In twenty years,

I hope to be sitting at the banquet table for the wedding of one of my children. I can see it now... Everyone gathered together, all decked out in their wedding garments, surrounded by the people and things that make them happy, the band playing uplifting music... ah, it will be lovely.

And Zorak and I are going to sit there, beaming on the inside, and...

bicker.

That's right. We're going to touch each other's plates, and whine about it. He's going to swing his leg and kick *my* chair. Repeatedly. Ignoring all warnings. One of us will keep moving, and the other one will get up and FOLLOW, plate and all. And right in the middle of each toast, one of us will shout, "Would you stop TOUCHING ME!"

And that will be just the beginning, because by that time, I'm sure there will be payback galore built up from these four, and it's going to take some ingenuity on our part, but I'm pretty sure we will be able to cram all of it into the wedding festivities. Oh, yes. We're gonna party like somebody else is footin' the bill, folks!

OK.

Probably not. Truthfully, I am deeply grateful that neither of our parents did that at our wedding. Whooeee, that would've been one humdinger of a spectacle (we had a lot of payback coming from our raisings). And I guess that's the thing about parenting. You remind your children of a thousand rules of behavior a thousand times over: do not kick your brother's chair; do not put your fingers in someone else's food; do not get up and follow someone who has just stood, demanded in no uncertain terms that you leave him alone, and stormed off (actually, you may want to cover that one a few extra times - could save a life some day). And still, five years down the road, you find yourself tensing up, bracing yourself for combat because you *know* you're going to have to say it 1,001 times. Or more. And you dream of the day you can start a food fight at your son's promotion party. Or play frisbee with lunchmeats at your daughter's college graduation. Or pick a brawl at the wedding...

But when the time comes, those thousand and one (or million and one) reminders have kicked in and done their job. You've done your job. And suddenly, you realize you don't want to ruin it. You've spent all these years helping them learn not to ruin it for themselves... you want to sit back, wallow it in, think up new things to worry about, and love them. Just like you've loved them through everything.

I will probably look at Zorak, though, and smile mischeviously when he whispers, "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" (Because I never am, and we both know that, but at that point, we may just be...)

But just to be on the safe side, don't sit near us at the wedding, ok?

Kiss those babies!
~Dy