Missing my Father, Passover Edition

Batman & Joker at the Seder table, 2012

Food is the great memory-soup-pot stirrer. And so moments with my father often rise up to slap me in the face when I am in the midst of fixing food. (I would have said "cooking" but anyone who knows me would have done a spit-take, as I don't really cook these days, mostly assemble.)

Passover began on Friday at sunset, so our house was awash in matzo. Making Ethan his lunch, I asked if he would like some, or if he thought he’d be sick of it by the time these next 8 days were over, but he responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” (Or as enthusiastic as a kid who is down for the count with a sore throat and bad cold can sound.)

And so I head to the kitchen to fix Ethan some (whole wheat) matzo the way he likes it… the way I liked it as a kid, schooled by my father because it was the way HE liked it: slathered with a thin, even sheen of butter and then salted.

He LOVED to eat matzo like that, and for years I did too. There is an art to it, making sure the butter is soft enough to spread, and spreading with a light enough touch so as not to pulverize the matzo as you spread. Then shaking on just enough salt. A delicate operation all around.

So standing in my kitchen, making my son his matzo I have invoked my father, tickled that such an un-religious man is so heavily associated with this very observant foodstuff.

He was a dedicated atheist/agnostic. He disliked organized religion. But we always did Passover and Hanukkah. I think because these were holidays in the home, about food and family.  And food and family were really important to him.

So every Passover of my childhood, we would head off to my Aunt & Uncle's (my mother's brother's family) where my wonderful cousins would be waiting for me.  We would go through the haggadah - a liberal, modern one, light on the "chosen people" & Hebrew and heavy on the social justice and unity of all peoples stuff - as quickly as possible. Then linger over the wonderful meal, finish up fast and roll home very late, very happy.

My husband's family is much more traditional and religious than mine, and in the years when my father was still alive and it was the year for us to Passover with Dan's side, my father would gamely sit through the long Seder, eat his matzo without butter, it being a Kosher meat meal.

As the years went on, his post-dinner sofa nap became longer and longer, eventually involving a pre-dinner one as well, encompassing most of the Seder itself. But still, it was good to have him with us.

He and my Mother-in-law passed in the same year, so my mother is the sole representative of their generation at Passover now. This year she appeared markedly more fragile than last, fading rapidly.

I feel her slipping away before my eyes, a pleasant smile always on her face, but less and less going on behind it with each passing day.  Caring for my father grounded her, kept her present, focused.  She is starting to forget people.  I do not know if she will still be with us next Passover.

This year my father is now two years gone; this our third Passover without him. But buttering and salting a square of matzo for my son, I feel him standing by my side, peering over my shoulder, reaching out for its crisp, crumbly goodness; reassuring me I've salted it perfectly, just right.
 

Heavy

"I hope I'm not leaning on you too heavily." my mother said, taking my arm as we slowly made our way through the bustling streets of New York City.

I had just brought my Mom to the doctor for an injection to ease the ache of her arthritic knees. "Of course not," I said "I'm a big, strong woman."

But inside I felt her weight; light on my body, heavy on my soul.

She leans more and more these days. And that's all right, I can bear it; am just weighed down by what it presages, that she is moving farther from independence, closer towards an ending.

We were on our way to the hot chocolate shop just around the corner from her doctor's office, a block, a block and a half away. A short stroll. But for my mother now, taxing.

She has been limited for so long it's easy to forget the energetic middle-aged mother of my youth, the athletic young woman I have heard she once was.

I was just reminded of that this weekend. We were all gathered at her brother, my uncle's house for the holidays, and my cousin Jessie had unearthed my uncle's journal from 1941.

Jess had gone down to the basement storeroom, looking for a bottle of seltzer and instead found an artifact from 70 years ago, from Uncle Walter's 8th grade year, from when he was on the man-boy cusp of 14. (I'm going to blink and my boys will be there, too.)

