4th of July 2012

A recap of how I spent the 4th. Click the link to read more.

Unpacking at the House

 By the time I arrived at the house on Friday, the movers were almost done loading the boxes in the house. This meant I got to help my sister-in-law unpack the kitchen stuff, so I organized the dishes and mugs on the table and let her decide where to put them. The house has a huge amount of cabinet space compared to the old apartment, so fortunately we weren’t worried about having enough space, just how to use it best.

            By the end of the evening, we were sitting around the table with a friend of my brother and SIL’s, drinking beer and alternately discussing the fate of the world and what show(s) Big Bro and SIL should start watching (Mad Men, and possibly Game of Thrones).

House Weekend

In terms of nursing school news, my Physical Assessment class is going very smoothly. My lab partner and I aced our vitals midterm (we had to take each other's vitals - temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and respirations). The next day, I aced my lecture midterm and then had lunch with a dear aunt. Brother and I had dinner at a charming bar a few hundred feet away from the apartment. I was told that Magners cider is a "girly" drink. I reminded Big Bro of one of my favorite mixed drinks, Cranberry Vodkas, which I think are clearly in the top five of girly drinks.

Moving day is fast approaching, so I helped my brother with some packing Friday night, and Saturday we put down primer in my future room (he did the tape and tarp). Brother, SIL, and I went to Lowe's to get some more painting supplies and pick window treatments (there are lots of windows in the house, and many of them are very tall). My favorite quote of the evening: "we will keep the blinds [in the basement windows] closed FOREVER." (Emphasis added).

This morning through this afternoon, the three of us primed the guest room (on the same floor as my future room), and then painted my room and the guest room.* The paint for my room looked light, light blue on the chip, but ended up a darker cooler than expected. But it was a beautiful color, so I don't care. Likewise, the light green for the guest room looks more yellow on the walls than on the chip, but not in a bad way, so we are considering both paint jobs done.

Tonight, we're getting falafel and frozen yogurt for dinner, and then watching Coming to America at the apartment. I'm excited.

* = To be accurate, Bro and I painted my room; Bro and SIL painted the guest room while I ran out to get my groceries.

January 2007

As you may have noticed, the excerpts from The Fiennes are not back-to-back. This piece is set during Reuben's second bout with leukemia. It has been the hardest section to write on an emotional level, but I also felt like I got closer to understanding my characters. Comments are welcome.

My Brother's Christian Wedding

Since my brother is Christian and my sister-in-law is Hindu, they had two wedding ceremonies: the first, Hindu, and the second (which was this past weekend) was Christian. In addition to their religious differences, the weddings differed in size. The Hindu wedding had about 550 guests, and the Christian wedding had about 65 guests.

Basically, the Christian wedding guests were some of our parents' local friends, some of my sister-in-law's immediate family (including her brother's fiance), our grandfather, and our uncle and aunt and cousins from PA (father's side). My sister-in-law's brother was best man, and I was the maid of honor. Since the wedding colors were green and ivory, I wore a long green Grecian-style dress, and my brother and the best man had light green, similarly patterned ties. My mom wore a elegant textured red skirt suit, and my sister-in-law's mother wore a red-pink and gold sari — definitely not typical mother of the groom/bride outfits.

The ceremony itself was simple and straightforward. The wedding party processed into the chapel. First the parents were asked if they were happy with the marriage. After a hymn, three readings (mine was Psalm 139, with a reference to murder edited out), and the minister's reflection, the couple exchanged vows. They didn't do the "for richer or poorer…" vows repeated in American movies. Instead, they were more poetic: "to laugh with you in joy, to grieve with you in sorrow…" My mom wrote the vows as interlocking rings on the wedding pulpit hanging she made, which made for a crisp, straightforward, yet also very profound addition to the stone chapel. After the vows, the minister announced my brother and sister-in-law as married. We sang another hymn before the recessional.

Between the ceremony and the cocktail/lunch reception was the family photo shoot. Since the number of family members at this ceremony was much lower than the Hindu wedding, there were fewer family groups to coordinate. While it was a little annoying to break away from conversing with our guests to be photographed, there are very few occasions in our family for nice photos. In particular, this wedding was the first time our PA cousins and our grandfather were in the same place with us in about 5 years, which is a special occasion in itself. (We see our cousins and our grandfather each about twice a year, but rarely at the same time).

The guests went to the reception, which was held in an event room at the Boston Science Museum, in a yellow school bus, which seemed appropriate for the venue. The wedding party and my grandfather piled into a limo. It was my first time in a limo, and I was expecting it to be very exciting. In fact, I found it uncomfortable to get into and out of the limo, since I had to slide along a very long curved bench in a long dress and heels while it was raining outside. However, arriving at the museum was a lot of fun. There was an elementary school group in the main lobby, and once they saw my sister-in-law in her gown, they started clapping and cheering. We were also admired in the elevator to the reception room. It was a lot like being in a celebrity's entourage, except without the fear of being blasted in gossip magazines.

