So happy birthday to the bloke who totally ruined any chance of me making a living as a Professional Single. I was all set, but then he came along and invited me to stay with him should I ever go to Scotland, etc.
In light of our conversation yesterday, I observe that B.A. is nothing like a hero in a Jane Austen novel. For example:
1. He was born in the late twentieth century
2. in Scotland,
3. a descendant of whalers and millworkers,
4. to quarreling young parents who divorced
5. and was brought up speaking dialect until
6. his accent was scrubbed by the Scottish Episcopalian Church
7. which led to him learning how to be funny
8. so as not to be beaten up by his working-class peers in the school yard although
9. a social window opened long enough for boys like him to go
10. to an old Scottish university where he ended up
11. teaching philosophy until
12. taking a job at the Historical House where he now
13. lives, the Historical House being a bigger than a parsonage but smaller than Pemberley,
14. with his Catholic wife, being himself a convert to Roman Catholicism.
Actually, I suppose if B.A. were like any character in a Jane Austen novel, he might be like Mr Bingley, but only in so far as they share a sweetness of temper. (B.A. is much cleverer and much less easily influenced than Mr Bingley.) He might also be like Mr Bennett in that he prefers to stay shut up in his library than to go out dancing.
I am searching through my mind for a character in a book who enthusiastically and wholeheartedly encouraged his wife to make a career out of writing, but I really can't think of one. However, B.A. is a vast improvement over all men in literature, in part because he is real.
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marriage. Show all posts
Saturday, 22 August 2015
Saturday, 1 August 2015
When Your Married Relations Squabble
I will never forget the first time I felt on a level of equality with my mother and grandmother. I was 25 or 26, married, and visiting from the city where I lived with my then-husband. He didn't like coming with me because he didn't like my family. Let's not go there. Anyway, I was in the kitchen and my mother and her mother were sniping at each other. It was probably very mild sniping, as my mother was the apple of her mother's eye, but eventually I got sick of it and said, "If you two don't cut it out, I'm going home."
They cut it out.
Holy guacamole. Two of the three primary authority figures in my life had just caved before me. For a very long time I assumed it was part of the magic status that comes along with being a Married Woman. However, I now realize that it really stemmed from being acknowledged by both as an adult. There are other ways to be acknowledged as an adult--setting up your home away from home is one, having a proper 9-5 job is another, handing your mother rent money because you are over 21 but still living in her house is another. Adult is as adult does.
That said, your mum and dad and grandmas and grandpas are always your mum, dad, grandmas and grandpas, so they are always going to have one heckuva psychological influence on you, sometimes even after they are dead. Benedict Ambrose's heroic maternal grandmother was so influential in the life of B.A. that although she is on the road to heaven, she is also haunting my kitchen, telling me I am washing dishes the wrong way.
One thing it never occurred to me to do--not in a million zillion years--was intervene between my mother and grandmother. And to give them credit, it never occurred to either of them to ask me to take their side on any dispute. I seem to have grown up under very good, if rather strict, parenting, for I cannot remember a single serious instance of my mother moaning to me about my father, or my father about my mother, or my mother about my grandmother, or my grandmother about either of them. In fact, my grandmother praised my mother to me more, I believe, than she praised my mother in person.
They were the adults; we were the kids. They managed their own relationships without us, and the survivors still do. Surely my parents must quarrel occasionally; B.A. and I fell out last night over the not-so-simple simple syrup I was trying to make. However, I can remember only 2 of their quarrels in all my 40+ years; the last was 24 years ago.
And I am very thankful because I understand from a thousand sad divorce stories that parents pit their children--underage and adult--against each other all the time, and I think this is just horrid behaviour. Presumably parents feel that they would take a bullet for their children--why on earth do they do something so psychologically cruel to them in reality? My only explanation is the whole divorce-process itself. Divorcing people are crazy people.
I went through a divorce myself, and I was pretty crazy. The damage lasted for years. Anyone who runs away from her husband should run to a convent and have the nuns lock the doors. At the time I thought it was just me, but a woman the ex and both I knew was a minister's daughter, and her mother said all divorcing people were crazy: don't get emotionally involved with them.
Fortunately, I didn't drag any innocent children though that awful time, there being no innocent children around to drag. Oh, except my younger brother and sister. I do feel badly about that. I remember one phone conversation with my 18 year old brother, when I was off my head, and suddenly stopping myself and saying, "Wait. Maybe you're too young to hear all this." "Yeah, " said my 18 year old brother, and I shut up.
As children, you're pretty helpless before your older brothers' and sisters' and parents' and grandparents' relationship disputes, but when you are an adult, you know enough (or should know enough) to refuse to take sides between people with an equal right to your loyalty*, to refuse to be the family counselor, to refuse to put up with craziness. As an adult you have the right (and the responsibility to your sanity to say), "If you don't cut it out, I'm going home."
One of the first things we learned in "Introduction to Ministry" class was that when we encountered a problem we couldn't handle, we refer the person to whom we are "ministering" to an expert. It was a mantra banged into our heads: refer, refer, REFER. It was also mentioned, by the by, that it is usually not ideal to "minister" to our own family members. Well, my goodness, if an actual priest isn't supposed to minister to his own family members--hearing their confessions (except in dire emergency), counselling them, etc.--imagine how unqualified you and I are to do so!
When I was a teenager, teenagers with alcoholic parents were refered to an AA offshoot called, if I recall correctly, "Alateen". (I read about it in Seventeen magazine.) This was probably to stop them from becoming victims of co-dependence, the overwhelming impulse to help the out-of-control parent who refuses to help him- or herself. There should be one for children whose parents are divorcing and so out-of-control as to enlist them in a war against their own mother or own father. This, to me, is psychological child abuse, and it remains so even when the children are grown up.
Married people squabble. Of course they do. And there are happy married couples who squabble and there are unhappy married couples who squabble. But here's a freaky thing: the unhappy married couples are no less married because they are unhappy. You know that line in movies when two agonized lovers say to each other, "This thing [our relationship] is bigger than both of us" ? It's true. I have seen two absolutely dysfunctional people (who, come to think of it, weren't even married) who were completely stuck to each other (and the bottle), and their relationship was an erotic war in which "secondary partners" were pawns and fodder. Their romance looked like a life-sentence, and when I last saw the female half, I barely recognized her--she looked so old and crazy.
Blah. Shudder. So what I am saying is that as sad it is when your parents or grandparents or married brothers and sisters are having marital disputes, not only should you keep out of them--save to give shelter to whoever needs shelter and to REFER your parent, grandparent or sibling to Catholic Family Services--you should refuse to be sucked in. REFUSE. Say, "I can do this, but I can't hear that. It is too much for me. Here's the phone number for Catholic Family Services/a counsellor I know."
On airplanes you will notice that the travelling parent is always supposed to put on his/her own oxygen mask on (should it drop from above) before putting one on his/her child. This is because an adult cannot help the child if she/he has passed out, and the child certainly can't help her/him. Well, although as an adult you can give your parents money, shelter, etc., etc., you are still their child. You can NOT solve their emotional problems, and if they crazily try to make you try, you must draw the line. "Cut it out, or I'm going home." Otherwise, you will be trying to put an oxygen mask on your parent(s) while you are passing out yourself.
*Naturally it's different in the case of siblings, for your loyalty is usually going to be with your blood sibling. However, the last thing you want to do is somehow exacerbate tension between your sibling and his/her spouse, or create a war between you and the spouse. So if you do listen to squabble stuff, remind yourself that's only half the story, and forget everything you have heard--unless it is a clear case of abuse, in which case, offer shelter and REFER.
They cut it out.
Holy guacamole. Two of the three primary authority figures in my life had just caved before me. For a very long time I assumed it was part of the magic status that comes along with being a Married Woman. However, I now realize that it really stemmed from being acknowledged by both as an adult. There are other ways to be acknowledged as an adult--setting up your home away from home is one, having a proper 9-5 job is another, handing your mother rent money because you are over 21 but still living in her house is another. Adult is as adult does.
That said, your mum and dad and grandmas and grandpas are always your mum, dad, grandmas and grandpas, so they are always going to have one heckuva psychological influence on you, sometimes even after they are dead. Benedict Ambrose's heroic maternal grandmother was so influential in the life of B.A. that although she is on the road to heaven, she is also haunting my kitchen, telling me I am washing dishes the wrong way.
One thing it never occurred to me to do--not in a million zillion years--was intervene between my mother and grandmother. And to give them credit, it never occurred to either of them to ask me to take their side on any dispute. I seem to have grown up under very good, if rather strict, parenting, for I cannot remember a single serious instance of my mother moaning to me about my father, or my father about my mother, or my mother about my grandmother, or my grandmother about either of them. In fact, my grandmother praised my mother to me more, I believe, than she praised my mother in person.
They were the adults; we were the kids. They managed their own relationships without us, and the survivors still do. Surely my parents must quarrel occasionally; B.A. and I fell out last night over the not-so-simple simple syrup I was trying to make. However, I can remember only 2 of their quarrels in all my 40+ years; the last was 24 years ago.
And I am very thankful because I understand from a thousand sad divorce stories that parents pit their children--underage and adult--against each other all the time, and I think this is just horrid behaviour. Presumably parents feel that they would take a bullet for their children--why on earth do they do something so psychologically cruel to them in reality? My only explanation is the whole divorce-process itself. Divorcing people are crazy people.
