Ever after (happily)

My daughter met her brother’s mother for the first time last week. At age 39, he was getting married for the first time and it seemed an opportune time to get the families together. We don’t live far apart, only a 10-minute walk in the city. But, except for the children my husband and she share, we have no connection.

That exception, of course, is a huge part of our life as a family. Jeff was 13 when I met his father, who had been separated from his mother for eight years by then. He was a bright, funny boy with a mop of blond hair and a soft, pudgy face. He and his younger brother Jeremy played, laughed and battled each other with equal enthusiasm.

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There will be—profit?

One has to wonder sometimes about the role of coincidence in human affairs. Readers might recall how the 1979 premiere of the nuclear-meltdown movie “The China Syndrome” was followed, only a few days later, by the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant. So what’s to be made of the arising of the gas/oil drilling issue here in the Upper Delaware so close to the emergence of the Daniel Day-Lewis blockbuster, “There Will Be Blood?”

Besides graphically illustrating how gruesomely things can go wrong when dealing with natural forces, the film is also a cautionary tale illustrating how greed can warp perceptions and priorities, and lead one to sacrifice one’s identity, one’s sanity and even one’s very humanity.

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