In addition to the joy of celebrating my brother and sister-in-law's wedding, I had the unexpected gift of the first long, uninterrupted grownup conversation I've had with my PA aunt. We ended up talking about her wedding, which happened when she was my age, and how she and my uncle fell in love on their first date. But we also ended up covering a lot of family history, Catholicism, Judaism, and how her life has taken a path entirely different from what she imagined (but, in the end, in a positive direction). After having little snippets of grownup exchanges on Facebook in the form of wall messages and comments on each other's statuses, it was a joy to learn more about her not just as an aunt, but as a fellow adult. It's peculiar, being in transition from relating to your relatives (and grown-up acquaintances) as being "too old" to relate to, to starting to be able to relate to them not quite as equals, but as people. But it's a good feeling, one I was most aware of on this joyous occasion.

My Brother's Movie Wedding: Part 2: Interlude/Reception

Traditionally, I spend most of Shabbos afternoon fast asleep. By the time we got back to the hotel from lunch, however, there wasn't enough time for a Shabbos nap. After my mom and I de-pinned each other and changed into relaxing clothes, we schmoozed with my mom's sisters and nieces, who had spent the afternoon shopping and watching movies. Before long, we had to get dressed and accessorized again. Luckily, our reception outfits, embellished silk tunics and pants, were very easy to put on. There weren't even any back zippers. Mom's tunic was dark blue and her pants were bright tangerine; my outfit was a bright turquoise. I wore one set of bangles on each wrist, as opposed to one half set. A typical bangle set is 4-5" long, and, as I found out later, makes a lot of noise when you dance.

The cocktail reception and dinner were held in the hotel. Dinner was in the ballroom, and our families were announced (and shown in real-time on a big screen) as we walked up to the head table. Given the number of people, the head table was on a large platform. It was a lot of fun being announced and sitting at the head table, but at the same time the long table was not conducive to conversing with my dinner companions. So, after the couple and the bride's parents began circulating, I left the table to hang out with my cousins. A few minutes into our conversing, an important thing happened. The DJ had made the important shift from slow songs for the couple to dance to (and, of course, be properly documented) to catchy dance songs for the guests. Three of my cousins started to bob their heads and sway in their chairs. You know where this is leading.

We formed a moving, shaking, singing, gesturing quartet in one corner of the dance floor. What struck me was that, despite our significant age range (one generation's worth), we all sang/chanted the words and obviously gestured the lyrics (you know, pointing to your friend for the "you"s and closing your eyes when you point dramatically to yourself for the "I"s) like high school girls at a dance in the gymnasium. Although better dressed, of course. Though it took a lot of persuasion, we eventually got my parents to dance for one song (my brother doesn't believe me, but I'm sure he will once he sees footage).

Sadly, my parents and relatives were sensitive to the DJ speakers, and left early. I almost left early myself (around 11:30), because I was starting to feel tired, but my brother stopped me. I'm glad he did, because I was very happy to be dancing until the lights went up.

I think my brother has had a difficult time accepting that I'm in college, because he made some remark about my being too young to dance the way I was dancing (I couldn't hear it well because of the noise, but I didn't need to know the detail to hear the sentiment). I didn't think I was being particularly wild; the dancing was a lot less inappropriately wild than at many of my high school dances, where the principal's spoken/unspoken rule was "anything that's not indecent exposure will be politely ignored unless, of course, people appear drunk." What the dancing had, though, was joyous energy, which is what wedding dances should always have.

In part that joyous energy comes in the form of things like dancing to "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls and laughing about the reason why it was requested. But it's sustained in the reason for the celebration in the first place, in knowing that after a year of talking about it, my brother and my now-official sister-in-law are now (finally!) married.

My Brother's Wedding: Part 1: Preparation/Ceremony

One year ago, my brother called me to tell me that he had important news, but wouldn't tell me what it was. After a few minutes, I figured it out — he was engaged. The wedding was this weekend, and I've had trouble summarizing it for curious friends because there was so much to talk about.

My father and I arrived in Chicago Friday night. My mom had arrived the day before, along with her sisters and several of her nieces, to see the city. We stayed at the hotel where the reception was held, which was one of those nice hotels with a indoor "courtyard" type of space, with the rooms circling the courtyard. I hadn't brought my French siddur with me, so I looked for the next best thing — a Gideon Bible, and skipped past the lists of suggested passages (many having to do with temptation) to the Psalms. The sun was shining, and all was still, but the day would quickly become filled with excited moving about.

