The M word

Oh dear. The temperatures are warming up.  It is the time of year that I start to see a renewed effort at making the world a bit more proper and respectable by writing and sharing a plethora of sermons on the importance of modesty.  So this year, I am joining in on the fun or lack thereof.

So...Gentlemen...here is a list of things I never need to witness from ya'all ever again.

1-Hitting the pause button on a movie that has a certain actress in it and groaning at it as if you were having an orgasm right then and there...in front of ladies and gentlemen.

2-Watching and sharing music videos of people sharing filthy/ misogynist/ chauvinist jokes, or dancing or dressing provocatively...and groaning and or cat-calling together as a group.

3-Street harassment. Catcalling, honking your car horn at, or calling out at women who are complete strangers to you and then driving away before you can face the consequences.

4-Commenting on a celebrities/ models/ "friends" body parts disrespectfully to communicate either disdainful scorn or disgust or objectifying, lustful, arrogant approval.

5-Verbally and socially objectifying the human person and the human body by looking at photos of your "friends" on Facebook and people you "follow" on Twitter and appraising them solely on terms of sexual attractiveness to you, and then sharing your opinion with everybody.

6-Announcing a particular fetish or sexual preference of yours to people. Especially if they did not ask. Especially since it is none of their business. I certainly never asked. What makes you think the world has an interest in your sexual preferences? Yeah, you definitely are never getting a second date...and if my girlfriends ask me how the date went I am going to pass your announcement on to them so they will never date you either and tell all their pretty friends not to date you...who will tell all their friends and relatives...yeah you better move to another parish...or else clean up your act. Which brings me to # 7.

7- Assuming that other women or men have a duty to conform to or care about whatever your particular fetish or sexual preference happens to be, no matter how racist/ unrealistic/ unattainable/ shallow/ demeaning/ filthy/disrespectful/ ageist /unhealthy/ sexist it is.

8- Telling blonde jokes/ fat jokes/ old lady jokes/ fat lady jokes/ fat old lady jokes/ fat old blonde lady jokes/ Hillary Clinton jokes/ pretty much any joke that suggests falsely that only a certain type of woman is a daughter of God whose body is a temple of the Holy Spirit but that any female who ages, looks a certain way, disagrees with your views, or acts in a way that you disapprove...is not.

9-Ever asking or answering the question, "Would you do her?"

10- Ever asking or answering the question, "Hot or Not?"

11-Ever asking or answering the question, "On a scale of one to ten, how do you rank her?" Because I have never heard it used for work performance...or for ranking mind or personality.

12- Okay, I take it back. I did hear this gem once, "I give her face a 5, her body a 4, her brain a 4 and her personality a 2." Um...that is demeaning, and objectifying. I will see you in the line for confession.

13-Saying that ladies do not curse, and then proceeding to curse in front of ladies.

14-Making obscene gestures at people, particularly at ladies, particularly because you know that they will not return the gesture because they are ladies.  That makes you cowardly as well as immodest and disrespectful.

15- Going to the beach, ogling a girl in a bikini until you are drooling with lust. Laughing at an older woman whose cover-up can't hide all of her baby-weight, varicose veins and cellulite. Teasing or touching inappropriately your date in the one piece that cost her 85 bucks plus shipping. Then proceeding to go on a rant as to why Christian girls don't cover up enough at the beach.

16-Calling women who do not dress or act in a way that you approve "sluts".

17-Calling men who do not dress or act in a way that you approve "fags".

18-Dating and heatedly making out with someone with no promise of or intention of marriage.

19-Running in public without a shirt on and then getting shocked and surprised when girls sharply avert their eyes from you and blush. Then proceeding to act shocked and surprised when you are visually assailed by a woman in running shorts and a sports bra.  But not averting your eyes. Again, hypocrisy alert.

20-Looking at a woman lustfully, getting caught at it by someone, and then blaming the girl for what she was wearing.

