The day after our wedding, we enjoyed a Thanksgiving potluck with fifty of the gentleman’s closest relatives. And the next day, I stopped by his aunt’s house… and inherited the family genealogy. As a building block for other writing, I just want to note here what genealogy has taught…
Yesterday, I posted to facebook on how many weekday hours American parents spend on housework, childwork, and job work. Click through to interact with Nathan Yau’s visualization, which shows that e.g. many dads now spend 1-3 hours per day in child and house care (much more than in 1965!) but they’re also doing more…
Given these many ways of doing relationships, I want us to look at all paths: single life, community life, or partnership with another person. Given the Bible’s focus on not making hasty vows, I’d challenge my fellow western Christians not to pressure young people to make lifelong vows before they’re ready….
One path doesn’t work for everyone, as I wrote before. So people are starting to discuss just what an honest commitment means. The New I Do suggests that young couples–and even long-married folks–discuss their values and goals in a relationship, before making or reaffirming a commitment. In this model, you could choose: A “beta”…
In 1861, Lotte Fischer crossed the Atlantic on a steamship that likely took seventeen days to travel from Bremen to New York. She reported that she was a German girl, travelling alone. Within a few years, she married a German immigrant named Johann and settled in Ohio. But as…
As I’ve written before, I love learning about people’s names, and I ask people about their names at every moment that might *possibly* be culturally appropriate. So this summer, I met a woman with two daughters. “Who named your children?” I asked. Gulnar* tells me that an elderly relative…
It started rummaging for records and relatives, because I did not want to be a white American. It started with the chart on the wall, held up in a cheap poster frame. Inez Meeker. Amarantha Borealis Corintha Delphina Rogers. Who has a name like that? And moving on to the pale gray binder in…
“It’s really important to join your life with somebody who has the same priorities as you.” I’m still working on transcribing my interviews with single Christian women in the U.S. last spring — I swear! In the meantime, I talked with my friend Marina about her experiences. Marina is…
The other day, Aiza, an older friend, told me that her son just arrived from Almaty. Oh, how’s your son? I ask. Well, he wants to move to Almaty, she said, clicking her tongue a bit, and shaking her head. Aiza is forty or a bit older, with fresh…
These Diet cokes, these soft crumbly cookies–they remind me of piano lessons with Grandma. Week after week in my early teens, I’d go into town on Fridays with her, from my house in the country. Every Friday morning she would honk her horn in our driveway. I was sitting…