Making History: It's About Time

I posted recently about my trip to the Popular Culture Association Conference, where I gave a presentation about how I think time works in romance fiction -- as a circle of redemption and celebration, where there's time to do it over and do it right.

I hope to sum up those remarks for this blog sometime when life and my own fiction writing don't get in the way.

Some other time.

Because this time I'm on the road again, visiting friends and family on the East Coast, to celebrate my cousin's kid's bar mitzvah, my son's PhD degree ceremony -- and my sister's wedding this May 17.

You may already have seen this news photograph, from the New York Times last November, of the first same-sex couple to receive a marriage license in Connecticut.

But you may or may not know that the woman on the left -- the little one waving that precious piece of paper so joyously -- is my sister, Robin Levine-Ritterman, half of one of the eight same-sex couples who sued the State of Connecticut for the right to marry and who won it last October.

Robin's body language is so naturally exuberant that I'm not surprised the Times photographer wanted to capture it.

And it's about time, too.

Because next week when they actually do get married it'll be seventeen years to the day after May 17, 1992, when Robin Ritterman and Barbara Levine -- and a big, noisy party of friends and family -- came together to eat and drink, to sing a capella and dance the hora, to hug and weep in celebration of this couple's commitment to becoming loving life partners.

Even if that first time no legal or governmental entity recognized it as a marriage.

And even if there were those among the crowd who weren't unambiguously delighted.

I've already written about this love story on my own blog. About the family arguments that burned up the phone lines in the months before the ceremony: Is this really necessary? Won't it be traumatic for the nieces and nephews? How about those in the family with strong religious sensibilities? Isn't this all a little... uh, blatant?

I wrote that in the end everyone attended. And brought all the kids (who were and still are fine -- not a trauma in sight). I suppose it helped that our families love to party; perhaps another way to put it is that we were brought up to recognize the life wisdom of celebration, of taking these precious times out of time to mark and measure a lifetime that's always too short (which is also a way of living your life, at least part of it, in romance time).

And because we loved Robin and Barb more than we loved our old habits and preconceptions -- and loved each other enough to want to share the joy and hardship of change.

Funny how that works -- funny how recognizing someone else's right to love makes your own family and romantic relationships stronger. Or so I believe and so, I'm convinced, more and more people will come to believe as they're faced with the choice of supporting or losing beloved family members. And as the tapestry of birth and death and sickness and kinship and community embraces us all in its "fine close weave" (as the writers of the PBS adaptation of Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford put it).

My sister, my sister-in-law and my struggling, squabbling family all made history. I write historical romance.

It's a fine close weave.

L'chaim and mazel tov.