Daddy

Last night the Trapp family went to the Christmas eve service at my parents-in-law's church.  Because the Trapps are always involved, all Trapps were required to be involved.  Therefore, I ended up being Mary, reprising a role I hadn't played since I was 15 in a church where no one knew me.  I don't know about you, but in the church I grew up in, girls went crazy trying to get to be the one to play Mary.  It was a big deal.  No one from outside the church would EVER have been allowed to usurp this role.  Yet, even though I asked several other girls who actually attended this church if they wanted to play the role, they all said no.  Strange.  So I played Mary.  I felt weird. 
At the end of the service, at which my father-in-law preached, we lit candles and sang "Silent Night", which is one of my favorite Christmas traditions.  The woman who had assisted my father-in-law with communion right before the candle lighting stood in between me and my father-in-law.  As the music started, she turned to me and said, "Would you like to stand by your daddy?"  I was totally taken aback!  He's not my daddy!  My daddy was in Iowa, and I was not with him on Christmas eve for the first time in my entire life!  Still, the middle of "Silent Night" wasn't the right situation to tell a perfect stranger that she had no idea what she was talking about.  She, after all, didn't know that my father-in-law was "daddy" to my sister-in-law who was standing half-way across the room.  She was trying to be nice.  So I said, "Thank you," and I traded places with the woman. 
I spent the rest of "Silent Night" thinking about this "incident," and I decided that while my father-in-law isn't my "daddy", he's pretty great.  And genrally, I am so fortunate to have married into a wonderful, loving family where I do feel like a daughter and a sister and not the interloping wedge between my husband and his parents.  I'm spending Christmas without my mom, dad, brothers and sister, but I'm also spending it with my other family who I love dearly.  (And on a less emothional level, I'm not in the middle of a midwest ice storm wondering if the power will stay on.  It's raining here, but there's still lots of snow.  It's not freezing, and I'm cozy, well-fed, and surrounded by fun people.) 
Merry Christmas!