Your Special(ly Expensive) Day

While I may be a singleton, I have a keen interest in what is usually referred to as the Bridal Industry. The name alone gives me the cold chills. It typically entails a lot of hoopla about The Dress, The Venue, The Flowers, and Registering For Things Like Toaster Ovens You Should Already Have Since You're An Adult, Right? To be followed by tears and fighting between the happy couple and/or the friends and parents of the happy couple and on one memorable occasion my formerly sane friend spent an hour on the phone with me about to never talk to her poor mother ever ever again for the mortal sin of - are you ready for this? - sealing the invitations wrong. Then there are $7000 dresses you seal up and never wear again, and the engraved matches for people who don't smoke and a big formal sit down dinner you'll never eat for the grand total of $20,000. Trust me on this, I've been sashayed down aisles as a bridesmaid wearing a pee-yellow dress and pinchy shoes and ears bearing the Official Pearl Earrings, the only ones sanctioned by the bride after two hours of intense cross-examination.

I just don't get it. Am I missing an X chromosone or two?

Mind you, I was raised by a thrifty French Jew, and I am a thrifty woman. I live value. I like knowing that my dollars are going somewhere. Although I am a self-admitted fashionista, I do not want those dollars to go to a wear-once outfit that is going to make piddling before the ceremony an experience requiring two bridesmaids holding up my train in their own pee-colored dresses. I do not want a giant party that costs as much as a new Honda Accord, or if it means planning endlessly, writing lists on yellow legal pads, and worrying about whether the violets will make it through to Tuesday because the florist is out sick and it's too late to get into the flower mart and everything happens to me. About the only good part as far as I can see is sampling the wedding cakes. Now that I can get behind. I'm sure I speak for Hapa Boy on that one aspect as well. We are both happy to do any tastings necessary.

But I digress.

Nearly every single bride I've ever been around has been some variety of knife-wielding maniac. I grant you, this is sometimes amusing from a distance. Take the spellbinding television show: Say Yes to the Dress. In this brilliant social satire, young and youngish brides go to the ginormous bridal emporium, Kleinfeld's, where they try on dress after expensive dress, helped in this heartstoppingly important endeavor by some heavily accented New Yawk women who seem to have cornered the market on both platitudes and lip liner. You can hardly blame them for going in for the kill, uh I mean sale - the cheapest of the dresses will snap $2500 from your bank account. You know, if I'm going to give someone $2500, I'd like to wear it not once but daily. In fact, it leads to a totally different understanding of why Miss Havisham never took her wedding dress off in Great Expectations - maybe she wasn't psychotic, she was just trying to get her money out of it. Obviously, the women on this show are more concerned with their Special Day and their Happy Ending (and I hope their grooms are getting some Happy Endings because I would not want to spend more than twenty minutes around most of their lovely brides, as witnessed below:



But it isn't really the money that gets me about the Bridal Industry. It's the way it packages happiness and expectations. It's about how being a Beautiful Bride equals making everyone around you miserable and buying dresses that cost the equivalent of six months at a private school and having professional makeup done and your hair all poofed up in a way you'll never wear it again. It's about the effect on a marriage when the inevitable letdown occurs when you are no longer a Princess, you're shuffling along inside your life and your relationship like everyone else. It's about the way America insists that all life events must be marketed and budgeted for and expensive to be memorable. It's not the fault of the brides that they go insane, it's the pressure that comes from living up to society's idea of The Day and all the Save the Date cards and engraved invitations. As my lovely friend A. puts it: What's wrong with an Evite? It's environmentally friendly. I can promise that if Hapa Boy and I tie the proverbial knot, I'm going to supply great bread, some lovely cheeses, and a mess of fruit and cupcakes. That's my favorite food, people. Does anyone really want to eat the chicken? I'm going to put out a few bottles of cheapish wine to toast a lovely outdoor setting and the fact that I'm proud to travel through life with the best man I've ever known. And because it's His Day too, he can have the day that he wants. He can wear dark jeans or an old suit because I would plan to wear the prettiest dress I can find at a price that won't make me gasp or feel pinched at the waist and my normal messy hair and some bright red lipstick.

Unless, of course, my sister gives me her designer wedding dress. That one has already been paid for.

It's Spinster-ific!

My post the other day on remaining child-free and loving it got a couple of panties in a bunch, didn't it? I'm not married either, which continues to be shocking to those that are. As it happens, my friend the Dee-light-ful Lady M. wrote the Manifesto below when she was *gasp* single. Lady M blogs on, although now she is married - and one of the funniest and most amazing people I know. Okay, it's true that Hapa Boy has made me a happy woman. But there's no ring on my finger that isn't from the Lady M's talented hubby at Dave Sheely Designs (go ahead, buy one), so the Manifesto still applies, and in my opinion, it can't be said enough. In fact, I once said a much less witty form of it here:

The Spinster Manifesto

(c) 2001 Mary T. Helmes/halfmadspinster.com (that URL now defunct)

We have a right to be female, over 30, and single.

We have the right to be female, over 30, and single, without being considered in possession of some fatal character flaw.

We have the right to make male friends.

We have the right to keep male friends even after they are married.

We have the right to make male friends even if they are married.

We do not have the right to sleep with married men.

We have the right to express genuine interest in and knowledge of other human beings without it being automatically interpreted as some kind of desperate sexual interest.

We have the right to have protected sex with a consensual partner without being married.

We have the right to own cats.