Oh, you were expecting this list to be directed at women? Perhaps you were expecting another sermon dictating a certain dress code as if it were gospel truth and deviation from it were heresy. Nope. I have heard dozens and dozens of sermons about modesty in my life. Before I hit puberty...all during my High School years...all throughout college I have heard them.  In fact, and let me really stress this part-I have heard more admonitions and sermonizing about the virtue of modesty than I have heard of ANY OTHER VIRTUE IN MY LIFE.

Because I was a young woman, the one thing that I was singled out for to get regularly reminded of the importance of was not courage, diligence, charity or wisdom.  Not even in college. And I went to two "Good Catholic Colleges".  No, the mandatory talks were about Modesty. Most of them were unsatisfying, because they talked so little about Modesty.  They talked about sleeve length. They talked about skirt length. They talked about necklines. They talked about rape. They talked about better attracting the "right kind of man". They talked about speaking and dancing and sitting and acting "like a lady".  Did the men get the mandatory monthly talks about the importance of modesty? No. Oh, if I am lucky, occasionally I will get a blog post or an article reminding men to avert their eyes. Sometimes they will even say that Modesty is not merely about a dress code. Sometimes they will actually give the definition of the Holy virtue from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Tonight I was pleasantly surprised by reading one that called out the people who are treating modesty as if it were a feminine virtue and not a universal one. It was rare when I was growing up to find a sermon about modesty that did not place 95% of the responsibility for it upon women.  I remember once reading a "book of virtues for young women" as a teenager and when I got to "Purity" it read, "Purity is the most important virtue for women, along with Modesty, her handmaiden."

Purity and modesty were and still are, two of my most beloved, treasured and esteemed virtues. But I remember reading that and saying to myself "What?!" And then going down and showing my mother and my sister and my girlfriends and saying, "What about Charity? Isn't Charity the Queen of all virtues? Besides Purity IS Charity! It is seeing with God's eyes. But he does not say that anywhere? What about Humility, the mother of all virtues? What about Courage? What about Wisdom? Is what we heard before wrong? Why is he saying that?"

Then I read further and all that was left in the sermon were admonitions that if we "lost our virtue" we "lost what made us precious". Then it had cautionary tales about how we should avoid flatterers and mistrust men in general because they were probably trying to seduce us. Then it had more cautionary tales about how we should not ever be vain about ourselves because it would make us susceptible to seduction and immodesty. Adjurations to abstain from anything that could lead to fornication. Cautionary tales about girls who were raped by their uncles. Then blaming the girls for trusting their uncles.  It was a very eye-opening read for a fourteen year old girl and I never forgot it.  I will never forget how sick I felt afterwards. I felt sick like that many many times as I made that transition from girlhood into womanhood. I still see things every day that make me feel sick.  The behaviors I listed above are the things that most offend my modesty. They also offend my sense of the sacred, my respect for people, my respect for men, women, children, the elderly. They also offend my sense of justice.  They offend my sense of propriety. And the worst offenders I have seen are men.  Not women. Yes, I have seen immodest women on the internet, in movies, in TV...all sponsored by men, directed by men, watched by men, participated in by men. I have even witnessed some things from women that I knew that I thought unworthy of their dignity. But most of the offenders that I have met were men.  And yet it is women who get the majority of the sermons during the warm weather months. It is women who get told to respect themselves and act like ladies.

Fine, bring them on, I will keep listening to your complaints about strapless or sleeveless dresses, plunging necklines, bikinis, cut-offs, yoga pants, leggings worn as pants...fine.  But do it for the right reasons, and do not pretend that you are talking about modesty when you sermonize.  If all you talk about is rape prevention, that men are beasts (they are not! And I am sick of hearing it said! I love men!), that if we get treated like excrement it is because of how we dress, our demeanor or the way we talk or how much makeup we wear...do not pretend you are encouraging virtue.  "Do not advertise what is not for sale"? What does that even mean? NONE OF ME IS FOR SALE! Did you just compare my body with a commodity? I guess your hands are for sale then, because you are not wearing gloves.  "Don't show anything you would not want him to touch"? Oh is that why he keeps playing with my hair? Because I am not wearing a veil? And my body is up for grabs if I am not wearing a burka? You are not encouraging modesty with that kind of talk. You are enabling and justifying immodesty.

