Last night, my best friend, whom I have known since I was nine years old got engaged.
As we both giggled over the phone and I ran around the room asking about what the ring looked like and how it happened, it dawned on me that I felt like I was back to the tender, naive age of nine. And it was a welcomed altruism. One that took me by surprise.
But honestly, how could I avoid reverting back to the land of fairy tales and Prince Charmings? As a child, I had been conditioned, or more accurately "targeted" by toy campaigns from heartless corporate big-wigs, to view love as such?...hence this absolutely heinous commercial about this year's hot toy, which is called (finger in throat) Diamond Castle Glimmer Horse, which I linked to this blog for your entertainment.
This pink, cupcake-eating, heart-string pulling, genderless horse is a perfect example of the kind of things I fell prey to when I was a little girl. Aside from it's creepy misalignment with reality in general, (it was a harsh blow when I discovered unicorns were a farse, it hit me harder than the Santa hoax), it also plays a fiendish role in distorting what marriage is in the minds of pliable little "daddy's princesses".
And let me tell you from experience, there ain't no pink horse that flies you to a diamond castle every night after you clock out of your nine-to-five job, tired and disenchanted, having to face a fridge full of groceries that you don't want to make and a load of unfolded laundry wrinkling it's way to ninety years old in the dryer.
Granted, I am not a sage. I am a little nub on the tree of long lasting marriages. I will be celebrating my 5th Christmas with my husband but only our second married one. I know I have loads to learn. Perhaps one of the biggest things I had to learn is this: while I was force fed diamond encrusted dreams through an IV loaded with saccharine cartoons and plastic play-things, it came into focus that normalcy is so much more comforting than the fallacy of fairy tales.
I am happy for my best friend and her husband-to-be. Not because I think her beach wedding will be spectacular, or because she deserves the perfect ending to her singledom buttoned off by the sparkle of a diamond ring. Its because she will now be joining the ranks of women who believed in love, and now get to find out what the whole thing is really about.
Marriage for me, has enlightened, tested, refined, matured, and held me in so many ways. Watching TV with my best friend (that's my boy) in pajamas eating salsa and chips for dinner for the third night in a row. It's a far cry from suppers in the dining hall, with roasted boar and candied pecans but man, is it so much better!
I do not live in a castle, I do not ride a flying horse to work. I did not marry prince charming, I do not sing to animals, and even if I did they wouldn't understand me (Snow White is a damn liar). So when I look down at my ring I see a testament of promise, that no matter what happens...a true reflection of human frailty and acceptance will be found.
So my dearest friend, welcome to "for better or for worse"- the stuff that real life is made of.
1 comment:
I was never quite fooled by Ken and Barbies' relationship, but I most certainly decided that my marriage would resemble the relationship that Erik Draven and Shelley had in the Crow. I swore that he was the type of guy I would end up with.
Did I marry Erik Draven? Well of course not, but I did marry a guy who will eat 5 bowls of chili in four days when there is not money to buy the boar. I hear ya and I'm right there with ya.
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