The Husband: She Excels Them All

In a previous post about how my wife and I first met, I mentioned that before she was dreadlock girl, Bethany was punk girl - spikey hair and face piercings included - and a few of you commented that you'd like to see photos of my lovely bride when she was in her punk phase.

Well, I am pleased to share a wonderful development. We have a good friend named Phil Cacka who is a professional photographer and owner of Hawthorn Photography in Portland. Bethany and I went to college with Phil and his wife Michelle "back in the day" when both Bethany and Michelle were classic punk queens.

The four of us once took a trip to Seattle with our college church group, and Phil snapped some absolutely fantastic pictures of Bethany walking around downtown, wearing a ratty old fur coat. Several days ago I emailed Phil to see if there was any chance he still had these pictures, which are now ten years old. And miracle of miracles, he did.

These pictures still make me weak in the knees, just like they did a decade ago. There's just something about them that makes me want to go out in the street, do a little soft shoe and croon in a deep voice at the moon (which for obvious reasons I will not actually do).

I think my favorite thing about them is that they capture something important about Bethany's personality: she's just a little bit insane. You have to look closely at her face, but you can tell - there's a bolt loose in her brain somewhere. To quote Stephen the Mad Irishman from Braveheart, she "isn't quite right in the head." And that is a very happy thing. I'm so glad I didn't marry a normal person.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason these pictures bring to my mind one of my favorite passages of scripture: Proverbs 31. Now, a college professor once warned me never to end a piece of writing by quoting someone else, admonishing me that to do so is to "surrender the key rhetorical space" or something like that. But in celebration of finding these pictures (thank you Phil!) and as a late tribute to Mother's Day, I think ceding the key rhetorical space to King Lemuel is entirely appropriate:

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