I woke up this morning from a dream about AJ as a baby. We were all in our bed with the morning paper, like we used to do, and my husband and I were tickling AJ to make him laugh. I woke up feeling like I missed AJ terribly. It�s an odd thing to miss someone who�s still there. I wouldn�t trade the current AJ for anything, but at the same time I miss baby AJ a great deal.

In a conversation with my mother last week, we were talking about my aunt�s Christmas letter. Her only child is graduating from high school this year and her letter was incredibly sweet, talking about how she�s already missing him. My mom said that she thought her sister should plan something fun to do for right after they drop off my cousin at college. She said how she�d done that when I got married and it had helped. I was surprised. By the time I�d gotten married, I�d been living away from home for more than a decade. I didn�t think my parents would suffer anything more than a post-party letdown. More likely, I thought, they�d be relieved to be rid of the many details of the wedding and the daily or near-daily phone calls from me asking them questions. My mom said, �We were really happy for you of course, but it was the end of an era, wasn�t it? Nothing would ever be quite the same again?�

I�ve been thinking about that comment for a couple of reasons. One, is the way I�ve been feeling nostalgic for this particular Christmas even as it�s passing by because it has been everything I wanted it to be, because AJ has found everything I wanted him to find. The other is metonym�s discussion of her mom on her trip home and her reactions to her mother�s (metonym�s grandmother�s) illness. Reading these entries has been like a flashback to a year or two ago when my mother went through a similar thing. Like the wedding comment, my mother�s behavior as her mother became seriously ill gave me new insight into her personality and a greater understanding for what it means to lose a parent. I can only imagine how irrational I�ll be when I�m in the same situation.

But back to the wedding issue. I�m still trying to puzzle it out. Why would it make such a difference? I�d been dating Mr. Spy for seven or eight years. We�d been living together for a year. I was in my early thirties � I moved out of my parents� house when I was eighteen. Why was my wedding so traumatic?

I tried to imagine how I�ll feel if/when AJ gets married. And that�s when it hit me that no matter what happens in the marriage, the parents get moved to second place. When AJ gets married, his attention will be n his new family, not his old family. He loyalties will be split between us and his inlaws. This is as it should be. I would expect nothing less of him. And it will totally suck.

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