it's all relative

We went to a Pod party last night, and had a blast. (For those who don't know, the Pod is the combined property where Adam's maternal grandfather and uncle and aunt and cousins live: two separate houses right next to each other, with pool and garden in between.) It left me bemused though. It was lots of fun, but it felt strange. Nothing was wrong persay, but I still felt like something was just . . . off. It took me awhile to figure it out, but eventually I remembered someone (quite some time ago, probably when I was newly engaged and looking in need of all the advice anyone married cared to give me) advising me that it was best to approach in-laws (in the broad, extended family sense of the word) like you'd approach a different culture. I remembered that advice, and I figured out what was bothering me.

Being with Adam's family feels slightly like being in a foreign country. Not in a bad way at all, just in that was that makes you feel like you don't quite know the rules. "I'm not from around here . . ."

It got me thinking. My sister, who has always been the one to dive into learning other languages and other cultures, ever since she was small, has told me that the cool thing about cross-cultural friendships is that when you really become friends and get to know each other, you know the people, in some ways, better than you can know people in your own culture, because when you find that you have something in common, you have something real and deep in common, not just the small, petty, surface things that you have in common because you're of the same race or born in the same class or whatever. It's the real, deep, human things that make up your friendship, not the incidentals.

Which is a cool thing to think about when I think of my husband's family. Because it really is true: each family is its own culture. I've seen that recently living with Dan and Christa. Each family has it's own expectations and assumptions and ways of doing things. And it seems to me that one of the cool things about marriage is this communion of two cultures, in the two different families that are joined. So then, Adam and I are the new heads of a new family, and we can look at both of our families, and take what is best of each to make this new family culture for us and our children. And hopefully they'll do the same, and so on down the generations, so that the many families resulting will just get better and better and better: more righteous, more holy, more joyful - hey, my heart even hopes for more practical and efficient! (my family culture being much derived from the Scots)

Anyway, it was a cool, interesting musing, so I'd thought I'd share. There's much more you could say on the subject of course, but Adam and I are about to watch a really goofy movie expressly in order to make fun of it, so I'd better go. :)

-Jess