2003-09-26 - 4:59 p.m.
May 18, 2003
I learned yesterday that California is America’s number one dairy producer and Wisconsin number two. I wondered in what else California is the number one producer and it scared me. The sate is large, diverse in geography, but it hardly seems consistently big in any geographical sense to produce wine, diary, garlic, tomatoes, oranges, easter lilies,redwood lumber, etc. like the state does.
Listening to your tracks, I wonder how it is you ever thought you were meant to live a life alone without love. You have always craved that other.
In church today a few kids lined up on stage to represent a group of youth going on a missions trip in July. Five girls and one boy. The girls were beautiful and the stage honestly looked like a beauty pageant except for the one girl who had not made herself up, but would have been marvelous competition if she knew how. The sad thing was that the girls knew they looked great. The same sad thought came through my mind as comes when a group comes in for coffee. They are too old, these angelic faces are too old. Immediately the young seductress from American Beauty enters my mind because they look just like her and I wonder whom these girls are trying to impress.
This reminds me of a bizarre conversation I had with a co-worker on our last day of work together. Two out-of-town attorneys came in for some coffee. On their way out the door they asked another co-worker there about her plans for the future and congratulated her ambitions. “Stay in school as long as you can,” said one. I think another one might have cracked a joke about marrying well. And then they were gone. The two “sisters” began a conversation on the merits of marrying a sugar daddy while I listened with mild amusement. Finally --- drug me in with the indirect question of my age cap for a husband. I explained that I could not approach my life with that restriction and told her one of the fateful love stories of a co-worker last summer. God works in mysterious ways and I do not intend to put up another hurdle for Him to work me through, and allow yet another year of separation from my other heart.
Then I got into the conversation having thought through some of this while milling through the Virginia crowd last summer. I honestly wondered what I would decide if I relocated to Virginia and some man pursued me. There are some benefits, as I pointed out to --- to being a sugar mamma. I do not agree you find those benefits in the sheets. I do not see how that is any different from the drive-in, except he knows what he’s doing. You still don’t have the love, and all the beautiful non-physical intimacy. So the only reason such a marriage is of any benefit for the intelligent woman, is for the ambitious woman who has little money to fund her project(s).
I forget for what reason I used Proverbs 31 to illustrate the duty of a wife as hostess: “Her husband is known in the gates, When he sits among the elders of the land” (31:23). I think this is a very important verse to understand the point of the whole chapter. And when another friend complained that at parties --- busied himself with others often leaving her on the opposite side of the room, I used this simple verse again. She will do him much more good befriending herself with the wives or whomever on the other side of the room. She is an extension of him and will make him much more pleasing in the eyes of the social world if the hosts and hostesses invite the two of them with pleasure instead of hesitation for disliking his wife.
This is something that has often distressed me for sundry reasons. Knowing that the social scene will change as I get older, I am not as worried about this as I used to be. In the process of learning other skills I think I will learn what I need to assist my husband in this way.
Much to my old rommate’s amusement I asked for the early shift at Zingerman’s (6:30-2:30). But I need to return to this healthful schedule: “She rises also while it is still night; And gives food to her household, And portions to her maidens”.
