SIMCHA FISHER

We’ve started Michael Dubruiel’s The How-To Book of the Mass: Everything You Need to Know, But No One Ever Taught You (OSV, revised 2007), and I couldn’t be more pleased. My older kids are certainly quiet and respectful at Mass, but I would love for them to be more engaged, and I think this book will be transformative — not only for them, but for me and my husband, too. Let’s face it, we have some gaps in our educations, too.

Read the rest at the Register.

Because we are driving them crazy.

This woman, Chrissy Teigen, had a baby ten days ago. She is famous — I guess she is a model or something — so when she went out to dinner with her husband, John Legend (?), lots of people took pictures of her.

So then this happened:

You just had a baby stay at home

Dumb. No normal woman would want to leave her baby so soon

Years of infertility struggle finally had a baby and peaces out after a week

Maybe it’s just rich people but I have two children, I had them at a young age also. I don’t think I let anyone watch my child without me til a month or two.

That spotlight pull be strong. One week. Who wants to leave a one week old baby to go to a bar?

And so on. These are comments on social media, in response to a woman who committed the outrageous and vile act of . . . going out to dinner with her husband. She didn’t fly off to Antigua and leave her baby in a box on the floor at the airport. She didn’t accidentally forget her at the hospital. She didn’t turn the kid over to the first maternal-looking dog she could find so as to lead a “Babies Bore Me” rally at the local Bad Mother Sodality.

She just. Went out. To dinner. And then presumably went back home and hung out with her baby, as women do.

My friend Laura Broussard, who has a knack for getting to the point, said:

America: where we shred you for going on a two-hour dinner date at a week postpartum but give no sh*ts if you have to go back to work 40 hours a week at a week postpartum.

Seriously. It’s a couple hours. A healthy nine-day old baby is probably sleeping at this time. If my healthy nine-day old is sleeping well and my friend called and said, “Can I pick you up and take you out for calzones down the street before you start trying to lose the baby weight?” I would say OK JUST LET ME FIND MY DRY SHAMPOO. (Because ain’t no paparazzi care about my look while I’m grubbing at Rotolo’s.)

Leave. Mothers. Alone. Stop picking picking picking at them. You want to know why American mothers are all crazy? This is why they’re all crazy. Because there’s nothing they can do that won’t get them yelled at by strangers. If you think that doesn’t make people crazy, then try it some time — and add in all the normal hormones and stresses and insecurities of motherhood.

I invite you to carry a baby for nine months, give birth, and spend a scant week healing up and dealing with the exhaustion and wackiness that every mother deals with, and find it in yourself to shrug off criticism — yes, even if you’re a rich mom, even if you’re a mom with lots of help, even if you’re a mom who can fit into slinky pants right away, and even if you’re a mom who is married to someone named John Legend. This is the stuff that makes people crazy, and there is no way to avoid it.

Teigen dealt with the criticism with humor and grace. I didn’t do as well when I had just given birth and decided to get back to work after a short time, because I could do it sitting down, and because we needed the money. As soon as I said something people didn’t like, I got a rousing chorus of “YOU’RE A BAD MOTHER TO BE WORKING.” Not that they wanted to help pay my mortgage, or anything.  Not that they had anything good to say about WIC, or mandatory maternity leave laws. It was enough that I was a woman who had publicly admitted to giving birth. Suddenly, any misstep I made could be magnified by a thousand because [fill in the blank] isn’t supposed to be how mothers act. 

How about we let the lady eat? Or at least stop using motherhood as another stick to beat women over the head with. And yes, I’m speaking to women at least as much as I am to men.

First person to say, “Hey, fatherhood is hard, too!” gets a hundred lashes with a pair of maternity compression hose.

***

Angry Mob photo by Hans Splinter via Flickr (Creative Commons)

What do you get when a sperm meets an egg? A new life, a new soul . . . and a dazzling flash of light. According to a science story in the Telegraph UK

An explosion of tiny sparks erupts from the egg at the exact moment of conception.

For the first time, researchers have caught these intimate little human fireworks on film.

The bright flash occurs because when sperm enters and egg it triggers calcium to increase which releases zinc from the egg. As the zinc shoots out, it binds to small molecules which emit a fluorescence which can be picked up my camera microscopes.

