Lunch With My Other Son

If any of you have opened your cooking and life lessons cookbook, you may recall that I put in a life lesson that says, "when you get married you just don't marry your spouse, you marry their whole family." As all of you now are either married, or about to be, I'm sure you can see the truth in that statement.

You walk into different traditions and make new ones with different people. Sometimes you mesh very well and other times you feel like a catus in a sea of babies breath. You have to try very hard to fit in--but the family has to try equally hard to let you in.

It occurred to me this past Father's Day, that I needed to do a better job of this with Jon, my son-in-law and one of the best fathers I know. So, this past Saturday, we went to lunch at Salmon Dave's in Rocky River. We just talked. There were no long pauses or wishing the time went by faster. We talked about a million things and I learned things about Jon I should have asked 7 years ago when he entered our family.

I learned that besides being a wonderful husband to my daughter and father to their children, that Jon is creative and funny. We talked about his childhood health problems and how he didn't let that stop him from swimming competively. We talked about the inequities of the working world and things that he wanted to be when he grew up. I found out that we share the same dislike of country music but we both love the Lakewood area because of the small shops and hometown feel it has to it.

We talked about Jon the person who sometimes gets lost in the hustle and bustle of the kids and making sure Jenna is feeling OK.

When your children decide to get married, you hope that their spouse will love them, treat them with respect and care for their well being as much as you have. In this, Jon has far surpassed my hopes.

I went to a fortune teller a long time ago. She told me I was going to have 3 children--a girl and two boys. Well, I had the girl and inherited the two boys. But somewhere along the line, in the halls of National City and in a church in Berea, I gained another wonderful son. We had lunch on Saturday and I hope we do it again very soon.