I'll be reading Growing Up with Tamales for story time at Blue Willow Bookshop, in Houston, on Thursday morning, May 15. Tell everyone you know with kids in the Houston area. How do you find and support local indie book stores like Blue Willow? By going to Booksense.
On Saturday, May 17, I'll be in Dallas, reading and signing at the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library, for the 13th Dallas Children’s Book Fair & Literary Festival.
On June 22, here in Houston, I'm going to do a poetry workshop. It's free and open to the public, y'all, and they're having one every Sunday in June, taught by local poets I love and respect. So come on down.
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
There was bad news, too.I went to court to finalize the arrangements for my middle son, Dallas, to go live [elsewhere] for the semester. And then, [magically, in a process I'm not supposed to describe in detail], my child support got reduced to nothing. And that wouldn't have bothered me so much if it weren't for [the emotional ugliness surrounding the process].
And I wrote a long, angry entry about it here. (And some of you responded with very kind, helpful comments. Thanks, y'all.) And then I deleted that post, because there's no use filling up my blog with [that ugliness]. You know?
So, aside from the fact that I miss my middle son and I'm even broker than I was before, life is still very good and there's no use dwelling on the ungood parts. Right? Right.
1/9/07: And now that I'm having to go back and censor this entry, lest it invoke more ugliness, let me say again how happy I am to have removed myself from my previous life. Thank God.
being engaged
Tad and I got engaged for a few personal reasons, particular and special to him and me and no one else. Namely, this ring symbolizes a promise to each other, and that promise is, "I promise you didn't just spend five years dating me for nothing."
I explained the word engagement to my kids. I told them it usually means the fiances are planning to marry in a year. But that we aren't getting married in a year. "How long?" my youngest asked. "I don't know," I said. "Maybe five years from now. Maybe two years. But probably more than two years. I don't know."
The kids accepted that answer, but no one else will. :)
On Friday evening, while visiting Tad at his place, I fielded my third or fourth phone call from congratulatory friends and family members, all of whom were eager to help us plan the wedding. RIGHT NOW. I was explaining to the caller that we wouldn't make plans until we saved up enough money to have the kind of event we wanted. The caller was trying to persuade me that we should have an inexpensive wedding this spring. Tad was on his second such phone call. We hung up and turned to each other over the turkey spaghetti dinner Tad was cooking.
"Man," said Tad. "I thought getting engaged would make people quit asking us quesitons. But now it's even worse."
I nodded sympathetically.
He said, "I'm telling people, 'She's not pregnant. We don't have to get married right now.'"
"People are excited," I said.
"People need to mind their own damned business," he said.
I told him it was a good thing, that people were so eager to see us married. It meant that they thought we'd be happy together. He grudgingly agreed, then we made up a unified strategy for dealing with other would-be wedding planners. Then we agreed we wouldn't talk about this anymore, for at least a year. Then we ate our spaghetti.
After dinner, we went to a friend's art thingie, where a local string quartet played. While we listened to them, it flickered through my mind that it might be nice to have this string quartet play at our hypothetical wedding, however many years in the future. But I decided to keep that thought to myself. I didn't want Tad to think that I'd been infected with the fever.
After their first piece was done, Tad leaned over to me and whispered, "We should get them to play at our wedding!"
On Saturday, we went to Barnes and Noble so I could spend the last of the gift certificate my dad got me for my birthday. I couldn't help looking through the wedding mags. It's my right! This ring on my finger means I'm allowed! I picked out three of the least obnoxious seeming, then added something called Asian Bride to my stack. In case, you know, I decide to wear an Asian wedding dress instead of a white one. Well... I'm pretty sure I'm not going to wear a white dress. Not a white wedding dress, in any case.
Asian Bride turned out to be for Indian weddings only. (However, those Indian wedding dresses are pretty freaking awesome. I wish I had the slightest excuse to wear one.) The other magazines seemed to fall into one of two categories:
1. Magazines for brides who only care about looking like princesses on the biggest day of their entire lives.
2. Magazines for couples who care about their wedding guests... and thinking up a million ways to force their "personality" down their guests' throats.
I bought an issue of The Knot (Texas edition) because it had the nicest photos and design ideas worth knocking off for cheap. I also bought five gazillion non-wedding magazines. Thanks, Daddy! At home, I flipped through about a quarter of the Knot before thinking, "This is ridiculous. We don't need all this stuff," and putting it aside.
That night, Tad was visiting me at my house. I came upon him in my bedroom with my wedding magazine in his hands and a look of distaste on his face. "This is ridiculous. I don't think we need all this stuff. Do you?"