When I saw the headline, I caught my breath. “It’s almost,” I told my husband, “As if something amazing is going on! Something that shouldn’t be messed with!”

Then I read the rest of the story, and I let my breath out in a sigh. One of the researchers involved in the project called the zinc flash “breathtaking,” — and then went on to explain:

This means if you can look at the zinc spark at the time of fertilization, you will know immediately which eggs are the good ones to transfer in in vitro fertilization.

Breathtaking indeed. We stand in a dark doorway and behold the brilliant spark of life itself, and we say to ourselves, “Think of the commercial possibilities!” I’m thinking of venal, wretched Uncle Andrew in C.S. Lewis’ The Magician’s Nephew. Accidentally graced to be present at the creation of Narnia, Uncle Andrew saw that flash, too, as life came into being:

Far overhead from beyond the veil of blue sky which hid them the stars sang again; a pure, cold, difficult music. Then there came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself, and every drop of blood tingled in the children’s bodies, and the deepest, wildest voice they had ever heard was saying:
“Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.

Narnia here is only minutes old, and the rich new soil is so fertile and fresh that everything that touches it springs into life and flourishes and bears fruit. Even gold and silver coins that spill from his pocket, even bits of toffee. And Uncle Andrew rubs his hands and hatches a plan to dash back home and find some bits of trains and warships that he can grow into iron trees and sell for a profit.

Thus the researcher as she witnesses that dazzling flash of new life:

[Y]ou will know immediately which eggs are the good ones to transfer in in vitro fertilization. . . It’s a way of sorting egg quality in a way we’ve never been able to assess before.

You can just hear her rubbing her hands and she mentally fondles the potential profit.

I’ll let the honest Cabby, destined to be the king of Narnia, answer her:

Oh stow it, Guv’nor, do stow it. Watchin’ and listenin’s the thing at present; not talking.

Am I being too hard on these researchers? It is true that they’re making money as they force human life into being. They profit from sorting through tiny persons, flushing the inferior ones away, and inserting the heartiest specimens back into a likely uterine home, hoping their investment will pay off.

But they do want to help. They do not want to harm, surely. The researcher says:

“There are no tools currently available that tell us if it’s a good quality egg. Often we don’t know whether the egg or embryo is truly viable until we see if a pregnancy ensues.

“That’s the reason this is so transformative. If we have the ability up front to see what is a good egg and what’s not, it will help us know which embryo to transfer, avoid a lot of heartache and achieve pregnancy much more quickly.”

Surely more life, less heartache, is always a worthy goal? Surely if we can, we should? To increase life, to sustain life, to avoid heartache. We can do it. Shouldn’t we?

Here is what Aslan says:

“Alas … Things always work according to their nature. She has won her heart’s desire … All get what they want; they do not always like it.”

Light brings heartache. Darkness brings heartache. You will not be spared heartache, no matter how hard you try to catch that spark in a jar like a lightning bug. If you love life, then do not quantify. Do not sort. Do not coax, and do not discard. If you love life, you will let it flash out its brilliance in its own time, and you will let it go out when it will. It is not ours to coax into being, and it is not ours to snuff out.

***

Image: “Ancient of Days” by William Blake – William Blake Archive, Public Domain,

My husband sent me this collection of excerpts from interviews with Donald Trump: Donald Trump Thinks Men who Change Diapers Are Acting ‘Like the Wife’.  Trump displays a few fairly mild examples of his trademarked unabashed sexism and general jerkitude, saying that he doesn’t change diapers and would never be seen pushing a carriage. When he discovered Marla Maples was pregnant with his child, his chivalrous response was, “‘Excuse me, what happened?”

Nothing shocking here. It’s not as if we all imagined him spending hours fondly dawdling by the crib talking baby talk before leaping up to help one of his wives with the household chores. Nobody who likes Trump is going to be astonished to hear that he’s proud to be a caricature of a hands-off, inattentive, sperm donor of a dad who look at his own baby daughter and saw a potential set of gorgeous legs and perky breasts.

Trump is gross, blah blah blah. The thing that struck me was how sorry I felt for him. Five children, and in all those years, he apparently never let himself enjoy them. He’s happy to use them as props, but they don’t seem to have made him happy.

