Building a Lego Wife

Friends my age have children who are getting married! It's a little crazy entering this new phase of life, but I'm enjoying learning from their experiences. One of the challenges is having no control over who these children are marrying, despite all of the planning and scheming through the years.

My friend Linda, whose daughter Shelley got married last summer, said that she never realized that she'd been imagining her idea of a perfect husband for her daughter through the years--picking and choosing traits and putting them together in a nice package. Sort of like building a Lego husband she said. Then of course, Shelley brought home a completely different boy! But it's all good.

I wonder if I'll do the same for Jack. Or if I'll be one of those moms who picks out the "perfect" girl for him when he's, say, eight.

I must say that it's very tempting to do just that with Jack's bff Gracie, who moved away from our neighborhood a couple of years ago. We arranged for them to spend the day together on Saturday, and neither of them could sleep on Friday night. I swear it felt like Christmas Eve.

I like the idea of Jack and Gracie ending up together. They have an amazing relationship. Even when they have a rare disagreement, they work through it together with a great deal of civility. They genuinely enjoy each other and they're instinctively on the same page. And the silver lining is that I like Gracie and I like her family.

Gracie's mom, Diana, and I laugh about the possibility of them getting married someday. We're not really serious about that, but we think the connection they have is pretty rare and special.

What I hope for Jack is not necessarily that he'll end up with Gracie, but that he'll end up with someone that he can connect with so well. And it won't hurt at all if I like her too.