Bride At 35

It’s obvious from the zillions of dollars NBC has spent “introducing” all of us to Katharine McPhee, a singer we actually all met almost 10 years ago, that she’s supposed to be the actress you’re rooting for in “Smash” and its fictional race to find the lead in the fictional “Marilyn The Musical.”

My girl's on the right.

There’s nothing fictional about Kat’s talent – her voice is smooth, powerful yet subtle, and she’s got a gorgeous face and a great body. As the runner-up “American Idol” she embodied that American dream of being whisked from obscurity to fame in the length of a television season, and it’s clear that Karen, the spunkity Iowa-bred waitress with a song in her heart and a tray on her hip is the ingenue of all ages. It seems telegraphed that she should be the one to play the famously talented but fragile Miss Monroe.

And yet…

…I don’t want her to be. My heart is with Karen’s competitor, the person who (for the moment) actually has the part – Broadway chorus veteran and insecure maker of some bad choices Ivy, played by Broadway vet Megan Hilty. And I can’t help but believe that I prefer her, bad choices and all, over the newbie, because I’m not a newbie anymore.

Yeah, I’ve made it about me. What of it? That’s what we do. And so I have no trouble admitting that even though Kat McPhee is an incredibly talented vocalist, she’s always left me a little cold. And as sweet and spunkalicious as Karen is – and as much as the Disney Princess in me loves stories about magical discoveries that instantly change lives overnight, I have a soft spot for the plugger, the veteran who’s strapped on those character shoes and those crazy costumes, several shows a week. The slightly jaded but realistic girl who still believes in a dream, but has less illusions about what it takes to get it.

Of course, Ivy’s made some questionable decisions, like I said – she’s sleeping with her director, and I can tell you without giving a whole lot away that she doesn’t deal with her casting triumph in the most mature manner. And she might not be the nicest person in the world. But if nice was a determiner of success in the entertainment industry – well, y’all would be watching fingerpainting in caves, because there wouldn’t be any entertainment.

That aside, I relate to both women- I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed young reporter once, and I rose up the ranks at an admirable clip, but with an amazing amount of work and sacrifice in places that were not the most glamorous, because the work meant something. And I admit to being sometimes a little jealous of people who seemed to have been handed assignments or schedules or cushy jobs that I would have loved. I believe that no job is worth subterfuge and nastiness,  but I know that fatigue and desperation might sometimes cloud one’s judgement.

Anyway, the fairytale I like even more than the new girl sweeping in and getting all of her wishes granted is of the fairy godmother who gets, for once, to be on the receiving in of those wishes, after years of supporting other people’s dreams.

It’s Lynne.

So my wonderful husband and I went to see a chick flick last weekend in the theater, even though I wanted to see it, I also offered to see a movie where things blow up instead. And we both like when things blow up, but it was a few days before Valentine’s Day, so rock on with the mushiness. Off we went to see “The Vow”, a love story, based on a true story,that follows in the tradition of “The Notebook”, and “A Walk To Remember” in that it’s un-apologetically romantic, and doesn’t mind employing cheese to get it’s point across.  These kinds of movies usually garner big (mostly female) followings but so-so reviews from the press because okay maybe the plots aren’t really tight, and some of the background characters seem to be types and not actual living breathing people.  But what resonates is whatever message of love that the filmmakers are trying to get through.  But sometimes, we are too cool to try and just enjoy it for what it is.

I though about this as we sat in the movie theatre last week.  We went to an 11:00 am screening, which was not crowded but was pretty well-attended.  And the audience was what you thought; a few guys there with their wives/girlfriends, some groups of women together, and a row of teenagers, 2 guys and about 4 girls, who sat in front of A.C. and I. And then the movie started.  We see how cute couple Paige and Leo meet, and it’s cute, and how they have this cute wedding in the museum of the art school she attends, and they read their vows from the menus they wrote them on, and how they get run out by security because they didn’t have permission to have a wedding there, and they run out all happy and delirious. And then we see they, in their car, get rear-ended by a truck in snow-covered streets a few months later, and how Paige gets severely injured and lapses into a coma. When she wakes up, she doesn’t remember the last few years, including her courtship with and marriage to Leo.  Who is determined to win back his wife, even if he has to date her all over again. And of course, there are tears, and drama, and some overwrought acting, and some laughter and SPOILER ALERT I don’t think I am giving anything away to say that the ending is happy, because that’s what these movies do, although it takes some steps getting there that you might not expect, but that made sense.  And while we were letting all of the sentimental goodness wash over us, the row of teens in front of us had other plans.