The other day, I posted a picture of my husband at what must be our . . . mathmathmath . . . yes, about the hundredth kid’s birthday party we’ve had at our house.

[img attachment=”100302″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”13087622_10153611020587029_1664471751188240295_n (1)” /]

The baby is obviously enthralled, but notice my husband’s face. This is a man who is having a good time, and not because he’s really into Dollar Store fashions. Having kids is fun. Having kids makes you happy. Having kids gives you something simple and straightforward to be joyful about.

Of course, there’s also some of this kind of thing, when your four-year-old wants to tell you all about . . . whatever it is that she is going on and on and on and on and on about . . .

[img attachment=”100303″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender (1)” /]

And there are other, less photogenic moments, too — long days, long nights, frustration, disappointment, sorrow, doubt, and fear. These are things that come to every father, too.

Some men are naturally good dads, and take to it instantly. Some men intend only to fulfill their duty, and are delighted to learn that they actually like their kids. Some men love playing with their kids, but are slower to realize that they need to take part in the less pleasant bits of childrearing, too. There are all kinds of good dads who work out all kinds of arrangements with their families. It’s all right to take some time to grow into the role of father. It’s a big one.

But ladies, if you are thinking of marrying a man and starting a family with him, please, please, first take a hard look at how he interacts with children. Talk over your expectations ahead of time. Does he understand that his kids are going to need him — not just his money, but him, himself? Is he even open to the idea?

It’s not just about the kids, and their needs, and their happiness. It’s also about him. If you love a man, you’ll want him to enjoy the gift of a joyful, involved relationship with his children. There’s nothing masculine or conservative about refusing to accept the fullness of the great gift of fatherhood. Have the conversation!

This was spring vacation week, so I put up a little effort. In retrospect, I can see that my effort did not extend to vegetable preparation. Oh well.

***

SATURDAY

Corn dogs, chips, and Hobbit bread for the kids;
amazing sandwiches and exhilarating fries for me and Damien.

I gave a talk in Hanover on Saturday, and we stopped at Everything But Anchovies for dinner. The sandwiches were so good, I thought it would be fun to do a sandwich of the week, now that it’s getting warmer.

Meanwhile, back at home, honorable daughter #3 made her amazing stuffed Hobbit bread. She used pre-made pizza dough, and baked two large woven loaves stuffed with a savory filling of mushrooms, onions, and cheese. A fine time for me to leave town.

I’ve mentioned Hobbit Bread a few times, so I figured I might as well finally share the recipe. As you can see, it’s long, complicated, and adorable. You can easily adapt it to make it simpler and quicker, and it’s still ridiculously delicious.

Here is the recipe from An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery (link is to Kindle version of the book – thanks to my friend Stasa for getting a digital version of the recipe for me!):

Whew.

***

SUNDAY

Reubens and onion rings

I’ve never had a reuben sandwich before! SO GOOD. I boiled a hunk of corned beef that was on sale from St. Patrick’s day (the age made me hesitate, but then I remembered that even brand new corned beef is only just barely food, so it probably hadn’t spoiled), sliced it thin, and made grilled sandwiches on rye. Corned beef, swiss cheese, sauerkraut, Thousand Island dressing. I followed these directions, and weighed the sammiches down with cans of tomatoes.

[img attachment=”100046″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”DSC_7280″ /]

FABULOUS. I had two, which made me feel like this:

[img attachment=”100047″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”IMG_8001″ /]

***

MONDAY 

Pancakes and sausages, chocolate covered bananas

Boy, those bananas were not great. We had made these once before, for a jungle-themed birthday party, and they were really delicious. This time, they tasted fine — frozen bananas have a pleasant custardy taste — but they were a mess. I don’t know what went wrong, but the chocolate never melted properly, and it wouldn’t stick to the bananas. I tried adding some shortening in to smooth it out, but it didn’t help. It sounds crazy, but I think maybe Aldi brand chocolate chips aren’t good for melting. Anyway, the kids had fun.

