In My Quest To Be At Peace With Weddings: Part Whatever

Lucy and I took this piece of art, yet another one of Azucar's masterpiece wedding cakes, to Salt Lake yesterday. Brides were running rampant all over the place. One almost insisted that we were handling her cake. I was trying to be kind, as it was her BIG FAT DAY and all, smiling at her even though she was wrong. It wasn't her cake and we needed to get to the 9th floor of the Joseph Smith building. Move it BRIDE KONG.

Lucy can laugh at those situations better than I, and one day (when I get to know you better) I will tell you about the time she got into a fight with another patron at Banana Republic. Good times. And don't you just love their pencil skirts? I mean Banana's pencil skirts. Nice and slick with it.

I think I have blogged before about my disappointment for weddings. Oh yes, here it is. The Council Woman has helped me identify it as a empathic distress for the loss of innocence that usually accompanies a major life change. Friends have gotten married and even their voices have different tones. Much lower, much quieter. I used to think they were just trying to sound more mature. Not so. It's that life suddenly got a bit more serious.

An hour after our special delivery, I was sitting on the front lawn of my dear friend's house eating fresh Mexican food and listening to my favorite peeps in the WHOLE WIDE HOOD!!!, namely The Cooks, talk about education to our young women. Brother Cook was interesting (as always) Sister Cook was astounding.

Acknowledging that many of the young women probably wanted to get married and have children more than pursue a career, she dedicated her talk to wifehood. It was so brilliant to me, I have to paraphrase here in capturing what was said:

It's fine if you want to be a wife and a mother more than anything else, she said, but it doesn't mean that wifehood and motherhood don't require an educated background. Most specifically, she said that of pursuing a serious study of yourself.

Know what makes you sad.
Know what makes you happy.
Know what makes you scared.
Know what makes you secure.
And know WHY.

Perhaps formal education may not be the path that you take to becoming self-aware, there are many ways of discovering truths about your soul. Get counseling if there are any issues in your life that interfere with peace in your heart.

While marriage is amazing, it's the hardest undertaking of this lifetime, prepare well. And take this preparation seriously as would any other passionate student. Take classes on marriage, parenting, prenatal health and like subjects. Read books. Converse other wives. Fasting, prayer, scriptures, meditation, gaining knowledge and enlightenment from divine sources are essential.

Instead of using wifehood and motherhood as a cop out for not going to college, understand that the most sacred rolls will require the most preparation time, serious dedication to study, almost impossible tests and more advanced field studies that any university could possibly dream up.

Major in marriage and graduate cum laude!
(So I made that little statement up myself, go ahead and pass it on to everyone who ever glanced your way in a special little e-mail, and then tell them that unless they pass it on to everyone who has ever sneezed on the face of this terrestrial planet, none of their wishes will come true ever again and also that their computer will explode causing partial damage to their home office and quite possibly their face.)

(So now you know. I don't like weddings or crazy cheesebally mass e-mails, I don't care if it made you cry. It won't make me cry. Don't send it to me. Send it to your mom.)

And now, back to the subject at hand...
I can only wish upon a bright star that I will always search for self-awareness. I meet so many woman who seem to have no connection to how they present themselves on a level of reality where most of society lives. Don't they know they are manipulative? Unkind? Impatient? Don't they know they regularly hurt people? But then again, the psychological side of me understands that the person who claims self-awareness is, by virtue of the definition, not at all.

It might be impossible for the girls to understand the absolutely amen-ishness to what Sister Cook shared with us between bites of chips and salsa. (After awhile I stopped eating because I wanted to hear everything being said, why is chomping so loud in your head?) But it meant a whole lot to me. It makes sense and I like those kinds of sense-making ideas.

Sister Cook's talk may have been just for me.

In fact, it was so enlightening that it made me want to find that Bride, at her over-the-top fancy reception, and say to her, boldly and with compassion, It's not about the cake my dear. It's so not about the cake.