By the best-selling author of Eat, Pray, Love, the sequel, Committed takes us with Elizabeth Gilbert as she comes to terms with a life-changing decision. In fact, she's committed to the decision. Committed to a significant other, ring or not. Committed to make marriage vows, like them or not. In this most recent book, Gilbert meditates on her reluctance to marry Felipe, a Brazilian man she had been dating and living with for two years.He is the same man Gilbert fell in love with at the end of the sojourn she chronicles in Eat, Pray, Love, now being made into a motion picture with Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.
Gilbert is not alone in her decision not to marry, as it is shared by her significant other. It is that they are forced to make this choice when no other is left available. Felipe is permanently blocked from returning to the US after "overusing" his tourist visa, according to the Homeland Security guard that "deports" him back to Australia, where he has citizenship but no longer a home, and hasn't had a home there in over ten years.
So for nearly a year, the two of them travel from one cheap hotel in Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, or Indonesia to another. All the while, Gilbert researches the history of marriage in the Western world and interviews married women, not all of them Western. She interviews a Hmong woman in Vietnam as well as her own mother and grandmother to find out if they were happy to be married and if they were okay with whatever they gave up in getting married.
Gilbert's book interested me, not only because I thoroughly enjoyed Eat, Pray, Love, but because as a single woman Gilbert's own age, I, too, have thought a great deal about marriage, its benefits and detriments. And in comparison, other kinds of commitment that don't involve an exchange of vows and a signed, witnessed piece of legitimacy. For as Gilbert discovers in her research, and I have read and heard before, studies show marriage benefits men much more than women. Women who marry are more likely to be depressed than their single sisters; they are less healthy in general; and they don't make as much money or go as far in their careers. The inverse of all of these is true for married men. They are richer, healthier, and more successful when compared to their bachelor brothers.
Albeit, I have no statistics or studies to back me up, I'm going to go out on a limb so say that not all single men are like my good friend Scott who dines out more often than he uses his own kitchen. And not all single women are akin to the Cosmopolitan-drinking, weekends-on-the-town with Carrie and friends on Sex and the City. Because unlike these women, I like to cook. As do many men I know. Likely all of us for the same reason. We like really good food, and food worth eating does not come from a box or a carton that is reconstituted with oil and water or nuked in a microwave.
Here's another tidbit that women reading this may recognize. For a great while, I found myself reluctant to admit I liked to cook, because what often followed was a comment that my liking to cook would make me a good wife (and note here that I know full well that this comment was always meant as a compliment), but it was a comment that I never took lightly. For what I heard, nice or not, was that my culinary aptitude was akin to a job qualification, or was it a designation?
So, I was relieved that Gilbert was not the chief cook in her book, or was that purposeful? She purposely mentions that it is her boyfriend, Felipe. I can name a number of men that cook delicious food, but I can also imagine that not a one of them have been told that he would make a good husband, based on his skill in the kitchen. Because a woman who cooks is akin to a woman that cares for a man and her children. That's how I would interpret the comments I received. A caretaker. Someone who brings comfort as well as sustenance to those she loves. Gilbert has no inclination for children, unwilling as she is to make the sacrifices she sees her own grandmother and mother made in marrying and starting families.
So, if I were to cook or to dine, I would not choose the caviar and champagne moments associated with marriage proposals. For Gilbert, like me, does not take the decision to marry lightly. Rather it is a decision mulled over, journalled about, researched, and talked about endlessly into the night. And in times of stress and strife, what do we normally turn to? Comfort food would be "it" for me. Mac 'n cheese, of course. Cheesey, creamy bowls of macaroni noodles. Or a bowl of minestrone and a long fresh baguette. A glass of Beaujolais. Food that stirs tastebuds, brings back memories of the cozy kitchens we felt at ease in. Because for all the hesitation I have to be a mother, I loved being mothered. Does this make me "unwomanly or unnatural or selfish," adjectives Gilbert uses to describe the attitude some may have toward women who are not dying to have children or get married? I certainly hope not.
Because the truth is I would readily invite my whole neighborhood over for a Friday night cocktail or a Saturday barbecue of grilled salmon. And my nephew knows he has got me wound around his little finger when it comes to spending time with him. Because I have never for a minute doubted the joy that children bring.
More on Elizabeth Gilbert: http://www.elizabethgilbert.com
No comments:
Post a Comment