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June 11, 2002 - Looking Back
In Boston, still. On the wicker couch, Ruby drowsing at my side. The huge pine in our front yard fills my field of vision, the singing of birds fills my ears. The breeze is welcome and gentle and carries with it the scent of roses. Toby picked me one from the backyard last night and tucked it behind my ear as I smiled up at him. I always want to remember that he did this. Our original plan called for us to leave for Maine six days ago. But we can’t leave without Toby’s computer, which is still waiting for a part, so here we are in Limbo. I don’t mind so much - the hammock, always, is there for me- but it’s been hard on Toby as each day puts him farther behind in his work. Especially now, as he’s finally been given reason to hope for a permanent position and the health insurance coverage that will come with it. Right now it seems like we’re waiting for everything. After I graduated from college in 1994, I more or less stopped keeping a diary. I didn’t start again in earnest until 1998, a few months after Toby and I were married. There are times when I regret the loss of those years, but I think I will always be glad that I didn’t shine too bright a light on the months leading up to our wedding. In the fall of 1996, we phoned my parents to tell them that we were getting married and that I was converting to Judaism. I am sure it must be some lapse on my part if I don’t recall them taking even a moment to offer best wishes and congratulations on the engagement. Surely my memory is distorted and they drew breath at least before raining hellfire and damnation on the choice I’d made, launching a tirade that would continue through the year and a disapproval that continues to taint my relationship with them. My father grilled me on whether or not I believed it to be the literal truth that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. (I do.) My mother sent venomous letters that I forced myself to read. My father said he wouldn’t come to our wedding if we had it in a synagogue, and I asked him if he’d feel the same way about a synagogue ceremony to welcome a future grandson. Absolutely, he told me, and that’s probably when he made the "lost to the line" speech. After all this time, it’s still so hard for me to understand why they were so shocked and dismayed. Sure, we went to church and Sunday School when I was little, but by the time I was in high school, it was strictly Christmas-and-Easter. We had the occasional grace over a holiday table, but I could never say that I was raised in a home with a strong sense of Christian religious identity. Values, morals, tradition, love - all of these things, yes. But a regular awareness of God in a Christian context? No. Jesus came home for the holidays in December and pretty much took off after that. Mom and Dad never made a point of sitting me down to tell me how important it was that he died for my sins. And, as I’m sure you’re heartily sick of hearing by now, I was finally baptized at the ripe old age of fifteen. Church or no church, my faith in God has always been a part of me. What I lacked was a formal way to express it, and, most of all, a way to bring it into my daily life. And then I met a man who had all those things and who wanted to share them with me. Why did this make my parents so unhappy? Was it just that Toby was going to be able to give me something that they hadn’t been able to provide, or was it something more? Our wedding. They refused to come to a synagogue, so we said, all right, we won’t have it at a synagogue. They lobbied hard for a civil ceremony, or perhaps a Unitarian one. Toby and I couldn’t compromise on this. We agreed that since we shared a perfectly legitimate religion, with God and all the angels included, a civil wedding would be meaningless and a Unitarian one pointless. My parents’ next plan was that we have a Jewish ceremony in Pittsburgh - a ceremony which neither they, their friends, nor any other member of my family would attend, a shameful thing to be carried out in secrecy and at great distance - followed at a later date by a non-sectarian reception or even a second civil ceremony for their benefit. When we said no to that, too, my father told me not to expect him at the wedding and my mother added that she felt she had to support whatever choice my father made. During the months that followed, I reminded myself every day that I was their firstborn daughter, their beloved daughter, and that even though they might be hurting me terribly, my parents still loved me. I swore that no matter what awful, poisonous things they said to me about the path I had chosen to follow, I wouldn’t be the first one to turn away. I called them regularly even though I ended up emotionally devastated after every conversation. I cried countless tears as Toby held me, and we counted the days to our wedding. The joyous bridegroom, the happy bride. In the end, Mom and Dad invited a grand total of two couples outside the family and insisted the wedding invitations be worded in a way that would indicate that they were not sponsoring, approving, or condoning this wedding in any way whatsoever. I have a framed copy of the invitation and every time I look at it is like a knife in the heart. My parents contributed nothing toward the wedding expenses. And we wouldn’t have asked for much. In an era when the average wedding checks in at twenty thousand dollars, we budgeted for and spent just over eight. My in-laws contributed $3,500. My parents, nothing. Particularly, my father made sure to tell me, none of his money was going to see the inside of a rabbi’s pocket. They instructed me to use what money was left from my inheritance, which I did. They didn’t approve of what I was doing, and not helping out financially was just another opportunity for them to show it to me and to Toby and to his parents and to everyone else. I know how proudly the invitations will read when Violet and Diana marry, I know my sisters won’t be expected to put up a dime. Our wedding was a Jewish wedding, complete with rabbi, chupah that I sewed and emboidered myself, a shining canopy of gold beading on white satin, the Seven Blessings recited beautifully in Hebrew by Toby’s uncle, and a broken glass at the end of it. My parents chose to come for the day and had thought to