I went through a divorce myself, and I was pretty crazy. The damage lasted for years. Anyone who runs away from her husband should run to a convent and have the nuns lock the doors. At the time I thought it was just me, but a woman the ex and both I knew was a minister's daughter, and her mother said all divorcing people were crazy: don't get emotionally involved with them.
Fortunately, I didn't drag any innocent children though that awful time, there being no innocent children around to drag. Oh, except my younger brother and sister. I do feel badly about that. I remember one phone conversation with my 18 year old brother, when I was off my head, and suddenly stopping myself and saying, "Wait. Maybe you're too young to hear all this." "Yeah, " said my 18 year old brother, and I shut up.
As children, you're pretty helpless before your older brothers' and sisters' and parents' and grandparents' relationship disputes, but when you are an adult, you know enough (or should know enough) to refuse to take sides between people with an equal right to your loyalty*, to refuse to be the family counselor, to refuse to put up with craziness. As an adult you have the right (and the responsibility to your sanity to say), "If you don't cut it out, I'm going home."
One of the first things we learned in "Introduction to Ministry" class was that when we encountered a problem we couldn't handle, we refer the person to whom we are "ministering" to an expert. It was a mantra banged into our heads: refer, refer, REFER. It was also mentioned, by the by, that it is usually not ideal to "minister" to our own family members. Well, my goodness, if an actual priest isn't supposed to minister to his own family members--hearing their confessions (except in dire emergency), counselling them, etc.--imagine how unqualified you and I are to do so!
When I was a teenager, teenagers with alcoholic parents were refered to an AA offshoot called, if I recall correctly, "Alateen". (I read about it in Seventeen magazine.) This was probably to stop them from becoming victims of co-dependence, the overwhelming impulse to help the out-of-control parent who refuses to help him- or herself. There should be one for children whose parents are divorcing and so out-of-control as to enlist them in a war against their own mother or own father. This, to me, is psychological child abuse, and it remains so even when the children are grown up.
Married people squabble. Of course they do. And there are happy married couples who squabble and there are unhappy married couples who squabble. But here's a freaky thing: the unhappy married couples are no less married because they are unhappy. You know that line in movies when two agonized lovers say to each other, "This thing [our relationship] is bigger than both of us" ? It's true. I have seen two absolutely dysfunctional people (who, come to think of it, weren't even married) who were completely stuck to each other (and the bottle), and their relationship was an erotic war in which "secondary partners" were pawns and fodder. Their romance looked like a life-sentence, and when I last saw the female half, I barely recognized her--she looked so old and crazy.
Blah. Shudder. So what I am saying is that as sad it is when your parents or grandparents or married brothers and sisters are having marital disputes, not only should you keep out of them--save to give shelter to whoever needs shelter and to REFER your parent, grandparent or sibling to Catholic Family Services--you should refuse to be sucked in. REFUSE. Say, "I can do this, but I can't hear that. It is too much for me. Here's the phone number for Catholic Family Services/a counsellor I know."
On airplanes you will notice that the travelling parent is always supposed to put on his/her own oxygen mask on (should it drop from above) before putting one on his/her child. This is because an adult cannot help the child if she/he has passed out, and the child certainly can't help her/him. Well, although as an adult you can give your parents money, shelter, etc., etc., you are still their child. You can NOT solve their emotional problems, and if they crazily try to make you try, you must draw the line. "Cut it out, or I'm going home." Otherwise, you will be trying to put an oxygen mask on your parent(s) while you are passing out yourself.
*Naturally it's different in the case of siblings, for your loyalty is usually going to be with your blood sibling. However, the last thing you want to do is somehow exacerbate tension between your sibling and his/her spouse, or create a war between you and the spouse. So if you do listen to squabble stuff, remind yourself that's only half the story, and forget everything you have heard--unless it is a clear case of abuse, in which case, offer shelter and REFER.
Friday, 24 July 2015
Slub and Wesele
Today is Polski Piątek, so I will enthuse about the fact that I get to go to Polish Pretend Daughter's wedding after all! (PPD is no relation to PPS, incidentally. They are even from different towns.) At first I thought, I do not want to go to another wedding without Benedict Ambrose. And then I thought, And we have no money! But Benedict Ambrose decided we had enough money for me to go, so off I am going to another international wedding without my husband. On the one hand, weep weep. But on the other, Poland--yay!
So in Poland there are two words to denote the two events that comprise a wedding. There is the ceremony, which is called the ślub (shloop, from the word for "vows"), and the reception, which is called the wesele (veh-SEH-leh, from the word for "cheerful"). Polish weddings are as famous in Edinburgh as Italian weddings are in Toronto. In Toronto, you really want to be invited to the massive pot-latch that is the Italian-Canadian wedding. But in Edinburgh, one really wants to be invited to the traditional two-day Polish wedding jamboree in Poland.
I was a bit worried about how I was going to get from the bride's church, where the ślub will be, to the countryside location of the wesele. When I mentioned this, the bride metaphorically smacked herself in the forehead and wrote something along the lines of, "Oh, forgot to tell the foreigners what all Poles know: there is always a bus to take guests without cars from the church to the hall."
Well, that's all right then! Now all I have to do is figure out where I am going to sleep the nights before the wedding morning, and the night after the wedding night before my cheap flight home. (The wedding night is sorted; I shall be farmed out to a relative upon whom I will practice my Polish.) Happily the bride's town is not too far from Kraków, not too far from Warsaw, and not all that horribly far from Wrocław. (Well, actually, it is a bit of a hike from Wrocław.)
However, I have two months to sort that out. For the present, I am going to memorize whole scripts of Polish small talk and lose ten pounds by returning to the 5-2 diet, which I foolishly gave up on last year after amazing results that have now disappeared.
 |
| Swing-dancing compliant! |
Here is the dress I think I will wear to the ślub. My mummy just finished making it for me. We bought a black crinoline for it today although B.A. thinks a crinoline is Too Much for church. He thinks a black mantilla will look splendid with it, but Mum and I are thinking we might make a hat.
Update: Calvinist Cath, who on the run-up to her 30th birthday was (if I remember correctly) feeling gloomily Single, and then was courted by post by a chap who spied her being all helpful and feminine--without a SCRAP of make-up--at the minister's dinner, and then got married in an intensely Calvinist service, has just given birth to a little boy. So congratulations to dear Cath and her husband. As Cath has been reading my blog since forever and a day, I feel that this is all a victory for Long Term Singles everywhere.
Saturday, 18 July 2015
Core Values
I was reading a letter to a British "Agony Uncle" from an English culturally Christian widower who wants to marry a Muslim lady in the Middle East he met over the internet. She wants to stay Muslim, but although she wants him to stay Christian, and they want to have children, they for some reason think they can't get married. How-do-we-raise-the-children doesn't seem to be the problem, for he talks only about not wanting the children to be born out of wedlock.
It all seems very odd to me. I don't know where she's from, but in the UK there is no ban on Christian men marrying Muslim women, or even on Muslim men marrying Christian women, which I suspect may be less of a problem in the Middle East.
The "Agony Uncle", being unusually thick, suggested that the cultural Christian Englishman become a Muslim. I would love to know what he would say to a Protestant pal whose Polish girlfriend's family was having kittens because he wasn't a Catholic. "So just become a Catholic, what's the big deal?" is not what I would say, and I am a Catholic. Of course, being a Catholic, I don't think the way to enter married life is by telling huge public lies about what you believe.
Marriage is tough enough without people with conflicting values entering into them. Romeo and Juliet were so much the same that it was actually stupid that their fathers didn't get along. They were around the same age, they were the same religion, they were the same colour, the same nationality, the same social class, they spoke the same language and they were from the same town. Shakespeare's point was how stupid and petty their fathers' feud was, not that thwarting your parents' hopes for your future marriage is incredibly noble. There was absolutely no reason for Romeo and Juliet not to have gotten married; they would have been fine. Even dull.
It is an ENTIRELY different play from West Side Story, which was about poor white native-born Americans and Puerto Rican immigrants disputing over a slum. Incidentally, the most hilarious line in West Side Story is Bernardo's dismissal of Tony's citizenship, Tony being "really a Polack."*
Although just a throwaway line, it does suggest that Maria and Tony had something other than love-at-first-sight in common, which is that they shared the same religion. In the film they basically get married in that dress shop. Although illicit, I would argue with a canon lawyer that the marriage was valid. Okay, it's not entirely a desert island scenario. But the intent was there. It was almost certainly consummated, too.
Romeo and Juliet, who were upper-class teenagers, and Maria and Tony, who were just nice half-educated working-class Catholics, shared CORE VALUES. I am not sure the English widower of the letter and his online Middle Eastern Muslim sweetheart also share core values. He doesn't seem to think his Christianity is a core value (style over substance is how he put it), and certainly neither does the Agony Uncle. However, it would seem that his sweetie considers being Muslim one of her core values, which makes me wonder why she wants to marry a Christian Englishman. Maybe it isn't Islam but her family--which she will be able to bring to the UK, incidentally, if she marries this man--that is the core value, and they are shouting, "Nae Christians!!!"
I am no fan of mixed marriage, but the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in Canada sure seems to be, and it was with great shock that I discovered that mixed marriage was NOT considered some kind of ideal.
When I was in my early twenties, the significance that you needed a dispensation to marry a non-Catholic Christian and TWO dispensations to marry a non-Christian was lost on me. It never occurred to me to ask "A dispensation from what?" So imagine my shock and horror when I, engaged to a Protestant, discovered in an old book--written by Father Robert J Fox, I believe--that there is a Church law that Catholics must not marry non-Catholics. That's what the dispensation is from, and the reason for the dispensation is supposed to be the assumption that the Catholic party is so head-over-heels, he or she will stop going to Church if she isn't allowed to marry his or her non-Catholic sweetie.