I want us to win this culture war, but we are not going to win it if people do not even know what Modesty is. We won't win it if any effort they make at encouraging or fostering lady-like behavior is only nurturing a sick false "purity culture".  We won't win it if we enable a culture that makes "purity" the only thing that makes a woman "worth it" and real purity is rejected by men as only for saints or would-be priests.  For that matter we are not going to win if sanctity or the priesthood are rejected as unattainable by the vast majority of our men.

My Wedding Day Part 2

I did not process down the aisle because there was no music and no crowd.  I just genuflected, strode up to the kneeler beside Ian and waited for our Mass to begin. Ian was being his stubborn, superstitious self and would not look directly at me until Mass had begun.  He made me smile and roll my eyes at the same time. That was my Ian. Father set up and then Mass began. I chanted as fervently as I ever had in my life.  Then the moment came.  We faced each other to offer each other our vows in the sight of God and the Church. Now he was looking directly at me. And suddenly everything was silent and still. The moment before our eyes and hands met, I was struck with a holy fear. It was like the fear and love I had felt every time I had held a new baby brother or sister for the first time. Or the fear I had felt the instant before the Sacred Host touched my tongue at my First Holy Communion.

God, Dear God...I have loved you all of my life and you have loved me all of my life. Help me to love him and love you as I should. Please sustain and strengthen my love every day. Help us to love you and to love each other more and more all of our lives and then forever in heaven. 

I looked into his eyes and saw his love for me. Those dear eyes, brimming with joyful tears, dark as midnight and often red from insomnia. Now they were clearer and brighter than the diamond on my engagement ring. They positively twinkled behind his glasses. Half the fun of getting married is seeing how happy it makes the man you love.  Today his shoulders were not heavy with the weight of a weary, wandering world.  Every familiar and adorable feature on his face was yearning for me. For us. I saw that he was taking his life and heart into his own hands and holding it out to me in offering. And I heard him speak the words.  That he would love me forever. That I had been chosen to be cherished by him for always. That he would "accept our children lovingly from God" whether they were boys or girls, healthy or handicapped, smart or slow, whether the world thought they were beautiful or ugly or whether they were "good" or "bad" or "easy" or "difficult".  That all of him wanted all of me.

And as I answered his vows with the old, familiar and beloved words "to have and to hold, from this day forward, to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part" he knew the truth of my heart offered to him and to God. He heard it in my voice, he saw it in my eyes, he felt it in the touch of my hands.  And he smiled at me.

To be truthful, I hardly remember the rest. I was so dizzy with happiness and gratitude. I know we brought up the gifts. The miracle of consecration and transubstantiation happened in a trice. God himself came down on that inadequate altar to become food for us. He gave us His strength to empower our weakness, His life to save us from spiritual death. Ian said afterwards, "That was like a powerful three way hug...Being joined to you in marriage before God, then being united with God, He in Me and I in Him and also joined with you in Him."  And I recognized again, the joy of an orphan who has a Father in God, a Mother in Our Lady, a home in Mother Church, a place in the Mystical Body of Christ, a Lover and Savior and Lord in Christ, a Comforter in the Holy Spirit, and an angel as a guardian. And now Ian and I were a family, a domestic church. Now we were one. Now we were married.

And suddenly we were invited by the priest to kiss and we forgot how to.

Seriously, our first gesture of love as husband and wife and we both went white and froze for a second. We were so nervous as we leaned toward each other. (Are we doing this right? It has something to do with the lips, right?) We found each other of course and then we forgot to be nervous and self conscious in front of that massive crowd of four people. And everyone went "AWWWWWWWWW!" Which was exactly how we felt so we laughed against each other.

We were embraced and congratulated and we thanked everyone and embraced everyone. It felt like an instant and age and then Ian and I were alone together and tucking ourselves into what was now our car to go home. HOME. OUR home.

