Here Be Marriage |
A place to think about marriage. The personal essays here relate to the specific experience of the author, and are not meant to suggest, in any way, that there is a "right" or "wrong" way to get married, or that you even should get married. They are merely approaching marriage from the perspective of if you're going to do it, what questions need to be asked and answered? Why "Here Be Marriage?" It's a riff on the old "Here Be Dragons" map tag, and, in a way, marriage is the same sort of mythical thing. |
In a few minutes, Rachel and Bob are going to be pronounced husband and wife. These are excellent words, husband and wife—they lean toward each other, they exist in reference to each other, they link arms. “Wife” especially seems druidic and traditional: like “life” but with the addition of the womanly W. “Husband,” despite its traces of Saxon farming methods, makes me think most of “hatband”—and this seems right, if you imagine a conventional movie image of a man in a 1955 hat, with a nice gray hatband. Not a mobster hat, jus the hat of a good man—a husband. Boyfriends don’t wear hats.
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So I am very happy that Bob and Rachel are getting married. Bob will be a good husband, and Rachel a good wife. They are proud of each other, and this mutual pride is one of the nicest things you can sense about a couple.
"From “Wedding” by Nicholson Baker, from his collected essays The Size of Thoughts.
