My name is Jaime and I have a broken biological clock. Even though I’ve passed the thirty-year mark, I still don’t have a deeply-rooted, primal desire to pop out a baby. Problem is, if I don’t have a child within a relatively short window (short being under ten years) the decision will be made for me. If the Wedding Road Trip fairy could grant me anything, I’d ask for ten more years of my twenties in which Chris and I can frolic through the fields and fly around the world without worrying about nap time and baby wipes.
I’d like to say that going on this Wedding Road Trip has inspired me to rush home, close my eyes, spread my thighs, and think of babies. But it hasn’t. Instead, it has done quite the opposite. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not like our friends and family members have children that resemble Satan’s earthly army. Quite the opposite, in fact. But after seeing several families who haven’t been on a vacation in years, parents who don’t have sex because they are too tired, and sleep schedules that remind me of cramming for tests in college, I can’t say I’m finding the idea the least bit attractive. Sure, there are babies out there like Alexa and children like Addy, but that doesn’t insure that our child won’t turn out like Veruca Salt- the Willy Wonka girl, not the band.
In some ways, I feel pressured to have children because my older brother and his wife have opted out and it will be several years before my younger brother and his wife start making mini Gregamels. Plus, who will I have around to play my reindeer games when Chris gets sick of taking road trips around the country?
At this point, all I can hope for is a morning when I wake up with the desire to carry a large melon in my stomach for nine months.
Hey, it could happen.
Most of the people we’ve visited on this trip have been married, with a few dating situations and the occasional divorce, but no one else has been in that odd limbo known as “being engaged.” It’s a fun time, but dominated by people asking about your wedding (when is it? why is it there? why are you going on a wedding road trip?). So when we met up with my friend Ulla and her fiance Keith in Cambridge, we could bond over our mutual status.
For the record, Ulla and Keith are not doing your run of the mill wedding – they have a five-city, three country extravaganza planned. Admittedly, they are from Germany (her), Canada (him) and live in the US, so a single location would have been tough… unless they got married in O’Hare Airport. Hmm…
Keith shared with us a cautionary tale of a past engagement of his that went awry. The story was one of those crazy “I can’t believe that actually happened to you” situations that left Keith burned for several years. But nothing like the magic (and sanity) of Ulla to bring him back to the place where love (and marriage) are possible.
Ulla imparted one key price of perspective – the Buddhist idea of accepting yourself. As I can best recollect, the concept is that before you can truly give yourself to someone else, and accept them, is that you need to accept yourself for who you are. I’ve got to admit I might not be there yet, since there are many things I’d like to improve about myself, but there’s something powerful about the idea.
When we were in Boston, I fulfilled a promise made long ago. No, we didn’t break down and elope. And no, I didn’t move to Canada, as threatened after the 2004 election (I moved to San Francisco instead, which is really another country anyway). Rather, we stopped by the HQ for my employer, Sasaki Associates, in Watertown, Massachusetts. This is the company that kindly allowed me to take a six week sabbatical for our Wedding Road Trip.
The company is located in a Millard Fillmore-era mill on the Charles River, a site so historic that the paper bag was apparently invented there. If only something really useful, like the dirigible, had been created at the site. Sasaki has converted the mill into a LEED-certified office building populated with architects, city planners, and the like.
It was nice to see the people that I work with over email and phone from SF. We didn’t solicit wedding advice from my colleagues. The visit was purely social, with little discussion about clients, the economy, or why my timesheets are late again.
I’m going to sound like I’m repeating myself, but once again we went to visit my cousins. (In case you’re wondering, I have seven cousins on my mom’s side of the family, so that’s why they keep cropping up on the Wedding Road Trip.) This one (we’ll call him Josh) lives outside of Boston with his wife Kris, son Alexander, and son-arriving-one-week-before-our-wedding.
Josh is the oldest of the cousins and tends to be ahead of the rest of us with marriage, grad school, and children. I even sort of followed him career-wise (he’s a landscape architect, and I’m an urban planner). I’m happy to travel in his wake, since he’s got a solid relationship with Kris and an amazing child in Alexander.
Josh and Kris shared a lot of sound relationship advice with us, but for the purposes of this blog, let’s talk about raising children. We’ve seen a lot of different arrangements of childraising on this journey, and have no definitive judgments on right or wrong – we’re still learning. But we must say that Alexander seems like an exceptional outcome. He is three years old and the first thing he does when he walks in the house is put away his shoes. I am 34 and still have not learned how to do this. He also built a fort out of paper towel rolls, and then promptly put them all away. According to Josh, Alexander came up with the idea himself and brought all of the recyclable paper towels up from the basement without assistance. We couldn’t figure out exactly how Josh and Kris made this happen, but it might be because they treat him respectfully, sort of like a fellow adult (no, he’s not allowed to drink beer or watch HBO).
Sigh. It would be great to get some of that mojo bottled.
I owe my cousin Daniel an apology. Back when he was in high school and I was in the sixth grade, my grandmother took us both to Clovis Lakes, the local water park. For the entire day, I reported to Daniel and gave him the phone numbers of girls who he thought was cute. By the end of the day, he had about twenty numbers. This sounds like a great story except…
All the numbers were fake. Every last one of them.
Sure, the girls thought Daniel was cute. They even told me to tell him that. But when it came to giving out their phone numbers, they weren’t going to go the extra mile. Desperate to impress my super cool cousin, I went the distance for them.
And so there it is, Daniel. The secret that’s been haunting me for years. I hope you forgive me… and please don’t tell your sister that I read all of her diaries while she was out on a date.
Daniel has since grown up to become a doctor and has no problems asking women for numbers. This confidence is probably what snagged him Kiva, his girlfriend of two years. Kiva is also a doctor, something that brings out a competitive streak in both of them from time to time. Word has it that their dinner table discussions often center on radiology, a study neither of them ever seems to find tiring.
Over breakfast, Daniel and Kiva shared the secret to their success- working long hours. Given that they only see each other for a few hours of week, they treasure that time together and don’t sweat the small stuff. Okay, I made up the fact that they tout long hours as their secret sauce, but it completely makes sense. After all, who has time for mindless drama when you can be saving people’s lives?
Daniel also shared an insight that he had several years ago about people in general. After dealing with a particularly difficult situation with an important person in his life, he realized that the problem was actually his own. By accepting that “people are people” and that he wouldn’t be able to change the person in question, he was able to let go of the angst that he felt. I found this to be particularly helpful advice, as Chris and I have recently been dealing with accepting the reality that we both suck… a little bit.
Kavi commented that she has never spent so much time talking about relationships in one sitting. This made me laugh, as that’s pretty much been our lives for the past month. That brought up another point, however. If we spend so much time dissecting our relationships, when do we have time to live them?
Spending time with Daniel and Kavi reminded me of how relationships and life are cyclical. Family members especially, play important roles that ebb and flow over the years. While I haven’t had a deep conversation with Daniel in several years, after this meeting, I am sure that Chris and I will find a path to Massachussetts to connect once again in the very near future. There’s something beautiful about finding your way back to a relationship that was once very important to you. And Daniel, I promise not to give you any more fake numbers… not that you need them.
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