One year later, the same gender marriage debate continues to eat up precious air time on the twenty-four hour news cycle. And, my husband and I celebrated one year of marriage in the eyes of The Episcopal Church. (See the wedding pics at Facebook.)
The No On Marriage people are traveling the country in a bus. Their visits to state capitols are not generating large crowds of supporters. Opponents of the NOM movement suggest this bus tour is a ploy to discredit the pro-same sex marriage activists as they express feelings about the tour. The No people have gone on record saying they are the victims of hateful speech. Whatever.
Fortunately Lindsey Lohan being sent to jail and Chelsea Clinton getting married have pushed NOM's tour off the Google News Page for the time being. While Lindsay and Chelsea realized their immediate fates, my husband and I forgot about our anniversary. Three seperate text messages congratulating us reminded me what I was doing this time last year.
After living together twenty years, Paul and I tied the knot in the most un-nautical and most terribly vanilla fashion. The Episcopal Church was present in the form of an ordained priest but I've always known that in the eyes of God Paul and I were sufficiently married.
One year later, one tumultuous year of personal, financial, legal, difficulties as well as the always unwelcome devasation of loved ones dying, Paul and I continue to be married. We promised for better or worse,as spelled out in the vows from The Book of Common Prayer. So forth and so on.
Now, I've become a full time student. More of this anon, but for now, this quarter I'm taking a basic algebra class. I'm doing surprisingly well. My instructor is young, easy on the eyes, and passionate about mathematics. I dashed off a poem about marriage in algebraic terms. Feel free to edit it or make comments.
An Expression
has no sum
a + b like mom & dad
before their expression
became an equation: EX:
.5 + .5 = a + b
Until a and b get it on, they’re
just another collateral couple
easy to tell apart.
From the road along our house
strangers visiting the prolific
(a + b = 14) family at the bottom
of the hill might formulate an expression
for our corner: EX:
a + b = (sprawling ranch house + lush garden)
+ lawns(2) + mowed(2)
Their variables would be incorrect,
promise, for sure, the centuries have spoken.
We’re (-x + -x) the neighborhood integers
who shan’t ever become an equation
even if the sum law (l)is scribbled
out inside rooms off hallowed halls
down there in Olympia or DC.
Despite an equation (l) = -x + -x
(a + b) will always be, easier to add,
like Hamburger Helper one-skillet-cooking
just add water. Too simple so no tongues
stumble over pronouns saving the a or b
having to remember which x is which,
so hard to tell them apart.
Howdy Jerry! You won't require any strength at all to ingest my comment! I just want to say I'm on board with the sentiments you've expressed so well here. And all the best to you and your husband! Congratulations on the knot-tying ceremony, however non-nautical it was. Someday.....someday, if we can manage to fry some much bigger fish than the societal acceptance of same-sex marriage, (important to humanity as it is/should be) we might just be blessed enough as a species to see it settle back into the wallpaper as a 'non-event' (I still think that this a few hundred years off, sadly. I'm neither a theist or deist....but my innate sense of justice and fairplay demands equality, of course, when it comes to such a basic human right as marriage.......more power to the happy couple and those who aspire to be as you two....married!
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