More babylove!

They're just springing up like flowers these days! Congrats to Kwynne, Pam, and their new little wee one, Leandré! Ok, back to bracing my ovaries for the insanely cute baby pics that are sure to come.

Wedding readings: For fun

Some possibilities from the lovey-dovey side of things:

"My true love hath my heart and I have hers,
By just exchange one for another given;
I hold hers dear and mine she cannot miss;
There never was a better bargain driven:
My true love hath my heart and I have hers.

My heart in me keeps her and me in one;
My heart in her, her heart and senses guides;
She loves my heart for once it was her own;
I cherish hers because in me it bides:
My true love hath my heart and I have hers." Sir Philip Sidney


You'll notice, my sister beat me to this one in her comment a few days ago:
"Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and fields
And all the craggy mountains yeilds.

There we will sit upon the rocks
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
With a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull;
Fair lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;

A belt of straw and ivy buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my love.

The shepherds' swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my love." Christopher Marlowe


This one is so darn cute. Maybe toward the end of the ceremony, for a little levity?
"Though you know it anyhow
Listen to me darling now,

Proving what I need not prove
How I know I love you, love.

Near and far, near and far,
I am happy where you are.

Likewise, I have never learnt
How to be it where you aren't.

Far and wide, far and wide,
I can walk with you beside;

Furthermore, I tell you what,
I sit and sulk where you are not.

Visitors remark my frown
When you're upstairs and I am down,

Yes, and I'm afraid I pout
When I'm indoors and you are out;

But how contentedly I view
Any room containing you.

In fact I care not where you be
Just as long as it's with me.

In all your absences I glimpse
Fire and flood and trolls and imps.

Is your train a minute slothful?
I goad the stationmaster wrothful.

When with friends to bridge you drive
I never know if you're alive,

And when you linger late in shops
I long to telephone the cops.

Yet how worth the waiting for,
To see you coming through the door.

Somehow, I can be complacent
Never but with you adjacent.

Near and far, near and far,
I am happy where you are;

Likewise, I have never learnt
How to be it where you aren't.

Then grudge me not my fond endeavor,
To hold you in my sight forever;

Let none, not even you, disparage
Such a valid reason for a marriage." Ogden Nash from "Tin Wedding Whistle"

Wedding readings, from the religious side

More possibilities! These are biblical verses we may use, mostly because we like them, and partly for my parents' sake:

"Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love... Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No man has ever seen God; If we love one another, Gob abides in us and his love is perfected in us." I John 4:7-12

I especially like this one:
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience, forbearing one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let peace rule in your hearts... And be thankful. Let love dwell in you richly, as you teach and admonish one another in all wisdom..." Colossians 3:12-17

Though it is used very frequently, I love these verses (especially as put by Joni Mitchell):
"Although I speak in toungues of men and angels
I'm just sounding brass
And tinkling cymbals without love

Love suffers long
Love is kind!
Enduring all things
Hoping all things
Love has no evil in mind.

If I had the gift of prophesy
And all knowledge
And the faith to move the mountains
Even if I understood all the mysteries
And I didn't have love
I'd be nothing.

Love- never looks for love
Love's not puffed up
Or envious
Or touchy
Because it rejoices in the truth
Not in iniquity.
Love sees like a child sees.

As a child I spoke as a child
I thought and understood as a child
But when I became a woman
I put away childish things
And began to see through a glass darkly.

Where, as a child, I saw it face to face
Now, I only know it in part.
Fractions in me
Of faith and hope and love
And of these great three
Love's the greatest beauty.
Love
Love
Love" I Corinthians 13 as made into a song by Joni Mitchell

Wedding readings, Part 1

These are some of the possibilities for the invitations, the ceremony, or for the decorations.

"My life has been the awaiting you,
Your footfall was my own heart's beat." Paul Valery

"Let not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this is error, and upon me prov'd,
I never writ, nor no man ever lov'd." Shakespeare

"I know not whether thou has been absent:
I lie down with thee, I rise up with thee,
In my dreams thou art with me.
If my eardrops tremble in my ears,
I know it is thou moving within my heart." Aztec love song

"Let the earth of my body be mixed with the earth
my beloved walks on.
Let the fire of my body be the brightness
in the mirror that reflects her face.
Let the water of my body join the waters
of the lotus pool she bathes in.
Let the breath of my body be airlapping her tired limbs.
Let me be sky, and moving through me
... my beloved." Hindu love poem

Welcome, Natalie!

And congratulations, moms! It's been so wonderful to watch Jen and Cait's journey so far, and now we are so privileged to witness that of their daughter, Natalie Claire, too! Yay!

Oh yeah, the ceremony...

