A new chapter in Family Life, First Visit

As I have written, our eldest daughter married a couple of months ago. She and her husband visited for the first time as a married couple. It was a good visit, as we mixed tourist activity and staying at home. I appreciate living fairly close to St Louis even more, as I was able to present them with an array of things to do, if they felt so inclined. Her husband lived in Japan as a youngster for a while, so we went to the Botanical Gardens and spent most of our time at the Japanese Gardens. After lunch with one of our daughter’s classmates, we went to the City Gardens. I had yet to visit this random collection of junk and objects of interest in its mad mixture. I noticed that a number of the various tubes. toward the end I sat down with a knot of other exhausted parents. It made my day to hear so many delighted shrieks of girls and boys alike. So many children told their minders: “this is the best place ever.” I loved seeing how our graduate school daughter played and that her genius husband could discover some of the child within him. It warmed my heart to see them at that stage in life together where they reach out to touch each other, a quick caress, a fleeting brush of the hand, as if they are checking to see if they are really here, together. Since he is interested in the ancient Near East, we fed his interest in archaeology by going to Cahokia. they were impressed by the excellent explanatory material, especially on culture and cosmology, in the museum. I was delighted to see grandparents slowing making their way up the Monk’s Mound stairs even more slowly than I as children bounded up them two or three at a time. Since they had energy, something I have read about in physics books, we walked over to the burial site of the euphonious Mound 72. All of that set me to thinking about time. i was walking over the places of many homes in the museum, visited its major ritual place, and walked by a final resting place. How were the residents of Cahokia just like us and how did their family life differ? Did they know how to welcome a new member of the family? How much did their rituals of transition help when a daughter married? In our ritually impoverished age, we feel as if we need to make things up as we go along. These activities help frame time and interaction. I need to learn how to treat my first-in-law in our nuclear family. Outings make more of a safe space. Plus, it gave me an excuse ot give them plenty of room and not feel so intrusive. Our daughter is now married, but I have yet to work through what then should stay the same and what needs to be changed. Our daughter seemed utterly herself, and I was glad. They were really good about helping me plan making food at home or what they were in the mood for if we went out. I was struck how closely they listened to each other and how they seemed connected even when they were both staring at their separate computer screens. Parenthood is learning when to let go and when to hold on. It keeps the center of love and respect even as its focus shifts and grows through time and may well become a parent too, one fine day. In the end, what helps me face having a new son-in-law is the same thought that gave me comfort when our first held our firstborn. We do not do this alone; god is involved fully in this most precious life, this new relationship.