You see, during the really sentimental parts, they groaned. Loudly.  And when Paige’s mother makes an emotional speech about her commitment to her marriage, some of the kids laughed out loud. Loudly.  And they talked. And they chatted. And I actually shushed them but they didn’t hear me.  And I was reminded of being oh-so-hip in high school, and going to movies with my friends (Dee, Paige and sister Leslie, I am looking at you), and feeling so young and alive that we wanted everyone to know how young and above it all we were. I am sure that we had adults rolling their eyes at us, and if they had blogs back then (well they did, but they used pen and paper and were called journals), they probably wrote about the immature kids who couldn’t let them enjoy the movie.  And for the kids in front of us on Saturday, it could have been selfishness, or the need to just be heard. But what I really think is that they didn’t have the maturity to swim past some of the cheese to get through the movie’s message: that this man and woman had made vows to each other, and no matter what people thought, or the fact that she didn’t remember HIM, let alone what she said at their wedding, he was going to do everything he could to stick to what he had said in that museum. His vows included, “I vow to seriously love you, in all your forms, now and forever. I promise to never forget that this is a once in a lifetime love.”  And even though she did, he did not.

“The Vow” shows that you sometimes have to endure car accidents and disapproving in-laws and amnesia and hipster friends and ex’s and pain to get to the love at the bottom.  And the movie shows that sometimes, under the lines that could be written better, and overacting, and plot lines you might see coming from a mile back, is a beautiful, beautiful message of commitment and love.  Because don’t we all want the people who love us to look past our cheese and see the gold that’s there and fight for it? I do. And I hope the same for you.  And that’s what this movie is all about. I hope you see it.

Leslie here! I had to chuckle during last night’s “Gossip Girl” when a girl told a would-be suitor that it was a little cheesy to ask someone out for a first date on Valentine’s Day. That’s because I had that same conversation with a guy who asked me out for a date that was to be three years ago, today, February 14, 2009.

He didn’t care. I said yes, because he didn’t seem to be going away.

And at the end of this month, we celebrate our second wedding anniversary. So I’d say it was a good date.

The reason I had for rejecting a V-Day first date was that it seemed to put so much pressure on that date – I mean, it’s just the most supposedly romantic day of the year, where poor suckers lovers sink loads of money and thought into making this one day perfect, when the onus should be on making the whole year that way. You don’t get to be a jerk to me as long as you were extra sweet one day of the year.

But it worked out – not because he didn’t go all out. He sure did. But it was in ways that he knew meant something to me, a combination of grand gestures (a fancy dinner at a vegetarian restaurant, because he knew that’s the kind of food I liked; red roses and organic lollipops to reference the song “Lollipops and Roses,” which Natalie Cole had sung at a concert we’d gone to the night before (supposedly just as friends)) and normal, low-key fun (walking on the beach, talking about soap operas). He got the giddy romantic part right, which was appropriate for the day, and the “let’s just talk and get to know each other” part right too.

And that’s what we have to remember. If you were single yesterday, don’t be extra bummed because you’re single today. It’s just a day. A nice day for some, an albatross for others. But in the end, it should just be a reminder that there is love out there, love to be cherished and enjoyed and hugged. And don’t worry if you haven’t found it yet. It can find you. On any day.

Happy Valentine’s Week!!  We at Bride at 35 celebrate true love in all it’s forms, be it in marriage, or dating, or friendships, and all that comes with it.  Some people love it February 14, and some people dread it, but we like to think of it as a good time to focus on love, period, whether it’s your sweetheart, or your kids, or your friends, or your Grandma.

