I think "IT" is real...

This is in response to several posts I have read on the "shidduch" (dating) oriented blogs I have been drawn into.  It is another opinion piece which many people, myself included, may feel I have no credentials to write, and therefore is should be just a jumping off piece to your own critical thinking - and yet, I feel it very, very deeply, so please do take this view into consideration, and feel free to share.

People who have been (or feel they have been, or are told they have been) looking to get married for a LONG time without success may come to believe that they are looking for the unattainable if they resolve to look for "love".  Isn't it enough to like the prospective partner, if you share commonalities, have a common plan for the future?  Won't love grow out of these?  Isn't the perception of "love" during dating just a chemical reaction, that in reality clouds your ability to judge the "true" characteristics of the other person?

To paraphrase the Dowager Countess of  Downton Abbey, marriage is, hopefully, for a very long time. 

Even if you think you have shared goals, situations can change which make you sharply re-evaluate and change your goals.  Even if you have shared interests, people change, new possibilities present, and change a person's focus.  Troubles AND joys come which can throw a relationship hard, or slowly erode as surely as gentle streams of water erode mountains.  For two people to stay together through this is a miracle! - how many times have you heard this vort?  There must be something supernatural to keep two people together through a lifetime. 

And so there is love.  The love between a parent and child is a given - as clear as the chemical lust between young lovers.  If you haven't been there yet, believe me.  When my last one was born, I finally made it the whole delivery without any anesthetic, but plenty of pitocin, so I was damn tired and relieved at the end  - and then I saw him.  And within two seconds I went from feeling just glad to have that "thing" out of my body TO "the baby, oh look at the baby, oh my baby" gush of love and protection and devotion and love.  Love between a couple is not a biological rush in the same way, and so the question of when it resolves is an open argument.

When I realized engagement to the wasband was imminent, I asked a friend, not a close friend but someone who knew me pretty well, "Do you think it is more important, for the success of a marriage, that the prospective couple be ready for marriage, or that they both love one another?"  I obviously felt I fit only one of these criteria - the fact is that I fit neither, but anyway... My friend, also just a college kid didn't have an answer.

Well, I came to my answer fairly quickly - they both need to love the other.  I went to stay with a very close college friend, after I had been married maybe a year or so.  She was talking with me and another older (not old, don't get angry at me, just older than we, already married many years, with children, etc) woman very close to her.  My friend told us about a man she had seen several times, told us he was very nice, they got along well, he had good future plans, etc.  "...And, so I know that love doesn't just happen, that it is more important to look at his character, and see if we are compatible, and then love will come later.  Wanting to fall crazy-in-love is a foolish thing, I'm going to be sensible..."  We two married ladies jumped, "No, don't, WAIT!  There must be an element of love.  Compatibility is a must, but in isolation, it can only carry you so far before you are left feeling disappointed and dissatisfied.  Look for love."  She found her true b'shert in the next man she met, and both were obviously in love.

So that is what I leave you with:  Look for love.  Yes, be careful not to be blinded by lust.  Yes, love alone is insufficient.  Yes, even "love" takes a lot of hard work.  But for G-d's sake - He created love for us.  Love is good.  Look for love.

Pretty

Last night the shul sisterhood had a "Spa and Sushi" event.  This morning, my nails are a bright coppery-gold.  In some cultures, this is considered quite attractive...

No, I'm just kidding - I picked out the color, and I am very pleased with the manicure.  I think it looks beautiful.  The other ladies seemed to agree.  Those of us sporting bold colored polish were happier with our choices than the women who picked more conservative colors.  I might also have been happier with the results since I do not keep my nails closely pared these days (whoops -not paired, they are closely paired), as do many of the other attendees.

I also decided to show off my fanciest-yet beaded bracelet.

This is the veiw from the back.  People wonder if it is like a glove; no, it leaves your hand very free.

  So, while I'm at it, I will show you the stuff I have been working on in the last couple months (I have been popping off bracelets almost every other night for the past couple weeks, Channukah Bazaar season is coming up.)

