Interview time.
So since I’ve recently caught up with Jim, one of my best friends from high school who I haven’t been in touch with much in the last couple of years, I decided to play the interview meme with him. Alas, his answers to my questions are friends-only, but I will post my answers to here in public glory for you all to gawk at.
1. Name two interesting disagreements that you have with groups you otherwise tend to agree with.
At the risk of it sounding like a cop-out, what I’m finding lately is that groups I otherwise used to tend to agree with, I agree with less and less. I used to be a Republican, now I’m more of a small-l libertarian. And though I continue to embrace my Christian faith, I find myself less and less aligned with the conservative Christian view of the world, and America in particular, than I used to be. I guess I should clarify that- the basic assumptions of Christianity that I embrace lead me to an ever more diverging view of things like government, for example, and how I should treat those with whom I disagree.
I suppose these two shifts are interrelated. For example, I fully agree that truth is absolute, what’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong. But I also believe that people are responsible for their own moral choices and must be allowed to make them as they see fit (so far as they do not interfere with the rights of others to live their lives as they see fit), which is sort of a libertarian, religious non-right thing to think. Like, one may make moral or immoral sexual choices, and one will experience the natural consequences of such choices, but I don’t want to legislate my sexual ethics.
In other words, Truth is absolute but that doesn’t mean that I (or any other mortal human in the last 1900 years, give or take) is a reliable arbiter of it. I realize that this isn’t exactly what you meant by “two interesting disagreements,” but it does sort of outline where I am politically and theologically these days.
Oh, and a cynical answer would be- Well, I agree with other Christians about a lot of stuff, but see, I agree with Jesus when he says that the world will know his disciples by their love for one another. Apparently a lot of Christians think the world will know us by how judgmental and busybody-like we can be.
Why in the world aren’t you married yet? Reasons, eh?
Because every time someone asks us that question, we put off getting engaged for 6 months just to spite them.
(There’s actually a serious answer here, but it got kind of long, so I’m putting the rest of the interview behind the cut. Let me take this opportunity to say that Jim is one of the only people in the world who can ask this question without inspiring a profanity-laden rant. So don’t the rest of you take this as an invitation to start asking. You are, however, welcome to read my answer by clicking on the link.)
But seriously, reasons are not simple. I think it’s fair to say that it is currently less a question of The Right Person and more a question of The Right Time. And, speaking only for myself and not for Tom, it’s actually not “marriage” that is so scary to me. Tom and I have seen each other at our best and at our worst, and as I think of all the possible challenges and joys that a married couple can share, I feel no apprehension at all, and in fact, I feel reassured, at the idea of sharing them with Tom (well, except maybe this one). No, it’s not the challenges of marriage that frighten me. Oh no.
It’s the challenges of engagement. That’s right, I’m scared to death of a wedding. Or, more specifically, planning the wedding. You think I’m joking, but I’m totally not. I know you married people reading this are smacking yourselves on the foreheads and wondering why something so relatively minor in the cosmic scheme of things would prevent me from taking such a positive step in my life, but clearly that is because the bliss of your marriages has erased your memory of how emotionally-draining and horror-inducing planning your wedding was. Or, you are a man in one of those couples where all you had to do was show up on time in a tux because she did all the planning herself.
