Looking back with Lot's Wife

May 31, 2000 I HAVE helped my husband on occasion and we CAN work together. Of course, there was the time 20 years ago when I painted the trim in one of the kids’ bedrooms. Okay, I’m not Michelangelo, but gees, Louise, it was just the trim for heaven’s sake. He’s a perfectionist; I like to think of myself as a generalist. But we CAN do things together. We can drive places together, as long as he drives. We do pretty well making Christmas lists together, as longs as I shop. We make breakfast together: he smushes up the frozen orange juice and doesn’t get in my way, and I make the eggs, bacon, hash browns and toast, and put it on the table. We CAN plan all kinds of things together—the garden, redecorating, vacations. However, we’re frequently a little impaired in the “to do” department because he’s of the “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well” school, while I mostly just want to get it over with so we can have some fun. Lately, however, we’ve been trying to put our finances on the ...

May 24, 2000 “Fiddler on the Roof” is opening this week at the Springville Villa Theater. In case there is someone out there who hasn’t yet seen this brilliant play, I’ll remind you that “Fiddler” is about a father with three daughters who lets each of them go, one by one, with the man of her dreams. And with each daughter, the father is forced to give up one of the traditions he holds sacred. One daughter picks the young man she loves rather than accept the choice the matchmaker has made for her. Another daughter marries a young communist who moves her away from her family and finally, the last daughter wants to marry outside their Jewish faith. This is the one tradition he cannot let go and he disowns his daughter. However, at the end of the show, he begins to reconcile even with her. At the wedding of his first daughter, Tevya and his wife Golda sing a song about their wonder that their daughter has become a woman; “Is this the little girl I carried? Is this the little boy at play?...

May 17, 2000 In one of those moments that you have when you actually know what it’s like to be in a train wreck, I offered to have a friend’s wedding at our house last week. As a philosophical aside, I must ask: Why would I do this? Well, this was my friend’s second marriage and while she was happy and in love and sure she was getting a great guy, she was also cooking and cleaning for six kids while trying to find her birth certificate, which was filed with the vaccination records and school photos, so she could get a marriage license. With one thing and another, it was looking like the best thing to do was to go to City Hall one afternoon and say, “I do” and get the kids home for dinner. So I decided that it would be a simple matter to let the kids plan the wedding. I can now tell you, if you ever want a great marriage ceremony, get a bunch of the neighborhood rug-rats together and let them have at it. This was one swell to-do. We met Tuesday for our first planning session. The weddin...