Ralph Gardner Jr: Things Change

Sometimes your kids get married and move away. Sometimes they move away and then get married. Occasionally they move away and don’t get married. Or they get married and stay put.

All I’m saying is that things change. Nothing stays the same. And that’s generally a good thing. Life would be insufferably boring otherwise.

Transformation shouldn’t come as a surprise. And it doesn’t. Nonetheless, it’s slightly disorienting when it happens, when you find yourself in the throes of it.

And it’s probably most pronounced over the holidays when you have to consider factors, issues that you haven’t faced before.

For example, my daughters – both of whom, I’m proud to report, are functioning adults – typically spend the night at our apartment on Christmas Eve.

I read both “The Night Before Christmas” and “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” aloud, they go to bed, Santa arrives and deposits a sleigh full of gifts under the tree, silently departs, and we go to sleep. My kids may have abandoned the jolly old elf but I continue to argue for his existence.

However, this year our older daughter got married and her husband, understandably, thought they should awaken Christmas morning in their own home, and open gifts that Santa left under their tree.

So Lucy and Malcolm missed my dramatic reading of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” I always get choked up when the Grinch realizes that Christmas doesn’t come from a store. “Maybe Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.” My voice even cracks when the Grinch robs the Whos’ houses “Leaving crumbs much too small for the other Whos’ mouses.”

My wife Debbie thought I should wait to read these classics until we gathered at my Lucy and Malcolm’s for Christmas lunch. That was also a new development. In the past we had lunch – roast beef, not roast beast, the Whos’ traditional feast – at our apartment, then crossed Central Park for my mother’s holiday party. But she passed away last year.

I refused to delay the reading. The Book is called “The Night Before Christmas” for a reason. And the Grinch didn’t steal Christmas the day of but over the previous night. It would have made no sense to read the books after the events in question occurred.

So I read them to my younger daughter Gracie and her boyfriend Henry, both of whom were spending Christmas Eve at our apartment.

When one gets married he or she is marrying the individual, perhaps overlooking the fact that he or she also marrying their family. When your kid gets married top of mind are things like paying for the wedding and hoping it doesn’t coincide with a downpour. Whose family they’ll spend holidays with aren’t exactly top of mind, until they are.

This year’s Christmas lunch included Malcolm’s father Scott and brother Tyler. Happily so.

It’s nice to have someone other than the usual suspects around the Christmas table, especially someone who can make a tender turkey with tasty stuffing and gravy as Scott did.

So blended family Christmas Day went off without a hitch, hopefully with many more to come.

The next existential crisis arrives in March when Gracie moves to the West Coast to open a restaurant.

I should probably mention that we’re a close family. Whether we’re closer than other families I can’t say because I’ve never lived within another family. But we get along. We even enjoy traveling together.

And as Debbie shrewdly noted, when you raise kids in New York City you don’t typically have to worry as much about them moving away because New York is a prime destination for the young and ambitious and they already live there.

So both of our kids have lived within a subway ride of us since they graduated from college.

But the opportunity to start a restaurant was too good to pass up so Gracie and Henry, also a chef, are loading up his car and heading west come spring.

At first this development seemed to signal the inevitable splintering of our family. But in the same way that adding a second family to your holiday festivities, and for all I know a third in years to come, can enlarge and improve it, and include new recipes, so having a child move to the opposite coast – to a beautiful island off Seattle, no less – expands not only her horizons and experiences but also yours.

The last time I checked Debbie was pricing midweek airfares between New York and Seattle. And once we’re there – though we’ll give our daughter a few hours, or days or weeks to settle in -- what’s to prevent us from exploring Oregon, Northern California or even Alaska?

I’ve always wanted to see the Redwoods.

As you get older there may be a tendency to get set in your ways. More than a tendency. But, lo and behold, things like your children’s marriages and perhaps one day even grandchildren come hurtling towards you like a meteor out of the night sky, changing things and maybe even you along with them.

I’m coming to realize that it’s not just for the best. It’s exhilarating.

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