Last night my mom and Ted’s parents were both at our house for dinner, seeing each other for the first time since our wedding, twelve years ago. Our families live on opposite sides of the country and they haven’t had many opportunities to visit one another during our marriage. After eating, we all hung out in our living room together, the kids cuddling with their grandparents. Then the girls went to bed and the grownups talked for a while before my mom had to drive home.
Looking around our living room last night was a new sensation for me. Our two families are very different and they probably would not have met each other, if they hadn’t each believed in education and helped send their kids (Ted and me, respectively) to (the same) university.
Yet the fact that Ted and I loved each other brought them together. They first met when we were getting married. Twelve years later we two are more in love and have given our parents three grandchildren. I looked at our girls, their granddaughters, and realized that Ted and I have permanently connected our two families. There are now three people in the world whose blood and flesh trace back through these two separate heritages. Our girls are the glue between them forever. To think how the choice of two twentysomethings to love each other for life could bond two families together across continent and cultures…Last night while looking around our living room, I saw this truth literally embodied in the people present: three of the grandparents who gave us life, and their three grandchildren, who came from Ted and me.
The title of this post sounds like a new reality TV show: perhaps Trading Spaces combined with American Idol? I’ve heard the song Look What Love Has Done a few times, maybe only once or twice, but as I thought about this post, that tune entered my head.
The lyrics for the song say “look what love has done to me“. So often when I think of love, I think of me: how I feel, what I’ve experienced, what I’ve paid for it, how love has changed me and my life.
But last night in our living room I saw what love has done for us. Love isn’t lived in a vacuum. Love comes in community. It begins with two people and flows from there. The love that Ted and I have has impacted our parents. It’s created children. It has changed generations. Just as the love of my own parents impacted us and their own parents and grandparents. I saw how I need to see love not just as something inside me but something outside us, having a wide effect, radiating from our relationship in ripples of circles. Love has changed me, but I’m not the only one.
note: written Tuesday but published Wednesday