All in the Family

Its a funny thing getting married.  There are all the things that you know that y'all don't agree on, and then there are all the things that you had no idea that you disagreed on because the fact that someone could even think differently on the subject was on par with saying Jimmy Carter was an effective president or that Megan Fox was a talented actress.  One of those Fox traps for Christy and me was grandparents.  When it came time to think about where we wanted to live after grad school with progeny on the intermediate horizon, I suddenly came to the realization (with Christy's help) that being close to potential grandparents was going to be more important that I had previously realized.  Not growing up with grandparents as an everyday essential part of my life, the thought of predicating the position of our pad on the proximity of parentals was a bit strange to me.  For example: at our wedding there were 7 grandparents.  None of them were mine.  It was difficult for me to generate a context for the necessity of having grandparents in the immediate vicinity.

Over Christmas, I had the chance to take my burgeoning brood to Gainesville, GA to spend the holiday with my mother in law's family and stay at The Farm.  The Farm is 20-some-odd acres of pasture and woods north of Gainesville in a town called Rabbiton which is presided over by Papa Kit and Carolyn.  Papa Kit was a doctor from the 50's on into sometime in the late 20th century, has had both knees replaced several times, knows more dirty jokes than the US Navy's 7th fleet combined and used to hunt religiously several times a week.  Carolyn cooks without recipes, puts up with Kit's dirty jokes, has more common sense than every advice columnist combined and takes in stray dogs whenever her heart gets the best of her head (which is often).  They are American Gothic 2.0.  After four days of spending time with them and the family, the wisdom, support and direction that these people have obviously provided to their children and their children's children is something that I reap the benefits of on a daily basis through my relationship with Christy.  Needless to say, nearby grandparents are no longer optional.

Watching my own parents with Madeleine has been a slow unfolding of the possibilities that having grandparents in the equation could bring.  Spending time with the Walkers was an opportunity to see the thing in time-lapse, and seeing Madeleine grow up with her grandparents is now one of the things about having her that I am looking forward to most.  And what is marriage for if not for filling in the gaps that our own lives have left us?  

Commitment

My best friend James and I have known each other for about half of our lives so far; everything from this point onwards is going to be us knowing one another longer than we haven't.  Two years ago today I had the profound pleasure to be his best man as he was married to the most amazing and inexplicably perfect woman in the world for him, and below is the text for the toast that I gave that night.

The night before he got engaged, James told me, "I think I could handle not being married," waited a beat while I looked at him with a cocked eyebrow, and finished, " ... but I'd probably end up pretty weird."  And that's part of the genius of language, the flexibility of definitions.  A mutual friend of ours, James Lyons, once showed James and me a giant brass soy bean he had sculpted for his future wife and explained to us that as a person handles brass the oils and moisture from their hands will patina the metal.  The trick being that everyone's touch results in a different patina depending on their diet and nutrition, body chemistry, etc and has its own unique impact on the way the brass ages and changes.  I'm not sure what kind of effect dozens of powdered doughnuts and gallons of mountain dew have on a brass patina, but I do know that as [James] and Patrisha begin to share one another's joys and handle one another's challenges, that you will uniquely impact one another.  In effect, you will be weird.  Not the pale, long goatee wearing, wood-shaving sprinkled weird you would be left to your own devices for the next 80 years, but weird in a glorious way you never could have achieved on your own.  I'm proud to have done my part in making you as weird as you are today, and pleased to have the honor of watching that processes continue to unfold between you and your wife. So here's to growing old and weird with the ones we love.

I have been very happy to be not only a part of their wedding, but a part of their lives for the past two years.  I look forward to the day that they can both look back to Dec 5, 2009 and realize that from this point on they will have been married longer than it took them to find each other.

CTRL + ALT + DEL

My wife was a double major in college: English and Journalism. She is a fabulous writer, a better wife, and this weekend while perusing through one of her old text books I learned the distinction between the two commonly misappropriated words 'nauseous’ and ‘nauseated’. Things which are nauseous cause one to feel nauseated, but technically speaking one does not ‘feel nauseous’ according to the Holy Bible of proper English utility, The Elements of Style. These are the kind of things which interest me, and in this case haunt me.

This weekend I attended my godsister’s wedding in Seattle with my wife, mother, father, sister and brother in law. After arduous hours of travel by land and by air (and very nearly by sea a few times, thanks to the legendary Pacific Northwest weather systems) we toured Pike Place Market, nearly got embroiled in a lover’s spat involving one exceptionally large and irate black man, one small but hurtful black man and one perplexed black woman, enjoyed the local cuisine, and sat through a lovely ceremony eternally and existentially smelting my godsister and her then fiancé in the bonds of Christian marriage. After the festivities died down, we decided as a family to take in the one essential feature of downtown Seattle: The REI. After skittering up and down narrowly glistening streets towards our destination, we came to a public parking structure half a block from REI and decided to make use of its services. We waved at the attendant, parked in the section labeled ‘Visitor Parking for Local Retail’ and ran like cows to feed toward our destination. The time: 6:17pm. 90 minutes and $120.00 later, we left Bobo Mecca contentedly laden with our purchases and headed back down to our tan rented Mercury van, only to discover that our every ingress to the previously hospitable parking structure had been cinched down tighter than a bullfrog’s rectum¹. On a wall near the main gate of the parking structure in unobtrusive letters a small sign read: ‘Sat: 8:00am – 7:30pm.’ Hello, Nauseous. Hello, Nausea.

We managed to track down a very convivial and very helpful security guard girl who went to extraordinary lengths to help us extricate our vehicle from the acquisitive parking garage, and after nearly 50 minutes of chicanery and a good measure of Tom-foolery we were back on the road towards Portland. I never thought that the movie Dodgeball would be apropos to anything in my life, but reading that stupid sign I found myself wanting to quote Christine Taylor’s character: “Yeah, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit . . .”

¹That is: Water tight.

Spunges Among Us!

One of the unexpected fringe benefits of getting married has been the legitimate utilization of the mesh sponge. (Side bar: I always heard of these things referred to as luffas. This seems to be a misnomer, since the luffa gourd is the source of authentic luffa sponges.) I was never raised in a frou-frou environment, and for most of my life bathing consisted of some hot water, bar of Irish Spring soap and some elbow grease; at the most there may have been some 40 grit sandpaper or steel wool for those really stubborn oil and grease stains. In my single days, there was no conceivable situation that would precipitate me marching myself into any retail establishment and purchasing a mesh sponge. I was infinately more likely to shoplift it. A more likely purchase would have been (and this was my favourite store run as Town Driver for Calvin Crest) a package of adult diapers, tampons and six litres of rootbeer. Now I have body wash and a mesh sponge, and I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t like it.

Marriage has taught me to realize that sometimes being right can be utterly wrong, how to apologize and mean it, how to truly appreciate being alone and how to truly appreciate being together. And it has taught me to love the luffa.

99 Problems . . .

For all of the complaining I've done about the addition of our newest family member, I must admit that I have become attached to Reba. Yes, she's inconvenient. Yes, she gets into things. Yes, she's a sock pirate. But she is also exceptionally intelligent, affectionate and I suspect she has hypnotic powers. There have been several instances in the short month that we have had her in which a group of people will find themselves watching her, slackjawed with wonder, while she chews on a rawhide bone. Hypnotic. I held out as long as I could, but in the end her wrinkly forhead and goofy antics won me over and now I'm stuck loving and caring for this dog potentially for the next 10-15 years.