"I know you told me not to get my hopes up about how you would look," Ian said, "And that this was not the dress that you had hoped for your wedding day...But if you could only see yourself right now. You are radiant. You are so, so beautiful!"

Any trace of nervousness I had felt at my own insufficiency was now forgotten. All I knew was joy and peace and him.  "My husband," I pronounced with all my happy heart.
"Let's go home, my dear wife."

And there are so many other little details about that day that I hope I remember forever. I hope I remember skyping with Ian's brother Z, and his "best man toast" speech to us. I hope I remember the chocolate cake we ate at the lovely steakhouse when we blew out the candle and made our wish for our future happiness, holiness and prosperity. (I do remember it, and my mouth is watering. Velvety, moist, decadent, chocolate love...The champagne! The steak! The spiked mocha latte topped with whipped cream and chocolate curls in the sugar-rimmed giant glass! Wow!) Most of all, I hope that I will remember every smile on his face as clearly as I do now, as if it were yesterday. And I know that I will.  Because he smiles at me like that every day with the same love and longing, gratitude and wonder. But now with more comfort, ease and familiarity. That smile is a shadow of heaven.

My Wedding Day Part 1

My wedding day dawned with dove gray skies. I remember that I wore galoshes to the Navy Chapel because it rained so much prior. After all this time of waiting, I was finally going to marry Ian. I would have my own unbroken, stable, loving family and know that joy. Having not slept the night before, I was a messy combination of emotional rawness, jittery nervousness, melancholy and ecstasy.  I wondered which would look worse in the photos, my red eyes or my unbleached teeth or my humidity-frizzed hair.  I tried not to look too closely at the simple ivory dress that I had snagged on clearance from JCPenney.  It was worlds away from the dress I had dreamed, of course. I had to supplement it with an embroidered, lacy shrug of mine, to make it church-appropriate.  Oh well, I thought, It is all I could afford, and now I am out of time to come up with anything better.  Ian is already crazy enough to be wild about my looks. Let's just hope the insanity holds out.
Between finances, relocating and deployment, Ian and I had to get married as soon as we could. We could not have a big celebration with all of our friends. We would not get our High Tridentine Mass. There would be no organ or choir. There would be no reception. I had not even been able to ship my wedding veil to Washington. There would be no reception, no beautiful church, and nobody would be there except Ian's parents and a grandmother that I was still getting to know.
Ian just wore a suit for the ceremony instead of his dress uniform.  The little Navy Chapel still had poinsettias decorating the altar for us. After all, in the old calendar, it was still the Christmas Season. I bought the only other flowers from a grocery store that morning.  I bound together corsages for my grandmother and new mother in law, a button-hole for my new father in law, and one for Ian. Ian was so happy that he got the single red rose I had bought. He made me smile again and again and held me when I needed a hug. My in laws reactions were priceless and touching. I had wanted to give the new additions to my family a peace offering and gesture of filial love. It meant more to them somehow, that I had made them myself that morning.
 I managed to have enough white spray roses afterward to bind up a nosegay for myself. I used an old, celery colored, chiffon scarf to wrap it. As I assembled myself in the bathroom, and mentally prepared, I hoped that I still managed to look bridal. I thought about the wartime brides I had seen in 1940's movies, who wore suits with pencil skirts and covered their day hats with newspapers to shield them from the rain. I smiled. Every bride that I had ever known, said that their wedding day felt surreal. They were right. I was still pinching myself.

