Son 2 is engaged!

Friday morning, I got a call from Son 2. Wow, two calls in less than a week? What's the occasion?

Turns out he wanted to let me know that Amazon had just made a delivery ... to deliver an expensive package he had ordered not long ago ... containing the engagement ring he had ordered for Beryl.

This is not a picture of Beryl's ring, but just some
random ring I found on the Internet. But that's OK.
I haven't seen Beryl's yet, but this will do.

Aha. Wait ... engagement ring?

Yes, exactly.

And then he told me the story behind it. He burbled. He was clearly—and rightly—very excited. Thrilled. Dancing on air.

And I'm glad for him. As disappointing as my own marriage was in some ways, there is nothing quite like the thrill when you are just about to embark on it. I'm glad he has been able to experience the "dancing on air" feeling.

The back story? Well apparently they've been talking for a while about getting married. Son 2 said that Beryl told him a while ago, If you don't get around to proposing to me this year, I'm going to propose to you next year. And he added that "getting around to things" is often an observable problem for us Tanatus; it's very easy for us to decide that things are good-enough, and just stay in a rut for the longest time before taking any action to change it. So clearly Son 2 chose to break out of this mold, and take decisive action.

He sounds a lot like me, back forty-something years ago when I decided to propose to Wife.

On the other hand, Beryl was out in the field for work right now, and he had not gotten her agreement before buying the ring. Did I mention it was expensive? Now the odds were naturally in favor of her accepting. And they had discussed in general terms what kind of ring she would like, if he were to get her one. He used that discussion to inform his ordering.

So at the time he called me, he was in possession of a Very Expensive Ring, with only a strong hunch that she would say Yes.

Spoiler alert: Of course she said Yes. That was the sum of this morning's text message. So I passed the word to Mother, to Brother and SIL, to Debbie, to Marie and Schmidt. We all agree it's a very exciting time. And, as I say, I'm glad for him.

Do I expect the marriage to go well? I have no idea. They've been together for more than four years now, but I still don't know Beryl very well. When I was courting (living with) Wife before we were married, we lived in an apartment that was just a mile from my parents' house and we came over often for dinner. We were together for a year before the wedding, and by that time my parents had gotten to know her very well ... for good or ill. Son 2 has taken deliberate steps to make sure that didn't happen to him and Beryl. So most of what I know about her is that Son 2 is thrilled to be with her. And I am aware that after a while the romantic thrill passes.

So a little later Friday morning, I pulled out my Tarot deck and asked the question, If Son 2 marries Beryl, will it be a good thing in his life? It's a yes/no question, so I laid out the kind of 5-card reading that I describe (for example) here or here. This reading gives three answers: if they are all Yes or all No, that answers the question; if they are mixed, then the picture is more complicated.

To repeat the question: If Son 2 marries Beryl, will it be a good thing in his life?

Answer: 2 Swords reversed, 5 Wands, Page Pentacles reversed, Queen Cups reversed, Chariot.

• That works out to No, No, and No. 
• I read the individual cards as follows:
• 2 Swords reversed: Son 2 has picked a definite direction, instead of letting himself be paralyzed by sloth or indecision. Doesn't make it a good direction, but it's definite.
• 5 Wands: Family fights. Between the two of them? With her family? With his family? I have no idea.
• Page Pentacles reversed: The book I use glosses this as "Surrounded by people with ideas in opposition to his own," which might explain the family fights (if, for example, his in-laws prove hostile). But this is also the reverse of the card that showed him going to graduate school, so I suppose it might also mean No professional advancement, or Loss of money. Tarot is multivalent that way.
• Queen Cups reversed: My book glosses this as, "Her imagination runs away with her." Is that Beryl? Or does it refer (despite the sex) to Son 2? Does either or both of them have unrealistic expectations for the marriage? (I mean, probably. I think most couples do.)
• Chariot: He may succeed through very hard work, and the marriage may be a steadying factor in his life. He may exercise a lot of control to keep it out of a ditch. But he'll have to.      

Now of course there are a lot of disclaimers that belong here. I've been reading Tarot for a few years, but I wouldn't say I'm brilliant at it. Many of my own readings are a little mystifying to me still, or else they make sense just because my own life is so small and closed, so simple and repetitive. Also, it is supposed to be hard to read Tarot accurately when you are emotionally involved in the outcome. Well, I was. When I shuffled the cards to lay them out, I was still giddy with a kind of contact-high or contagious excitement from our phone call. And in the other direction, my own marriage obviously didn't go that well ^{[citation needed]}, so maybe I'm at risk for worrying too much about him. All of these things are possible.

But mostly I just felt like this reading described my marriage. I blundered into it by making a willful decision to go ahead, I had to learn to exert enormous control, and indeed it did stabilize me. At the same time it exposed me to plenty of fights, plenty of opposition, and plenty of runaway imagination.

Oh, wait. Maybe that's where the disclaimer belongs. Maybe when I laid out the cards, they showed my my marriage and not Son 2's. That would explain why the message looked so familiar.

In any event, I won't tell them what I read. That could turn the prophecy self-fulfilling, when in fact it might just be wrong. I guess we'll see, ... over the next thirty years or so.

I hope it's wrong. And I wish them both well. 

           

Three weekends

I was going to write this post yesterday afternoon—or evening, or whatever—but I was too tired. Instead I ate and drank and went to bed. Today I didn't accomplish much besides going to the grocery store, and already it's late again. But maybe I can make a little headway on this post before I cave in.

