May the Circle Be Unbroken

While some of us are sweating through our shirts before the sun is already up in the sky, others are doing hard work of another kind.  Being born and dying -- that kind of hard.  The uncle that we visited in Boston recently, he died.  He was such a gracious, kind, gentle, intelligent, funny, talented man with a strong moral compass and a wonderful deep voice.  He was adored by grandchildren, children, nieces and nephews and probably dozens of people I never heard of. He had a soft Louisiana accent and a slow way of speaking, allowing for many dry jokes. He left this life quietly and without fussing about the way he had to go. We don't get to choose how we die but if we are lucky we get to choose how we feel about dying. I never had a conversation with him about it but he died the same way he lived, patiently and without loud complaints.  He was at home with hospice care, always with my aunt Sarah.  

As we all know, dying is hard work.  It seems so much better to know that you are dying and to be allowed to think that through than it would be to die quickly and without warning. Of course lots of people don't get to think it through because their minds don't stay strong, but Jim was lucky to have his good mind the whole time, even if sleeping became the main activity in the end.  When my father died, he never took the opportunity to understand that he was going to not going to  be able to get through his illness. Because he missed that chance, we all did, and that has colored my feelings about death for decades. But  watching people like Jim and Grandma Hiu and Uncle Vern confront their departures, that has helped me to see how I want to be, if I can, when I die. I want to die old and I want to die knowing that this is happening.  If I can't be old, I still want to be aware. I definitely don't want to die tragically and suddenly.  That seems like such a waste of a chance to participate.

Meanwhile, on the other end of the cycle, Julia and Stephen spent a few days waiting for their baby to appear after Julia's water broke.  They hung around, doing little things while they waited, and after a few days the baby decided to make an appearance.  They had the baby at home, to the consternation of some of their more conservative and caring relatives, and everything went amazingly well.  So now there is a two week old in our midst. Her name is Shaia Rose, which I say rhymes with papaya nose, and she is a wee thing with no schedule that matches the rest of the world yet. Julia is less surprised than Stephen, I think, at all the demands that this little six pound person can make.  Everyone is thriving despite the lack of sleep.

And now I have to get out there and sweat through another set of clothes. My job is much less momentous than birthing and dying, but feeding people is what happens in between the beginning and the end.

Another Triumph of Spontaneity and Planning

Two weeks ago there was the wedding.  And then nearly two weeks after that celebration, a baby was born to the brother and sister-in law of the groom -- much to the joy and relief of her mother and father and all the waiting cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles. Like all happily anticipated babies, she will be the center of family attention for a long time to come.

Meanwhile, for many months another celebration has been in the works.  In coordination with the wedding day (which brought Benjamin home from Haifa), the Groisser clan chose a date when all of the family could convene in honor of Gram/Mom/Lilah.  She has already been 90 years old for three months, which is even more cause for celebration. She is going strong.

Everyone arranged to be in Boston for the weekend.  Sarita and James came from California, Benjamin had come from Israel for the double header, Dena and Jacob flew from Denver, Steve came home from Albuquerque, we drove from Virginia and the rest of them were already in the area. It has become a regular tradition of ours to gather perhaps once a year or maybe a little less often, depending on the excuse we have for convening. It is a small family: all 14 of us fit easily into our group photo. We have quite a series of these pictures by now, and we each have our own opinions about which were the most awkward years for the people in the photographs.

Because this is a family that knows its limits, there was no plan for unscheduled stretches of togetherness. Sue took the job of organizing the food and the venue (the biggest and only really necessary job), welcoming us once again to her house for dinner and brunch. The house fits us perfectly and has become a natural home for our reunions, now that she has renovated it and created so much open space for easy socializing -- in the place where they all grew up. Nothing could really be more perfect.

As always, each of us has our own story of what it took to extricate ourselves from our normal lives.  In the case of the farmers who drove from Virginia, we had decided to try to leave home before rush hour on Friday, knowing how impossible it is to escape the area.  We chose the long route, heading west and then north through Pennsylvania.  By the time we got to Leesburg we were in the midst of a crashing thunderstorm.  Within minutes we got news from Carrie that all the electricity was out at the farm and a big tree had fallen into the pigpen and crashed down some power lines.  Jon was immediately very sorry to be away from home and was sorely tempted to turn around to help deal with these issues.  They are his department.  Benjamin and I did not agree to turn back, so Jon had to satisfy himself with giving lots of detailed instructions to Carrie about generators and setting priorities for which coolers and freezers needed power.  All the coolers were filled with the weekend's market loads.  This has happened before, but we were home last time.  Carrie followed all the directions and kept the coolers cool.

By mid-morning on Saturday, most issues were resolved.  Jon will be able to cut up the fallen tree himself when we get home. 

Up until this trip, the house in Brookline has been our middle of the night destination -- for my entire life. But that house has been sold to a young family and we went to sleep in Alissa's nice apartment in Somerville for the first time ever. So many eras ending and beginning.

Because we had not thought it through, none of us realized that we would have a whole weekend of hanging around together with our nuclear family of five.  Tonight at dinner we all tried to remember how long it has been since we took a trip, just the five of us, and we had to go back 10 years to the winter of 2007. It did feel quite unusual to be driving around in a car together for two days.  Alissa did most of the driving and there was a navigation team in the backseat, offering a range of opinions. Highly entertaining.  

We went to see Sarah and Jim, knowing that Jim might not wake up for visitors.  He is in a rapid decline, staying comfortable with hospice care, sleeping in a hospital bed in the middle of the living room.  To our surprise and joy, he eventually woke up and greeted us.  