[img attachment=”100048″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender-9″ /]

***

TUESDAY

Chicken enchiladas, guacamole and chips, corn, waffle iron churros

Pioneer Woman’s recipe. I used chicken thighs instead of white meat. I always run out of onions before I run out of chicken and cheese, so this time I made triple the amount. Then I forgot the stove was on and burned the hell out of them, so they got compacted right down to a third of their size. They weren’t so much caramelized as carbonized.

[img attachment=”100044″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender-5″ /]

I guess in terms of atomic value, we ingested the same amount of onionness, but in practice, there weren’t enough onions. Still a very tasty meal.

[img attachment=”100045″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender-6″ /]

Kids made the guac. Husband made the waffle iron churros while I hid in my room neglecting my domestic duties.

***

WEDNESDAY

Beef stew and dumplings

Most of my kids didn’t even know what dumplings are, that’s how long it’s been. Dumpling suspicion:

[img attachment=”100042″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender-7″ /]

I grabbed this basic recipe off allrecipes.com.

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 3 tablespoons shortening
• 3/4 cup milk

(I made double this recipe.) Mix together dry ingredients, cut in the shortening, then add the milk and stir until just blended.
Drop clumps of dough into the simmering stew, cover tightly, and simmer 20 minutes.

They turned out great!

[img attachment=”100043″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”FullSizeRender-8″ /]

Light and fluffy, couldn’t be easier. Hooray, a new thing!

***

THURSDAY

Pulled pork, cole slaw, baked potatoes

Holy hell, this was some fatty pork. By the time I was done trimming it, half of it was gone. It got all et up, though. Oh, also we were out of beer (!) to cook it in, so I used Coke.

Cole slaw was made with cabbage and carrots, and a dressing of mayo, sour cream, vinegar, sugar, and pepper. Tasted exactly like cole slaw.

***

I am now collecting exciting sandwich ideas for sandwich of the week. Next week, we’ll be recreating the yummy ones we had at that restaurant. Tell me all about your favorite sandwiches, hot or cold!

Andrew Jackson, racist and jerk, is off the twenty dollar bill. Harriet Tubman, hero, will replace him. Excellent!  She deserves honor and accolades. She was one of the America’s greatest, totally worthy of admiration.

Americans have been doing a lot of self-examination lately. In the case of the twenty dollar bill, we’ve identified an ugly growth that deserves to be excised. The Jacksonectomy makes perfect sense. We’re not going to pretend he never existed, but we’re going to say, “This is someone we’re not especially proud of.” A great and healthy thing to do.

The mania for self-examination, though, can be a sickness in itself. They erect boxes around statues of Christopher Columbus. They teach kids that Thomas Jefferson was, above all else, a racist (not that racism was one of his traits or part of his legacy, but his main trait, the essential character of his legacy). They teach kids that Abraham Lincoln was a racist.

Now some deep thinkers are refusing to watch the new movie The Jungle Book because it’s based on a book written in 1894 by a British man born in India, a man who had ideas very closely aligned with all British men born in India in the 1800’s.

He was also an incredible story teller, and the movie, which is a movie about animals, looks wonderful.

My friends, I put “was a racist” into my search bar, and the third suggestion was “Jesus was a racist.”

So let’s slow this train down for a minute and figure a few things out.

First of all, no one gets any points for believing the thing that almost everyone believes. So, you were born in 1991 and are not in favor of enslaving your black friends? You get exactly zero hosannas for that. You didn’t figure out on your own that racism is wrong. You’re just going along with the crowd, and if the crowd got something right, then the crowd gets credit for that, not you.

Second of all, if you believe exactly what you’ve been taught to believe, then surely you can see that the same was true for people who lived 100 or 200 years ago. It doesn’t make them hideous people, it just makes them products of their time, just like you. They were just going along with the crowd, and if the crowd got something wrong, then the crowd should get blamed for that, not them.

Third of all, we can legitimately laud and applaud the good ideas, courageous achievements, and tireless work of people who accomplished amazing things, even if some of their ideas are bad, offensive ideas. In fact, this is what makes life possible. Go ahead an interview your five best friends. If you spend long enough with them, you’ll find out something offensive. That’s what people are like: complicated, inconsistent, a mixture of good and bad ideas.

