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Location: Work.
Listening: "Shape Of My Heart" ~ Sting.

Before I even begin this entry, I'd like to note that no part of it is some form of not-so-oblique, passive-aggressive "hint" to Peter or anyone else. So, for anyone reading this who might be inclined to draw that conclusion--sorry. I'm merely thinking out loud.

So I finally replied to my friend Erin's mail about her engagement. Since she and I have been speculating about such events in our respective futures for about fifteen years now, I figured I'd ask the customary questions--how did he propose? What does the ring look like? Where are you having the wedding?

She replied, and sent pictures.

...we sipped some champagne and then he told me to pack an overnight bag. The doorbell rang, we go downstairs and there is a 1964 Rolls Royce sitting there, which whisks us away down to the Homestead in Greenwich, where he has reserved the best suite for the night, and his best friend * and his wife...are waiting to celebrate with us. We had more champagne, called parents, and...then he took me to brunch the next day. All in all, it was like something out of a movie...

I read this, nodded, and then, to my amazement, promptly started crying. I eventually stopped, but have been sunk into some sort of depression since. I'm now attempting to sort out why.

I know the spades are swords of a soldier

As I've mentioned before, I decided that I had no desire to be married when I was a child. It seemed a simple decision then. Marriage in my family appears to equate to a situation where the female married because, to state it simply, it seemed like a good idea at the time. My aunt (who speaks eight languages, was the first woman to graduate with a degree in International Relations from Rhodes College and was recruited as a linguist by the CIA) married my uncle instead. He was a petty officer in the U.S. Navy. She was pregnant with my cousin (I later was allowed to find out). They're still together, although they've lived on separate continents (he's in Saudi Arabia, she's in Kentucky) for several years. There have been several near-misses at divorce, but my aunt persists. My uncle is theoretically coming stateside for good this month.

My mother, who had no desire to ever be anything but a wife and mother, left college in her junior year to marry my father. They met on a blind date in her freshman year. She spent the next two years doing his laundry, washing his car, and cleaning his room at the frat house while he worked late in the Industrial Design lab. When she determined that she might want to date someone else, he told her "Fine. But I know that you'll marry me.". It says something about the difference between she and I that she found this romantic and that I would have never spoken to him again simply to prove him wrong. They are both very reserved and practical people. The first time I saw them kiss (not in pictures), I was sixteen.

My father's mother married my grandfather because he was the most dependable of her many boyfriends at the time (she was an Irish redhead in rural Mississippi). While she was dating him, she would return from an evening out with him to sneak out later and go dancing with various and sundry other boys. She spent the next sixty years making breakfast, lunch, and dinner for him, raising four children, and living virtually from hand to mouth. Several months after he died, she found a folded piece of paper under a lamp on the table beside his armchair. It was a note, thanking her for everything she had ever done for him. It was the only time he had ever done so.

My mother's mother married my grandfather and spent many years under close observation by his family. His parents were wealthy. He had been raised with a bodyguard (they had oil money in the 30's, the Lindbergh kidnapping was recent memory, and there had been threats against his life). She was subjected to private investigators and formal personal inquiries during their engagement. She became a surgeon's wife, raised three children, and lost almost everything when he was discovered evading his taxes. In later years, he was a militant racist, gun collector, militia supporter, and emotionally and verbally abusive. She never left him.

In short, marriage, in my family's history, has traditionally equated to a collection of "what if's". As a little girl, I looked around and determined that I would rather be the captain of my own fate so that, if I had "what if's" further down the road, I would know that they were my own mistakes, and not my complacency in the face of someone else's. I wouldn't barter my visions of my future for a role as someone's mother and cook. I decided this when I was five. I determined that no one would change my mind.

I know that the clubs are weapons of war

Yet, when I was sixteen, I became engaged to my boyfriend, who was headed to Harvard by way of Army ROTC. When I went to college, I unexpectedly fell in love with someone else and moved in with him. I realized, in the next year, that I was better off with my initial conclusion. The procedure was lengthy and painful, but, in the end, I decided that what I had lost was merely testament to what I had originally determined. I regarded marriage as an ultimately naive notion based on the presumption that anyone could be trusted completely. I used my immediate experience to justify my conclusion that the idea of two people spending their lives happy only with each other was, very simply, a lie perpetrated by social mores. I spent the next seven years allowing myself to love only to the edge. It's harder than it looks.

To be continued...