When I marry R in approximately 3 weeks, I'll be gaining a stepdaughter but no in-laws exactly. Not only is R more than a decade my senior, but he was also the youngest of four children. He was the baby, the unplanned child that happened later in life for his parents. What this means is that his parents were contemporaries of my grandparents, and unfortunately they have both been gone for a long time (his dad died relatively young and has been gone for more than a quarter of a century now). I have mixed feelings about not gaining a set of in-laws. On the one hand, it makes me sad... I have a small family myself now, so between the two of us, we won't be giving a future child much extended family. I love big families, and I adored the three grandparents that I grew up with. If we have a child, he or she will be getting exactly one grandparent: my mom. My heart is in my throat as I write this... I love my mom, and she's an amazing grandma to my niece and nephew (who call her "Grandma Lion"), but can she give to them what three separate individuals gave me growing up? It's a lot to expect.
From a more selfish perspective, I'm kind of relieved about the lack of in-laws. The more people you throw into a marriage, the more potential for conflict there is. I think of my own father... Would he approve of R? I'll never know. It makes me sad but then it's also freeing-- I can make my own choices.
R has an older sister who is quite the character and who will be symbolically (at least in my mind) standing in for his parents at our wedding. I've ordered her a corsage, and I think of her as a motherly figure in his life. When he graduated high school in Chicago, she was already living and working as a nurse here in California, so he left his parents and moved in with her for his college years. She's incredibly likable, with a larger than life personality and charm. Unfortunately, she has a knack for inadvertently alienating people by making insensitive remarks to or about them. I've already been on the receiving end of her "foot-in-mouth" habit.
It was on my first visit to meet her (she lives with her husband in the Palm Springs area). We decided to spend a few days with them over Christmas one year. We were among a handful of guests, all of whom were very old friends of hers. Everyone was sitting at the table conversing, and R and I left the room for a few minutes. I guess she thought we were out of earshot, but we both heard her plainly telling the other guests (about me): "She's very nice but she doesn't have much ambition". Ouch. Her assessment of me may have been accurate, but in any case it wasn't something I appreciated hearing a woman I'd only just met tell her closest friends. It didn't exactly get our relationship off to a good start.
Fast forward to the present: We haven't ever become close. She just gave us a $100 gift card for each of the two gift registries I listed on our wedding website. It was a generous gift and I am grateful and moved by the gesture. Of course it isn't about money or "stuff", but her thoughtfulness was like oil in the gears of our "stuck" relationship. I was feeling very good about our potential to move beyond previous misunderstandings. Unfortunately, we've now just had another conflict (Ahhh, pre-wedding stress... can't we just be done with all of this already??).
My mom and sister are throwing me a bridal shower (in fact, it's tonight!). Although it's something we've talked about for a while, I wouldn't commit for the longest time. What can I say, the idea of it made me uncomfortable. I don't have a lot of friends or people I feel comfortable enough with to impose upon for yet another time and financial commitment (the wedding being commitment enough for a lot of people, I think). I was pretty much opposed to the idea until my mom relayed how a family friend said to her, "S should really reconsider. You only get married once, and it's an experience she'll regret not having." So with my reluctant blessing, my mom and sister began planning the shower in earnest a few short weeks ago. When they asked for a guest list, I supplied a minimum number of names-- just those people I know extremely well and don't feel bad imposing upon. R's sister P was not on the list. A few evenings ago, while on the phone with my mom, I mentioned P's generous wedding gifts. My mom met her a few Thanksgivings ago, and really liked her, and immediately chimed in that we should have invited her. She felt that we had forgotten her. So at her request I provided P's phone #, and she placed an "eleventh hour" phone call to her to invite her to join us.
The next day, P left two unhappy messages on our home answering machine, stating that her feelings were very hurt that she was "forgotten". I wrote her a lengthy email two days ago explaining the situation (including the fact that the shower planning was haphazard, that I was cautious with the guest list, that the other invitees had only been invited days before she was called...). I apologized and also explained that I don't exactly love being the center of attention, hence my initial desire to skip the shower altogether. She wrote back and was not at all sympathetic to my low key approach-- she concluded her email saying something along the lines of, "if you don't want to be the center of attention, you should have gone to the justice of the peace to be married, rather than planning a public ceremony."
Jeepers. Well, I disagree. Things aren't quite that black and white. One can dislike the spotlight and yet still yearn for the ceremony of a public wedding. I'm not devoid of emotion, after all! I don't want my wedding to go down like a business transaction.
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