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| Hubs and I flank our SIL-to-be |
When my husband and I were young and fearless, we left our
home state for work, settling 1,600 miles from friends and family. The move
proved a good one, children came, and we made new friends, some of whom became
like family to us. Week-long visits “back home” most summers linked our girls
to their aunts, uncles, and cousins. The grandparents made a point of visiting
us once or twice a year.
I don’t know when I started referring to my husband and
daughters as “my little family.” Does every mother make a distinction between
her nuclear family and its extensions? Do I make the distinction because my
husband, kids, and I don’t see our kin on a regular basis?
Because my sisters aren’t in and out of my house every week,
and my brother doesn’t drop by Sunday afternoons to talk sports and politics,
I’m most myself with my little
family. We get each other’s jokes, tolerate each other’s bad puns, and get a
kick out of stumping one another with word etymologies. (It’s more fun than it
sounds.) For a while, I feared I’d built too high a wall around the four of us.
Would a prospective son-in-law be able to scale it? Would he mesh with the existing
group?
I’m thrilled to tell you my little family is growing. Soon,
I’ll gain a son-in-law who fits like the missing piece of a puzzle. What’s
more, it’s been easy to welcome him into the family, be ourselves with him, and
love him.
Because Son-in-Law-to-Be and Younger Daughter are young and
fearless, they’re likely to settle 1,900 miles from me and my husband. They’ll
form their own little family.
I can’t wait to visit.