To that end, we wanted to run stuff on all kinds of love and stuff.  Today, we wanted to talk about those fantastic, awe-inspiring, sometimes anxiety-producing things called new relationships.  We found this article from the Stone Foundation, called “You’ve Met Someone-Great! Now What”. It gives REALLY good advice on how to tread the waters of that new good thing you’ve got, so it can maybe be the foundation of something wonderful, and not the beginnings of a great break-up story that you tell your friends.  Hope it’s useful!!

by Lynne Streeter Childress

So, it’s about 24 hours after Whitney Houston died, and there still isn’t a cause, and it still doesn’t make sense.  I won’t speculate about what happened, because we don’t know for sure (at least not verified by the press), and that doesn’t do any good.  But we do we know about that career, and that voice, and that smile, and all those hits, and those high notes we believe we can hit too, in our cars at least (“I will always, love YOUUUUUUUUUU”).  And we know about the addictions she admitted to, and how they seemed to curtail her glorious career, and the parodies, and the drama-filled marriage, and the recent comebacks, and how they didn’t go as planned after her voice seemed to give out.  But that’s the thing.  We were always waiting, with open arms, for her to come-back.  We hadn’t given up on her.   In the days before she died, I had just read two stories about her; one about her supposedly being back with ex-boyfriend Ray-J,  and the other about her being asked to be the new judge on TV talent contest “The X-Factor”.  And I thought, “Good for her! What a great opportunity for her to come back, and show people what talent is.”  And now that’s done.  No more comebacks.  There’s the movie she just finished, and I think some other projects she had completed, but that’s it.   And we don’t know why for sure.   And that’s the maddening thing.  We know of her issues, but we don’t know exactly what went down yesterday because we weren’t there.  And we can speculate and pontificate but it doesn’t change that she’s gone, and that we don’t get to cheer her on through another triumph.

I am still in shock, because even though I didn’t know her, Whitney Houston’s music and presence on earth as a phenomenon has been a forgone conclusion, much like Smokey Robinson or Paul McCartney is for my parent’s generation.  And that music played a major part in my life, so even though it might seem like it’s not my place to make sense of the life and death of someone I never met, I can’t help but want to.  Because she was so beautiful, and lovely, and lively and alive.  And even from far away, that’s a big loss.  The loss of hope is huge, and the hope of her getting it all back, at least on this earth, is gone.  So I guess, if I may, this is the sense I can try to make, a lesson to be learned from this tragedy, because even though we don’t know the exact cause of her death, or who is to blame, death at 48 is a tragedy.  Here’s what we can do.  Be good to the people you love who you still have,  who are still alive, even if most of their problems seem to be their own making, and even if you can’t have them be a regular part of your life because of the destruction they bring.  But you can still pray for them, and hold out hope for them, even from a distance.   Because happy endings can happen.

Lynne here.

So yesterday I wrote about this special on ABC News’ “20/20″ that featured celebrities who have had successful marriages.  We thought it was refreshing because most of the marriage stories you hear out of Hollywood are break-ups.  And it made me think that as lovely as it was to hear the stories of people in La-La Land, how even more wonderful it would be to hear YOUR stories.  So, in honor of Valentine’s Day, we wanna hear about your love stories. Been married 6 months? A year? 5? 20? 50? We would love to hear about you and your sweetie, and what makes you stick together.  And if you would let us, we would love to feature your story on our website! Here’s what you can do.  Write a comment here are on our Facebook page, or email us (and send pics!!) to bride35@gmail.com.   Okay? Your stories make people smile, and they give hope to EVERYBODY, single or married, because they give us a picture of what COULD be. And you wanna make people smile, right? Hee. Come on. Tell you story.

Last year, we started the “Bride at 35 Book Club”, and we just finished reading our second book, “Love Walked In”, by Marisa De Los Santos.  This time, our little reading group included myself and Good Friend Elicia, and at first I was thinking I would write up a summary of our discussion and post it for you guys.  But the more I looked at our notes, I realized that if I printed our whole discussion, I would give away the whole book, and deprive anyone who wants to read it of chance to have a pretty amazing reading experience.

