Every year my wife and I celebrate "Apartment Cleaning" to purge our lives of worldly influences and renew our marriage covenants. We do not want to lose our identity amid the flotsam and jetsam of the commercial world which seems to seep through every crack of our lives like nerve gas. Although we are in the world, we want to be able to be not of this world for a short time to allow ourselves to replenish our spiritual energies and commitment to each other and to our God.
Our tradition was in response to a fight about what kind of wedding reception we should have. We'd both decided to get married in the church, but couldn't agree on the reception because I wanted a modest one at the church and my fiancee wanted to have a large one in her parent's garden. She wanted a catered dinner which would have cost almost $25,000. Even though her parents were footing the bill, I didn't feel comfortable spending so much money on something that would last only a few hours.
My folks weren't able to help out financially at all. My father had lost his job three years earlier after fourteen years on the job. It was as if my father were a large blow up doll that someone had poked with a pin. He tried to force himself to get a new job, but only sank deeper into depression. Everything came to a head when he overdosed on Tylenol and suffered permanent liver damage. My mother made sure we finished high school, but wasn't able to pull the family's finances out of the fire. The only thing she'd been able to save from bankruptcy was the family home. Consequently, the amount of money spent on the reception was obscene since it would have been enough for a large down payment on a house of our own.
My fiancee and I had many long discussions about the reception before she was finally able to convince me to go along with her parent's plans. I didn't soften my stance until she told me how her parents had almost divorced. Her mom and dad had eloped because her father was Mexican and her parents didn't want her to marry the wetback. After the elopement, her relations with her parents were poor until two years after her daughter's birth. My father in-law refused to allow his in-laws to see his daughter. If he wasn't good enough for them, then they weren't good enough for her. My wife's mom felt torn between loyalty to her husband and her parents, but finally decided to let her folks see their granddaughter. After one of these visits, my father in-law recognized his father in-law's silver lighter with inlayed turquoise laying on the kitchen counter. Enraged, he left the house, spent five hours at the bar, returned home, and beat the crap out of his wife. My mother in-law never told her parents about the beating and in return, my father in-law invited her parents over to visit the next weekend.
After hearing her story I felt it was more important to forgive the weakness of others than to isolate ourselves from them. Despite my new found faith, the reception was almost more than I could endure. The long line of strangers dressed in poorly tailored suits, low cut dresses, overpowering cologne, cheap perfume, and alcohol breath straggled by all afternoon. It was as if every leaf on my wife's family tree had blown into town on a hot wind from Hades. My wife on the other hand took it all in stride and even seemed to enjoy it.
I still wished my in-laws had decided to contribute to our house down payment rather than fritter it all away on the reception. On the other hand, I felt guilty because my parents were in no position to help us out. I was very bitter three days later when we visited our new apartment to see how the renovations were going. The apartment was empty since all of our belongings were at her parent's place or in my old apartment. The newly painted white walls and brown carpet seemed ordinary, yet peaceful. Wandering through the empty rooms made us aware, in a way that the wedding, reception, or honeymoon had not, that we were going to share the rest of our lives together. Entering the apartment was like a nuptial baptism.
On impulse we spent the night in the apartment talking about our relationship to each other and our faith in God. I confessed to my wife how I envied her parent's ability to spend so much money on a reception and yet detested their material shallowness. She chastised me and reminded me that we needed to create our own traditions. She accepted her parents who did their best given their up bringing. She retold the story of the prodigal son. I confessed my sins of pride to her. She told me about her relatives and why they were special to her. Once again I felt sheepish and apologized for my ungracious behavior during the reception. Above all I realized that her love for her relatives and friends was a weaker version of the same love she had for me and I for her.
In the wee hours of the morning, we agreed to fix up an apartment for a low income couple every year to renew our marriage covenants. With the help of our pastor, we've been able to do this for the last four years. We feel blessed to be together, appreciate our parents' sacrifices for us, and hope that our tradition will enable another couple to start their lives together in a clean if not holy environment.