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Marriage Then and Now 6/30/2006 An institution under attack.
Approaching the verdant valley with its cornfields, tiny meandering creek, and the old farmhouse brought back so many memories; in fact this valley is filled with memories of the long-gone laughter of children playing and of a family working together. The hills echo with the shouts of Frank Smith and the boys as they called across the hills to tell Mom they were on the way home for lunch in a time gone by.
It holds memories for me too; 40-some years ago I came down the same road to meet my husband’s parents for the first time. The final leg of this pilgrimage was accomplished by riding the mile to the farmhouse on a tractor. Tiny Boggs Creek had become a roaring river that had inundated the entire valley, leaving the farmhouse stranded on the hill. These days, thanks to a modern government watershed program and a big lake, Boggs Creek is tame, a hardly visible tiny trickle hidden by cornfields and high banks, which bisects the valley.
As we approached this time, dust being our enemy rather than water, we rounded the bend and there, standing sentinel on a hill, was the old schoolhouse. No one knows how long it has been there, but most agree it was standing in the late 1800s. It has been witness to much of the Boggs Creek valley’s history. Many of the valley’s children attended that one-room school through the years and I am sure that if its walls could speak, it would tell many stories.
My husband and his sister were born in that school house in harsher times. His little family huddled for warmth around the pot-bellied stove in the winter and sweltered in the humid Indiana summers. His father worked the farm with his father, just like the Smiths had done for the last 150 years. Eventually, there would be six children and they would move into the family farmstead, but for awhile they lived on “Schoolhouse Hill,” where Jim and his sister played in the woods, picked blackberries in the thickets, rolled down the hill countless times, and worked hard to help the family survive. Laughter echoed across the hills in those days; the Smith family was hard-working but they knew how to have fun too.
Laughter was echoing across the valley this night, the laughter and joy of a wedding ceremony. Jim’s niece was getting married behind the old schoolhouse in a beautiful glen carved out of the undergrowth of blackberry thickets and trees that had grown up in the years when the land had been used for pasture. Lights had been strung in back of the school to accommodate tables and a dance floor, and in the midst of a forest glade a platform had been built around a 100-year-old tree that would support the wedding party as the groom and the bride repeated those ancient vows … promises made on a hill filled with history of promises kept by those who started it all. The two families gathered as witnesses to the beginning of a new life together for this couple, and their prayers and hopes seemed to float up through the sun-dappled trees and wing their way to the Father of promises.
The leafy bower was a kind of green chapel with branches forming the arched windows that looked out on the valley below. By now a haze covered the cornfields, born of Indiana humidity and the dust produced by the guests coming to the wedding. Birds sang followed by the sound of a bull-frog in the distance; a gentle breeze touched our faces as many of us recalled days when we too had made a promise to love and cherish until death parts us. Treasures of a long-gone past were part of the scene … old crockery, an ancient rocking chair, quilts that had been made by family members long-gone, milk cans, and a picture of grim-faced children sitting in front of the old schoolhouse for their class picture. The old and the new blended for a moment, and we all savored the shared memories and our own private thoughts.
After the ceremony the old schoolhouse witnessed more history: The sound of hip-hop, rap, rock and roll, country-western and swing music that catered to the multi-aged guests as they and the bridal party celebrated the moment. Adults and children danced, some of us a bit rusty, but still able to manage the moves … with disastrous and painful results the next morning. Children once again rolled down the hill, collecting the formidable Indiana chiggers by the thousands I presume, and laughter once more echoed across the valley. It is rumored that a member of the bridal party lost her footing and rolled down the hill as well, as the night crept into the early-morning hours.
As I watched the celebration and looked out over the valley that holds so many memories, I thought of Frank and Millie. They laughed so easily and raised such a great family, most of whom were gathered there. I wondered if they were able to see what was going on at the schoolhouse.
They made and kept a promise so many years ago; we are all the recipients of that promise. I think they would have been pleased.
Marriage Under Attack
Marriage occupies a huge part of our culture; the wedding industry is thriving as brides search for innovative ways to commemorate their special day. In this case, the bride’s father spent the better part of a year creating a place to fulfill his daughter’s dream wedding. Frank and Millie made the same vows in a simpler setting, just as thousands like them did in the World War II era. They settled down, worked hard, raised their families and left legacies of promises kept for their families.
In more prosperous times, couples are struggling to keep their promises as the culture picks away at the fabric of commitment; more than 50 percent of marriages end in divorce. The very definition of marriage is being challenged with the idea that any grouping of people who love one another qualifies as a family. So-called polyamorous groupings are on the horizon as yet another form of marriage in our culture, along with the more-recent attempts at same-sex marriage. Family courts are struggling to make sense out of the Gordian knot of tangled and complex relationships¯how to give the children stability when there are a myriad of de facto parents involved in their lives. Even Solomon would have been perplexed at the dilemma presented to the courts.
Millie and Frank were simple folks who did not have the advantage of advanced education, yet they understood the basics: Children need two parents … a mom and a dad … who are committed to each other and to their kids. The children their union produced understood that their parents’ union was a rock, much like the limestone of southern Indiana … steadfast and immovable. The children had a sense of purpose because they were needed to keep the farm going…to feed the family. They had big responsibilities at an early age because everybody was expected to contribute … the family’s survival depended on it. Shouldering responsibility and completing tasks was the food that fueled self-confidence and a sense of accomplishment, not some government-funded self-esteem program that paints a veneer of assurance that chips off with the first failure or obstacle.
I was impressed with the sense of continuity in those southern Indiana hills … not that the little farming community has not been tainted by so-called progress. Divorce and infidelity do happen, and the culture has infiltrated it via better communication and newcomers lured by the big lake nearby. However, the hills and the valley that embraces them give testimony to a continuity that is timeless. Mankind can do its worst but the Creator who made it all is unchangeable, and His creation is mute testimony to His steadfast love.
As we left the valley the next day after a family reunion, I looked back on a landscape that has not changed since the day I rode in on the tractor with Jim’s dad, and I was glad. I wish it were the same for all of us.
Judy Smith is State Director for Concerned Women for America (CWA) of Kansas. For more information on how to become involved in CWA in your state, click here.
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Concerned Women for America 1015 Fifteenth St. N.W., Suite 1100 Washington, D.C. 20005 Phone: (202) 488-7000 Fax: (202) 488-0806 |
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