I thee wed

Getting married seems far more complicated than when I did it more than, um, twelve years ago. Then, it seemed absolutely the right thing to do and we just did it and then afterwards I had my crisis, which, in case anyone is in doubt, is the wrong order. Crisis first. Wedding second. It was, despite my belated misgivings, the right thing to do, to pledge my life and love to Ed.

Still, I think that if I were in a position to get married today, I might not marry out of solidarity with the thousands of couples who are not allowed to marry because of the gender of who they would like to marry. I might not marry because it seems to buy in to a certain conservatism which I resist. I might not marry because I am now further from faith in organized religion than I was. I might not marry because of the fuss and hoo-ha over the event itself.

Then again, I might. We need rituals. Crossings between one stage of life and the next. Part of the problem, I believe, with modern motherhood is that there is no ritual. No crossing over. In Egypt, there is the arbayeen: the forty days of early motherhood when you sit in state, visited by your relatives and friends. You do not have to pretend you are okay. You do not have to go out and pretend you have your stomach back. You are cared for so that you can care for your baby. There should be such a ritual here. Mothers need lots of love poured over them so that they can pour enough out. But that’s off the point. The point is that rituals are powerful and necessary to demark the journey of our lives. There we were and here we are and that is where we are going. This is also why I very strongly believe children need to be at weddings. They need to see where they are going and we need to see where we have come from and the couple need to see where they are headed too. We are all in the cycle, on the wheel and all spokes of it matter.

When Ed and I married, we chose to use the modern rite in the prayer book, because it did not begin with the idea that marriage was for the breeding and bringing up of children, but rather with the idea that marriage was for mutual support and benefit and so on. Children did come along, but we still don’t believe that they are the reason we married (nor did we marry to prevent fornication as it was too late by then). Yet, children are a part of many sworn partnerships (wedded or otherwise) and they are one potential consequence of marriage, even if not the only one. I, because somewhere in my heart I am quite conservative with a small c, longed for the majesty of the old words but my politics won out. I still got to say something like what Percy and Marguerite said to each other, which is, for me, one of the most beautiful onscreen weddings ever.

With this ring, I thee wed.
This golden sliver, I thee give.
With my body, I thee worship.
And with all my worldly goods, I thee endow.

Tomorrow, Christina and John will reenact the ritual that millions have done before them. Tomorrow my sister will marry and when she marries, I will again marry Ed in my heart. I will recite the words they speak and mean them even more than I did all those years ago. In her ritual will be the echo and the music of my own. And perhaps that, more than anything else, is why we marry.

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