We have the right to express love for our friends, nieces, nephews and pets without it being construed as some pathetic attempt to replace the children we do not have ourselves.

We have the right to have our own children.

We have the right to buy our own furniture, clothing, china, electronics, cars and trips without being looked upon as selfish, frivolous, or boastful.

We have the right to rent whatever movie we wish.

We have a right to shower for as long as we want, unless there’s a water shortage on.

We have the right to break up with people we deem unsuitable without being admonished to not be so “picky” at our age.

We have a right to be picky.

We have the right to look our age.

We have the right to not act our age.

We have the right never to hear the expressions “How come you’re not married?” or “Tick tick tick tick tick tick.”

We have the right to express our wish to someday have a marriage, children or any combination thereof.

We have a right to proudly reclaim the word Spinster, to uphold and forge this brave new identity, to embrace our singleness, to live our lives fully, and to never let our human expression be characterized as a paraphrased offshoot of the male experience with words such as “bachelorette.”

We have a right to live wherever we want, even if it’s somewhere where it “might not be easy to meet someone.”

We have a right to stay home on Friday night.

We have a right to go out any night we choose.

We have a right to turn down dates.

We have a right to stay single forever.

We have a right to get married whenever we want.

We have a right to live as valid human beings, no matter what the choice.

The Learning Curve

As Judy Collins once sang in her weirdly haunting soprano, there are places I remember all my life though some have changed. The change is this case is equal to extinction: the College of Santa Fe, a small liberal arts school in the least charming neighborhood of my very charming ex-city is about to close its doors. You could call it a victim of the recession, but that wouldn't be the whole story. The whole story is a a whole bunch of fiscal mismanagement and bad debt and missed opportunities. Still, the end result is the same. Unless something happens in the 11th hour (and this is New Mexico, so you never know, right?), there will be no more College of Santa Fe.

In the interest of full disclosure, I didn't attend the College of Santa Fe. I taught there. I traumatized countless students with my martial law attempts to teach them how to write stories and novels. ("Dialogue does two things, people - it reveals character and furthers action. If it doesn't, it isn't dialogue. It's conversation. Conversation is great for the dinner table, but not in a book. Repeat that after me, please.) Oh me and the College of Santa Fe - we were tight. I went to readings on the campus, and I briefly dated a professor (although the less said about that, the better). I was good friends with those who had passed through those gates. Sure, I once suggested that the motto of the school should be changed to: College of Santa Fe: We're Everyone's Safety School! Just kidding, CSF. We had our ups and downs, but the college and I shared what might be defined as a typical long-term relationship: Time together, laughter, memories. Even after we broke up and I moved away, I never thought of a final goodbye. Colleges don't die.

Apparently they do. But the real question is whether CSF and other schools that are hurting in these economic times really deserve to live. I mean, what is a small liberal arts college for, anyway?

When I taught at the University of Arkansas, I was often bemused by the grade groveling that went on. "I need a B+ to get into the Accounting program because if I don't I'll never be able to get a job and feed my family and y'all will have the death of a half-dozen little starved babies on your head!" You know, that kind of thing. I didn't fall for it. My job was to teach them how to write. Getting into the Accounting program was out of my jurisdiction. Let's face it, I had a funny idea about education. I thought they were there to learn. I know, right? Weird.

They didn't know what to make of me. One of my student evaluations actually said: "She does not know God." (Well, not personally. But I'm sure She's very nice.) How about this one, burned into my memory: "I don't like the big black boots she wears to class. She needs to dress up more female. Also she gives too much homework. She never lets us leave early. She grades too hard." On the other hand, many years later I discovered an old student was my friend's husband's brother in law. (Are you getting that?) After talking at a Christmas party, we realized that he had been in my class. How? He remembered my clunky black boots. I'm not making this up, people. Oh, and he also remembered one of the stories that he had read in my class. So although I "never let them leave early" and "I graded too hard" at least one of my student's could talk intelligently about a story he had read fifteen years ago. That's evidence that I actually participated in a liberal arts education - whether they dropped out or became accountants. I bet one or two might have picked up some books not written by Danielle Steele or Steven King just to see what I was forever yapping about in class.

See, along with the bizarre idea that the removal of a baby foreskin should be celebrated with deli platters and some nice corned beef at a Bris, my culture truly values learning. That's learning and not "advanced degrees." I have them. So does my sister. But we were not only honor students, we were dragged through every museum within a 500 mile radius. We were supposed to ask questions. We are both critical thinkers. As far as I'm concerned, whether you plan to be a stay at home mother or a marine biologist, there's no mileage in ignorance.

Which brings me back to: What is a small liberal arts college for? Why slap down all that tuition? Why send your children there when they want to get dumb degrees in English or History or Art or Film that won't lead into good paying jobs immediately after graduation? I'll tell you why. Because a liberal arts education, wherever you find it, is not about a career - it's about learning. It's about waking up a sleeping mind, and getting excited about intellectual discovery. I'm not saying that the College of Santa Fe is the best example of this, but as far as I'm concerned the idea is pretty valid. I don't want that concept to vanish into big universities where the object is high grades and higher pay. Call me crazy, but I want my tax dollars to go into higher thoughts.

So College of Santa Fe, I'm sorry for all those fights we had and the times I didn't appreciate you. I'm sorry for ribbing you about the way the film students always dressed in black and smoked. I apologize for the way I complained about drafty classrooms and that time I had to teach in a basement room with no windows. You were a good egg, CSF.

Rest in Peace.