My daughter is getting married this Spring, and she informed me on the phone the other day – she said it carefully and gently – that it was not necessary or desired for me to walk her down the aisle to be married. “You can if you really want to,” she said thoughtfully, “but you know, we’re not doing the Patriarchy thing. I’ll give myself away.”
I admit to being a little shaken at discovering I was part of “The Patriarchy,” that is never a hat I ever much wore or that fit me too well. I am never quite sure how to be a real strong man, although I like the ones I have met up here, I am still trying to fit in.
We were all feminists in my family, I think it is great that my daughter is giving herself away, I am happy to sit and watch and take it all in, I don’t need something to do. Emma also pointed out delicately that there was a question of dress; few people there would be wearing jeans and almost all the men would be wearing ties. There was some silence there (I did mess with her a bit, and said I had no chinos, but Maria yelled at me to behave), I told her I would be happy to wear chinos, but I burned all of my ties years ago and would not be wearing one. Would it bother me, she asked, if I was the only man not wearing a tie? Not at all, I said, I would be happy and proud.
I hope I’m not being difficult, but she has her statement to make, and I have mine. It’s her wedding, but I have to keep myself intact too. Perhaps, I wonder, I am just being troublesome, as so many people in my life have told me that I sometimes am. I suppose I grew up fighting hard for my identity, and I am loathe to give any of it up.
The wedding will be in New York City, and I sometimes do get the feeling that there is some concern about how I will behave – what I will wear, look like, whether I have all of my teeth or will come in trailing hay and manure, or dance naked on a reception table. I suppose there is some justification for this. When they tried to make me to go my own Bar Mitzvah years ago in Providence, I broke loose and ran several blocks down the street before a posse of huffing and annoyed Jewish men in dark suits and yarmulkes caught up with me and dragged me back to the Temple.
During the rest of the service, I was flanked by strong men: the Rabbi held one arm, my brother the other, I could barely breathe, let alone move. I’m not sure if I made it through the service or not, I don’t recall. My daughter has no sense of this period of my life, it has never seemed relevant.
My life here in Cambridge seems pretty humble to me, but when I am visiting New York City, I do sometimes get the sense my existence is incomprehensible to some of the people there. This is not true of the New York Carriage Horse drivers, they are strange and idiosyncratic too, I fit right in there.
New Yorkers are wary of the country. Too many animals, not enough theaters. Not enough movies, restaurants, Democrats, people with new clothes and exotic recipes, no gourmet markets or micro-brewing. My daughter is very polite, but she is not enchanted with weak broadband signals, coyotes howling, deer running in the road, quiet, darkness, donkeys or long drives for mediocre representations of ethic food.
I assured her that I had no need of being a Patriarch, but the very word evokes the Bible and the Kabbalah. Perhaps I ought to grow a beard and make some dark and meaningful pronouncements, give some orders. Then I could trim the beard as a gesture of my own evolution and sacrifice myself to the future. If I am a Patriarch, I wondered, why does no one (including my daughter) ever tremble at my proclamations and do as I say? Aren’t Patriarch’s forbidding and powerful? I don’t feel I even deserve the title.
As it happens, I am proud to be helping the movement to dismantle the Patriarchy, I think it does a lot more harm than good. I say good riddance and good luck. Just look at Washington. The Patriarchy is a dreadful, violent, outdated and angry mess.
My early life left me with a discomfort about ceremony, I have not been to a Bar Mitzvah since mine (or been invited to one). My Jewishness has definitely moved to the background of my life, when I moved to Cambridge, a farmer I had known for several years came down and slapped me on the back and said, “hey, my wife tells me you are a Jew! I never knew that, how about that? Isn’t that something, I had no idea! A Jew!” He chuckled a bit, then said goodbye. “And not a thing wrong with that!,” he added, just for good measure.
My friend’s discovery made me a bit nervous, but I was relieved that he took the news so well, he was a big and strong man. I suspect he really is part of the Patriarchy. When he told people to do things they listened.
Still, my aversion to ceremony and ritual is my problem, not my daughter’s. I do have a pair of chinos somewhere up in the closet, I just have to ask Maria to cut some of the loose threads that are hanging down.