Abraham Day-Lewis

The "team of rivals".

I have lived for the past ten years in Illinois, called the "Land of Lincoln" because it's where Abraham Lincoln got his start in politics. Before I moved here, I lived with my Civil War re-enactor parents in Ohio - my dad regularly portrays a member of Ulysses Grant's staff - and I've worn a hoop skirt several times for Civil-War commemoration events in my home town. There are bookshelves in my childhood home that are heavy with books of Civil War history, biographies and battle analysis. When the Ken Burns 10-hour documentary came out on PBS, it was an enormous deal: my parents taped every hour and have watched and re-watched it many times.

I share my parents' interest in - though perhaps not their devotion to - what happened during those bloody years in our country. The scale of the thing is impossible to comprehend, and of course the Civil War and its aftermath are still affecting our country.

Which is why I'm pretty geeked about this: according to various sources on the series of tubes, Daniel Day-Lewis is going to play the part of Abraham Lincoln in a biopic directed by Stephen Spielberg. In my opinion, Day-Lewis has the perfect face to be Honest Abe, even if he isn't an Amurrican.

I won't be surprised if my parents are already camped out at the movie theater.

Four

Four years ago today, about this time, I was shaving my legs.

Stay with me, this isn't about my leg hair.

I was shaving my legs in the shower of a little hotel just outside of Chicago. In the adjoining suite were my mother, my sister, my best friend and a few other women I love. My father and brother-in-law were intermittently present, being sent out on errands.

The shower began like basically every other shower in my life, except that I'd been bustled in to the bathroom by a few of the aforementioned women. That, and it was quite a nice bathroom, large and clean and filled with sunlight. And I'd made sure to have a brand-new razor head, with which to shave my legs.

Somewhere between lathering up my right leg and beginning the removal of stubble, I was struck with an overwhelming sensation. I felt briefly faint, and found myself reaching for the wall to steady myself. My head spun. Something enormous was happening, something much larger than myself or the steamy shower or the people in the hotel room.

I'm getting married. I realized.

Today.

After the shower, one of my friends in the adjoining room would apply makeup to my face while another friend would do the same for my two bridesmaids - my sister and my best friend. Then that friend would do my hair. Flowers would be brought in to the room for all of us. We'd eat sandwiches that my brother-in-law would procure, realizing we wouldn't have a chance to eat again for a while. I would, soon, slide in to a white gown and my friends would place a veil on my head. I'd put on the jewelry and shoes my sister lent me from her wedding. My only brother would drive me in my little Honda to the church down the street. He'd get emotional. So would I.

Then I'd see my fiance, in a black suit, with his brothers, walking in to the same church. We'd all have our pictures taken and we'd drink bottled water in the stifling July heat.

And, shortly thereafter, we'd get married.

Nearly-fainting in the shower was the last moment I had by myself on July 14, 2006. For the rest of the day I'd either be accompanied by bridesmaids and relatives or by my new husband, and I appreciated the company. I loved that so many people were there on that day, helping us in ways large and small, supporting our union.

But I'll always be grateful for that brief, private moment of enormity. Because what followed it was solid, and hasn't left me: it was a calm and joyful sense of certainty.

Much of the time I have a typical American optimism, believing that things will turn out for the best, but I think much of my early relationship with DH was riddled with worry: we're so young, he seems so certain while I'm not. Honestly, he was ready to marry long before I was. But he was patient. When he finally proposed - a sweet surprise - I was excited about marrying him, but I was also nervous and occasionally terrified through the planning process. I'm still not entirely sure what it was, but I do know some things that it wasn't.

It wasn't about foregoing all my other options, because he's certainly everything I want in a man: hilarious, brilliant, strong, good with power tools and kittens and children. He's a skilled writer and a good singer and a great hugger. He has the best laugh, and great facial hair, and beautiful eyes. He is a keeper, in every way.

It wasn't worry about my in-laws, though I occasionally did fret that I was getting "too close" to them. They had welcomed me into the family long before the wedding - which had made me nervous, too, but which I now know is kind of silly. They're just welcoming like that. And they knew, before I did, how this relationship would work out.

So many things about marriage, about joining families, about the wedding, had made me nervous. I am a usually confident person who was plunged into the weird role of "bride-to-be" and became an anxious, fretting mess. Looking back I realize I'm just not bride material. The constant attention, the many parties, the plans that had to include everyone - it was a tiring process and even though I tried to stay calm and be rational about it, I cried plenty of times. I got into arguments with people I love. I cared about the wrong things and dismissed other things I shouldn't have.

