What Goes Around Comes Around

          This last weekend my husband and I, along with other family members and close friends, attended our eldest sons engagement party.   A small intimate affair filled with love and laughter.   A day I think everyone who attended will always remember.   It was not only a day filled with memorys, that are preserved by photos, that will last a lifetime; but surprised me by becoming another opportunity to learn something about life.
          The event started as any other.  Introductions to people and future extended family.  Good food, good drinks, good conversation.   After we settled in I found myself observeing my son and his fiance' at this gathering with love and awe.   They are both in their mid 20's and life, while they have been living it for some time, has now been redefined for them by some one else.  I watched my youngest son observe the event unfolding before him.  He appeared to have a look of joy and slight confusion over the day.  A thoughtfullness of things yet to come for him.   I watched all of my eldest's friends, some of whom are entering relationships, some of whom have been in them for some time.   All of them absorbing the warmth and love of the evening.  I felt a level of comfort with my future daughter in laws parents, and all of our friends our age, as we all watched and reminised, to ourselves, over that time in our lives that is now being repeated by our children.  I suddenly had an over whelming warm feeling that life goes on; and I was happy for it.  My life suddenly started coming full circle.
          I am not so old as to not remember when I was young, engaged to my husband and starting out what would be my life, for the rest of my life.   I still remember the breath taking feeling of love; not only for my husband but for myself.  Look at what I was doing with my life!  I was capable!  We got married, then had our first born.  Then our second son.  The bliss was almost incomprehensible.  We lived as a family.  We found love and support in a home and life that we created.  
          The creation of our life didn't come easy.  We worked hard for it.   No one told me that marriage and raising a family would be the most difficult job I would ever have.   If they tried, I surely did not listen.  This is deffinetely a wisdom that is earned through experience.  I was certainly not warned about the compromises that I would have to make.   When a woman chooses to be married, and especially to have children, she makes a choice to put certain things in her life on hold in order to move her children forward.   Never with regret; especially as they get older and you can see that the compromises were, and are, actually apreciated.  
          A family endures.   It is your safety net, your support, your love, your sounding board, your anguish, your sorrow, your life blood.   It is something that we create.   There it is.   The Pith of the Matter.   WE create it.   During this creative process, like any great artist, we will throw away things that are not working.  We try new colors, new tones, different perspectives.  It is the creative process.  It is what is suppose to happen.  The people we grew up with in our youth are not our creation.  They are someone elses.  Namely our parents, or Aunt's and Uncles.   Granted they are still important people in our lives.  We give them respect and politeness.  But family is defined as a basic social unit consisting of parents and their children.   It does not say that once you make a choice to start your own family you are still to include the siblings you grew up with in that family.   Huh; interesting....including those people in your life is a choice.  An earned respect.  They stop being family and become your equals, friends by choice. 
         Realizing all this suddenly made me, after 26 years of marriage learn something.   Family is an ever changeing, ever expanding process.  It changes as we do.  Sometimes we hold on to the people we were raised with.   I think when we can endure the relationships with those people it is because we all have common interests as mature individuals.  But sometimes we are unable to sustain these relationships.    Sustain is to support, hold, bear the weight, maintain and it cannot be done alone.   
          The longer my husband and I are married and the older we get we are asked the following question more often.  What makes a good marriage.  Well trust, or course, is number one.   Even if you make a huge mistake the other person needs to trust that you will learn from it and be better for it.   Second, the ability to adapt, to change, and understand change   Humans are suppose to change.  The person you dated will not be the person you marry.  The person you marry will not be the person who parents with you.  The parent of your young children will not be the person who parents with you when your children are adolescents.  Bottom line, things WILL change and your ability to adapt with those changes helps determine not only the success of your marriage, but your happiness in it.  This by no means means that you are giving up who you are, it means that being able to negotiate, compromise and communicate are imparative in a marriage.  And those three tools need constant tweaking.  Third, be comfortable with being apart sometimes.  My husband and I will jokingly tell people that one of the reasons we have endured and continue to endure is that he traveled for work.   We looked forward to being apart soemtimes, because that meant we were over joyed when we were back together.  (It also meant I didn't have to negotiate for tv time and being able to cook chicken livers.)  I took vacations alone.   Learning to be alone and enjoy your own company makes you better company for someone else.  
          After 26 years I add a fourth one to the list.   The ability to create.   Being in a relationship is all about createing.   We create something new and different daily; think about it.   From being able to carry on a conversation with a stranger at the grocery store to cooking a meal.  We recreate our selves constantly.  Putting on "different hats" for different occasions and settings.  Being able to stay interesting to the same person day after day for years takes some imagination.   Marriage does not sustain boredom, boredom is maintained by choice.   Creation is sustained.
           This was a revalation to me.   I have "fired" many people in my life, not only as friends, but also people  I considered, mistakingly, as family.   But their have been very many meaningful, sustaining relationships in my life.  The most priceless one is the one I share with my husband.   Yes we bicker, always have, it is intelectually stimulateing to us.   We argue, don't always like each other, sometimes have a day where we feel momentary hate for each other.   But I truley believe that this is part of the creative process.  Right now, at this moment in time, the life that we have created together, that we have sustained together as a family is what has made us most happy in life.   We have both changed careers, houses, pets, and friends.  But our life together has sustained.
          The Pith of the Matter?   While I was traveling the path to where I am now in life I had doubts of where that path would end.   I am still traveling it and the end is no where in sight.   You know that saying what goes around comes around?   Mostly we apply it to persons who have inflicted some hurt or injustice on us.   But it also apply's to living your life.   Have my husband and I had a perfect life together?  No.  Thank goodness for that.   The message that we send to everyone in our life, whether they have been fired, or are still sharing our life is this;  live your life with truth, adventure, and creativity.  The opportunity's to learn, love and laugh will be boundless.   Now at the end of being a parent and moving to the next phase of life with my husband things that were once hidden are now clear.  What goes around comes around.