He hadn't written in it much. Noting the significant year, we went to look up December 7th, the day that will live in infamy, and found... nothing. Entries filled January, trickled into February, and then petered out, an undertaking abandoned.

But in those few short entries at the beginning of the book, there lay a treasure trove.

He wrote of his joy at having walked a pretty girl home after school; musings on the nature of love, sports, and friendship.

And then these two entries about my mother, his beloved big sister:

"I feel lost with out my big sister around. I wait in the store every day just to see and speak to her"

(At this time my mother was 19, had graduated high school and was busy working, but she still came back to her parents' candy store in the evenings.)

"My older sister is a swell gal. My ideal. I wish she was born a boy then we could have some real fun."

As we read these journal entries aloud my mother teared up, as did my uncle. He reminded her of how athletic she had been in her youth. What an influence she had had on him.

"I looked up to you." Walter said. "And whatever you did. I did too: ice skating, tennis, track, basketball, volleyball...  I did all that because you did, I followed in your footsteps. I wanted to be like you."  His ideal.

My Mom & her "little brother" Walter last spring

It's so hard to picture my frail, slow-moving 89 year-old mother as an athletic teenage girl, but I know she was.

And wasn't she lovely as a young woman?

My mom, Sylvia, at about 20

Since my mother did not have me until she was 38, I never knew her like this. Thank goodness for old photographs.

And journals, left laying around in basement storerooms near soda bottles, waiting to be rediscovered, words reaching out across decades. Words of love, family, friendship.

As I write this post, my son Ethan is reading over my shoulder. "Let me see those diary pages again, Mom" he says. "Is that really something your Uncle Walter wrote about Grandma, so many years ago? She's really his big sister?"

And he reads them again, laughs out loud at the line: "I wish she was born a boy then we could have some real fun."

The past reaching out towards the future. Words traveling across decades, generations.

Words of love, family, friendship.

My son, reading, leans on my shoulder.

I will probably (hopefully) someday lean on him.

Hopefully, not too heavily.

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

Post Turkey Day Post

Today I loaded my 9 year-old boys and my 89 year-old mother into the old jalopy and drove us out to Long Island, my ancestral stomping ground. We were headed to my aunt and uncle, my mother's brother's home in Port Washington, scene of countless hours of cousinly frolic throughout my childhood.

Cousin Jessie and my Mom

They live in a sweet little house at the end of a dead end block with nothing but fields and gentle woods just beyond. My cousins' old elementary school's ball-fields and playgrounds are kitty-corner to their backyard. In short, the perfect place for a family to enjoy a warm November day.

The house, from the path in the fields

My mother loves Autumn leaves

Ephemeral leaf art

I love Autumn leaves, too

We hugged and talked and sat in the yard and walked in the woods and played in the schoolyard and ate delicious leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner (always better the next day, somehow).

Jake loves basketball

So does Ethan

We played guitar and sang songs and recited poetry and talked in silly character voices and made up stories on the spot to entertain each other. Jessie and Annette and I performed yet another rendition of "We Are Juvenile Delinquents," a song that's been in our repertoire since we were 10 and 12.

Jess, Annette & I in 1973 at their house

We stuffed ourselves to the gills and beyond on the amazing desserts mostly made by Annette's 13 year-old daughter Greta, a fantastic cook and aspiring food blogger. (I'm working to get her set up with a blog soon, my Bat Mitzvah gift to her.)

Annette & the beautiful Greta, who is also an amazing baker

 A table full of amazing, Greta-made desserts

And then, most amazingly, some documents from deep in my mother and uncle's past were found and examined: my uncle's diary from 1941, when he was a boy of fourteen, and their mother, my grandmother's passport from 1920, the year she fled her native Eastern Europe for America.

Grandma Dunia's Polish passport

Uncle Walter's diary

Wow. There is WAY too much story contained in these two amazing little items for this simple "I'm home tired and happy from spending a day with my family" post.