My mom and I, and some of my sister-in-law's friends were helped with our saris. There are three pieces of the post-British Empire sari: the choli (short-sleeve, v-neck midriff blouse), the petticoat (a long drawstring skirt) and a very, very long piece of colorful fabric. which is elaborately folded and draped. For white women who are relatively inexperience with saris, there is an important fourth piece: safety pins, which help keep the folds looking nice. Many Indian women also use safety pins, but not as many as my mom and I did. The pins, and tying my petticoat drawstring to near-Victorian tightness, kept my sari looking put together. My mom had a red-purple sari with wavy gold/purple trim and mine was dark red with gold and green trim. We also had sparkly necklaces and bangles (of course).

My parents, my mom's relatives, several family friends, and I went to the temple in a fancy bus after spending several minutes admiring each other's outfits. At the temple, we had a quick breakfast before moving upstairs. I was trying to figure out how to walk in the sari without tripping over the floor-length hem, when the wedding planner arrived with a headset to arrange the procession of the groomsmen (all in matching tunic/pant/scarf outfits), groom and groom's family. The bridesmaids wore trendy saris (the ones with bra-level cholis and semi-sheer fabric as opposed to the more traditional opaque silk and waist-level cholis) in similar shades of teal to the bride's mother's sari (which was teal and lime green).

The room where the ceremony was held was a cinderblock auditorium. The walls been beautified with extensive white drapes, and a green/white draped with rose petals ran down the center. On each side of the center aisle were rose-orange balls of carnations on metal stands, with green and white drapes hanging between them. The platform on which the ceremony was held had lots of fine white drapes as its backdrop, with strung yellow flowers hanging in front of the drapes. On the platform itself was the sacred fire (in an ornate metal box), a basket of fruit, and several small bowls with yellow and red spices. In the middle was a large chair with red cushions. My parents and I sat on the platform stage right, and the bride's parents sat stage left, with the bride's brother standing behind them. My brother sat in the large chair. One of the bride's uncles, who is an engineer but is also religiously learned, conducted the ceremony.

During the first part of the ceremony, the bride's parents persuade the groom to marry their daughter, and the groom is treated like a king. A dark red turban with beads and embroidery is placed on his head, and spices are spotted on his feet and necklace. As the priest explained that on his wedding, the groom becomes king of the universe, my brother was visibly beaming. My parents and the bride's parents, along with my brother, wore red, white, and green flower garlands. My parents' garlands were made of carnations, and the bride's parents' garlands were made of folded rose petals (the effect was that the folded petals looked like exotic puffy flowers, for lack of a more eloquent description).

Before the bride arrives, escorted by two of her uncles, a semi-sheer orange screen was held up so that my brother would not see her. My parents and I tried to see her, but were just outside the line of sight. The screen was lowered, so that my brother and the bride could see each other. The bride's father then asked, three times, that my brother not transgress the bride in dharma, wealth, and the enjoyment of wealth (for Jewish readers, think about the parallel between the groom's basic obligations here and Jewish husbands' legal obligations to provide for and protect their wives).

My brother placed a wedding necklace over the bride's head. Clarified butter was poured over the sacred fire. After that, my brother put toe rings on the bride (apparently he didn't understand how to adjust them at first, so there was a good laugh about this). The couple took seven steps around the sacred fire, lead by the bride's brother, who held up a lemon on a knife. Traditionally, the bride's brother would lead the bride and groom to their new home, and the knife carried in case of wild animals. The couple exchanged vows, and held hands in a special way (to distinguish this hand-holding from a hand-shake or friendly hand-holding).

After the ceremony, the couple sat in two chairs below the platform to be blessed by the guests, who also sprinkled them with petals. My parents and I stood with them for a while, and also halfway down the aisle. There were about 500 guests to the reception, and 300-400 at the wedding (I'm bad at estimating really large crowds), so this part took a long time. In addition to waiting for our turn to be photographed, we stayed in the auditorium about an hour and a half after the ceremony. By the time we went downstairs for lunch (1:30-ish) we weren't actually that hungry between the general excitement and saving room for dinner.

"Discovering" Family Memorabilia

One of the main differences between my house and my paternal grandparents' house is the number of old pictures on display and in storage. Our displays of family photos are limited to a collection of photos on the top of the TV cabinet and a family portrait on top of the piano. The standard display photos are up there - my parent's wedding portrait, high school portraits of my brother and me, a picture of me when I was about 2, and a few pictures of my mother and her sisters. The other photos are stored in neatly organized boxes or albums, in contrast to my grandparents' house, where it's impossible to take 2 steps without seeing a set of family photos.

I thought I had seen most of the family pictures at my house when I was doing the laundry the other day. Some of my maternal grandparents' belongings sit in boxes in the basement, so from time to time I've looked at them while waiting for a load of clothes to finish. One box had a few random, mislabeled manila folders. I lifted up the folders to see if there was anything else, and found an off-white photo album bound with generic yellow tape. There was an assortment of pictures of my mother, her sisters, and their cousins, my two ex-uncles, my maternal grandparents and my great-aunts and great-uncles, photos that had probably been unseen for over 15 years. And all it took to find them was a little laundry-induced boredom.

