the cold about that.
• That our domestic life is stable, safe and loving. It's easy to take that for granted until you hear the concerns of other women in OB-emergency worried about their partners.
• That I have had good spirits throughout this, so far.
• That I have time to nap during this third trimester when I really need it.
• That I got to have a great, refreshing rehearsal weekend retreat with my fellow performers right before the incident that landed me here.
• And mostly: That I have an incredibly loving and thoughtful husband who lives the definition of standing by your spouse "in sickness" as well as in health. He's had to do it several times in the last few years, and I just pray that I'm as good for him when it's him who needs me, as he has been for me.

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

* photo courtesy earlycj5 via Flickr Creative Commons

This made me happy

The sheer joy in this moment brought me to tears when I watched this this afternoon. It's funny, I can almost hear my mom saying, "that's innapropriate for a church wedding!" But really, doesn't God delight in our love and our unions? Doesn't God want us to celebrate it with unbridled passion? Plus, it's not like they chose something with crass lyrics or danced lasciviously. But enough of me arguing with my mom in my head. This made my day because it's a group of people who embraced not just the joy of the occasion whole-heartedly, but the theatrics. Wedding ceremonies are spectacles in just about every society. If you're gonna do it, go balls to the wall. Good for them! And maybe I liked it most of all because it was, as the blog I discovered it on championed it, unexpected. Love it or hate it: no attendee will ever forget that wedding.

Outer Circle

My little brother got married this last weekend. In Milwaukee. I didn't understand how emotional the week leading up to his wedding was for me, until we returned home.

To begin with, it was great. Not as many of our family was able to make it up for the wedding as hers was - how much of that was the politics of guest-list management, I don't know - but it was wonderful seeing the ones who were there. Most of my favorites were able to make it! One of my most favorite cousins J and her husband Geoff and their little girls, M and The Firecracker - not her real name, but I only use pseudonyms anyway, and this is accurate to her personality - traveled up from Texas. Likewise J's brother, my cousin, Max and his wife Kat, and my uncle Ted and aunt Cassie all came up from Texas. Three of my mom's four siblings came, as well as just one of my cousins from her side, R, and my grandparents made the trip as well. This was a particularly big undertaking as Grandpa is 90, rapidly physically declining, and I'm doubtful that he should ever get on an airplane again. However, I was thrilled and grateful to see him. We all caught up, hung out, laughed, etc, etc, etc. Well, mostly the fun stuff was with the cousins and family on Dad's side, and my cousin R, on Mom's side. I've never fully related to Mom's side of the family. I love them, I just find conversation falls flat after a few minutes.

Heading home - or "home" - after the wedding, I felt so happy to have seen everyone, but also like I'm missing out, and like I'm not sure where home is, or what it means. The lives of people I love most are happening without me and everyone gets to share in it, but me. This was most pronounced, for me, when I considered how well my extended family knows my new sister-in-law, and she them, and how very little I know of her. Their wedding was only the 6th time I'd met her. Considering that you really don't get to see or spend quality time with the couple during the wedding mayhem, I've really only met her 5 times. And of those 5 times, 3 were brief dinner situations. We've never really talked in-depth about anything, never hung out. She's just been, for the last 3 years, either my brother's girlfriend, like so many others, or his fiancee.

When the videographer pulled Honey and me aside at the reception to say something for the couple - well, actually, we pulled him aside; he'd already packed up, thinking he'd gotten all the "importants" (of course, having to seek him out, instead of the other way around, contributed to feeling outside the gang, but, whatever) - I realized everything I wanted to say was to my brother. I really don't know my sister-in-law well enough to congratulate her with some personal tidbit. I just said something generic about her being smarter than him, which is true, but not really catered or specific to her personality or history. During her sister's toast (the matron of honor), she recounted a story about how one of my brother's jokes helped her cope with her baby daughter's Down Syndrome diagnosis, after she'd been depressed for weeks. God, I thought, her sister already has a strong fondness for him, and I'm relatively indifferent toward her. What's wrong, here? In the three years they've been together, she's gone with him to several family events throughout Texas. The Firecraker, J's daughter is 19 months old, and I'd only just met her this past weekend. My sister-in-law, whom I'll call Balance - since she balances Bro's personaltiy pretty well - had met her several times. Balance knows M pretty well, too. And as Bro and Balance live about a mile from Max and Kat, they hang out all the time, as they do frequently enough with my parents, who also live in the same metropolis. I don't know how many times Bro has met her family. I know he spent last Christmas with them and maybe a few extended weekends, as well. But they instantly love him, instantly connected with him, and her little brother and older sister seem keen on, and comfortable with him.

