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The Wedding


This is a shot of Lake Edith in Jasper Nationa...

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So, the date is set for Tuesday, June 26th at 5 p.m. in Jasper National Park. The invitations have been issued. The rooms and photographer booked. Dinner plans made. The dress is being altered as I write this.

 

I sent Rob some pictures of me in the dress. His daughter, Mick, saw them and him looking at them and asked, “Isn’t that bad luck?” He told her that he had helped pick out her mother’s dress, and they were married twenty-five years. I told him that Will hadn’t seen me in my dress until the wedding day, and he was sick not even three years later. So much for the bad luck theory.

 

He asked me if I am getting excited and, truthfully, I am not quite there yet. I did most of the heavy lifting getting the wedding arrangements made when I married Will. Wedding details consumed me and it was made worse by Will’s insistence on a princess bride type thing. Because the wedding is taking place in Canada, Rob is taking care of many of the traditional bride things. He runs things by me. A bit of a role reversal which helps me understand better the lack of apparent enthusiasm men seem to have for their weddings. It is not a lack of interest but rather the fact that they are not intimately involved in much of the planning. And there is still so much here to be done. Sell the house. Wrap up things at work. Pack. Successfully cross an international border. I guess I am too mired in the details of here and now. I know the wedding will be beautiful. Rob is determined to make it so, and I trust him. The setting is gorgeous with a mountain backdrop by a river. He has previously proven himself quite the romantic, and I have no doubt the ceremony will meet or exceed standards already set.

 

My dress is beautiful. Ivory satin A-line with a deep v-neck and two thin straps on either side in the back. It had a very small train which I had the seamstress, Sally, remove, so now it just skims the ground slightly. I have an ivory pashmina in case it is a bit cool and white sandals that I don’t think completely match, but since they are on my feet and mostly hidden, who cares? I have been thinking about how to wear my hair and what old, borrowed, blue and new items I can wear. And flowers. A bouquet is a must. Not roses though that is as far as that thought has gone. For jewelry it will be just the necklace that Rob gave me the first time we met in person in Idaho Falls. Two interlocking hearts. One silver like the chain and one gold with a single diamond setting. I have never taken it off.

 

In truth the only thing about the upcoming wedding that is really on my mind is the wedding night when we are finally just us. In Arkansas we spent part of one evening dancing in front of the fireplace. Just lost in each other. I could spend forever looking in his eyes, pressed against him, wrapped tight in his arms. Music in the background. Warmed by the fire. Time spent by just we two has become the most precious thing. Whether it is romantic interludes, sweeping water out of a flooded basement or just having breakfast and talking.

 

Rob was talking with his sister-in-law last evening before our nightly conversation and she wondered why we weren’t going to try just living together for a time before getting married. I can understand why people would think that would be a good idea. I used to think that living together before deciding to marry was a good idea too. But Will and I lived together but with the understanding that I expected a commitment within six months. Even then I didn’t believe that living arrangements should be open ended. I did not think it wise to put distant or even vague deadlines on such an arrangement. Living together until you graduate from college or save enough money for the wedding or to buy a house. I don’t see how you can truly commit to another person if the intent is not right there from the beginning as opposed to something you work yourself up to. Research has actually proven my assumptions correct. Couples who live together for a short time with the intentions of marrying are more likely to marry and stay married than couples who live together with the intent to try out the arrangement before committing to marry. Furthermore, couples who co-habitate without a firm marriage commitment up front are less likely to marry in the first place and more likely to divorce when they do marry. I remember being mildly rebuked for our living arrangements by the priest when Will and I were planning our wedding and I hauled out these very statistics for him. I could tell he was aware of them too by his reaction, and by the fact he never mentioned our “sinfulness” again.

 

You can’t practice being married. How could you? Could I have practiced for the difficulties that can only be encountered in a union that is committed? The struggle with infertility that Will and I faced or the years of care-taking that preceded his death? Could Rob have been prepared for Shelley’s cancer? Her last months? And even the happier times. Or the day to day? You can live together. Split the rent and the bills. Buy furniture and a car. Take vacations and shop for groceries. Make love or just have sex. But you are still only roommates because the door is still technically open. Husband and wife. Partners forever. That is something that is achieved day to week to month to years. It goes even beyond the outer boundaries of love. It calls for a commitment up front that is really faith-based and asks that you trust the other person to love and support you, even when you are not so lovable and giving the support requires effort, if not actual hard-work.

 

I am looking forward to our wedding day, the rituals and the nervousness, and the romance, but it is just the first step on a longer road. A wedding is just for a day but a marriage is for a lifetime.

Diet Coke


Diet Coke Products

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Diet Coke has fallen victim to the latest faux health craze which is that of infusing beverages with supplements. I first noticed this latest “improvement” when I was shopping at Target a week or so ago. A mother and her two young teen daughters stood transfixed in front of the display. A favorite addiction of the semi-calorie conscious was now healthy as well as fat-free. Who could resist such a siren call? Target had cleverly set up the display with single serving bottles to promote sampling. After all just one 16 ounce bottle was not much of a commitment, was it?

