Great!! :-)

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: Hi, Calliope! : >> With all due respect, I still stand by my post.<< : I would expect no less of you, my worthy adversary... :-) : >>At my age I doubt that anyone here is not a young lady to me.<< : :-))) The way you said 'Young lady...' gave you away straight. Within a fragment of a second, I was back home, 16 years old, and heard my mother's voice. And I am older now than she was then. <Chuckle> : >>I read nothing about compromise or understanding. Whether or not we like it, a partner usually has a family lurking in the background. Sometimes we agree with the family sometimes we do not. The tone of the post was no compromise.<< : You are right. It did not speak of compromise with 'the family lurking in the background'. But there may be reasons for that. We do not know what struggles 'Married to a Greek' and her parents-in-law went through. And the vigor in her posting suggests that it is >a heated subject<. I know mixed couples who split up because of the pressure parents-in-law built up. Believe me, I was deeply shocked by the means employed to >save their child< from non-greek influence, including making their own grown-up child suffer >for his or her own best<. I have also met parents-in-law who were most understanding and open-minded and through their warm humanity made it attractive for their child's non-greek spouse to follow a tradition or two (or three... :-) . : >>I agree that they as a couple should decide their own destiny. What is disagreeable are the blanket statements about "OLD" ways, old school of thought, wearing black at weddings, and the assumption that all Greeks are dark.<< : If this is how you understood the posting, then, yes, blanket statements are objectionable. In the case at hand, wouldn't you agree that we simply hit the very sensitive point in a discussion where we generalize a personal experience for the sake of argumentation? I, myself, only perceived the 'personal experience' shared, the posting did not strike me as trying to be exemplary. : >>It's very hard to cross culture lines and I'm sure the Greek family felt just as alienated as she did.<< : I totally agree. : >>I wonder if anything was done to assure them that some part of what they have believed all their lives would be passed on.<< : I am in no position to say what was done. Two sets of parents-in-law go with a marriage and I assume both wish to see passed on what they believe in. In a time in which indiviual freedom is gaining significance in the way we shape our lives, the question whether a tradition is valued and kept increasingly depends on how attractive and desirable a parent-generation can present these traditions. Pressure and guilt will work on weaker personalities and produce a desire for new ways in stronger ones. : I, for my part, was blessed with a wonderful great-grandmother who taught me more about life than my mother did. And as strange as this may sound, it irritates my mother that I returned to many values she dropped as 'old-fashioned' forty years ago. : >>There is no easy answer here.<< : I agree very much. : >>Throwing a little oil on the fire makes for a lively discussion....<< : :-) Yep! : It has been a real pleasure... : Tracey

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