I thought about each of my friends with gratitude and regard. I tried not to be sad that they could not be there. Many brides have not had the luxury of being reunited with old friends when they wed.  I told myself again.  I thought about my father. My poor, beloved, abusive, estranged father. I said a prayer for him and thanked God for the gift of my life. And I was so relieved and grateful that he was far away and could never hurt me again.  I had said goodbye to him years ago. At my graduation, my relatives had played at a charade of us not being estranged from each other and that he was not an unrepentant, abusive predator. After enduring their antics and his with more grace than I should have, I promised myself that I would never again let them spoil a major event of my life with such a disgusting farce. Between his charade and my mothers antics it was almost more than I could bear.  He was not here, and my abusive, mentally ill mother was not here either. The relatives that had turned a blind eye to my pain who did not really know me were not there.  And I felt tremendous relief.  Now I could cry if I wanted  to. Now I did not have to make an apology for my tears or broken heart to anyone.  Now I could be happy and laugh without them. And there was nobody around to demand apology for that either. God and Ian both knew and loved my heart and they were the only ones there.
I thought of James, Margaret and Charlie, John, Thomas, Andrew, Elizabeth, Teresa, Elena, Peter and Catherine. My brothers and sisters. After growing up giving so much of myself to them, I had left for college. We had all missed so much of each other's lives. I was the first of the children to go to college and graduate. I was the first to truly break free from the domestic violence, emotional abuse, co-dependency and denial that was our lives before and after the divorce. Now I would be the first of our broken, dysfunctional family to get married.  A cold hand gripped at my heart. Everything in me ached for them. For all of us. We were eleven beautiful, bright, gifted children who were born to a psychotic father and a neurotic mother. Our parents were bitterly divorced and could not stand each other. We loved our parents, we loved each other, and we loved our Catholic faith. And now we had to pick up our cross and follow Christ. We had to find our path to follow Christ according to our vocations, not in imitation of our parents' example.  I was the eldest of them and the least of them.  I wished they could have been there and we could have been happy together. But it was impossible. And that was what heaven was for.   I prayed in my heart and spoke to them:  I love all of you so much. I wish you could all be here. But if we all make it to heaven, we will have all eternity to be together and be happy. 

During our marriage prep the priest had said to me and my prospective spouse "You know you are 50% more likely to divorce because her parents are divorced?" Haha. "Yes, father" we replied. "But we are not going to get divorced," Ian stated. "And of course I know that father",  I added. "Every child whose parents are divorced gets that statistic read to them. It is one of the hallmark joys of being a child of a broken home that you sometimes get treated like an unsafe bet, or damaged goods."

I wanted to tell my brothers and sisters that we had a choice. And a chance.  We could be loving, loyal, only slightly insane, semi-well adjusted people. We could be good and faithful Christians. And we could have happy, loving, lifelong marriages.

I fastened the string of pearls that Ian had bought me from Thailand as a Christmas present.  The words of another priest, a dear, very old, jokester and toughie of a retired Marine Irish priest came back to me. "You take good care of her! You, Mr. Scottish, Navy man, you! This girl right here! She is like a pearl of great price! A man sells everything that he has to have her!" I had laughed and blushed and Ian had turned to me and said, "He is right. You are my pearl. You are priceless."
Now I fastened the earrings that matched the necklace and admired them again. Somehow, now that I saw how gorgeous and expensive real pearls were, it made the memory of that pretty speech more loving. I hummed the tune to the chant I would sing for the responsorial psalm and thought of Ian.

Dear Ian. He was my hero and my comrade at arms. Brave Ian. Clever Ian. Wise Ian. Kind Ian. Crazy Ian. Silly Ian. Serious Ian. Melancholy Ian. Peaceful Ian. Quiet Ian. Noisy Ian. Loyal Ian. Steadfast Ian. Every beautiful gesture, gift and love-speech he had ever made me, every hug and kiss, every loving glance and gaze came rushing at my memory and overwhelmed me. I was too overwhelmed with emotion to weep joyful tears or talk coherently to my grandmother when she tumbled into the bathroom. I loved him so much and now I was finally going to be his life's companion forever.

"Stern as Death is love. Relentless as the Netherworld. Many waters cannot drown love."  I thought to myself.  I squeezed my bouquet, looked at myself in the mirror one last time, took a deep breath and walked to down the hall to the chapel to marry Ian.

When Life hands you spoiling bananas...fry them!