BUT HAVE IT YOUR WAY. Let’s say that we have to strike from the books anyone who retains any taint of noxious ideas, especially racist ideas. Even if it was the same as what everyone else believed in those days; even if this person accomplished wonderful things despite being a racist. Let’s say that we’re so intensely offended by any whiff of racism that we refuse to honor anyone who’s associated with racist ideas, no matter how tangentially.

Explain to me Margaret Freaking Sanger. Because when we wanted a replacement for racist ol’ Andrew Jackson, lots of people thought Margaret Sanger was the perfect choice.

Some of the things they say about Sanger aren’t true. That photo of her speaking at a KKK rally is photoshopped. But she did speak to KKK members as an honored guest, because

if Sanger could convince the ladies of the KKK of the benefits of birth control, then it was worth it to her . . . there was no one whom Sanger wouldn’t talk to about birth control.

She did say

The mass of Negroes particularly in the South still breed carelessly and disastrously, with the result that the increase among Negroes, even more than among whites, is from that portion of the population least intelligent and fit, and least able to rear children possibly.

And she did say:

[I]f we can train the Negro doctor at the Clinic he can go among them with enthusiasm and with knowledge, which, I believe, will have far-reaching results among the colored people. His work in my opinion should be entirely with the Negro profession and the nurses, hospital, social workers, as well as the County’s white doctors. His success will depend upon his personality and his training by us.

The minister’s work is also important and also he should be trained, perhaps by the Federation as to our ideals and the goal that we hope to reach. We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

I wanted to make sure I wasn’t buying into an urban legends that unfairly vilified Margaret Sanger, or made her seem worse than she actually was, so I sought out a source that admired and honored Sanger. So I got all of these quotes from an essay called “How False Narratives of Margaret Sanger Are Being Used to Shame Black Women.”

The essay makes all the usual arguments: everyone said stuff like that back then; she was no worse than anyone else; she was just so passionate, she was being pragmatic; she did so much else that was good. It makes the argument that . . . okay, yes, she was pretty damn racist, and her racism absolutely motivated her to behave the way she behaved, but abortionandbirthcontrol, so we’ll work with her on this.

So, according to an essay that sets out to defend her, this is an incontrovertible part of Margaret Sanger’s legacy:

–Working with people who enjoy torturing and murdering black people: check.
–Classifying black people as careless breeders who are likely to be unfit parents: check.
–Condescendingly plotting to lull childishly suspicious black people into a sense of security by recruiting black doctors: check.

My friends, we have a racist. By the standards set forth by every progressive American institution, we have a flagrant, unapologetic, dyed-in-the-wool racist. By current standards, we should be chiseling her name off walls, tearing her page out of biographies, throwing shoes at her statues. But we’re not.

Tell me why this is okay. Tell me why this is tolerable. Tell me why the enlightened, ultra sensitive, finely tuned society we live in — a society which cannot bear to read Huckleberry Finn or Little House on the Prairie — allows all of this:

Government authorities and other institutions have memorialized Sanger by dedicating several landmarks in her name, including a residential building on the Stony Brook University campus, a room in Wellesley College’s library,^[75] and Margaret Sanger Square in New York City’s Noho area.^[76] In 1993, the Margaret Sanger Clinic—where she provided birth control services in New York in the mid twentieth century—was designated as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.^[77] In 1966, Planned Parenthood began issuing its Margaret Sanger Awards annually to honor “individuals of distinction in recognition of excellence and leadership in furthering reproductive health and reproductive rights.”^[78] The artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Sanger.^[79] Her speech “Children’s Era”, given in 1925, is listed as #81 in American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches of the 20th Century (listed by rank).^[80][81]

It’s outrageous. Outrageous. If she wasn’t a racist down to her bones, than no one is. Margaret Sanger was thoroughly racist. Her condescending, paternalistic, genocidal, imperialist ideology was baked into every move she made, every word she wrote, every thing she achieved. Margaret Sanger has to go.

____

Photo by Steve Strummer – Own work, Public Domain

There are benefits and drawbacks to being this kind of pope. We’re already pretty familiar with the drawbacks. I think the CDC is ready to acknowledge a new public health risk: Franscogenic Panic Disorder. It afflicts conservatives and progressives equally, and is marked by hair pulling, teeth grinding, hypertension, and a general feeling of confusion, disorientation, and an uncontrollable urge to leap to conclusions.