More stories to come; to come soon, I promise. And now? Goodnight. I hope you, too, are all going to sleep with a belly full of leftover pumpkin pie and a heart full of familial love.



Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

Dunia

Asked to picture my grandmother in her vital days, before the stroke that laid her low, creating the shadow who hovers dimly in the background of my later childhood years, this image comes:

Dunia, in her kitchen; yellowed light from an ancient ceiling fixture suffusing everything with a sulfuric glow, wiping her hands on her ever-present stained apron, a cigarette stuck to her lower lip, as if by glue and not mere spittle, the red edge of a pack of Pall Malls peeking up out of the apron's torn pocket.

Moments before, her hands were furiously busy with wooden bowl and gleaming blade, chopping up the eggs, onions and chicken livers whose frying smell hangs close, blends with the cigarette smoke to create a thick haze in the kitchen: the smell of Grandma Dunia's house. (I have that chopper now, passed down the maternal line, its metal handle still retaining a hint of the red paint that once caught my eye, there in my grandmother's kitchen.)

Outdoors the air is fresher though also strange, dank, loamy; her yard deeply shadowed by old tress, old bushes grown tall and feral. The lilac that stands by our own garage door comes from these here, my flower-loving mother happy to have a piece of home with her. But somehow, here, even the lilacs seem dour, moody, menacing as they tower over me, the smallest, palest thing around for miles.

The old swing-set in the backyard is miraculously still standing, and I push the upstairs tenant's twin toddlers higher and higher to their squealing delight. At eight, I am the big girl, enjoy watching the little girls' flashing smiles, marvel at the many tiny pink-barretted braids it must have taken their mother hours to tame their hair into.

I do not know this will be my last visit, that my grandmother's days of independence are swiftly numbered. I will miss spending time with these little girls, the only young, new things in this creaking old house.

Finally the gloaming completely engulfs the yard, a perfect background for the fireflies dancing delight. But it is time to head inside, the night being no time for young girls to linger outdoors in this now rough neighborhood.

Smoke swirls through all the rooms of this house, as my grandmother lights one cigarette off the dying ember of the previous, a chain that will, by necessity, end the soon-coming day she keels over.

My mother, once a smoker too, now quit, waves her hand in front of her face to clear a small circle of air, hoping to breathe freely.  She knows better then to ask her mother to stop smoking, in spite of the wheezing it now brings on. She knows better than to ask her mother for anything, empathy and generosity running decidedly short in this house.

We do not visit often, but when we do I marvel at how different it is here than in my home. Her ancient standard poodle skulks like a ghost from room to room, large and silent, its one eye turned milky strange, a frightening apparition to a child used to frisky cats.

The television is round at the edges, encased in a huge wooden cabinet, almost unrecognizable to me, but for the comfort it provides; the familiar images appearing therein reminding me that I still inhabit the same solid world, though the frame has shifted.

While I watch TV, the grown-ups talk and talk. I do not try to listen in. When my grandmother tells a joke, though the telling is in English, the punch line is always in Yiddish, a language I do not understand. Even the laughter here bears a sharper edge, a tang, is not easy and light. 

When it comes time to leave, my mother comes to sit in the back seat with me, her lap my pillow, a sleepy girl's fondest wish. The car's windows are open, inviting night's fresh air to rush all around us, and we gratefully inhale.

She strokes my head, her hands ever gentle with me, as her mother's never were with her.  And I drift off, knowing I will wake up in the arms of my strong father carrying me from the car, bringing me home.


Curious about my unusual Grandmother? I have written about her before: here, and here.

This post was inspired by a prompt at The Red Dress Club. This week's RemembeRED assignment was to write a post inspired by this photo:

Please click on the button above, go to the link-up and read the other wonderful posts you'll find there.
 

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

Y is a Crooked Letter

"Y is a crooked letter."

I have no idea what this means.

