reflections after my sister's wedding...

[melnjones]

First of all, I want to say how much I appreciate this group. You are really a breath of fresh air for me.

My younger sister, three years younger than me, got married a week ago at the age of 22. It was an absolutely beautiful wedding, and my brother-in-law is possibly one of the greatest men who has ever walked the face of this earth. It seems so rare anymore for a wedding to occur in which everyone involved is truly thrilled about the situation, but this would describe my sister's wedding. I can't begin to say how happy I am that my sister will be spending her life with this great man, and that he has joined our family (of which he has essentially been a part for awhile now anyway).

That being said, many things about last Saturday have caused me to reflect. I'm 25 and single, which is really REALLY old to still be single in my family with our Amish history. I'm the oldest single female of my many cousins on either side of my family, in fact. I definitely felt the pressure of having a younger sister marry before me. Luckily, only one family member, a great aunt, made that comment to me..."I always thought you'd be getting married first" she says...ooh I wanted to punch her, but punching an elderly woman just isn't very polite I guess:-)

Weddings are such a big deal, and rightly so, but as I watched all the festivities and celebration of my sister and my brother-in-law's lives, I mourned the fact that if I never marry I may never get such a day to bring together people I care about from so many different areas of my life. Who doesn't want a day for their loved ones to celebrate their life? Realizing this, how can I be intentional in celebrating the lives of those around me? Am I only relying on the cultural-standard times to celebrate? If I can't celebrate with a friend over their marriage or the birth of a child, what events CAN I celebrate in their life? One of my mentors mentioned to me that perhaps when I graduate from grad or post grad school I can have an event where I invite friends and family from around the country, but the problem is that given my family's Amish background there isn't huge importance placed on education, especially past...oh...8th grade. Plus, my family is fairly spread out throughout the country, so few can even manage to make the trip for a wedding as it is. Even though I don't see them often and I don't know many of them terribly well, my extended family is very important to me. If I don't marry, which is highly possible, does that mean I'll never have a celebration with my family?

On a good note, I did have an aunt and uncle tell me as we had conversation about marriage that it really is ok to stay single, and my uncle said that they all would love me either way. That is a HUGE thing for me! I love my uncle...he was practicing Amish until a few years ago when he and his wife left the church...pretty unheard of at their age, but yeah, says something about them. I really needed to hear that from someone in my family.

Another pet peeve about weddings...the stupid receiving line. I like it because it's a good way to make sure you see everyone. However, as a bridesmaid who only knew maybe a third of the people passing through the line, most of the rest of the people thought it appropriate to pass by and simply tell me that I looked pretty. Dude. It was horribly objectifying. They didn't mean to be offensive, but there's something about being told by stranger after stranger that I'm pretty and then watching them walk away that I really can't stand.

That same weekend I went to a viewing for one of my great aunts who just passed. I didn't know her at all really as she has had Alzheimer's for a very long time, but her husband is my grandpa's brother and looks remarkably like my grandpa, so I have always been partial to this great uncle as my grandpa passed 10 years ago. Well, come to find out, my great aunt and uncle had 12 kids, 62 grandkids, and 143 great grandkids. Holy crap. My own grandmother had 10 kids, and from a conversation I had with a family member last weekend I really wonder how much freedom my grandma actually had in life. Did my grandpa, whom I adore, respect her? Or did she just serve as a baby-factory? It makes me very sad. I'm kind of on this journey of family discovery, as in our family's culture no one really talks about anything. I'm trying now to be very intentional in finding out more about my family, even those who are still living. It's a pretty hard task unfortunately.

So, after all of that, I remain in the position of feeling that perhaps I don't really want to get married or have children. Ever. And perhaps I have good reason to feel this way.

[ismnotwasm]

1. And good luck on that journey

I respect either choice, but I go out of my way to tell women who choose to not marry or remain childless that I fully and completely respect that choice. It is sad, our rituals, or should I say in our society families and friends don't come together with more joy, more often than to celebrate a marriage-- or mourn at a funeral.

It's interesting you bring this up. My oldest daughter, the one who was in the military for 9 years, is getting married. To make a long story short (all my stories are long) She got pregnant when stationed in Korea, decided to keep the baby, the father went out of her life, (much as hers did to her, she's never met her father, and I expect it will be a long time before my Grandson meets his biological father) Met a man while stationed in Afghanistan who became a rock solid friend. He wasn't in the military, he was sub-contracting for Halliburton (I forgave him and he promises he won't do it again) She, as an NCO, had developed a VERY hard core personality. Had to, as she's very attractive and no doubt considered great "ass" or whatever the idiots are calling it these days.

Anyway back to the marriage thing. Curtis, who became her best friend and her lover, was all about it. He's 6 years older, and wants a family. She was very reluctant for many reasons, not the least of her upbringing.(Part of what could make this a very long story. I never married 'til I was 33, not to either of the fathers of my 2 biological children, and my husband is the only man I will EVER marry) She had no intentions of ever getting married. I still don't know how he talked her into it. She may consider having another child. (As gramma, I'm SOOO down with that, but it's not me pushing out babies)

Curtis is adopting my grandson--as an interesting aside, he is a black man, so racism is frequently part of our discussions, how we will deal with it as a family etc. Nathan, my grandson, will have a Black Dad. He loves Curtis AS his father, but already is experiencing racist backlash at the age of 7.

