marriage – Peaceful Reader

Happy Anniversary!

{Amana, IA, 2013}

It’s so nice to be married to the one that you love. My husband came home the other day and shared some interesting facts about relationships. He loves sharing tidbits with me and this time he’d drummed up some frightening facts about marriage. Did you know that 73% of long-term married couples are not with their true love! Can you imagine? And that if given the chance they would leave their partner to get back to their true love. To me, that’s a little like, love the one you’re with…

We were married 12 years ago in a beautiful ceremony in Galena, IL. At the reception at the picnic shelter my husband with some musician friends sang an original composition to me. It was lovely and made me cry. We’ve had an incredible journey and hope for many more years together. Yesterday at church an older woman that we keep in touch with said to us “12! Try 61 years!” She was smiling as she said it but there was a wistfulness as her husband of 61 years died two years ago. How sweet love is, whether you have it for 2 years, 12 years, or 61 years.

If you find someone that you can live with, that brings you joy and laughter, make them yours. It isn’t about all the sexy stuff-it’s about eating breakfast together morning after morning, listening to them slurp their huge bowl of cereal and still rubbing your foot next to his before you head off to work. It’s about being a good listener even when you’ve heard the story before. We should treat our companions with the same respect we give our co-workers and friends.

My parents were divorced when I was a young adult. No matter what age it happens it tears you a part. My parents hadn’t been compatible for years. There was strife and anger about who knows what-and frankly I don’t want to know. I think my mom realizes now that they both could have tried a little harder, been more sympathetic, patient, or thoughtful. However you look at it; marriage is a lot of work and it takes being aware of that everyday and yet everyday needs a little fun. It’s up to you to remember to bring the joy in; maybe a smile, a game of cards, a movie to share together or just a hug in the kitchen. Don’t wait for the other person to provide your happiness.

{In Virginia, 2013}

Today we’ve enjoyed working in the kitchen together as I made three new batches of pesto with basil from my mom’s garden and he cooked a hearty breakfast with biscuits, bacon, eggs, and fruit AND then as I started on the 3rd batch he cleaned the kitchen right around me! As we cooked, blended, scraped, and wiped we played a whole slew of old country favorites like Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty and this other one by Conway Twitty that my husband sings me all the time. We are not actual fans of country music yet there are some classic songs that speak to us. Like this one by George Jones and Tammy Wynette. Classic. This one by Otis Redding also makes us happy, which then led us to this interesting reinterpretation of Otis’ song.

And yes, there was a little dancing going on in the kitchen. And a lot of smiling. So much so our daughter had to leave the room.

As Maya says: “We need just three things in life: something to do, something to look forward to, and someone to love.” We heard Maya Angelou speak for our very first date together and we hold her words close to our heart.

The Newlyweds by Nell Freudenberger

Nell Freudenberger

(2012)

I read this for our March book club selection and the general consensus last Monday at our meeting was that it was solid but not great and yet our conversation was very animated. We had definite opinions coming into the discussion about what we liked and disliked and it made for a rousing night of sharing.

We agreed that we all loved that Ms. Freudenberger based this novel on a chance encounter in an airplane with a woman named Farah. This made the story stand out to us for it’s validity. While it is fiction it is not just the author’s imaginary ideas of what it would be like for a woman to travel so far for love; she has a first hand account of what that was truly like.

Synopsis:

In The Newlyweds, we follow the story of Amina Mazid, who at age twenty-four moves from Bangladesh to Rochester, New York, for love. A hundred years ago, Amina would have been called a mail-order bride. But this is an arranged marriage for the twenty-first century: Amina is wooed by—and woos—George Stillman online.
For Amina, George offers a chance for a new life and a different kind of happiness than she might find back home. For George, Amina is a woman who doesn’t play games. But each of them is hiding something: someone from the past they thought they could leave behind. It is only when they put an ocean between them—and Amina returns to Bangladesh—that she and George find out if their secrets will tear them apart, or if they can build a future together.
The Newlyweds is a surprising, suspenseful story about the exhilarations—and real-life complications—of getting, and staying, married. It stretches across continents, generations, and plains of emotion. What has always set Nell Freudenberger apart is the sly, gimlet eye she turns on collisions of all kinds—sexual, cultural, familial. With The Newlyweds, she has found her perfect subject for that vision, and characters to match. She reveals Amina’s heart and mind, capturing both her new American reality and the home she cannot forget, with seamless authenticity, empathy, and grace. At once revelatory and affecting, The Newlyweds is a stunning achievement. (Goodreads)

It is a “stunning achievement” because I learned so much about Bangladesh and how difficult it would be to arrive here in the U.S. with very little background knowledge of our daily life. Just getting a job would be a huge hurdle.

