Nine Years of Beraphic

Beraphic, in case you are wondering, is a relationship name, composed according to television fans' relatively recent "shipping" conventions. Since Benedict Ambrose and I took refuge in a holiday flat with Netflix, I have become hip to the kids and all their crazy entertainment crazes. Currently it is making portmanteaux of fictional characters' names in homage to their romances, e.g. "Riverdale's" Jughead + Betty= Bughead.

I remember "shipping" Mulder and Scully from "The X-Files" decades ago, but nobody called them Sculder or even Mully, thank heavens. However, I seem to recall the names of canoodling film stars being squished together in this way, like Bennifer and Tomkat. Ick to Tomkat.

Anyway, it is Beraphic's ninth wedding anniversary, so feel free to send us pottery, if you like. We have just returned from a boozy lunch, so B.A. is taking a nice nap and I am sobering up with coffee before delving once more into the latest correspondence from the front-lines of the war against the Culture of Death.

This morning we went together to my weekly Polish tutorial for a fun activity called "translate for B.A." Language tasks are not immediately transferable, so if you expect to speak a foreign language abroad when travelling with a monolingual spouse, you must practise thinking in the foreign language while your spouse is interrupting you monolinguistically.

We told my young Polish tutor that today was our anniversary, and she was quite interested in the longevity of our marriage and wanted to know our recipe for success. B.A. said it is going along to Polish lessons to make sure the Polish tutor really is a woman, and now that he has seen her three times, he is sure she is a woman and he doesn't have to come anymore. Ha ha ha.

I had to translate that all into Polish, by the way.

Then B.A. got  philosophical and said that the recipe for a successful marriage was five parts patience mixed with a sense of humour about oneself and one's spouse. Also, shared first principles. And also love because without love it's nothing, which is easier to say in Polish than "five parts patience."

At a certain point I just free-styled and explained in what seemed to be recognisably Polish that unlike most of our generation in either Canada or Scotland, we are both fervent Catholics, which was our shared first principle. It would have taken a lot more vocabulary to theorise that anyone whose first principle is vegetarianism should marry a vegetarian, or anyone who is a fanatical nationalist ought to marry someone from his or her nation.

Catholicism in itself is more consciously pro-marriage than, say, vegetarianism or nationalism, but I remember being confronted with a classroom of little Catholic girls all deeply anxious to know how one goes about getting an annulment. That said, Catholicism smiles upon those things that help sustain a marriage--like patience, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice--and frowns upon those things that stick pins in it, like resentment, spendthrift, and infidelity. I'm not sure vegetarianism is that conscious of relationship-building, and nationalism could theoretically lead a woman to leave her alpha male husband for an alpha-plus national chieftain, or a man to leave his ageing wife for a fertile young thing, all for the sake of the Fatherland.

But in general I am all for people figuring out their own first principles and choosing their spouses  accordingly.

Less edifying factors that lead to long marriages include financial interdependence, with certain ruin to both, should one spouse desert the other; family pressure, with the likely disapproval of many suddenly scary family members, should one spouse desert the other; and a fair amount of unpleasantness in the world outside the home, so that home is a real refuge, no matter who else is living in it. For example, I might be flakey and crabby and prone to singing the same Polish pop song over and over again, but I am still more soothing to the nerves than, say, a Scottish vs English punch-up in the Historical House car park.

How Family Should Work

The older of my two brothers is asleep in the bed in our dining-room enclave, the space B.A. and I call the "Polish Corridor" as the guests who sleep there tend to be Polish students. It's amazing what a difference it makes to have another person with me in the Historical House. On the rare occasions B.A. is away out very late at a Men Only Supper, I sense Something at the Bottom Of the Central Staircase. On Wednesday night, I thought I could sense this terrible, surely fictional, monster. Last night I did not.

(Incidentally, when you live in a Historical House, never ask if there are any ghost stories associated with it. There are ghost stories associated with the H.H. that are kept from tourists out of respect for the departed family. The worst one involves a ... Never mind.)

When my brother arrived at Edinburgh's Waverley railway station, we checked his bags into the baggage office and went for a "Full Scottish" breakfast at the nearby Cockburn Café. It was a lovely, sunny morning: just the thing for jetlag. When we got to the café, Nulli called home and discovered that his mother-in-law had cancelled her trip to Paris and her birth country so as to help his wife (her daughter) with their children while he was in Scotland with B.A. and me.