The Histories and the Stories

In my paternal grandparent's house, every room, and almost every wall, is covered with pictures of family members and church documents. On end tables and on tops of dressers rest family artifacts. There are also clocks, some working, some not, along with collections of old books. Next to some pictures are little framed descriptions of the person depicted, which give them the feeling of a museum piece. There are histories behind every object and every picture but when you look at them, you want to see the stories. How did he treat his grandchildren? What did she struggle with?

These are the kinds of stories my mother tells about her family. They don't always fit into the neatly framed church membership document, but they feel alive. You can see them happening.

At my house, the most visible family artifacts are the round dining room table and chairs from my mom's parents house. It's something that connects us to the past moments of family togetherness in my mother's family and continues in the present whenever we gather to eat. You can't get more familial than a dining room table. It doesn't fit in a pretty frame. It is just there, ready for a quiet breakfast or a rowdy game of Trivial Pursuit.

The Acceptance/Alienation of the Convert

In the Bible, the Hebrew word for what in the modern era we call a convert is "ger," which roughly translates to a foreigner or stranger. While one would not generally refer to a religious convert as "Joe the stranger" in conversation, I feel that after "coming out" as a convert, people treat me differently. Overwhelmingly, their reactions are very positive: "Wow! When/why/how did you convert?" At times, though, the person I'm talking to begins to mock themselves in the form of a compliment to the convert by saying something like, "you're so well-informed … I was born Jewish but didn't know about that."

What's harder, though, are the moments of confusion when someone assumes that I was born and raised Jewish until I say something about my parents going to church or visiting my grandparents for Christmas. Before I went to college, I didn't have to explain that I was a convert in the middle of what started out as simple conversation about plans for winter break or upcoming Jewish holidays.

Harder still is finding a place for yourself in the community when your family isn't Jewish. Since so much of Jewish observance is centered around family meals and celebrations, if your family isn't Jewish (or observant, as is the case for some) you become dependent on the goodwill of Jewish outreach services for finding a place to celebrate a Passover seder, light a menorah, make holiday food and celebrate the sabbath (unless you're lucky enough to be a college student on a campus with a large, engaged Jewish community).

That shaky interim period between calling your parent's house "home" and creating your own that seems to start in college I've tried to see as a time of intense religious reflection, because once you become responsible for a spouse and children you have much less time or space to make big changes religiously. When you're a convert and also the only Jew in your family, you're forced to think for yourself a lot anyway. Much earlier than most of your religious brethren, you have to keep track of the holidays for yourself, pay your own membership dues, find places to go for holiday meals and services and educate yourself. There are, I think, advantages to this, but it at times it feels quite taxing.

Given that most converts to Judaism that I've met seem to convert around birth (for adopted children) or marriage (for a non-Jewish person marrying someone Jewish), I wonder how many other converts have that awkward period of being tied to your birth home and needing to make your own home. For me, the ultimate fulfillment of marrying and having a family would be to observe the holidays in my own home, with my children, and not having to rely on others' charity. Even more than that, the relief of no longer feeling so stuck, in many respects, outside both my family and the Jewish community.

Every other Jew is a convert or baal teshuvah…

The title for this post comes from something one of my neighbors said about our generation of Jews. It may not be literally true, but some days it does feel like everyone on our floor is a convert or baalat teshuvah (a woman who became religious later in life).

I don't know what the experience of religious conversion is like for Christians or Muslims (other than the ritual requirements being somewhat more simple). Prospects for Jewish conversion, including myself, are reminded that we are not only joining a group of believers, but we are also joining an am, a people, a family of sorts bound by a tradition and history going back thousands of years. While most communities, I think, are very welcoming of converts, there are still awkward gaps between born Jews and converts.

Except for cases in which the convert has a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, or was adopted by Jewish parents, the convert usually doesn't have a family history of Judaism or the experience of living Jewishly as a child. Sometimes, they come with an entirely different set of social standards (Protestant Time vs. Standard Jewish Time) and religious experiences.

There are some blessings in these gaps, like the [sometimes] privilege of being an interpreter to one's relatives and friends, as well as shortfalls. Sometimes it becomes tiring to explain why you're Jewish but you're family isn't to Jews and non-Jews, or to hear what people say when they assume your family is Jewish ("we have to watch out for [insert non-Jewish group]").

On the other hand, I certainly won't forget the time I was talking to a Lubavitcher chassid about the generational differences within my family. I told him that the custom of marrying young in many chassidic and Orthodox communities reminded me of my grandparents and parents, who married in their early 20s, and noted that my brother is 29 and unmarried.

He replied, "that is because your parents' and grandparents' generations really cared about the tribe." (Well, they do, I thought, but not like that…)