All About Marriage

In all the holiday business I forgot to tell you about a couple of things. Like the conversation I had with my dad (and sort of with my mom) one night over dinner. The extremely abridged version went something like this:

Dad: You're never going to meet a guy as smart as you.
Me: Sure I will.

Dad: No, you won't. You need to stop thinking like that. Look at me and your mom, I'm not as smart as she is.
Me: Yes you are. That's why your relationship works. You're not as educated, but you're just as smart. "Smart" doesn't just mean "has several college degrees". There are a lot of ways to be smart. Intelligence is a separate thing from book learning. And if I don't meet someone that can carry on conversations that I find interesting and intelligent, then I'm never going to get married. Why would I want to be with someone who isn't at least as smart as I am?

Dad: But the love of your life could be the UPS man!
Me: Yes. The love of my life could very well be a charming, intelligent, funny and kind UPS man. Who said I'm ruling out UPS men?!

Dad: I just don't want to hear you say you're never going to get married. You will.
Me: I might. I might if I find the right guy. But there is in fact a possibility that getting married is something I will never do. All I was trying to say was it's a possibility that I'll always be single.
Dad: I think you're holding out for too much. You're probably not going to find a relationship like the one Mom and I have. Very few people ever do.
Me: Then I'm not going to get married! Why would I settle for less than what you have? I've seen what a really good marriage looks like, how could I possibly be happy knowing that my own relationship wasn't as good as it possibly could be? That's the downside of having you as my parents, truthfully, because I've seen a relationship that's pretty damn amazing so now my own relationships have a lot of expecations to live up to. But you found a great relationship, and I could, too. And if I don't I'll just be alone.
Dad: You won't be alone!
Me: You don't know that. And why does it matter if I am? There's nothing I can do with a husband that I can't do just as well or maybe even better on my own.
Dad: You can't have that sort of attitude!
Mom: What are you talking about?! Of course she can have that kind of attitude, that's a GOOD attitude. Ashley, stop listening to your Dad, I don't know what he's talking about right now.

Dad: I'm just saying that you need to stop being so picky.
Me: Did he basically just tell me to settle?

Mom: Yes, and I don't know what he's talking about. You shouldn't ever settle, you do whatever you want to do.
Dad: But you're going to end up with somebody. You will.
Me: Okay. You're probably right, I probably will. I just don't understand what the big obsession with marriage is all of a sudden.
Dad: I thought you wanted to have children.

Me: Yes. I do. And I can also do that on my own, if I really have to.

And from there Dad tried to go off about single parenting and how I might go about having a baby and how I "wouldn't try to adopt a child, would you? Wouldn't you want it to have your own genes?" and I wisely said, "We're done talking about this for the night" because I'm not about to have an argument about a hypothetical decision that won't happen for fifteen years if it happens at all.

So yeah. I don't know what's up with Dad. What happened to being Daddy's Baby Girl and Dad running potential suitors off the porch with a shotgun and all those other cliches? And isn't the mother supposed to be the one that's all gung ho about marrying off her eligible daughters? What's with the role reversal?

I talked about it with my grandma a bit and her theory is that it's sort of a pride thing for my dad. He wants to believe his daughter is worthy of being married off, so to speak, so it bothers him because he thinks I don't think I'm worthy of finding a husband. (Wow, how archaic) But for me that's not what it's about at all. For me it's the total opposite. I am worthy. I'm worthy of waiting, holding out, finding a guy that's perfect for me. I don't have to settle for the first, second, or third guy that comes along and expresses an interest in me. I can hold out and wait for someone awesome to show up, and that's why I say things like "I'm going to be single forever". Because I'd rather be single forever than be with someone who isn't great for me. I don't see any problem with being picky, especially since the alternative to any guy is just me, by myself, and that's a pretty good thing to be most of the time.

Incidentally, Grandma ended the whole conversation by saying, "It's just that we look at you and we just know you're going to end up with somebody, so you have nothing to worry about."

Sigh. Thanks for understanding, guys.