What I CAN tell you about the book is this: It’s about a young woman in her 30′s who has felt stunted in her life because she hasn’t really gone anywhere in the career she once wanted, and who also dreams of the kind of love found in the movies.  She meets the man of her dreams, and finds out that love sometimes looks differently than you think it will. I can’t say more than that really, but I can say this.   I think that this is a book for people in our age range, who maybe haven’t found their place yet in love and life, or who are perfectly happy with where they are.  I think it’s for anyone who can accept that my happy doesn’t need to look like your happy if we are truly happy.  It’s like one of my favorite lines ever from a movie.  In “Under the Tuscan Sun”, Diane Lane’s character buys this villa in Tuscany and tells her realtor about all of the plans that she has for the house, like getting married and having a baby and a family there.  At the end of the movie, after things turn out differently than she would have planned, the realtor points out that she actually HAS everything that she wanted. It just came differently than she thought it would. And that’s why you guys will love this book.  It’s about opening yourself up to good things, even if they don’t line up with what you had in mind.  And I know we can all use a good thing. Read the book .

Lynne here! Well, not below, because that’s Osmond people!!

ABC News’ 20/20 just did a special called “Hollywed”, which took an inside look at celebrity marriages.  And it kinda started out the way you might expect, with tales of the recent spate of famous divorces, and even a thing about the shortest celebrity marriages.  But just when you were feeling good and jaded, or superior, or just plain sad at either the seeming frivolousness or the heartbreak of it all, the show took a happy turn! They talked about famous people who have actually stayed together!! First they featured Gene Simmons of KISS and Shannon Tweed, who have been together for 28 years but got married just last year, after Shannon threatned to finally walk out after years of Gene’s infidelity if he didn’t change his ways. And he did. And they are happy.  Then they talked to Donny Osmond and his wife Debra, who have been married for over 30 years and raised 5 smiling sons.  And they were refreshing and honest and loyal and happy.  Next was Allison “Sami Brady” (Days of Our Lives shout-out, y’all!!) who has been married to her police officer husband for almost 12 years, giving hope that celebrities can actually have relationships with us normal folk and be happy.  And the last spot was about Isaac, Taylor and Zac Hanson AKA dreamy rock band Hanson, most famous for the insanely catchy “Mmbop”, which I know you are all singing now that I mentioned it.  All three brothers got married, relatively young, to Hanson fans, and all look completely, well, HAPPY.

And that’s the point, I guess.  It was really, really refreshing to see a show put as much energy into happy people as it does into drama and distress. Good on you, ABC News. And good for the rest of us. Who like happy.

Lynne here.

The Sound of Music is pretty much my favorite movie.  The scenery, the music, the beautiful story, the heart behind, it, and Christopher Plummer’s cute self all make it a pretty fantastic movie.  One of my favorite parts of the viewing experience has always been getting mad and hating on the Baroness.  If you don’t know the story, to make a very long story short, nun-to-be Maria gets sent to the home of Captain Van Trapp, an Austrian Naval officer, to nanny his seven children.  She teaches them to be more sensitive people through the love of music, and while falling in love with the kids, she and Captain Von Trapp fall in love with each other.  The problem is that he is engaged to be married to Baroness Schraeder, a rich haughty woman who is all ready to enter into what looks more like a business arrangement than a love match.  The Baroness actually realizes that Maria and the Captain are in love before THEY do, and she kinda plots to shame Maria into leaving.  Maria’s sweet naivete is trumped by the Baroness’ manipulations, and it has always made for a wonderful booing session as the Baroness bullies Maria into going back to the Abbey.   Over the years, though, I have begun to understand the Baroness’ point of view a little better.  She and this dude had an arrangement, and she was not about to lose him that easily.  When I watched the movie again on this past Christmas Eve, I thought a blog about that sounded like a great idea.  Then I realized that it WAS a great FAMILIAR idea, because Leslie had already blogged about this very thing in this post for her real job as a columnist at the Palm Beach Post.  She says it very well.  Enjoy!!

by Lynne Streeter Childress

Part of being 40, it seems, is that you learn more and more about yourself every day.  Sometimes it’s good stuff, like you realize that you can handle more than you thought, while other times it’s sobering: like maybe you realize that you’ve been hanging onto resentment for somebody, when maybe you were the one that was wrong.  But actually, that sobering thought becomes a cleansing one because you realize that there’s some stuff you can just let go, and you know, be done with.

