the Wilds

On our way to the east coast to prepare for the wedding, Dave and I made a stop in Ohio, at the Wilds! It's a 10,000 acre conservation/wildlife area, reclaimed from an old strip mining site in rural eastern Ohio. They specialize in facilitating captive breeding of species that are extinct in the wild. Exciting and important stuff. Dave and I love the zoo, so this was a perfect place to celebrate Dave's, how shall we say, "milestone" birthday!

Upon our arrival, we took a 2.5-hour safari bus tour. Our guide, Lee, was either really bored of giving this tour, or maybe high.

Our favorite animal that we saw was the Szechuan Takin:

What a ridiculous-looking animal! Lee said that he looks like a creature out of a Dr. Seuss book. I think that he looks more like Acheloos, the river god defeated by Heracles in a contest over Deianeira. He is often depicted as a large-horned bull with the face of a man:

Heracles broke off one of his horns in the fight, which became the horn of plenty symbol. Okay, end of mythological excursus. We spent the night in a yurt! It was our first experience with "glamping" – glamorous camping, of course! I've stayed in a yurt before, but it wasn't very glamorous. In fact, it was at a national park in Uganda, and there was neither electricity nor running water on the site. So this was a big upgrade:

The view was really stunning. I don't know how much money it took to go from strip mine to this, but I think it was worth it:

Those of us who were spending the night at the park ate dinner in the same dining room. The couple next to us were celebrating their 60th wedding anniversary! And next to them was another couple, celebrating their 54th anniversary. Dave asked them for advice, which I dutifully share here:

• "If it's not really bad, don't say anything."
• "Yeah, keep your mouth shut!"
• "It's easier to leave than to stay and work it out. But it's worth it."

The next morning, we took the Wildside Tour. It ended up being a private tour of the site by pickup truck with an animal management expert. Since we didn't have to stick to the main roads, we were able to get much closer to the animals. We fed Mickey the Giraffe:

And pet Gobi the Bactrian Camel:

And drew near to cheetahs and Przewalski's horses and rhinos:

It wasn't cheap, but compared to, I don't know, dropping 12 grand on a real safari in Tanzania, I'd say it was pretty affordable! We'd love to go back sometime and see what new things are going on there. Maybe an anniversary trip?? ;)

Love, a poem by George Herbert

Last week was truly awful, and I have nothing good to say about it. So instead, I'll post this 17th-century poem about love!

An old friend shared it with me a long time ago, but I found myself considering it more carefully recently. In addition to its clear Christian meaning, I think it illuminates the abundance and generosity of true romantic love as well. Don't love and feasting make a great pair? Or am I just thinking this way because Dave has been making me dinner more often?? =) (*Correction: Sarah B. has also been making me delicious dinners! More love!)

LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
     Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
     From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning           5
     If I lack'd anything.

'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
    Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
     I cannot look on Thee.'     10
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
     'Who made the eyes but I?'

'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
     Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?'      15
     'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
     So I did sit and eat.

http://www.bartleby.com/101/286.html 

The Odyssey on Marriage

In my Great Books class, we just finished reading selections from the Hebrew Bible and are now getting started on the Odyssey. Funny how none of the marriages of the Jewish patriarchs have inspired me with hopeful visions for my own upcoming marriage! What a relief, then to leave behind those abysmally dysfunctional relationships and turn to the Odyssey. Odysseus and Penelope have far from a perfect marriage, and there's plenty to criticize, but I have always loved Odysseus' wish for Nausicaa in Book 6:

"And may the good gods give you all your heart desires:
husband, and house, and lasting harmony too.
No finer, greater gift in the world than that...
when man and woman possess their home, two minds,
two hearts that work as one. Despair to their enemies,
a joy to all their friends. Their own best claim to glory." (Fagles' translation)

Odysseus has experienced every glory of the battlefield and every victory of the intellect, and yet he defines the greatest gift in the world as marital harmony. Love it!

"Leave it alone" vs. "always room for improvement"

Julie is such a good reader and friend – not only did she remember my blog entry about enjoying advice from long-married couples, she also emailed me this perfectly relevant column by Colbert King of the Washington Post! In it, he offers marriage advice based on 50 years of marriage.