Well, I'll be. I was very troubled by this, as I certainly loved my faith more than the guy, but I thought my faith exulted in Catholics marrying non-Catholics, for it was an outward sign of growing Christian Unity, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. I wonder how many guys signing off on those dispensations were born from mixed marriages because if there is anything I--a veteran now of two marriages--can think of more challenging to a Catholic's faith, it's marrying a non-Catholic.
(Incidentally, I went exclusively to ordinary Mass before I met B.A, and now I go almost exclusively to the Traditional Latin Mass. Currently, former Anglo-Catholic B.A. reads me the Anglican Coverdale Psalms before bed. Guess who has the most religious influence in my house?)
However, there are Catholics whose core values do not include agreement on religious matters in the home, and therefore these Catholics will probably be happier in mixed marriages than Catholics who thrive on agreement in religious matters in the home. I also know Catholics Who Really Care who are married to Protestants Who Don't Really Care, and they seem happy.
My home-point is that you cannot be happy married to someone if your Core Values conflict. "The kids should be Catholic" as a core value is always going to conflict with "The kids should be something else", and so if you strongly believe your kids should be Catholic, you must not marry a man who strongly believes they should be something else.
One of the least-thought-out things the contemporary Church did to Catholics entering a mixed marriage was drop the insistence that the non-Catholic party swear to help raise the kids Catholic. Apparently it was decided that error does indeed have rights, and that it was unfair to the non-Catholic party to have to swear the same oath as his/her Catholic intended. Well, hell. That is a stroke against Christian Unity right there. Nothing like the non-Catholic party turning to the Catholic, when all is said and done, and saying, "Well, YOU swore to raise the kids Catholic, but I didn't, and I that means I can thwart you every step of the way."
Not that I'm bitter.
Another thing the Church could do, since I'm on a roll here, is take very seriously the possibility that a devout Catholic is being pressured into marriage with a non-Catholic. Why would a devout Catholic want to marry a non-Catholic anyway, the savvy priest should ask himself. Marriage is hard enough--Catholicism is hard enough these days--without marrying someone who doesn't believe what Catholics believe about marriage, sexuality and family life. So why....? When asking the question about free will, the priest should be dead serious, and treat the question seriously, like there's a real possibility the bride/groom thinks the groom/bride will commit suicide/murder if she/he doesn't marry him/her.
However, if the Catholic party is a cultural Catholic, tra la, and only darkens the door of the church so that he/she can get married in it, then the disparity is not such a big deal. Possibly his/her real core values are vegetarianism and being kind to animals, and these are shared by his/her post-Protestant lover. If so, terrific, and maybe their shared love for creation will lead them together to a greater appreciation for the Author of Creation.
Oh, and all this to say, don't be so tough on the Catholic guys you know from your parishes or FSSP missions. Yes, you may find them disappointing right now, but after awhile, you may grow to cherish them. After all, many of them share your core values.
*As this is, in North America, considered a terrible racial slur, imagine my shock when I discovered that the Polish word for a Pole is, in fact, "Polak." Unfortunately for my giggling Inner Child, I have few opportunities to use it, because if you say someone is one, you have to put it in the Instrumental Case, i.e. Adam jest polakiem.
It all seems very odd to me. I don't know where she's from, but in the UK there is no ban on Christian men marrying Muslim women, or even on Muslim men marrying Christian women, which I suspect may be less of a problem in the Middle East.
The "Agony Uncle", being unusually thick, suggested that the cultural Christian Englishman become a Muslim. I would love to know what he would say to a Protestant pal whose Polish girlfriend's family was having kittens because he wasn't a Catholic. "So just become a Catholic, what's the big deal?" is not what I would say, and I am a Catholic. Of course, being a Catholic, I don't think the way to enter married life is by telling huge public lies about what you believe.
Marriage is tough enough without people with conflicting values entering into them. Romeo and Juliet were so much the same that it was actually stupid that their fathers didn't get along. They were around the same age, they were the same religion, they were the same colour, the same nationality, the same social class, they spoke the same language and they were from the same town. Shakespeare's point was how stupid and petty their fathers' feud was, not that thwarting your parents' hopes for your future marriage is incredibly noble. There was absolutely no reason for Romeo and Juliet not to have gotten married; they would have been fine. Even dull.
It is an ENTIRELY different play from West Side Story, which was about poor white native-born Americans and Puerto Rican immigrants disputing over a slum. Incidentally, the most hilarious line in West Side Story is Bernardo's dismissal of Tony's citizenship, Tony being "really a Polack."*
Although just a throwaway line, it does suggest that Maria and Tony had something other than love-at-first-sight in common, which is that they shared the same religion. In the film they basically get married in that dress shop. Although illicit, I would argue with a canon lawyer that the marriage was valid. Okay, it's not entirely a desert island scenario. But the intent was there. It was almost certainly consummated, too.
Romeo and Juliet, who were upper-class teenagers, and Maria and Tony, who were just nice half-educated working-class Catholics, shared CORE VALUES. I am not sure the English widower of the letter and his online Middle Eastern Muslim sweetheart also share core values. He doesn't seem to think his Christianity is a core value (style over substance is how he put it), and certainly neither does the Agony Uncle. However, it would seem that his sweetie considers being Muslim one of her core values, which makes me wonder why she wants to marry a Christian Englishman. Maybe it isn't Islam but her family--which she will be able to bring to the UK, incidentally, if she marries this man--that is the core value, and they are shouting, "Nae Christians!!!"
I am no fan of mixed marriage, but the contemporary Roman Catholic Church in Canada sure seems to be, and it was with great shock that I discovered that mixed marriage was NOT considered some kind of ideal.
When I was in my early twenties, the significance that you needed a dispensation to marry a non-Catholic Christian and TWO dispensations to marry a non-Christian was lost on me. It never occurred to me to ask "A dispensation from what?" So imagine my shock and horror when I, engaged to a Protestant, discovered in an old book--written by Father Robert J Fox, I believe--that there is a Church law that Catholics must not marry non-Catholics. That's what the dispensation is from, and the reason for the dispensation is supposed to be the assumption that the Catholic party is so head-over-heels, he or she will stop going to Church if she isn't allowed to marry his or her non-Catholic sweetie.
Well, I'll be. I was very troubled by this, as I certainly loved my faith more than the guy, but I thought my faith exulted in Catholics marrying non-Catholics, for it was an outward sign of growing Christian Unity, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. I wonder how many guys signing off on those dispensations were born from mixed marriages because if there is anything I--a veteran now of two marriages--can think of more challenging to a Catholic's faith, it's marrying a non-Catholic.
(Incidentally, I went exclusively to ordinary Mass before I met B.A, and now I go almost exclusively to the Traditional Latin Mass. Currently, former Anglo-Catholic B.A. reads me the Anglican Coverdale Psalms before bed. Guess who has the most religious influence in my house?)
However, there are Catholics whose core values do not include agreement on religious matters in the home, and therefore these Catholics will probably be happier in mixed marriages than Catholics who thrive on agreement in religious matters in the home. I also know Catholics Who Really Care who are married to Protestants Who Don't Really Care, and they seem happy.
My home-point is that you cannot be happy married to someone if your Core Values conflict. "The kids should be Catholic" as a core value is always going to conflict with "The kids should be something else", and so if you strongly believe your kids should be Catholic, you must not marry a man who strongly believes they should be something else.
One of the least-thought-out things the contemporary Church did to Catholics entering a mixed marriage was drop the insistence that the non-Catholic party swear to help raise the kids Catholic. Apparently it was decided that error does indeed have rights, and that it was unfair to the non-Catholic party to have to swear the same oath as his/her Catholic intended. Well, hell. That is a stroke against Christian Unity right there. Nothing like the non-Catholic party turning to the Catholic, when all is said and done, and saying, "Well, YOU swore to raise the kids Catholic, but I didn't, and I that means I can thwart you every step of the way."
Not that I'm bitter.
Another thing the Church could do, since I'm on a roll here, is take very seriously the possibility that a devout Catholic is being pressured into marriage with a non-Catholic. Why would a devout Catholic want to marry a non-Catholic anyway, the savvy priest should ask himself. Marriage is hard enough--Catholicism is hard enough these days--without marrying someone who doesn't believe what Catholics believe about marriage, sexuality and family life. So why....? When asking the question about free will, the priest should be dead serious, and treat the question seriously, like there's a real possibility the bride/groom thinks the groom/bride will commit suicide/murder if she/he doesn't marry him/her.
However, if the Catholic party is a cultural Catholic, tra la, and only darkens the door of the church so that he/she can get married in it, then the disparity is not such a big deal. Possibly his/her real core values are vegetarianism and being kind to animals, and these are shared by his/her post-Protestant lover. If so, terrific, and maybe their shared love for creation will lead them together to a greater appreciation for the Author of Creation.
Oh, and all this to say, don't be so tough on the Catholic guys you know from your parishes or FSSP missions. Yes, you may find them disappointing right now, but after awhile, you may grow to cherish them. After all, many of them share your core values.
*As this is, in North America, considered a terrible racial slur, imagine my shock when I discovered that the Polish word for a Pole is, in fact, "Polak." Unfortunately for my giggling Inner Child, I have few opportunities to use it, because if you say someone is one, you have to put it in the Instrumental Case, i.e. Adam jest polakiem.
