8 years ago October 7, 2008

It was cold that day.  I remember waiting at the back of the church, freezing cold in the silk dress my mom had made, watching out the door and seeing a few flakes of snow drift down.  In October!  I would have been annoyed or amused, but I was preoccupied.  The woman at the back told me it was time, and I grabbed my parents’ arms, entered the sanctuary and saw all these faces turn to look at me.  I had been calm and collected, but the sight of all those faces of family and friends broke me down.  And there was Chris, at the front of the church, waiting for me.  I think we both smiled through tears.

8 years ago today

I don’t actually remember much about the service except that my feet were freezing cold on the cold stone floor.  We have an audio cassette tape of the whole thing, so I could listen to it.  If I had a tape player.  Who has tape players these days?  My car doesn’t even play tapes.

I remember walking out of the church and laughing, and seeing a friend who had run into troubles finding a parking spot.  He arrived 18 minutes late.  He missed the whole service.  It was short.  But it was sweet.

At the reception, our photographer was getting antsy since we had only booked him for the first hour or so, he wanted to be sure to get a picture of us toasting.  The champagne wasn’t opened yet, so in our photos, we’re toasting with beer.  The food was very good (we were worried because we hadn’t actually done any tastings).  The friends and family were even better.

I am so happy that we shared those vows eight years ago, I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  And it keeps getting better.  If things are this good now, I can’t wait to see what the next 8, 16, 32, or hell even 64 years hold for us.

On weddings and marriage… October 7, 2007

Wedding

My brother got married last Saturday, to an amazing woman, in a wonderful wedding. His wife’s family is from India, so the ceremony was a combined Hindu/Lutheran one.

I spent much of the time worried about how Zoe would deal - with the plane ride, with the food, with the messed up schedule, with all the people, with all the parties, etc. Turns out I needn’t have worried. At almost every event, we would show up and within minutes, someone would take Zoe from me and she’d be passed from person to person - loving every minute of it.

(no, I’m not sure who is holding my baby here).

This was especially great at the Mehndi party - where the women all had our hands decorated with henna. You have to leave the henna on for a couple of hours to get it to stay - and the longer you leave it, the darker it gets.

I only had my right hand decorated, so I could still pick up Zoe if need be, but having lots of people willing to help with Zoe made things much easier.

As I said, the wedding was spectacular. It started with the Bharaat procession, where the groom processes to the wedding amidst music and dancing with friends and family. Traditionally, the groom is supposed to ride a horse or elephant, but my brother wanted to dance instead. Personally, I think everyone should dance to their wedding with friends and family.

The ceremony was long - 2 1/2 hours, but it somehow didn’t seem as long. Probably because it was broken up with the bride leaving to change into a new sari in the middle, and also because I felt totally fine getting up and walking around, and even leaving a few times with Zoe when she got restless.

Zoe stayed up until 10 pm the first two nights of the weekend because there were so many fun people to play with, and music to dance to, and new things to see. Unfortunately, the late nights meant that she crashed a couple times on the day of the wedding. Including having a meltdown while I was giving a toast to the couple at the reception. But she still did so much better that I had dared to hope for. And I’m glad we thought to bring her stroller, we just let her nap in there, which worked very well.

Lunchtime nap

This is at the reception, shortly before she had her meltdown.

Just a couple more pictures, because I feel like showing off…

Zoe and I in our outfits, both from India. It took two women to tie me into the sari. I’ll need to learn to get into it myself because I really want to wear it again someday.

As much as I loved wearing the sari, it was hard to keep it on correctly with a nearly 1-year-old constantly pulling at the skirt, so I changed for the evening reception. Zoe stayed in her cute little outfit.

