A Matter of Time
There is something about family gatherings that reminds you how fast time is passing. At least that’s how I felt after my niece Leah got married last weekend in Goshen, Indiana. My entire extended family gathered for the first time since 2013, when we were celebrating my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary, and here we were again (had it really been six years already?!), bearing witness to the birth of another family and a connection we all have now to people we didn’t know before this weekend, but are related to Leah, and so, in a way, to us.
Leah was the first of my siblings’ children to get married: also, the first-born grandchild; the first to graduate high school, then college; the first to have a real grown-up job and a house and the real symbol of adulthood, her very own dog, Zelda. Even though she has led her cousins through each stage of life, it’s hard to fathom that Leah is really an adult. Where did the last 25 years go already? How are we to the point where my niece is a quarter-century old?
I can still remember vividly the day she was born, when I was in graduate school, working a landscaping job and living with my grandma to keep her company after my grandpa’s death. It was over 100 degrees that July 11, a temperature seared into memory because it was too damn hot, and because I’d been tasked with spraying weeds on a blacktop parking lot that day. After I got home from work, recovered from heat stroke, and heard the news, I took my grandma—Leah’s namesake—to Steak and Shake to celebrate, followed by a trip to Walmart so Grandma Leah could pick out a dress for her newest great-grandchild. I dissuaded Grandma Leah from buying a frilly white thing, perhaps projecting too much of my own fashion tastes on this new baby. We visited little Leah two days later, and Leah held Leah, a new generation of our family underway.
On July 13, Leah got married in a beautiful off-white lacy dress (so maybe I had been wrong after all), on a steamy Indiana afternoon. The ceremony was simple and elegant, and included hymns, readings from parents and grandparents; the reception had Mexican food, an open bar, and dancing. The evening was an amalgam of the best parts of Leah and Sawyer’s Mennonite heritage, their love for good food and drinks, their youthful spirit and humor.
Throughout the evening, I was reminded again and again that my life is passing at warp speed, the wedding a symbol of a quarter-century in my own life, half of its total, disappeared. I thought about my aging parents, and how they were only a few years older than I am now when Leah was born; I thought about my siblings, now solidly middle aged when they were tormenting me—just yesterday, wasn’t it?—with their teen angst. And I thought about my kids, only one year away from high school graduation, ready to be launched into adulthood. In only a little while, we might be gathering for one of their weddings, although I’m hoping this event does not happen too soon.
Time stalled for a few moments on Saturday night, though, as we celebrated this new family of Leah and Sawyer, and by extension, a new connection to the Biddle family, who seem like really great folks. My siblings and I danced together for probably the first time ever, our teen angst giving way to a middle-aged lack of inhibition. Our children joined us on the dance floor, and laughed at the old folks, at us, but also with us, because it was clear they loved having us all there, together.
I looked at my beautiful sister, mother of the bride, who is younger than me but always leading the way, showing me what grace and strength looks like in a mother. And at my niece, who reminds me that tumultuous teens can transform into responsible, creative, empathetic adults. And at my boys, one year away from turning 18. So much has happened in the last quarter-century, but on that night, what I felt most was deep gratitude for my quirky, complex, lovely family, and gratitude for the time we’ve had together, however fleeting that might be.