Welcome to the 21st Century Americans . . .

Note:  if you want my references, click on the links . . . ;)

First, to all my American family and friends who are becoming apoplectic about the US Supreme Court's ruling and some of whom may have to make good on their promise to move out of the US:  Do NOT come to Canada -- you will be sadly disappointed.  Not only have we allowed ALL loving couples to marry since 2005, you will not be able to bring your guns across the 49th.  I do have a few suggestions where you might consider seeking asylum:  Russia, most of the African countries and pretty much all Muslim nations (see this handy list).  So start packing. . .

Second, to all my friends spouting off about 'traditional' marriage, please revisit your history lessons and please figure out which 'traditional' marriage you are talking about. If it is Christian marriage, you might find that YOUR marriage is NOT a traditional Christian marriage.

Christianity in its purest form, as established by Christ's disciples demanded that members be unmarried and celibate.  Really.  I kid you not.  NO marriage because it would detract from a follower's devotion to God.  Besides, the Rapture was just around the corner anyway, so true believers needed to chaste, holy and totally devoted to God.  I'm pretty sure you can guess what happened.  Hormones and attraction.  Once They (being the religious leaders) figured out they could not stop LOVE between people, they co-oped marriage.  (see here)

Let's move a bit further ahead in time and marriage became an economic transaction.  Daughters were essentially material to barter with . . . for land, for power, for other assets.  Or they were burdens to be augmented with dowries so that some other family would take them off your hands and assume ownership and responsibility for them.  Face it, if you were female you were a piece of property.  It was 1929 when the Canadian Supreme Court (yup another team of "Supremes") held that, yes, indeed women were  PERSONS.

Marriage was also traditionally for life.  No divorce . . .ever . . . no matter what.  Until 1968 it took an act of Parliament to get divorced in Canada.  This, for those of you unfamiliar with Canadian government, the body that governs the whole freakin' country.

So, if you want to do that 'traditional' marriage thing remember:  if you or your spouse were married before, well, your marriage is NOT traditional.

If your marriage was not bartered for or arranged by your Father, it is NOT traditional.

For my female friends, if you did not let your Father select your spouse or if you do not follow your spouse's every order, it is NOT traditional.

Oh, and for my LDS friends, how many sister wives do you have?  Mormon marriage, the really 'traditional' one, the one that started with the Church was polygamous in nature.  My great grandfathers had multiple wives and, if you are more than 3rd generation, yours probably did too.  If you are from Southern Alberta, the odds on favourite is that you are a descendant of a second wife.  Cardston and the surrounding communities were founded right around the time of the Manifesto, which reads:   "And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-Day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage that is forbidden by the law of the land."  This does NOT say that polygamy is wrong or bad.  It says:  "Don't do it if you are going to end up in jail."  So really, the change in marriage laws is a most excellent thing for the devout . . . your first sister wife could be just around the corner should the law change so that multiple spouses are okay (and I would bet Winston Blackmore will be taking THAT question to the Supreme Court [the Canadian one] in the not too distant future).  So the Church doctrine that makes polygamy is necessary in the great afterlife . . . the one that comes after, as Brother Jake calls it, the Super Special Mormon Heaven, may soon be back in vogue.

Oh, oh, but you say:  Traditional marriage has changed with the times.  We pick our own spouses.  We make decisions together as a couple.  For the LDS, we don't have multiple wives - - our leaders got updates from God.  Do you see what you just did there?  You changed the rules on marriage!!!!

And Guess whatelse???  Your definition of marriage is not TRADITIONAL.  It was changed.  By the society where it was practiced.  Just like 'marriage' has now been redefined by the US Supreme Court.

So suck it up, sweetheart, and unless you want to move to a place where (if you are female) you'll be wearing a burka (which, BTW, is really just temple garments worn outside the clothes) and not going anywhere without a man beside you, just accept that ONE faith, religion or cultural tradition does not get to define marriage for the rest of the world.

The California Aunt -- Auntie M

They say you do not remember days, you remember moments.  One moment (well, it lasted a bit longer than a moment) that sticks with me was the summer I was almost 16.  My mother's siblings had come to Southern Alberta on their annual pilgrimage from the South (California and Arizona, specifically).  Each year they would come up and start some project or other in the 'Big House'.  The 4800 square foot, two storey brick home where my grandmother lived with my maiden aunt (didn't everyone have one of those?) and my perpetually childlike uncle. 

One year they expanded the back porch so that it covered the entire area between the backroom (aka summer kitchen) and the far corner of the house.  It gave us a large space not only for barbeques and hanging out in the summer, but also an area to stack wood for the fireplace in the winter.  The new porch and steps also had the advantage of not crumbling under foot, as the old concrete had seen much better decades and was starting to randomly give way without warning.

This summer's project was more massive than anything to date.  They were going to turn my grandparents' old bedroom into a large, expanded bathroom.  Grandma was getting well passed the age where getting in and out of the cast iron clawfoot tub in the main bath was easy or safe.  A walk-in shower, complete with a chair, was going to be installed and a door created between what had once been the "rug room" which would now serve as her new bedroom and the new bath suite.

Anyway, as the adventure continued my aunts and uncle discovered that simply knocking a hole through the wall for a door sounded easier than it was going to be.  Why?  Well, my great-grandfather had the foresight to make the house a solid structure.  Solid -- as in 3 layers of bricks for the exterior walls and 2 layers for the inside walls solid.  Yes, this was going to take more than a reciprocating drywall saw and wheelbarrow for the debris.  It was going to require sledgehammers, muscle and possibly explosives.

So, there they were: three middle-aged women and one man going at the wall with an assortment of tools.  It was messy and, at times, hysterically funny. BUT the thing that I remember better than anything was my Auntie "M".  

Auntie M was smack in the middle of the 'Change'.  This meant hot flashes . . . intense hot flashes.  Add to that the summer prairie heat and a house without air conditioning.  One moment she was just standing in the kitchen having a glass of iced tea and the next she had whipped off her top revealing a bra reminescent of Marilyn Monroe or early Madonna (but this was, of course, before Madonna).

She was my mother's younger sister and the undisputed rebel of that generation.  She married for the first time at age 15. . . to a man who would be considered by many of us her love of a lifetime.  Even after they divorced, not too many years after they first married, he continued to visit the 'family'.  I, in fact, remember him stopping by the Big House in the 1990s to visit Auntie M when she was doing her caretaking duties.  It was like watching time wind backward.

Auntie M went on to marry twice more . . . with the last marriage ending in her mid-thirties.  After that she had what I believe was an active social life, but she had decided to pass on those marriage vows again.  I remember her comment to me (when I was nursing my own broken heart at her place when I was 21) about marrige and men.  She said that she much preferred being 'the other woman' because she didn't have to do the man's laundry and when he got on her nerves, she could send him home.  Although I have a different personal view on daliances by married folk, I have to say she had a point.  And it worked for her.

Her last marriage produced her only child, my cousin B.  To say he was the light of her life would be an understatement.  He was more of supernova.  From birth he was larger than life -- with blond hair and dazzling blue eyes that produced more than one crush among my friends when they would visit from California in the summer.  B was the quinessential surfer boy and we had a teasing relationship that grew from the fact we were both doted on by our mothers and, as was often pointed out by family members, spoiled.

Sadly, B developed stomach cancer when we were in our early thirties and passed away at a time when he should have been delighting in his three growing children.  Thanks to Facebook, I see much of him in his daughters and son.  Auntie M, well, I think her spirit only comes along once every few generations.  I don't think the world is quite ready for it again, yet.  But her oldest grandchild is pregnant, so you never know!