TO HAVE & TO HOLD
/June 16th. Our day. That was the day the knot was tied, the vows were said, the cake was eaten. The day it all started was actually weeks and months before that. I don't remember it being an actual moment; more like an unfolding. We didn't shake a Magic 8 Ball. There was no Rock, Paper, Scissors, or coins tossed. There was a bit of ignorant bliss, romance, naivette, hormones, young love and belief that this was a match made in heaven. At least that's the way I remember it.
We didn't use the traditional vows in our marriage ceremony. We wrote our own and they definitely had an early 70s zeitgeist of peace and love to them, but they were sincere and have stood the test of time.
When I speak of traditional vows I'm talking about those that go something like this:
I, ____, take you, ____, to be my husband/wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part.
First, we didn't even know what "to have" and "to hold" meant. Next, we were kids. We were invulnerable to stuff like worse, poorer, and sickness much less death. Why bring all that crap into the celebration?
As I think about this anniversary of our wedding, I'm 52 years older and I still am not sure I understand what have and hold mean. I could guess; and I will before the essay is finished. All these years later I don't know that I would want those words in our vows if we were to do one of those vow-renewal things. That sounds so possession-y, like some kind of claim of ownership. Like maybe: "I promise TO HAVE control over you and TO HOLD you back from being your own person" or something.
I think my attitude has been marred by all the focus on that twisted theology that religious fundamentalists call "complementarianism". I would love to write about how I feel about it but I'm not going to let it be a dark cloud over my intent of writing a heartfelt sentiment about how blest out of my heart, head and soul I am to have been married to My Amazing Missus for more than half a century.
So, here's how I'm viewing and understanding having and holding. Let's start with the dark side of having/holding.
Remember poor old Peter? The guy that was known for eating a lot of pumpkin; so much in fact that he has been known for eons as Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater?
He had a relationship problem. Or, was his problem a wayward woman, or maybe he had signed up for a doctrine that somehow believes that wives are subordinate to husbands. The question that other men seeking submissive wives might have is: how in the world did he get her into that pumpkin shell and in what state was she in that he was able to keep her there "very well"?
Sometimes seeking to have and hold turns into an ugly form of possesion--dehumanizing another to the point that they exist only for the other's use: like a commodity.
Let me illustate with the this little excerpt from a newspaper article:
The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train tracks, roads and a barbed-wire fence, looks like the kind of place where beauty goes to die. But within its walls, crated or sealed cheek by jowl in cramped storage vaults, are more than a million of some of the most exquisite artworks ever made. --New York Times.
I realize that it seems like I'm using an inanimate object: art, to try to make my point about being fully human, created in the image of The Creator. But think of it as representing something bigger. Let's call it "beauty". Somethings are just not meant to be KEPT. Having and holding are so much more than that.
Let me try it this way. If you are a parent or a grandparent, or maybe an aunt or an uncle, this next sentence will cause a burst of images and memories, joys and maybe a few sorrows, but sublime all the same. Ready?
We HAVE a new baby and I got to HOLD him.
Can you feel the honor in that? The joy? The desire to share the news.
Here is a picture of My Amazing Missus and me. It is moments after the birth of Jeremiah our youngest Grand. We are crammed in the window seat of the hospital in Enid, Oklahoma, with all of the other Grands, taken January 19, 2022 at 2:11p.
Had he been born a few weeks later the hospital would have been locked down because of the pandemic. Selfishly, I cannot fathom what it would have cost me emotionally to not be able to be there for that moment--that first moment of HAVEing a new grandson and HOLDing him.
That's what it means to me to have and to hold. Obviously I didn't HAVE him. His beautiful mom Brooke did all that work with steady support from his dad, Kyle. And, obviously HOLDing is more than physical, literal holding.
If I haven't made my point yet, then I'm a lousy point maker. It's just that if I were to tell my bride of 50-something years that I am committed to having and holding, I would want her to know it is all about cherishing and celebrating and sharing.
I understand the concept of one thing complementing another. I'm intimately familiar with peanut butter and jelly. But, in a true complementary relationship one thing is not subjugated to the other. That is an ugly distortion, and it is one that I'm vulnerable to. In fact, I've done that kind of crap to others. Hopefully I've haven’t justified it by being a christian, a male, old, white, democrat, introvert, bald, cynical, peanut butter & jelly loving jerk.
Happy Anniversary to My Amazing Missus. Like the old song says, "I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow." I'm still here; to have and to hold from this day forward.
