Monthly Archives: January 2011

Disney Weddings


Kissing the bride

Image via Wikipedia

Rob’s mother marries this coming weekend. Though originally set to be a June bride, which would have made it possible for more family and friends to attend, the groom’s border crossings were increasingly contentious as Canada is not keen on the whole “marrying outside your nationality” thing, although they are less snarky about it than the U.S., whose crossing guards are even ruder than usual to a potential non-citizen spouse.

We had planned to mini-celebrate the nuptials after the fact at Christmas because the bride and groom to be were to be wed two weeks prior, but the plans were squelched by a Nazi parish priest, who insisted on pushing it back to January.

Traveling through the Canadian Rockies at the height of winter is no one’s idea of a good time. Least of all Rob’s. He’s slogged more than his fair share of white knuckle high mountain snowy road driving and his whole being visibly sagged at the prospect of attending a January wedding in the Okanogan Valley.

“We’re flying,” he said.

Not that this is a much better solution. His mother and fiance took about seven hours between delays and sitting on the tarmac to complete the flight here to Edmonton that normally takes less than an hour.

“Maybe the trip will be a respite.” Rob told me as he eyed the Weather Network for temps and precipitation estimates for the weekend. A balmy plus 4C and rain.

He will give the bride away. His mother didn’t have the full on Catholic wedding the first time and is determined to right that past injustice.

Dee was asked to be a flower girl and she is, naturally, giddy with joy at the prospect of donning  a white dress and having her own bouquet. She was quite put out that I didn’t get her a bouquet of her own when Rob and I married. An injustice to check off another list.

My mother-in-law then asked me to read. I couldn’t say no even though it’s probably very inappropriate for a non-believer to get up on the altar and recite scripture.

Especially a verse that she refused to have read at her own Catholic wedding going on twelve years ago.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

A total load of drivel that has no basis in a non-Disney princess reality.

Love has, as far as I know, not a single magical property to make anyone less human. Everything Corinthians talks about is perfectly human and very much a part of just about any relationship a body could have from the one with your significant other to the most superficial interactions with the strangers we run across daily.

I understand it’s appeal and why it’s a wedding favorite. The day one marries is full of promise but also wildly unrealistic expectations of absolute bliss forever that shouldn’t be encouraged.

What did I choose back in the day?

Something from Revelations – which in retrospect is an odd place to go hunting for scripture readings – and the Psalms. One of those semi-porn things that David or Solomon supposedly wrote.

Rob and I had only the vows that the province of Alberta insists everyone use and are, frankly, the best vows I have ever read, spoken or heard.

People should have the weddings they want. It’s one of those things you don’t get to do over and not getting it “right” the first time can be like a grain of sand in an oyster shell for some. Not much of an irritant at first and not destined to be a pearl at any point down the line.

It would likely be argued that Corinthians is extolling the virtues of the Creator, but I think that’s crap. The God I’ve read and been taught about is a tyrant where love is concerned and expects way more than he gives back.

Aside from my reservations about the scripture, I am uncomfortable participating in Catholic ceremonies simply because they are sacraments. It’s not exactly blasphemous on my part but it is tinged with a certain amount of disrespect. But how does one say “no” to a request from someone ones cares about on such an important day in his/her life?

You don’t. You can’t. So you compromise yourself a bit because in its essence it’s not an act that affects my immortal self as much as the bad karma of refusing would.

In yoga, we strive to cause no injury. One of the examples my teacher gave was the story of a monk who accepted the hospitality of a family while he was on a journey through the mountains of Tibet. The monk was a strict vegetarian, but the mountain folk of Tibet are not and they offered him a meat stew. The monk was faced with a dilemma. Eat the stew and violate his own beliefs or refuse and hurt the family, who had no idea that their meal was an affront.

The monk ate the stew and considered it the very best choice. Between eating a bit of meat and doing harm to the good intentions of well-meaning people – the feelings of people win. As they should.

Death by Snow


gm_13005 Shining Bank Snow, Alberta 1977

Image by CanadaGood via Flickr

With a second “snow event” in as many weeks behind us, I pondered the piles which have turned our yard, front and back, into a white labyrinth and thought about the phone conversation I had yesterday with my husband.

“The boss dropped by, ” he told me, “looking for anyone who might be interested in a possible project down on the Gulf Coast. I told him that I might be but it wasn’t a decision I could make* without consulting you. The probability of the project is based on a U.S. economic recovery, which isn’t all that likely, but how would you feel about it?”