Today I had to go to the food bank because I had little to no food in the house and no money.  So I filled out the paperwork, presented two forms of identification and received a large box of goods.  On top of the box was a large bunch of brown bananas, falling away from their peeling, oozing next to the roll of toilet paper.  If you have ever received assistance from food banks you know that it is a blessing if they have vegetables and fruit of any kind, even from a can, much less whole produce! I needed the potassium those slimy brown fruits had to offer, but they would need to all be eaten fast or there would be nothing edible left.  Still as I lugged my burden the seven blocks to get home, I wondered to myself what to do with my treasure.

The prospect of eating them as they were was not very palatable.  Banana bread? They would be perfect for it, but I had almost no flour at home.  Fried bananas? They would never hold up their shape for traditional fried bananas...however...

So I got home, sank into the floor tiredly, got up, cooled off, put away my loot, and set about making my lunch out of my bruised tropical delights. 

I mashed them all up, saved most in the fridge for later, and kept the last three mashed bananas in a bowl for batter.  Now, how to make this into frying material? I had a little oil to cook with...so they would be fried somehow.  I had sugar in my room (I keep it on hand to use for exfoliation. It is effective and cheap.)  Two tablespoons of sugar went into the mashed bananas. I borrowed a pinch of table salt and threw that in too.  I had baking soda in my room (I use it for everything; cleaning, baking, deoderant, toothpaste...) I used a pinch of that.  I borrowed one egg and about a half a cup of flour. Beating the egg into the mixture with a fork, I gradually added the flour until it looked somewhat like pancake batter. 

Heating some oil in a pan, I plopped portions of the batter into the vessel and fried up "pancakes".  They were gooey and sweet in "banana pockets" in the cake. They were golden, crispy on the edges and had an uber-moist cakey texture.  They were very heart and filling as well.  Very satisfying. 

For the last week or so I had not been able to eat lunch, so this for me, was a much needed "pick-up" to my spirits.  Deo Gratias! Thanks food bank! 

Musings with My Morning Coffee

I am so nostalgic for those fabulous fifties fashions right now. I love how ladylike the looks are. I am also homesick for when I was living with my girlfriends. So much beauty! Everywhere! Whether we were gathered on the landing, under the stars, next to an outdoor fire, singing songs...or decorating a Christmas tree next to a roaring fire, or just drinking prosecco while watching an old movie, my friends had a way of bringing out the lady in me, of making everything more aesthetically pleasing, of spreading their pretty ways and gentility everywhere. There was such a comfort and familiarity within that environment.

I love dressing up for no reason at all. I love wearing baubles and playing with makeup. But now I live in an environment where everyone dresses down rather than up. Almost in reaction to the sloppiness and raggedness, I take special care to primp up on my walks. This makes me the object of some attention, needless to say. I am naturally a shy person, believe it or not, so at first this was met with mixed reactions. But as I pass by people on the sidewalk, crossing the street, or waiting to see the nurse and smile at them. They brighten up a little. One man that I passed while thrift store shopping, smiled, nodded respectfully and said, "Have a nice day, young lady." And when he said the word "lady" I smiled. Because we use the term "lady" two ways socially. One as an inoffensive way to refer to any woman, the second as a way to describe a woman who is gentle, polished and well-mannered. I think this time he meant it in the latter sense.

I suppose I would be the same person if I roamed around in my sweatpants. But I would not be making an effort to be pleasing a well-mannered about my presentation.  It is in that, I believe, that I have a chanceat exercising kindness to others as well as myself.

And now I am off to top of my coffee cup. Doo de doo di doo...

Morning Offering

O Blessed Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

I offer you my thoughts, feelings, words and deeds of today, in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass throughout the world. I offer you my anger, my hurt, my sadness and my sickness and I place them into your loving, pierced hands, My Jesus. Holy Spirit, take my foolishness and give me wisdom, take my weakness and give me fortitude. Father of Heaven, for the love of the Son, have mercy on me and on the whole world, for we do not know what we do. Mother Mary, be my mother, today and always. Teach me to love as you do. Amen.

