Dancing At Blended-Family Celebrations

October 2008 is filled with important days. Delaney is 11 months old today and was baptized last Sunday. Delaney's parents celebrated two years of marriage, and I start my Tuscany trip in two weeks.

Here's a picture I took of the happy family after the baptism:

 

I last attended that church about twenty five years ago for a funeral. But, there is history. I was confirmed there. I volunteered many summers at the Church Festival (iced tea station). I married  Rachel's father there. We baptized Rachel there. I directed the Junior Choir for a couple of years and directed the Christmas pageant once. 

The more than three-centuries-old brick building shaded by huge Magnolia trees, the bishop's chair, the altar, the cross, the needlepoint kneeling pews were all welcoming and familiar. But everything else was different. I knew no one in that congregation (except my former in-laws), which was jolting since at one point it had been an important social and spiritual center of my life.  It was as though that day's message was "Life moves on."

I admit that I felt displaced. I now understand that I must have expected -- or hoped -- to feel otherwise. I'm thinking that this tapped into my "military brat" pathology and other related and unresolved issues.  "You're just passing through. No matter how much you invest in energy or emotion you will never really belong."  I seldom experience those feelings anymore; but, in what felt a bit like strange -- if not hostile -- territory, they reared themselves like an internal Greek Chorus. 

The dance around family photographs was interesting and I'll have to spend some time analyzing my movements (perhaps on the plane to Pisa). There were the traditional and easily choreographed pictures of the two sets of great-grandparents holding Delaney, Jon's parents holding Delaney, and Rachel's Dad and his wife holding Delaney.  I had urged my father to stay home since he wouldn't stay overnight and he'd have been on the road about seven hours of that day had he attended.

Charlie and I, without being aware of it, held back while we watched the photo sessions. I believe we were both confused about how any posed pictures of the two of us should be handled.  We didn't want to send mixed messages to each other or anyone else. And we didn't want to step into each other's space. Should he and I have our pictures with Delaney taken separately?  Together?

My marital and parenting relationships with Rachel's biological father ended for all intents and purposes when she was six months old.  Charlie and I were married two years later. From the beginning he was her primary father (and in most people's opinions more of a father than her own both in presence and financial support) while she was growing up. Rachel will tell you that he never treated her any differently than he did our other two daughters.  Indeed, to this day he sees her as one of his three children. She and her biological father did not rebuild their relationship until she was in college.

There was a bit of a tap dance when Rachel turned to us with the camera.  As though reading our minds, she said, "Any way you want it."  Without missing a beat we found our rhythm again. Charlie reached for Delaney and we moved to the front of the church." It seemed both logical and natural.  I have no idea what the picture looks like (I'm not looking forward to seeing it given my typical photo-phobia).

Marriages may end, but parenting does not. Or should not. Charlie and I will always be parents together.  It's the kind of parents we are. It's what our kids expect.

But, as I said, I'll have a lot of time to analyze the dance and make adjustments to the choreography later, if I choose.