Sunday 26 January 2014

Moving further towards the empty nest

The invitations to daughter S's wedding have now been sent out, and people have begun to reply.  The RSVP is web based, so one or two people have had problems getting onto the website (could be their browser, could be that they're older), but it seems to be going smoothly in general.

I had a chat with S's fiance B's mum during the week and we discussed clothes.  I've got one of my 'outfits' in the sales, but am not sure which wedding to wear it to yet.  B's mum will wear a sari and I know will look stunning. My outfit is a traditional 'mother of the bride/groom' two piece.  We talked about various other issues to do with food and arrangements and we're both feeling quite excited.  We agreed that our children are a 'practical couple'.  We first met when S and B had just started going out.  At first it was just a short chat, but it progressed to having a meal together and we've now met several times and all get on really well.  I'm looking forward to continuing to become friends, and it will be particularly fun because we're from different cultures and it's interesting learning about them. 

Son G's parents live in another country and we've not yet met, only Skyped, but by a series of coincidences members of our family have met them in the past and in fact pushed K in her buggy when she was a small child.  So there will be some interesting reunions at their wedding, and I'm hoping we'll also have the chance to get to know each other whilst they're here for the wedding.

All the new relationships are exciting but I also feel a bit daunted.  Am I behaving in the way an 'in-law' should? Am I friendly enough, or too friendly?  I've always felt my social skills aren't great, so I hope I get it right. 

These new relationships are a kind of consolation for those that are changing so radically - our relationships with our children.  They will leave the nest and start building their own nests, but our empty nest will sometimes fill up with the new friends and family we are getting to know.

We are also filling the space with other things.  We've booked a holiday after the two weddings are over (my boss thought it hilarious that they are happening within a week of each other, but was very understanding about giving me time off around the weddings, and then soon afterwards for a holiday to recover!).  I'm involving myself in organising a monthly 'Cafe Church'.  And there are my two book clubs, which continue to thrive - one of them is still growing, with a new neighbour coming to the next one.

I'm also making the most of my time with the two children while they're still here.  G's living here this year, and the other night I played a favourite childhood game with him - Ocean Trader.  He beat me spectacularly as he always used to.  With S I've started attending a series of evenings on different types of spirituality, which I'll write about another time.  And we'll soon be attending a 'felting' workshop where we plan to make a bag for my mother.

But a part of me still feels a little bit sad.  The invitations have gone out - it's really happening.  Everything will change soon.

Sunday 12 January 2014

A lifetime

I've just been finishing reading Christmas letters from friends.  One friend, J, sends a booklet every year and I spent a couple of pleasant hours yesterday afternoon reading through it, taking in the rhythm of her life through the year.  Christmas letters are often vilified and scorned by journalists, who mock them mercilessly, but I always enjoy the annual updates from friends, and look forward to receiving them.

This year the booklet from J included sad news of the death of one of her friends, B, who she'd met in Greece in 1977.  This was the year I met J, when she arranged for me to be an au pair for a summer vacation.  She was already working in Greece, also as an au pair, and B was a dance teacher.  I used to meet J and B on Sundays and they showed me the sights of Athens.  We sat in Omonia Square drinking thick Greek coffee and eating delicious ice cream.  I have a photo showing the three of us, standing in the hot Athenian light, smiling down the years.  It was literally a lifetime ago, and now I feel sad thinking about the end of one of those lives.  I didn't keep in touch with B, so I don't know what her life brought her, during the years when both J and I have married and brought up our children.  I hope she was happy.

A lifetime passes so quickly, yet when you're young it seems you have such a long time in front of you, to fill with all sorts of experiences.  I was listening to the Carpenters yesterday, the song 'For All We Know'.

'Love, look at the two of us
Strangers in many ways
Let's take a lifetime to say
I knew you well...'

It's become a bit of a convention to say that nowadays it's difficult to keep a marriage going for a lifetime, because a lifetime is so long.  In the old days, the modern wisdom goes, people didn't live very long, so they didn't expect to be married for as long as 50 or 60 years - they might only be married for 10 or 20.  So it's not surprising that nowadays, when most people live longer, they can't sustain their marriages, but must move on, and have serial relationships.

But I don't necessarily agree.  I like the idea of taking a lifetime to get to know someone well.  I still want to find out more about my husband.  I still think it's worth working at the relationship so that I can say 'I know you well'.  It's a wonderful gift to have a whole lifetime to build that closeness, and I'm grateful that we've had the years we've had, and hope we will have many more.

A lifetime built on the friendships detailed in the annual letters.  A lifetime framed by love for another person, strengthened through the ups and the downs. 

Sunday 5 January 2014

The ancient paths

At New Year we travelled to cousins in the north.  There we enjoyed a family party - unfortunately S and G couldn't come as they were with their respective fiances in the south, but we had a great time catching up with 24 relatives we hadn't seen for a while.

After the party and the games and the fireworks on New Year's Eve, husband R led a short reflection for the family on New Year's Day, based on a verse from the book of the prophet Jeremiah: 'Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.' (Chapter 6, verse 16)

He talked about how the life of faith does not always have a single, easy answer when hard things happen. He talked about how we all make mistakes, and fail to live up to what we hope to be, but it's OK to say sorry and start again - indeed that is the basis of our faith.

And he talked about how the ancient paths can be the traditional ways that earlier generations have found helpful - maybe the old prayers, or some of the old customs, or the old communities.  It seems a strange message in a world where the new is what we prize, but it felt strangely comforting, and redolent of dim churches, smelling of wax and incense, and with the ghosts of harmonising voices hanging in the air.

I will draw on some of this as I go forward into 2014, facing all sorts of new things.  When daughter S returned from her New Year celebrations, she'd been making wedding invitations, and gave us the first one (an invitation from ourselves, as the bride's parents, to ourselves!).  I felt tearful.  I didn't cry when she tried on the wedding dress she finally bought (although some of the earlier ones she tried on had raised a tear) but the invitations brought home again that the weddings are soon, and after them the household will be different - not for a term or two, like when the children went to university, but for good.

But the ancient ways remind me of the old rhythms of life - the rites of passage around birth, marriage and death; the ceremonies and rituals that have been created over the centuries to help give weight to the changes we know are important, and want to mark appropriately.

These will create for me a framework for the changes I'm facing, some rules to follow which will help to make it easier to go through the changes.  We've used wording on the invitation that was on our wedding invitation.  We will follow a marriage service which has evolved over hundreds of years.  And we will weave into the celebrations some of the traditions of the other culture into which daughter S is marrying.

Doing this will give a richness to the changes which also provides a mitigation to the difficult aspects - the partings, the new ways of relating that we will have to develop. We join the ancient paths, and they turn out to be the familiar paths that have been trodden by so many before us.

The best thing about this week was the amazing firework with which we celebrated the New Year - it went on for two minutes and was completely spectacular.
And I've just listened for the last time this Christmas season to John Rutter's beautiful Christmas Album.
The worst thing was missing the toy duck race on New Year's Day because of a migraine brought on by all the excitement of Christmas and too much cheese, red wine and chocolate.  But my duck won even though I wasn't there.