My Progressive Parents Pushed Me to Marry at 18

I was a sophomore in high school and a cheerleader in New Orleans. I had my license and had been driving for a year. It was 1980 and I was 16 years old.

At night, my friends and I met at a bar on St. Charles Avenue, where drinks were poured into to-go cups at the door. My father drove a red motorcycle and my mother listened to Donna Summer, Bad Girls and Hot Stuff.

Not only was the school I went to and the city I lived in progressive, so, seemingly, were my parents.

But both of my parents had grown up in the Syrian Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn and had moved to New Orleans when they first got married for work reasons. They always believed one day they'd move back.

When I started to date, my father did not approve of my boyfriend choices and was on a plane to New York in no time. In just a few months, he secured work for himself, sold our ranch-style house in New Orleans, and bought a two-story home in Brooklyn.

To say I cried when we moved is an understatement. I wasn't prepared to leave the only life I'd ever known and was terrified of losing connection with the friends and close family of my childhood.

While in New Orleans, we attended a Reform synagogue, and I did not speak a word of Hebrew, nor did I know anything about keeping kosher or the laws of Shabbat.

Nonetheless, my parents, wanting me to be a part of community life, enrolled me in the local yeshivah in Brooklyn, a religious school of Jewish learning. There, I wore skirts that covered my knees and shirts that reached my elbows, and boys and girls learned in separate classrooms.

All of this was foreign to me, and I figured out in a number of uncomfortable situations that there'd be no more cheeseburgers or fried shrimp po-boys.

In addition, on Shabbat, observant Jews don't drive in cars or turn lights on or off. Understanding none of this, I felt like I'd been transported to the stone age.

To make matters worse, my progressive parents weren't actually progressive at all. They wanted me to get married: To a Syrian Jew, and by the time I was 18.

Marriage, family, and children were a community and familial priority—valued and considered to be the path to a good life.

Marriages weren't arranged, but still the conservative nature of this new world landed on me with a thud, feeling as traditional, old-fashioned, and out-of-date as some of the storylines from Fiddler on the Roof.

Adolescence is a time of transformation, a time when young people struggle with their identity, and I was no different. I thought I wanted to go away to college and become an artist. But then I met Mark. And with all the changes happening in my life, I was dizzy with expectation and confused about who I was and what I wanted.

Mark was five years older than me, and I was attracted to his straightforwardness and his ability to know what he wanted. We had long, winding, thoughtful conversations, and in his arms, I felt safe.

When he asked me to marry him, I realized I'd be giving up on some childhood dreams, but was also open-minded and excited about what awaited in its place. Surprising myself, I married him at 18.

Soon after, I went to college. It took me six years to graduate from NYU and another six years to get a Master's degree. My degree is in education, not the arts, because I got pregnant and my doctor said smelling turpentine in the art studio and touching chemicals in the photography dark room wasn't safe for my baby.

I've come to learn that while sometimes I feel like a young version of myself—a rebellious teenager from New Orleans, a hippie at heart—I'm not exactly who I once thought I was.

After all, I got married at 18, had five kids by the time I was 34, and every single Friday night, I cook a huge dinner for my growing family in order to honor and celebrate Shabbat.

While I'm a writer, mothering and homemaking are key to who I've become.
Fiction writers are often asked if they are plotters or pantsers. A plotter plans and outlines. A pantser wings it, making up the story as they go along.

Without a roadmap, and not tied to a specific ending, pantsers decide on the spot, at the end of each scene, what comes next.

I have a friend who says if you want to head east, don't go west. Sometimes people know exactly who they are and what they want. They are pointed in that direction, driven. And sometimes life shows you who you are, one choice at a time, surprising you.

When I got married at 18, young and innocent, I thought that if my marriage didn't work out, I'd get a divorce. It's been forty years, and despite some significant challenges, one choice at a time, we're still together.

Turns out, I'm a pantser on the page, and in life.

Corie Adjmi is the author of The Marriage Box, which is available on Amazon now, and the award-winning book Life and Other Shortcomings. You can follow her on Instagram @corieadjmi.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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