Jewish Atheist

“In marriage, do thou be wise: prefer the person before money, virtue before beauty, the mind before the body; then thou hast a wife, a friend, a companion, a second self.”

Homer

Dear J____,

Thank you for your kind invitation to your and A_____’s wedding in September. As your genetically closest uncle, I responded that my wife and I would attend the reception and the farewell brunch. Because your father expects it, I hope to be able to be there for the other two events as well, i.e., the dinner that your Nana [my Mother] is taking us all out to, plus the rehearsal dinner the next night.

It’s a four-day extravaganza (really, who needs to rehearse a procession?), with the only permitted excesses being food and alcohol. It’s too bad there aren’t some good drugs present, because that’s what it’s going to take to get me through these events — that is, if I come at all.

At this point, I am hoping that fate will rescue me and give me a rock-solid excuse not to be there, e.g., we would be in the middle of a real estate closing or perhaps an actual physical move. But given the way the housing market has performed in the two-plus years since the house was first listed, I do not expect to have a buyer by September, which means there is a distinct possibility that I will be at your wedding.

Why so negative?

You may be wondering what all the negativity and resistance are about, and that’s the purpose of this letter — in fact, it is your wedding present: sincerity and candor, two qualities that are scarcely to be found in our family.

The first reason for my resistance to attending is that it will be a considerable financial and physical effort, given the fact that I will have just driven East (18 hours on the road, but, surprisingly, less stressful and cheaper than flying) a couple of weeks before (I’m newly married – see below – and have a new family now).

As for the money…I earn, as a retired self-employed consultant, one-tenth of what I made as a Corporate Director, but I still live in one of the most expensive places in the country, with ruinously high real estate taxes and the highest state sales tax in the nation. I went through a divorce and am enduring a real estate market that’s the worst in my lifetime, perhaps ever. I did not expect to still be here in 2010, paying these huge costs of living (and of corruption – it’s Illinois, after all).

You, on the other hand, have lived a life of wealth and privilege, never knowing a moment’s financial anxiety (or indeed any other significant setback or disappointment that I know of), so I don’t expect any empathy in this department. Hence my resistance. My showing up will mean little or nothing to you.

I think you really expect that this will be no effort for me, that I’ll just show up on command, no sweat. Well, there will be sweat. But it won’t be recognized. I’ll be a cardboard cutout, getting 10 seconds of your time. When you say that my presence is your present, I take you at your word. This will be a costly, difficult trip. That, and this letter, are my gifts.

No effort from the Prince

The second reason why I am resistant to attending is that although you are quite a pleasant and intelligent young man, you have, for the past 15 or 20 years, made zero effort to have a relationship with me. Love and respect must be earned and deserved.

I tried. Years ago, you‘ll recall, I invited you here, on my own initiative, for an elaborately planned jazz mini-camp, in an attempt to bond with you. Not only did it not work (your parents outdid me by treating you to a full-blown two-week Jazz Camp, something that wasn’t available in my day), but you appear to have abandoned the discipline and the beauty of bebop in favor of some atonal, amorphous glop (okay, maybe it’s not glop, but if you had taken the trouble to share it with me, I might have a more informed opinion).

You are a boy to whom all has been given and of whom almost nothing has been asked. Your father’s wealth and generosity have made the first three decades of your life a dream world of experiences — white-water rafting, piloting a 747 simulator, junior year in Australia, camping, surfing, skiing around the world…it all sounds like one big party to me. Education and material goodies have been showered on you, and all you had to do was produce acceptable academic performance, which you did.

You went to a private high school, unlike your Dad and me, but you chose not to compete for the Ivy League, again unlike us. Tufts, architecture school, and now a neat environmental job in chic San Francisco. I commend you for even getting a job – very difficult for a white male in these diversity-ridden times.

So I can see where you would regard an uncle’s gift of a jazz mini-camp to be nothing more than a drop in the bucket of favors that life has showered upon you as if it were your due, as if I were just one more bearer of gifts to the Prince.