But it's what my mother's mother, my Grandma Dunia, would say to my mother when, as a little girl, she asked those ten thousand questions little girls are wont to ask, the ones that begin with "Why...?"

Not big on answers, that one, my Grandma Dunia.

She was not fond of questions, idle curiosity (unless it was hers, about the neighbors), or anything deemed frivolous, extraneous, unnecessary.

She gave nothing away. Played her cards close to the vest.

And drove a hard bargain over everything else. A hard nosed businesswoman, albeit in a stained apron.

Some of it was probably guilt, survivor guilt over the disappearance of her very large family, the many sisters and brothers left behind to perish. She was the only one who escaped Eastern Europe in time, made it to America, outran the Holocaust.

She never spoke of her lost family. My mother never even learned their names, nor knew exactly how many Aunts and Uncles she had once had. Start to discuss it and Grandma would change the subject, walk away, a chain-smoking wall of stone.

Dunia was decidedly old school, a keeper of old world traditions; superstitions, if you like.  My mother had to bite on a thread if Grandma needed to sew on a button, repair a hem whilst a piece of clothing was still being worn. Otherwise my mother was deemed in grave danger of having her brains stitched together.

Salt, spilled, needed to be ceremoniously tossed over the left shoulder, promptly; praises or declarations of good fortune followed immediately by spitting towards the evil eye.

Walk out of the house having forgotten something?  Spin around three times before you head back, or you are asking for trouble and misfortune to follow you in the door.

The rules my mother lived by, and didn't ask "Why?'

Me, Mom & Grandma Dunia, 1974

I don't remember the day my dying father stopped asking and answering questions, I just noticed, eventually that it had happened. He lived in both an eternal now and also a somewhere and when else, simultaneously. No questions needed.

Jacob asks questions, but not that, most crucial one; the most open ended of all questions, the can opener of a thousand worms: "Why?" Another gift of his autism.

He can now answer "why" questions that have very direct, immediate, specific and concrete answers... or else they turn into cyclical, existential round-de-rounds.

"Why are you crying, Jakey?"

"Because I'm sad, Mommy."

"Why are you sad, honey?"

"Because I'm crying, Mommy."

Repeat.

But show him a picture of a very obviously crying boy holding a very obviously just broken toy, direct his attention to the toy in the boy's hands, point out how it is broken, and then ask him: "Why is that boy crying?" And you likely -- if he's on his game, not having an off day -- to get the answer: "Because his toy is broken."

Progress. Of a sort.

I'm not knocking it.

But I still want to know WHY Jake is sad.

And I still want him to ask me why water is wet, why the sky is blue, why birds fly... the ten thousand questions (typical) kids are wont to ask.

And I promise I won't brush him off with that useless nonsense: "Y is a crooked letter."

I will sit and hold his hand, begin with "Because..." as I did (and still do) so many times with his brother.  As I have dreamed so many times of doing with him, opening up the worm can, and feasting on "Why...?"

And, because it makes the "Because..." all the more delicious, fun in the answering?  The crookeder, the better, I say, so bring on the "Y."


Top Photo: "Mama" New York City, 1952, Jim Steinhardt. My mother named this photo, saying the mannequin reminded her of her mother, always wearing an apron, often stained, and with a torn pocket.

This post has been inspired by and linked up to Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday writing meme. And "Y"? What's so crooked about it, really? Maybe it made more sense in Yiddish.


Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

(Not Really) Wordless Wednesday: Grandma Dunia

Yesterday I told an... interesting story... that took place in my Grandmother's house when I was six years old.

Since I haven't picked up my camera in over a week, and have no new pictures to share, I thought I would show you some old ones, and link it to yesterday's post. Make this a "theme week" as it were.

So here are some photos (and further tales) of my mother's mother, my Grandma Dunia. She was a tough cookie, a no-nonsense broad. Not the least bit sweet and cuddly; I have no idea what that kind of grandmother would be like.