Marriage and Romanticism

I have been called a romantic all of my adult life. At first I never argued with the statement.After all, I was in love with being in love. I waxed poetic about sunsets, babies and elderly couples kissing in public. I loved jewelry, silk, lace, flowers and the color pink. I loved old fashioned wicker baskets, sun-rooms, ball-gowns, bird-cages, linen handkerchiefs, dangling gypsy earrings and bohemian styled clothing. I believed in true love. I believed in love-at-first sight. I believed that it was more romantic if you married your first love and stayed married to them your whole life. I hoped to marry young and have many children. I was overjoyed at every romantic couple I met and wept each time they broke-up\separated/divorced. I proclaimed every kind of weather and every season as "romantic". I was rhapsodic about men. I memorized poetry. I sighed and wept happy tears at the sight of a Raphael painting. I knew who Laura and Petrarch were. I knew who Dante and Beatrice were. I knew who inspired Botticelli's Venus. I knew something about Romeo and Juliet other than the fact that they were teens who committed suicide. I sang the Nat King Cole song, "When I fall in love, it will be forever..." Isn't that what a "romantic" is?

But now that I enter my late twenties, though I am the same person that I am when I was young, and still do all of those things...I would not classify myself as a true Romantic in the old sense of the word. The school of romanticism is enamored of the aesthetic ideal and is in eternal pursuit of the perfect. The tragic tension of the romantic is in the pride of Byron, the shame of Coleridge, the melancholy of Keats and the ecstasy of Shelley. It is in Wordsworth's daffodils, in William Blake's angel-laden trees, and in Walter Scott's nostalgia for times and realms that he never knew. We live in a finite, temporary, imperfect world and our hearts were designed for the infinite, eternal and the perfect. So our hearts rejoice at the sight of shadows and dim reflections of that ideal and then weeps at the realization that it was only a shadow.

When you were a baby, you probably saw a brightly colored flower, decided that you wanted it, plucked it from the ground, delighted in its beauty, then learned sadly that if you plucked it, it would wither and die faster. I remember once when I was a child, being dazzled by the majesty of light sparkling on water, and perplexed that when I filled my cup with it, the light would not stay in my cup. I still feel that longing for the eternal and the perfect, as we all do. And like a true melancholic, I am often saddened by the discrepancy between what I long for and what I am actually capable of doing, experiencing, being. As a Catholic, I know that my heart's desire will be realized only by God and He alone can sate that hunger. This hope, and this resignation, is where I part ways with romanticism. Because I know that the perfect is coming and that the perfect is God, I do not have to worry about finding the perfect on earth.

Why am I talking about this? Because this fact is brought home to me as I am planning my wedding.
There is no other phenomenon in our culture more saturated with romanticism than wedding planning and celebration. Just look at the magazines. "The Perfect Wedding", "The perfect dress", "Romantic locations" , "Exotic destinations" "Finding the right florist" "The right planner" "The right location" "The right time" "The right man"...You starting to see a pattern? No matter how impoverished the couple, the dream of the bride reigns supreme on this special day. The parents might be divorced but they must be there and be nice to each other. This might be the bride's fifth wedding but she must have a three-tiered cake.  Because this time it really is forever. She might have had to ask two girls she does not like that much to be her bridesmaids because her sister is overweight and her best friend got pregnant and she MUST have six bridesmaids. In her ordinary life, she wears a pantsuit, her gym clothes, and blue jeans every single day, but this day she MUST have a designer gown that costs five thousand dollars for the church and another that costs ten thousand for the reception.

Do not get me wrong. I love cake. I love silk, satin, chiffon, lace. I wear attention-grabbing colors and floor skimming hemlines in my every day life (and am sometimes called eccentric for doing so). I have no qualms with spending my money. I love flowers and sometimes buy them for no reason at all. I believe that every sacrament deserves celebration and magnificentia. Get a florist for a baptism too! Get a three-tiered cake for a first Holy Communion reception too! Wear a long white gown for your sixteenth birthday too! Or for no reason at all! Just because you are beautiful! Because you deserve it! Because no woman ever needs to give an explanation to the world for looking regal, feminine and drawing attention to herself!