So, here I am: out on the East Coast, missing out my dear little cousins M and The Firecracker growing up; missing out family get-togethers over Easter or birthdays or whatever; missing out on finding out who the hell this person is that my brother just married who everyone seems to enjoy so well. In the meantime M adores my mom as if she were her own grandmother, and Max and Kat bug Bro for more cookouts, knowing they could just crash his house if they felt like it. Honey and I know we want to move west again. Texas is on the short list, as is the Pacific Northwest, and we're open to other, as yet unconsidered, places west of the Mississippi if they seem right for us. However, even if we moved back to Texas, there is, of course, no guarantee we'd see family all the time. (Not that I'd even want to.) On top of that, Bro and Balance have talked enough about moving to Milwaukee sometime in the future that even if we did move to Texas, it's highly possible that they'd move out and I'd still never get to know this woman, or worse, miss out on the lives of nieces and nephews as they grow up. (Honey is certain they're going to jump on that train within a year. I'm not as certain.) Plus, I don't want to be that spouse who demands we live near my family, as if mine is the only one that counts. My aunt - the only of my mom's siblings who doesn't live in Texas - followed that demand of her husband's and she's never been quite happy with it, feeling left behind as her family moves on.

I now really want to talk with my pre-existing sister-in-law, Honey's sister, about how the transition was for her, to me. I loved Honey's sister immediately. Sometimes, I feel like she could be my "for real" sister. Bro accepted Honey immediately - though, in honesty, as we met in Texas, they had more time to get to know eachother than Balance and I have. Honey didn't have the luxury at all of getting to know his older brother in law. His sister eloped while living overseas, so their first meeting came months after they were family. I have to imagine that was really weird and alienating for Honey. I've never heard any friends of mine talk about feeling alienated or missing out on knowing who their in-laws are. I don't know if that's because people just don't talk about it; if my friends actually know their in-laws before hand; or if it's because many of my friends are babies of their families and the dynamic of an elder sibling relationship is different. I strongly suspect that part of my sadness at not knowing Balance comes from my being the elder sibling. I'm protective, by nature, of those I love and always want to sniff out their mates. Stands to reason, then, that though I like Balance, I feel like I haven't had the chance to fully assess her for the person I've felt most protective of my whole life.

I don't know her, and the rest of my family is going on without me. I'll let go, eventually. But for now, I'm just feeling left out.

Three Beautiful Things

1. Finding a siamese mushroom among the mushrooms I bought at the store, Saturday.



2. Reconnecting with an old friend on LinkedIn and discovering she lives in my metro area and meeting up with her for dinner tonight. Also: finding that even after having not seen each other, nor having corresponded with each other for 9 years, we still had enough commonality to make the evening enjoyable and to want to go out again, soon!

3. Recognizing that I was being hit on - or at least sniffed out - with my girlfriend tonight. And when one of the guys asked something to the effect of, "why don't you hang out with us?" I answered, "I think I need to spend some time tonight at home. With my husband." It felt good. And my girlfriend later was like, "yeah, you shut him out." Yea, me!

Why I'm not worried about A**

I began to write this as a response to VirginiaGal's comment on my last post, but then I saw that I was going to ramble, so I figured I should turn it into a post.

From age 20 to 24, my brother dated a young woman we'll call A**. She was a sweet girl, not unlike other girls he'd dated before or since; two years his junior. She was really in love with him and he with her for a while. But my brother has always intended on getting married at some point in his life. And several months before they broke up, he took stock of their relationship and his feelings toward her. "No matter how hard I tried, Molly, I just couldn't picture myself married to her," he'd tell me. And even if he later decided to never marry, he felt it unfair to drag her along. Better to cut loose while they're both still young and can find other happiness than to drag it out into something that will eventually make both of them unhappy. (Side note: the brother of a friend of mine, in his early 30s, recently broke up with his girlfriend of a decade. He'd never wanted to marry; she did. He eventually pulled the plug about a year ago. Basically, he wasted 10 years of her time for something that only one of them wanted.)

Though I'm sorry she had her heart broken - and I know Bro was very sad himself for a while - I ultimately don't feel sorry for A**. Firstly, she's moved on to another boyfriend with whom she seems happy. Plus she and Bro have remained (amazingly) decent friends. Would it have been better if Bro had stayed with A**? She was a nice girl and he loved her, but it's possible to love someone and know they're not "the one," for dreadful lack of a better noun. You have to love someone fully. The person you marry should excite you mentally and spiritually as well as sexually. You have to spend the REST OF YOUR LIFE with this person. Is it fair to someone to partner with him/her when you know ultimately that you're not delivering the goods he/she needs or that you're not getting from him/her what you need? She didn't challenge him and didn't inspire him to be the best him he could be. With the current girlfriend, I see Bro becoming a more mature young man. He's developing new interests and returning to old interests. He's happier. It makes me happy. I don't know if A** has found her lifetime mate, but if and/or when she does, that person should inspire her to be the best A** she can be. Anything less would be a rip-off to both partners.