Wednesday, 8 July 2015
Why Men Are Scared of Marriage Part XC
I really should start a series. Meanwhile, just google "Guido Amsel Winnipeg".
Although 99.9% of you are going to be utterly horrified that a guy sent letter bombs to his ex-wife and her divorce lawyers, there will be .1% (mostly male) who will think, "Poor bastard."
Anything else I have to say would be inappropriate in this context.
Although 99.9% of you are going to be utterly horrified that a guy sent letter bombs to his ex-wife and her divorce lawyers, there will be .1% (mostly male) who will think, "Poor bastard."
Anything else I have to say would be inappropriate in this context.
Thursday, 16 April 2015
Bitter Almonds
I was doing a particularly disgusting household task today (think botulism), and all of a sudden I remembered a "Seraphic Singles" reader I met a while ago. She used to read my blog because she had been good and sick of being Single, and what she wanted more than anything else in the world was to get married and have a baby.
Meanwhile, she had graduated from university and was working towards the relatively high-status and lucrative career her family expected of her. She enjoyed the challenge and did the work and eventually got a great job shortly before she married. Soon after becoming married, she got pregnant and when the baby was born she packed it in at the office. I forget if she was offered decent maternity leave or if she basically just had to go. I suspect the latter. It wasn't one of those professions that are oh-so-understanding when a woman has a baby.
Staying at home with the baby didn't seem so bad because (A) she didn't want her baby raised by strangers at a day care and (B) her husband also had a well-paying job. Although it didn't take quite as much extra study as her career had entailed, it was very lucrative. It was also very high pressure; at least, he found it so. He got terrible migraines and when he came home he did nothing but watch TV and wonder aloud why the house was such a mess.
The house was such a mess because the baby was a difficult one and the New Mom had to work around the clock 24/7 to keep the baby happy, healthy and fed, sleeping when the baby was sleeping. And despite this, as the months dragged on, and the baby began to toddle about and to say a few words, the New Mom was mind-numbingly bored. And ashamed. Deeply, deeply, ashamed. All that education, all that overtime, and for what? Her mother and other female relations, she was sure, were looking down on her for "not working". She had been a working woman, commanding a good salary, racking up successes and praise, and what was she now? She was exhausted, run ragged by the baby, very worried about her husband, and somehow unable to even keep her house clean.
When I launched into a little theological speech about how motherhood is the most important and noble profession for a woman, the New Mom began to cry. So I stuck a sock in it except to say what I always say to weeping mothers of very young children, which is that if they need help around the house and their husbands are making that much money, then they should freaking hire household help. Once upon a time, well-educated women married to men in highly-paid jobs ALWAYS had household help. ALWAYS. And the highly-paid men who didn't agree to pay for it were considered incredibly cheap and even cruel.
I don't know if your fellow reader did get some household help although I hope so with all my heart. It wasn't even as if she wanted any time to herself, or even to try to get her self-respect back by going "back to work". My impression was that she wanted to be able to TAKE CARE OF HER HUSBAND as well as the baby, and she was finding it absolutely impossible. And having a clean house is part of caring for husbnads, since husbands seem to really, really need to have tidy houses even if they themselves are fundamentally incapable of wielding a sponge.
I thought I would throw that out there today in case I have been sounding too peppy about marriage lately. What all you girls who desperately want to get married must realize is that there is a lot of cleaning and brainless television in your future. It blows my mind that men (men not completely worn out from real wage-slavery, like mining, that is) used to leave the house after dinner and go out at night: to the pub, to the music hall, to the dance hall, to lectures, to political meetings, to the theatre, to the cinema. If they were fond of their wives, they would take their wives.
The television seems to have put an end to that for most men. There are a lot of men at swing-dancing, but I bet swing-dancing days will be over as soon as they can get women to share their beds and board---perhaps a nasty shock for the poor women who envisioned dancing together into the future. (The brave and besotted boys who come out to Polish class because they love their Polish sweethearts enough to want to speak to their relations are great and honourable exceptions to these observations.)
Anyway, Single, Engaged or Married, you should always contemplate the pretty sugar-coloured almonds that are such a feature in weddings nowadays. The sugar on the outside represents the sweetness of married life. But right in the middle is the slightly almond, sometimes still with its bitter skin. Whoever developed the sugar almonds at weddings tradition had a good grasp on reality. No two people living together can be completely contented with each other and their lot 100% of the time.
Meanwhile, she had graduated from university and was working towards the relatively high-status and lucrative career her family expected of her. She enjoyed the challenge and did the work and eventually got a great job shortly before she married. Soon after becoming married, she got pregnant and when the baby was born she packed it in at the office. I forget if she was offered decent maternity leave or if she basically just had to go. I suspect the latter. It wasn't one of those professions that are oh-so-understanding when a woman has a baby.
Staying at home with the baby didn't seem so bad because (A) she didn't want her baby raised by strangers at a day care and (B) her husband also had a well-paying job. Although it didn't take quite as much extra study as her career had entailed, it was very lucrative. It was also very high pressure; at least, he found it so. He got terrible migraines and when he came home he did nothing but watch TV and wonder aloud why the house was such a mess.
The house was such a mess because the baby was a difficult one and the New Mom had to work around the clock 24/7 to keep the baby happy, healthy and fed, sleeping when the baby was sleeping. And despite this, as the months dragged on, and the baby began to toddle about and to say a few words, the New Mom was mind-numbingly bored. And ashamed. Deeply, deeply, ashamed. All that education, all that overtime, and for what? Her mother and other female relations, she was sure, were looking down on her for "not working". She had been a working woman, commanding a good salary, racking up successes and praise, and what was she now? She was exhausted, run ragged by the baby, very worried about her husband, and somehow unable to even keep her house clean.
When I launched into a little theological speech about how motherhood is the most important and noble profession for a woman, the New Mom began to cry. So I stuck a sock in it except to say what I always say to weeping mothers of very young children, which is that if they need help around the house and their husbands are making that much money, then they should freaking hire household help. Once upon a time, well-educated women married to men in highly-paid jobs ALWAYS had household help. ALWAYS. And the highly-paid men who didn't agree to pay for it were considered incredibly cheap and even cruel.
I don't know if your fellow reader did get some household help although I hope so with all my heart. It wasn't even as if she wanted any time to herself, or even to try to get her self-respect back by going "back to work". My impression was that she wanted to be able to TAKE CARE OF HER HUSBAND as well as the baby, and she was finding it absolutely impossible. And having a clean house is part of caring for husbnads, since husbands seem to really, really need to have tidy houses even if they themselves are fundamentally incapable of wielding a sponge.
I thought I would throw that out there today in case I have been sounding too peppy about marriage lately. What all you girls who desperately want to get married must realize is that there is a lot of cleaning and brainless television in your future. It blows my mind that men (men not completely worn out from real wage-slavery, like mining, that is) used to leave the house after dinner and go out at night: to the pub, to the music hall, to the dance hall, to lectures, to political meetings, to the theatre, to the cinema. If they were fond of their wives, they would take their wives.
The television seems to have put an end to that for most men. There are a lot of men at swing-dancing, but I bet swing-dancing days will be over as soon as they can get women to share their beds and board---perhaps a nasty shock for the poor women who envisioned dancing together into the future. (The brave and besotted boys who come out to Polish class because they love their Polish sweethearts enough to want to speak to their relations are great and honourable exceptions to these observations.)
Anyway, Single, Engaged or Married, you should always contemplate the pretty sugar-coloured almonds that are such a feature in weddings nowadays. The sugar on the outside represents the sweetness of married life. But right in the middle is the slightly almond, sometimes still with its bitter skin. Whoever developed the sugar almonds at weddings tradition had a good grasp on reality. No two people living together can be completely contented with each other and their lot 100% of the time.
Friday, 20 March 2015
A Dragon is Eating the Sun!
Picture a little bespectacled married couple in the front courtyard of a Palladian villa holding a piece of cardboard. The husband is also holding a piece of paper with a round hole in it. The wife is looking at a disc of sunlight on the cardboard. It looks like a tiny sun cookie with a dragon-bite taken out of the bottom. The husband is looking at the sun. Wife: Stop looking at the sun!
Husband: It's not dangerous. There's a cloud over it. Look!
Wife: Stop looking! You'll go blind! I'll have to lead you to work in the morning!
Husband: Look! Look! Wow!
Wife: Stop telling me to look! I'll go blind!
Husband: You won't go blind! There's a big dark cloud over---Wow....
Wife (looks): Wow.....! ....And now I can't see. Ahh! Ahh! The spots, the spots!
Husband: Oh shoosh.
Wife (takes off glasses): My glasses are dirty. But still, you're not supposed to look at the sun.
Husband: I'm really glad I saw this on telly last night, so I knew how to make this [pin-hole eclipse viewer].
Wife: Then look at it and not at the...Stop looking at the sun! STOP IT! STOP IT!
Husband: I'm looking at you, darling. Oh, look at it now !
UPDATE: If you are reading this in Europe before GMT 10 AM, don't look at the sun. Watch the eclipse over television/internet instead.
UPDATE 2: It did noticeably get colder although I am not sure the dragon had anything to do with that.
Monday, 16 March 2015
When God Sends None
When I was a university freshman, I ran with a tough Catholic crowd, and one guy loved to carry out orthodoxy tests. The one I remember best is the openness-to-life one.
"How many children do you want?" he would ask some unsuspecting pal.
"I don't know. Two?"
"Heretic!"
"How many children do you want?" he asked another unsuspecting pal.
"Lots! Six--maybe eight?"
"Heretic!"
So I was ready when he got me in his sights.
