Guacamole Prayer

During my dress fitting the administrative guy at the Dress Doctor (yes, the one you are thinking of, the one who let the scrawny bleach blonde with the crazy poofy, bow-at-her-would-be-breasts go ahead of me because she had been so nasty and inhuman to him) asked me if I was going to be doing any kind of wedding diet. I laughed and told him I planned to have lots of guacamole, brie, and bacon between now and my wedding day. (That's a prayer, by the way.) He laughed nervously, and I can imagine from his clientele that there's not a lot of full-fat-eating brides who come his way. Even I had the ill-fated and short-lived scheme to use those ridiculous bands to tone my arms so I can't exactly claim immunity from the notion of a wedding diet.

No, I am not dieting. I am not toning my arms. I am not increasing my work outs. Planning a wedding IS a work out. It's certainly enough of a work out for me. I don't even feel pressure to diet, or at least, not any more pressure than I do being an American woman who was raised on on TV and Seventeen Magazine. It's not a secret I am a little baby crazy, and I think about one day having a daughter and what would I like to teach her about her body or about getting married? (I stole this question about my imaginary daughter from one of my favorite young mothers, bridal caboose rider, Mimi.) I would want to teach my daughter that getting married is a time to open your hands and heart and life to all the people who want to celebrate you and support you and your partner in creating a new life. I would hope it would be clear from how I live my life that taking more love into one's life is incompatible with deprivation around food.

I would want her to know she has my full support in creating both a wedding and a marriage that is entirely her own and a full expression of her and her partner's. I would want her to have lots of support and friends (she can have a therapist too if she's lucky-- hell, she can have more than one--I hear that's been done before) to listen to her and support her and help her wade through all the voices about how it should be or how it is done. I certainly hope by the time my offspring gets married that she (or he) would have spent enough time with Jeff and me to internalize that she is Beloved just as she is and that I have no need for her to shrink or contort or be anything at all other than who she is. I would want her to know that she can ask me for what she wants and I will be honest about my availability and limitations. I hope to have passed on to her an immense capacity for joy and connection and gratitude for the miracle of making a new family and bringing two worlds together. I hope she will feel capable and proud of making a mess, of being a mess, and doing it all imperfectly. I hope she will do whatever she wants and feels as much as she can.

I would want her to know that planning a wedding is just a moment in time, and like all others, it will pass and become a memory that is pressed into photo albums and narratives. I would most, most, most, most of all want her to know that she deserves to take care of herself and do whatever she needs to do to be available for the joy of the millions of moments that make up her engagement period.