On the other hand, he is setting an example of immediacy which we would all do well to follow. He responds directly to the person and the need in front of him, putting other concerns on the back burner, and he seems to expect us to do the same when we’re confronted with his words and his behavior: responding to what is immediately in front of us.

Read the rest at the Register.

***

Image: Canonization 2014-The Canonization of Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II by Jeffrey Bruno via Flickr (CC)

If there were any justice in the world, I’d be pulling down a massive salary as an etiquette expert. Check out this guy, who thinks he’s so smart.

Big deal! I know lots of things about what should and shouldn’t be, and I will tell them to you! With pictures, even. Here’s just a few off the top of my etiquette head:

1. Nobody likes to see an attractive rug unravel. It’s unsightly and a safety hazard. There is an effective response to this problem: stop buying cheapass rugs that smell like formaldehyde. The solution is not, as you may think, to slap some duct tape on it.

[img attachment=”99686″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”rug tape” /]

2. Kindness to animals will always have a place in gracious society; but many members of haute monde will frown on taking a buddy-system approach to lollipops and the hellbeast family pet.

[img attachment=”99687″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”corrie boomer lollipop resize” /]

3. It’s considered tasteful to allow oneself a small display of souvenirs collected during one’s travels, as long as they are of the best quality, in good condition, and arranged in a visually coherent way. So, not like this:

[img attachment=”99689″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”pope shelf” /]

4. It’s acceptable to incorporate words into your décor, as long as they convey uplifting sentiments. “Joy” is popular; “FAMILY” is widely used. It is not, however, considered de rigueur to write “DOOM ON YOU” in the mildew on the bathroom ceiling.

[img attachment=”99690″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”doom on you” /]

5. Stop saying, “But I just cleaned it! I don’t understand how it got this way so quickly, when I just cleaned it!” You didn’t, and you know it.

[img attachment=”99691″ align=”aligncenter” size=”medium” alt=”heap” /]

***
I hope that these tips are helpful to you as you go about, birdlike, building the cozy nest of your home in a manner that is as pleasing to the eye as it is something something something.

What? I just wrote a post! I don’t know how it got this way so quickly!

In First Things, bride-to-be Leah Libresco notices that all the wedding planning guides have something rather dreary in common: They don’t leave room for the wedding night.  One book, she says, reminds the happy pair:

“There’s not just the one (huge) celebration to think about—kick off your engagement with a cocktail party; throw a rehearsal dinner to remember; extend the wedding-night celebrations with an after-party; and send your guests off with a post-wedding brunch.”

She says:

It can’t be that the book’s authors didn’t notice that they’d squeezed the wedding night down to nothing (this is a book that reminds you that if you’re only booking one hairstylist for you and your bridesmaids, someone will need to volunteer for the early morning slot).

It’s simply that this is a plan that assumes there will be nothing particularly special about the first night that a couple spends together. It’s a to-do list for engaged couples who have already been sexually intimate before marriage and don’t need to reserve any time or energy for consummation. In all the hustle and bustle of a wedding weekend, there’s no time for non-essentials, and one more night together doesn’t manage make the schedule.

Libresco gives the kindest possible interpretation to this arrangement, saying that, likely, couples who are already used to living together want to be generous toward their friends, whom they may not see very often, or who may not get the chance to live it up. So it makes sense to host an event so lavish and long that there just isn’t any room on the schedule for sex.

She proposes:

Instead of recommending wedding schedules that erase the bride and groom’s obligation to (and delight in) each other, the Knot and other wedding guides might do well to carve more time out of the reception for the couple to spend together. They could borrow the tradition of the Yichud Roomfrom Jewish weddings. After they are wed, a Jewish bride and groom head into a separate, locked room for a private interlude. It may be brief (eight minutes is the minimum required) but it allows them to not be hosts, but simply to be two people, a little awed by what they’ve offered to each other.

Eight minute minimum, eh? I can just hear the scoffers scoffing. Eight minutes is more than enough, if it’s your first time! Har har. 

