Category Archives: Love

Why Getting Married is Like Doctor Who

19 Friday Oct 2012

Posted by in Growing Up, Love, Uncategorized, Wedding

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Andrew and I celebrated our fifth, and last, dating anniversary on September 24th. Next year, we’ll be celebrating in a new month and starting the count over at one with our first wedding anniversary.

The home stretch of wedding preparations has been a tumultuous couple of weeks. Family stresses, work demands, and the last few pre-cana videos we’re trying to watch before, you know, the cana all bubble around and beg for attention, and suddenly I find myself thinking a lot about Doctor Who.

Specifically, the tenth Doctor. Even more specifically, some of the things he talked about near the end. My youngest sister best expressed one of the things I love about David Tennant’s interpretation of the character: “You can feel the weight of all the Doctors in him.” This is someone who knows who he’s been before, even knows that this isn’t by far the first time he’s changed. And even so, when he’s told his time is coming to a close, it’s an upheaval.

Even though Time Lords regenerate, the Doctor says, it’s still a kind of death. His face will change. So will his personality. He’ll keep some important parts of himself, but the way they are expressed may be very different. There’s no way to tell beforehand. The Tenth Doctor is afraid going in, and sad, and at least a little angry.

The beautiful thing, though, is the next season starts and we get to see what happens next. The face and voice are different, true. Some people miss the old Doctor. The Doctor himself has to work out what he likes now, how he responds to stress–who he is in this new context. But those important parts that are kept emerge quickly: intelligence, compassion, kindness, a sense of wonder, his memories of everything that has come before. And the new Doctor is more playful, and he is perhaps a bit less guarded with his emotions, and he is maybe more patient than he used to be.

Marriage is a regeneration. I’m starting to really sympathize when I see the Doctor exploding with that orangey-yellow light. I’m bubbling with change. My benefit is I know more about my future than the Doctor gets to, and get to transform in a much happier context than Time Lords do. I’m also guaranteed a pretty snazzy companion.

I do have moments when I think, “I am going to miss my name,” or “I am scared I won’t recognize myself as a wife.” Engaged couples don’t often talk about those moments, or at least not publicly. It feels cruel, or ungrateful considering the unfathomable blessing that it is to find someone you want to love for the rest of your lives. But I think they should.

And then I imagine those first days and weeks of marriage, still crackling with energy, still discovering how people see me differently, how they hear me, what I’ve kept or lost or gained. Nerdy as it is, it helps to see the Doctor flow from actor to actor. New face, new style, but on the most fundamental and important levels, the same wonderful character. I’m not going to start a whole argument about which Doctor is objectively better, but if I could pick which one I would rather be, I’d go with Matt Smith–the Doctor with a marriage.

Tomorrow, at 2:30 pm, I start the biggest adventure of my life. Geronimo.

And a Bride in a Purple Dress

26 Sunday Aug 2012

Posted by in Breaking Boundaries, Growing Up, Love, Wedding

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Andrew and I were thrilled to attend the wedding of two of our good friends, Jon and Ellen, early this month. Now, I know all weddings are joyous occasions, no matter the details of the day, and my personal soapbox is that bridal magazines have no right insinuating that your wedding isn’t “original” or “personal” enough if you go the traditional route. You’re marrying your favorite person in the world–isn’t that automatically and irrefutably personal enough? But even with that said, this wedding was something special.

Jon and Ellen are artists, you see, and they’re the cool, down-to-earth type. They like engaging with people and places, meeting the world where it is and creating beauty there. They are also relentlessly creative, finding outlets in paint, cloth, food, music–whatever they can get their hands on. So they convinced their pastor to marry them not in a church but in the middle of the city–in an alley, in fact. And not just any alley. This alley, found just off the corner of Howard and North in Baltimore, is known as a hot-spot for graffiti artists. The walls are covered, and constantly changing (when I took a break outside during the reception, I saw a tag that hadn’t been there during the ceremony an hour before). Some pieces are beautiful, many are tags, some are profane. Jon and Ellen took the very real risk that their wedding ceremony spot would feature some prominently spray-painted dicks, is what I’m saying.

Fortunately, the alley’s artwork seemed occasion-appropriate, for the most part. Maybe the fates smiled, or maybe the groomsmen did a quick sweep shortly before, cans at the ready, just in case. Who can say? But what was so amazing to me was the way the ceremony started to come together, guests standing or sitting, in summer dresses or cutoff shorts (“come as you are” dress codes make for an interestingly mismatched crowd), music I recognized from “Love Actually” playing over the speaker, the groom standing on a black wooden platform, and the bride, just a touch dewy in the August sun, teary and laughing at the same time, walking arm in arm with her father and wearing her lovely, understated but elegant purple dress. It was nothing Bride magazine or theknot.com editors ever talk about, but it made sense. The more traditional readings, the completely unconventional “unity graffiti” they made, taking turns holding the ladder for each other, the laid-back potluck-and-pie reception, all felt right for them, and it was such a breath of fresh air. It was a reminder, too, not to let other people bog me down with their expectations of the right way to do a wedding–or a book of short stories (and possibly some poetry).