My husband and I got married by a friend of his--an interesting man, but who could not be more opposite of me on any issue.(I'm agnostic)He is a fundamentalist young earther, thinks abortion is murder, became a bush supporter on single issues like abortion and stem cell research, believes in the rapture, although he knows his Scripture better than to try and predict the time--And is STILL a bush supporter (I can't wrap my mind around that one--I would go for the young earth thing first, seriously)

But the man Believes, you know what I mean? He tries so very hard to do what is right in his world. His church is one of those "Free Evangelical Sonrise" churches that hold services for different cultures in their languages. In a very poor neighborhood. He's worked with the lowest of the low, junkies, abusive parents, felons, -- adopts kids that no one else wants, tries to practice the teachings of Christ as he sees it, and never once has he pushed his ideology on me or my husband. His wife works as a nurse practitioner on a Indian reservation.

So guess where my daughter is getting married? Yup. The same church, by the same pastor--her choice. He's cool with it, even though he knows none of us share his beliefs. When my daughter was stationed in Afghanistan, I know the military pastors saved her sanity on more than one occasion.

Quoth she: "If I'm getting married I'm getting married in a goddamed church" You can take the girl out of the army...
So we're planning a wedding. In a word-- blech-- not my cup of tea. There are very few redeeming qualities I find in a wedding. Less than you find probably.

BUT That father she never met? Well, recently MY father found half sisters, (he has been insisting on searching for years, it was a pain in my butt until it paid off) Evidently the father, whom I haven't seen since I was 17- is an abusive loser, but she's bonded with the sisters and the older one will be a bridesmaid. Hand of fate... (She still hasn't met her father and has no intention of doing so)

Her wedding will be unconventional on so many levels, but she'll use the basic rituals as a backdrop. My generation of women in my family have not gotten married very often for various reasons, but neither is there a large extended family like you have. So we don't really know "how" to get married. More fun probably. We make it up as we go along. Or just don't bother. Or can't, as in the case of my lesbian cousin and her partner.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. Never married in middle age, I know about family pressures

Both my brothers are married and have children. I would have liked to, but it didn't happen.

My older relatives seem to see me as a pathetic creature like my mother's cousin, who was designated by her Old World parents as the daughter who would stay single and take care of Mama and Papa. The cousin did just that, remaining quite infantilized, despite holding down a responsible job, never learning to drive, never going anywhere without her parents, never "disobeying" them. After her parents died, she literally went mad.

As I was growing up, my mother and grandmother gave me a mix of signals and advice that were guaranteed to mess up my mind, and it took years of living away from them and a certain amount of therapy to sort it out, by which time "prime time" for getting married had passed.

But the push was always there, whether it was my mother and grandmother and great-aunt playing up to the guy who stalked me during my senior year in college and who begged me to be nice to him, or responding to my plans to get an M.A. and Ph.D. with, "The most important degree isn't M.A.--it's MAMA." My cousin who married at 18 was considered an adult, while I, at 25, was treated like a child.

It was the year that I was 25 that one of my housemates, also 25 and single, came back from a family wedding and noted that the 19-year-old bride had not only been given everything she needed for her kitchen at the bridal shower but that the wedding presents had taken care of much of the rest of the stuff one needs to set up a household. And here was my housemate, employed fulltime, but having to buy household necessities bit by bit.

Maybe we need to replace the bridal shower with a "first apartment shower."

[VelmaD]

3. yes yes yes

I have absolutely NO intention of ever getting married. So no shower for me. But if I grab some random guy off the street, head to Vegas and marry him...then people will buy me a blender and a fondue pot and that food processor I've always wanted. :eyes:

[StellaBlue]

5. I'm with you there

:hi:

I plan to marry myself on my 30th, complete with Crate and Barrel registry. :evilgrin:

[Warpy]

4. I have a cousin who was the eldest of twelve

and she waited until she was safely out of her childbearing years att 49 before she walked down the aisle.

Her brothers and sisters have produced shockingly few offspring. One even gave his bride a wedding present of a prenup vasectomy.

Women in my family tended to marry late as that was the best way of limiting one's childbearing before birth control became widely available. One grandmother was 32, the other was 36 when they took their vows. The chance they took was having only widowers with clutches of kids to marry, or men with problems that kept them living with Mom.

Never say never. You still might find yourself at the head of that stupid receiving line, squeezed to death by foundation garments under an overpriced gown you'll wear only once, your feet killing you in shoes the wedding designer insisted upon.

In the meantime, there are a lot of us out here who are very happy as singletons. I tried marriage and found it suffocating. We're not all meant to marry. At least now we have choices beyond the convent, the street, and unpaid servitude to our relatives.

[foxeyes2]

6. You are only 25

Don't take that the wrong way but 25 is still young and you have plenty of living left to meet a man and fall in love and get married. But if that doesn't happen it isn't the end of the world. Being single is just that, it says nothing about who you are, has no bearing on your worth, it just means that you are not married. You are obviously an intelligent, caring, loving person. You place a lot of importance on your family and sharing and celebrating with them the events of each other's lives. Those are all good qualites and you have those qualaties whetehr you are married or single.

Yes you can throw yourself a party when you get a degree if you want to. It may be that not everyone in your family can make it but you don't know who will unless you ask. Do what feels right for you and don't worry about getting married. Continue to learn, make a wide variety of friends, immerse yourself in hobbies that you enjoy, liove life to the fullest and when you are 127 and on your deathbed have no regrets.