Flippancy and Swine Flu

Adam's attitude toward tragedy and death has always been an annoyance, and a bit of a concern. Who wouldn't wonder about a true lover who could stone-facedly speak about your hypothetical death as "God's will." I share my deepest, most painful paranoid delusions about losing him with him and he responds, "Well, I'll be happier with God anyway."

On reflection, I know he's right. Infuriatingly right. But it's never made his attitude any easier to bear. I want the idea of losing me to be painful to him. How else do I know he really cares about me.

The mass hysteria about the swine flu has really opened my eyes to his way of thinking. I hate feeling helpless, but there is so little I can do about a global pandemic that it seems silly to even waste time thinking about it. The English National Health Service speaks about a global flu pandemic as inevitable. Why worry about what I can't stop.

From within this context--facing a frightening, world-wide disease I cannot stop--Adam's attitude suddenly becomes clear. It's not that he doesn't, or I don't, care about what happens. We love each other, the life we're going to live together. But why spend time worrying about what we can't stop? And what's the point of believing in a God who saves and a perfect afterlife if I'm going to fear death?

Honest Blog

As you may have noticed, I've been doing more and more reading at Wedding Bee. They've got a nice balance of bits-and-bobs posts about wedding planning and serious posts about "marriage planning," so to speak.

This post really spoke to me. The blogger's concern about how her own personal failings might affect her marriage seem really familiar.

Sometimes I just want a knight. I want to be saved. I want to be needed and wanted and adored. I want someone to think of me first. I want someone else to figure things out. I want to be cherished. I want someone to come to my rescue. Unfortunately, those times seem to be when my beloved wants all those things too...

I've posted about my favorite story of knighthood, Erec and Enide nore comprehensively before. Erec and Enide are lovers in a medieval French romance. Erec wins a tournament, defends Enide's honor, and they are both happily married. But, years later, Erec discovers that Enide doesn't think he's quite the man he once was. Together, they set out on a grand quest to prove Erec's prowess. Along the way, they learn many valuable lessons about themselves, and each other.

Adam really is my knight, my Erec. Like Enide, I've had to gradually learn to trust him. Like Enide, I've had to learn never to undermine his masculinity by doubting his willingness or ability to take care of me.

He's had to learn lessons, too. Like Erec, he's had to learn that simply being a masculine hero isn't enough. Like Erec, he's had to learn that I'm not just his lover--I'm his partner.

But perhaps the most important lesson is the one we've learned together: even though they have different needs and desires they don't always understand, Erec and Enide are always best when they're putting their lover ahead of themselves. We both want to be loved and cherished in our own special way. We'll be happiest when we do that for each other.

What Does Engaged Mean?

Last night, Adam and I discussed applying for an apartment. My job for next year is more nailed down than his is, so I may need to apply alone for the time being. Of course, many apartment complexes require a certain amount of money in the bank as a kind of collateral for their residents. After two years at Oxford, I don't have a dime. Adam's response? "That's okay. I'll just give it to you."

Whoa. It suddenly hit me just how much more seriously Adam takes engagement than I do.

I would be dishonest if I said I didn't find my commitment to Adam serious and binding. But in my family, debate isn't over until both parties have said "I do." We celebrate how a father reminds his daughter, just before her big procession, that the marriage doesn't have to go through. Engagement is just a period for wedding planning.

It's not that Adam would try to take me through divorce proceedings if our relationship fell apart in the next three and a half months. It's that, for him, asking me and receiving my consent seems to have made marriage a pretty "done deal." We're not just wedding planning. We've started our lives together. Marriage is the next step on a journey that will last a lifetime.

For someone like me, always a little afraid my friends will figure out how annoying I am and leave at any moment, Adam's attitude is extremely liberating. He loves me and he's already serious about spending the rest of his life to me. Which is good, because I'm serious about spending the rest of my life with him, too.

Showers

I've had a number of really awesome experiences in the last couple of weeks. One of these was my "week of showers," a week of wedding-dress fittings and bridal parties like no other.

I've already written about some of the moral qualms Adam and I felt about wedding and shower presents. But seeing the looks of love and generosity on the faces of so many friends and family members laid most of those reservations to rest. The rooms were full of people who really care about us and who really wanted to help us provide for our future! We're grateful for their generosity, for the generosity of my Aunt Donna and friend Linda Summerlin who planned the events.