I’m now eight weeks away from my wedding and just about eight months from putting out my first book. It’s going to get busy. A lot of people have a lot of expectations. I hope I keep my head straight, I hope everything turns out beautifully, but mostly right now I hope I follow Ellen’s lead in the upcoming wedding season and school year, keeping traditions that sing to me but never afraid to rock an unexpectedly perfect purple dress.

Ray Bradbury

28 Thursday Jun 2012

Posted by in Books, Love, Uncategorized

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The first time I found Bradbury was through Something Wicked This Way Comes, the book that devoured me so utterly that I had a moment of panic when I looked up and realized it was July instead of October. The lyricism of the writing, the horror of the situations, and the strength of the strange friendship between two such different boys captivated me, and I knew I had to read everything this man had written.

The first time I found Bradbury was in the Golden Book of Children’s Literature, my tome with green script on the side, with embellished old fairy tales and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and Kipling and Aesop. The story was “Switch on the Night,” and there was a character called Dark in that one too, but not at all like Something Wicked’s nightmare carnival man. Dark the girl embodied night–crickets and stars, porch-lights and croaking or chirping frogs, the soft wings of owls and the texture of black tree branches against midnight sky.

Both of these stories are true–the first time I read Bradbury knowingly, and my actual first encounter. It turns out I have been discovering and rediscovering Bradbury for most of my life. The horror of the carnival stories, murderers, and people trapped within their own private fears; the sweet nostalgia for the mythical small-town America; the exhilarated rush of space and machine, and the prickling alien-ness that they hold; and always, the great human yearning toward understanding of self, of other, of loved one. I read and reread and stopped by his row on the bookstore shelf just so I could rest my hand against the block of books for a moment.

I took Bradbury with me to college. He was my Honors project. I combined literature and sociology in a way I hoped he’d be proud of, following his keen interest in people rather than the classifications he always eluded. Not quite sci-fi writer, too complex for moralist, too nostalgic for a doomsday prophet, too optimistic for pure horror. Dandelion Wine and From the Dust Returned, Fahrenheit 451 and The Golden Apples of the Sun, Martians and Greentown, Illinois.

One of the things I love about Bradbury is the stories he told about himself. He swore he remembered every instant of his life, including birth. He said a carny named Mr. Electrico had recognized him, age 12, as the reincarnation of his best friend, who had died in his arms in the first World War. He said Mr. Electrico had knighted him with lightning and commanded him to live forever, and he said it all with such conviction that I believed him.

Last Wednesday, Andrew called me up at lunchtime to tell me Ray Bradbury had died. Of course I started crying. I feel like I lost my grandfather. He formed my writing self, the play of it, the love of people and where people go wrong, the yen toward short and strange. My first thought was, What do I do if Bradbury is dead? What does the world mean if Mr. Electrico misspoke about that boy, all those years ago? How do I make sense of the world anymore when he isn’t here?

Bradbury made me feel like the mythos that you formed around yourself as a child was okay to carry into adulthood. More than okay, it was something to fuel you, feed you. He created himself like a story. Sometimes my friends tell me I see the world in different or strange ways; there’s a trio of us in which I am indisputably the loopy one, not because I think I actually am so silly as all that, but because I suppose there is a fancifulness and a sense of play that is more alive in me because Bradbury lived it so well.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury. Live forever.

Why I’m Thankful for Hitchhikers

24 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by in Family, Growing Up, Love

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This year, along with my family, what tops my list of Things to Be Thankful For is hitchhikers. Intergalactic hitchhikers, to be specific, as memorialized in Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

As a few people know, about seven months ago I got engaged to, by my estimates, the coolest person in the world. What fewer people know is that Douglas Adams is a large part of the reason why this came to pass.

Back in 2004, I was in a summer theater production of Grease: The Musical Watered Down for High School Productions But Retaining the Message That You Should Change Yourself to Make People Like You. My talented and beautiful sister, Elisabeth, would come home every night complaining about her dance partner, who apparently had two left feet so bad it was a miracle he could walk straight. Fortunately for all players involved, the kid who was playing Eugene flaked, and the director decided that Andrew’s adolescent klutziness and comedic talents might be better suited to play the school nerd than a dancer in the chorus. Lizzie was happy because she got to dance with someone better, and started chatting with Andrew more. The topic of program bios came up, specifically the “crazy” quotes some people include, and the following conversation ensued:

Elisabeth: One year, my sister put “So long and thanks for all the fish” in her bio.

