“My future son-in-law may be considered ‘old-fashioned,’ but to me, he is my Hero. And I will never forget that sweet summer day when he honored his future bride by honoring the ones who raised her.”
Last month in the wedding month of June, I received the Email in the middle of an ordinary morning, a work day filled with clients, finishing up an article and tending to the more mundane tasks of life like doing laundry, running errands and paying bills.
The Email stood out from the usual junk mail and spam that normally filled my Inbox. It caught my attention and I immediately clicked to open it with curiosity.
The Email was from a young man, a man I had grown to know and love in the past year and a half. He was my oldest daughter’s boyfriend, and the Email was an invitation to join him for lunch in Denver at a time that would work best for me. He told me not to worry; he just had some things he wanted to talk to me about.
Well count me in! Anyone who knows me well knows that there’s nothing I delight in more than in being in relationships, in connection, in knowing and understanding another human being.
♦◊♦
Jeremy had come into Kellie’s life at a time when she was a deliberately free and unattached woman. She had had a long-term relationship in college, and when that ended she made a declaration that the only person she wanted to spend time with was herself. She wanted no restraints, no ropes to tie her down.
When she graduated from college, she and a girlfriend traveled to parts of the world exotic and strange. She loved her independence and decided going “solo” was going to become a long time commitment.
She moved to San Diego to work for a sports team as a Guest Representative. The pay was paltry, and to make ends meet, she took a waitressing job at a Mexican restaurant that was situated in a touristy part of town, and she was miffed at the costume she had to wear and the lousy tips of loud and demanding customers.
Shortly after she began working there, she began to speak of a young man who had caught her attention and the way she described him made my ears stand up in attention like a paramedic on alert.
He was a couple of years older and like so many other others, he had been laid off from his job as a civil engineer and was doing whatever it took to make ends meet, including working at the cheesy tourist restaurant. They became friends, and he told her of his plans to move to Denver where work might be more available and the call of the mountains was stronger than he cared to ignore.
When her stint with the Chargers ended, she returned to the state she was born and to the family who had missed her and to the young man who had moved there several months before her, pounding the doors until his persistence paid off and he landed a job in his profession.
I had always wondered if there was a man out there who would be strong enough for my daughter, a fiery passionate determined young woman who eschewed the attachments and commitments of coupledom and the ties that might bind.
♦◊♦
Fast forward to this recent June morning when the Email came. Could I meet him for lunch? Hell yes I could meet him for lunch.
I was curious about his intentions for our meeting but no matter. When I arrived at the restaurant, I could see him sitting outside having procured a table on the patio. He’s a gorgeous young man with a head of hair so full of dark curls you have to stop yourself from reaching out and touching them.
Lunch was ordered and I sat back in my chair waiting. He looked me right in the eyes and began to speak words of love about my daughter. He told me of her qualities, her attributes, and her beauty. He told me she made him a better man, and he told me he couldn’t imagine a day in his life without her.
He leaned forward meeting my gaze with intention and purpose. He confessed that he knew it might be considered old-fashioned, but he wanted to ask for my blessings to ask for her hand in marriage.
And the warmth in that summer air, intensified by the look in his eyes, enveloped me and my heart was in danger of bursting right there, right there on the spot.
I reached out and hugged him tight and spoke words of love and enthusiastic approval and told him I couldn’t think of anyone better to be with my daughter. Since he had come into her life, his calm quiet presence and way of speaking words clearly yet gently had melted the rough edges around my girl, and I couldn’t have been happier.
As I drove home with goose bumps making permanent residence on my arms, I tried not to pinch myself. I’ve watched the world become a ruder place, where manners and decorum are seen like artifacts from days gone by. Where marriage is drifting to the back burners of a culture who finds, for a variety of reasons, it may be better off to do anything other than to utter the words, “Till death do us part.”
My future son-in-law may be considered “old-fashioned,” but to me, he is my Hero. And I will never forget that sweet summer day when he honored his future bride by honoring the ones who raised her.
It will always stand out as one of the most precious days of my life.
And yes, she said a resounding “YES!”
♦◊♦
Reposted from OpenSalon.
—Photo Seattle Municipal Archives/Flickr
About Mary Kelly-Williams
I’d have to be a real hard-hearted jerk not to find this story sentimental and sweet, but as a feminist, it makes me uncomfortable to hear about men “asking for a woman’s hand.” The historical complications of this are problematic to me, and along with women feeling societal pressure to change their surnames after marriage, is a discussion that often gets marginilized in favor of “tradition.” The whole thing is so heteronormative: imagine this scenario written as a man asking permission to propose to another man, and the sexist implications become readily apparent.
Go with the hyphenated name. If one or both people have a long name, abbreviate it. Don’t worry about quadruple hyphenation if children marry; they can make their own decision at the time they marry about which portion(s) they want to carry into a new marriage.