"Seraphic, how many children do you want?"
"As many as God sends," I said breezily.
He was very disappointed.
"Aw. You got it right."
And I thought about this last night, after a long, tiring Mothering Sunday trip to see my mother-in-law, who mentioned, just in general, that her boyfriend was becoming a grandfather, and at once I thought that because of me she would never be a grandmother. I squashed the thought immediately. When I told her last year about The Horrible Clueless NHS Phone Call, she was clearly sorry for me, not at all for herself. She is a very kindly woman, and I really wish that she could have grandchildren, but she had only the one child, and there it is.
As many as God sends.
I came home to comments--one anonymous, one by a father of many--giving me a hard time because of a comment I made in connection with women who assume Catholic men will reject them because they are too old to give birth to big families. As their comments were made on Saturday, it is just bad luck that I happened to read them on Mother's Day.
Nevertheless, I am restricting anonymous comments again because I am not putting myself out there so that people can make uncharitable assumptions about my intentions and voice them without so much as a pseudonym. Nor am I particularly interested in married men parading their happiness at having got the exact number of children they wanted in a blog read primarily by Single, childless women. In the Catholic world, married men with children are not exactly marginalized. Nor are they particularly clever about the feelings of childless women.
To return to the subject of orthodoxy and hopes for children, it is a curious feature of Catholic marriage that nobody can put aside his or her spouse just because they are infertile. You would think a God who loves children so much would indeed have made that the great exception to the no-divorce-and-remarriage rule. After all, the primary reason for marriage IS children. But He didn't make that exception.
When I was going through The Worst Day of My Married Life, it did cross my mind to tell B.A. he should ditch me and find someone younger, but fortunately I didn't do such a self-pitying and insulting thing. It would have hurt B.A. very much, and although I am not an angel, I do not spit on God's most generous gifts. Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that we were sacramentally married, so there was no going back for any reason, including infertility.
"As many as God sends"--even when God sends none.
I know very well that many of my Single readers dread being childless even more than they dread never finding the love of a husband. Well, I will not lie. At times it feels absolutely horrible. I came from a big family, I assumed, as a teenager, that I would have a big family myself one day, and big families feel "normal" to me. It never occurred to me that God wouldn't send me any children at all if I married, but here we are.
There are two comforts in this--and by the way, we are all clear that when I talk about hopes for marriage and children I am talking to childless, Single women, yes? Childless, Single women who are devout Catholics and therefore would never dream of going down the pub and getting themselves knocked up by a stranger, yes? And don't look so shocked, for such an tactic was suggested to me by a divorced mother of two. It would no doubt blow happy married fathers' minds what is proposed to Single, childless women by their well-meaning friends.
The two comforts are as follow:
1. Because I grew up in a "large" family, I still have that large family, and although the older members die, younger ones are born. I have myself expanded that family by adding B.A., and thus although I will probably never give B.A. children, I have given him a new mother, father, brothers, sisters, nephews and a niece.
2. Benedict Ambrose did not marry me as the future mother of his children but as me, myself, 38 years old--slightly older than himself, in fact. This was not because he was a bad Catholic, closed off from life, but because he wanted to marry me, and my ability to have children was not something he thought about much at all. He was also in his late thirties, and had dated older women before. Clearly dating-so-as-to-get-kids had never been his priority.
And I am writing out such personal, so deeply felt thoughts not because I am some kind of exhibitionist or emo-blogger, but to illustrate to frightened single, childless women over 25 that they do not have cause to fear permanent rejection by Catholic men because they are growing older.
Yes, they will meet deeply insensitive men who will reject them because they, the men, havefantasies assumptions about their own untried potency and assume that they will be able to beget and financially support any number of children as long as they have access to young-enough ovaries. But not all men are like that. Indeed, I would say precious few, and those few are not worth knowing anyway. They would fail my friend's little orthodoxy test. If we want to get right down to it, the super-correct, absolutely obedient and faith-filled answer to "How many children do you want?" is "As many as God sends, even if He sends none."
Comments OFF.
"How many children do you want?" he would ask some unsuspecting pal.
"I don't know. Two?"
"Heretic!"
"How many children do you want?" he asked another unsuspecting pal.
"Lots! Six--maybe eight?"
"Heretic!"
So I was ready when he got me in his sights.
"Seraphic, how many children do you want?"
"As many as God sends," I said breezily.
He was very disappointed.
"Aw. You got it right."
And I thought about this last night, after a long, tiring Mothering Sunday trip to see my mother-in-law, who mentioned, just in general, that her boyfriend was becoming a grandfather, and at once I thought that because of me she would never be a grandmother. I squashed the thought immediately. When I told her last year about The Horrible Clueless NHS Phone Call, she was clearly sorry for me, not at all for herself. She is a very kindly woman, and I really wish that she could have grandchildren, but she had only the one child, and there it is.
As many as God sends.
I came home to comments--one anonymous, one by a father of many--giving me a hard time because of a comment I made in connection with women who assume Catholic men will reject them because they are too old to give birth to big families. As their comments were made on Saturday, it is just bad luck that I happened to read them on Mother's Day.
Nevertheless, I am restricting anonymous comments again because I am not putting myself out there so that people can make uncharitable assumptions about my intentions and voice them without so much as a pseudonym. Nor am I particularly interested in married men parading their happiness at having got the exact number of children they wanted in a blog read primarily by Single, childless women. In the Catholic world, married men with children are not exactly marginalized. Nor are they particularly clever about the feelings of childless women.
To return to the subject of orthodoxy and hopes for children, it is a curious feature of Catholic marriage that nobody can put aside his or her spouse just because they are infertile. You would think a God who loves children so much would indeed have made that the great exception to the no-divorce-and-remarriage rule. After all, the primary reason for marriage IS children. But He didn't make that exception.
When I was going through The Worst Day of My Married Life, it did cross my mind to tell B.A. he should ditch me and find someone younger, but fortunately I didn't do such a self-pitying and insulting thing. It would have hurt B.A. very much, and although I am not an angel, I do not spit on God's most generous gifts. Meanwhile I knew perfectly well that we were sacramentally married, so there was no going back for any reason, including infertility.
"As many as God sends"--even when God sends none.
I know very well that many of my Single readers dread being childless even more than they dread never finding the love of a husband. Well, I will not lie. At times it feels absolutely horrible. I came from a big family, I assumed, as a teenager, that I would have a big family myself one day, and big families feel "normal" to me. It never occurred to me that God wouldn't send me any children at all if I married, but here we are.
There are two comforts in this--and by the way, we are all clear that when I talk about hopes for marriage and children I am talking to childless, Single women, yes? Childless, Single women who are devout Catholics and therefore would never dream of going down the pub and getting themselves knocked up by a stranger, yes? And don't look so shocked, for such an tactic was suggested to me by a divorced mother of two. It would no doubt blow happy married fathers' minds what is proposed to Single, childless women by their well-meaning friends.
The two comforts are as follow:
1. Because I grew up in a "large" family, I still have that large family, and although the older members die, younger ones are born. I have myself expanded that family by adding B.A., and thus although I will probably never give B.A. children, I have given him a new mother, father, brothers, sisters, nephews and a niece.
2. Benedict Ambrose did not marry me as the future mother of his children but as me, myself, 38 years old--slightly older than himself, in fact. This was not because he was a bad Catholic, closed off from life, but because he wanted to marry me, and my ability to have children was not something he thought about much at all. He was also in his late thirties, and had dated older women before. Clearly dating-so-as-to-get-kids had never been his priority.
And I am writing out such personal, so deeply felt thoughts not because I am some kind of exhibitionist or emo-blogger, but to illustrate to frightened single, childless women over 25 that they do not have cause to fear permanent rejection by Catholic men because they are growing older.
Yes, they will meet deeply insensitive men who will reject them because they, the men, have
Comments OFF.
Saturday, 21 February 2015
Coffee to my Cake
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| "Auntie" by Auntie and Popcorn. She misses Uncle. |
It would have been amazing, and I would have been saved a lot of sorrow, had I known from age 9 or so that B.A. was waiting for me in the future, just as I know that B.A. is currently waiting for me at home and I'll see him (God willing) some time on Thursday. If my faith in God's plan for me had been as strong as my belief that I'll see B.A. next week, I would have had something much closer to the serenity of knowledge. Oh me of little faith.
Meanwhile, I have been visiting more formerly Single pals. Life works such enormous and amusing changes. The friend who wailed, "Where is [the One]?" is happily married, with chickens in her urban garage because the coop is too cold. The friend who was equally worried about the advent of the One is also happily married, has three children under seven and looks a little tired. The friend who was a fiery urban opera singer is living in Vermont, heavily pregnant, chasing a toddler, married to a farmer with movie-star good looks.
"Everyone is on a different schedule," a Catholic cop who grew up in my parish once told me, and I found that of enormous comfort. It's true. If you really want to get married--and this means you actually enjoy the company of the opposite sex as it is (or we are) and you have a good grasp of what marriage actually is--then you probably will get married. To be brutally frank, any of us Westerners could get a spouse from the Third World (or Russia) with a few emails and American dollars, but we don't, do we?
We don't because the "marriage" we can buy is not the marriage we want. We recognize that marriage begins in friendship. Marriage is the ultimate in human friendships--"friendship caught fire", as Ann Landers (I think) once said.
