Meeting the family.

I am home from Victoria, home from Ottawa, and I am not quite ready to go back to work tomorrow after a week of bargaining and a weekend of birthday festivities. But still, I am taking a moment to bask in the generosity of my boyfriend, my friends and my family over the last few days. Since Thursday night I have been wined, dined, gifted and cuddled by all sorts of magnificent people. Just writing this is making me tear up, I’m feeling so damned lucky for all the love in my life right now.

This weekend was big for me, not just because 35 is a bit of a milestone year, but because after a few months of dating I got to take Brian home to meet my family for the first time. And I don’t just mean my parents, but all the women who have been in my life for the past twenty (or more) years and their partners and/or children – my chosen family so deeply lodged in my heart I can not imagine my life without them, past or future. It was time, really, just so that Brian could start putting faces to the names of the people I talk about. Needless to say, everyone got on famously (and that includes Brian and my parents this afternoon at lunch), and it was a weekend of familial socializing I won’t soon forget.

Not to be too effusive about it, I am continually surprised by this remarkable new person in my life and by the relationship we are making together. I never thought I would have *this* again – the creation and sharing of the space two people hold between them – connected in particular overwhelming moments during which I want the world to stop so that the enveloping warmth never ever ends. And yet, I am not carried away by it, nor unrealistic. Outside of those moments of emotional bliss, I see this man as an equal and a whole person standing beside my own whole person – and it quite simply feels like the healthiest romantic connection I have ever had.

It seems impossible, but there he was this weekend becoming a further part of my life, this accident of meeting that has become something a part of me. If I wasn’t so exhausted I would go on and on – but suffice to say I am happy, fortunate, and feeling very much cherished by everyone.

Thank-you. Thank-you. Thank-you.