I am really touched by that. Meanwhile, my mother told her 90-something pal at the hospital where they volunteer the whole story, and Ina said something like, "My, you have a close-knit family." When my mother related this to me, I said, "Yes, we do, thank God" although actually this "close-knit" family lives in at least seven separate domiciles, none of which houses three generations, and most shelter only one. There is no iron-clad pilgrimage to senior members' home (or homes) for Sunday Dinner, although my single brother and sisters do often drop by our parents' house on Sunday evenings. The siblings can go for weeks or even months without phoning, emailing or texting each other.

Nevertheless, the bonds are strong, as this week's emergency has proved. After I got off the phone with my father (4:15 AM for me; 11:15 PM for him), my mother phoned Nulli and Ma Belle Soeur, and as Ma Belle Soeur is a doctor, she knew better than any of us what could happen and said to Nulli, "You may have to go."

As I have taken away B.A.'s computer and he can't read this, I will say that Ma Belle Soeur was thinking about the funeral arrangements. The "tiny chance" B.A. and I were told about every time he signed consent forms was apparently really 10%. After Ma Belle Soeur told my brother this Worse News, she rolled over and, exhausted from an endless day of doctoring, went to sleep while our poor Nulli stared sleeplessly at the ceiling.

But "what a difference a day makes" as the song goes. From 4 PM Wednesday, everything has been much, much happier. All the same, I would be going quietly out of my mind when at home alone, so I am SO grateful my brother is here---and SO grateful he doesn't have to worry about his kids driving his wife around the bend, thanks to his mother-in-law's wonderful decision to cancel her Paris trip.

The doctors are discussing what to do with B.A.'s brain when they have their weekly meeting today, so I ask your prayers again. I asked Polish Pretend Son to pray that it wasn't cancer, and so far it isn't cancer, so PPS's prayers seem to be efficacious. The lead surgeon, by the way, wasn't a Pole but a Czech.

Funny, by the way, how a  married couple of 40-somethings decides whom to tell when one of them is in danger of death. In our case it was:

1. Kindly neighbour-friend with car. (Transportation/grown-up of parents' generation.)*
2. FSSP priest. (Last Rites and priestly prayers.)
3. Four devoutly Roman Catholic friends by telephone text message. (Prayer warring by those who would be properly concerned and pray fervently but not feel personally devastated.)
4. My parents. (3:45 AM loneliness overcoming daughterly wish to spare parents perhaps needless worry.)
5. B.A.'s mother. (Natural Justice.)

*Invaluable, by the way. She made me take a shower when she drove me home on Wednesday evening so I could rush about backing a very late bag of overnight things for B.A.

"Have a shower," she said.

"I don't have time!" I yipped.

"Make time," she said.

My mother found this story true evidence of the neighbour's excellence.  The neighbour is sort of genteel Marxist, Guardian-reading agnostic, which I only mention to point out the deep goodness of many lefties. Sometimes the right-of-center forget.

Trads and Matrimonial Advertisements.

It is well-known now that the parents of Benedict XVI met in the matrimonial ads.  His parents kept it a secret from him and siblings, but naturally after Joseph Junior became pope, a German reporter sniffed it out. Here it is: 

“Middle-ranking civil servant, single, Catholic, 43, immaculate past, from the country, is looking for a good Catholic, pure girl who can cook well, tackle all household chores, with a talent for sewing and homemaking with a view to marriage as soon as possible. Fortune desirable but not a precondition.” 

The future Frau Ratzinger  was 36 and a trained cook, and despite being over 35 she bore three children, both sons becoming priests. It's a happy story. I love how Joseph Senior underscored that he had an "immaculate past" before stating he was looking for a "pure" girl. Yes, unless you have an immaculate past yourself, chaps, don't get your heart set on a "pure" girl. A smartened up, currently chaste girl is good enough for you. 

The ad was placed in a Bavarian Catholic paper in July 1920 (when both Church and society encouraged single men to be immaculate and single women to be pure, so it was weird and generally shocking if you weren't), so it makes complete sense that Joseph Senior would immediate flag his ability to provide and signal his interest in women who would make a good homemaker. The fortune bit is quite funny, since surely Bavarian women of fortune could do better socially than a middle-ranking civil servant, but hey, money comes in handy. 

There are dating websites for Traditional Singles, and so small is the Traditional Catholic community that I immediately recognized TWO of the local Trads on this website.*They both go to Mass regularly and have proper careers, but I don't know them well to gave a précis of their personalities, so you would have to investigate yourselves. Yes, it's Catholic Match, but I am being magnanimous. Besides, one of the local Trad women (none of whom I recognized, by the way) foolishly didn't add a photo and started her ad "It's been a tough few years" so now I have the opportunity to STRONGLY encourage you not to do this. ALWAYS have a photo. NEVER mention unhappy stuff. Men are visual. Men prefer happy. Dear Lord. This should be taught in high school. 