But that morning, in the shower, I think the enormity of the moment was in part a realization that the planning is over, the fights are finished, the dresses bought, the cake decorated. The priest was checking over the liturgy. The musicians were warming up. All that was left, really, was to spend the day as it was planned. And that plan involved pledging my life to the best man I'd met. In that moment every fiber of my being told me that this was correct. I may have chosen stupid bridesmaid dresses (and I did) but I chose the right groom. Or he chose me. I suppose we had chosen each other, many times, by that point. We still do.

I was not a good bride. There are skills that brides need: grace, and a certain comfort with the spotlight in a time that is both intensely personal and very public. I didn't have a lot of those skills. But I was a bride for a short time, and we muddled through. At roughly 4:30 that day I became a wife. It was a change I welcomed. I was happy to shed the title of "bride". I felt I'd carried it too long, and too awkwardly.

This was the big surprise: I'm comfortable and happy with being a wife - at least, I'm great with being DH's wife. And he's excellent at being my husband. The words "husband" and "wife" sounded foreign to both of us initially, but the roles didn't take much getting used to. When the fanfare ended and the honeymoon was over and we started settling in to our first little apartment, we both marveled at how natural this was, living together and sharing the small decisions of life. The suddenly-blinding certainty I'd felt on the morning of our wedding has calmed down - for which I'm grateful, as I'd never get anything done if I was fainting all the time - but it hasn't dissipated. If anything, after 4 years and a career change and grad school and moving and adopting a cat and traveling and worrying about money and eating pizza on tired weeknights and arguing over dishes and everything that comes with sharing a life together, that certainty has become more solid. It was enormous when it struck me, because what we share is huge. But we have the rest of our lives for it to play out. For this I am more grateful than I can say.

Happy anniversary, DH. You're my favorite.

Weekends

I need to tell you about my weekends.

Perhaps because I've spent more weekends than usual traveling this year, I've come to value even more the stretch between 5:00pm Friday and about 11pm Sunday, when I don't have a strict to-do list, I'm not in my windowless office and the only person I have to consult with about activities is, oh, my favorite person on the planet.

At this time in my life, the absolute best weekends are the ones that have zero outside obligations: no family gatherings, no weddings, nada. All those activities are fun, usually, but the Saturday that begins when the cat is head-butting me awake because she's out of food and I didn't set an alarm because I didn't need to are the best.

When faced with a wide open Saturday, my hubs and I always come up with some kind of plan. Often that plan involves rearranging some part of our one-bedroom apartment so it feels more open or works more efficiently. I usually try to sneak in a little cleaning, maybe do our laundry (which is a project because we either have to haul it to the basement laundry room - our building has 9 washers for 100 people - or we go mooch off a relative. We used to do laundromats, but they're not very fun) . I usually get some bit of housekeeping accomplished on a weekend, but the motivation isn't usually that I love cleaning, it's that starting Monday with a clean space is pleasant.

This past weekend was just one of those perfect weekends: No schedule. We moved furniture, washed windows, did all the laundry and the dishes, fixed our bikes after a winter in storage. This was over a two-day period: nothing was rushed. We spent just as much time lounging around, surfing the internet, drinking coffee, reading. We watched an action movie we've seen ten times, and we ate pizza. We got some gin, mixed a couple of drinks, admired the new furniture setup. Stayed up late and slept in late.

Our weekends manage to be lazy and efficient at the same time, but though I enjoy that, that's not really the point. Even if we do have hard work to do or we're heading to my in-laws or we have to go to a wedding or baptism or something, I look forward to weekends and the down time we have together.

I like weekends because I like the person (and the cat) with whom I live.

This reflection has come up because a post by Heather Armstrong, aka dooce, just bothered me considerably. Before anyone points out, "uh, Schmei, you know dooce is mentally ill and on a lot of medications, right?" Let me make it clear that I understand that. The post itself was just her being her neurotic self, I thought. Kind of entertaining, a little uncomfortable - her usual writing style.

But her commenters scared the bejeesus out of me.

Dooce's post - it's here - is all about how she hates weekends. Hates them. She can't relax because she can't work, and she gets all anxious without a schedule and starts cleaning everything compulsively. When I read the post, I thought, "I guess I could see that. If I worked from home I'd have trouble shutting it off for two days when my office is right there, too. Not everyone is able to do that..."

But there are two wrinkles. One is that she has two young children, and I know babies are terrible creatures to live with sometimes, and her six-year-old daughter certainly does not sound like a picnic either, so I guess I can understand her anxiety but I always thought weekends with kids could be nice. I guess I just assumed they'd be like weekends are for us now, only with an additional small person who can't eat pizza just yet and needs poopy diapers changed, and then later that small person might be doing something like playing outside when the weather's nice, but that would be fun, right? I love to get outside on weekends. I don't even mind soccer games that much.

