The Cousins Party

The extended Riley family in Oak Glen, over the past three years, has been blessed with so many new babies I’m having trouble counting and naming them.  On Denny’s side,  (my older brother) I believe there are four new souls.  Scott and Benita welcomed two, and Mary and I were blessed with four.  That makes TEN new babies, with–if reports are accurate–two more on the way.   Eight girls, two boys, two awaiting ultrasounds.  An even dozen.

Mind you, I’m not counting any child over three years old.  There are enough Riley youngsters in the Glen to start a homeschool academy, and that may already have commenced.  (Oak Glen is now home to several young couples, and the community parties are full of people under three feet tall.)

I can’t share pictures or names, since the world has become so weird, my adult children have understandably established rules about social media, but last night we had a “cousins party,” and there were so many little heads in elbow-crooks that I was having trouble picking one from another.

My poor hearing makes me a very iffy party guest and not a particularly good grandpa, since some of the children who are beginning to speak full sentences get frustrated with my lack of understanding, but I am silently observing all the time.  One little guy has a right inner eyebrow that slants down on its own, whenever something looks suspicious.  It’s hilarious. I can see that look being the same twenty years from now. Another little girl has a delicacy about her, a caution, that is touching.  I can imagine her being the sort of friend who hurts for her companions before they do.  Another, nearly three years old, always throws her hands up whenever she sees me.  She wants to be picked up and held, and she gives very tight hugs.  I told my in-law, “she’s one of our most affectionate grandchildren.”  My in-law’s response:  “That’s the Puerto Rican in her.”

It all strikes me as a kind of community investment — this adult attention to these new little souls.  The other day I was tired and didn’t feel like driving.  There was my handsome son, Sam, ready to take the wheel.  A guest posted a video of Christmas Carol, and there was my confident musician son, Gabriel, up there, lighting up the room, making people happy.  (It’s more difficult than you think, and he has it down.)  We couldn’t afford a family getaway this year, and two of our children rented a house for the entire family.

Babies, young people, are all terribly helpless at the outset, and a little expensive, and time-consuming–but then they become giants.  They become larger than life.  It’s the timeless, natural order of the universe — parents caring for children and then children caring for parents.  Nearly every century, and certainly every chapter of the Bible, describes new life as a “blessing.”

We’re the first century to get it wrong.  We’re the first century to worry about budgeting for children, to arrange “day care,” to agonize over a college education.  Let me tell you, that “worry” doesn’t work.  Charlie Kirk said what I’ve been saying for 30 years: get married young, have lots of children, and let that obligation encourage your own empire-building spirit.

As the house filled up last night with the sound of of so many parents and children celebrating, I drove down the hill to pick up some of our visiting children at an in-law’s house.  As I was rolling out the lower driveway, I was greeted by a snow white dove, which is extremely unusual for Oak Glen. It would NOT move.  It allowed me to take pictures, and I assumed it would fly off.  My nephew Ryan and his wife, and their little girl drove past me.

“Check this out,” I said.  “Look at that bird!”
Ryan got out of the car with his daughter in his arms.
“Want me to scare it off?” Ryan asked.
“I guess so,” I said. “It won’t let me out the driveway.”
Ryan walked behind the bird,  and the stately little creature exited stage left, with a kind of royal strut, fearless, sure of itself.

When we returned, there it was on the boulder next to the driveway.

A great feast was waiting for us.

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This post was written by Jim Riley