Dunia and Joe, my Mother's parents, around 1920

Grandma Dunia, with her children and their spouses, around 1960.

Grandma, me and Dad, my house, 1967

My father had no great love for his mother-in-law. He said of her: "She has no appreciation of art, not a drop of poetry in her soul. If you can't eat it, make money from it or gain status by it, it's useless to her."

And he was not wrong. She was a survivor, the only member of her family to leave Eastern Europe before the holocaust. She was a shrewd businesswoman. And not a very nice mother. My mother has spent much of her adult life in psychotherapy. Not without cause.

Grandma shortly after her stroke, surrounded by her granddaughters.

Many years ago my mother tried to explain to her mother why she was in therapy. Unable to find the right words, she eventually blurted out: "Because I'm just not happy, Mom."  To which my grandmother replied (just like in the old joke): "Happy? Pffft. Who's happy?"

Grandma was decidedly old world, old school. In her world, people don't go into "therapy," they just go about their business. Unless they don't. Unless they break down.

Then they lie on the living room floor for two months in a semi-catatonic state while their twelve year-old, eldest daughter takes over running the business and the care of her younger siblings. And when they snap back out of this breakdown? They never thank their daughter for holding the family together. In fact, they never speak of it again, because weakness is shameful.

Three generations (Me, Mom, Grandma) 1974

Yes, my mother is the eldest. Her younger brother, my Uncle Walter, is a psychologist and her younger sister, my Aunt Marilyn, is certifiably crazy. Go figure.

Surrounded by granddaughters (Jess, Annette & Me), 1974

Grandma Dunia: businesswoman, candy-store proprietor, poker-player, chain-smoker, bootlegger, the go-to-woman if you were a gal "in trouble" before abortions became legal.

Yes, I may have some more stories to tell.


I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.


Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

In my Grandmother's House

Memory is tricky.  There is the memory of childhood events and the telling of these events.

The older the memory and the more frequently retold, the less distinction exists between these two, the fuzzier the line between actual, visceral memory and mere story, until I can only guess what was my direct experience and what has been told to and by me and now feels remembered.

But tonight I shall attempt to trick the trickster, to carve back the lacquered layers of an oft-told tale to find the little girl hidden within…

 *****

It is dark.  And I hate the dark.  I find it very frightening, the quiet and the shadows.

I see things in the shadows, always.  The swirling shapes that menace, the snakes under my bed, the things I cannot name, that I know intend me harm.  Light vanquishes them all, and I long for light.

Yet here I am in the dark, forgotten in this forgotten room in my grandmother’s house.  In here, there is darkness, but not quiet, for the sounds from the living room, from the commotion without, still flood in.

When I was hustled into this room and bade to stay still and quiet, the door was pulled closed, but not completely, so there is a slim rectangle of yellowed light brightly rimming the doorway through which the world continues to exist.

As my eyes adjust to the darkness I see that the shape in front of me is an ancient cot, folded up like an inchworm humped in mid crawl.  I crouch down behind it, lean my face in, seeking comfort.  But its sprung wire cage presses harshly into my soft six year-old cheeks, so I retreat, sit on the wooden floor and warily wait.
 
The musty smell of things long unused overlays the cigarette smoke drifting in from the living room, which has itself mixed with the usual scent of the house, a heady blend of fried onion and old dog.  But then a new tang wafts in, tinged with something odd, metallic.

Watching occasional shadows flicker through the yellow rectangle, I listen for clues, cues as to what is going on and why I am here.

First there was a guttural male voice and high pitched female screaming, then police sirens wailing closer and closer, doors banging, more voices, male and female, talking, shouting, talking again.  And through it all, the soft sounds of a woman sobbing.

I almost drift off, but for the churning in my gut, the fear I have been forgotten, will remain here, always. 

Then, eventually, someone remembers - the child! - and comes to get me.

It has been a long time.

It is over.  This is the aftermath.