When I was in college, I remember seeing a video from a "relationship specialist" who claimed that the partner you spend the rest of your life with should inspire admiration in you, and you in the partner. I can't remember anything else in the video, but who the hell cares? He was right in that. It's possible to love other people, but I think mutual admiration is one of the key ingredients to that love that sustains couples through the slings and arrows of life. I loved some prior paramours, but lacked that mutual admiration. The same is probably true of Honey.

And it has to be symmetrical admiration. How many girls did I see in high school and college who were just over the moon about their boyfriends and their boyfriends just took them for granted? (Or vice-versa?) Should those boys have proposed to the girls because the girls loved them? Fast forward 20 years: who is happy in that relationship? I've seen these people in airports. The woman is very clearly miserable and the man is just engrossed in his crossword or sudoku (he turned off years ago) and nary a friendly glance is exchanged between them. And it's not just airport layover misery. You can smell marital disdain. Bro may have inspired A** to be a great person, but she didn't inspire him. And hopefully A** has found - or will find - the person who will inspire her to be not just great, but the best A** she can be.

My only hope for Bro is that his current girlfriend is as inspired by him as he is by her. I think she is.

From what I've experienced in my marriage, and from what I've witnessed in other relationships, choosing a mate isn't just about finding someone you love and you'd like to have children with. It's about who you want to not have children with as well. (Not every relationship produces offspring, whether by choice or chance. And even when they do, kids leave the nest, eventually. Who do you think you're gonna have to stare at for the remainder of the time?) It's about choosing a partner to weather the illnesses of your family members with, to weather your own illnesses with, to weather shitty jobs with, to weather personal depressions and downfalls with and even to weather periods of "why the hell did I get married" with? Hard times can bring resentment of one's partner even in the happiest of relationships. People can love each other, but if they don't love each other fully, or have that mutual admiration, then the resentment that arises from the hard times can turn into disdain, which can be outright poisonous. And of course, sadly, sometimes even the most stable and happy relationships crumble under the weight of outside sadness. But why stay with someone when you can smell the toxicity from down the road?

I really am sorry Bro broke A**'s heart a few years ago. Life is hard and only gets harder as we age. Staying with her would have caused her much, much more pain in the long run and would've made him sadder in the long run, too.

marrying within one's religion: a response to a friend

This began as a comment to a post on Virginia Gal's blog. But per usual, I rambled, and felt like it would be too much for a comment.
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VirginiaGal, i know exactly what you mean about wanting to marry within your religion.

in my brief dating experience, i only ever really dated atheists, agnostics and generally areligious types. for the most part, all nice boys: good kissers, with whom i just did not ultimately click. marriage was far from my mind, but i assumed if i DID marry, i'd marry an atheist, agnostic, areligious type. when Honey and i started dating, the common religious faith was liberating. finally, i was with a guy who understood why i held dear the things i did. one of the things i miss most about going to church these days is holding his hand during the lord's prayer and resting my hand on his knee during communion. other boyfriends and paramours had attended church with me before, but i never felt connected to them during service. i'd feel like they were humoring me. with Honey beside me, worship feels more worshipful. had i married an areligious boy, i doubt we'd bless our meals the way Honey and i do at home. not everyone feels the need to do it, but it's a ritual that i feel keeps me daily contact with God, my sustenance and my family, for the moment we pray. so I'm glad Honey shares that value with me.

there is no doubt in my mind that many people's cultural lives and spiritual lives are immensely enhanced by marrying outside their religion. and who knows? if Honey and i hadn't met - at church, no less - maybe i would've been blessed by a great Jewish or Buddhist guy with whom i felt some spiritual bond. you really never know who God has in store for you. ... which is part of the reason why i think it's good to date without too much regard for religion. you don't have to marry every guy you date: that would be like feeling obligated to buy a car just because you test drove it, or a ball gown just because you tried it on. you need to see how other cars handle and how other gowns fit. you can still learn a lot about life and about yourself by dating people you'd not expect yourself to date. (you'll KNOW when it's right to marry someone. it'll be so mutually undeniable it'll catch you off guard.)

nonetheless, i do feel like if your religion is the guiding principle of your faith, marrying within your faith is critical. just a quick note here: i just realized i said "marrying within your faith." i could've said marrying within your religion. marrying within religion is easy. there are plenty of Christian guys i could've married; there are plenty of Muslim guys you can marry. people can share religions, but if they do not share a common faith, then religion is irrelevant. for instance: plenty of Christians i know are great people, but the focus of their faith is preparing for the second coming, let's say. my Christian faith is more focused on loving the heck out everyone i come in contact with, even when i don't want to; and social justice. we're still both Christians with common tradition and text, but our faiths are different. don't marry a Muslim guy just because he's Muslim. share a faith as well as a religion.

... now if you'll all turn to page 284 in your hymnals ...

sorry for the sermonizing. i guess it runs in the family. ;) all that is to say, VirginiaGal: i understand why you want to marry a Muslim. just never sell yourself short.

Okay, i GOTTA get ready for work.