I want to learn some more designs like the star - such as snow flakes.  But I am also desperate for more snoods.  Anyway, I'm glad to be arms-deep into the pretty.

Hats (and gloves) again

I love hats.  LOVE.  I always planned to wear hats as an adult, never was really excited about wigs.  For the first ** years of married life, I was too intimidated to wear hats much, I'm sure glad I got over that.  Living in the other neighborhood last year, going to a shul full of hats helped a lot.

Over the holidays, I pulled out some new hats, as well as some older ones.  The new ones came from a woman who was giving away much of her collection.  I only took two: one black with a down-slanting brim, very chic, and the second sort of a rolled-brim leopard-print tam (probably the first leopard print ANYTHING I have ever chosen).  I love the look of both with my holiday clothes.

One of the older ones was from the Renaissance Faire.

Mine is similar in shape to these, in plum velvet, with gauffered ginko leaves.  It is a great hat, gorgeous, but huge, so I don't wear it too often.


Ladies, there is nothing wrong with wigs, but don't you want to do something fancy once in a while??  Even when I go to weddings now, I try to put something in my "hair" - flowers, a facinator, a big barrette.  But why am I even starting on this, with a crowd that overwhelmingly wear black suits to weddings??

Anyway, for the present, I'm keeping my hair long, making more snoods, and collecting hats as I find them.

As for gloves - I need some.  I have a terrible habit of playing with my nail, creating hangnails, and generally doing all kinds bad stuff to my fingers on shabbos.  I can't put on moisturizer, my skin is dry, and I don't even realize what I'm doing until the skin around my nails is a painful mess.  It popped into my head this Yom Kippur, that I should wear some little cotton gloves.  So I am on the look-out for nice, plain cotton gloves (is it even possible to still find kid gloves?).  My first round looking on the internet turns up mostly slutty halloween stuff, followed by slutty "bridal" or "prom" stuff.  Sears has gloves, but they look like the things worn by toll-booth operators.  I'll try to let you know if I find anything - let me know if you have a lead.

Frankenweenie

Had a remarkably pleasant night with movie buddy, when we went out last Saturday night to see Tim Burton's "Frankenweenie". 

It was great fun.  Lots of allusions to other horror movies, really fun animation, even a stop-motion film inside of another stop-motion film.  I unfortunately missed bits of it, because I was really sick with some stomach bug - and I still loved movie.

I highly recommend this as a fun, clean, not stupid movie that you can take your family to see.  Less creepy than corpse bride, I would even recommend it for fairly little kids.  I'm gonna go again, to see what I missed, and laugh all over again.

After these things... he remembered Vashti

I'm thinking in the manner of Achashvarosh's ministers.  The last couple posts show me becoming way too nostalgic, especially for the time I was part of a couple.  I am not nearly so angry as I was a year ago, and I am "remembering" the wasband.  So! it is time to either A) remember why I had to call it quits, or B) find something else to fill the void.  I tried a bit of A) today, looking through old emails.  This succeeded in making me not miss the wasband, but by way of making myself sad and angry again, so not the preferred method.  Okay, I think maybe it is time to ramp up option B)...which would necessitate speeding up the legal processes, state and religious. Despite all the advice I get, joking and serious, to get out and start dating, I'm still married, dammit! so just hold your horses.

Look over there! Where?

The other night, in the car, I heard a snippet of Joe Jackson's "Is She Really Going Out with Him".  It was a "visceral response" moment.  The song brought back a flood of memories from college through early marriage.  The wasband and I didn't agree too much on music (like many media, he seemed to be interested much more in the "knowing about" music, than actually enjoying it; but maybe I'm wrong; anyway...), but we both like Joe Jackson.  I'm listening to it again as I type, and I want to be back with those people who knew me when I used to feel free and fun. 

And I wanted to flirt with the wasband.  Come on! he was my husband for almost half my life, and in the most obvious ways, I was much more intimate with him then anyone else in this world.  So when I want to flirt with someone - he is the first person to come to my mind.  When I want to remember being a young adult, when I want to share memories of the children, when I want to remember being a lover, when I need to feel close to another soul, the person I imagine next to me is...him.

