Oct. 13, 2018 "The life of a US teen bride": Today I found this article by Terrence McCoy in the Edmonton Journal. It was a big article, but you can read more of it on the link:
It was the day of the birthday party, and the husband and wife had invited everyone they knew. They’d spent the morning buying food — a sheet cake, jumbo hot dogs, ground beef, soda, chips — and were now standing around a picnic table covered with it all, along a long lake under a cloudless sky, hoping at least some people would show up to eat it.
Today was the first time both sides of their family were supposed to come together, something that hadn’t happened at their wedding four months before. On that day, not a single member of the husband’s family had attended — not his brothers, who’d called him a fool for marrying like this, and not his parents, who’d told him the relationship would only get him into trouble. Just about the only people who’d gone that day, and were here so far on this day, had been the people involved in the wedding itself.
There was Maria Vargas, a shy and brooding girl who looked older than her 16 years, and her husband, Phil Manning, 25, who often acted younger than his. And nearby, smoking a cigarette, was a slight woman with long, narrow features, Michelle Hockenberry, 39, the mother who’d allowed her daughter to marry.
Even in an era when the median age of marrying has climbed higher and higher, unions like Phil and Maria’s remain surprisingly prevalent in the United States.
Between 2000 and 2010, an estimated 248,000 children were married, most of whom were girls, some as young as 12, wedding men.
Now, under pressure from advocates and amid a nationwide reckoning over gender equality and sexual misconduct, states have begun ending exceptions that have allowed marriages for people younger than 18, the minimum age in most states.
Texas last year banned it, except for emancipated minors. Kentucky outlawed it, except for 17-year-olds with parental and judicial approval. Maryland considered increasing the minimum marrying age from 15, but its bill failed to pass in April. Then in May, Delaware abolished the practice under every circumstance, and New Jersey did the same in June. Pennsylvania, which may vote to eliminate all loopholes this autumn, could be next.
“Devastating” is how the bill’s memorandum summarized the consequences of child marriage.
Nearly 70 percent of the unions end in divorce, research suggests, and for children in their mid-teens, it’s higher still — about 80 percent.
Teen brides are nearly three times as likely to have at least five children.
Their chance of living in poverty is 31 percent higher.
And they’re 50 percent more likely to drop out of school, which was the outcome that terrified Maria the most. The start of the school year was just two weeks away, and she still didn’t know whether her mounting responsibilities at home would keep her from returning to the classroom.
“There’s your parents,” she now whispered to Phil, trying to put that worry aside on a day when they were expecting two dozen guests. Sinewy and sweating, Phil looked up from the grill and saw a bearded man and a dark-haired woman. They slowly made their way to the picnic table, piled with presents wrapped in tinsel paper to celebrate the second birthday of Maria’s son, Douglas, whom she’d had with another grown man. They stopped and looked down at the presents, then at Phil, then at his new wife.
There was a long silence as everyone looked at one another.
“What do you think, Mama?” Phil finally asked, but his mother only shook her head.
Maria wandered away with her son to play at the lake’s edge. Phil went to the grill and started serving food. Michelle took a sip of iced tea and glanced at her daughter’s new in-laws.
“How you guys doing?” she tried.
“All right,” Phil’s mom said.
“Hot?”
“Yeah.”
And that was the end of the conversation.
Maria walked back, straight black hair dripping from the water, and Phil met her halfway. He put his arm around her. He gave her a long kiss, and everyone watched them, expressionless. The kiss ended, and Maria went to the picnic table. She looked at what the few guests had left behind. The vanilla cake that, by the end of the day, would be only a third eaten. The dozens of hot dogs. The barely touched potato chips.
“Supposed to be a lot more people here,” Maria said. “I wouldn’t have gotten so much food.”
This is how a child in America gets married:
It was a Friday, March 16. Maria woke early. She normally hated anything feminine — “a tomboy,” Michelle called her, who smoked, swore every few words, had skull tattoos — but today was different. She wanted it all. Michelle did her makeup and hair. Maria put on a white dress and veil.
Then, fearing authorities would arrest Phil at the local courthouse, they drove into nearby West Virginia, where they wouldn’t be recognized and which has one of the country’s highest rates of child marriage. Within an hour of arriving at the Morgan County Courthouse, her mother had signed the form, the marriage license had been issued, an officiant at the ceremony outside had said, “It’s my pleasure to be the first to introduce Mr. and Mrs. Philip Manning,” and everyone had begun to cheer. Maria felt happier than she’d ever thought possible.
And now?
Now it was nearly five months later. She was waking once more, this time past 10 a.m., feeling exhausted again. She poured a bowl of Cocoa Puffs for Douglas’s breakfast, then looked at the mess around her. She swept the floor. Scrubbed the counters. Pulled out a bag of garbage from the trash bin. Put in a load of laundry. Lit a scented candle. And checked on Douglas.
“I got to clean your room next,” she told him, sighing.
