More nerve-wracking than meeting the folks, in this modern era, is the meeting of the children.

Junior’s meeting of mine went fairly well. He’d already met Seamus while hunting, before we were even an item, and Seamus is a friendly sort. John was, well, John, but he’s coming out of his shell and actually being polite for a change. Which probably had nothing to do with the whispered and sincere threats in his ear, now, did it?

This weekend was his younger daughter’s birthday. Seemed a good time to introduce everyone all around, with other people around to run interference and pizza and games to provide distraction. From what he’s said about the younger one, I thought she might be a little like Seamus; outgoing and happy to be around people. I was right too, we hit it off just fine, and in fact she and Seamus buddied up a little bit too.

The older daughter might be a little more of a challenge. She strikes me as more of a sensitive sort, who’s had to go through quite a bit in the last year. There was their divorce, and her mother getting remarried right away, and moving houses, and now her Dad springs a new girlfriend on her, complete with a whole other family to deal with. She might take a while to warm up to me, but that’s OK. We got off on a good enough foot; she was distant but polite, and that’s really all you can ask of an eight-year-old. We have time, after all.

Family dynamics are challenging enough when everyone’s related to each other, but the prospect of merging two families scares me a little, and him too. We’ll do it, it’s absolutely worth it, but it’s going to be hard. We catch each other’s eyes over the heads of whichever kids happen to be around at the moment and know that we’re both doing the math and wondering if we’re crazy to be trying this. At the very least, we’re going to need a bigger house, but that’s just details. There are going to be an awful lot of details to work out, and some of it’s not going to be easy at all.

Suddenly, this relationship isn’t just between the two of us; now there are six hearts involved, and how do you keep that many happy, warm, and safe? I don’t know, not right off the top of my head, but we’ll be learning as we go.

Imagine, daughters. I never thought I’d be in that position, but I can see it from here.