It's amazing how much wedding planning is all about the reception. J and I have most of that set down now, and just put the deposit in at the Northampton Brewery, so fortunately it gets to take more of a backseat now. Having also just met with our officiant last week, we're finally thinking about the ceremony- you know, the truly important part of the day. It is a little intimidating to think about. How do we design an event for our friends and family that declares our love and committment to each other, while reaching out to them as our community and letting them know how much we love and appreciate them? It's hard to go it alone, and I don't think any couple or family can survive well without their loved ones there to support them throughout their lives. So far, we have been amazed and brought to tears by the love and support of our closest kindred spirits, and I'm sure I'm going to cry all over the place when we celebrate this wonderful day with them. I only wish we could invite more of our loved ones- the restaurant only seats 70 for large functions, and it's been hugely difficult to separate our guest list into A and B (and even C) sections! It's been great impetus to spend more time with our friends, though- we finally know all of their full names and significant others and addresses and phone numbers, and our lives have been so enriched by the dinners and parties and visits and overnights that we've been spending with all these VIPs. Sniff!

Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my 24th birthday. Actually, I'll be exactly so in 10 minutes at 11:24pm. Woo! Thanks, Mom!

Martha is just so smart!

Hereby I admit my love for anything by Martha Stewart. From her Weddings magazine, I have learned how to make really pretty flowers out of tissue paper, in all shapes and sizes. Results? More wedding savings! The expensive real flowers will be limited to our bouquets, the rest in pretty paper!

Diaries of a social worker

A client of mine, who I like, relapsed on her alcoholism over the weekend, just before her post-probation requirements were to be fulfilled, and may go back to jail until her hearing in two weeks that would have ended her probation. My co-worker's client who was doing well and was about to get a stable income for the first time in his life recently relapsed on pain killers, got in trouble with the police for trespassing where he is persona non grata, went to the ER with a mental crisis, probably lost his great new housing arrangement, and flunked a test for a new job and is using that as a reason to go off the deep end. My newest client lives in total squalor, a house so dirty and smelly and full of trash and bugs that the home health aides won't go in to help her, has such rock-bottom self-esteem that she may never be able to take care of herself, even though she's smart and capable in all other ways. My longest standing client can't seem to get free of the addictions to almost a dozen different substances that have plagued her since she was a teenager, yet she's not even 30 and is bright and has so much potential, so that when she tells me a few days ago that she relapsed again (for what has now been several times in a month after almost six months of sobriety) and then I tell her we start over, just like before and not to give up on herself, and then she smiles- it's heartbreaking and frustrating beyond belief.

So often people don't understand what I do or why- all the time, I hear about why the people I serve don't deserve to be served, about what a waste of time and money and human life they are, about how lazy and immoral they must be to live the ways they do, about how I must be such a saint because they can't bring themselves to feel sorry for these people like I obviously do. Here is one thing that I have to say about that- this work is not about feeling sorry for them. Aside from the general sorriness I feel that any person should be in such a sad state of affairs, I don't. Yes, most of the time they are capable people who aren't acting responsibly, usually for reasons unspeakably hard- I have only a single client who is not a survivor of child abuse- lo and behold she is one of the few who has never battled an addiction. I don't have a panacea for trauma, but I suspect it has to do with a personal journey toward a self-love which one has never felt- this is a journey we all have to travel, easier for some than others, so no- I wouldn't say I feel sorry. I don't think that is what this work is about.

For me, it is about forgiving someone for their faults and mistakes (because everyone deserves to be forgiven a million times because God forgives endlessly) and then helping them. It's that simple. I believe without forgiveness, we are all of us lost. Being the true-blue religious liberal that I am, I think of forgiveness as the most godly thing we can do- and since God's forgiveness is never worn out (ever, ever) that we owe that kind of love to our neighbors- that's one of the many places I think we Unitarians have it way over the hypocritical "religious" right. How mad it makes me to hear someone disparage strangers for their shortcomings, when that person is too afraid of the human condition to even stand on the same sidewalk as that stranger. I hear them talk about how saintly those of us are who work with the people who scare them- the poor, the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, the severely depressed and oppressed- but I don't think it is saintly, I think it is just a duty to others to confront one's fears and prejudices in order to serve them no matter what, and that not doing so is the fault. Rather than most of our nation's people turning their backs on those who scare them being the normal ones, and the social workers the unusually saintly, I think it is those who actually try to connect with their neighbors who are normal and those who don't the not-so-moral-after-all. This all inspired today by yet another person disparaging the poor- this time because of their higher rates of Type-II Diabetes. WTF? *Now stepping down from high-horse*

Meeting Mr. Sperm

J and I went to New Jersey this weekend and met our PKD, his partner, and their son who is 20 months old. They were, of course, very nice people and we enjoyed spending the day with them. PKD and his partner have an interesting relationship, at least in speech, because they were both born and raised in other countries, and so English is their middle ground of communication and their conversation is full of clarifications for each other and "what is this?" when they are looking for words in English. We feel reasonably sure that we could handle a lifelong, albeit infrequent friendship with these guys. And the little boy is proof that PKD's swimmers can and do result in cute kids. Altogether a reassuring trip. My favorite moment: PKD goes to dress their son (which is apparently unusual, as his partner is the one with the fashion-sense), PKD's partner grows more and more nervous and fidgety over the space of several seconds and then goes running up the stairs saying to us "Sorry, I'll be right back- I have to make sure he doesn't wind up in United Colors of Benneton."