The last three weekends, I've had something going on. Each time it was something that involved being around people, and something that involved hours of driving. I'm not sure which was more tiring. Normally I don't think of driving as a lot of work, but maybe there's a point where a quantitative difference becomes a qualitative one.

Meeting Beryl

So I have met Son 2's girlfriend. I'll call her Beryl.

Yesterday the two of them (Son 2 and Beryl) undertook the long drive from where they are now living (together) to this neck of the woods, where I, and Son 1, and Wife, and Mother, and Brother + SIL all live within an hour or two of each other. For geographical reasons, my apartment was the first stop. So I cleaned the place (which was a benefit right there) and planned a bunch of food for them. They arrived in the evening: I cooked, we ate, and the conversation flowed freely. This morning I made breakfast. Then they drove off to spend Christmas Eve with Son 1 and Wife. They will be coming back some time tonight, because they left their stuff here and are sleeping here. But we didn't make a plan, and I don't know what to expect. Nor do I know whether they will have eaten dinner by the time they get here … though as it gets later, I assume the odds go up that they will be already well-fed.

Tomorrow we drive, all three of us, to Mother's place. Brother and SIL are already there helping to get things ready, and we'll have a Christmas gathering there.

Progress of a kind

The last 24 hours have been … really informative. And they've meant a kind of progress in my relationship with Wife and Son 2 … and maybe even Son 1, though that's harder to tell. But explaining it is going to require backing up for a minute. 

Chapter One: Background

This weekend, Son 2 is breezing through town. A while ago I told you about his opportunity to go to graduate school. Since then he applied and was accepted for January admission. Now that it is December he gave notice at his work and his last day was Friday. This weekend he is moving to the city where his graduate studies will take place, and where his girlfriend has been living for a while. He is taking the long way around to get there, visiting first me and then Wife en route, for a couple of reasons: partly winter weather is forecasted to block the more direct route, and partly there are things in my storage unit and in hers that he wants to take to set up his new housekeeping with. He slept in my apartment last night, and he left early this morning for Wife's place. After that I think he'll wind up with a brief visit to my mother before driving to the new city.

Magic is afoot, part 1

A couple weeks ago, I laid out a Tarot reading in the morning to ask, "What do I need to understand about today?" I got a couple of cards, of which the important one was the Page of Pentacles. So I looked up that card in my handy cheat-sheet, and learned that it is a card for students. Huh? Am I supposed to start acting more student-like? What's this about, or is it just random gibberish?

Not long thereafter, I got a call from Son 2. He caught me up on his news. In the first place, his girlfriend had gotten a job a few weeks ago in a city that meant he now had a considerable drive each weekend to go see her. Actually I guess maybe I already knew that part, because he has been starting to look for jobs in the same city. He's doing it responsibly, to make sure he doesn't endanger his nascent career; still, he understandably wants to be living near her.

Then he added the next bit. The person who was his boss during his internship last year just called. She (the ex-boss) is now teaching at a university in the town where Son 2's girlfriend is working. She has a fully-funded research project that has to get done, and the graduate student who was working on it just bailed on her. She always liked Son 2 and thought he would be the best possible person to do this research. So ... has he ever thought of going to graduate school? Would he like to start now? Can he send her an application pronto, so she can grease the skids and get him accepted?

What do I need to understand about today? Student-hood. OK, got that.

Son 2 has a girlfriend

Yesterday Son 2 called me. He often calls on the weekend to say hello, though he's not strict about it. Anyway, this time he really said he had only one piece of news -- namely, that he has a girlfriend. I said this was much better news than his stepping in quicksand. He said, "Now you can decide that I'm normal," and I chuckled that I wouldn't go that far. He told me her name, and corrected my attempts to spell it. And that was about it. Then he said he was going to call Wife and tell her.

You will notice that this call told me almost nothing about her. Son 2 texted me a couple of photos, including one of the two of them together. She looks very pleasant; he's smiling. It's not quite what I've called a "goofy grin" but close. But he told me nothing else about her besides what I've told you here, and I didn't ask. My father was always really pushy and intrusive about wanting to know the details of my private life, and I want to spare Son 2 that same inquisition. I replied to his text saying that I'd be happy to hear any stories he wanted to tell me, but on his schedule. And that means that right now I know virtually nothing.

Son 2 did suggest that Wife won't be nearly so lenient. He left a message on her phone, and said that he expects "a barrage of questions." 

The call sounded rehearsed, and the abrupt way he ended it made him sound awkward. I assume that this relationship really isn't new, but that he got to the point of wanting to be able to refer to her by name when talking about her. Or maybe she pushed the issue, the way D once pushed it on me. Either way it didn't really feel like news. The last time or two that he stayed with me, whenever we talked he seemed to start a lot of sentences with "My housemate." ("My housemate did this," "My housemate did that.") Now he can give her a name, which is shorter. And one morning while he was sitting at my kitchen table, he got a phone call that prompted him to stand up and step outside right away; when that call wrapped up, I heard him sign off with "Love you." So as I say, it didn't really feel like news.

Doing the math, I realize that Son 2 is 23, and this is the first time he has said anything about dating anyone. That doesn't mean he hasn't dated, of course. He went to boarding school for high school and he went away to university, so anything is possible. But if he was dating before now, he never bothered to mention it. So it is possible that he started his romantic life kind of late, the same way I did.

Meanwhile his older brother, Son 1, has never said anything about dating at all. He has had the same opportunities as Son 2 for carrying on a romance out of sight of his parents, but I just notice that he has never said anything.

Twenty-three years old? When I was that age, I was already married. Not that my example is necessarily the best one to follow, obviously enough.

Anyway, that's the news.