Maria was a housewife, in every sense. In this trailer at the edge of town, which she rarely left and which she and Phil shared with an unemployed friend, she cooked most meals, swept floors, dispensed advice and managed finances.
Every month, Phil took home $1,600 from a furnace of a factory making drill bits, and every month, they spent about $1,150 of it on bills. To keep them disciplined, she’d stuck a budget to the refrigerator. “Monthly savings: $450,” it said. The sum seemed more hopeful than realistic, but it was what they had to save if they were ever going to get the money they needed to move to nearby Bedford, where she hoped to enroll at a high school that had on-campus child care for Douglas.
The possibility of going to school was the only remaining shard of a childhood that had long since splintered apart. She remembered the moments. She was 4, hugging her handcuffed mother, while Michelle was incarcerated for simple assault. She was 13, caring for her younger siblings, day after day, as Michelle watched her stepfather die of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at the hospital.
She was 14, hanging out with a 19-year-old man who, according to police reports filed in the subsequent criminal cases, had sex with her at least five times at the Janey Lynn Motel in Bedford, got her pregnant, became her boyfriend and then later abducted her.
After Douglas was born, and after the father had gone to prison for the concealment and corruption of a minor, school seemed to matter less. Michelle told her she’d look after Douglas. But Maria couldn’t bring herself to trust him with anyone, not even her mother, and didn’t return to the classroom that year. One of the first people, in fact, she allowed to care for Douglas was Phil, whom she’d met at a friend’s place when she was 15 and with whom she’d at first wanted only a physical relationship. But soon she couldn’t imagine being with anyone else, and still couldn’t.
“Will you make me lunch today?” he now asked, as a hard rain washed over the trailer park and they sat on the porch smoking.
“I already made it,” she said of two tuna sandwiches. She stood and, noticing the time, glanced down at herself, still in pajamas, then at Phil, still shirtless.
“I got to get dressed,” she said. “And then get Douglas dressed. And get you dressed.”
Douglas had a pediatric appointment. Phil told her he was coming, too, and she was again reminded why she married him. Even in the beginning, their relationship had never to her conformed to the stereotype — with her as victim, him as predator — but instead felt as if they were saving each other.
She helped him stay out of jail, where he’d twice gone on burglary convictions, and he helped her with Douglas, promising to treat the boy like his son.
“All right, we got to go,” Maria said. The roommate, a recovering heroin addict with short blond hair, drove them in his battered white sedan through downtown Everett, a drab collection of Colonial houses beneath a mountain, before pulling up to a pediatrician’s office. They went inside, and that’s when Maria saw her. The middle-aged woman in the waiting room with her own child, wearing a shirt that said “Everett Warriors.” It was her old high school principal.
Maria had last seen her at the beginning of the 2017 school year, when, following her time away, she’d tried out Everett High School. Within weeks, the isolation of eating lunch alone, unable to connect with other students, and the annoyance at seemingly impractical classes had become too much, and she was back home.
But did that mean 2018 would be that way, too? What would it feel like, she wondered, to do something, rather than having things done to her?
“I have to enroll,” she whispered to Phil.
“We are going to Bedford,” he promised.
“If we don’t, I’m going to be a sitting duck,” she said, left at home doing nothing. “I can’t put Douglas on my hip and take him with me, or I would.”
The name of the principal’s child was called. Maria watched her disappear into the back. Relieved that the woman hadn’t seemed to recognize her, she leaned her head against her husband.
Phil met Maria on Feb. 25, 2017, in a trailer on the other side of Everett, where a buddy from jail was living. He loved her hair, long and black, and all that night, she laughed and took pictures of him with her phone. Phil leaning back, giving her a weird face. Phil closing his eyes, drinking a beer. Phil smiling in a selfie, bare shoulder pressing against hers. To him, she sure didn’t look 15, but he never asked. What he did ask for was her phone number. “I’d caught feelings” was how he put it, and that was that. He was 24, and he had a 15-year-old girlfriend.
What at first felt innocuous soon became a terrible secret. They saw each other as often as they could but lived according to certain rules. Never hold hands in public. Never kiss unless they were alone. Never tell anyone anything, least of all the truth — that they were already sleeping together, that they weren’t just friends.
“U know I’m always only a message away,” one friend wrote to him on Facebook in early April 2017, trying to find out what was going on.
“I don’t think you want in on this one, really,” Phil replied, distraught. “. . . It’s just this thing that won’t stop.”
He thought about breaking up with Maria all of the time, and about how it could end if he didn’t. With him in jail. With his face on the Pennsylvania sex offender registry. With his life ruined. But instead he moved into her mother’s house, started calling Maria “wifey” and concocted another cover story. He was living there to help care for her mentally disabled brother, Donte, and nothing more.
All of the lies, one after another. It got to be too much, especially after he’d come to see her son as his own, and especially after he’d ask her to marry that October, and she’d said yes.
So he stopped hiding it. He changed his Facebook picture to one of him and Douglas. He called Maria his girlfriend online. He started telling people. His parents were furious: “You shouldn’t be doing this; she’s 16 years old,” his father said. His co-workers laughed: “Chester Cheeto,” they called him from then on, referencing the comic strip “Chester the Molester.”