Wretched excess

Which brings me to the next reason that I will attend under pressure and protest, if at all: the stupefying conspicuous consumption of this extravaganza nauseates me. My last marriage proved that all you need to get married, really, is $35 for a marriage license, plus a nice judge, plus a nice police officer to take cell phone pictures (no cameras allowed in the Detention Center in Waukegan IL, which was where the judge’s chambers were located).

Let’s take the cost of the events themselves first. This wretched excess is costing your father upwards of $50,000, say $60,000 at least (20x his bar mitzvah, plus he’s paying for the out-of-towners’ lodging). Then there’s all the time, money and effort spent by the, say, 250 people you’ve invited. Let’s say it costs $500/person, all told, to attend. So your guests are shelling out another $75,000 to attend.

Then there are the gifts. It’s not enough that well over $100,000 will be spent to celebrate your nuptials, an amount that could feed ten Haitian villages for a month.

Really, J____, the social irresponsibility of your wedding is appalling. With your veganism and environmental architecture, you think you’re so politically correct, but your lifestyle entails an enormous carbon footprint. Don’t you know that the air travel that transports your royal self around the world is one of the most profligate uses of fossil fuels?

But in addition to all the money spent on the celebration, you need to be showered with four registries’ worth of material goods, specified in loving detail on your site, right down to the last lampshade.

Shameless insensitivity

You two, who have professional jobs and can pay your way (in fact are nearing your peak earning years) are asking people, in very tough economic times – really, how can you be so unaware? – to contribute to your sybaritic self-indulgence. Such shameless insensitivity can come only from narcissistic people who have been very lucky, e.g., your father and you (so far)….or someone who hasn’t lost a job or whose 401(k) hasn’t evaporated.

The self-absorption goes over the top when you ask people to shell out for your month-long honeymoon in Bali. $25 will rent a surfboard, according to your website.

J____, take it straight from your uncle (and sometimes an uncle is the only person who will tell you the truth), the greed is offensive and the acquisitiveness downright creepy. The Prince reaches out to commoners and commands gifts and favors. When did financing the honeymoon become de rigeur? I don’t care if your overindulged friends do it. Show some restraint.

Celebrating intent

Finally, I oppose lavish weddings (and bar/bat mitzvahs) in general and on principle. Your parents wasted seven hours trying to find the perfect, holy place for you to be wed. Your bride-to-be had to rehearse her hair and makeup. The food had to be sampled, too, in advance. I remind you that while the Royal Tasting went on, elsewhere in the world, children were dying of malnutrition, and a billion people were living on a dollar a day.

The bar/bat mitzvah is the merest pretension to maturity, and getting married is equally (in)significant and requires even less prep-work. Why should I celebrate your wedding (you didn’t bother to notice mine – another annoyer) when you and A____ haven’t done anything but intend to stay together? Let’s get together in 10, 15, or 25 years and see. The divorce rate is 50%. Let’s see if there’s something to celebrate.

Forced gaiety

Oh, yeah, I almost forgot: the “merriment.” Any time “merriment” is mentioned on the invitation, I know it’s going to be another dreary event full of temptations to overeat or overdrink out of stupefying boredom, trying to make small talk at the top of my lungs, with frequent trips outside to escape the loud music and bad speechmaking. Hope I’m wrong.

Best wishes

So I wish you and A____ all the best, even if you’re going about it in such a socially and environmentally irresponsible manner. Marriage is on-the-job-training, and every couple has their issues, but the most important key to long marriage is honesty, which may be a problem for you.

As you know, the deal with our family is that niceness must prevail at all costs: there are to be NO disagreements, NO unpleasantness, NO disapproval of anything anyone does (except get divorced or fired), NO bad news (and no honest discussion of feelings and opinions - that would be unseemly). Your parents didn’t have the Responsible Drug Use talk with you – they just hid their pot smoking (and your Mom’s cigarette smoking), in a bizarre reverse-adolescent scenario.

So try to learn that talking about unpleasant things is preferable to letting them fester unresolved, just because someone doesn’t want to have an unpleasant conversation.

Other than that, what do I know about marriage? I’m on #3, still trying to get it right. Hope you have better luck. Treat each other with unfailing love and respect, and you should be fine.

Love,

Uncle A.