Favorite gifts? Too many to name! But they do include a Royal Albert tea setting for four, a new Cuisineart food processor, and a Black and Decker tool-kit (mine, not his).

The Black and Decker tool-kit was a brainstorm I had a few weeks before the shower. I added as many practical, "non-traditional" things as I could think of: a picnic basket, board games, an herb garden. Can you think of anything else "non-traditional" that might make a nice registry addition?

The Veil

I don't normally seek out advice on this blog, but it's worth a shot.

My mom laughed at me when we went dress shopping because every dressed had to be matched with a veil before I felt "like a bride." A long, flowing veil adds that mysterious charm, the once-in-a-lifetime allure or a bride. Not mention a veil is traditionally the symbol of a woman's purity. To me, the veil makes the dress.

When I went for my fitting, I found the most gorgeous, cathedral-length lace veil. Stunning. Mom said my face lit up with they put it on my. Even though I knew the lace didn't quite go with my dress, I've not got an itch for all that lovely lace that I can't scratch.

Two problems: A, budget. That gorgeous, cathedral-length lace veil costs $300. B, Adam. My fiancé doesn't get it. And why bother with an investment that significant if my groom is going to roll his eyes while I walk down the aisle.

He's right about the width of the veil. I'm only 5'3" (ish) and 115 lbs. I need a narrow veil for my frame. But what about the length?

Do we compromise on a lovely, finger-tip length veil like these?

Or do I totally give into his hesitations, and my parents' pocket-book, and settle for a simpler number?

I need to call the bridal store in the next few days to tell them what we've decided. What do you think?

Ballet: The Arisotelian Exercise

I know I still have entries on our Engagement Encounter pending, but I thought I would write a post I've been meaning to write for a while now as a follow-up to my review of Giselle.

As an undergraduate, I read a lot of Aristotle. I'd like to think that The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics have played a large and important role in making me who and what I am today. In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle brings readers to two important conclusions which I always try to keep in mind. First, the end of human life is happiness. Second, humans become happy by becoming good.

Of course, as anyone who has ever made a resolution knows, we can't merely choose to be good. Choices don't work like that. Every action is really a chance to choose what's good. We become good by choosing the good again and again and again. This process, the habituation to virtue, is the path to happiness in life.

If you've looked at the title of this post, you may ask yourself what this has to do with ballet. I'd never considered the connection either. I started dancing about a year ago, purely on a whim conjured up by one of my favorite animes. I knew Adam and I were headed in the direction of marriage, and I wanted to get in shape. Ballet is a wonderful way to build muscle tone without (if I avoided the anorexic that often plagues professional dances) losing the feminine curves I love in the way I look.

I started dancing and slowly grew to love it. For the first time ever, I could see the changes exercise was bringing about on my body and on my mind. Plus, it's a lot of fun turning your first successful pirouette. Then, sitting in on a rehearsal of the English National Ballet last fall, I realized ballet's real virtue.

Before that rehearsal, I'd never known that every company, no matter how professional, begins every day with a class. And every dancer, no matter how talented, fills each class with the same basic techniques, albeit at greater or lesser levels of difficulty. Every single dancer begins his or her days with plies, simple bendings of the knees. That's it. Ballet teaches by repetition, developing muscle and skill by performing the same movements over and over again.

Viola! Aristotelian exercise. By habituating my body to physical virtue, I found myself suddenly liberated physically in a way I never have before. I'd started this regime to look better for Adam. Now, I find myself stronger, more flexible, and happier about my body and its abilities than I've ever been before.

I think Adam felt challenged and inspired by how happy I was with ballet and decided that was something he wanted for himself, and to share with me. Although ballet isn't so much of an ideal exercise for a 6'6" man with a fused spine, he has found his own ways to build muscle and flexibility. When I saw him a few weeks ago, it was the first time in almost six years of knowing him that he's seemed pleased by what his body can do. It was a real treat to see the joy in his face at overcoming some of the physical limitations which have challenged him since his back surgery almost eight years ago. He's giving such a wonderful gift to me: a strong, healthy body with a better chance of lasting the lifetime I want to spend with him.

Dancing has turned out to be a joy and blessing I never expected. I feel stronger, lighter, healthier, and happier with myself than I ever thought I would. And those things are all gifts I'm excited to give to Adam. So ballet has turned out to be the ideal Aristotelian exercise, leading me to a kind of virtue and through that virtue toward happiness.

