"Bride"

I confess that I am not a blogger, nor a writer.  I am just a midwest art history professor who is about to move out of the world of hermit professor with 3 cats (in truth I have 0 cats, but such is the stereotype) and into the world of bride, Mrs and someday, mother.

When the love of my life, MarinerMagic, finally proposed about a month ago I was beyond.... well.... just beyond any human emotion I have a nice smarty word for... and for me, that's pretty beyond.  But within 24 hours I noticed something, a not so subtle shift in the way that I thought about myself; thought about who I am.  And it wasn't just me, the whole world did it.

Here's the thing, we got engaged in mid-August and we are getting married just before Christmas.  Yes, of the same year!  (Insert disbelieving, "no it can't be done, what are you thinking, you must hate flowers and parties and nice things" gasp here.)  So the planning is moving quickly.  I went from clandestine online wedding dress shopping and sneaking off with my girlfriends to try on the real thing to brazen emails popping into my inbox saying, "Dear beautiful bride, congratulations on your engagement!  He's probably a nice guy, but if not, don't worry!  Our (food, music, cake, flowers, elephant rides) are so unique and wonderful that your dream wedding will be dreamy, even if he isn't."  Okay, so that's a sarcastic paraphrase, but that hits pretty close to the mark.  I realized within the first two weeks of being engaged that I didn't much care for the title "bride."

The word "bride" is supposed to make every woman feel transformed and beautiful.  I felt happy and loved and secure and joyful, but I didn't suddenly feel like some super model version of myself.  (If I had suddenly looked more like Natalie Portman, my beloved probably wouldn't have minded, but....)  If I have transformed, it is not into an ethereal creature in white who can bestow mystical powers on little girls with a touch of her magic bridal bouquet, but rather into a controlling, obsessed, vindictive shrew who tries all day not to yell at everyone from the florist to MrMarinerMagic to my mother about the width of ribbon to be tied on lavender bundles that will be hung mostly outside of the guests' view.  This coming from a woman who has spent most of the last 6-10 years cuddling texts on post-modern architectural theory and the American Arts and Crafts movement in the solitude of a comfy yet sloppy single gal apartment.

One week after we became engaged and the serious business of choosing a venue for our December wedding near Seattle was done, I was back in the midwest in my classroom teaching new freshman to freewrite, compose poems and creatively outline essays.  Freshman writing seminar is one of the bright lights of my academic year.  My freewrites in the past are little time capsule gems, which are sometimes interesting and sometimes fluff.  When I look back at this year's freewrites all I will find are lists of wedding "to-dos."  This makes me sad.  And so I started thinking.....

Perhaps once I get through all this wedding planning, past the day when I become officially MrsMarinerMagic.... I will wake up and realize that I am still me.  I am still the person that I was at 3 when I wore my swimsuit and cowboy boots out into the front yard to drop rocks in a bucket of water.  I am still the person who saw a Rembrandt painting in high school integrated arts and was instantly uplifted.  I am still the person whose most vivid memory of England is riding on the train from London to Liverpool and trying to answer blue collar questions about Monica Lewinsky.  I am still the person who has spent nearly all of her disposable income on books and shoes.  These are the small things.  The quotidian moments that make me who I am.

However, my life is about to change from being about taking care of myself, to being in a partnership where it will often be more important to take care of someone else.  Here is where I hope to capture the new quotidian moments of my life.  Not as a bride, not as a Mrs. and not as a mom.  But as me.