If the idea of abstaining before marriage is foreign to you, you might enjoy bursting the bubbles of your straight-laced friends’ wedding night fantasies, informing them that two virgins having their first sex is going to be awkward and disappointing. There is some truth to this: the best sex happens between two people who not only love each other but who know each other very well; and virginal young newlyweds, by definition, do not know each other very well.

But the wedding night isn’t a big deal because of the fabulouso sex you’re guaranteed to have. It’s a big deal because it marks a turning point. It’s not supposed to be a pinnacle or culmination of anything; it’s supposed to be a beginning. It’s okay if the sex is not great, because the whole point is that now you can begin to learn how to do this amazing thing. The point is that you’re not only eager to have sex with each other, but you’re eager to start something new together. It’s not about leaving virginity behind; it’s about marking the beginning of a union, which includes but is not limited to married sex.

It’s sad that sex is no longer considered something special that husband and wife share together, something reserved for a special state in life. In a way, it’s equally sad that all the other aspects of married life are no longer considered something special that husband and wife share together, something reserved for a special state in life.

At least in Putative Trend Land, some couples are so busy, burdened, and stressed out by wedding planning that they are taking a “minimoon,” a short “honeymoon” vacation together before the wedding.

The Huffington Post breezily explains:

What are honeymoons made of? It’s really all about just being with each other, away from the daily grind. It’s about embarking on an unknown adventure, eating good food, sightseeing, and exploring any number of fun, new experiences. In short, it’s a vacation, one that just happens to be in celebration of a marriage. But there’s no law that says such celebratory vacations can’t happen before the “I Dos.”

But then what are they celebrating? If their life together is already a “daily grind” that makes them feel like escaping, what could a marriage ceremony possibly signify? What could marriage possibly be for?

Listen to me now. I’m an old married broad. I know all about the daily grind, and I know a lot about the joy of marriage, too; and I can tell you that what couples need is not white sand beaches or mai tais.  Happy couples are couples who know how to find their happiness in being together, wherever and whenever that happens to be. Happy couples are couples who understand that the marriage they’re in is something real, something that sets them apart from everyone and everything else in their lives, something which may demand things from them, something which may pour out blessings on them, in a way that nothing else besides marriage can do.

This is why that time locked alone in a room together is indispensable.This is why that first married sexual union matters, and why time should be set apart for it — yes, even if you’ve had sex with each other before, and yes, even if it’s not going to be the bestest sex ever. You ought to be looking forward to beginning something you cannot do with anyone else, would not do with anyone else: Sex, and all the rest of it, too.

A wedding night is the starting point of something new, something different. Marriage is supposed to make you different. If your married life isn’t changing you, then what’s it for?

***

Image: Sir Samuel Luke “The Village Wedding” 1887; via Flickr

Several months ago, I talked about what it’s like seeing a therapist. Today, I want to talk a little about taking an SSRI for anxiety.

Americans, especially American Catholics, sometimes feel that taking drugs for mental health is cheating, taking the easy way out. I felt this way, too. I wanted to get better, to get control of my emotional life, and to learn better habits by the sweat of my brow, with discipline and hard work. It was bad enough to admit that I needed the help of a therapist. The idea of taking a drug to help the therapist help me? Unthinkable.

One of my goals in therapy has been to suss out the difference between mood swings I can control, and mood swings that are out of my control because of hormonal shifts. After a few months, I was able to pinpoint which distressing times were purely due to my cycle. It felt legitimate to try drugs to help myself through PMS, possibly PMDD, because I could see that this was a true, obvious chemical problem. So I decided to try taking Sertraline (generic Zoloft) for the second half of my cycle.

Without the drug, I find myself a huddled, paralyzed clot of paranoia, panic, and despair for two or three days every month. With the drug, I’m more sensitive and irritable toward the end of my cycle. In other words, it made life possible.

It worked so well, and the things I feared were simply not happening, so I thought, “There’s really no reason not to take this drug every day.” So, with trepidation, I started off at the lowest dose, and then increased to the next lowest dose after several months.

Here is what it’s like taking an anti-anxiety drug:

What I was afraid of:

I thought it would turn me into someone else. I was afraid it would make me some kind of blissed-out zombie who didn’t care about anything, and that taking away anxiety would mean changing who I was. I wanted to still care about the things I care about, and I wanted to be able to get upset, even to get mean, when the situation called for it.