Sexual attraction can make or break a male-female friendship. The unselfish friend who does not want to marry the friend in love with him/her leaves that friend alone to recover and, hopefully, find another friend to marry. The unselfish rejected suitor takes his/her disappointment on the chin and goes away for awhile, not to stew in bitterness, but to see the beloved with greater objectivity. People who are neither inclined to marry the attractive person nor able to inspire a deep depression in him/he, can--spouse and culture permitting--keep up a light flirtation for forty years. (Yes, I know Mary Crawford of Mansfield Park said something similar. IMHO, Mary Crawford gets a bad rap. Who would you rather talk to at a party, eh, Fanny or Mary?)
I must write another post on flirtation soon. Flirtation, when honest and mutually agreeable, is great training against the seductions of men from outside the Anglosphere. All over the world there are women who know that when 99% of the men of the world say "OMG, you are so beautiful I'm in love with you and I want to marry you and have children with you" to random women they barely know, they are lying. When I was forty, dressed as Dame Maggie Smith, pushing Hilary White around her Mediterranean town in a wheelchair, teenage boys playing soccer in the street gazed at me with bedroom eyes crying "Che bellezza!" What nonsense. Anglosphere men almost never say such delightful things to women, so we are suckers for les autres.
Well, that is a different post (or two) entirely. To sum up this post:
1. B.A. marvellous and worth waiting for.
2. God has many wonderful surprises in store for people who respect themselves and others and enjoy the company of the opposite sex.
3. Everyone is on a different schedule.
4. Sexual attraction makes a wonderful servant but, as we oldies know, a lousy master.
5. Marriage is rooted in, and begins with, friendship.
Monday, 26 January 2015
Birthday Queen
And thank you to Benedict Ambrose who took me out for a boozy lunch today and gave me a pin shaped like a bee. B.A. is the best of men and has learned over the past six years that neither taking me for a boozy lunch on my birthday nor giving me a gift of some sort causes thunder, hurricanes and violent cold snaps. I mention this only so that readers do not think that once they are married, their relationship work is done. No. Even the best of men sometimes have to have it explained to them twice or thrice that some things are very important, and celebrating birthdays on the actual birthday is one of them--at very least to me.
Celebrating Valentine's Day is also considered very important by many married women, but as a matter of fact, I always spend V-Day with readers instead. Of course, a valentine and flowers, no matter how small, are always appreciated. Wedding anniversaries are also important in the Historical House, although more low key than my actual birthday. Without me, B.A.'s birthday would be low key because---get this---he is a man and "Men don't care as much about birthdays." Did you ever? I can't quite believe this, so he gets a boozy lunch or a party and a present too.
As everyone says, in a good marriage you have to communicate and say things like, "I understand that you don't care so much about your X, or see the point of Y Day, but my X and Y Day are incredibly important to me, so I would be very grateful if you would remember to celebrate them.
That said, you also have to pick your battles. Personally, I do not care if B.A. leaves cups and saucers all over the house, or has three water glasses on the go in the bathroom, or uses every single pan in the house to make supper. Washing dishes is my job, so I just collect 'em all up and wash 'em. I don't see any point to complaining. I save complaining for really important stuff, like his suggesting we celebrate my birthday on some other day.
Naturally I am not perfect, so B.A. also picks his battles and complains about things that are very important to him, and after unfairly grumping about it, I apologize and try to do better. And that reminds me that the dishes have silted up in the kitchen, so I had better log off and wash them.
Thursday, 22 January 2015
The Weasleys
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| Ginny Weasley, long awaited girl. |
For the record, I have read Francis's entire statement (as one does) and I find only two objectionable things: his use of the crude anti-Catholic smear "like rabbits" and his holding up of a mother of eight for ridicule. I think he would have got his point across much better if he had mentioned a penniless man who refused to learn NFP and badgered his wife for sex-on-demand despite A) her ill health or B) really not being able to feed the children they already had. This is probably a reality for millions of women across the developing world, and if the Holy Father had mentioned him instead, the Catholic blogosphere would not now be covered with bunny pictures.
Mind you, I rather like the bunny pictures. I also like all the witty remarks about bunnies B.A. and I have been exchanging. My guess is that married Catholics across the world are making flirtatious bunny remarks to each other this week. Perhaps there will be a baby boom in October as a result. Outraged relatives and neighbours will hiss, "I thought Pope Francis said you weren't supposed to be like rabbits", and the married couple, sleepless and exhausted, will giggle foolishly.
My nasty cold rather discourages bunny behaviour, but it does not prevent me from working on my Polish. And so I have been reading and listening to Harry Potter i Komnata Tajemnic, which is the Polish version of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. I have got to the chapter called "Nora" which turns out to be Polish for "The Burrow", the name of the Weasley home and also, er, what rabbits live in. Oh dear. I cannot get away from rabbits today.
Harry Potter has long been a focus of Catholic controversy, and this has always mystified me, since no-one has seizures over the magic-filled Oz books. I find the early HP books wonderfully inventive and well-written. J.K. Rowling has a clver sense of contrast, inviting us to compare Harry's nasty uncle and aunt and their one spoiled child with the generous, sprawling, cash-strapped Weasley clan.
The Weasleys are a traditional family with a father in a civil service post, a mother at home, and seven children, two of them grown up and employed by the time the baby is 10. The youngest Weasley is the only girl, which I suppose is an explanation to those who need one. ("WHY did the Weasleys have so many children, Mummy?") A much more amusing explanation is that the Weasleys, so red-haired and all, were not only wizards but Roman Catholics. Their religious faith being at odds with their wizard world, they made a bargain with their consciences, and lo. On the other hand, maybe they just like children. They certainly embrace Harry and also Hermione, whose mother possibly prefers drilling teeth to raising children.*
If J.K. Rowling were a Catholic--she isn't, she's Church of Scotland--her critics might have taken her to task for the happy fecundity of the Weasleys and accused her of Catholic propaganda. Nasty little Draco Malfoy is an only child, and we are invited to condemn his sneers at the Weasleys for having "more children they can afford", not to applaud them.
The Weasleys also embody traditional male and female characteristics. Mr Weasley is the sole breadwinner (unless Charlie and Bill send money home) whereas Mrs Weasley cooks, cleans, launders and shouts. Bill prospects for gold. Charlie wrassels dragons. Prefect Percy plots to become Minister of Magic. Fred and George are famous for their pranks and go into business. Ron is sports-mad and wizard (ha ha) at chess. Ginny begins her school career as a damsel in distress and ends it as female romantic lead. (Yes, J.K., we know Hermione ought to have married Harry, just as Louisa M's Jo ought to have married Laurie. Too late now. )
I note, however, the more classically Protestant/Anglican Christian names of the father (Arthur) and children. "Molly", of course, is a diminutive of Mary. Maybe Molly is the only Catholic parent. Maybe my Catholic theory is a bit of a stretch.
The good, impecunious Weasleys are a contrast with the wicked, rich Malfoys. (Weirdly, by the Malfoy's own standards they are the same "class", being Grade A pure-blood wizards.) Their poverty is also a contrast to Harry's inherited wealth. This is quite a good thing from a literary point of view, as it mean Ron has a struggle between envy and loyalty, and Harry has something else beyond his control to feel badly about.
Reading the Harry Potter stories with strict attention, in two languages, reveals how dark they really are. Six year old children may find it funny that Harry is forced to live in a cupboard under the stairs--and my parents do have a cupboard under their stairs big enough to house a child--but Child Protective Services would not find that funny at all. It is also not funny to adults that eleven-year-old Dudley is obese, thanks to his greed and his parents overfeeding. Of course, this provides another useful contrast, for Harry is thin. In fact, by the Chamber of Secrets, he is actually starving. And this is again helpful for underscoring the superiority of the Weasley family, for shortly after Harry is rescued from his abusive uncle and aunt, Mrs Weasley dishes up "eight or nine" sausages, three fried eggs and bread and butter.
I won't launch into the one-child Malfoys who, given their obsession with blood purity, family prestige and intermarriage, probably had infertility issues. (Oh, say! That's why they sneered at the Weasleys. Envious as hell!) No, the one-child family that epitomizes money-clutching lack of generosity is the dastardly Dursleys.
Almost everyone in the Harry Potter books is obsessed with name brands (e.g. the Nimbus 2000), but the Dursleys are the very soul of grasping consumerism. They are also deeply wedded to the notion of the nuclear family, having cast off Petunia's (also Muggle) parents entirely and socializing only with Vernon's rich sister Marge, who prefers dogs to children. Although they are not hurting for money, and Petunia stays at home, the Dursleys have elected to have just one child, upon whom they lavish ridiculous amounts of presents. They begrudge every penny they spend on their nephew, to the point of feeding him as little as possible. Why they were not afraid of Social Services checking up on them, never mind Dumbledore, is a mystery to me.
Quite obviously Dudley Dursley would have been better off had he had to fight various brothers and sisters for his parents' attention and learned to accept living with limited resources. But I am afraid this was always going to be unlikely, for as we know from their treatment of Harry, the Dursleys are incredibly stingy. Interesting that they would give Dudley everything except a brother or sister to love.
So I continue to be mystified that some Catholics think the Harry Potter books are a portal to hell when they underscore that generous poverty is better than impoverished riches, big families can be happier than small families, and self-sacrificial love for others is the answer to just about everything.
*Of course, she may have married late.
Sunday, 19 October 2014
What is a Family?
I saw the CNS headline saying that the Synod had given encouragement to the "traditional" families, which suggests that Francis X Rocca's sub-editor thinks there are other kinds of families. The creeping relativism of sub-editors drives me nuts; they should all be sent to theology school.