On the subject of finding a perfect relationship for you, my friend Cassie got married on December 30th. It was so much fun, but also very surreal. I've had a couple of other friends get married, but none as good as Cas. Cassie and I have been friends for ten years. (TEN YEARS. Man, I feel old!)
My earliest memory of Cassie is from 8th grade, the day she passed me a note in stupid Ms. Hernandez's 9th period Spanish class that said, simply, "Do you preach the gospel?" I scrawled back something very intelligent and witty and funny, something like "Um...what are you talking about?" and a friendship was born. I still have all of our Spanish class notes in a box in my closet back home in El Paso, and all of them are equally nonsensical. My favorites include, "What if you were black and turned white like Michael Jackson?" and "We can't go see Evita this weekend because I got a 76 in Art and I'm grounded" and the infamous "Dear Ashley, You are a piece of caca with hair" (that one, which also included drawings of our friend Kelli with clown feet and our friend Lisette with a tomato head, was intercepted by Ms. H and earned us a trip to the hallway and threats about referrals to the vice principal's office...Ms. H was constantly threatening to send people to the office). The entire point of Cassie's notes was to try to make me laugh out loud and get into trouble. She was also a bad influence in our 6th period P.E. class, convincing me that Coach Gamboa wouldn't notice if we skipped participating for the ENTIRE SEMESTER and just hid out on the tennis courts (incidentally, she was right about that one and we both got "A"s for sitting on our butts all year).

We never ran in quite the same circle of friends, but our circles overlapped somewhat and we stayed friends all through high school. We weren't the sort of friends who ate lunch together daily or even hung out on weekends all that much, but we had a few classes together throughout high school, most notably our theatre production class. Cassie's favorite thing to do in that class was rope me into being her partner for Flashbacks [this show we did annually that was basically Karaoke With Costumes and Rehearsed Dance Routines] and then insist that our friend Kristen or I sing the bulk of the song while she danced in the background, therefore giving herself the opportunity to say "What are you talking about? I wasn't on stage at all" if something went wrong (and Cas was always convinced things were going to go badly). Our entire friendship has always been like that, full of teasing and tormenting and getting each other into trouble and laughing, laughing, and more laughing.

There was the time we went to Taco Cabana and had to run out of there full speed after one of us (we never can recall who it was exactly) broke the sink so that water was flowing onto the floor. Prom junior year, when a big group of us got together for a lasagna dinner at Cassie's house and then took a trolley to the dance and listened to "The Thong Song" over and over again. The fact that she called me "Queen Latifah" for months before I finally thought to ask why and her answer was, "Because she's your total opposite. She's big and black, you're skinny and white," as if that was a totally reasonable explanation.

When we graduated from high school in 2001, I honestly didn't expect to stay in touch with Cassie. We'd always been good friends but not BEST friends, and I thought we'd probably end up going our separate ways. Over the years I did in fact lose touch with many of my high school friends, and in fact I lost track of most of my very best friends, the ones I thought I'd always know (incidentally, this is probably more my fault than anyone else's, as I am terrible at staying in touch). Somehow, though, Cassie and I always stayed friends. Every time I was in town on a break from school we'd get together, and she would call me whenever she happened to be in Dallas/Fort Worth and later in Austin/San Antonio and we'd spend an afternoon or evening hanging out and catching up. We spent many an hour talking about our relationships of the moment, the good parts, the bad parts, and the crazy parts (and oh, there were some crazy parts).

Last December Cassie introduced me to Jason, and even though he wasn't feeling well and was very quiet that night at the Ale House, I could tell he was a really good guy. When she called me two weeks later to tell me they were getting married and asked me to be a bridesmaid, I agreed right away.

An entire year went by somehow, and I got to know Jason for real. My initial impression wasn't wrong; he is in fact a fun, nice, good guy. And most importantly, Cassie and Jason are very happy together. And, perhaps even more importantly than that, actually, Cassie seems to be completely and totally herself with him. In my opinion, there is no better gauge of a relationship than that.

The morning of her wedding we were getting our hair done at the salon and Cassie turned to me and said, "You need to go tell Katie that her eye makeup is pretty. Katie gets really self-conscious when you tell her she looks pretty, and I'm hoping you'll make her cry. My goal is for all of my bridesmaids to cry today." Typical Cassie, teasing and tormenting even as her wedding veil is being pinned in place.

I wouldn't have her any other way. I hope Jason and Cassie have years of happiness and love. (And I still can't believe she's actually MARRIED!)

P.S.-She met her husband in a nursing home. Just goes to show that you really never know where you're gonna come across that special guy, huh?