Life happens in its own time | Columnists | Summerville Journal Scene

Printer friendly version |

E-mail to a friend

Life happens in its own time

Published Tuesday, September 01, 2009 3:13 PM

By Judy Watts
Summerville Journal Scene ®

It’s two weeks until Surfer Dude and Dudette return to South Carolina for their wedding. For a week our family and hers will come together to frolic on the South Carolina coast. We will lie in the sun, eat too much and spend lots of time together. Fortunately, we already like each other and vacation together anyway, so other than the wedding part, this is not an unusual time of year for the two families to be sharing dinner and beach towels.

Yes, we know how lucky we are that all of us – and there are right many when I start to count – get along just great.

So it isn’t hard to understand how our offspring get along so well. For ten years they’ve been an item.

Dude is the kind of person who makes a plan and then sticks to it. For instance, when he was four years old, we were trying to teach him to tie his shoes. Finally, one day in frustration, he looked at me and said, “I’m not ready to learn this. I will learn this when I am five years old.” He held up five fingers to show me how old that would be.

“Are you sure you don’t want to learn that now?” I asked him. In response, he held his five fingers up again.

Several months later, on his fifth birthday, he came out of his bedroom with his shoes tied.

“Who tied your shoes,” I asked him.

“I did.”

“When did you learn to do that?” I asked as I stooped down in front of him and admired the excellent job he’d done tying his shoes.

“I told you I would learn how when I was five years old.”

“Happy Birthday, Sweetie.” I gave him a hug and tucked the incident away in the mental file on him. This was definitely an insight into the way this particular manchild would manage his life. It would come in handy to know this later on, I figured.

And so about six years ago, I asked him if he and his beloved were ever going to get married.

His reply, “We’ll get married when we’ve been going together for ten years.” My heart sank a little and realized that looking at wedding magazines was very premature.

“Ten years? You’re joking aren’t you?” (I already knew the answer but was hoping…)

“Nope. Ten years.”

I could tell he meant it because he used that same tone of voice he had when he was four years old and not ready for shoelaces.

They will have been going together almost ten years to the day when they get married later this month…longer that a lot of marriages survive these days.

So, now I am refraining from asking the next big question – “When can I expect a grandbaby to play with and teach to fish?”

If he says ten years, I will likely have a meltdown, before explaining the biology of childbearing.

And then I’ll give him a hug, go drag out his baby pictures and imagine a little Surfer Dude or Dudette running around the house.

Weddings are great!

Contact Judy Watts at 873-9424 or jwatts@journalscene.com

Comments

Notice about comments:

Journalscene.com ® is pleased to offer readers the enhanced ability to comment on stories. We expect our readers to engage in lively, yet civil discourse. Journalscene.com ® does not edit user submitted statements and we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted in the comments area. Responsibility for the statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not Journalscene.com ®. If you find a comment that is objectionable, please click "report abuse" and we will review it for possible removal. Please be reminded, however, that in accordance with our Terms of Use and federal law, we are under no obligation to remove any third party comments posted on our website.

Users can now build user-to-user connections, follow friends' recent posts, add an avatar that fits their personality, and more. If you have posted here before you'll need to sign up again, or if you've never posted before, start now by reading our terms and conditions, and then signing up below!

Full terms and conditions can be read here.

Poll Question

For entertainment, I mainly go out in...

Most Viewed
Most Commented

104 East Doty Avenue | Summerville, SC 29483 | 843-873-9424 office | 843-873-9432 fax