Love and Marriage

Once there was, and once there wasn't a teenaged girl living in a foreign land. Her parents were or weren't from India, although she herself had grown up in Orange County. At any rate, she finds herself, now in her 14th year, living in a small frontier town on the edge of the Mojave desert, her father in prison, her mother, no less imprisoned, running a small motel day and night. Even more astonishing than this unlikely turn of events, is the fact that she has somehow become reincarnated as a Mexican. It's a lot to deal with during Freshman year.

She called a couple of evenings ago, "I need to ask your Mom about Mt. St. Helen for my science paper."

"Mt. St. Helen? What do you need to know?"

"...science project...blah blah blah...I can't talk to my Mom about anything. She never talks to me. I've already broken every rule of Hinduism. I want to try out for cheerleading. My Mom will never let me. I had a boyfriend, but he betrayed me. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend. I can't have a boyfriend until I finish college and medical school! My mom doesn't drive and doesn't speak English. That's why we have satellite, so we can get Indian channels."

"Uh...I was in Hawaii when Mt. St. Helen erupted."

Man. I have no idea how to help this poor kid. Clearly, she needs to have more to do besides sit around cooped up in a motel watching over-heated romantic Indian romances, and dreaming of being a cheerleader, but what can I do? I have my own daughter chasing tennis balls every night. It is all she can do to eat, finish her homework and fall into bed exhausted before she can think much about boys. Heh heh.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about.

This post is about arranged marriages. I said earlier that I wondered if they were one of those societal conventions which distinguishes the more highly civilized from the barbarians. This is a concept that came to me in an Indian restaurant once. It was my husband's first experience with Indian food, so we were discussing the entrees and the menu and so forth. He really liked the daal soup, and asked what was in it. It came to me that the list of ingredients were not what made the soup so good, rather the combination of flavors, subtly synthesized so that none really stood out, but they created a sort of dance across the palate. I made a comment about it which ended with the statement "...this is just one of those things left over from a more advanced civilization." Arranged marriages might be another of those things. After all, "falling in love" is all well and good, but can you really base a lifetime on hormones and adventure?

Evidently, you can about %46 of the time. I'm not sure what the odds are for arranged marriages lasting, but I do know that when it comes to my own kids, I really don't feel good about leaving such a major decision completely up to them. Surely a consensus among the adults in the situation would be a much better way to go into the future?

I don't know.

When I was an undergraduate ( I took a BFA in French, BTW), my boyfriend, Bah'man/Hossein/Jack, told me that his late father had had three wives. His mother was the youngest, and the only one with children. The wives lived separately from each other. The second wife was the widow of some relative, and his father married her rather than leave her homeless. Or so the story went. Evidently, the father was a big womanizer in general, and none of the wives were happily married. I have an image of them all stuffed into the back seat of a car, tight-lipped and cordial. B/H/J loved all of them and called the co-wives his Aunts. The thing is this: what is the difference between having three wives, and having a wife and two ex-wives? -- You can't put them all in the back seat, for one thing.

Since then, I've met many couples who's parents were matches made in living rooms and over tea tables. They seem to be as happy or happier than anyone else's parents. My daughters asked me once how it all worked, if you just showed up for your wedding, or what?

"It's not like that," I said. "You get to a certain age, and maybe some boy notices you, so he asks his mom. Everyone more or less knows each other anyway, so the mom and maybe the sisters just happen to pay a visit to your mom. They talk about different things, then someone starts asking about "the kids." Then, maybe some pictures come out, and the idea occurs to someone that it might be nice if you two got to know each other. So something is arranged, a dinner party, or another visit, or something. They everybody gets feedback. If you like each other, it goes for a little while, then you are expected to declare what's going on, engaged, or just friends, or whatever. If you don't like the person, then your mom starts visiting other moms. You do get a choice, and some input, depending on the type of family you have, but it's just not all up to you."

A the end of the day, my conclusion is that there isn't really such a difference between Moslem, or Hindu, or Chinese or Christian marriages. There is no divorce, really, here or there or anywhere. You can spend money, and feel like you've solved a problem, but at the end of the day you still have to deal with these people, especially if you have kids. There they are at the weddings, the funerals, in sickness and at Graduation. Not to mention finances. All you can really do is put space between you and add more people in. At least in the East there is a protocol, and a hierarchy, and everyone is expected to get along.

--Not that I'd want to live that way, mind you. Oh no, I've been raised to demand my God-given right to equality...but I can see the appeal. Frankly, there are days when I wouldn't mind a younger wife or two to help out around here, and it might be nice to have a baby in the house without having to go through that whole pregnancy ordeal.

So this is what I tell my kids, when they worry about if we are going to get a divorce. Don't worry, I say. There is no such thing.