As of yesterday, my husband and I have been married for 31 years. I'm not sure that I would have taken much note of that fact as a marker of the passage of time, except for two unrelated events that took place in the preceeding 24 hours.
The night before, a friend of my daughter's was married in a lovely outdoor Summer Solstice celebration. (It got started a bit late thanks to a disapearing microphone and the pastor's fear that she wouldn't be heard without it; as things turned out, we could hear the pastor just fine but could barely see the bride and groom in the dark, and I kept expecting Puck to leap out of the suburban shrubbery to create additional chaos.) This was the first of my daughter's friends to marry and, I would imagine, the last for quite some time. The bride is the only member of their just graduated class to forego an immediate transition to a four-year college; she and her new husband (now that's a hard word to write in the context of my daughter's generation!), both probably genius-level kids, are wriggling out of the academic world that has probably seemed more confining than liberating to them, at least for the time being. She's always been the unconventional one, which made her very traditional wedding all the more poignant. She seemed completely and supremely happy at the reception, so we are all hoping that her determination to detour from the path laid out for her since birth will lead her to nothing but happiness. But it is most definitely hard for me to comprehend that a little girl who used to arrive here for regular overnights is now a young woman in possession of a husband and and a china pattern.
And in the next astonishing life-event, yesterday morning another friend's daughter and her partner became the parents of a brand new baby boy. I don't know the new parents, but the new grandmother -- Grandmother??? Oh, MY -- and I are good friends. Yet another unconventional situation in which the older generation silently fears the long term potential for sorrow -- in this case due to the idiotic stance of our state law, which apparently prohibits lesbian mothers from adopting the biological children of their partners, thereby precluding them from the legal protections afforded heterosexual parents. For the moment, though, we can only rejoice in the arrival of a new little person and hope that the good will of his parents and extended families will be sufficient to see him through whatever the laws of the state seek to confuse.
I'm not sure how this all happened. How did we reach the point where our generation is parenting brides and new mothers?
8 comments:
It kills me. It just absolutely kills me. Wedding invitations are starting to come in for my friends' kids, and part of me still sees them in diapers and us as new mothers.
I seem to have missed out on the whole "next generation is getting married" thing. I don't have kids (if I did, I could very possibly be a grandma by now...), my oldest sisters kids will die old maids (they are 35, 33, and 26, and as far as I know, don't even date...), and my youngest niece and nephew are still in middle school. Maybe this only makes it harder to believe I'll be 50 in a couple of weeks... To quote the punch line of a birthday card I once bought-- "We is all old." Lisa :-]
My oldest nephew will be 21 this fall and I still see him on the changing table after his bath while we tried to wrestle him into his clothes. Kid loved getting wet, hated getting cold afterwards. After baths were really..........strenuous. The kid could buck with the best of 'em.
Jackie
My husband and I celebrated 32 years last week. Our oldest just graduated from college (looking at a 5-year Ph.D. program which she will pay for). Our second will graduate at the same time my husband plans to draw state retirement and work part-time--in two years!--I can't believe it. I just hit the double nickels, ordering from the senior menu and getting senior movie tickets at those establishments gracious enough to start the discount at age 55. So far no one from my children's circle are even within sight of marriage/parenthood yet and after reading your reverie I am grabbing hold of this 'tween' time with gusto (especially freedom from the tuition bills for our daughter's private college back East--our son is at an in-state university). How did we reach this point? Going through my copious albums (the historian in me) is helping me scroll back through time and see how rich, full, busy, and productive the years since that 23-year old bride said "I do" have been. It no longer seems like the years have flown by when you see what an awful lot you really have done--made a marriage work, raised good kids, grown spiritually and professionally, travelled, and just done a tremendous amount of good things for others. Yes, maybe we are 'over the hill', but in a sense of being over the hump of the hard work of discovering what we are meant to be and seeing a bit more clearly what we want to make of the journey ahead. I'm so glad I'm not that 23-year old girl anymore! A toast to being up there! What better place to be? Debbi (P.S. Have fun with your sermon--this Sunday?)
Happy Anniversary to you and your husband!
As the mother of a new hs graduate...I can imagine the new bride's parents. I know that they want every happiness for her...but at this young age, she can't possibly know how long "'til death do us part" really is. I hope it works out for her.
I have one friend with grandchildren. She's a little older than me and I don't see her often so it doesn't really hit me. It did all happen too quickly. At the graduation parties, I was just remembering those kids in baby playgroup.
Happy Anniversary! What a week full of milestones you've witnessed.
I'm actually looking forward to that stage.....kids' weddings and grandbabies seem like a very joyful time of life. Very cool about the adoption.
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