Emily and Kristen, you may (or may not) be interested to know about the origins of my last name, Kelly-Williams. When I divorced, it was a no-brainer to me that I would not keep the last name of my ex-husband. I couldn’t stand the thought of having the last name of a man I was no longer married to. But I didn’t want to go back to my maiden name either. That last name came from my father’s side. Despite my love for my father, I didn’t have a close relationship with him or his family so that was out. I decided on “Kelly” because it was my grandmother’s maiden name on my mother’s side. I never got to meet her but my mother spoke so highly of her I wanted to honor her by choosing her last name (which yes, inevitably was tied to her father but one could go crazy thinking of all these things). When I changed my name, my oldest son wanted to change his last name to _____-Kelly. He told me it was ridiculous that he not have some part of his mother’s name in his name. As much as I thought it was a wonderful idea, the logistics and practical nature involved eventually dissuaded him. But I appreciated his sentiments.
Beautiful story. I hope my daughter settles down one day with a guy like your son-in-law.
Kristen, from one fellow “feminist” to another, I hear you. However, I’m also a “masculinist” and I have a different take on how you interpreted my story. I think you may have missed something from the get go. Did you notice that my daughter’s future husband asked to meet with me, besides my daughter’s father? I am divorced and from a “traditional” point of view, Jeremy didn’t need to ask me anything. But he had respect for me as her Mother and frankly, he asked me first before he met with my daughter’s father.
What women feel pressure to change their surnames? Maybe I’m spoiled living in progressive Boulder, Colorado but I almost had to laugh at that. If women feel any kind of pressure from society, culture,or their families to surrender their surnames (which were mostly likely their father’s anyway), they are grown-ups and need to take responsibility for whatever decisions they make, despite whatever pressure they may encounter. This is our fundamental task as human beings, male or female.
You inadvertently do a great disservice to my strong and independent daughter and honestly, all women. I understand your concerns given the historical perspective, but we can spend our lives lamenting the past or live in the present moment.
Given that I have a very close relative who is a young gay man who has been involved with another man for many years, knowing who he is, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if he honored his partner by honoring his partner’s parents should he have the intention to marry him and perhaps even have a family. I think it’s wiser to not assume these things.
The Reality s that my daughter’s fiance is going to marry my daughter, with or without my blessing. The Story you chose to attach to it is your right and your prerogative. The story I attach to it is one of deep appreciation that this young man has so much respect for my daughter and her parents that he took the time to spend with each one of us to convey his heartfelt and deep feelings.
I do appreciate your reading the story and offering a different perspective on it.
Pauline: Thank you! I believe there are many good young men out there like my future son-in-law and I wish your daughter all the best.
Thank you for your thoughtful response. You are absolutely right that I read your story through the lens of my own karma, and I almost didn’t post my response because I was hesitant to sound like the jerk raining on your very lovely picnic! My personal reaction is just that my own marriage would never have happened if it had begun with my husband seeking approval from my parents before “proposing” to me. I just can’t wrap my (admittedly limited) brain around how that scenario could possibly be equitable. Yes, for me. As traditionally unromantic as it may sound, our decision to marry was borne out of discussion and mutual agreement rather than a proposal on his part, which I personally feel would have been antiquated and anti-feminist. And yes, living in a liberal city years ago (New York) also made me laugh at a lot of things, but now that I live in a conservative, rural area of the South, I realize that the those things that I thought were not issues anymore very much are.
Totally agree with you, Kristen, about both the (a) talking to the parents before talking to me seeming creepy, insecure and/or controlling and (b) there being a lot of men who will still not do the hyphenated name (and I live in Denver, just down the road from the author of this article) and who get very hung up about children having only his last name.
That being said, I agree with the author that we need to stand up for ourselves and our children. It actually becomes “normal” pretty quickly to do the hyphenated name; it’s more difficult and awkward I think to keep your own name; then children don’t share your name.
Emily, I can only speak for myself, but I agree with you. It would more than creep me out if my former husband had talked to my father before me “back in the day”. It would not have gone over well at all, but that didn’t happen. Once we decided, he did go ahead and talk to my father and while none of this was a surprise to anyone, my father’s joy in having my boyfriend officially becoming a part of our family, and the broad beam of a smile on his face as he opened the champagne was wonderful.
I agree with you that most men balk at the hyphenated name, although I know several men who did this, and one who took his wife’s and abandoned his own. I think the reasons many men don’t probably have nothing to do with lack of respect for their partner, of if their partner even asked them to change their name. It’s an interesting discussion to have for sure.
One thing I wonder about is how genealogists are going to keep track of all these name changes. I’ve changed my name so completely that it will be difficult to trace my roots and that’s one piece to this puzzle I haven’t found an answer to.
Ms. Kelly-Williams:
I am curious. What is your interpretation of “masculinist” and what does that have to do with Kristen’s (and my) objection to the practice of talking to the parents before talking to the person you plan to marry?