No. No, I don't. We don't need escort cards or signature cocktails or monogrammed favors or save-the-date cards. Shoot, we don't even need bridesmaids or groomsmen or big white wedding dresses. We decided it right then, as we flipped through the magazine. No superfluous expense. No symbols without meaning.
My friend Yvonne passed on really good wedding planning advice. She said you're supposed to decide which two elements of the wedding are most important to each of you. Then, you spend your budget on those and forget the rest. For Tad and I, the two most important things are food and music. We've already talked about it and decided that, years ago, even back before we ever admitted we might get married some day. Third most important thing, to me, is flowers. But I think we can just have it in a garden, then, and not worry about buying too many.
We've thrown a lot of parties together, and I've always been pleased by how well they go, and how our party priorities dovetail. So I think our hypothetical, years-from-now wedding should be just fine. The more we agree not to discuss it, the more I realize that we've already, pretty much, telepathically planned the whole thing.
"There's no use getting married until we can afford a bigger house," I said.
Tad agreed.
"I wish... Don't think this is weird, but I kind of wish we could get married and then not live together," I said. "Just get married and then keep doing the same exact stuff we do now."
"That's what I've been thinking, too!" he said. "Wouldn't that be cool?"
Maybe we'll end up doing that. Just have a tiny, beautiful wedding, with good food and good music, for our family and friends. Then go back to living our lives and being happy.
Labels: domestic, my sex life, parenting
6:13 AM #Comments:
Hi, lurker and first-time commenter here. I've reading your blog for a while now and I likes it. :) Also, belated congratulations!I've been engaged for almost two years now and the wedding's in August. I'm an only child and my fiance's the last of his siblings (and the only boy) to get married, so I can totally related to the friends and relatives going apeshit. Fun, isn't it?
# posted by
: 10:36 AM
That's what my mom did. She dated a guy for seventeen years while she lived at her house and he lived at his. They got engaged and we all thought it would be another ten years before they got married. Randomly one Sunday my mother called and said "We're getting married on Friday. DON'T YOU DARE TELL ANYONE. Do you think you can get the day off work?"
For them the priorities were location (this random mountaintop near the Cumberland Gap) and lack of fuss. The four of us (my sister and I were the only guests) ran off on Thursday night. Mom invited everyone to brunch at her house on Saturday morning, where we told people about the elopement. Then we all went canoeing.
Then she continued to live at her house and he at his for another six months or so until she decided to rent out her house and move in with him. She's still not sold on that idea and talks foldly of buying herself a nice little house closer to town where he can visit.
# posted by
mary ann : 11:03 AM
Charmed to death by all of this, and I love your attitude.
# posted by
Marigoldie : 11:51 AM
OH THAT F*****G J*****S. I'm not sure why, but it makes me absolutely furious that your jerk ex got away with that. And to gloat about it??? ARGH.
Onto happier topics: given that there's not much about your relationship with Tad that anyone is going to describe as "conventional," I think the idea of getting married and living apart sounds perfect for you. For heaven's sake, do what makes sense to you, and don't listen to any of us!!! ;-)
# posted by
: 12:01 PM
Gwen, you make me so, so, so happy. I was always so scared to tell anyone that I just really didn't know if I ever wanted to live with someone, even if I found someone special enough to me that I wanted to marry them. I cannot tell you how happy it has made me other people feel that way also.
Especially someone whose writing and opinions I respect so much and enjoy reading. (By which I mean, someone AWESOME.) <3
Thank you for being you and not being afraid to tell us about it.
# posted by
Ali : 1:49 PM
ITAW ali. i've been reading you for ever. since hipmama! and i have been really inspired by the grace with which you handle things (and also the way you occasionally go nutso, lol). it's stupid to say, and possibly sounds creepy--but there have indeed been times in my life that i have tried to handle a situation (dreadful ex, new love) in a way that you would, because really? you do a great job. also i love crafts, so you know, YAY CRAFTS.
--smarticus
# posted by
: 2:07 PM
OMG!! You don't know how wise those words are!! Then you would never lose the romance, right? I think it would be totally cool to be married but to live next door to one another. I think an older famous actress did that and was married for a very long time.
# posted by
ShoeGirl : 4:11 PM
Well, Tim Burton and Helen Bonaham Carter (sp) live in different houses, connected by a hallway
# posted by
: 9:17 PM
Gwen,
congratulations to you, Tad and your family. You are a great person and a great mom. I am wishing you all the best.
