On Easter Sunday, John & I had the pleasure of unexpectedly spending a snatch of time with a family who seemed right out of one of my favorite films, the small treasure, Dan in Real Life.
We were blessed to hang out, however briefly, with a multi-generational family that seemed to truly madly deeply care about each other. Such get-togethers are their happy norm - the proud grandfather, who hails from Central PA, dashed inside to get a picture of his brood at their annual bowling outing.
The grandparents, their children & grandchildren (ranging from 7 years old to 31) descend from not-so-near & rather far at Easter to celebrate with one of the daughters & her family, while everyone treks to the grandparents' for Thanksgiving & Christmas. In the summer, the pilgrimage is to an over-sized rental house at Virginia Beach.
Our brush with this delightful family came out of the blue, totally touched our Easter with a magic we could never have imagined.
Thinking about writing this posting got me thinking about how utterly blessed we are to have quite a few Dan in Real Life families within our circle of friends & pleasant acquaintances. Our bestest friends in the universe gather every late Jan-early Feb with four generations of their family in Hawaii - this year there was a great-grandmother & a soon-to-be great-grandma, our friends, their children, grandchildren, a beloved niece & her family. I think of all the photos of Easter dining room tables that were proudly posted on Facebook, of pictures of far-flung family arriving for a weekend of reconnection & savoring the joys of being together.
A friend of mine pointed out, "You know, they have their problems, too." Naturally - as did the fictional reel family in Dan in Real Life. But they do keep coming together, do keep getting past whatever challenges divide to find the things that draw closer.
When John fell in love with me, he marveled at how many happily married couples I knew. He knew one, maybe two. A couple years after we married, he marveled at how almost all the couples he knew seemed happily married, including two of his good friends who'd been together for years but decided to take the plunge after seeing how well it had gone for us.
Am feeling blessed to have spent part of our Easter in the heart of a loving family, to have seen the multi-ages competing in the egg toss that attracted us in the first place (great back story!), to have heard the happy voices & seen the beaming faces, to have learned bits & pieces of their stories. And blessed to be able to look around at our circle of close friends, good chums & pleasant acquaintances and see so many families that take the deep delight in one another's presence that has always & forever been a treasured picture in my heart. It does exist, it can happen.
It's not easy, I am sure. Nothing that matters ever is. Still, there they were, whether around a dinner table on Marlin Road or tucked off of Buck, down in Atlanta or out in Sacramento, or tossing eggs on a large front lawn in Wyncote, in spite of the challenges & all that divide Real life playing out even better than fiction!
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