🍺 TREE 619: JG – adjustin’ an’ drinkin’ an’ swearin’

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Christine and I were engaged 10 months. I lived in Tucson, Arizona. She lived in Fochriw, South Wales. We spent 10 weeks of our engagement together. When we were married she was 18, I was 22. She had never lived away from home (except for this one time that doesn’t count, but this is my autobiography not hers, so you will have to trust me that it doesn’t count). I had been living on my own for two years. I was a neat freak. She sensed that there were an infinite number of ways to fold (or not fold) a towel and that as many of them as possible should be explored in one’s lifetime. She also held the conviction that a man, once married, should not spend extra hours at work or go to every church meeting just because. Also all the kids in my youth group who were her friends through of various trips back and forth didn’t know how to be friends with her anymore because now she was the youth pastor’s wife.

We spent the first year of our marriage getting to know each other and figuring out how to live together. It was a considerably larger adjustment for Christine. She went from being a kid in Wales to being a pastor’s wife in America. I went from being a pastor in America to being a married pastor in America.

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I grew up not swearing and not drinking alcohol. It wasn’t a Thou Shalt Not thing; it just wasn’t done. Then I married Christine. One night in bed she told me a say a dirty word. The one I picked shocked her. I quite enjoyed the experience.

The drinking happened this way. I have always been curious about how things are made, especially things that involve eating and drinking and craft. I wanted to know about beer, so I said to Christine, Let’s go to Nimbus Brewery. We went and had a little tour and the first beer I ever tasted was, I think, a pale ale straight out of one of their vats. The yummy goodness was almost overwhelming. The second beer I ever tasted was their oatmeal stout. The yummy goodness was almost overwhelming. I left most of it though because I was afraid the shock of the first alcohol in my body would cause me to immediately pilot our automobile off a bridge.

I think there is a certain amount of rejecting the norms one grows up with that is necessary for a person to fully grow up. Whether it happens during angsty teenage years or more quietly later on, it has to happen or the person never becomes fully who they are. I don’t think that rejection is possible without some pain for both parents and children. When was it for you? If you have adult kids, how did it work for them?

Grow slowly
Jeff