Over the 25 years of my marriage, I have not been a great in-law. Not that I've been a bad one (I hope), but my effort has been lacking. No doubt I could find any number of excuses, but I cannot claim any good reasons.
Nor can I explain my sudden thought, in March, to reach out. But whatever the impetus, I suggested that my husband Brad and I pool two of our accumulated timeshare weeks to trade for enough space to house the 12 people in our family and his sisters' families for a joint summer vacation. My thought was to find a spot in the Midwest--where Beth's and Debbie's families live--so they, with younger children, could more readily travel with their kids and paraphernalia by car while we would fly. And that we'd land at a place with two units available, one of the few weeks all of us were free, where there'd be plenty to entertain families with children ages 2 to 23. Everyone said yes immediately and agreed on possible weeks and geographies--and I found the place. Close enough that my husband's parents also could drive in to join us for some of the vacation. And only about an hour from Brad's first cousin and her family of six...who happened to have her sister's family of five visiting during an overlapping weekend.When you reach out, it would seem, the world really can manage to reach back.What a week we enjoyed. The core twelve of us did things together and apart, within and in various mixes of our nuclear families, with cousins deepening their relationships with each other and with their aunts and uncles.
On August 2, my in-laws having joined us, there were 14 to celebrate our niece's birthday right on time, our daughter's about a week late, and my father-in-law's two weeks early.
We spent the final Saturday on the water: 23 siblings and cousins (the local cousin and their visiting cousin families now joined with us), ages 1 to 55, on two boats, for eight hours, with every one of us loving every minute. How often does that happen?Twenty-five years ago, I married into a terrific family. I've known this all along, yet I've failed to make the most of it. I won't look back and beat myself up about the opportunities missed, and this is a family that wouldn't think to do that to me. But I will look ahead and help make the opportunities to come, and this is a family that will appreciatively participate in doing so.
I’m on vacation in the Bible belt. We have two very large vacation condos for three families of four: ours and my husband’s sisters’ families. In each unit we found a “prayer for our guests” awaiting us and two copies of the New King James version of the Bible.
I awoke on our first morning here ready to exercise. I’d brought my favorite exercise DVD and we had plenty of space in front of the living room television after I moved the coffee table aside. But what would I do for weights? A quick review of the options left me with a pot in one hand and a pan in the other. My daughter considered this a prime photo opportunity, but I’m pleased to report that she was using our old camera that can’t capture anything indoors.
The pot and pan proved sub-optimal. Unevenly weighted and rather clumsily shaped. As I struggled along with these, the thought came to me: two Bibles in each hand. That’s offensive, my husband said later when I announced my bright idea. You’d never have let me exercise with the Bible in synagogue, my daughter objected. (My son is wise enough to stay out of these conversations and look on with amusement.) Upon reflection, I found that the only strong sensitivities I have regarding the use of sacred texts involve placing them on the floor or in the trash. The disrespect of these actions has been ingrained in me, yet the notion of exercising with them fails to jar me at all.
I’d have had no problem with you using the Bible to exercise in synagogue, I told my daughter, but I’d have had a problem with you exercising at all in synagogue. That’s when we started to think creatively. With Humash in hand, all that standing and sitting. All that swaying and rocking. It could look like intense davening (prayer), all the while a front for a great workout. Spiritual and physical strengthening together; two for the price of one.
As for my sisters-in-law, for whom the Bibles in our condos are their Bibles, they found nothing offensive in the idea and were happy to donate their bedside volumes to my cause. Then I came to another realization. However weighty the content may be, or the philosophical argument about its appropriate use, the hotel edition of the New King James Bible simply does not weigh much at all. Granted it’s got twice the Bible, with both the Old Testament and the New, but only the English text. How I suddenly appreciated the weight of my Etz Hayim (Tree of Life) Humash, with the Five Books of Moses and the weekly Haftarah portions (selections from Prophets), all in both Hebrew and English, plus considerable amounts of commentary. It gives me plenty to lift when in synagogue—certainly physically, as I’ve noticed on those Shabbat mornings when my back is out—but also intellectually. Then there are the precious moments when the sensations of body, mind and emotion manage to align, and the lift becomes spiritual as well.