Maureen
# posted by
: 9:30 PM
Here's the wedding advice I give to every person I know who's getting married: Do what makes you happy. And ignore everyone else. Not that you need the advice; I'm sure you're already planning on doing just that.
People can drive you crazy, though. We didn't listen to a single person when we planned our wedding (alone on the beach) and reception (back home) and there isn't a single thing that either of us would change about it. That includes the timing, even though we were together nine years before we got married.
Defying convention in favor of personal satisfaction always makes me feel very empowered.
# posted by
kate : 10:09 PM
Yay! (To the good parts, not to the stupid crappy bits having to do with your ex.)
I think if we got married again, we'd follow your attitude about it. I don't think we were quite confident enough in ourselves at the time not to fall in with all the claptrap -- even though it did turn out very well. I think we were bullied into a more elaborate affair than was really *us* -- not by any one person but more by... society's expectations? Damn you, The Knot! At this point, I think we'd be mature enough and secure enough in our own identities to not worry about all that. All that is to say that I'm sure your hypothetical future wedding will be awesome and beautiful and FUN.
(And I think the two houses thing is great. I'm a big fan of having someplace that is your OWN piece of peace and quiet. We live in one house, but he travels a lot and so part of the time, it is my own!)
Anyway, many felicitations, and heres to several happy years of wedding planning!
# posted by
jam : 8:32 AM
I think you've got the right idea about all of this.
But can we see the ring?
# posted by
tina : 12:09 PM
Anon: Yep. Hey, congratulations on your upcoming wedding! When are you gonna have a baby? :)
Mary Ann: Your mom sounds bad-ass.
Marigoldie: :)
Jennifer: What you said, on all counts.
Ali: Heh. Thanks. I think you should go ahead and do whatever you want in life, and say it's because of my blog. Use me as your excuse to be free.
Smarticus: Thank you. That's very flattering. However, I have to say that I hope you're handling your stuff the way an idealized version of me would, and not necessarily the way the real me would. :) But, yeah... yay, crafts, for real.
Shoegirl: Yeah, that's totally our fantasy -- being next-door neighbors.
Lauren: More proof that money buys happiness.
Maureen: Thank you!
Kate: Word up. I'm with you.
Jam: Totally, totally. Part of the reason I'm so confident about what I want? Is because I bowed to the pressure for my first wedding, and... yeah. No. Not again.
I think separate houses are ideal, but we want separate bedrooms ("rooms") at the very least. I don't think it's fair that kids get their own rooms to fill up with their own stuff, but married couples are expected to share and combine. So... what you said, basically.
Tina: Go to Flickr. Starbuck the Cat is modelling it.
# posted by
Gwen : 1:58 PM
hay! that is a pretty ring!
well to be honest it's not like i'm all WHAT WOULD GWEN DO!??, and then i, you know, ask the magic 8-ball i have set up in frot of my gwen altar (which i *swear* i do not even have). it's more like, ok, i remember times that you wrote about utter *bullshit* from your ex in a very calm way. so one *can be calm*, instead of stabby and hyperventilating. or when you first broke it off with tad, and then, you know, you decided to take the risk, and you were nervous, but *moved forward* and gave yourself permission to be scared but optimistic. like that. no hero worship or whatever ;-)
# posted by
: 2:47 PM
Hey, you DO have an excuse to wear an Indian wedding dress...and that excuse would be that you like them. I'm sure one would look great on you, too.
# posted by
Amy : 1:58 PM
Smarticus: Thank you. Rest assured, though, that when annoying things happen, I can get stabby and hyperventilating with the best of them. Ask my boyfriend, he knows from daily experience. :)
Usually, by the time I write about the bad stuff here, I've had time to process the living hell out of it in my mind, and that's why I seem calm. In fact, I'd say that allowing yourself to vent all your emotions is what makes it possible to move forward afterwards. You can't move forward if you're bottling stuff up. You know?
Amy: Dude, you're right. You are so right.
I admit -- I don't care what the world thinks, but I do care what my fiance thinks. And, in general, he dissuades me from wearing overtly Asian clothing (especially inauthentic "chinoiserie" trends) because he doesn't want people to look at us and assume that I'm only dating him because I have some Asian fetish.
And I say, "But that *is* why I'm dating you. Now help me zip up this Hello Kitty kimono."
And then I say "Just kidding."
But, so, maybe I'm going overboard on the "sensitivity" thing, huh? I mean, I can't help it if things look awesome and I want to wear them, right? Whether or not those things are from India, China, or wherever?
I think I'll start a new blog post about this topic and see what all you guys say about it.
# posted by
Gwen : 9:11 AM
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