Nice weekend
The other day I was staring at Husband #1 while he was snoring, I mean sleeping. 29 years, I was thinking. I have been living with this person for almost 29 years. How is this possible? When I was 29 years old, I, thank God, had all three of my adorable monkeys. Did I feel that 29 years old was old at the time? I was probably too tired to think about it, but looking at this man next to me, thinking how I haven’t killed him (or vice versa) in 29 years, was just astounding to me.
We have raised three amazing young men, miraculously, with God’s help and Husband #1’s patience, and now they are all independent and have life partners of their own. As I said to Son #1, they are all going up the hill of life, and Husband #1 and I have reached the top of that hill and now are rolling down the other side. 29 years. That is just nuts.
Why am I writing about this? Gotta be honest with you, I have no idea. I am sitting in traffic and just letting the words flow. This past weekend, we were out on the Island of Long, celebrating the marriage of my niece. I received a couple of comments like, “Oh, are you going to write about this?” So, I guess I am. Sort of. I can’t always mix family and columns; sometimes it doesn’t end well.
In any event, what we learn time after time is that we live in a very small world. Husband #1, my mother-in-law, and I stayed at the house of a very lovely family. Their daughter is bff with my DIL #3, and then, through a conversation about this and that, I find out that her brother is my brother’s good friend. I have known her brother for years. I had just seen her brother at a wedding. Isn’t this fascinating?
For years and years, my parents used to make a barbecue every summer celebrating my brother’s, uncle’s and first cousin’s birthday. June 1. They all had the same birthday. My brother would always invite his friends, and one year, I walked into my parents’ house and saw a girl with whom I went to college. Turned out, she was marrying my brother’s friend. Small world. Fast forward 20 years later and I am staying at the house of her sister-in-law.
Whenever you meet someone like that, you always wonder what they know about you. Unless I just think that way. But whatever she does know, whether it is from her brother or my sister-in-law, she was still very nice to me and we had a really beautiful Shabbos.
Strudel and her family were there, so that made the weekend even better. There is nothing like seeing the world through the eyes of a 3-year-old. On Friday night, we were walking around the synagogue where the sheva brachot were, and Strudel found a stack of five green stepstools. Oh my goodness — you would think we found a pot of gold.
Who knew how many activities you could participate in with stepstools? Hours and hours of entertainment! Fortunately, they were pretty durable stepstools, because Strudel insisted that I do whatever she did — jumping from one stool to the other (well, she jumped, I pretended to jump), marching on them, sitting on them (that I had some trouble with and am surprised that I was able to get up on my own and am not still sitting on the stool).
I just love that kid. And her sister, thank God, laughs at everything Strudel does. It is the cutest thing ever. They stayed in a house across the street from us, and the basement came fully loaded with an actual ball pit.
All in all, it was a really nice weekend. The newlyweds look adorable, the food was delicious, and it didn’t start to rain until the very end of Shabbos. My niece’s new in-laws are from the Teaneck area, so we could all commiserate about the traffic, which is only ironic because of the traffic we are sitting in now. But it is all good.
Wishing the new couple a lifetime of good health and happiness, and may we all only have celebrations.
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck got very nostalgic when she saw the almost packed camp trunks in the house where her kids were staying. Ahh, the memories….
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