Personally, I do not think B.A. and I constitute a family on our very own. God has not blessed us with children, so in my view we're just a married couple rattling around a very big house. If we were a tree, we might be a handsome leafy green apple tree--but one of the ones that never bears fruit.
However, if I think of us not as a tree but as a BRANCH of a tree, the tree being our Canadian family whose branches have embraced those of my sister-in-law's Romanian family, then I can think of us as a family. Our branch, I hope, gives support and shade to the fruit-laden branches.
The model of a family that is just PARTNER+PARTNER annoys me to no end. It's like a diet of chocolate: chocolate is all very nice, but it's not enough to keep you going. And what an impoverishment of one's identity to be a PARTNER first and last. I myself am not a partner, but a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law, a niece, a great-niece, a grand-daughter and a great-grand-daughter. (I'm not really a cousin, though, since I have no first cousins and barely know my second cousins and first cousins once removed. They aren't on the prayer list.)
My family is as rich in relationships as it is because three married couples, my American grandparents, my parents, and my brother's in-laws, had more than one child. My nephew Pirate rightly lobbied me for Scottish cousins, and I told him he should request more cousins from his current source of cousins.
Oh dear. I do wish I could give him Scottish cousins. Instead I will leave him and his Canadian cousins some legal and technical problems when B.A. and I shuffle off this mortal coil--what to do with all the furniture, etc. Poor them. They will have to take time off work and squabble over the paintings. However, the thought cheers me up immensely.
Yes, I am indeed part of a living and growing family, and will be even when I am dead. I envision wonderful three-sided (at very least) discussions about B.A.'s and my health, eccentricities, deaths and property. YAY! And since I was brought up to pray for the soul of my never-married, childless Uncle Art, I see no reason why my niece's and nephews' children shouldn't be brought up to pray for our souls. (Uncle Art, by the way, gave me a wonderful toy broom when I was very small. I loved it. Little did Uncle Art know this gift would help to keep his memory green into the 21st century.)
The only family there is is the "traditional family". However, everyone belongs to one. It doesn't (or shouldn't) matter if you aren't the trunk or the most important or the most fruitful branch or taken from a sick tree and grafted onto a healthier one or, indeed, even alive on earth anymore. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water.
Personally, I do not think B.A. and I constitute a family on our very own. God has not blessed us with children, so in my view we're just a married couple rattling around a very big house. If we were a tree, we might be a handsome leafy green apple tree--but one of the ones that never bears fruit.
However, if I think of us not as a tree but as a BRANCH of a tree, the tree being our Canadian family whose branches have embraced those of my sister-in-law's Romanian family, then I can think of us as a family. Our branch, I hope, gives support and shade to the fruit-laden branches.
The model of a family that is just PARTNER+PARTNER annoys me to no end. It's like a diet of chocolate: chocolate is all very nice, but it's not enough to keep you going. And what an impoverishment of one's identity to be a PARTNER first and last. I myself am not a partner, but a wife, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a sister-in-law, a daughter-in-law, a niece, a great-niece, a grand-daughter and a great-grand-daughter. (I'm not really a cousin, though, since I have no first cousins and barely know my second cousins and first cousins once removed. They aren't on the prayer list.)
My family is as rich in relationships as it is because three married couples, my American grandparents, my parents, and my brother's in-laws, had more than one child. My nephew Pirate rightly lobbied me for Scottish cousins, and I told him he should request more cousins from his current source of cousins.
Oh dear. I do wish I could give him Scottish cousins. Instead I will leave him and his Canadian cousins some legal and technical problems when B.A. and I shuffle off this mortal coil--what to do with all the furniture, etc. Poor them. They will have to take time off work and squabble over the paintings. However, the thought cheers me up immensely.
Yes, I am indeed part of a living and growing family, and will be even when I am dead. I envision wonderful three-sided (at very least) discussions about B.A.'s and my health, eccentricities, deaths and property. YAY! And since I was brought up to pray for the soul of my never-married, childless Uncle Art, I see no reason why my niece's and nephews' children shouldn't be brought up to pray for our souls. (Uncle Art, by the way, gave me a wonderful toy broom when I was very small. I loved it. Little did Uncle Art know this gift would help to keep his memory green into the 21st century.)
The only family there is is the "traditional family". However, everyone belongs to one. It doesn't (or shouldn't) matter if you aren't the trunk or the most important or the most fruitful branch or taken from a sick tree and grafted onto a healthier one or, indeed, even alive on earth anymore. Family is family. Blood is thicker than water.
Friday, 17 October 2014
Time to Expel the Annulment Myths
One of the most important things I have read in the past week (and what a week!) was the interview with Cardinal Burke when he talked about annulments. I have had an annulment myself, of course. It was granted about fifteen years ago now. (I mention this in this week's issue of the Toronto Catholic Register. Buy Sunday!) And I have often been hurt by the "rubber stamp" remarks of never-married Catholics sighing over the laxity of The Church Today. It's not that I felt "rejected" or "judged" (for most people back home did not know I had ever been married): it's that I felt a thrill of doubt about the process. Sometimes the only thought that kept me sane was the principle of "Roma locuta, causa finita."
Cardinal Burke, bless him, explained that the process was a lot looser between 1971 and nineteen eighty-three*, and was tightened up thereafter. Now, this is perhaps not so consoling for those who were granted decrees of nullity in the 1970s, but as my papers came through in the 1990s, I am terribly relieved. It confirms what I was told at the time: my case was judged and double-judged. Thank heavens.
If I want to terrify myself into fits, I could imagine how my case might have been heard prior to 1971, but I was not even born prior to 1971, and anyway at university I would have had a LOT more clerical backing in my most heartfelt desire to marry a fellow Roman Catholic. (Indeed, I had an embarrassing interview with a priest about the pressure I felt under from unwanted suitors, and he just laughed.) Before 1971 it was acknowledged that a mixed marriage presented extraordinary difficulties; it was not used to show how wonderfully ecumenical and modern we are. And, incidentally, back then the non-Catholic party ALSO had to take an oath to raise any children Catholic.
But I digress.
There are too many Catholics, simple good-hearted Catholics, who do not even bother to apply for decrees of nullity because of all the myths. The biggest myth is that it is expensive. I was presented with a bill of $600 and was permitted to pay it in installments. And I could have claimed it on my taxes as a charitable donation.
I had one friend, an atheist ex-Catholic, who kept making jokes about my offering to pay for "the church roof." There are countless antiquated jokes like this. They are jokes, bad jokes. Perhaps they were fine back in the days when all Catholics were growing up in a pro-marriage Catholic mono-culture at a time when divorce laws were stricter and relatively few Catholics divorced. But they are totally inappropriate today. They are a scandal for they lead simple-hearted people to despair.
Myth 1. It's expensive. No, it isn't. And you don't pay until it's all over anyway, and you can negotiate the when, and perhaps the how much.
Myth 2. The whole point is to enrich the coffers of the Church. No, it isn't! The fee is to pay everyone who works on the case. My divorce cost more than my annulment, and my divorce lawyer charged me the Legal Aid rate.
Myth Three*. It's a just "Catholic Divorce", a con-game. No, it isn't. It is a prayerful process in support of marriage and the family ensuring that justice is done. I felt, when I was married the first time, like a fox whose leg was caught in a trap. I gnawed off my leg to get out of the trap, and the Church, through the annulment process and the sacraments, healed my poor wounded leg. Now you can barely see the scar.
Myth 4. It's unbearably painful.
Myth 5. It's a doddle. No sweat. Piece of cake. A laugh. My condolences to any Catholic who met people from the Marriage Tribunal who yukked it up. The people I met took it all very seriously although I think they may have been surprised that I took it even more seriously than they did. I suspect many people don't bother to seek one until they find someone else to marry. For me remarriage was not the principal issue. Dissolving the bond was the issue.
I found the process very painful. But here I am alive to tell the tale. And married to a very nice Roman Catholic my mother rightfully adores.
Myth 6. Any faithful Catholic knows all about annulments and can give solid advice. So wrong. I'm not even sure I didn't make a mistake by using the expression "dissolving the bond." I'm not a canon lawyer. The more I know about annulments, the more I know I don't know. Any remarried Catholic who wants to regularize her/his situation should go straight to their parish priest. They shouldn't talk to their Aunt Betsy, their friend's friend who "got an annulment", or me. Parish priest. Even if he doesn't know that much, he knows how to START the process.
Myth 7. It's a compromise with the world's attitude towards marriage. It isn't. Personally, I attribute the high number of annulments not to the divorce rate, per se, but to the artificially prolonged immaturity of the Baby Boom and Baby Bust generations.
I believe that very few unhappy couples born after 1945 actually understood/understand what marriage was/is and how difficult it is by its very nature when they married. And I also believe that marriage has become even MORE difficult in societies where marriage is under constant attack by the sexual revolution and consumerism.
And I also--alas--think that many Roman Catholic priests have been remiss in the ways they have prepared or not prepared Roman Catholics for marriage in anti-marriage societies. It is not enough to bellow at us "Marriage is not a contract, it is a COVENANT" without warning us that without a shared commitment to our core values (and for devout Catholics that includes Christ), we're toast. Again, priests should talk less about how beautiful mixed marriages are (though certainly they often are, on a case-to-case basis, if not as an institution) and more about how they are a difficult exception from the norm.
Of course, the laity is probably also greatly to blame for the unpreparedness of themselves to marry at a reasonable age in ways too many to enumerate here. I, for example, was shockingly immature when I was 25, despite everyone telling me from childhood how mature I was. But I was never mature; I was just terrified of authority. Life hurt so much, I took refuge in daydreams, make-believe and story-telling, never more so than when I went to university and found, not Arcadia, but Sodom and Gomorrah.
