Gen X Grows Up, Has 2 Kids and a House

It was a crazy weekend, for sure. The first time both sides of my family have been in the same room in a long time, and Lisa’s family were all there too, including the Lisa’s aunt’s 16-year-old step-daughter who kept giving me flashbacks to the 80s with her Tom “Top Gun” Cruise sunglasses and her Madonna “Like A Virgin” tights under skirt outfit. Everything went very well, thanks in large part to Lisa’s obsessive planning skills. She managed to get everything fine-tuned so that all we had to do once we got back from the church was throw some fruit together, and start eating.
The Christening was a good excuse to get all the family together and to see everyone again. We tend to see each other mainly at weddings and such, which happen regularly enough. My two remaining grandparents are the big impetus for doing the religious stuff. They are the ones who go to traditional Latin mass and refuse to take Communion from anyone but the priest. It’s interesting that without ceremonies like this, we’d probably have to make up something else so that we could get everyone together for a party. For me, it’s not about the religious aspect any more, it’s about having our families welcome our new child into our big family.
Non sequitor segue: This is just one way that my generation (so-called Generation X) is different from preceding generations (Greatest, Boomers). When we were younger, we were considered slackers, until around the time Time magazine ran a cover story taking a new look at us. More recently, Time took yet another look at us, and realized we had grown up and were raising our kids in very different ways than our parents probably raised us. Whether we are all “Alterna-dads” or “hipster parents” or “grups,” we have different ideas about how we want our kids to grow up.
The crazy thing is that for one day, four generations were in our house sharing the joy of a new child, and nothing else mattered.