Our book club conversation focused a lot on characters and the decisions they made. We were amazed at Amina’s bravery to arrive here with very little skills. Many immigrants choose to arrive here through a school visa and thus have school as their focus where Amina comes solely for George. George, many of us thought, was a little boring and not all that helpful to Amina. One older member of our group and the woman who recommended this book loved George and thought he was a perfect match for Amina. The rest of us thought he was lazy (not job wise but relationship wise) as he wanted everything to come easy and his way. He didn’t push to become a Muslim as he had promised which would have helped Amina keep her promise to her mother. This, to us, was a major mistake but I guess a typical marital issue. Would a man every really go out of his way to do something he promised to do if it wasn’t something he would choose to do in the first place? Of course the answer is some men would but George wasn’t written to be a unique individual. Even his reasons for choosing an online Asia dating service is because he wants a woman who won’t play games. The question is did he get his wish with Amina?

Many of us enjoyed Amina’s return trip back to Bangladesh. While she is there she feels out of place and nervous about events that normally would not have bothered her. She does meet up with Nasir, the son of her father’s best friend, and their friendship is rekindled. Perhaps Nasir and Amina had at one time been matched together but Nasir left for London and soon after Amina started her initial online conversations with George. Her and Nasir still have an emotional connection though and she is happy with how much he has helped her parents.

Random Quote:

“Amina knew she was a different person in Bangla than she was in English; she noticed the change every time she switched languages on the phone. She was older in English, and also less fastidious; she was the parent to her parents. In Bangla, of course, they were still the parents, and she let them fuss over her, asking whether she was maintaining her weight, and if she’d been able to find her Horlicks in America.” (105)

This story has many different layers and it does shine a critical look at the complexity of marriage and relationships. I’m happy to have read it~I just wish I felt more comfortable with Amina’s choices especially as she travels back to America with her parents.

Read this great interview of Nell @HuffingtonPost.
And Polly’s review at SF Gate.

I’d like to read more by this author~

The Amazing Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl

I devoured Flynn’s previous book Dark Places (2009) but never got around to reading Sharp Objects (2006). My husband read it and honestly I think it is too creepy for me. All three of her books feature dark characters with twisted, thoughtful, and non-linear plot lines.

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn

2012

415 pages

The opening line on the inside flap “Marriage can be a real killer” makes such an interesting opener for the tale of a marriage gone strangely, crazily awry. Nick and Amy meet at a party in New York City as two fairly young adults. They flirt and the flirting is cute. They walk home together after the party but then don’t meet up again for a few months. When they connect the second time it seems like all the pieces fit snugly together and they end up marrying.

Their backgrounds are so utterly different that this may be a testament for sticking with your own kind. Amy, an only child, has grown up sheltered and wealthy in the big city with two odd parents who’ve turned her life into a wildly popular picture book series. Think Jane without Sally and Dick. The books never fail to make Amy feel like a loser even though her parents are always there to boost her confidence.

Nick is from small town Carthage, Missouri with a rather dysfunctional family. He has a twin sister, Margo, a smothering mother, and an abusive father. Both Amy and Nick write for a living until magazine subscriptions and dot.com’s start to go under. They lose both of their jobs within a few short weeks of each other. Luckily Amy has that trust fund to rely on and they meander around their NYC pad for months. Margo calls one day to say their mother has cancer Nick takes it as an opportunity to give up the big city and head back home to Carthage with Amy in tow. Big city, pampered Amy does not do well with small-town, small-minded middle of the U.S. of A.

Nick and Margo use the last of Amy’s fund to purchase a downtown bar and spend their days minding the bar and hanging out after their mother passes on. Their father is in a nursing home where he causes lots of trouble and seems to flit in and out at crucial moments. He adds this odd twist that makes you seriously wonder about Nick’s mental stability. Amy’s parents are anther complex set of characters that add so much to the dynamic of what we know of Amy.