Andrew: Nice. That was actually my least favorite book in the series.

Elisabeth: Wait, you’ve read those books??

Andrew: Yes…

Elisabeth: No one reads those books. You need to talk to Jessica. She needs someone she can talk about books with.

The rest, as they say, is history.

So this year, I’m thankful that I’ll have dinner with the most wonderful family I could ever hope for, I’m thankful my pecan pie looks and smells good coming out of the oven, I’m thankful that I’m in a year and a half of adventurous wedding planning before I get to spend my life with the guy I love more than anything, and I am thankful that one night, young Douglas Adams wondered if intergalactic hitchhikers would need a travel guide, and unwittingly set things in motion to make me happier than I knew I could be.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Proposal Story

11 Wednesday May 2011

Posted by in Love, Wedding

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By request:

So Andrew and I have been going to see the cherry blossoms in D.C. every year for the past three years. The first year we went, we were giddy because he had just come back from three months in England the day before. The second year it rained, we went after peak season, and I sprained my foot from the sheer amount of walking we did, but it was still fun–we huddled by the hot chocolate stand when we got too damp, took strategic close-up photos of remaining blossoms so photo evidence would look lusher than what we actually saw, and he offered to carry me back to the Metro station. This year was the third year, and, unfortunately, my schedule was super-full, and we didn’t get to go.

At least, that was the plan.

So on Thursday, my Sunday dinner plans fell through. I was disappointed, but couldn’t very well blame my friends for illness and last-minute project panic. I sent Andrew a quick email asking him if he wanted to go to D.C. with me instead, and he replied, quite enthusiastically, that he would.

So Sunday: he picks me up at the church where I work, still in fancy clothes (button-down, dress slacks). He told me he hadn’t had time to change after church. We drove down to the Metro and hopped on the Orange Line. Now, Andrew’s got budding Dad Pockets already, between wallet, a hefty bunch of keys on a lanyard, and phone, so I was teasing him by playfully grabbing at his pocket. He told me later that I actually grabbed the ring box at one point (I thought it was his phone!). Seeing as how I didn’t gasp or give him a knowing look, he started breathing again, and put his jacket on his lap as a protective measure for the rest of the ride.

The cherry blossoms were GORGEOUS this year. Big, frothy things bobbing up and down (one of the things I love about the cherry trees is no one prunes the runaway limbs, so you have to duck under them as you walk. It can be a little scary when you’re walking four abreast on a narrow strip of sidewalk with nothing separating you and the water and realize a huge branch is now blocking the way as well, but I think trees deserve to be allowed to make proper canopies. Besides, even if you fell in, you could grab a branch to pull yourself out!). Andrew and I meandered around, taking photos of each other and narrowly escaping arrest for illegally climbing flowering trees (so worth it).

Frothy blossoms!

My fantastic almost-fiance, illegally climbing a tree

I am not above flirting with a tree branch

Eventually, we started to talk about going somewhere for dinner. We headed off the path, just to notice a little clearing with some beautiful trees and almost no one around. Andrew said he wanted to “look at” these trees, and I’m like “Okay! Trees are pretty!” So we’re standing there, and I turn around and he has a card in his hand. I recognized it from a prior Valentine’s day–it’s a little card with two birds in a tree and one is singing to the other and it’s adorable. Andrew told me he had wanted to write me a card because we don’t do that often anymore, and again he’s romantic enough and I was oblivious enough that I took this at face value. The card was really sweet, all about how many things remind him of me every day, and how important it is to him that I am in his life. So we hug, and kiss, and then he says, “And…”

And I say, “There’s an ‘and’?”

And he tells me again how he will never stop loving me, and I tell him this too, and it was only when he said, “So I wanted to ask you…” that it finally hit that this was our moment, right now.

And he got down on one knee, and pulled out the ring, and I was crying, and he said, “Will you marry me?”

And all of a sudden I realized that I had my hands on my face and I was so happy I couldn’t speak. Which was a bit of a problem, because the man I love more than anything is on one knee and would probably like an answer. So I start nodding, and as soon as I can take my hands off my face I say “Yes,” and we spent the next 20 minutes laughing and kissing and crying and saying “Oh my God” way too many times and jumping up and down.

Neither of us wanted to wait through dinner before telling people, so we went straight home to my family and told them, and then to his parent’s house. By the time we got back to my car at the church, all the restaurants were closed, so we went back to my place and ate leftover spaghetti and split the last bit of wine in the bottle, and it was completely fitting.

Hooray!