There are also Traditional Catholic Singles and Latin Mass Dating, about which I know nothing, and there is even SSPX Singles, which you may wish to consider even if you do not frequent SSPX chapels.  How interested SSPX fans will be in the merely Extraordinary Form and Traditional Doctrine Positive is a question, however. Of course, a sudden infusion of new blood in the SSPX courtship scene might provoke interest. Again, it's a relatively small community, except in France. 

Normally I despise dating websites because they are much too much like shopping for people, and indeed I anticipated them in 1987 or so when I wrote a series of stories called "Man Shortage", "Man Shortage II", etc. My heroine drunkenly wished for a catalogue of Single men that she could choose from in her search for a date. At least one of these stories was published in the school newspaper, and I got a talking to from an RE teacher because my heroine (unlike myself, incidentally) preferred blue-eyed blonds, which he thought rather neo-Nazi. However, when it comes to Traditionalist Catholic communities, internet dating is less like shopping and more like finding a plank to cling onto as the ship goes down. 

It doesn't strike me as traditional for tradition-minded Catholic women to place their own ads, but I suppose they have to, to answer the ads of traditional Catholic men. Really the most important thing in a woman's profile, in my humble opinion, is the photograph. Sad from a female perspective, but true. Men are who they are and not who we want them to be. No bikini shots, naturally. Marital status first or career? Hmm. If you don't have a career, you could put your dad's career. How old-fashioned is that?

Doctor's daughter, 32, single, university-educated (Aberdeen), obedient to Church teachings, from Stonehaven, enjoys cooking, baking, child care, is looking for a traditional Catholic man, age 30-45, with a professional career, with a view to marriage. 

"As soon as possible" doesn't sound as nice coming from a woman, does it? Meanwhile, you may have a job working at the pet shop, but honestly, who cares? If a guy cares about marrying within his class, "doctor's daughter" covers that; if he cares about education, you mentioned uni; if he's worried about chastity, that's covered as much as you want it to be; if he's looking for feminine (and they all are), cooking, baking and children covers that....and now you make your demands. Trad Catholic. Your age group. Professional and money-making. Marriage. All that walking on the beach stuff is stupid. Be practical, taciturn and look nice in your photo. Smile. 

If you do have a career, however, mention that at the beginning, for the sake of men terrified of the potentially crushing financial burdens that come along with dependents, aka housewife and kids. 

Secondary school teacher, 35, widowed, one child, obedient to Church teachings, from Glasgow, athletic, enjoys homemaking, is looking for a traditional Catholic man, age 35-45, employed in trade or profession, with a view to marriage. 

My fictional Glaswegian secondary school teacher is either less fussed about class than the fictional doctor's daughter or from a blue-collar family. She lives for marathons, but it's better to preserve the mystery by just saying "athletic". 

As for the trad guy, I think Joseph Ratzinger Senior's ad is a good template, except for the emphasis on sexual purity. Too much of an emphasis on purity today may scare the purest of virgins because of the creepiness of contemporary virgin-hunters. Start with the career. 

Museum curator, widower, trad Catholic, 47, no children, from Dundee, is looking for a trad Catholic woman, never married or widow, 30-50, who has a professional career she enjoys with a view to marriage as soon as possible. Natural red-heads preferred.  

That's for B.A., in case I should snuff it and he doesn't go into a monastery after all. He loves to cook, but he doesn't like housework, so my professional lady replacement should hire a daily instead of preaching about equality in household tasks. B.A. is an example of a trad Catholic man who does appreciate a financial contribution to ye olde household accounts. The Scottish heritage industry is not a field in which a man gets rich--unless he owns tartan tat shops. By the way,  B.A. might consider a 17 year age gap a bit big, but I don't--not for men over 40 anyway.

The photo is a bit trickier for men, but in general, just look like yourself on a work day, only happy.

*I find it odd, however, that I don't recognize more of the Edinburgh ones. If they aren't going to the one FSSP Sunday Missa Cantata in town, why are they described as "traditional"? They could be at the SSPX's Sunday Low Mass, but if they aren't, I'm puzzled.

Update: In case anyone is disturbed by my posthumous plans, I'm not dying; I just like using B.A. as an example.

Update 2: I wonder if women-over-30 specifying age is a limiting move? I can WELL understand women under 30 being firm about no-one over 40 or even 35, but after a woman turns 30, older men are often more attractive than they were before she turned 30. My only concern (were I a 35 year old widow) would be an elderly man hoping to find himself free nursing help. Well, then there's the bullying factor. Sometimes I am quite astonished at things men of my parents' generation say. Others are wonderfully charming, however.