What I find objectionable about this whole wedding mania is the fixation with one day for everything to be a perfect fulfillment of universal ideal and a personal fantasy. And the demand that it be such and the sense of entitlement about it. We all know the cliche about the dreaded Bridezilla. If you think about it though, every woman in our culture is encouraged to pursue everything she wants and never settles for less than what she wants-EVER. Moreover she is instilled with the truly romanticist notion that all of her dreams are attainable if she only waits long enough, cries long enough, nags long enough, gets the right lawyer, the right boyfriend, the right job, the right college, the right friends, the right career-goals, the right gym instructor, the right counselor...if she only would wish upon the right star...or sadly, if she is Christian, if she only prays hard and long enough. Then we wonder why there are so many divorces. Then we wonder why there are so many women with eating disorders. Then we wonder why there are suicides. Then we wonder why so many people are on anti-depressants. Then we wonder why the world has turned so jaded and cynical. Then we wonder why innocence is lost so young. Then we wonder why Taylor Swift writes so many whiny songs.

I do not believe that the perfect is attainable in this life.
I do not insist upon finding perfect happiness in this life.
Up until recently, I expected nothing out of life except misery. And yes, this is the opposite extreme. But the point that I am trying to make is that the idea that you will be perfectly happy forever in this life is just as nonsensical even if it is more attractive.
I used to expect that like many girls who come from my situation, that I would die very young.
When I was a child I used to try to convince myself that everybody that you loved would stab you in the back and break your heart.
Now I know better. But all the same, this does not mean that I don't know that my friends will sometimes unintentionally hurt my feelings.
My family is still going to do things that drive me nuts.
My children (when I have them, if I am so blessed) will fight with me, argue with me, disagree with me, and quite frequently drive me crazy.
My husband (after I marry him) will alternate between being "The Best Husband Ever" and "You impossible, infuriating man!" on a daily basis. My husband will alternate between thinking me the most wonderful wife in the world and the most frustrating person imaginable. That is life.

Life is supremely romantic in the same way that "Pied Beauty" is the loveliest poem.
Life is beautiful in the way that hugging my baby sister Catherine after she almost fell off the second story of our condo is beautiful. Life is beautiful as the snot and drool my sister Margaret coughed up after I saved her from drowning. Life is beautiful like the smile of delight on Elena's face after she sprinkled the bread flour all over the living room carpet. Life is beautiful like the tears on a child's face when she hugs her soldier Dad returned from Iraq. Life is beautiful like the bouquet of flowers a child picked for his mother out of her forbidden, untouchable, prized begonias. Life is beautiful like the fragile hands of an elderly woman clutching a rosary. That is the sort of romantic beauty that I want on my wedding day and the kind that I know that I will have. Because it is the sort of happiness, beauty and romance that comes from love.

At the end of the day, it does not matter if the bakery makes a mistake on my cake order. It does not matter if somebody accidentally spills wine on my wedding dress. It does not matter if I can not afford to go away for my honeymoon. It does not matter if I lose the twenty pounds. It does not really matter if my dress is alencon or chantilly lace. It does not matter if the ring pillow was made in china. It does not matter if my wedding guest are too few for a guest book. It does not matter if one of the groom's men has scuffed shoes. It does not matter if my mother in law hates my shoes.

It does not matter because this is not supposed the be the perfect day or the perfect life. The only thing I want to do perfectly on my wedding day, is love my husband. For that matter I want to do that perfectly for the rest of my life. But I know that I am imperfect and he is imperfect and our love for each other falls short of the love that God has for each of us. And I am ok with that.

My future husband said to me once, "I love you. And want to be with you when you are sick...when you are angry...when you are sad...when you are wrong...because I want to be with you always. I do not love you only when you do exactly what I want, or when you say what I want or think what I want. I love you. And I choose to love you forever."

And to confess the truth...that is sublime in its romance.