Thursday, November 08, 2012

Marriage

I've been thinking a lot about gender relations in general, and also specifically within my church (LDS).  But I haven't decided anything yet, so right now it's all a formless soup within my cranium.  I've been thinking about marriage, and being a stay-at-home mother.  I'm reading this book and it's so interesting.  I'm only on Chapter 2 so far.  Chapter 1 = our current ideas of marriage are based on the culmination of about 250 years of gradual thought change.  Towards the late 1700s an idea started to take hold, that people who get married should be in love with each other.  The Victorians ran with it, and by the 1950s it had reached its apotheosis.  But prior to 1800, a lot of people thought too much love in a marriage was weird, unseemly, or dangerous.  This I am still trying to wrap my mind around.  I mean, you're in the same bed.  Naked.  How could some love be dangerous??  (Dangerous because the lovebirds would be inclined to put each other first instead of those they should put first, like parents.)  I'd pay good money to know what kind of marriage Adam & Eve had, or Enoch, or Noah.  Would their minds boggle at our ideas & attitudes? 

I do remember in a book on a history of feudalism I read a few years ago, the author talked about how modern people have a hard time understanding just how important the family was in medieval times.  I don't mean husband-wife-kids.  I mean the extended family.  Like in some parts of Europe, you couldn't sell some land that belonged to just you if your family didn't approve it!  There wasn't this infrastructure of government we have now, it was all about the family.  If you were disabled or infirm due to age, your family took care of you.  This support group is really pretty much absent from our lives, and it's the kind of support group that would kill for you, because you are blood.  If I become infirm, I don't plan to show up on my cousin's doorstep.  (Bet you're relieved, T!)  

This also reminds me of this article I read on a British newspage (side note: Brits totally have the best, and by "best" I mean "most gossipy," newspages) about a woman who lives here in the US, who is putting herself through college by cuddling for $60 an hour.  CUDDLING.  For SIXTY DOLLARS AN HOUR.  One person commented said how sad that is, that we as humans are now so starved for affectionate touch that people will pay this woman to cuddle with them.

So bobbing up out of the soup of my mind is that I think we ARE missing something in our lives, living so far from our families, putting so much pressure on our marriages to supply many of our needs for social interaction, affection, (non-sexual) intimacy, etc.

But then I think what the reality would be if all my family and all my husband's family lived in our same town, all near each other.  A couple of my friends have most of their extended family within an hour of each other and it seems like quite a bit of drama.  Honestly, with my family it would be all drama, all the time.  But always people to hang out with!  And help you tile the bathroom!  And watch the kids for each other!  Hmm...

See?  No conclusions.  Just ramblings.  That's all you get, folks.

Oh and some kiddo pics.


 My little duckling.  I could only look at her in brief glimpses because she was literally too cute.



 Miss Tinkerbell has been fake smiling a lot recently.  But she is also reading a lot recently, all on her own, so yay!



Gotta love an honest ninja.  (Ace got the headband from church a few weeks ago.  At crunch time, his actual ninja headband was nowhere to be found, so we popped this on his head.)



Dh made cookies the other week and they were perfect!  Look at them!  He said, "Crap, I've just screwed myself, haven't I?"  Yes, yes you have.  I got him to make them again on Sunday.  Sucka!



Baby C (toddler C? Miss C?) Not-baby-any-longer-waah-C is my climber.  With three kids, it was bound to happen.  At least I didn't get a climber til the end, when my heart could take it (yes I'm 90, why do you ask?).  She climbs everything and is undeterred by falling, which she does several times a day.  For a few days we could stave off the worst of this by tucking in the chairs around the dining room table.  She figured out today, to her parents' dismay, how to pull out the chairs and thus has unimpeded access to the table, which she proceeds to walk upon as if it were a thoroughfare.  *le sigh*  The only plus is now the table is very clean to reduce the potential for destruction.