Thoughts on Returning Home

Amari, the Bride

Well, Diane and I are home once again, after another three-week absence. This time we drove to Massachusetts for the wedding of our youngest, Brendan, who married the beautiful Amari on October 1 on Nantucket Island.

We avoided the unfriendly skies and drove, largely because I simply enjoy driving. Not only do we experience the country up close but we also avoid the minor terrors associated with airports and TSA. Driving for me has become a quiet form of protest, one I will be forced to set aside when we take our next overseas trip, unless we discover an affordable way to travel by sea. One hopes that these rather mild public criticisms will not by captured by an NSA supercomputer thus elevating me to a category of traveler routinely subjected to strip searches and cavity inspections.

While in Massachusetts we visited each of our four grown children and their spouses...and our eight absolutely wonderful grandchildren. Since our children live in four different parts of the state, we divided our time among them all, and ended up spending about four days with each family. We enjoyed these brief visits immensely and were pleased that the grandchildren hadn't forgotten us since our previous trip in May. Living here in Florida, nearly 1,500 miles from our grandchildren, generates a fear that the little ones will glance at me as I walk through the front door, turn to their mother and say, "Who's the old guy?" Well, so far so good, although one-year-old Ben took a little while to warm up to us.

Grandchildren: Pedro, Camilla, Carlos, Eduardo, Ezekiel, Phineas, Verionica, Benedito

The wedding of Amari and Brendan was beautiful and the unpredictable Nantucket weather cooperated and gave us a warm, sparkling day, the kind of day one hopes for when visiting New England in the autumn months.

Our four children: Siobhan, Brendan, Erin, Ethan

Later, at the celebratory party after the wedding, I sat in a chair sipping a glass of rather good, but unnamed, Cabernet. I took real pleasure watching our four children enjoying the day as they talked and laughed with each other and caught up on family things.

As parents of grown children we often forget the good that we did as we struggled to raise our children, recalling only the mistakes we made. I've decided to forget those as well because I can no longer do anything about them. About all I can do now is offer quiet advice when it's asked for, pray that their marriages and children will bring them some of the same happiness and joy Diane and I have experienced, and turn everything else over to our merciful, loving God.

Our very 1950s family. That's me on the left.

Happy in the presence of my children, I found my thoughts drifting back to my parents and my only sibling, my brother, Jeff. It's at times like these that I miss them the most. My mother died over 30 years ago, my father died in 2005 at the age of 95, and Jeff died suddenly two years ago at 68. Thinking about them all I suddenly realized, Hey, that leaves only me. I'm now the family patriarch. There's no one else to pick up the patriarchal mantle and offer wise advice based on a lifetime of lessons learned. I suppose being the family patriarch would have far greater meaning if the later generations actually paid any attention to what I said. Yes, it would seem being the patriarch is a distinction that means little more than quite likely being the next male in the family to die. Happy thought.

But that's okay. There's an old Irish blessing: May you live to see your children's children. It would seem the Irish borrowed it from the Jews (Psalm 128:6). And that, too, is okay, since the Irish and the Jews are very much alike in so many ways. If a psalmist hadn't written it, no doubt some Irish poet would have. Anyway, I always thought it a rather strange blessing. After all, don't most people live to see their grandchildren? But then I thought about my own family. My mother's parents died long before I was born, so I knew only two of my grandparents. My paternal grandfather died when I was just five years old and I have only vague memories of visiting him at a VA hospital in Connecticut. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War and the Boxer Rebellion, and I can still picture him, sitting in a wooden rocker and wearing a plaid bathrobe over his pajamas. He looked so very ill, but as he noticed his two grandsons walking through the doorway, his face brightened into a wide smile. What a perfect memory! It is how I shall always remember him.

My grandmother was really the only grandparent I knew well, and because she lived with us for several years, I have many fond memories of her. She died when I was 15. And so I really knew only one of my grandparents well. I suppose, then, compared to many of my recent ancestors, I am truly blessed.

Earlier this afternoon Diane and I completed a nice 20-minute Skype video call with our elder daughter, Erin, and her five children. Watching the four eldest -- ages four to ten -- crowd together to get into the picture and tell us about their day and what costumes they hope to wear on Halloween was a true joy. Technology can be both curse and blessing, but in this instance it's certainly the latter. One cannot even imagine how our grandchildren will communicate with their grandchildren 50 years from now.

Family is a great consolation and now that I'm an orphan at age 67 I can't imagine what life would be like if I had no children, no grandchildren, no family.