American Wife

Today I had my first dress fitting.

This whole wedding thing is not unexpected--I've been engaged for five months now, and that's plenty of time to adapt to the whole concept of "til death do you part." I'm fine with that part--commitment to a person has never been a difficult thing to achieve. So the concept of marriage is nothing intimidating. And yet...

Holy shit, Batman, I'm supposed to be a wife?

It's just that I always associated wifedom with grown-up things, like responsibility and paying medical bills on time and cooking and, I don't know, things that I generally suck at. I'm not even particularly adept at making my own bed in the morning, and the whole corner-tucking thing? Not a hope in hell. Forget being a competent wife, most days I'm not even sure I'm a particularly competent human.

And after all, what is the meaning of "wife"? (There's a book by that title that I keep meaning to read). I associate things like cooking, and mending, and making sure the toilet paper is stocked, and silly things like that with wifedom. And yes, I am fully aware that said concept is subscribing to traditional gender roles. So, in theory, once we throw all of those roles out the window, what is the new "meaning of wife"? What are the duties of the modern wife? What are reasonable expectations? Sex every night? A minimum of nagging? Lots of laughter? What do I do to make an adequate, equal, modern helpmeet? Particularly when there are no children in the picture (other than delinquent and mainly absent stepchildren) and indeed, no plans, desires, hopes, or thoughts to having them?

And why the hell aren't the men trying to figure out what the meaning of husband is?

These were the random thoughts going through my head today as I moved about the department store, looking for the necessary knickers to wear underneath my wedding gown. As I debated the merits of thong vs. full coverage underwear, a phrase kept floating around in the back of my head: "A year in the life of an American wife." From time to time, I would substitute "American" with "clueless" or "incompetent." But mainly I began to think that maybe this here blog's a good place to follow my first year of marriage, my ups and downs and what I figure out and how our partnership (and hopefully my domestic talents) flourish.

Perhaps fittingly, perhaps forebodingly, I nearly passed out at David's Bridal during the dress fitting. Apparently standing very still while dressed in a gown with four layers of cloth and a built-in corset can really be a brutal experience. Yes, an incompetent wife, indeed.