He argues for an approach of benign neglect:

For those still curious about how we managed to last all these years, I offer this advice: Once the knot is tied, leave it alone.

Marriage is like baking bread, roasting a chicken or whipping up a dessert. Once it’s prepped, and starts cooking, no testing, tasting or stirring. Don’t poke or flip it once it’s on the grill. When it’s done, let it rest.

Too many folks get married, only to end up worrying their marriages to death.

I don't want to worry anything to death! (But for the record, doesn't cooking usually require some testing, tasting, stirring, and flipping?? Maybe I'm just an anxious cook, as well.) King sounds peaceful and secure...pretty appealing, no?

But King's argument stands in direct contrast to today's "always room for improvement" marital culture, which, as far as I can tell, pervades at least the NYT's Style Section. Case in point: Elizabeth Weil's NYT Magazine 2009 cover story on marriage improvement, which itself was a teaser for her recently published book (which I have not read). Here's the premise for her endeavor, which apparently involved reading various marriage-advice books, attending marriage-improvement classes and therapy, and having new kinds of fights with her husband.

And as I lay there, I started wondering why I wasn’t applying myself to the project of being a spouse. My marriage was good, utterly central to my existence, yet in no other important aspect of my life was I so laissez-faire. Like most of my peers, I applied myself to school, friendship, work, health and, ad nauseam, raising my children. But in this critical area, marriage, we had all turned away. I wanted to understand why. I wanted not to accept this.

There's been plenty of discussion about Weil's book by people more articulate than I, and this is just a quick blog post. Bottom line: she sounds insane, and really bad at constructing an experiment. And also...far too relatable? Because I too am Type-A, love projects, enjoy research, and am generally anxious about my relationships. Furthermore: let's just say, for the sake of the argument, that I turn out to be "less successful" in my academic career than I had hoped. Let's say that I decide it's not worth pursuing this career through years of frequent moving, temporary positions, low remuneration, and constant uncertainty, and decide to leave the field. This may enable me to find a line of work with greater security, actually live with D. in the same house, and/or start a family! But can I envision myself coming to view my marriage as "a project," perhaps in compensation for all the, I don't know, Classics articles I thought I'd be writing? [Euripides' Helen re-enacts the Trojan War! You heard it here first!] Um, yes.

Ultimately, at least as of today, Weil did not in fact worry her marriage to death. After all of that "work," she came to the following, non-earth-shattering conclusion:

...the “good-enough marriage” is characterized by its capacity to allow spouses to keep growing, to afford them the strength and bravery required to face the world.

I agree, but question whether she needed to go through (and put her husband through) all of that hullabaloo to understand this.

So, which approach do you think works best? Is this a case of "to each his own"? Some couples will be more successful by letting things be; others will thrive with conscientious effort. I usually fall back on two platitudes: every couple is different, and the truth likely lies somewhere in the middle. But if this is where I inevitably end up after attempting to evaluate diametrically-opposed ideologies, is it possible that this whole effort to glean wisdom from other couples is not so meaningful after all?

Marriage IS scary

'Til death do us part? For someone in her late-twenties, that's a scary phrase. I've already changed so much in the past ten years; how do I know who I will be in the future? Or who D. will become? I've noticed that most of my parents' friends have encountered, at some point in their marriage, at least one terrible trial: cancer, the sudden loss of a loved one, financial disappointment, a child turning out very differently than had been hoped. How will we handle it, when something bad inevitably happens?

That's why I love hearing about couples who have lasted decades. I'm fortunate to have many examples in my own family to imitate. And the NYTimes Vows column sometimes includes a "State of the Union" update on previously featured couples. This week's column looks back at couples who married when the column was still new. One couple shared the following advice:

How do they stay so happy? “If I were to boil it down to one thing, Susan stayed nice and I stayed funny,” Mr. Parent said. “If you can stay kind and keep a sense of humor, man, you can get through anything.” 

Funny I'm not too worried about. But NICE?? Well, just as I'm hoping not to turn into a Bridezilla over the next year, I'm going to work on not transmogrifying into a shrew of a wife. Wish me luck!

(Hilariously, the file name for this image is "hissy-shrew," and the caption reads, in part, "Shrews will stop at nothing to defend their precious food supply...All that gorging leads straight to an early grave." Sounds about right?)