There is still a policeman, a doctor.  In the alcove, between the doorways of the unused bedrooms I see a young woman in a short dress with bandages covering her legs, arms, face.  She is talking to the police, shaking her head.

The doctor is putting on more bandages.  There are many of them.  They look pale against her warm brown skin, and some are starting to turn crimson as the blood leaks through.

I fall asleep on the sofa, and wake in my mother’s cradling arms, being carried out to our waiting car, their evening out cut short; my father, somber, at the wheel.

I never sleep over my Grandmother’s house again.

*****

This is what I believe I have actually clearly remembered from that evening. The rest of the tale, cobbled together from memory bits and what was subsequently told to me over the years to become part of my memory, is in my repertoire of colorful childhood stories, and goes like this:

When I was six years old, my parents were going out and asked my grandmother, my mother’s mother, to watch me.  As it was Saturday night, the night of a regularly scheduled poker game, she didn’t want to, but reluctantly allowed my parents to drop me off to stay with her for the night. Naturally the game went on as scheduled and I was left to entertain myself, as I saw fit.

When you think of the term “Grandmotherly,” the soft, warm, nurturing indulgent presence that implies?  An image of my grandmother will not come to mind.  She was anything but.  She did not like children.  My mother’s childhood?  Not particularly happy.

On this particular evening the poker crowd was large, so card tables had been erected in the living room, with maybe a dozen players gathered round.  There was much smoking, probably a fair amount of drinking, though that really didn’t register to my six year-old self.

They were having a jolly time.  I was sitting in the pushed to the wall sofa, playing with my etch-a-sketch, oblivious, when the trouble started.

One of the card players was a young woman who had recently broken up with her man, and he had not taken it well.  His mind had turned to a decidedly “if I can’t have you then no one will” bent, and he walked through the front door that evening with a knife, intent on ruining her beauty.

I did not see this.  I heard a door bang open, a male shout, a female scream.  And then I was swiftly picked up and deposited in that dark, musty, unused bedroom turned storeroom.  As it was just off the living room, I heard everything, but made little sense of it, having no context.

They really did forget about me in there for the longest time.  When I came out there were police taking statements and a doctor bandaging up the girl.

I was told what had happened was this: The ex-boyfriend had come in with a switchblade held high.  The crowd had attempted to keep him from the woman, but he got to her and began slashing away.

Someone had procured a baseball bat at about the same time the police arrived.  So whether it was because he heard the sirens or wanted to avoid the bat, he bolted out the back door, vowing to return with a gun, finish the job.

My grandmother got a hold of my parents and told them to come get me, which they did rapidly and with great alarm.

We were told that this man did indeed come back later with a gun, but the police were laying in wait, and apprehended him at the door.

My grandmother continued to live in that house and play poker nightly with that same crowd until she was felled by a stroke some four years later, to live out her remaining years in a nursing home (where she stripped all the other old ladies of their nickels daily in gin rummy).

The stroke came upon her during a poker game, and the rumor was that she finished the round before she keeled over because she had held the winning hand.

Somehow, I believe this to be true. 


This post is linked up with the memoir prompt over at The Red Dress Club.  To see the prompt, click here.  To go to the link-up and read other posts, click on the button below: 

Looking for comments? To read or leave a comment, click on THIS post's title, or HERE, to bring you to the post's page view. Comments should appear below.

Wordless Wednesday: Nostalgia Edition

My Mother as a flower girl in her Aunt Rose's wedding, c. 1929

We finally unpacked and hooked up the scanner, and I have gone scan-mad.  My father's recent passing has unleashed a floodgate of photos passing through my hands, and I could spend hours, days, years, just visiting with them. My friend Adrienne is doing the same thing right now, pouring through a treasure trove of memorabilia from her Grandmother (who placed her precious collection in her granddaughter's hands upon moving to an assisted living facility).

So I thought I'd share some of my favorites from the sands of time:

1917 My father as a baby

Yes, all of us grown ups were once babies, much to my kids' confusion and delight.