I mean, think about it. A typical engagement lasts a year, and while that’s all nice and good for taking a good long time to prepare for marriage, let’s be honest. Most of it is spent preparing for the wedding. Because it takes a whole year to plan a big ol’ traditional wedding. Longer in DC, mind you. And it costs a crapload of money. Money that I would rather be spending on, oh, keeping a roof over my head. So for a full year before a couple takes the most important vows they will ever take, they’re bickering over guest lists, picking flower arrangements, fussing over the stupidest little details, buying gargantuan snow-beast dresses for tons of money that they’ll never wear again, alienating all their friends over taffeta torture devices and shower gifts, and for what? So the woman can parade around and play princess for a day in front of 500 of her closest friends and relatives? Oh, and need I remind you that my grandmother’s family is Italian? Have you seen The Godfather? Do you remember Connie’s wedding at the beginning? That’s eons of ethnic tradition to deal with, yo. There’s no use trying to keep it small, because my mother has 8 brothers and sisters who pretty much all have families of their own. And then on my dad’s side there are the second cousins and great-aunts and uncles who have been at every family gathering and live(d) around the corner from you, and the friends you haven’t spoken to in years but you were at their weddings so of course they’ll be invited to yours, etc. And none of that is to imply that I wouldn’t want those people there, but you can see how this spirals out of control pretty quickly. I don’t want to spend a year before making a lifetime committment worrying about the cost of chicken vs. fish and whether the invitations should be hand-addressed or not. I do not want the Bridal Industrial Complex with their 5 pound, glossy magazines and their handmade reception favors to have a chance to manipulate me. I have no patience for such details, and I love Tom- why do I want to put him through putting up with me FOR A YEAR while all that crap is going on? (for more angst on this subject that sounds a lot like something I would say, I suggest reading Smitten for about the last 8 months. this entry sums it all up nicely. And Rachel feels similarly.)
But you might suggest elopement- after all, all you really need to get married is a minister, a marriage license, and a couple of witnesses, no? Not an option, my friend. I’m not about to deprive my mother and grandmother of the right to see me get married, and I don’t want my dad to miss out on giving me away, and I wouldn’t want to do that to Tom’s family either. And dammit, I don’t want to sneak off like I’m doing something wrong and come back and just spring it on everyone. I want my mom to be there (with waterproof mascara and a great big box o’ tissues). I want to give my dad a kiss before taking the hand of my about-to-be-husband in front of the minister, God and everybody. When we take holy vows that join two families, I want those families to be there to witness and bless our covenant.
So I’ll have to work out an in-between. Maybe only parents, siblings, and grandparents. Maybe a big cookout or something later to celebrate with our friends, and I wouldn’t be surprised at all if our families insisted on family get-togethers with similar purpose, but it won’t have all the emotional baggage of planning a wedding reception. That sounds much saner. Much more like the beginning of a marriage, and less like the Extravaganza of a Lifetime at which, oh yeah, a minor lifetime committment is made.
What do you want to be known or remembered as? How would you like for people to think of you?
I would like to be known as Good. That seems over-simple, but it’s not. I want my friends to know they can count on me. I want people to believe I will do what I say I will do. I want my commitment to the Right Thing to be trusted. I do not expect that I will always do right. I do not expect that I will always live up to that standard. But I want to be known as someone who was committed to being Good, not in the childish, behave-and-do-what-you’re-told, but in the moral, love-your-neighbor, keep-your-promises, do-justice-love-mercy-walk-humbly-with-God sense.
Also, I would like to be known as someone who uses too many hyphens.
Name five specific things you’d like to do before you die or are raptured.
Only five?
Spend a week in Italy.
Learn to belly dance.
Stop taking the wrong stuff personally.
Accept that I am actually pretty smart and competent and that I’m not just faking it.
Host Thanksgiving dinner for my family at my house. Which requires getting a house, I guess…
How have you changed in the last ten years?
Um, how have I not? Let’s see, since the end of my junior year of high school, I’ve gone from being generally pretty sociable, to being sort of reclusive and introverted, to being sort of an odd mix of both with a healthy dose of second-guessing-from-the-inner-monologue. I’ve learned the difference between loving someone who thinks you’re special and loving the ego-boost you get from someone who encourages your college-student sense of self-importance. I’ve stopped waiting for that magical moment when adulthood is conferred and you’ve got it all figured out, because it never comes. Mostly, I’ve gone from being the girl who stayed close to home because it’s safe and easy, to the girl who dropped everything and moved 250 miles away to find herself… and actually did.