*When the number three begins to appear all the time, you will know that I have a new laptop.
Cardinal Burke, bless him, explained that the process was a lot looser between 1971 and nineteen eighty-three*, and was tightened up thereafter. Now, this is perhaps not so consoling for those who were granted decrees of nullity in the 1970s, but as my papers came through in the 1990s, I am terribly relieved. It confirms what I was told at the time: my case was judged and double-judged. Thank heavens.
If I want to terrify myself into fits, I could imagine how my case might have been heard prior to 1971, but I was not even born prior to 1971, and anyway at university I would have had a LOT more clerical backing in my most heartfelt desire to marry a fellow Roman Catholic. (Indeed, I had an embarrassing interview with a priest about the pressure I felt under from unwanted suitors, and he just laughed.) Before 1971 it was acknowledged that a mixed marriage presented extraordinary difficulties; it was not used to show how wonderfully ecumenical and modern we are. And, incidentally, back then the non-Catholic party ALSO had to take an oath to raise any children Catholic.
But I digress.
There are too many Catholics, simple good-hearted Catholics, who do not even bother to apply for decrees of nullity because of all the myths. The biggest myth is that it is expensive. I was presented with a bill of $600 and was permitted to pay it in installments. And I could have claimed it on my taxes as a charitable donation.
I had one friend, an atheist ex-Catholic, who kept making jokes about my offering to pay for "the church roof." There are countless antiquated jokes like this. They are jokes, bad jokes. Perhaps they were fine back in the days when all Catholics were growing up in a pro-marriage Catholic mono-culture at a time when divorce laws were stricter and relatively few Catholics divorced. But they are totally inappropriate today. They are a scandal for they lead simple-hearted people to despair.
Myth 1. It's expensive. No, it isn't. And you don't pay until it's all over anyway, and you can negotiate the when, and perhaps the how much.
Myth 2. The whole point is to enrich the coffers of the Church. No, it isn't! The fee is to pay everyone who works on the case. My divorce cost more than my annulment, and my divorce lawyer charged me the Legal Aid rate.
 |
| After almost 20 years, I think the analogy still stands. |
Myth 4. It's unbearably painful.
Myth 5. It's a doddle. No sweat. Piece of cake. A laugh. My condolences to any Catholic who met people from the Marriage Tribunal who yukked it up. The people I met took it all very seriously although I think they may have been surprised that I took it even more seriously than they did. I suspect many people don't bother to seek one until they find someone else to marry. For me remarriage was not the principal issue. Dissolving the bond was the issue.
I found the process very painful. But here I am alive to tell the tale. And married to a very nice Roman Catholic my mother rightfully adores.
Myth 6. Any faithful Catholic knows all about annulments and can give solid advice. So wrong. I'm not even sure I didn't make a mistake by using the expression "dissolving the bond." I'm not a canon lawyer. The more I know about annulments, the more I know I don't know. Any remarried Catholic who wants to regularize her/his situation should go straight to their parish priest. They shouldn't talk to their Aunt Betsy, their friend's friend who "got an annulment", or me. Parish priest. Even if he doesn't know that much, he knows how to START the process.
Myth 7. It's a compromise with the world's attitude towards marriage. It isn't. Personally, I attribute the high number of annulments not to the divorce rate, per se, but to the artificially prolonged immaturity of the Baby Boom and Baby Bust generations.
I believe that very few unhappy couples born after 1945 actually understood/understand what marriage was/is and how difficult it is by its very nature when they married. And I also believe that marriage has become even MORE difficult in societies where marriage is under constant attack by the sexual revolution and consumerism.
And I also--alas--think that many Roman Catholic priests have been remiss in the ways they have prepared or not prepared Roman Catholics for marriage in anti-marriage societies. It is not enough to bellow at us "Marriage is not a contract, it is a COVENANT" without warning us that without a shared commitment to our core values (and for devout Catholics that includes Christ), we're toast. Again, priests should talk less about how beautiful mixed marriages are (though certainly they often are, on a case-to-case basis, if not as an institution) and more about how they are a difficult exception from the norm.
Of course, the laity is probably also greatly to blame for the unpreparedness of themselves to marry at a reasonable age in ways too many to enumerate here. I, for example, was shockingly immature when I was 25, despite everyone telling me from childhood how mature I was. But I was never mature; I was just terrified of authority. Life hurt so much, I took refuge in daydreams, make-believe and story-telling, never more so than when I went to university and found, not Arcadia, but Sodom and Gomorrah.
*When the number three begins to appear all the time, you will know that I have a new laptop.
Saturday, 11 October 2014
The Stag Weekend
My dear husband Benedict Ambrose has gone to a stag weekend in England, leaving me alone and palely loitering. Well, that's not quite true. I mean, I am alone and pale, but I'm not loitering. I have done exactly what I do on Saturday mornings, which is:
1. Wake up at seven.
2. Make coffee.
Three. Check the internet.
4. Study Polish for an hour.
5. Make Polish flashcards until 10 (or some minutes past 10).
6. Wash any dirty dishes.
7. Scrub the kitchen.
8. Take out the trash.
The recycling will have to wait until B.A. returns, for I don't have the necessary keys to the various doors and sheds Historical Household recycling necessitates.
The thing about being happily married is that if your husband goes away for the weekend, there is no sense of "when the cat's away." There are very few things I would do in B.A.'s absence that I wouldn't do in his presence. They are
A) eating delicious, tangy vinegar-
B) sprinkled fish and chips with my fingers
C) while sitting in his chair
D) watching Polish movies.
Unfortunately, we haven't got a DVD player (long story), so instead of watching Polish movies I watched "Jamie's 15 Minute Suppers" while I gobbled my vinegar-dressed fish and chips, and then hit the mute button and surfed the internet until 8:45, when my mother called. Then at 9:00 the new episode of "Lewis" came on, so I put the sound on again. (They've made "Hathaway" ill-tempered; what's with that? If the reprobates who write "Lewis" make him lose his faith, I will stop watching. Incidentally, can you imagine any other era in which such a straight arrow as Lewis would live in sin with a lady doctor? Oh, for the next episode of "Endeavour", that I may be edified by handsome DCI Thursday.)
Then shortly after 10 I brushed my teeth and went to bed with "Fluent Forever" and soon fell asleep. Such is my exciting, exciting life.
I should probably explain that my husband hates vinegar so much, he can't stand the smell or sight of it or anything that contains it, like ketchup or tartar sauce. He is also disturbed when I dispense with ye olde forke and just stuff food in my face like a squirrel. I never do this at a proper dinner table, mind you, but eating in front of the television is so utterly barbaric, anyway, I can't see why sins against cutlery make a difference.
Fortunately for my nervous disposition, the Historical House has not one but two security systems. However, they are much not good against the THING on the second floor. B.A. doesn't believe in the THING on the second floor, probably because I can never sense it when he is at home. The THING sort of oozes its way into my consciousness on nights when he is out very late drinking with the boys, and whether or not it exists, it scares the heck out of me, lurking away just below the staircase. So last night I avoided that end of the flat and shut the hall doors and felt perfectly fine. Slept like a baby.
1. Wake up at seven.
2. Make coffee.
Three. Check the internet.
4. Study Polish for an hour.
5. Make Polish flashcards until 10 (or some minutes past 10).
6. Wash any dirty dishes.
7. Scrub the kitchen.
8. Take out the trash.
The recycling will have to wait until B.A. returns, for I don't have the necessary keys to the various doors and sheds Historical Household recycling necessitates.
The thing about being happily married is that if your husband goes away for the weekend, there is no sense of "when the cat's away." There are very few things I would do in B.A.'s absence that I wouldn't do in his presence. They are
A) eating delicious, tangy vinegar-
B) sprinkled fish and chips with my fingers
C) while sitting in his chair
D) watching Polish movies.
Unfortunately, we haven't got a DVD player (long story), so instead of watching Polish movies I watched "Jamie's 15 Minute Suppers" while I gobbled my vinegar-dressed fish and chips, and then hit the mute button and surfed the internet until 8:45, when my mother called. Then at 9:00 the new episode of "Lewis" came on, so I put the sound on again. (They've made "Hathaway" ill-tempered; what's with that? If the reprobates who write "Lewis" make him lose his faith, I will stop watching. Incidentally, can you imagine any other era in which such a straight arrow as Lewis would live in sin with a lady doctor? Oh, for the next episode of "Endeavour", that I may be edified by handsome DCI Thursday.)
Then shortly after 10 I brushed my teeth and went to bed with "Fluent Forever" and soon fell asleep. Such is my exciting, exciting life.
I should probably explain that my husband hates vinegar so much, he can't stand the smell or sight of it or anything that contains it, like ketchup or tartar sauce. He is also disturbed when I dispense with ye olde forke and just stuff food in my face like a squirrel. I never do this at a proper dinner table, mind you, but eating in front of the television is so utterly barbaric, anyway, I can't see why sins against cutlery make a difference.
Fortunately for my nervous disposition, the Historical House has not one but two security systems. However, they are much not good against the THING on the second floor. B.A. doesn't believe in the THING on the second floor, probably because I can never sense it when he is at home. The THING sort of oozes its way into my consciousness on nights when he is out very late drinking with the boys, and whether or not it exists, it scares the heck out of me, lurking away just below the staircase. So last night I avoided that end of the flat and shut the hall doors and felt perfectly fine. Slept like a baby.
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