He was talking about the Texas coast. Texas being only slightly less objectionable than say Alabama, whose governor recently admitted that he has no Christian charity to extend to anyone who isn’t Christian and was once such a bastion of seething racism that blacks forced to travel through it packed their own porta potties and carried an extra gas can for refueling in the trunks of their cars.

“Baby, this is the 7th day without sun and it’s been snowing non-stop since last Wednesday,” I said. “This probably isn’t the best day to ask if I’d like to move south.”

Of course, the southern states in the U.S. are harbingers of the level of bat-shit crazy that will fan out over the rest of the country like the four horsemen once the next election cycle kicks into full propaganda mode this coming fall, so I am lukewarm (though not literally) about the prospect of a front row seat. Monitoring the shenanigans from Canada is enough adventure for me.

But the prospect of warmth, sun and no snow does tempt.

Everyone is escaping to Mexico. I listen to the travel tales filled with bouts of uncontrollable diarrhea and Federales with  machine guns escorting bus loads of pale northern tourists to the insulated resorts with a minimum of envy and a lot of wonder.

I read too much to consider Mexico even the slightest bit safe for someone pale and unable to speak the language beyond the ability to ask for a beer or for directions to the nearest washroom.

Silly white tourists. My student roster when I taught drop out prevention flowed over with Mexicans, who are ingratiating and smile a lot but who also see Americans (we are all Americans to them) as marks to relieve of the heavy burden of our bourgeois bounty.

The boys would regale me with stories of their tourist trap homes and cajole me to visit.

“I have a cousin (uncle or auntie) who can set you up cheap! It’s warm and more beautiful than anyplace you have ever been.”

“Is it safe?” I would ask.

Sheepish grins before a serious look would replace the huckster, “I wouldn’t send you anywhere that wasn’t. My family (friends) would look out for someone who I send.”

I’ve never been to Mexico. Rob and I thought about marrying down there, but the whole translation of documents plus the logistics of getting everyone there proved to be a significant deterrent.

Normally, it’s Rob who funks out early in the winter. He blames it on the lack of sunshine, but statistically, Alberta is one of the sunniest places in Canada.

I am fine until mid-April and it’s still snowing. It’s not the lack of sunshine; it’s the absence of spring. We simply don’t have spring here. It’s cold until it’s not. It snows until it’s meteorologically impossible for it to do so anymore. This could be early April or it could be June.

In Iowa, winters are a bitch, but spring – hot sometimes and lush due to the rain and snow melt – arrives with gusto in late March or early April. That is what my body is used to and I do miss it.

But there are feet of snow in the yard, along the roadsides and piling like small mountain ranges in the parking lots. And it’s still January.

Everywhere I go, people marvel and say, “I have never seen it snow this much before.”

Even Rob remarked, “It’s never snowed this much in the fifteen years I have lived here.”

To be a part of such an historic snowpocalypse hasn’t been a life’s goal and I am unlikely to look back fondly on it.

People talk about “climate change” and “global warming” and I read about scientists who are concluding that the earth is nearing one of the ends of its infrequent warm periods and preparing for the next ice age. The earth’s natural state, after all, is “ice ball”. Whatever the reason, it sucks and I have reached literal saturation.

*Rob unilaterally made the decision to move the family to Kansas back in the early 90’s and was informed by his late wife that he did not have the authority to ever do something like that again.

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A Little Virtual Love


Happy Valentine's Day

Image by Abby Lanes via Flickr

I was hiding Valentine’s booty the other day and warned Rob not to peek.

“I hate Valentine’s,” he said. “Why is there Valentine’s? I wouldn’t participate at all if it weren’t for you.”

… and your insistence that we celebrate every Hallmark X on the calendar … but that was unspoken.

He’s not a curmudgeon about it.

Okay, he is, but he believes that love should be expressed in the moment and not confined to arbitrarily set time periods.

Some of my exuberance stems from the fact that for much of my life, Valentine’s was a holiday I watched others celebrate and now that I have children and husband I am a full participant and it’s awesome. But I really don’t see evil in blocking out time to make an effort to express feelings that – even though they can be spoken and shown anytime – are more often than not lost in the daily rush.

Love is worth a big deal holiday of its own, in my very humble opinion.

There is still a bit of Valentine prep left to do, but in the spirit of spontaneity and dissociating the feelings from the prison of the calendar, I offer a tune.

To my husband, Rob, with much love always and an ocean of appreciation for everything he does for me – which is an awful lot – without any thought for himself.

You rock, Baby. XOXOX