“No one likes me,” he wrote on Facebook one night soon after the wedding.
My opinion: I feel really sorry for Maria. Her mom went to jail for awhile, and her step dad died of cancer. She had to take care of her younger siblings. She's 14 yrs old and then dated a 19 yr old man. and got pregnant. She should either get an abortion or give the baby up for adoption.
I don't really have a problem with Phil. However, they shouldn't get married. I don't know, wait until she's 18 yrs old, and graduated out of high school?
Sept. 21, 2021 "24-Year-Old Man Finds Love and a New Kidney Through Tinder: 'Never Would've Expected That'": Today I found this article by Joelle Goldstein on Yahoo News. This is a love story, but also about being an organ donor:
Courtesy Reid Alexander and Rafael Dìaz Rafael Dìaz (left) and Reid Alexander with their wedding cake
A 24-year-old man got his happy ending twice over when he met his soulmate on Tinder — who was also a perfect match for the kidney transplant he needed.
Reid Alexander tells PEOPLE he's still in disbelief about how the events of the last year left him with a new husband and a second chance at life.
"Expect the unexpected," he says. "I never would've thought that I would move across the country and meet the love of my life, and then the love of my life would also be a perfect match, and I would get a kidney. Never would've expected that."
"It was meant to be," adds Alexander's husband, Rafael Dìaz, 28.
Alexander's health issues began when he was diagnosed with Alport syndrome at age 17. The inherited disease causes damage to the blood vessels in the kidney, which can lead to hearing loss, eye problems, kidney disease and kidney failure, according to the National Kidney Foundation (NKF).
In Alexander's case, after graduating college, doctors informed him that his kidneys were only functioning at 20 percent and he would need to start dialysis while he awaited a transplant.
Despite the scary prognosis, Alexander — who grew up in Kokomo, Indiana — carried on with his plans to move to Denver and start a new life.
"I really love it out there," he says. "I got a job two days before I was moving and I was really determined to do it. I did it on a whim."
And not long after making the move, Alexander logged onto Tinder and met Dìaz.
"We started chatting on Tinder in August 2020," Dìaz says. "Both of us [were] impressed with each other."
"We really just hit it off," recalls Alexander. "And we were together every day ever since. It felt like we knew each other for a really long time. And it still feels like that to us."
Alexander was quick to disclose his medical history, noting that it would be hard to hide due to his hearing aids and challenges with eating salt. (The progression of Alport syndrome can be slowed by limiting sodium in the diet, per the NKF.)
But Dìaz was not phased, and immediately offered support to Alexander, who was preparing to begin dialysis.
"That's when I started to put more attention into the syndrome he has," Dìaz says, noting that he didn't know anyone with a similar condition, but thought, "'Okay, that is not a problem.'"
Dìaz then offered to look into being Alexander's kidney donor. "I was like, 'No, you don't have to do that,'" Alexander recalls. "But he was very determined."
"I was very sure that I [could] do it," adds Dìaz, who was already registered as an organ donor at the time. "I just said, 'I want to. You are someone that I want, that I love, so I can do it for you.'"
From then on, things came together quickly for the couple. This February, the pair got engaged and by April, they began testing to see if Dìaz was a match.
That same month, the duo also decided to tie the knot at an intimate ceremony, opting to use the money they were saving for a destination wedding to fund Alexander's transplant.
"We were going to wait and do a big traditional wedding... but then the realization of a transplant happening this year was getting more and more likely," says Alexander. "So it was [either] saving up money for a wedding or saving up money for a transplant. And so we chose transplant."
In June, after testing confirmed Dìaz was a perfect match, they were finally able to set a transplant date — and on Aug. 13, the couple underwent the procedure at Indiana University Health hospital.
Afterwards, they were filled with relief and emotion.
"I was in a lot of pain [initially]," Dìaz says. "But if I had to do it again, I would."
"It's not only because I love him so much, but it's also because I will be able to share life [with him] and enjoy this feeling that made [him] happy," Dìaz adds.
"I don't think there's anything that I can do that shows my appreciation," Alexander says of his husband. "It means so much because to me, he made the ultimate sacrifice. He gave me an organ so that I can live a better life [and] be healthy. And that's just so amazing."
"I've already cried so much," he continues. "From the first day that I woke up in the hospital after surgery and every day after, every time we saw each other, I just cried. It means a lot to me."
Currently recovering at Alexander's parents' home in Indiana, the pair are eager to return to Colorado.
"I think that the next step for us in this journey is to enjoy as much as we can because we never know what can happen next," Dìaz says.
They also hope their story will bring awareness to the importance of organ donation.
"You never know who [may] need you for that, or where you can help," Dìaz notes. "You can help families. You can help people. You can help to change the life of someone else and [give] someone the opportunity that they didn't have before. If you can do it, do it."
Those interested in becoming organ donors can do so here.
