You Would Admire This- Creative

Dear Future Husband:

Today in class we read the poem, “Early in the Morning” by Lee Young-Li.  You may have never read this poem but if you have, you are probably wondering why or how this poem concerns you.

Every morning, I put effort into getting ready and to looking beautiful because I never know when I will meet you or fall in love with you. Each morning I comb my hair, blow dry it, and straighten it for you. I take my time to make sure that every hair is in place so that you will think that it looks even more beautiful than it already is.  I want to continue to do this for you- I want to continue to make my hair sleek and shiny for you.

I hope that one day we are the couple in this poem. In the second stanza it says, “She sits at the foot of the bed. My father watches, listens for the music of the comb against hair.” I would want nothing more than to be able to get ready for you every single day for the rest of our lives. I can see it now. I would be standing in the bathroom getting ready to brush my dark, brown, wet hair while you are sitting there in the room reading the newspaper. You would be concentrated on reading the paper but you also wouldn’t want to miss watching me get ready.  Every few minutes, you would glance up from the major headlines and anticipate hearing the sound of the brush working through the knots in my hair. You would admire this.

“My mother combs, pulls her hair back tight, rolls it around two fingers, pins it in a bun to the back of her head. For a half a hundred years she has done this. My father likes to see it like this. He says it is kempt.” I can imagine me doing my hair the way you enjoy seeing it every single day. I can imagine you complimenting me on my long, soft, brown hair.  As soon as I’m done doing putting the last hair in place, I can picture you grabbing me by my waist, looking into my eyes and saying, “Baby, your hair looks beyond amazing and I’m in love with you.” I can imagine blowing drying it and straightening it for you for a half a hundred years.  You would admire this.

Even though I know that you enjoy my hair straight, sleek, and put perfectly into place, I would know the real reason. You like my hair this way because at night, your fingers are easily able to run through it. After a long hard day of taking care of our four kids, I would lay my head on your lap while you sat there, running your rough, masculine hands through my daily thirty minutes of work.  You would admire this.

I don’t know where you are right now or what you are doing but I’m picturing us and I’m picturing you admiring my hair. Although I may not know who you are or what you enjoy, I’m going to continue to do my hair sleek and shiny. One day…you’ll admire this.

I love you.

Love,
Your Future Wife

Blog # 4- Reflective. Sacrifice

“I hate my wife. I’ll finish her off.”

In the story, “Death by Scrabble”, the man can only think of how much he hates his wife and how he would LOVE to kill her. Although, this story is all about foreshadowing and irony, it still struck me hard. How can a man want to kill his wife, the person that he loves and committed his life to? What has she done to him to make him feel this way?

Marriage is all about commitment- through the amazing times and through the not so amazing times. When you stand at the altar with shaky hands, a rapid heart rate, staring into the eyes of the person you love, and then saying your vows and committing your life in sickness and in health to the other person is a covenant that should never be broken.

Even though the narrator in this story doesn’t want to divorce his wife, he wants to kill her. He wants to see her dead. This is worse than divorce by far. He must have regret, anger, and hatred towards his wife for not being able to do the things that he would rather be doing. In the third paragraph he says, “I should be out, doing exercise, spending money, meeting people. I don’t think I’ve spoken to anyone except my wife since Thursday morning. On Thursday morning I spoke to the milkman.” Three paragraphs later (sixth paragraph) he says, “If she wasn’t around, I’d be doing something interesting right now. I’d be climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. I’d be starring the latest Hollywood blockbuster. I’d be sailing the Vendee Globe on a 60-foot clipper called the New Horizons-I don’t know, but I’d be doing something.”

In those two short excerpts it is easy to see that he is longing for freedom to do his own thing whenever he wants. I get a sense that his wife is holding him back and doesn’t like doing the same things that he enjoys doing like sailing or even meeting people. After some time of never being able to do the things that he likes to do, he can develop a hatred for her and wants to see her dead. He wants freedom.