If you're in the Oxford area and interested in ballet, I'd like to invite you to our upcoming ballet performance on Friday and Saturday of fifth week. Please e-mail me if you have any questions or would like to purchase a ticket.

Well-Played Medical Information

This blog post may toe the line between a useful reflection and too much information, but please bear with me. Without going into too much detail, I'm so I'm not the only one who feels plagued by misunderstand and ignorance about some of my personal health decisions. That's why I was so excited to discover the English National Health Service's explanations of NFP, here. It's fair, balanced, and open about what NFP is, why it's safe, and who ought to consider using it. Bravo for unpoliticized health information.

Don't worry. I'm not trying to turn ...and Enide into that kind of blog. I just want to share information that I've found helpful and refreshing on our journey toward marriage.

Marriage Preparation

I hope to spend some time this weekend digesting our Engaged Encounter weekend over the next few days and to write about it, at least as much as propriety and Adam's better sense of discretion allows.

For now, though, I was impressed by this blogger's honesty and perseverance in tracking down the right marriage prep course. It comes from Wedding Bee, one of the more interesting (i.e. likely to talk about marriage as well as weddings) blogs I've found on the subject of weddings thus far.

Giselle

Several friends and I went to see the ballet Giselle last night to celebrate my twenty-fourth birthday. Giselle is the "quintessential romantic ballet." It tells the story of a young nobleman in disguise and the naive village girl who falls in love with him. She abandons her betrothed for love of him and then dies of grief when she discovers his identity and meets his fiance. In the second act, she finds herself a member of the beautiful and terrible wilis, ghosts of women abandoned on their wedding day who dance unsuspecting men to death. Even in death, she saves her lover from dying at their hands by prolonging his execution until the sun rises and the wilis disappear.

My friend Tom and I had a rare disagreement about the ballet. He was critical of the young man, just another incarnation of the nobility-loves-then-abandons-peasant motif. Her furtive defense of him is supposed to pique the audience's anger for him and sympathy for her. But I don't think Tom's got this one right.

The choreography of Giselle is singularly playful in a way I've never seen. The first act, the chronicle of the couple as they fall in love, lacks the sultry pas de deux of other ballets. Ballet has ample physical means to portray the attraction of a lusty nobleman to a virginal peasant. Giselle exploits none of it. Instead, their courtship looks like what it is: a perfect visual demonstration of what it is to fall in love.

Her pursues her, she resists. He pursues her with greater zeal, she yields. She turns her happy solo, peasant dance into an integrated pas de deux with him. He seems truly caught up in her, and in her world. When the noblemen discover him, he fiercely resists reclaiming his place among them.

And then there's the way the nobleman responds to Giselle's death. It is far more than Tom's proposed "guilt, but not penance" for what has happened. His pitiful and poignant response to Giselle's body is moving and sincere. Later, it is only because he seeks to keep vigil over her body that he is put at risk by the wilis at all. At the end of the ballet, the nobleman and Giselle's final separation is gut-wrenching as the very-real specter loses form and disappears.

To me, at least, the love between the pair seems very real. The playfulness of their courtship captures exactly the way I feel about Adam. At our best, we are capable of all the gay joility of the dancing pair. Being with him is just that much fun. And the intensity of the longing between them, knowing they will never be together, evokes the way I feel every time I'm separated from Adam--irrepresible longing.

Most importantly, the emotion in the ballet isn't one-sided the way it so often is. In the choreography, Giselle loves and is loved in return. That's the most shocking, and important, thing I always have to remember about the love between Adam and me: he loves me, too.



This clip, from the second act, captures the couple in both their plaintive and playful moods.

Incidentally, you can see what would have happened to Giselle's lover/my favorite moment of the ballet here.

Revolutionary Road

Although I have many happy things to write about from my vacation (including my first dress fitting) and my trip to DC with Adam (including our first meeting with the priest, an Engagement Encounter weekend, and apartment shopping), I find that it's always easiest to write what's fresh. And I have something slightly less sunny on my mind.

Revolutionary Road reunites Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio in a dark sketch of married life. DiCaprio plays a disillusioned thirty-year old working in a job he hates to support the family he has been compelled--half by his own desire and half by social pressure--to start. Winslet matches him as an independent-minded woman trapped into the life of a suburban housewife that she never wanted. Though the film tends to be somewhat over-the-top and self-indulgent, it encapsulated some of my darkest fears about marriage after the silver plate has tarnished.