Told in alternating chapters this book showcases Flynn’s amazing ability to twist and turn the way we look at varying scenes in a person’s life. There’s more than two sides to any story. I can’t tell you more. I just can’t. There is so much more. I didn’t dislike one part of this book except that it came to an end. I guess I was shocked by the ending. Read it. Read it. You won’t forget Nick or Amy. It could be any of us on a given day just going off the deep end.

Quote:

Amy Elliott Dunne
July 5, 2010
Diary Entry

I won’t blame Nick. I don’t blame Nick. I refuse-refuse!-to turn into some pert-mouthed, strident angry-girl. I made two promises to myself when I married Nick. One: no dancing-monkey demands. Two: I would never, ever say, Sure, that’s fine by me (if you want to stay out later, if you want to do a boys’ weekend, if you want to do something you want to do) and then punish him for doing what I said was fine by me. I worry I am coming perilously close to violating both of those promises. (65)

You can see the complexity of Amy’s character as she learns to make adjustments in her marriage; she suffers from an amazing ability to over-think life.

Read Tina’s review.
NY Times review
Gillian Flynn’s site.

28 Days of Things I Love; #2

I love my handsome husband!

We’ve raised a family together and we still enjoy each other’s company. He sends me sweet texts during the day. He makes me hand-crafted cards for special occasions. I’ve saved them all. He smiles when he sees me at the end of the day, whether it is 4:00 or 11:00 pm. He makes dinner on his day off. He works really hard on projects for both home and work. He is very creative and lends his energy to many of my teaching projects. He “puts” up with all my whims and truly tries to make me happy.
He is the perfect husband for me.

(He is a prisoner to his phone)

War is not the answer; Ellen Feldman's Next to Love

Next to Love; A Novel

Ellen Feldman

2011

289 pages

I read 2 adult fiction books in October-rare for me. Both were outstanding! Next to Love focuses on three young women, all childhood friends, and the men in their lives during World War II and after. Each woman’s story captivated me. Grace, Babe, and Millie experience the beginning of the war through the departure of the men they love and the end of the war with what they are left with and, as a reader, we are privvy to what direction their lives take, and how they get on with the business of living.

Grace, already married with a daughter, is mad at her husband, Charlie:

Talk to me, she wants to throw open the window and shout. Tell me. Are you afraid? Are you secretly thrilled, a little boy with a stick playing at being a soldier, a man going off on a great adventure, leaving us behind, breaking my heart? No, that isn’t fair. He is not enjoying this either. (27)

Babe and Claude are a mismatched pair who meet accidentally at the Carnegie library . Claude checks out books for her in an act of kindness, demonstrating his rebellious nature to her early on:

Three years later, they began going together. By then he was teaching at the high school, and she was selling ribbons at Diamond’s. His mother, sensing a rebellious nature as well as an inferior bloodline, was brokenhearted; his father merely disapproved. The town was full of nice girls from good families. Why did their son have to get mixed up with one whose father worked in the hat factory and who had to work herself? (20)

Millie and Pete are newlyweds, adjusting to life, when he enlists. His last night in town they’ve had cocktails and dinner with their friends all at Grace and Charlie’s home. Later, Pete sleeps while Millie lies awake worrying.

She looks at the clock. It is four-thirty. She gets out of bed and goes down the hall to the bathroom. By the time she comes back, he is awake. And she is bathed and dressed and wearing a big perfectly lipsticked smile. Nobody likes a gloomy Gertie. (37)

Millie, Babe, and Grace have very different journeys to travel throughout the story yet each leads to the same conclusion-war is a miserable way to solve conflict. Feldman’s story takes the reader deep into how WWII affected the lives of these women but on a greater whole how men and women were torn apart. Marriages and families were destroyed. The children of soldiers were forever changed because their father came back and struggled or didn’t come back at all. I don’t know if the author is a peace activist but she makes the point very clear: War is not the answer.

Think of the soldiers of today and what they’ve seen and what they’ve been ordered to do in the name of freedom. Fighting against any enemy causes irreparable damage to a person’s psyche, making it extremely traumatic to re-enter civilian life. I hope many read this book and take it’s message to heart. It is simply an excellent historical fiction. I plan to read more by Ellen Feldman. -click to check out her website.

Other reviews:
Charlotte’s Web of Books
Diane at Bookchickdi
Alyce from At Home with Books