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Choosing a life-long partner can be one of the most challenging communication tasks for many people. Staying with that partner during sickness and health, in hard times and in good times, takes much skill and patience beyond the initial love that brings two people together. In this unit you will meet Gail and Mark who face the added problems that two different races bring to a marriage. You will obrve how both cultures miss understanding each other’s customs when you read about Rich’s first meeting with his girlfriend’s Chine family. Finally, you will learn some traditional ideas about marriage practiced by different cultures around the world.
Gail and I imagined a quiet wedding. During our two years together
we had experienced the usual ups and downs of a couple
learning to know, understand, and respect each other. But
through it all we had honestly confronted the weakness and
strengths of each other's characters.
Our racial and cultural differences enhanced our relationship
and taught us a great deal about tolerance, compromi, and
being open with each other. Gail sometimes wondered why I and
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other blacks were so involved with the racial issue, and I was
surprid that she emed to forget the subtler forms of racial
hatred in American society.
Gail and I had no illusions about what the future held for us as a
married, mixed couple in America. The continual source of our
strength was our mutual trust and respect.
节水小妙招We wanted to avoid the mistake made by many couples of
marrying for the wrong reasons, and only finding out ten, twenty, or
thirty years later that they were incompatible, that they hardly took
the time to know each other, that they overlooked rious
personality conflicts in the expectation that marriage was an
automatic way to make everything work out right. That point
was emphasized by the fact that Gail's parents, after thirty-five
years of marriage, were going through a bitter and painful divorce,
which had destroyed Gail and for a time had a negative effect on our budding relationship.
When Gail spread the news of our wedding plans to her family she
met with some resistance. Her mother, Deborah, all along had been supportive of our relationship, and even joked about when we were going to get married so she could have grandchildren.
Instead of congratulations upon hearing our news, Deborah counled Gail to be really sure she was doing the right thing. "So it was all right for me to date him, but it's wrong for me to
marry him. Is his color the problem, Mom?" Gail subquently
told me she had asked her mother.
"To start with I must admit that at first I harbored rervations
about a mixed marriage, prejudices you might even call them. But
when I met Mark I found him a charming and intelligent young
guy. Any mother would be proud to have him for a son-in-law. So, color has nothing to do with it. Yes, my friends talk. Some even
express shock at what you're doing. But they live in a different world. So you e, Mark's color is not the problem. My biggest worry is that you may be marrying Mark for the same wrong reasons that I married your father. When we met I saw him as my
beloved, intelligent, charming, and caring. It was all so new, all so exciting, and we both thought, on the surface at least, that ours
was an ideal marriage with every indication that it would last forever. I realized only later that I didn't know my beloved, your father, very well when we married."
"But Mark and I have been together more than two years," Gail railed. "We've been through so much 北京5日游
together. We've en each other at our worst many times. I'm sure that time will only confirm what we feel deeply about each other."
"You may be right. But I still think that waiting won't hurt. You're
only twenty-five."
Gail's father, David, whom I had not yet met personally,
approached our decision with a father-knows-best attitude. He basically asked the same questions as Gail's mother: "Why the
haste? Who is this Mark? What's his citizenship status?" And
舒义when he learned of my problems with the Citizenship Department,
he immediately suspected that I was marrying his daughter in order to remain in the United States.
"But Dad, that's harsh," Gail said.
"Then why the rush? Buy time, buy time," he remarked
repeatedly.
"Mark has had problems with citizenship before and has always taken care of them himlf," Gail defended. " In fact, he made it very clear when we were discussing marriage that if I had any doubts about anything, I should not hesitate to cancel our plans." Her father proceeded to quote statistics showing that mixed
couples had higher divorce rates than couples of the same race and gave examples of mixed couples he had counled who were having marital difficulties.
"Have you thought about the hardships your children would go
through?" he asked.
"Dad, are you a racist?"
"No, of cour not. But you have to be realistic."
"Maybe our children will have some problems, but who children don't? But one thing they'll always have: our love and devotion." "That's idealistic. People can be very cruel toward children from
mixed marriages."风平浪静什么意思
"Dad, we'll worry about that when the time comes. If we had to
resolve all doubt before we acted, very little would ever get done." "Remember, it's never too late to change your mind."
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After much thought, I came up with a brilliant plan for Rich to
meet my mother and win her over. In fact, I arranged it so my mother would want to cook a meal especially for him.
One day, my mother called me, to invite me to a birthday dinner for my father. My brother Vincent was bringing his girlfriend, Lisa Lum. I could bring a friend, too.
I knew she would do this, becau cooking was how my mother expresd her love, her pride, her power, her proof that she knew more than any one el. "Just be sure to tell her later that her
cooking was the best you ever tasted," I told Rich. "Believe me." The eve of the dinner, I sat in the kitchen watching her cook,
waiting for the right moment to tell her about our marriage plans, that we had decided to get married next July, about ven months away. She was cubing garlic and slicing cabbage into small pieces
and chatting at the same time about Auntie Suyuan: "She can only cook looking at directions. My instructions are in my fingers. I
know what cret ingredients to put in just by using my no!" And she was slicing so quickly, emingly not paying attention to
her sharp chopping knife, that I was afraid the tips of her fingers
would become one of the ingredients of the purple vegetable and pork dish.