DiCaprio's character is a man who has never found his vocation. He suffers through his desk job to support his family. But he doesn't daydream of life as a writer, or an actor, or a teacher--he doesn't have that luxury. Because he has never taken the time to find his vocation, he doesn't even know what to dream for. This gapping hole in his life leaves him undamentally unhappy, emasculated, and unable to love his wife the way he ought.

Winslet's character has dreams of her own. She still pursues them, choosing to act in local theater even after moving down to the suburbs for their children. For her, its less that her own life is unfulifilled than that her husband's is. They can't be anything is he isn't anything. As he loses respect for himself, she begins to question his masculinity and lose her respect for him. The more he resentfully rebuffs her efforts to help him find his vocation, the more estranged their marriage becomes and the further she drifts from sanity.

The real tragedy of the film is how alone the couple is in their search for meaning. Other characters are fundamentally incapable of understanding the couple's complaint. Friends look at them with skeptical astonishment when they discuss their schemes to find something better in life. DiCaprio's co-worker waves his arms, gesticulating, about DiCaprio quitting his job to find his "vocation." In the end, the only man who recognizes the horror of the couple's lifestyle is the mad son of a neighbor. In the world of Revolutionary Road, only the insane look for meaning.

Winslet's character truly thought that he life was going to be special. Not that she was going to be rich or famous, but that her life would mean something to her and to those around her. It drives her slowly mad to watch the man she loves failing to live up to his purpose. Neither of them answer their callings; it ruins their marriage and their lives.

I'd be lying to myself if I denied how much I identify with Winslet's character, or at least the way I imagine her to be when she and DiCaprio's character first married. I, too, occassionally wonder whether I will feel trapped in the life I've chosen. I worry that Adam would choose a life he hated if that was the only way to support me, rather than allowing me to make whatever sacrifice is necessary to help him find and fulfill his vocation.

The mental image is difficult to sustain. Adam is absolutely wonderful. We have a strong vision of what it is we want in life. We've communicated with each other about it and are both prepared to do what it takes to get there. We think we're on the track of God's vocation for our lives. And, in all honesty, I think we are pretty special. But, in the dead of night, I sometimes wonder with Winslet: will my life always have meaning?

I'm Back

I'm back in Oxford with more time and initiative to think and write. I should be back to posting every day or two. If I have any readers left, please take note.

Showers

My daily routine is so bizarre and non-standard while I'm home that I often find it difficult to make time to write. I'll do better when I get back to Oxford in two weeks. But, for now, I would be horribly remiss not to mention my two amazing showers!

The strongest impression coming away from my showers is one of overwhelming love. One of my mom's best friends, Linda Summerlin, and my aunt, Aunt Donna, put a lot of visible time and effort into throwing me absolutely beautiful showers. People came and people gave me extraordinarily generous gifts. But more than that, I had thirty people really interested and invested in my life. People who wanted to know where I'm going with my life, who cared about my dreams for marriage. The entire experience was overwhelming. Thank you to everyone who helped make my showers so lovely.

You can view pictures of my showers here, here, and here.

A Love for All Ages

I try very hard to admit when I'm wrong. I was wrong to condemn Twilight outright. I'll stick to my guns about how wildly inappropriate it is for the reader of its usual demographic, but, for me, the four-novel saga has been eye-opening.

Traditionally, good literature doesn't tell the reader anything more than it has to. It shows the reader. We all recognize that the best kinds of learning come from experience, so it only makes sense that the structure of a narrative does more for the reader than narration itself does. So often, novels that tell the reader outright what the characters are thinking and what their actions mean are just poorly written.

Just imagine, though, a novel writer who completely absorbs the reader in one character's mind. Every minute detail of every perception presented to for the reader's consideration. Every nuance of every decision spelled out for the reader to process. And every sensation of every sense cataloged for the reader to experience. It's a different kind of reading. Not learning by watching, which works so well in the best of novels, or learning by hearing, which ruins so much popular fiction. It's learning by being, by becoming a character within the novel in a very visceral way.

That is why the Twilight novels have meant so much to me in the five short days during which I have finished them. I have become a character hopelessly in love with the perfect man. I have been personally shocked, again, that the perfect man could ever love me. My own heart has beat, my own senses have been aroused, by the mere thought of the man I love. And I, myself, have again been forced to recognize the powerful love which binds us--not just me to him, but him to me.

