To Find A Wife

In the fall of 1998, I went to Smith College to find a wife. Four years of high-pressure "prep" school had left me feeling academically drained and uninspired, and 95% of the reason why I decided to go to college at all was to meet my mate (the other 5% was to please my family). I chose Smith because it had a reputation of being a "lesbian camp" (this, according to one of my grandfather's friends, who was appalled to hear that that's where I was going to school. My grandfather replied, "well, my granddaughter's a lesbian!"), so logically it seemed like the place to go. And once I got there, I was not disappointed. There were lesbians everywhere! It seemed that nearly everyone was at least open to the idea of dating women, and within a week even my previously "100% heterosexual" roommate had a girl in her bed. I was not quite so lucky. Despite the fact that I made it clear to practically everyone I met that I was looking to meet my wife, get married and have babies, pronto, I remained painfully single for the first couple months of the fall semester (writing that out, I have to wonder if maybe my upfront disclosure was actually the reason why I remained painfully single for my first months at Smith).

I met Lena for the first time at the infamous "immorality" party on the Saturday before Halloween. The party was held in one of the Smith houses (aka dorms), and everyone was encouraged to wear as little clothing as possible. Some people wore lingerie. Some wrapped themselves minimally with saran wrap. I wore a pair of carhartt overalls with nothing at all underneath them, and I nearly froze my nipples off, waiting for 30 minutes outside in the line to get in (I still wonder if maybe that's why nursing was so painful for the first several months . . . ). Once inside, I eventually made my way to my friends' room and that's where I saw Lena for the first time. I have a vague memory of what she was wearing (or not wearing), but remember mostly that she was introduced to me as a "senior, b-doc rugger." Translation: she was in her final year at Smith, a "Big Dyke On Campus," (a title which she would later deny), and she played rugby. She remembers me as "that crazy first year who was looking for a wife." That night I began casually dating someone else who I met at the party and finally felt like I'd found what I was looking for.

While my first romance at Smith didn't last more than a couple of weeks, it was my key into the social scene of my dreams. I was meeting all sorts of fun and crazy people at nightly parties, many of which took place in Lena's on-campus apartment. It wasn't until one night at the end of January that Lena and I even considered the possibility of being more than friends. It just sort of happened, out of the blue and unexpected, and we somewhat reluctantly became a couple . . . it wasn't that we weren't truly enjoying each other, but I didn't, at first, think she was my wife, and she didn't have any interest in being anyone's wife at that point in time (she was actually unsure she even wanted to be anyone's girlfriend). I still had three years of college ahead of me, and she was nearly done. I'd be stuck in the same place for the foreseeable future, and she was ready to get out of town. We were opposites in so many ways, but we were falling in love regardless.

one of the first photos of us, summer 1999

By the end of our first summer together (8 months after we'd started "dating"), we were engaged. Lena made me a ring out of hemp, though there was no official proposal. Or rather, there were several different proposals and we both took turns asking for each other's hand in marriage. Since gay marriage wasn't actually legal at that time, we didn't plan for a wedding. But we did get a joint checking account so that I could move off-campus (most Smith students are required to live on campus, but exceptions are made for married students, or in our case, students with joint checking accounts). Lena decided to stick around the valley and wait for me to graduate. We lived in several different places and acquired a lot of pets (4 apartments, 3 puppies and 19 kittens in 2 years).

When it came time for me to declare my major (towards the end of my sophomore year), I seriously considered dropping out of school. After all, I'd already found my wife. And I just couldn't think of anything that I wanted to study. I flipped through the course catalog over and over again, reading what each department had to offer. I wanted to be a midwife, and it didn't seem like any of the classes at Smith were really applicable to midwifery (though in retrospect I'm sure that some of the bio classes would have been helpful). In the end, I decided to stay and get my BA, majoring in Education and Child Study. I would be a teacher. I'd get hands-on experience and learn by doing. And the carrot dangling at the end of college was that when I made it through, we'd get married. And have a baby.

Lena and I originally had lots of ideas about what kind of a wedding we wanted and where we wanted to have it. But with no money to pay for a wedding, and no particularly willing-to-pay family members, we eventually decided that getting married wasn't that important to us after all. I honestly had never really fantasized about the wedding part of having a wife; as a kid I remember thinking that weddings seemed awfully wasteful. And Lena felt equally ambivalent. We were committed to each other. And that was all that mattered. Until I got pregnant.

I got pregnant a couple weeks after graduating from Smith, and was about 3 months along when it suddenly dawned on me that I wanted to get married before the babies were born. I was worried that people wouldn't know that the babies were Lena's babies too, that the babies would be "illegitimate" (not literally, of course. Coincidentally, my mother and father were married by a justice of the peace when my mother was 7 months pregnant with me, for the same illogical reason). With only a few weeks notice, we managed to gather most of our immediate family members and two close friends to help us celebrate our civil union in Vermont (my parents had a small house in Vermont at the time). On October 5th, 2002, we were legally unionized. It was a beautiful ceremony.


An excerpt from the speach we prepared for the Justice of the Peace:

May these two women continue to keep this promise that they have made. May they succeed in their shared dream of achieving their personal goals while honoring the love--and family--that they share. May they continue to work hard to avoid unjust expectations of each other. May they continue to support the desire of one or the other to move away or stay in one place, go to school, have babies, start a business, paint the house orange, learn to sing, climb a mountain, or go roller-blading. May their decision to create a shared life not limit them, but rather give them the stability, love, and support necessary to find freedom. May they continue to love each other forever.

The cake was really good.

Eight months after our civil union, my grandparents had a big wedding reception party for us at their house in western MA. Everyone got to meet Lukas and Jasper, who were 5 months old at the time, and we did the whole fancy food, flowers and tent thing. It felt amazing to have so many of our loved ones gather to celebrate us and our love.

Photo booth photo from
just before the big party

The following spring, on May 17th, 2004, gay marriage was legalized in Massachusetts. We stood in line with dozens of other local gay couples and got our marriage license. We were legally married later that summer, without ceremony.

Luke and Jaz on the day Gay Marriage became legal

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of our Civil Union, which is the day we recognize as our wedding anniversary. I can't believe how much has happened in the past 6 years. We've become mamas to 3 sons. We've moved four times. We've switched careers, discovered new passions, and forgotten about things that were once important. We've felt free. May we always be so lucky. May we always have this love.

us, just the other day