I was hoping she would say something first concerning Rich. I
had en her expression when she opened the door, her forced smile as she surveyed him from head to toe, checking her judgment of him against that already given to her by Auntie Suyuan. I tried
to anticipate what criticisms she would have.
Rich was not only not Chine, he was also my junior, a few years
younger than I was. And unfortunately, he looked much younger
with his curly red hair, smooth pale skin, and the splash of orange freckles across his no. He was a bit on the short side, compactly
built. In his dark business suits, he looked nice but easily
forgettable, like somebody's nephew at a funeral. This was why I didn't notice him the first year we worked together at the firm. But, my mother noticed everything.
"So what do you think of Rich?" I finally asked, holding my breath. She tosd the garlic in the hot oil
which bubbled in a loud, angry
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sound. "So many spots on his face," she said.
I could feel the goo bumps ri on my back. "They're freckles.
Freckles are good luck, you know," I felt compelled to defend on his behalf, a bit too heatedly as I raid my voice above the noi
of the kitchen.
"Oh?" she said innocently.
"Yes, the more spots the better. Everybody knows that."
She considered this a moment and then smiled and spoke in a
Chine dialect: "Maybe this is true. When you were young, you
got the chicken pox. So many spots, you had to stay home for ten
days. So lucky, you thought."
I couldn't save Rich in the kitchen. And I couldn't save him later at
the dinner table either.
He had brought a bottle of French wine, something he did not
know my parents could not appreciate. My parents did not even
own appropriate glass for wine. And then he also made the西部计划报名时间
mistake of drinking not one but two frosted glass full, while
everybody el had a half-inch "just for taste."
But the worst happened when Rich criticized my mother's
cooking, and he didn't even have a clue about what he had done.
As is the Chine cook's custom, my mother always made
negative remarks about her own cooking. That night she cho to
direct it toward her famous steamed pork and prerved vegetable
dish, which she always rved with special pride.
"Ai! This dish not salty enough, no flavor," she complained, after
tasting a small bite. "It is too bad to eat."
This was our family's cue to eat some and proclaim it the best she
had ever made. But before we could be so diplomatic, Rich said,
"You know, all it needs is a little soy sauce." And he proceeded
to pour a riverful of the salty black stuff on the china plate, right
before my mother's shocked eyes.
And even though I was hopeful throughout the dinner that my
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mother would somehow e Rich's kindness, his n of humor
and charm, I knew he had failed mirably in her eyes.
Rich obviously had had a different opinion on how the evening had
gone. When we got home that night, after we put Shoshana to bed,
he said modestly, "Well, I think we hit it off A-OK."
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All humans are born into families -- and families begin with the joining together of a man and a woma
n in marriage. All societies have their own form of marriage. The ideas that we have about marriage are part of our cultural background; they are part of our basic beliefs about right and wrong. As we study marriage, we find that different cultures have solved the problem of finding a spou in different ways.
In traditional Chine culture, parents made marriage decisions for their children. Parents who wanted to find a spou for their son or daughter asked a marriage counlor (媒人) to find someone with the right qualities, including age and educational background. Older family members, who understood that the goal of marriage was to produce healthy sons, made the all-important decision of marriage. In traditional Chine society, sons were important becau they would take positions as head of the family and keep the family name alive.
As part of our cultural background, beliefs about marriage can be as different as the cultures of the world. The Hopi, a native people of North America, ud to have a very different idea about freedom. The Hopi allowed boys to leave their parents' home at age thirteen to live in a kiva, a special home for young males. Here they enjoyed the freedom to go out alone at night and cretly visit young girls. Most boys tried to leave the girl's home before dawn, but a girl's parents usually did not get angry about the night visits. They allowed the visits to continue if they thought the boy was someone
who would make a good marriage partner. After a few months of receiving visits, most girls were expecting a baby. At this time they could choo their favorite boy for a husband.
The Hopi culture is not the only one that allowed young people to visit each other at night. Some Bavarian people of southern Germany once had a "windowing" custom that took place when young women left their windows open at night so that young men could enter their bedrooms. When a woman was expecting, the man usually asked her to marry him. But women who were not with child after windowing were often unable to find a husband. This was becau ability to bear children was a very important requirement for women in this culture, and the windowing custom allowed them to prove their ability to others in the community. Some people are surprid when they learn of this old custom becau they think people of southern Germany followed the Catholic (天主教的) religion, which teach marriage is a holy right given by God in order to create children. But the windowing custom is only one example of the surprising views of marriage that have existed around the world.
One view of marriage that surpris most of us today was held by John Noyes, a religious man who started the Oneida Community in the state of New York in 1831. Noyes decided that group marriage was the best way for