I think one of the things that troubles me here is that your daughter seems like she is trying to get out of gendering, as many young people are. They don’t want a “women are preoccupied with relationships, men are preoccupied with status and power world.” Many young people, especially young women, have very good concepts of self-in-relation (rather than a woman just being focused on relationships and a man just being focused on himself) and they see themselves as equal to the other sex. There are many young women who are agentic and many young men who are relational.
I am concerned that they are running into resistance from older people who don’t understand what this degendered world is and are trying to reinforce gender stereotypes, including the patriarchal tradition of the man asking the parents for the daughter’s hand in marriage before he even talks to the daughter (and also before he and the daughter have the modern, very healthy conversations and negotiations about what that marriage might look like and what expectations each person might have).
I wonder how your daughter will see this: Does she consider this young man a good match for her or not? Does she like that you and he talked before he and she did? Or does she wish you had asked him to talk to her first? Does she have things to discuss with him to see if they are on the same page about what marriage means, including important topics like jobs, parenting, etc.? Does she need help sorting through those issues, particularly if he is very focused on these emotional issues and not considering these practicalities and how marriage may mean something different to him than what she wants?
Emily, I don’t have the time or inclination to go into a dissertation of what I mean by “masculinist” so I’ll say it briefly by saying that I feel men are objectified as much as women are, just in different ways. This is not based on research (although I’m not saying that there isn’t any to support what I’m saying), but more my clinical experience of working with couples over the years. I’ve been witness to many capable competent professional women who still expect their husbands to make more money than they, work longer and “take care” of the finances. The burden that men carry on a daily basis about how to provide for their families is rarely spoken about. In Chris Rock’s brilliant, “Bigger and Blacker”, he does a great bit about this during his routine should you ever care to take the time to watch it. His humor and insight is well worth it (if you find Chris Rock compelling enough to watch).
You said that my daughter “seems to want to get out of gendering” and you lost me on that one. The reality is that she and her boyfriend discussed marriage, timing, when and where for months before my future son-in-law spoke to me or her father. As for young women now having more of a sense of self than “older people” (gawd, I so hope I’m not in that category but that could be age denial), I’m not sure about that. I’ve been very dismayed to see the generation of women in their 20′s or younger who find the word “feminism” to be a dirty word. This has always been stunning to me given I had the good fortune to be exposed to the likes of Gloria Steinem, Betty Freidan and the feminist movement when I was a teenager. I think they are quite used to women as doctors, lawyers and CEO’s. What they may not be aware of is that there is still pay inequity among these professions and I’m not quite sure that they’ve noticed the large number of states who have recently been successful in limiting access to abortions. And now I’m getting way off topic.
There are so many assumptions in your comment and I would ask that you take a look at that. You were wrong about there being no discussion about marriage between the two of them and you were wrong about any expectation I had. It never occurred to me that Jeremy would ask for this meeting. Is there a way we can have these good discussions without being so strident about them?
As for how my daughter sees all of this (the last paragraph of your comment), perhaps these are more questions you really need to be asking yourself. It’s not that I’m minimizing your questions, but you don’t know my daughter and therefore you don’t know why I am laughing right now and why your questions as they pertain to her are so ridiculous, they could be seen as insulting. Great questions, mind you, but my daughter is tenacious when it comes to fighting for what she needs and wants for herself.
Hope this helps and I appreciate your different opinions and the discussion in general.
Mary Kay and Kristen,
I enjoyed reading the column and the conversation. I find the whole thing wonderful, and I would have even if you, Mary Kay, were Kellie’s dad (as it sounds like also happened), and as Kristen understandably assumed.
I would offer one more point on the meeting of old-fashioned tradition with a feminist-influenced world: I hope my daughters would consider engaging in the same ritual with their future father/mothers-in-law. My parents would have been honored if my wife had asked for time with them, and I would be honored if my future children-in-law sought me out.
Dan Mulhern
Dan, thank you for reading and commenting. After I read Kristin and Emily’s responses, I thought they had a great point and now so do you. I love the daughters engaging in the same kind of ritual. Why not? If the intention comes from a place of love and respect, this is a beautiful and wonderful thing.
Nice piece.
Before I proposed to my wife I did the same thing, except I asked her dad and her mom. But I admit, I didn’t do it because I wanted to. I did it because I knew it was important to my wife. Frankly I disagree with it completely. What if either of them (or you for that matter) had said no? I can’t speak for your son-in-law but I still would’ve asked my wife to marry me even without her parents’ permission. Which I’m sure would’ve created quite the awkward situation and would’ve been a sore spot moving forward.
I think it’s sweet in that it harkens back to a different time, but I do think it’s antiquated and no longer relevant. But I guess whatever works for the individuals involved is best.
Thanks for sharing.