I have a lot going on in my life at this current moment.   Among the stuff is that: my husband and I are expecting our first baby; we are settling into our first home and all of the responsibilities that come with that;I have a very close relative suffering with cancer;  I have a wonderful career as a freelance teaching artist, and I got to drive around and share my love of theatre with young people.   Most of those things are out and out blessings (we ARE finding blessings in the illness, but honestly I would ditch those lessons for my loved one to be cancer-free in a second), but all of them come with their own challenges, which can lead to worry, frustration, and feeling overwhelmed.   We are so excited about this little person coming (who we sometimes call Ron Swanson after our favorite character on the show “Parks and Rec”, and who I sometimes call “Sir Baby”), but I am also nervous about all of the different choices we could make about how to parent. Shoot, I am overwhelmed with all of the paraphenalia they come with (which is probably why we registered at a baby supply store for gifts 2 weeks ago, but haven;t added a single thing to the registry).  We LOVE our house, and I also don’t like the large amount of dishes that the two of us seem to go through, and I certainly don’t like loading and unloading the dishwasher.  I enjoy the freedom of being freelance, but the driving can take a toll, and trying to keep all of the different projects that I have going straight can be tiring.  And trying to stay positive about my sick loved-one takes a lot of resolve when sometimes I just want to walk around in a funk.

So yesterday, I had all of these things swirling in my little head, while I was standing in the line at the local Safeway grocery store that never has enough checkout lines open, no matter what time of day, and it seemed as if everything the person in front of me had in their cart had to be price-checked.  This wasn’t true, but it felt that way, and I really had to pray for the right attitude and to know that this too, would pass. And it did, and the clerk was nice, and I walked to my car, and it was raining, and I let out a sigh and turned on the radio, and heard a song I had not heard in awhile.

It was “Jesus Take the Wheel”, one of the first hits for then-”American Idol” champ-and-now-Country Music superstar Carrie Underwood.  It’s a classic country story song, about a young girl headed to her parents’ house for Christmas, with “her baby in the back seat”.  The woman is going through some stuff, and although we don’t know exactly what she was facing (the song says “it’d been a long hard year”), we know that as she was driving, everything she was facing was going through her head, to the point that she was paying more attention to that than to where she was going.  She doesn’t realize how fast she is driving, and winds up skidding off the road.  Scared to death, she checks to see that the baby is okay, and she realizes, right there, she can’t deal with all of the stuff on her own.  She throws up her hands and cries out for Jesus to “take the wheel”.  See how clever Country music can be? She means to take the wheel not just of the car, but of her life. It’s an analogy, get it? So wonderful.

And yesterday, with the weight of everything that I had swirling around in my own head, I threw up my hands in the Safeway parking lot and said, “Yep!! Take it!!”  Because see, if I get so overwhelmed with all the things that are happening, I can’t see where I’m going.  Because see, these things ARE happening, the good with the bad, so instead of collapsing under the gravity, I can choose to give all of the worry and fear of it to God, and ask Him to clear a path for me that I can actually navigate through.  There is enough stuff that I can’t control, but I can choose how I look at things. I am not talking about self-delusion: I am talking about seeing the good stuff in what I’m going through.  Like I see the baby we are getting and the joy he will bring, which helps me want to get through the laundry and clutter he and all of his stuff will accumulate so that he and (we) don’t get buried under it all.   Like remembering how wonderful it feels to walk downstairs in the morning to a clean kitchen because I took the time to actually clean it the night before, instead of psyching myself out about how much I hate it and turning a 30-minute task into a 2-day one (I do that. A LOT.) Like remembering, like my friend Amy reminded me last week, that this career is actually the one I asked God for when I left my full-time job over a year ago, and that it didn’t just materialize. God answered my prayers and made it possible.  Like remembering that even though I can’t stop my relative’s cancer on my own, my outlook affects that person, and me being mopy and morose and talking about nothing but cancer every time I speak to them on the phone ignores the fact that 4 years after the initial diagnosis, he is still here and still fighting.

That’s what Jesus taking the wheel looks like for me. Taking all of my mess, throwing it up in the air, and asking Him to take it, and to tell me what to do with what lands back in my lap.  And together, we can navigate through anything. Even the Safeway checkout line. Because they had a big box of Whoppers there. And I let Jesus drive, and I dreamed of malted milk balls,  and Carrie sang me home.