Home again, home again

My son and his bride were wed Monday evening in a Jewish ceremony in Portland, Ore.
My new daughter-in-law, Ruth, has a Danish mother and a South African Jewish father who are divorced.
It was my first encounter with my new extended family and I found them bright, witty and delightful.
My son, for the record, was baptized Presbyterian, grew up in a Catholic/hippie Hindu atmosphere and isn’t much for organized religion. Nonetheless, he donned a yarmulke and stomped the traditional wine glass into a bazillion pieces in keeping with Jewish tradition.
The rabbi who conducted the ceremony offered that Sean and Ruth are among the five most seriously committed couples he’s counseled/wed in his 40 years in the clergy.
My younger son and his wife flew out from Cincinnati and my ex and her two sisters converged on the occasion from Illinois, Indiana and California.
We stayed at the Doubletree Hotel at Lloyd Center, which is a splendid base from which to explore and enjoy Portland. There is a light rail system that runs from the airport to downtown and to the zoo and other attractions beyond and it runs right past the hotel. If I’d done my homework and discovered the light rail option, I might have passed on a rental car, since the ride from the hotel to downtown where the wedding festivities were held is free. But then we wouldn’t have been able to drive up the Columbia River gorge on Saturday to photograph Multnomah Falls and the windsurfers at Hood River.
The flights out and back were uneventful. The Hurricane Ivan redux we’d expected in Dallas on Friday never appeared. It was my first encounter with the Dallas airport. Maria has been through there several times and warned me about it.
Our outbound connection involved widely separated arrival and departure gates and we had to run to make the boarding of our DFW-PDX flight. Happily, we had a leisurely hour-long layover on the return trip.
Maria’s son, who had the house to himself from Friday through Tuesday evening, seems to have managed well and has had no incidents with his new car (at least not that he’s told us about).