Here's the other wrinkle - and this is the thing I should never do on anything besides this blog - I started reading the comments. And every. single. person. agreed with her. Weekends with kids? Suck. Across the board. They are a terrible period of constant suffering. There is no sleeping in, no enjoying coffee, no quiet time, NO FUN. Children with no routine flip out and abuse their parents, needling them constantly. They never shut up. They don't take naps. Things don't even start to pretend to improve until they're at least 10 years old, but then they're pre-teens and we know how awful THOSE are...

I am not kidding when I say those comments made me want to never reproduce in any way. Not even adoption, which, whenever I hear a horror story about childbirth, is my fallback position - "We'll just adopt!" - it's like takeout for babies. Who has time to gestate anymore?

Anyway, that post and those comments made me try to remember what weekends were like when I was growing up. Did I torture my parents when I was a kid? Sundays were fairly routine: church in the morning and then usually breakfast all together, the whole family passing around sections of the newspaper. I would always read the lame kid's joke aloud to Mom because I found her groan entertaining. (Sigh. I still love awful puns. They still make my loved ones groan.) Some Sunday afternoons Dad would go for a hike and take one or two of us along. Sunday dinner was usually something made of chicken, because it was a dinner with my family.

Did my parents hate that? I always thought Sundays were kind of nice.

Saturdays are harder to recall specifically because they were more nebulous. I do remember a time when all three of us were playing soccer, on different teams, at different places sometimes. I'm sure that was stressful, but once they got the transportation figured out it all worked out all right. And besides, that wasn't the whole day, just a couple of hours, usually, and then we'd all go home or hang out with teammates for a while or something.

I remember playing outside in sun or leaves or snow, or reading books. Entertaining myself, or playing superheroes with my brother. Or boardgames with my sister.

How bad was that? Was it that bad? It didn't seem bad, but I was a kid. Are kids that bad? Do they really ruin weekends? Can I never rearrange furniture with my husband again if we have a kid?

I suppose this is bothering me in part because, while I know plenty of women my age who have "baby fever," I don't really have it. What I would like is a child. Like, a seven-year-old, who will later be a twelve-year-old, and then a twenty-two-year old who I can take out to buy a suit for her job interview like my mom did for me. I would enjoy having a son or daughter, or one of each, or hell, two of each, and watch them grow up. It would be interesting to see what combination of traits kids would get, between my husband and me. I hope they get his mechanical smarts, even if that means they disassemble the thermostat. And they'll hopefully get his height, which will be nice for them... and for me, really. Once they're grown, I'll have more than one person I can ask to get things off high shelves. However, I kind of hope they get my hair. Because I am a vain person.

But I'm just not that in to babies. And the more I learn about newborns (my three-week-old niece, for instance, is both beautiful and a relentlessly demanding tyrant all at once), the less I want one of those. And the more I read articles like dooce's post, I find myself worried that the newborn stage never really ends. According to posts like that, newborns just morph in to kids who are potty trained, able to speak, and still just as awful to live with. If not worse.

All of those commenters sounded like my greatest fear about parenthood: they sounded regretful. And I hate that when I think about potentially being a parent some day, one of the questions I ask myself is "which would you regret more, NOT having kids, or having them and not liking them?"

That is a gross question.

I am happy with my life now. I've always kind of thought I'd be happy with kids, but posts like this make me worry that kids would ruin everything I love about my life, and then I couldn't take them back, and my husband and I would be stuck resenting each other and the little monsters we created for the rest of our lives together.

But there has to be a way to train kids to move furniture, right? Maybe that's all we'll need to do.

Wednesday

Other blogs have "Wordless Wednesdays", and "Wedded Wednesdays", and perhaps my personal favorite, "Unitasker Wednesdays" on Unclutterer.

I just like Wednesdays, but I'm not sure I'm ready to give them an alliterating theme on this here blog just yet.

There is a lot to like so far about this particular Wednesday. It's raining here in Chicago, and I kind of enjoy rainy days. My coworker gave me a surprise coffee-and-donut treat this morning, and oh, how I love coffee and a donut. I don't have class this evening - in fact, I'm finished with class meetings for 2009 - so I can go home this evening and spend time with my husband and our kitty and probably some acoustic musical instruments.

I will probably chat with my mom on the phone this evening, because she and I chat on the phone every Wednesday - something we've done since I moved out of the house 9 years ago. This is the grown-up version of Wednesday afternoons many years ago, when I was in kindergarten in the mornings. Mom would take off work midday and would walk me home from school so we could spend a little time together, just the two of us, before my older siblings got home from all-day school and my dad came home from work and the house got crowded again.

I think this means it's my mom's fault I like Wednesdays. That's OK. I hope my kids like Wednesdays in the future, too.

So, happy rainy/coffee/time-with-loved-ones Wednesday, everybody.