To flip it around, at the end of the story you see that maybe the wife had the same feelings towards him that he had for her. The very last line says, “I fall to the floor. My wife just sits there, watching.” It is clear that she had no desire to help him-maybe she in fact wanted to see him dead as much as he wanted to see her dead.

Marriage should not be like this. The vows that both people say at a wedding are, “Till death do us part.”  This really means that no matter what- no matter if you are bankrupt, no matter if you are a millionaire, and no matter if one person has cancer- you stick it out to the end. You work out every issue with communication and you talk about the issues as they occur. One should never hate their spouse and want to see them dead.

I know from experience that for any relationship to work sacrifice has to be involved. Simply stated- you cannot have your way all the time if you want a healthy, stable relationship. My last relationship didn’t work out in the long run because both of us were not willing to compromise. When I wanted to go take pictures downtown, he wanted to play basketball. We weren’t willing to give up the things that we loved for each other. In a more serious sense, God had to sacrifice His son for us and I had to sacrifice hanging out with the most popular people in school. When we (God and I) both sacrificed something that we loved, we began to have a healthy, stable relationship. Sacrifice is a must in any relationship.

Although I’m not married nor am I in a relationship right now, I will keep this in mind for the future. I will never wish death on any person because as the saying goes, “what goes around comes around” came true for this story. He had wished his wife was dead and with that, he was the one that was dead at the end of the story. When my marriage gets rough, I will think back to my wedding day and how I said “In sickness and in health, till death do us part.” I will always talk every issue out with my husband, never hate him, never wish death on him, and will sacrifice for him so that we may have a healthy, stable, long-lasting relationship.

Blog #3 Problematize--A Work of Artifice

The poem “A Work of Artifice” is a challenging. We read in this poem about a bonsai tree that should have grown up to eighty feet tall if no one would have planted it in a pot, pruning it to be only nine inches tall. At first, you don’t really realize the significance or symbolism of this poem but by the end of it, it’s pretty evident that this poem is all about oppression towards women.

“The bonsai tree in the attractive pot could have grown eighty feet tall on the side of the mountain till split by lightening.” In this single sentence, we see that in nature bonsai trees can grow to be very tall until an act of nature destroys it- in this case, lightening.  This is how everything should be. Women should be able to have the freedom to grow, spread their wings, be independent, and have the same rights as men. The only time that women should be “pruned” is if it’s by God.

“But a gardener carefully pruned it. It is nine inches high. Every day as he whittles back the branches the gardener croons, it is your nature to be small and cozy, domestic and weak; how lucky, little tree, to have a pot to grow in.”  Here we see that a person has entered the bonsai’s life but little to the bonsai’s knowledge- that person, the gardener, is lying to it. In this case, men are the gardeners, entering in women’s lives and never allowing them to reach their full potential. The men become controlling and deceptive. The men tell the women that they should be small, cozy, domestic, weak, and how lucky they are to be able to live in a nice little house to grow in.

“With living creatures one must begin very early to dwarf their growth; the bound feet, the crippled brain, the hair in curlers, the hands you love to touch.” The gardener is telling the bonsai tree that it is necessary to start pruning at a young age. Men think the same thing. Men think that they must start oppressing women when the women are at young age, before they learn right from wrong and before they stand up to the men that are oppressing them.

This poem certainly goes against everything that God has intended for men and women. God didn’t create men to be above women or vice versa. God created men and women to be equal, to be side by side. Ephesians 5:21-33 talks about how the man should love his wife as he loves himself and, the wife must respect her husband. This is a partnership, not a dominion. God doesn’t want husbands to degrade their wives. God created men and women equal.

Southeastern does an excellent job at providing the same opportunities for men and women. Unlike this poem, SEU does not look down upon women and allows women to grow to their full potential. They do not prune women nor do they only allow women to grow to only nine inches high.

This poem certainly goes against everything Christians believe, what Southeastern allows, and what I personally believe in.  Men and women were created equally; therefore, men and women should be treated equally.