I feel a kinship with you as always. I proposed with a 50 dollar placeholder ring, we eloped and got married on a public beach two weeks later, the friends we happened to be with took pictures, i tore off my striped blue and white vintage dress moments after and dove in the ocean. That was eleven years and one daughter ago. With paperwork the whole thing cost 150 dollars. If i could do it all again i would change nothing. It was perfect in it's imperfections. I can still say without reservation that it was the best day of my life.
Eleven years and one daughter is the proof. The dress in the ocean is the proof. The friends who happened to be there is the proof. Fifty-dollar placeholder ring is the proof. None of it scales. All of it cost everything that mattered and nothing that didn’t. Thank you for writing this. It is exactly what the piece is for.
The expectations between lovers wishing to marry is not society's concern. Your bride should know enough about you to have reasonable expectations in rings, get-aways, lifestyles long before the 'question' is popped. If not, both are setting up a rocky road rarely survivable.
Do what your heart tells you; be honest in all things and relax.
My grandfather built on to my grandmother's simple ring as time wore on but she always wished he'd left the original alone. That was given from his heart, the rest from his ego.
Your grandmother is the reader of this piece. She knew what was given from the heart and what was given to ego. The piece is a diagnosis of the system that taught your grandfather there was a difference between the two — that the heart alone was not enough.
My grandfather, may he rest in peace, was not a nice man in for 3/4s of his life. Stones and setting changes were his atonement for violence and sin.
My grandmother walked with God her entire life and in her beliefs does in death. Everyone saw her grace; few knew her husband outside the family. Imagine the questions she endured as settings changed, her not telling lies yet her friends of value…
Thank you for trusting me with that. The word “ego” was the one we had on the table when I wrote my reply. It was too small for what your grandmother actually carried. The rings she did not ask for, the questions she could not answer truthfully, the grace that hid what the family knew — that is a different weight entirely. I will hold what you have given me carefully. And I will listen to her heart, and to my partner’s, before my own.
If your beloved requires costly jewels and lavish shows of affection, perhaps she is not the one for you. I know many people who have abstained from participating in the wedding industrial complex. It made me reread The Gift of the Magi. That said, I found the rest of your piece spot on, sadly.
The Gift of the Magi reference is the strongest thing in your comment. That story is the piece. Each spouse pays from the body — the hair, the watch — and the artifacts become useless, and the love is what remains. The fact that you reread it after my piece tells me the piece reached you the way I hoped it would. One small note: nothing in what I wrote said my partner required costly jewels. The pressure I described was structural. She is not the one creating it. Plenty of partners do not create it. The system extracts anyway. That is what makes the diagnosis a diagnosis.
I feel a kinship with you as always. I proposed with a 50 dollar placeholder ring, we eloped and got married on a public beach two weeks later, the friends we happened to be with took pictures, i tore off my striped blue and white vintage dress moments after and dove in the ocean. That was eleven years and one daughter ago. With paperwork the whole thing cost 150 dollars. If i could do it all again i would change nothing. It was perfect in it's imperfections. I can still say without reservation that it was the best day of my life.
Eleven years and one daughter is the proof. The dress in the ocean is the proof. The friends who happened to be there is the proof. Fifty-dollar placeholder ring is the proof. None of it scales. All of it cost everything that mattered and nothing that didn’t. Thank you for writing this. It is exactly what the piece is for.
The expectations between lovers wishing to marry is not society's concern. Your bride should know enough about you to have reasonable expectations in rings, get-aways, lifestyles long before the 'question' is popped. If not, both are setting up a rocky road rarely survivable.
Do what your heart tells you; be honest in all things and relax.
My grandfather built on to my grandmother's simple ring as time wore on but she always wished he'd left the original alone. That was given from his heart, the rest from his ego.
Your grandmother is the reader of this piece. She knew what was given from the heart and what was given to ego. The piece is a diagnosis of the system that taught your grandfather there was a difference between the two — that the heart alone was not enough.
My grandfather, may he rest in peace, was not a nice man in for 3/4s of his life. Stones and setting changes were his atonement for violence and sin.
My grandmother walked with God her entire life and in her beliefs does in death. Everyone saw her grace; few knew her husband outside the family. Imagine the questions she endured as settings changed, her not telling lies yet her friends of value…
Listen to the heart, hers then yours.
Thank you for trusting me with that. The word “ego” was the one we had on the table when I wrote my reply. It was too small for what your grandmother actually carried. The rings she did not ask for, the questions she could not answer truthfully, the grace that hid what the family knew — that is a different weight entirely. I will hold what you have given me carefully. And I will listen to her heart, and to my partner’s, before my own.
She will love it for all the right reasons.
If your beloved requires costly jewels and lavish shows of affection, perhaps she is not the one for you. I know many people who have abstained from participating in the wedding industrial complex. It made me reread The Gift of the Magi. That said, I found the rest of your piece spot on, sadly.
The Gift of the Magi reference is the strongest thing in your comment. That story is the piece. Each spouse pays from the body — the hair, the watch — and the artifacts become useless, and the love is what remains. The fact that you reread it after my piece tells me the piece reached you the way I hoped it would. One small note: nothing in what I wrote said my partner required costly jewels. The pressure I described was structural. She is not the one creating it. Plenty of partners do not create it. The system extracts anyway. That is what makes the diagnosis a diagnosis.