The ol' ball and fur-lined chain.

My husband has been feeling slightly wounded dog about my last few posts. He feels a bit vilified, eunuched, the punching bag for all woman who read The Feminine Mystique, The Beauty Myth or anything by Gloria Steinem in college, marched for female rights, grew their underarm hair and examined their vaginas with a hand-held mirror. And now, as stay-at-home 50s-style housewives, have switched to Woman’s Weakly (no spelling mistake there).

Well I’m here to shout it from the blogtops that my man is actually one of the good ones. He does the dishes, vacuums, does laundry, is (mom look away, look away), great in bed, even better in position 37, is a fantastic father, has a nice, shiny, platinum credit card and all my friends think I’m lucky to have him. I’m not so sure they think the reverse. “Poor Noel.” Being married to THAT tiny, could-blow-at-any-second grenade can’t be easy. And I guess sometimes it’s not. Except that I am unbelievably dexterous at position 102 plus I’m funny.

So why do I make these snide, somewhat cruel remarks about him. Well it’s fun. And sometimes it’s just what married couples do. They get on each other nerves. They push the “Do not push that button because it’ll start nuclear holocaust” just to see if it will.

In marriage you see each other at your worst. Him, on the couch, watching sport with a beer ala Homer Simpson. Me, in my big brown gown, plucking the hairs out of my chin ala Blanche from the Golden Girls. Charming. But then we get those nights where we fancy up, spritz on some of the expensive stuff, share a bottle personally delivered from Bacchus and fall in love all over again.

We were chatting the other night about what we’d do if we were ever to split up. I vowed never to date again. Not for him, but because honestly it seems too much like drilling nails into your skull. He protested and insisted I marry again, not for me, but because he can’t be arsed to pay alimony while supporting a blonde stripper with huge tits. Oops I did it again. Sorry babe. Back to how wonderful you are.

And you are. I do love you. Where the fuck are those cute white puppies and cupids I ordered? Ah here they come. And the fields of corn just high enough for us to run toward the sunset in? There they are. So take my hand you big, gorgeous lug of a giant and let’s step into marriage Utopia. And on your way, do me a favor, take out the trash.n

Love

It can’t be easy being a poet. The constant search to combine verse, rhyme, reason, repetition, switch words, muddle them, pull a middle finger at grammar, check your sonnet for it’s allotted 14 lines, your onomatopoeia for musical flow, your iambic pentameter’s shoe size.

Still, this cannot be the reason, or rhyme, why so many poets are a depressed, glum, angst-ridden, alcoholic lot. Keats, Faulkner, Byron, Fitzgerald, Edgar Allen Poe, Tennessee Williams, Hemingway, Plath, Kurt Cobain. All suffered from bouts of depression and more than a few were raging alcoholics. The list is endless.

Dr James W. Pennebaker, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Texas in Austin, theorizes that being a published poet is a high-risk occupation. More dangerous than being a fire fighter or deep-sea diver. (Disclaimer: I found this guy on the Internet so he could in fact be a postman doubling as a professor online.) Why? Because apparently suicide rates are much higher among poets than among authors of other literary forms (whew!), as well as the general population.

Now this is a blog about a wedding. I know. So far it doesn’t seem that way. But bare with me, the connective thread is coming like a lightning bolt, or at least a small, energy-efficient light bulb.

As you know I recently went to a wedding in Africa. My daughter’s Godmother married her soul’s mate. The wedding was sublimely beautiful. But there was one part in particular that touched me.

I was a bride’s maid. Part of my duty was hanging out with the bride and drinking champagne while she dressed. Terribly hard work.
So while I drank and we chatted and I drank, I watched my friend transforming from my pretty pal in her t-shirt and slouchy pants into the most beautiful bride I have ever seen.

Eventually the bride’s father came to walk his daughter down the aisle.

I am relatively okay with words. I’m certainly no ee cummings, but I do fine with an adjective or four. But the look I saw in his eyes rendered me without any. There is no way I could describe the love one sees in a father’s eyes the first time he sees his daughter as a bride. And it dawned on me. That’s why poets are such miseries.

They’ll spend a lifetime scouring, searching, seeking in head-banging-against-a-brick-wall vain, the words to capture what they never will. And trying to ensnare that achingly naked, true moment with quill, pen or type will render them miserable, alone, with a bottle of jack smashed on the floor and pills scattered like rose petals around them.

It’s not easy being a poet. Now you know it.