I didn’t want to have part of my personality removed, and I didn’t want to lose control of the way I respond to the world. I am melancholic, and I see good things coming out of melancholy. I didn’t want to turn into a chirpy twerp who doesn’t understand suffering or darkness.

What actually happened:

The main effect I feel is an unstickiness. It’s as if, before the drug, I was trying to go about my day with this giant, hairy, tarball following me around. Any time something unpleasant came about — a fear, a worry, a conflict, an insult — the tarball would roll up to it and stick to it. Wherever I tried to go and whatever I tried to do, or think, or say, I’d have to deal with this revolting, sticky gob first — and everything else that happened in my day got stuck to it, whether it was truly related or not, until the whole day was sticky and tarry and awful.

The drug helps me to identify the things I wanted to get rid of — the uncontrollable anger, the panic, the paranoia, the obsessiveness — as foreign things, parasites, rather than important, functional aspects of my psyche. It’s had an untangling effect on how I perceive myself.

I don’t think this drug would be helping me at all if I weren’t also in therapy. It made it possible to put into practice the things my therapist has been telling me to do, which I wanted desperately to do. What it does is give me a little bit of space, a little bit of time, so I can stop and consider, “All right, how do I want to behave now?” And then I can choose. It doesn’t take my choice away, at all. It’s still me, all the way, for better or worse. I’m not a different person. I’m just myself with a little bit more freedom.

My therapist says that another of his clients is a teacher who had a hard time keeping his temper when the kids annoyed or defied him. This fellow described the drug’s effect as a force field that protected him from incoming missiles. He said he still felt them, but they didn’t hit home in the same way. I include this information because it’s different from what I experience, and it goes to show that the drug affects different people in all sorts of ways.

It also helps me sleep at night. Before the drug, I might suddenly pop awake and then lie there for three hours or more, literally quivering and shaking with guilt, fear, and worry over something like, “We’ve gotten out of the habit of taking vitamins every day.” None of the self-calming measures or mental exercises I tried had any effect on this torment. Now, I still have insomnia, and I still wake up and think about things that worry me, but I can say, “Yes, that is a real problem, but I will put it aside until morning.”

How it works with my spiritual life:

There are lingering fears, in many Catholic circles, that if we turn to secular sources for healing from emotional problems, we are supplanting prayer and hoping to find peace and meaning apart from Christ.

This could happen; but I’ve made a deliberate effort to make sure that whatever I learn in therapy gets put into service to my spiritual life, and my therapist respects how important that is to me. The drug has given me the opportunity to set aside or step around many of the lies, temptations, and bad habits that were blocking my prayer life. These obstacles are still there — I still accuse myself, complain to myself, look for distractions, protest that it’s pointless, see that I’m not 100% sincere, and so on — but I’m finding that space or time to pause, and then to say, “Yes, and so what? Let’s do this thing anyway. In the name of the Father . . . ”

Having a consistent prayer life is at the heart of any kind of spiritual growth, so this is an immense step forward.

Unpleasant side effects:

For the first couple of weeks, I got very sleepy — like, first trimester, drooling-with-my-head-on-my-chest-on-the-couch sleepy. This happened mainly in the evening, so I was still able to get my work done during the day; but I did feel dopey and disconnected during the day, too, at first. This wore off.

Nausea. This wore off faster than the sleepiness did.

Dampening of libido. This takes longer to wear off, but it does gradually subside as my body adjusts to the drug. This was probably the most distressing side effect, and the one which made me question whether the good effects were worth it.

These side effects happened when I first started taking the drug, and then they wore off; and then they cropped up again when I increased the dose. The second time, I knew they were temporary, so they wasn’t as worrisome.

Am I saying that Zoloft is the answer for everything?

Of course not. It doesn’t work well for some people. It makes some people worse. Some people don’t need it, and some people need something else — a different drug, a different dose, or a different plan of action altogether. My midwife prescribed the drug to me because she knew I was checking in regularly with my therapist, and that together, we would make changes if necessary.

I’m just telling you my experience. I’ll be glad if this helps you make up your mind, if you’re trying to make a decision. Some caution is warranted, but other fears turned out to be pure prejudice, and I was glad to be proven wrong.