The Dance of Marriage

It's my 9 year wedding anniversary today.

I'm kind of up in arms about it, actually. In fact I'm having trouble swallowing even as I see these words take shape on my computer screen. We are talking about nearly a decade here, folks. That's 3,285 days. 78,840 hours. In my book, that's
just plain and simple a LONG TIME to be institutionalized, no matter how good the food.

I am, at once, the biggest proponent and the biggest critic of marriage.

On the one hand I feel as proud as if I'd just completed the Tour De France (which, for me, is a feat I render utterly legendary) and on the other hand I find myself shaking my head in a state of half-horror and whispering, "oh lordie, what have I gotten myself into?"

Tell me you've never had this thought before.

I'm not a gifted candidate for marriage and my husband will be the first to endorse that statement. Through the years we've spent many a night at our kitchen table negotiating the terms of our marriage and that's probably why we fall asleep together every night in spoon formation...instead of miles apart with a blanket of silence covering all things left unsaid. Things don't go unsaid in our marriage. Even things that are hard to hear but need to be said simply because they are the truth.

A few years ago I went to Italy by myself for a month. Needed space. Needed perspective. Needed to remember how it feels to travel alone and meet other people in the context of being just Bronwen as an individual. I needed to rely only on myself instead of the comfort/ease of relying on a partner. My girlfriend said, "I can't believe your husband is letting you go alone, my husband would NEVER let me." I remember feeling a rush of gratitude that we'd negotiated not needing permission from each other to go out and do something that was really important. That I was dropped off and picked up at the airport by my husband who had a hug for me at both times.

Needs are different than wants. If we don't assert our needs, how are we supposed to get them met? If we don't negotiate for our wants aren't we settling for less? I'm certainly not suggesting we deserve to get everything we want in life, I do recognize the value in compromise but isn't negotiation a critical component to compromise?

I can't name a single married person (no pun intended) who would claim that having a healthy and fulfilling marriage comes really easily. In fact, I wouldn't even put the words 'fulfilling' and 'marriage' and 'easy' together in the same sentence. And if you're like me, whose idea of a "fulfilling" marriage means that it's wildly adventurous and passionately steamy and comfortingly secure and highly romantic and bedrock stable and deeply loving and humorously joyful and intellectually and emotionally challenging and unquestionably committed and radically honest and spectacularly fun.....well...you can understand why some nights at the kitchen table it's my husband shaking his head saying, "oh lordie, what have I gotten myself into?" Our wedding day, Santa Fe, NM 2000

This week my parents are celebrating their 43rd wedding anniversary on a six day backpacking trip in the north cascades of Washington. I kneel down before them in full prostrate bow.

I'm baffled by marriage and the more I talk to people about it, I find that they are baffled too! I don't have any alternate lifetime partnership models to recommend but with a divorce rate of 50% or higher, I am suggesting some modifications to the current institution in the spirit of upping the statistics. Updates if you will. Perhaps grandfather in a clause that all wives take mandatory yearly trips to Italy alone. Any takers on that, girls?


I mostly love being married and I certainly love my husband like I love no other human on the planet. And for today, I'm going to focus on that.
Bronwen

Putting the Hammer Down

Recently, upon completion of a long ride, my husband paid me the compliment of the century.

"Your really putting the hammer down, Bron."

Among our cycling friends, Mike's nickname is Lance and it isn't because he has the same hair cut if you catch my drift. So if in fact Bron truly was "putting the hammer down," as Lance allegedly claimed, well that's just not a compliment to shake a stick at.

disclaimer: I do realize that ending a sentence with a preposition is a big NO-NO in the Lodato family but "at which to shake a stick" just doesn't SOUND good!

I've invented a little game I call 'cat and mouse' (yeah, thanks it's original). I start out on a ride about 10 minutes before Lance (the cat) and we see how long it takes him to catch up with me (the mouse). For some reason the fact that I know I've got a good little lead on him and that HE WILL eventually catch me actually makes me ride harder! Just that modicum of fear that the next time I peer over my shoulder, he very well may be barreling around the bend, legs pumping, a determined grin on his face--literally drives me to "put the hammer down, " if you will.

Seems, not unlike most three year olds I know, I like being chased.

It occurs to me too what a huge motivator fear is in life. I make a daily conscious practice of not making ANY DECISIONS based on fear and yet isn't fear a critical component of risk taking? What makes a risk a risk if not for the element of fear? Might there be a way to use our fear to positively motivate us instead of paralyze us? To help us "put the hammer down" when we really need to?

I'm starting to think about other areas of my life that could benefit from some "putting down of the hammer." For now, I'm gonna work on increasing the amount time before the cat catches the mouse. Makes for a good chase.
Bronwen

MEN AND JEWELRY...THEN AND NOW

There is something
about a man
in jewelry.

But long before Johnny Depp and David Beckham were around to show us how well it can be done (ahem, it's getting hot in here..) men were wearing jewelry in every region of the world....and they weren't shy about it.




In Africa, when power was concentrated in a ruler who controlled valuable resources--marketable commodities like gold and ivory, for example--he generally encouraged the development of arts and crafts, both to express his power visually and to have offerings to give to the gods out of gratitude for his privileged position.

Today, objects of adornment are part of a multilayered communication system in all African societies. Jewelry, particularly beaded jewelry, communicated cultural values in a symbolic language that expresses rank, religion, politics, and artistic attitude. Beaded jewelry is central to the lives of all Africans--and its ability to reflect a cultural heritage is still more pronounced in Africa than in any other part of the world.



At least eight thousand years before Europeans crossed the Atlantic, Indians were making, wearing and trading beads of shell, pearl, bone, teeth, stone and fossils.

North American Indian languages appear to have no word for art; artistic expression was fully integrated into many aspects of life and not treated as a separate activity. Objects of adornment were created to serve a host of functions, both secular and sacred. The extent of their complexity depended on the lifestyle of the group and the resources available to them.

The best known shell bead was wampum: small, cylindrical, centrally drilled white and purple beads made primarily of the quahog clamshell. Strung on leather thongs or woven into belts, the wampum was sometimes worn as decoration but developed far greater significance as currency and was used for objects commemorating major political and ceremonial events.

In 1497, Jacques Cartier, a French explorer wrote, "The thing most precious that they have in all the world, they call it esurgny; it is as white as any snow: they make beads and wear them about their necks as we do gold, accounting it as the most precious thing in the world."


Until it was absorbed into China in 1959, Tibet was a Buddhist theocracy ruled jointly by a powerful hierarchy of monks and nobility that recognized the Dalai Lama as their spiritual and temporal leader. It was by far the most influencial country in the eastern regions of central Asia, with Ladakh, Bhutan, Sikkim, Nepal, Mongolia and Chinese provinces functioning as cultural outposts of Tibet.

Jewelry in these countries shared important similarities with Tibet. All personal adornment had religious significance. Tibetan jewelry is often monumental in scale, to express the rank of the owner and is sturdy enough to withstand life on the road. There is an exuberance of color in Tibetan jewelry, characterized by liberal use of turquoise, coral and amber beads.

The use of all adornment in Tibet, including beads, was outlawed during the Cultural Revolution and the Chinese repression of Buddhism in the 1960's. It has since reemerged.

Worldwide, jewelry continues to tell a story of our cultural history and values. Wearing jewelry proves to be a universal human need.

It's time to give men more options.
Bronwen

*credit: The History of Beads, Lois Sherr Dubin, copyright 1987