Saturday, January 2, 2010<\/p>\n
The kids (Kids?\u00a0 Who am I kidding?\u00a0 They’re adults now, married college students with plans and aspirations and their own budding identity as a married couple.) are sightseeing in D.C.\u00a0 Our daughter has seen most of it before, but it’s all new to her husband of four days.\u00a0 We drove them into town to save time and save them being in the frigid wind.\u00a0 Still trying to save our children; it’s what we’ve imagined we’ve been doing, what we’ve been trying to do, I guess, these long years of child raising.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
My wife and I thought through what remaining things we needed to do over the next weeks to help the pair.\u00a0 We didn’t come up with much.\u00a0 After the focus of these last days (and months and years) on our daughter, our day-to-day involvement is tapering off.\u00a0 The nest is truly nearly empty. \u00a0 Raising children, the focus of most of our nearly 29 years of marriage, is nearing an end and we are a little disoriented.\u00a0 Thank God we’re good friends happily married because without that, we’d be nowhere with not much to fall back on.\u00a0 Those years of putting the emotional, relational oxygen masks on ourselves first* are paying off.<\/p>\n
Also, we’re grateful we made the transition from parent-child to adult-adult in our relationships with all three of our children.\u00a0 We’re still their parents, but also, now, fellow adults.<\/p>\n
In the evening we needed to pick up their car.\u00a0 I’d taken it to my trusted auto shop and it was getting needed work.\u00a0 We were there a bit early so went into Del Ray, a part of Alexandria I think of as a little Brooklyn.\u00a0 Stopped at a place called Cheesetique, a shop my wife had noticed for some time.\u00a0 We thought it was just a little specialty store but it is also a wine bar, so we had a wine and cheese quickie date.\u00a0 We asked the waiter to choose for us, a less expensive wine and some potent cheese.\u00a0 He selected a pungent, blue goat cheese and an Australian red, both excellent.\u00a0 Not that we didn’t already know it, but it was pleasant and satisfying to enjoy being together, sharing a relatively brief but satisfying mini-date.\u00a0 I think we’re going to enjoy this next part of our lives.<\/p>\n
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(*In the safety instructions for passengers on a plane, those traveling with small children are asked to put the oxygen mask on themselves first.\u00a0 If they don’t do that, how can they be available to help the child?\u00a0 It’s an image I find useful to understand, and at times justify, taking actions that help or benefit or are good for me.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Saturday, January 2, 2010 The kids (Kids?\u00a0 Who am I kidding?\u00a0 They’re adults now, married college students with plans and aspirations and their own budding identity as a married couple.) are sightseeing in D.C.\u00a0 Our daughter has seen most of … Continue reading