Rules for life

Thomas gets rules now. A few weeks ago he got rules and so understood that if he did this again, he would get the same reaction out of mom and dad again. That was really frustrating. Now he's moved on to getting rules and knowing that if he doesn't do this again, mom and dad will be pleased with him and he can talk to them about it. This has led to a lot of new sentences being of the "NO [verb]" type around here. Or "NO [word that stands in for a verb]". Or occasionally "NO [sign]". Accompanied by a great deal of head shaking.

"NO. No bite. Dada. No bite. Mama. Vava. NO. [smacks lips] Blue." (The much-abused blue crayon.) "NO. No hot."

This formation also works when the topic is something he doesn't like. Today I tried giving him grapefruit juice. He drank it and said "Yuck!" To do him credit, then he drank it some more, pointed at his tongue, and said, "Yuck!" So I offered to get him another kind of juice, which he was happy about. I went and got some apple juice and gave him his "new. juice!" and after a couple of sips he pointed to the kitchen and said. "NO. No yuck!" That cracked me up, so we both sat around saying "no, no yuck" for a few minutes.

This strikes me as a good rule for life. My goal today is to have a no yuck day.

On changes, the passage of time, and happy endings

When I went through the RCIA, Matt and I met these two pretty incredible people. One of them was the candidate Matt got to sponsor that year; the other one was his girlfriend. They were both lovely, witty, fun people -- with two of the biggest hearts (cardiomyopathy aside) that I've ever encountered. Nobody was too small or too great for them to care about, and nothing was too little or too much for them to do for those they cared about.

Events and misunderstandings eventually caused them to break up, and with them the social group that the four of us were a part of. Over the years, we've kept in touch sporadically. I knew that a couple of years ago they started dating again.

Tonight, I found out they're getting married -- next month -- in Ireland.

Why?

"We wanted something simple," my friend told me. Having been engaged and (ugh!) tried to plan a wedding before, they wanted to go off somewhere, just them, have the ceremony and have it all, happily, over. Clink. Happily ever after and all that, finally.

I have to say that I'm struck by an irony. This is the one girl I knew who had a subscription to a bridal magazine back in college -- before she was even engaged.

We all change over time. And not only are we unable to say what constitutes a happy ending for our friends, we even change our minds about our own storybook endings, without even realizing we're changing.

So here's to Melissa and Jason. Congratulations, best wishes, and lots of love. Clink.

The rest of you, go make your happy endings, whatever they are.