Geronimo!

…then comes marriage, then comes (fill in the blank) with a baby carriage? I’m surely going to ruffle many colorful feathers here, but I really wonder. When did we begin not only to accept, but celebrate, even envy, women and couples, who have children before they even talk walking down the aisle?

Some people are going to be really ticked off. I know there are those of you out there with different stories. Not so traditional. Not so easy. And these are circumstances I would never even pretend to understand, or judge. But what I am talking about, gritching about, is a society that has nearly fully, NO. Fully decided that it is just great to promote and flaunt men and women who get pregnant, and then maybe, talk about what they want to do about it. Or try, like the rumors surrounding the obnoxious Angelina Jolie, to get fertility help, on the heels of, and maybe even before, a divorce is even final. Do we have no respect for ourselves? What do we want for our children? Really? Even if we must deal with some unconventional circumstances, is this what we desire, dream of, for our own?

You have your story. I have mine. And they don’t always look the same. I’m all for diversity. And some people truly believe there is no merit in a piece of paper only. There is Sting and Trudy. Who after quite some time and several children, finally did go for the piece of paper. But have apparently, and yes, this is subjective, been faithful to eachother and thier children for years and years. And it is important to understand that I am not condemning all women out there who either met her husband at the altar in a maternity gown, or brought their mutual child to the reception. I know all about casting the first stone, and judging ye not. But there is nothing un-Godly about questioning certain societal trends. Trends meaning the things that are coming in vogue. That we aspire to, or admire. Or think is sooo cool. And we are knee deep in a trend that says if you got the hots for each other, by all means, go for it. Bring a baby into your 2nd, 3rd or 4th relationship. Doesn’t matter if the ink is dry on the papers. Or if you’ve even notified a current spouse. This time it’ll take. This time, your loins are screaming the truth. Just ask the children of your previous marriages/affairs.

Angelina Jolie. Gag. Sorry, but hearing news bits about her “wonderful news”, with the ever devoted (right Jennifer A?) Brad Pitt just turns my stomach. The ever beloved TomKat. More gag. Apparently, they found each other, went out a few times, got pregnant, she considers his “religion” (just personally, I’m not into any religion that denounces the potential pharmaceutical needs of a post-partum woman), and they start planning a wedding. And all the world is enthralled. Isn’t it romantic that he proposed at the Eiffel Tower? Isn’t he brilliant for going at it with Matt Louer, vehemently espousing that medical intervention is unintelligent? Misguided? Just plain wrong? Remember the beautiful Catherine Zeta Jones? Her husband, the dashing Michael Douglas? If I remember correctly, she was proudly displaying her bulging belly before the papers had even been completed on Mr. Douglas’ divorce with his previous wife. The one that saw him through all his years of trying to make it in the business, and raised his other children at the same time. The toothy Julia? She wore t-shirts berating Danny Moder’s at-the-time current wife, to get her out of the way. And we were all soooo happy when their love was finally made official on her ranch out west somewhere. Aaahhhh, true love. Wasn’t it true love when she went barefoot to the wedding with Lyle Lovett?

I am not saying mistakes can’t be made. Or rather, lessons learned. I know many of us go through heartache before we find our true one. That the things we think could kill us, that we dread the most, are so often the things that make us, for the better, who we are. Or that we find our ideal situation may just turn out to be without the one we thought we’d share the rest of our years and raise a child with. It happens. And maybe, our baby is on the way before we exchange gold bands. These circumstances can still result in a wonderful life.

But if this is the case, if these are the trials through which we lived, is it really our dream for our daughters to experience the same? Do we want her to find herself pregnant, and wonder if the father will really stick around? Do we want her to win a man from his wife? And if so, what’s to give her the confidence that this time will be it. I’ve always wondered, if I am once the other woman, what will prevent another from taking my place one day? I’m thinking that the track record there may not instill so much peace in my heart. Do we want our children to have to wonder if the one they love will really be there? I’ve certainly survived, and even thrived, through some stuff. Yet, I would not wish it upon my children. I get really ticked at the constant barage of media out there, telling my children, telling your children, that certain things are not only OK, but normal, and even desirable. Some things just are not. And if you consider yourself more open, more liberal, more accepting than you think I am sounding in this little rant, just picture your child in one of the situations of which I speak. Your little girl. Or your son. When I personalize it, it makes a difference in my so-called philosophies. Does it for you?

