50 Something Moms

Traditional Marriage


Stumbled across this post at DoubleX yesterday. Group of young feminist bloggers trash talking marriage and all things wedding mostly, but what struck me about it was the focus on details. As if tossing bouquets and ugly bridesmaid dresses were the point of relationships and marriage at all.

“It’s details,” I complained to Rob. “Why do people get so bogged down in minutia of marriage that they miss the point of the relationship that marriage is supposed to be all about?”

“Everyone can’t be as enlightened as we are,” he replied.

I know I’ve beaten this horse before, but intimate relationships are built on communication and an understanding of expectations by both parties. Whether a woman keeps her maiden name, wears white or decides to stay home with babies is really beside the point. It’s like shaved legs.

Shaved legs?

I wrote a post for 50 Something a week or so back about the fact I don’t shave during the winter. It’s pointless, as no one sees my legs really and it’s itchy besides. In my post I stress that my hairy legs are just hairy legs. It’s a practical decision that in no way should be misconstrued as a feminist statement. Things are simple, and female, should take care to avoid “statement” status in the realm of feminism because they usually become so entangled in nonsense they end up undermining feminism’s real point – equality.

The same can be said of these ridiculous debates on the “tradition” of marriage. Marriage is just a formalizing of an ongoing intimate relationship. The trappings are details. That’s all. They reflect personal or religious tastes – for which there is no accounting.

Whether a couple goes Disney princess or jeans/t-shirt on a mountain top doesn’t matter as much as the journey that brought them there or the continuation of it after that moment has passed.

I am no less equal to my husband because I took his last name or wore white. Getting married in a church or on a river bank surrounded by mountains (and I’ve done both – in white) was a moment – shining and special, imo – in something that began earlier and will continue until one of us is gone.

I suppose it is important to define one’s self, but turning everything into a symbol or anti-symbol seems a waste of energy better spent elsewhere.

I Have Been Writing – Honest


But not here. I guess you could say I have been stepping out on my blog and dear readers à la Tiger Woods except that I have told you that I am poly-blogging, so you went into this with wide open eyes. Please don’t reach for the 7 iron.

Two pieces up at 50 Something. One on marriage, or what constitutes a happy one, that I wrote after reading Weil’s book excerpt at the NYT’s and another on our adventures with the Balloon Man at the children’s Christmas party that Rob’s company hosts every year.

I’ve had three pieces up at Care2 (here, here and here) and even got a kudo from my editor despite my profound lack of journalistic ability. The job is a challenge for me. I like challenges, but I hate not being awesome at what I do. I think this is why I really need to be self-employed. It’s less stressful. My editor also informed me that the second piece on entertainment education provoked a fellow blogger there to request response time – “respectfully, of course” – which makes me shudder a bit. Bloggers are seldom all that subtle or respectful when they take an opposite view and “respectful” usually means that the blogger will not call you names or imply you are descended from cousins in a flaming sort of way but rather in the unmistakably subtle way that people with a flare for words have. Naturally, I can hardly wait to read it.

Ironically, I just left a comment on another blog about how I find posts that are merely excuses to link to other people’s work to be extremely lazy, but since I am linking to my own writing – I will give myself a big ole pass.

On Shopping


I went into the city over the weekend to shop. It was a purposeful kind of shopping. There were things that needed attending to like stopping at the tailor’s to get Rob’s new dress pants hemmed for the wedding we are attending soon, and swinging by the co-op to pick up hiking duds for the daughter. This is the year we initiate her into the way of the trail. But I only rarely shop in person anymore. When I find myself in need, I thumb the Sears catalog or go on-line, and I mainly just make do with what I have. Despite what my six year old thinks, I am not growing anymore.

While we were waiting at the mall for the tailor to finish hemming, we killed time browsing the sporting equipment and apparel chain store. There is a scaled down version of this same store at the scaled down version of the mall in the suburb closest to the rural hamlet where we live. It is one of my “make-do” shop gaps during those odd times when Sears disappoints, but this outlet was full-service, and I rushed from clothes rack to featured display items like a teenager with a credit card.

Rob kept Kat busy checking out the new bikes and the spring and summer sports equipment while I loaded up and headed for the dressing rooms.

Trying clothes on in advance of purchase has become one of those luxury items I treat myself to on the rarest of occasions anymore. When I do actually shop in person, I gage sizes or stick to items I already have and therefore know that they fit. And no, I don’t end up with ill-fitting apparel all that often. I am a pretty good, and honest, judge of my current size. But not shopping in the wild much, a woman forgets about the bouncy salespeople who without fail knock on the door when you are completely undressed causing you to attempt to jump out of your own skin as well or the lighting which seems designed to change your skin tone and distort your mirrored self in a fun house manner.

When shopping with a husband and a small child, there is a certain amount of haste involved which retards the relaxing, self-indulgent aspects of the activity, and as I commented later to Rob,

“I was really missing having a best girlfriend along.”

But when it is late March and spring is still nowhere in ready sight and cabin fever has seeped so far into the bones that it’s almost a symbiant companion, a woman will take what she can get and be very, very grateful.

This is an original 50 Something Moms post by Ann Bibby