The newlyweds, Carl and Roopa

~~~

Marriage

(warning, a schmoopy post about my marriage is ahead)

Today is Chris and my (mine and Chris’s, Chris’s and mine, stupid grammar) 7th wedding anniversary. We had his parents take Zoe for the early afternoon, and had a lovely time going out and just being together.

The past seven years have been good ones. I mean we’ve definitely had our share of difficulties: my going to grad school, both of us dealing with really bad times at work, job changes, infertility, the first year of parenting. I certainly could have done without some of those difficulties (the infertility and bad job stuff, that is. The first year of parenting has not been easy, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world), but there isn’t anyone I would rather have faced them with. And we know now how much stronger we are together. I know that Chris has seen me at my bitterest, when I’m irrationally angry at the world, and he still loves me. I’ve seen Chris horribly frustrated and cynical, but I still love him. And that’s a good thing to know.

My toast at Carl and Roopa’s wedding was:

“May you look back on today [your wedding day] with fondness, remembering how happy and in love you were. But may you not remember today as your happiest day, or the day you were most in love. Rather, as you look back on this day, may you marvel at how much happier and how much more in love you are now.”

It’s true for Chris and I, I hope the same is true for Carl and Roopa.

Book Tour - Time Traveler’s Wife (Chris’s responses) April 15, 2007

As I mentioned, Chris read The Time Traveler’s Wife, too so he agreed to participate in the book tour this time around. Here’s his questions and answers. You can hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list of participants . My post on the book is just below this one. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Waiting for Daisy by Peggy Orenstein.

2. The present and future intersect frequently in the book. Often the result of these minglings is that information about the future is hinted at or revealed early but the actual experiences cannot be altered or prevented. If you could have known about the struggles you’d face on your path to parenthood, would you have wanted to know? Would you go back and warn or prepare yourself, even though you’d be powerless to change the outcome? Why or why not?

Yes, absolutely. When we first started trying to have a child, I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for it, and after we’d been trying I wasn’t sure it was going to happen. Knowing the timeline would have helped with both of those uncertanties. Knowing that we would ultimately be successful, and being able to share that information with Ann, would have helped a lot. I would have been comfortable with a relatively broad range of results, but not knowing what would happen was extremely frustrating.
3. How do the characters deal with the sense of fate (knowing how the future plays out) vs. free will? Do you think they end up doing things because they already know they happen? Does that take the guesswork out or make it harder to accept?

I don’t think they do deal with it. There’s no real strong evidence that Henry’s right about his inability to change the future, and I spent much of the book yelling at him about it. I think they definitely take the path of least resistance.

6. I love the references to music in this book. They are a convenient way for the author to clearly define the era the narrative is taking place in, but for those of us who can’t time-travel, music and the times in which we listened to it play a powerful role in constructing memory. Which is to say, that it is almost impossible for me to think about our experience of infertility without thinking of “The Waters of March” as performed by Susanne McCorkle. Mel’s written about this in the past. I also think about going with Mel to see Bruce Springsteen concert right when we started TTC and just being so certain that there was a child in-utero at the concert with us. There wasn’t. Or not one that became a viable embryo. For that reason, I hardly ever listen to The Rising, which is the album Bruce was touring behind (The Seeger Sessions however is awesome and on regular rotation). That said, what are the songs you associate with your experience — even if they have nothing to do with IF?

Ben Folds’ “Still Fighting It” came out in 2001, and has always struck a chord with both Ann and I, especially while we were trying to have a baby. The part that struck her was

“Good morning, son
In twenty years from now
Maybe we’ll both sit down and have a few beers
And I can tell you ’bout today
And how I picked you up and everything changed
It was pain
Sunny days and rain
I knew you’d feel the same things

and both of us were struck by the chorus:

Everybody knows
It hurts to grow up
And everybody does
It’s so weird to be back here.
Let me tell you what
The years go on and
We’re still fighting it, we’re still fighting it
Oh, we’re still fighting it, we’re still fighting it

And you’re so much like me
I’m sorry

I was kind of a grumpy kid, and I’m a bit less grumpy now. I keep hoping our children will be more like Ann than like me, because I want them to be happy. But hey, at least I’m not unmoored in time, right?

The first piece of music that Zoe responded to was Michael Franti and Spearhead’s Yell Fire, which I bought right around the time she was born. I think that’s permanently associated with Zoe’s early birth and the days shortly after.

Reading January 11, 2007

Brown Bear, Brown Bear by Bill Martin Jr and Eric Carle (Chris always tells Zoe who the author is of every book he reads her, it’s pretty cute).

We like stories with happy endings.