I’m just fed up with the glamorous shots of couples touching bellies, and shopping in $150 per outfit baby shops. When they haven’t even, for all apparent purposes, begun to plan a life together. Commit. Say they’ll stick it out, for better or worse. I’m not concerned with the state’s approval and silly certificate. I’m concerned about a heart issue. Again, I’m not condemning or judging all the men and women who find themselves in circumstances they may not have exactly expected. And then they go and do the best they can. I’m just tired of the glamorization of babies and families through people who’s idea of long term is a movie contract. From the people who started that remember the children a few years ago, telling us, the rest of the country, as if we didn’t know, that some really important years of a child’s life are the first three. Or some such nonsense, but who’s heads were people like Bruce and Demi, who’d long since divorced. Do you have to? I’m not in your relationship, so I cannot cast opinion. But in these celebrity cases? Don’t even get me started. Bed to bed, relationship to relationship, family to family, and then a re-made family upon re-made family. Call me square. Call me old fashioned. Tell me I’m judgemental and closed off. Religious freak. I’m not sure I care. I don’t think you have to hold to one certain religion or denomination to understand what I’m saying. One of our dearest friends and I were just bemoaning the loss of the family on the phone the other day. The loss of values, and hope of relationship within the family. And she is Orthodox Jew. And I am Charismatic Christian (on a good day). I think we all know, deep in our heart of hearts, that there are certain circumstances more conducive for children and families than others. And that our lovely members of society in their la-la land out in L.A. may not have a clue as to what that is. But they seem to be dictating to the rest of us what it is.

So. You don’t really believe in marriage, as a traditional institution. You don’t need any government, any religion, to tell you who you can love, and live with. Although I lead a pretty conventional life, I understand some of this. I love my husband, and we belong together. With our children. No matter who has or who has not signed off on some fragment of a form. What I wish, what I pray for, is a honoring of what it really is to be a family. And some universal understanding that it just may not be what we see in Hollywood on a regular basis. This may never happen, but I can hope. And I can still just go about saying gag about the Angelinas, and the Britney’s and Kevins, who can’t hold it together even a year after the baby comes, and all the others who are so privileged, but can’t really appreciate what they have. And think the rest of us are pedestrian, at best.

As quoted in the article by Ben Stein, one post prior to this, the heroes of our age are not the flashy ones. They are the ones who dig in and do the work that must be done. That we cannot survive without. And that especially means raising our children, for the next generation. It is no light task. And the perks suck. But it does mean everything. And the example we are being given by a large percentage of our culture, especially the wealthy and famous culture, is just wrong. Send me all the hate mail you want. But it is. Lord, help us.

Forwarded to me by my Dad, an article worth taking a few minutes to read.

For many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called “Monday Night At Morton’s.” (In case you don’t know, Morton’s is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth a few minutes of your time.

Ben Stein’s Last Column…
============================================
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a Star in Today’s World?

As I begin to write this, I “slug” it, as we writers say, which means I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is “eonlineFINAL,” and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.

It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the world’s change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton’s, while better than ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton’s is not the star galaxy it once was, though it probably will be again.

Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today’s world, if by a “star” we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails.

They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer. A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude of all of the decent people of the world.

A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.

A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and a little girl alive in Baghdad.

The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying to protect Iraqis from terrorists.

We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.

I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is eating at Morton’s is a big subject.

There are plenty of other stars in the American firmament…the policemen and women who go off on patrol in South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and in cancer wards.

Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real hero.

I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters. This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a comic as Steve Martin…or Martin Mull or Fred Willard–or as good an economist as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely close to any of them.

But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife and well indeed with my parents (with my sister’s help). I cared for and paid attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with my sister and me reading him the Psalms.

This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path. This is my highest and best use as a human.

Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein

Almost Thirteen Places We’ve Lived 1. Dallas, TX a 525 sq. foot apartment off the North Dallas Tollway, at Franklin Rd. 1992-1995 2. Smyrna, GA my folks home while we looked for a place of our own, December to February, 1995 3. Smyrna, GA our own rental, 1940s bungalow about 2 miles from where I had gone to highschool. First 2 babies born there, 1995-1998 4. Nashville, TN a 1920s rental near downtown, spring 1998-spring 1999 5. Nashville, TN our own home, first buy, 1920 Arts and Crafts stone bungalow in a neighborhood called Sylvan Park, one mile from our rental, May 1999-January 2000 6. Decatur, GA a rental on N. Decatur Rd., where we discovered our 3rd baby was on the way, January 2000-March 2000 7. Pine Lake, GA our own home where our 3rd was born, March 2000-December 2000. The one we still owe on. 8. Franklin, TN a small rental a couple of miles from downtown, December 2000-January 2003 9. Spring Hill, TN a larger rental about 15 miles from downtown Franklin, January 2003-October 2003 10. Greenville, SC a tiny rental, about 1100 sq. feet for all 5 of us, downtown, October 2003-October 2004 11. Greenville, SC our own home, about 6 miles from the rental. A 1950s 2 story traditional, currently in the middle of a kitchen remodel, mudroom addition, fireplace and built-ins overhaul, and hopefully screen porch add-on. And, it’s the first home we’ve owned, and lived in for an entire year.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others comments. It’s easy, and fun! Be sure to update your Thirteen with links that are left for you, as well! I will try to link to everyone who participates and leaves a link to their 13 things. Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!
View More Thursday Thirteen Participants