Twilight hasn't made me enter into Bella Swan's world. Her world has been pressed onto mine, giving me a new clarity of perception about my own life through the oddly fitting analogy between her life and mine. I feel really changed, altered, in a way only writers like Alcott, Dickens, or Stevenson have left me. Bella Swan's tale might not be told as well as Jo March's, but she, too, has become part of the way I perceive myself. I see myself--my weakness and my really quite remarkable strengths--in a new light as something to appreciate. I am different, special, with things I will always do poorly and others I will always do well. And Adam, my perfect match, fits me like a key, his own liabilities and assets working with mine in a truly extraordinary way.

More than that, though, the mastery of Stephanie Meyer's portrayal of the love between Bella and Edward means that, in my eyes at least, Adam is altered, too.

As though I've been turned into a vampire myself, my feelings toward Adam are all heightened and intensified. I feel the physical distance between us in a way I never had before, a physical need to be with my other half greater than any I've ever known. I want him in a way I've never really allowed myself to before, in a way that makes me even more impatient for August. And I may even love him in a way I never have before: Twilight has given me a new vocabulary, a new framework for looking at how and why I will love him for the rest of my existence.

I've penned the words and I feel more at peace. I'm sure the heightened emotions will quiet themselves into something more sustainable, and healthy, as the venom of Meyer's novels works its way out of my system. But Bella Swan has been imprinted into my mind, into the way I see myself. I hope that--and our shared love and desire for our perfect lovers--will never completely fade.

A Vampire Romance

Because I'm going to teach high school English at a girls' school next year, I thought it was about time I read "what the kids are reading": Twilight. The books aren't literary or well-written, so I'd like to blame my week-long voracious reading marathon on my interest in my future students' reading habits. But I just can't. I'm hooked on a story that, for all its lack of literary nuance, presents a powerful metaphor for the dynamics of a serious relationship and the draw of physical intimacy.

The Twilight novels, Stephanie Meyer's contribution to the over-crowded world of melodramatic teenage fiction, are the chronicle of the romance between human girl Bella Swan and her vampire lover/fiance/husband Edward Cullen. Cullen is a member of a vampire coven which has decided to abstain from human blood. His physical self-control is put to the limit when he meets Bella, whose blood proves an almost irresistible temptation for him. He craves her and that draws Bella to him. When she figures out his secret they work to make a tenuous and impossible relationship work, together.

The closer the two get, the more intense the physical demands of their relationship become. The normal teenaged struggle between hormones and virtue gets dramatically amplified into an intense, visceral struggle between their physical needs and Edward's desire not to kill the woman he loves. The author slowly, and in pain-staking detail, describes every instance of the tension between the lovers.

At the risk of being crass, I have to hand it to Ms. Meyer: she got it exactly right. The deep, difficult, often impossible-seeming task of controlling oneself in a physical relationship with the love of ones life. To read her novels, for all of their flaws, is a visceral experience. She knows... everything. The way my pulse quickens when Adam comes into the room. How my body shivers when he rubs my back. It's all just, well, right.

And, for me, the analogy between beautiful, perfect Edward Cullen and self-conscious, clumsy Bella Swan and the two of us seems refreshingly close to reality. While Adam has no deep secrets, he does share with the vampiric lover an impressive ability to do just about anything he tries. And I, like Bella, sometimes look at Adam and wonder, "How can someone that wonderful, that perfect, really be in love with me?" That's a question Bella spends the better part of the third novel learning how to answer: he just does. As impossible as it seems, love with a perfect vampire--or with an almost-perfect human fiance--can, and is reciprocated. And I suppose it is a healthy reminder for me that, in the novel, Edward constantly wonders the same thing. Adam's look of wonder into my eyes reminds me sometimes that he considers himself as lucky as I do.

All in all, the Twilight series has been a delightful diversion from the heavy reading I normally seek out. Sure, I could never suggest to a teenaged girl that she read the novels without some serious explanations of the physical and emotional metaphors in the novel. But for me, a twenty-three-year-old engaged woman, the novels have proved an escapist foray into some of the ideas I ought to have spent more time thinking about. Maybe fiction for teens isn't quite as dreadful as I'd always imagined.