Mom and Me, 11 days old

You may have seen my young father in my sidebar, remember this guy?

Dad in his early 20's

And now here's young Mom:

Mom in her 20's

Wasn't she a knock out? Since my parents didn't meet until they were much older (Mom in her 30's, Dad in his 40's) they never knew each other like this. I certainly did not know these young people, but it's fun to peek into their pasts.  The mother I knew never wore heels!

Going even further back, my Mother's relatives just off the boat. Literally, that's the boat behind them:

Mom's Aunts, Uncle and Zayde (Grandfather) at Ellis Island

I love the wicker suitcases. Welcome to America, oh Ancestors!


I don't normally like to scare people, but since Halloween is almost upon us... Me very, very pregnant with full term, full size twins:

The night before my kids came out to meet me

Yes, that was as uncomfortable as it looks.  My cousin Jessie called me "The happiest miserable person I know." during my pregnancy, because it was very physically challenging and I WAS just miserable (20 weeks of all-day-sickness, then unbelievable heartburn, for starters).  But simultaneously?  Deliriously, over-the-moon, goofy happy the whole time.  And totally worth it, since it lead to this...

I have always loved this photo:

Ethan, five minutes old (and already dramatic)

Jacob's happy personality really shines through in this one:

Jake at 4 months: "Duuude, let's grab a brewsky"

Our first Family Snow Day:

January 2003

When they were 8 months old, we took the boys to visit Grandma & Grandpa in Florida :

Mom & boys at 8 months

OK, enough with the cute babies.

Finally, I leave you with this one -- Me at 20, about to go out to Studio 54 or Danceteria with my wild friend Lisa, who loaned me her ha-cha-cha red dress and did me up (because really, at that time in my life? make-up not my thing):

Stop laughing, it was the style in 1980. Really. Stop it.

Since I am thoroughly in the thrall of my scanner, and even hijacked Sunday's and Monday's posts to throw some old pictures in, I'm sure I will be dragging you on more walks through time, but for now, have a nice Wednesday.

I’m linking up to Wordless Wednesday at Angry Julie Monday.
I'm also linked to Special Exposure Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Special Needs.

A Double Blessing

After a fairly uniformly crap year, it is so nice to have a reason for our family to celebrate: On Monday, October 18^th, exactly two weeks after my Mother-in-Law passed on, her great grandsons, my twin great-nephews came into the world.

Welcome, Nachshon Eitan & Betzalel Zamir

The boys arrived in the morning, nice hefty bruisers at around seven pounds each.  A delicious, delightful pair of full term, full size fraternal twin boys, much like my two, some eight years prior.

We visited them in the hospital, held them, and were overcome anew at the miracle that is a baby.  Times two.  Watching our niece and her husband being transformed into parents; watching these beautiful boys breathe and yawn and pucker their tiny rosebud mouths, still veiled in the cocoons of their newbornness; I filled up with love.

Later I reflected on how far our journey has taken us in these eight years since we were the new parents.  It is cliche but true: it simultaneously seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago.

Today we gathered together to welcome the boys into our family, our community and the covenant of our religion, Judaism. 

I cried much more than I thought I would.  There was so much meaning there, so much joy that needed to be released.
 

Three generations: my husband, niece, grand-nephew

They reminded me so much of Ethan and Jacob as newborns, I was flooded with feelings and memories. I just had to dig up some photos of them, too:

Newborn Ethan (one week old)

Newborn Ethan with my Mom

Newborn Jacob with my Dad

OK, he's not a newborn here, more like two months old, but I've always loved this photo of Jake:

Baby Power!

These early photos have such power over me, fill me with bittersweetness. They are of a time of innocence, when I was just a mom, just a twin mom. From the time before autism blew into our lives, before I became an Autism Mom.

And have I mentioned I'm having a love affair with the scanner right now?  Expect more photo madness soon.