 Right after I heard the song, I went in to a school meeting, and I saw the wasband walk into the room.  For a second, I expected him to come sit with me - because for umpteen year that was the obvious expectation, thus the inertial response.  Then I became scared, terribly scared, had an anxiety attack with the heavy breathing and heart pumping.  I don't know why exactly, but I just wanted to run. 

I keep thinking of the scene from "The Way We Were", when Barbara Streisand call Robert Redford, after their first breakup, to say she needed to talk with someone close about how angry and upset she was with him, but the only close friend she could think of, with whom she would want to talk,  was him. (If that wasn't clear, go watch the movie.)  Anyway, I felt that way a LOT over the years.  These things don't disappear all at once, you know.

Stewing Soup and Old Memories

Okay, this is what I started to write yesterday:

If I can kasher my range tonight, and there is no clear reason I can't, I want to make soup.  This whole summer, I barely cooked at all.  I want to make some thick, hearty chock-full-of-veggies soup.  Fall is the time for applesauce, cranberries, orange veggies, and soup.

The yucky thing I really should do first, is clean out the tupperware of soup stock I made when I first moved into "the house" a month ago, along with a couple other tupperwares of food I dragged along to the new place.  I would love to just dump the entire containers, but I can't stand the idea of the waste of the plastic or the $5.  I guess the smell will be the deciding factor.

Two years ago, I made the most delicious soup from a bounty of vegetables and herbs from the farmers' market and my own garden.  Amazing what a strong memory that made;  I have very strong memories around food (no surprise). 

If it were up to my little guy Po, all we would eat would eat would be vegetarian Matzoh Ball soup.  This actually represents a fairly wide range of soup bases, but generally root vegetables, lots of onion, maybe a tomato, and assorted spices including parsley and dill.  This is based on the first soup I ever learned to made - my grandmother and aunt's chicken soup.

But I didn't cook anything, except noodles at 11:30pm.  I kashered the range, scorched the backsplash a bit, and then the upstairs neighbors came to ask if everything was alright since they smelled gas.  I decided I was done then.  But meanwhile I was beading a gorgeous piece (photos to follow soon, I hope), and in the middle stopped to try to organize some remaining boxes from the move.  I don't have a bookshelf yet - a friend is moving out of town soon, and she said I could have her bookshelves in a couple weeks.  So most my books are mostly sitting in piles of boxes in one of the closets, along with whatever else I crammed in the boxes, in the mad dash to move this last time.

I opened a few boxes, hoping to consolidate the contents, and I found a lot of old correspondence.  In the mix, a few envelopes stood out as clearly having come from the wasband, back before we were married.  I had to look.  Maybe that seems a given, but I hesitated, wondering if I should return them.  I learned from Miss Manners that when a courtship ends, it is proper to return the letters received - they presumably contain much that the writer would find embarrassing, at the least, once the relationship has ended.   Plus, they are special, like a gift, that you would offer to return if things went splits.  In fact "returning letters" used to be a euphemism for ending a relationship.  But after almost 20 years of marriage, I wouldn't return an engagement ring (even if I hadn't thrown it across the highway those many years ago), so I ain't giving back the letters.

Then, as I went through the pile of card and envelopes, I read more letters from many people in my past.  (Aside - what another terrible, terrible effect of technology, that the next generation will not be able to do this!!!)  There was so much that I had forgotten, so much that I remembered.  I was clearly attractive (in whatever manner) to many people, in a way I could never let myself believe.  Man, I have such an inferiority complex!  What a shame.  I know it is completely worthless to continue to cry over mistakes in the past, but that is what I did.  Hopeful I will learn from the past - that I have worth.  That is really a difficult assignment.

Free Extra: Here is a clip of Bill Braudis explaining that he wants the engagement ring back, now that he married his bride.  Totally different idea, but just something I was reminded of.  Also, I think this one has the "6 cats before coffee" line that I am always thinking of.