The soap opera that is life decided to go odd on me today.
Early afternoon, sitting in the house, thinking it's hot, wondering what to do with the rest of the day. Phone rings.
Hubby's daughter, who a few years back loudly declared that she wanted nothing to do with her father ever, ever again. She's in town, she wants to visit, she thought it would be a lovely surprise to call us up for the first time in years when she's half a mile from the house and inbound.
Being the pessimistic sort when it comes to people who loudly declare their sweeping dislike of you, I expected the worst: she and her two children are homeless and are looking to move in or some such variant.
Happily, she appears to have grown up in the intervening years, and has enough mental wherewithal to sort out her mother's stories from her own experiences with her father and to come to the conclusion that she might want to make her own relationship with her father on new terms. She's in town to visit friends and family, but her home is in Washington state, where her husband is stationed at Bremerton. Her kids, Hubby's grandchildren, aren't too much the holy terrors, other than kids who are seven and five and being introduced to a new grandparent would be.
I'm very happy that Hubby can have a relationship with his daughter. For myself, I am in no way ready to be a significant influence in the life of descendants. I don't think kids are wonderful and the idea of being responsible for grandchildren makes me nauseous with dread. If it had looked like Hubby's daughter was going to be a significant part of his life, I wouldn't have married him. At the time, all signs pointed to "If you see her once a year for a couple of hours, count yourself lucky, bucko" on his ex's part. I understand that a reconciliation counts as a happy ending in the great screenplay of life, and the fact of a child is something I should have taken better consideration of. But I'm very, very grateful that she's happy in another state.