stay in the house while the ceremony took place in the yard. In the end, something (shame?) made them change their minds and the three of us walked down the aisle together. In the photographs, I am smiling. How I did this I still don’t know. All embellishments aside, this is the way it was - my parents expressed no joy when I announced to them the greatest happiness of my life. They spent the next year emotionally blackmailing me by threatening not to come to the wedding unless we did it their way - that is, any way but the Jewish way. They told me that I was a terrible, ungrateful daughter, and they said hurtful, bigoted things about the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. There was an ugliness between them and Toby’s parents (whom they met for the first time on the day of the wedding) which I refuse to describe even now. They did not make happy announcements to their friends and to ther rest of our family. They insisted that the invitations be worded so as to minimize their involvement, they did not contribute financially in any way, and they made me wait until the last possible minute before deciding that they would attend and participate at all. Yes, I understand that my choice to become a Jew was painful to them. But they hurt me - and my beloved husband, and his parents who had only the best of intentions - far more. During the reception, my young cousin asked me if this was the happiest day of my life. An easy question for any wide-eyed bride, but I had no answer for her. When I think of my wedding day - my only wedding day, the day that joined me forever with the light of my life and the eternal joy of my heart - this is what haunts me the most. In the time that’s passed, my mother has made some effort to come to terms with my Jewish life. She’s had Shabbat dinner with us many times and enjoys the candles and the singing. From time to time, she still says things that are thoughtless or cruel, but she spologizes for them now and asks me not to repeat them to Toby, whom she genuinely adores. Her religious beliefs - which, incidentally, are not primarily Christian ones, but that’s another story - view this world as "a hospital for sick people", a low place where the soul is doomed to be reincarnated over and over again until it reaches enlightenment. She believes that "prayer is a sport" and that "prayers go nowhere". Her attitude towards Judaism is that it’s more or less harmless, but pitifully earthbound and simplistic, something for the "once-born". It’s hard to tolerate this attitude because I would never dream of doing or saying anything to give her the impression that I looked down on her religious beliefs. Or anyone else’s. My father is a different story. From me - from us - comes a reluctance to force him to confront any Jewish aspect of my life. From him come things that I won't quote here for posterity - I want my children and grandchildren, Jewish or not, to think of my father as a good man. It’s a source of pain to me - but also of amazement - that someone as intelligent and sensitive and loving as my father not only thinks such things but actually says them. Out loud. To Toby and to me. And this is old ground again, because we never know what to do when it happens, so we stay silent, and he wins. Why is all of this coming up now? Because of her. She’s not a boy, so there won’t be a bris. If there was, I wouldn’t dream of expecting my family to be involved at all. See, there’d be all these Jews, and a Jewish rabbi saying Jewish words, welcoming a new Jew into the covenant between God and the Jews. With a girl, though, it’s not so cut-and-dried. There are a few things that need to be taken care of in the presence of a minyan (a group of ten or more Jews) - so that will have to happen at a synagogue. Toby and I will stand before the congregation and I will recite a prayer formally thanking God for having survived the ordeal of childbirth. Our daughter will officially get her name, and we will make a money offering to symbolize the sacrifice that would have been offered in ancient times. After services are over, we (or Toby’s parents, who will surely be there) will sponsor a meal for the congregation. Traditionally, the arrival of a girl has been the occasion for much less fuss than the arrival of a boy. But this has all changed, of course, and a daughter is every bit as important as a son. We mean to see her welcomed properly. The thanksgiving of the mother and the naming of the girl usually takes place thirty days after the child is born. Though I will extend the invitation, I don’t expect that any of my family members will attend the synagogue ceremony. I’m not at all upset about this - on the contrary, I pity them for being so stiff-necked and for depriving themselves of a wonderful opportunity to become a part of their new granddaughter’s life. I pity them for the future, for when she asks them why they weren’t there and they don’t have an answer. They’ve only got thirteen years to come up with a reason not to attend her bat mitzvah, twenty-five for her wedding. Use the time wisely, Mom and Dad. ("Well, see, honey, it’s because you’re lost to the line ... not really our grandchild the way that your cousins are ...") Here is what I have decided to do. While I don’t expect them to show up in the front row at the synagogue, I know that my parents are certainly not going to shun this new child. They are so excited about her - more so, it seems to me, than my in-laws are. (Traitorous thought.) And I want my family to welcome her, and if they won’t do it if a rabbi is involved, well, there are other ways. So I’m planning a welcome-home party for my future angel, a party just like my mother used to make for me. With a cake, and presents, and ginger ale punch with rainbow sherbet floating in it. And my mom and my dad and my sisters will be there, and we’ll pass her around and everyone can tell her what their hopes and wishes for her are. Maybe - maybe - we will say a prayer together. My mother can sing her the songs that she used to sing to me, and if they have special gifts they want to pass on to her, this will be the time. My family may not have a strong religious tradition. But we do have a strong tradition of being a family, and our new daughter is going to know that right from the start.
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