Just as I never thought that I’d reach the half way point of my life, I never thought that I would be an “in-law.” I recognized that Aaron’s parents were Kristen’s in-laws, but the reverse never dawned on me.

My opinion of in-laws does not come from my own in-laws who are really wonderful people. Or from Kristen’s in-laws who are also wonderful people.

Perhaps it is my childhood memories of Jackie Gleason’s character Ralph Kramden who wanted to punch his mother-in-law to the stars. Perhaps it is the realization that I’m old enough, in the second-half of my years, to have a daughter who is married. Perhaps it is rooted in some failure by me as a father of daughters to accept that I could so easily be replaced. Perhaps it is the plethora of mother-in-law jokes. Perhaps it is Webster’s definition of an in-law as “a relative by marriage” and some distorted view that I have of relationships other than by blood being less desirable.

After a month or so of distress, I began thinking about the definition: relative by marriage. That means relative by choice. Aaron chose to be my relative. Kristen, my relative by blood, had no choice in my being her father.

Aaron had known Susan and me over a year before he asked Kristen to marry him, and despite that, he asked her. This has given me an all new perspective. I became an in-law by Aaron’s choice! I don’t know what choice Kristen would make if she had any say in whether I’d continue as her blood relative.

Although I feel better about being an in-law, I’m still distressed at birthdays, especially because more than thirteen years have passed since I realized that I was in the last half of my life.