Marriage seemed to be the end-all for girls, the ultimate achievement. Meanwhile, boys could get married and have adventures and careers. Even at age 10, Rachel Rueckert couldn’t help feeling she’d gotten the short end of the stick.
An initial patriarchal blessing thrilled Rachel Rueckert, author of the new memoir “East Winds,” with its promises of education and world travels, but a “second” one, sadly, omitted those points.
Like the time her friend turned 14 and received for her birthday a few teen-appropriate gifts, but also a vacuum cleaner and, bizarrely, some queen-size furniture. The girl’s parents wanted her to be thinking ahead — of the family she would have in the not-too-distant future. Rueckert’s blessing was a powerful experience. It described her getting a meaningful education and traveling the world — two dreams she hoped to fulfill and was thrilled to hear were part of God’s plan for her life. The blessing said she would be “free from fear.”
So he sat her down again in the chair, placed his hands on her head and performed the ritual all over again, this time with the recorder working. That desire for “both/and” rather than “either/or” illuminates Rueckert’s absorbing memoir. In ways that will feel recognizable to many young Latter-day Saint women, she chronicles her attempts to remain faithful to her religious roots while also spreading her wings beyond the scripts her culture gave her. She did marry in the temple at age 25.
“I’ve grown a lot as a person through learning from Austin. He just takes it for granted that the marriage is the foundation. There is something beautiful about that faith in forever, and I’ve benefited from being with someone who sees the world in that way.”
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