Meet the Parents
The more time I spend with my wife, the more I realize that she is becoming my mother-in-law.
And that I am becoming her father-in-law.
Meet the parents. The people whose ideology, idiosyncrasies and insanity you will eventually inherit. Don’t try to fight it, you are already hardwired for everything you hated or mocked growing up.
In a way, it’s a good thing. Whatever instabilities and insecurities you inherit, you have an example of just what is ahead for your children. And if you are real slick, you can catch it in mid-sentence or mid-thought, apply all of your maturity to the situation, and consciously focusing on not being that way.
But believe that you will be that way.
As protective as your parents were over you, and you thought it was smothering or invasive dominion, is exactly how smothering and invasive you will be. As short-tempered and exasperated as they were, you are likely to blow two fuses just as quick. And as loving as they are, you will be just as tender.
Because you recognize where you would be if they weren’t that way.
Most of the time its laughable, especially when your spouse catches you in one of those moments where you sound just like one of your parents. Your face turns red, and you silently vow to watch that tone or de-arch that eyebrow in the future. Sometimes its surreal, when you are looking at your wife or your husband, and they turn their face just so that, for a split second, you could swear you were looking at their mother or father.
I’m noticing that now with my parents. My mother’s glasses align with her prominent cheek bones in a way that is genuinely Grandma. The things that she says, and the way that she says them, hearken me back to warm summer days in Boykins, Va. I get sad sometimes, because it forces me to consider the reward of aging, which, in this lifetime is wisdom, and everlasting joy in the next. It can make you uncomfortable, even a little sad.
But then you snap back to the present, to rejoice in the blessings of their years. And you know that you are a part of a lineage of love and laughter.
Nice to meet you, mom and dad.
