I'm going to be a Mother-in-Law!

So much going on lately, but I'll start with my younger son's engagement. He and his partner revisited Cumberland Island, Georgia, on a spring break camping trip and on their last day, my son "found" a shell on the beach in which he'd hidden this ring.

(A note on the following use of plural pronouns instead of singular: My son's partner identifies as "nonbinary," a word that this older woman has struggled to understand. If I'm getting it correctly, it's about not identifying either as male or female particularly, but there is no real accepted gender-neutral singular pronoun. So we say "they" and "their" and instead of "she" and "her." Grammatically, this is tough for my old-school self, but philosophically I'm fine with it. I'm trying to use those terms even when not in my future kid-in-law's presence so that I don't flub up when I am. And I do adore them, so I want to be sensitive.)

Anyway, opals are their favorite stone and my son found an Israeli jeweler on Etsy who had this beautiful ring that so suits his partner's style. My son graduates in May and his partner the following May, and the plan is for a wedding right after that in 2019.

As soon as they got back in town, we made plans for a celebration dinner. I cut flowers from the yard and the four of us sat well into the evening hearing about the proposal (a very traditional, down on one knee sort of proposal) and plans for the wedding. They talked about the possibility of having the wedding here, in our back yard, an idea I find both exciting and a little unnerving. But yes, absolutely. The two of them had only been dating a month when my husband and I got married and we all remembered their startled reaction to being invited to our wedding. My absolute favorite photo from the wedding hangs on our living room wall and includes my son's now-fiancée, in a mini-skirt with Barbie doll-long legs, smiling shyly at the camera.

I made this silly heart-shaped cake for dessert and we opened a bottle of champagne to toast the newly engaged couple. I could not be happier with my son's choice of life partner and I look forward to making a spectacle of myself, crying like a baby at their wedding.