Something I don't see every day
I'm becoming somewhat attached to a German restaurant here at Undisclosed Remote Location. This is the first time I've seen it busy. A wedding rehearsal party took half the dining room. But at a table next to mine I saw something truly beautiful: four generations dining together. A girl, maybe five years old, then the mother, a blonde six-footer, her mother, also tall, and the great grandmother, stooped with age but alert and proud.

I wanted to say something to them, about how remarkable it was to see them together in one place, but how to say it, without being taken for a lunatic who can't mind his own business?

As they left, I overheard that Great-Grandma was visiting from Germany.

Sadly, my in-laws will never see such a day. Barbaloot and I married later in life, and are raising children later too. My parents are already gone, hers are in their seventies. There's little hope our kids will have kids before the ir grandparents, my in-laws, pass away. Maybe that's why I had this urge to say something to them---to try to share their moment because I will probably not be participating in such a moment of my own.