Hit a milestone last night.  At least a speed bump on the highway of life.  Ben and his partner, K, hosted a Xmas dinner complete with eggnog, shortbread and mashed potatoes.  Kinda like old times but with the rookies in the kitchen.  Pretty neat.  They did good.

I suppose the speed bump was elevated to milestone status by the fact that K invited her family and so did Ben.  Two sets of moms and dads, one set of grandparents and a bunch o siblings in a ‘pair’ tree (they came in couples).  Plus a good friend or two – RC and Steve (his cat).  The dinner went nuclear in the family sense.

This is a good sign for their relationship.  And, I suppose, for ours – given that we all got this far and all.  Father ll and Mother ll are our parental-role counterparts.  Sal is still the cutest.  I am still the most homely.  We have a few more miles on the odometer but they are right behind us.

It’s weird.  Someday Ben might call another woman, ‘Mom’.  Someday, K may stop teasing me.  Family, eh?   

We all sat down to dinner like we had done it many times before.  Despite the healthy level of ‘awareness’ of each other as ‘the-potential-in-laws’, we managed to get along just fine and found a surprising level of enjoyment and comfort in the evening.  It was a ‘natural’ affair.

It seems the same level of madness and character that permeates Sal and my family is countered nicely by the personalities of the ‘other’ clan.  In fact, as much as I hate to admit it, the balance point is clearly with Ben and K.  Usually, I am the most sane person in any given gathering (as you know) but this time the ‘kids’ had it all together and dinner was delicious, the company fun and entertaining and no one asked me to leave early.  It doesn’t get any better than that.

I am not so sure that one dinner completes the passing of the torch but it was definitely a treat to enjoy the evening and not have to clean up afterwards.  And it was especially fun to leave the dishes with Ben.  I am sure that he has done dishes in his lifetime.  Pretty sure, anyway.  He lived as a separate being (eventually becoming an adult at some undetermined point in time that we refer to as the Basement Suite period) and so I know he knows how.  It is just that I have never seen it.

To be fair, I still haven’t.  Since K’s sister, S and Roz (sis-in-law and grandma) were willing to do dishes, Ben (like the chip off the old block he is) snatched every dirty dish within sight and fed the washing duo as fast as he could.  So, technically, he was not the washer-of-dish but rather the ‘dish fetcher’.  Still, it’s a start.  I was and am very proud.

Little does he know, that the domestication process has just officially begun with the ‘parents-meeting-parents’ dinner.

Poor sap. 

(names withheld by request)