As odd as one might think, I have a fantastic relationship with my ex-husband’s family, even though we’ve been divorced almost 18 years. He and I aren’t particularly close, but we DO get along when we’re in the same room. (I actually think we’d get along better if the current wife wasn’t so insecure, but that’s just my thinking) Usually, I go to their family reunion they have every year during Thanksgiving weekend. It’s the one time that everybody comes together, and it is so fun to see everybody. They’re a great family! But because of the boys’ work schedules, we couldn’t go this year. It was a sad weekend thinking, “I bet they’re all playing football right now” and “I wonder if they’ve climbed the mountain yet”. We really missed going.

I say all this because we were missed as well. Being missed is a very nice feeling. Getting surprise flowers on a Saturday morning is an even nicer feeling. Who in the world would send me flowers? That would be my sister-in-law who sent me a Christmas bouquet. Isn’t it pretty?

It was the inspiration I needed to get my behind into gear and put my Christmas tree up.

My oldest picked this tree out a few years ago when he was living at home because his taste runs toward the contempary side and he likes to choose a different color theme every year. This year, it’s red and silver. Last year was blue, but I just couldn’t stand describing my tree as “it’s a white tree with blue balls”. I cringed every time.

Anyway, back to my family story. While I was putsing about Saturday, after my surprise flowers arrived, I was thinking about my extended family, the family that adopted me even though their son divorced me, and how much they mean to me. It didn’t help that I was going through all the million boxes of pictures I have (I’m working on some special Christmas presents) and having major flashbacks in a time warp sorta perspective. So many memories.

When I got married, my mother-in-law was actually less than impressed with me. She had wanted her son to go to college, become a dentist, settle down and marry a nice Catholic girl. Well, he went to college. He got that part right. After that, it was downhill as far as her hopes and dreams for her oldest son. No, he became a fighter pilot in the Navy which is the complete OPPOSITE of becoming a dentist and “settling down” and then he married me (not a nice Catholic girl – I was Southern Baptist redneck). Frightened, I’m sure she was.

But her father, my ex’s grandfather, Papap. . . he loved me from the get-go. He was, and always will be, my favorite person on the planet. I don’t really know why he took a liking to me like he did. Maybe it was just his gentle heart. Maybe he could tell how much I needed a real family. When a girl doesn’t even invite her father to her wedding, I think he sorta sensed dysfuntion at its finest and thought I deserved a break. I’m only guessing as to his reasons. All I do know is that he was such a great person. And he calmed the rest of the family that was less than enthuised with the quiet Southern misfit that their son had brought home.

Maybe he instinctively knew how much I longed for a “family”. I came from a house with a raging alcoholic for a father and a mother who for years was, what I’m guessing, depressed. She was always so quiet and reserved and. . . sad. When we were teenagers, she divorced him and we moved out on our own. She became a whole different person. She was still quiet and reserved, but she did it while going to school full-time and working full-time and raising three teenagers. Talk about 180 degree turnaround. I was very proud of her. But we missed her too. She was so busy that we would sometimes go days without seeing her.

In the meantime, I dreamed. I dreamed about Beaver Cleaver’s household; the dad that went to work, the mom that stayed home and had dinner ready for the family so they could all sit down together at the end of the day and talk about what they’d done that day. Not the one where we were afraid for the dad to come home because we never knew what kind of mood he’d be in. Or the one where the mom was so depressed over the nightmare she was stuck in. Not the one where we were so afraid to sit down to the dinner table for fear of getting their head smacked for whatever reason that flipped my dad’s trigger. We could be chewing our food wrong. Or not eating fast enough, or eating too fast. And there’s a standing joke to this day about how we should NEVER dip out of the middle of the casserole when dishing up our plate. That caused major trouble never to be forgotten.

So when I met my ex husband and he talked so lovingly about his family, a very large family I might add, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. A man who valued his family and a girl who wanted a family. He was perfect. Then I learned that perfect isn’t Beaver Cleaver. It was close, but it eventually did not work. Luckily, I had my boys. And even luckier, the family that I’d become a part of said, “HE divorced you. We didn’t.” They rock!! I just wish they knew how much they mean to me.

This flower is for them.