This week, my spouse, Wendy, our daughter Katy, and I’ve had pleasant firm. On July 25, our daughter Mary and our grandson Thomas (youngest of Mary and John’s seven kids) arrived from Connecticut for a go to; they’ll fly house tomorrow. The final time we noticed Thomas was two summers in the past, when Mary and John and all the youngsters got here to the Midwest for the Junior Olympics, which had been in Des Moines that 12 months. John and Mary rented a home for eight days in a small city referred to as Perry, about forty minutes from Des Moines, and we’d drive from there to the stadium at Drake College the place the observe and area occasions had been held. (This week, John and a lot of the different children have been in Houston, the place this 12 months’s Junior Olympics had been held.) The one time we’d seen Thomas earlier than that was roughly a 12 months earlier, after we visited the household in Uncasville, Connecticut, the place they’d moved from Texas not lengthy after Thomas was born. So this was certainly an important day; a four-year-old has a particular character, with hints of the person to come back. And it has been great, as all the time, to have time with Mary.
There’s something directly commonplace and mysterious about households, whether or not giant or small. I consider my family, which consisted (after my dad and mom had been divorced, after I was round 5) of my mom, her mom, myself, and my brother, Rick, two and a half years youthful than I. In some respects, our mom and our grandmother had been very completely different from one another, whereas in different respects they had been like two peas in a pod. So it was with Rick and me, too. Rick was driving even earlier than it was authorized for him to take action; he has owned properly over 100 automobiles and vehicles in his lifetime (and tinkered with numerous extra). In the meantime, my mechanical aptitude might be on the very backside of the chart. And but Rick and I share so much as properly (not least, a love for studying), and we’ve all the time been exceptionally shut.
By the identical token, after I take into consideration our seven grandchildren, I’m struck each by how varied they’re and by shared affinities. I’m wondering concerning the future course of their lives, and I’m overwhelmed by a mixture of emotions—unhappiness included, after all, since my very own time right here will finish lengthy earlier than their tales do, but additionally (and, fortunately, extra strongly) an awesome sense of thriller.
Thomas, it’s clear, has inherited among the aptitude that led his father to gravitate towards engineering as a profession, although it’s properly to do not forget that John has a philosophical bent as properly; he and Mary (a philosophy main) met at Wheaton School in a seminar dedicated to Kant’s Critique of Judgment. Thomas loves constructing issues (such exercise has occupied a lot of his week right here), however he additionally loves tales. And he additionally delights in making each effective discriminations and even handed generalizations, a high quality I discover most adorable. Seeing Wendy sometimes breaking into a wonderful smile at this or that Thomasian mark of id has been an important pleasure. And talking of smiles, Thomas himself is a charmer in that respect, with an entire vary of smiles to swimsuit completely different events.
Will probably be very early on Saturday morning when Katy drives Mary and Thomas to the airport for his or her flight house. I’ve to confess to feeling a pang as I sort these phrases. However above all, I really feel grateful.