 

I remember my first brush with Diet Coke. It was in the student union at Iowa in the fall of 1982. I was a freshman. Diet sodas, in my opinion, were to be devoutly shunned. They recalled forced dieting of days past when I had been systematically starved, weighed and shamed by a variety of the well-meaning from pediatric professionals to the plump next door neighbor whose lawn I mowed. She would bring me this foul tasting diet soda whose grape-fruity saccharin aftertaste could not be improved with any amount of ice.

 

My first encounter with Diet Coke left an equally foul aftertaste though not in my mouth. I had stopped to grab a croissant and a Coke between classes and the very skinny girl behind the counter asked me if I wouldn’t rather have a Diet Coke. Maybe it was her job to push this new product but I remember she practically glowed with the celestial light of the born again when she extolled the wonders of NutraSweet. If only I had been older and wiser, I would have recognized the Stepford glaze reflecting the fluorescent lighting for the demonic possession it was. Instead, I declined, a bit contemptuously, and told her I didn’t think I needed to drink diet. What was the point after all? In my own experience diet drinks were more an indicator of fat rather than a way to take fat off. But the look she gave me was nearly as scathing. Clearly she viewed me as being in need of a sugar intervention.

 

I drank regular Coke that day and for a few weeks longer. It was the subtle pressure of my thinner friends that eventually coerced a conversion out of me. So although I escaped university without “acquiring a taste” for beer or coffee, I graduated with a B.A. in English and a Diet Coke dependency.

 

Not quite twenty-five years later, I am Diet Coke free. The aspartame aftertaste is once again evident to my palate and even the occasional sip curls my tongue. I was amused by the vitamin additives in what is essentially a questionably chemical laden drink. The artificial sweetener is not good for a person’s system regardless of what the FDA might believe. They, after all, were under the leadership of Donald Rumsfeld when they granted the okay for aspartame in absence of any finished studies or research on its effectiveness. The sodium content alone is reason enough not to drink it anyway, but add to that the fact that recent studies have found a link between weight gain and the drinking of diet sodas and you have made a convincing argument for one to “just say no”.

 

It’s not easy to avoid the artificial when it comes to food and drink. When millions of chickens and thousands of pigs can consume what amounts to plastic in their feed and still be deemed safe for human consumption and when it costs more to purchase organic food products than its preservative-laden counterparts, what hope do we really have? I suppose we can settle for vitamin additives in our Diet Coke rather than demand clean water to drink but in the longer run are we better off for having done so?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18507734/site/newsweek/

Good Enough


kitchen

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Rain, rain go away. Come again some other day. Sheets of water that pool on the lawn and overwhelm sump pumps remind me of the June and July of 1993 when it rained all but six days. Torrents that forced you to pull over to the side of the road because you literally couldn’t see past the hood of your own car. Water that ran like rapids along the curbs, spilling onto the easements like swollen rivers jumping their banks. Whenever it rains too much or too often or too hard, I become a little anxious like my old junior high school friend Lisa J. who for months after seeing Hitchcock’s The Birds for the first time would go running for the nearest shelter whenever she saw crows lined up on the telephone wires. The rain of late has vexed me with water in the basement. Not opportune as I am trying to sell my house, but fortunately so universally common in this part of the state that most people accept it as a matter of course. Which leads me to the conclusion that most of us operate under the motto of “good enough”.

 

I will admit to a latent perfectionist streak that never seems to manifest itself unless the attainment of perfection is nearly impossible, and the pursuit will tax me beyond measure. I don’t just want things to work out. I want them to work out in best case scenario mode. And that simply isn’t possible. It just isn’t.

 

The house is in need of update. Flooring. Walls. Fixtures. It will take money but more, it will take time. Many people today are conditioned to expect perfect but not work for it. When perfect is only possible through their own efforts, then good enough is okay.

 

And there are the details of the move that include mail forwarding and canceling utilities that if I had my way would be done already. There are plastic totes that need to be emptied of contents that should go to the Goodwill and then refilled with clothes that need to come with us to our new home. There is the letter to my in-laws that begs to be written and the little voice inside my head that reminds me to mail it once we are across the border if I want to avoid tears and tantrums and unwarranted questioning of my judgement. There is a job that irritates me beyond measure most days though I still feel compelled to do the best that I possibly can and leave it in better working order than when I took it over.

 

And I need to just make a cup of tea and tell myself that it’s really good enough. My efforts so far. The completion of things yet to do. Good enough. No one is actually grading me on any of this. It’s not a matter of collecting red, blue and gold stars on a chart. My “good enough” is the best I can do given the circumstances and frankly is probably better than most others.