I had not expected to be recognized, but he knew who we were, why we were there, and seemed glad to see us. He is especially close to Alissa, and they got to have a private conversation while the rest of us went to see the new apartment (they are moving in the next two days, we are amazed at the adherence to the plan). 

 We went out for lunch on Saturday at a restaurant named Moldova, in honor of the winter trip that Becca and Benjamin took a few years ago.  We all liked the food and the hands-off wait staff.  Then we went to a used book store in Waltham and splurged on a pile of books for gifts and back stock. Then we went to Gram's apartment so Alissa could get the photo board put together (another tradition that has evolved in recent years). At every opportunity, I took a nap, several times each day. That's what defines a vacation: lots of naps.

And finally it was time for the event which brought us all here.  It was a low-key, non-stressful party.  Just us and our gracious Gram/Mom.  We ate delicious grilled vegetables and salmon and some people watched the Red Sox game and then we sat down to say a few things about our gratitude for this matriarch and what she has taught us or given us.  No one sang or performed anything, as we did at Jon's party.  We just reminisced and were thankful.  And of course Leon was entirely present in our hearts and minds.  He is always with us when we are together, sometimes even continuing to hog the limelight. It was a sweet evening.

For the Groisser family from Virginia, it was an especially sweet weekend.  We just don't get to spend much time together since everyone grew up and went away.  We have big family gatherings but no small ones.  So this was the biggest treat of all, and it was totally unexpected. Different from 10 or 20 years ago, these three are so happy to be together, even if crammed into a hot car in July. 

We went back for one final visit with Jim, and he was groggy, much more as we had imagined.  This time it felt like a real farewell.  He could acknowledge us but he could hardly keep his eyes open.  We gave him kisses and hugs and said goodbye for the last time.  

What a full two days.  We crammed so much family experience into about 36 hours.  Whew.

A Triumph of Planning and Last Minute-ness

Jesse and Shalini agreed to have a wedding, even though they were not themselves particularly interested in planning such an event.  Their family and friends insisted, and eventually they gave in and began to make it happen.  They talked to people, they found out when most would be able to gather (from all over the world, including Israel and India) and they finally came to their  family to get some of the details in order. Jesse and Shalini are related to a wide circle of do-ers: people who can do it all.  Jesse's mother is organized, effective, calm, connected to people who can help, and it is easy for her to make anything happen (especially now that she is married to Gordon, a hero among do-ers).  Jesse has family with lots of resources:  a place to get married, cooking skills, a passion for baking, deep and wide skill bases.  On his father's side, there is an army of hard-working and plan-ful people.  He has brothers with incredible creativity and talent. Shalini and Jesse have a core group friends who are smart and funny and pure of heart and they were willing to do whatever was asked.

It would have been hard not to have this wedding, with all this power humming and waiting.

They chose July 1, despite the Virginia heat.  They accepted our invitation to have the wedding at the blueberry patch, which would be bursting with berries.  They graciously accepted Jon's offer to cook the wedding dinner, and they allowed Anna and Gordon to plan and cook the rehearsal dinner and the Sunday brunch.  Alissa offered to do all the baking, knowing that Rebecca would help with the cake decorating.  Stephen took the role of creating the wedding space.  Jesse took the job of renting the tent and tables and dishes and other necessities.

It was amusing to watch the whole event unfold.  Jesse took responsibility for everything that needed to be done before the real preparations began.  And Shalini did go buy herself a dress (but quickly figured out not to tell anyone at the stores that she was buying a wedding dress, that caused too much drama and increased prices) a couple of months before the wedding.  It was Shalini who decided what the dinner menu would be -- because she and Jesse dropped by late one night and had leftovers from our fridge and she immediately couldn't stop thinking about Thai food after that.   Other than that, Shalini stayed out of it.

Little did we know that they had chosen the exact same date as another young person who had grown up in Blueberry Hill, and that bride and groom had already made many more plans than our family had. (No surprise.) The Common House was already claimed for the rehearsal dinner.  We needed another idea.  Luckily, many of us are attached to my mother's front yard, as frumpy as it is. That's where her grandchildren, that pile of cousins, spent years of their youth -- playing in the sandbox, making structures out of giant foam blocks, sliding down the slide, eating Freezie Pops.  Despite some worries about heat and other outdoor discomforts, we went with that idea.

Anna and her crew transformed that neglected but shady yard into a lovely dinner spot.  They picked flowers from the farm, put tablecloths on the Reston Runners tables and presented a meal of Jesse's comfort foods: salmon and rice, orzo with feta and spinach, Gordon's bread.  Stephen and Benjamin got drafted at the last minute (by me) to make the garlic green beans -- picked on that day, the first of the season.  And for the first time in the history of the world, the extended families of Shalini and Jesse were together.  It was perfect.  Breezy, comfortable, delightful.  Shalini's parents came to the US a couple of weeks ago so they were well adjusted to the time zone, and they used to live in New York, and they have been here once before for a brief visit, so they were not in a state of shock. They were calm and present, and so happy. Cousins and boyfriends and spouses and aunts and uncles and grandmothers: 50 people celebrating (most of them from Jesse's side, but Shalini's relatives held their own).

From Thursday through Saturday, our own house was a food factory. Jon did his usual strategic cooking, figuring out what could be cooked first and stashed in the cooler. Alissa did the same. They jockeyed for space at the counter and the stove, cranking out pan after pan of curry and fruit bars and layers of cake and so many sauces.  Alissa was the more organized of the two. Jon spent too much time in the night trying to stay on schedule.

Meanwhile, Stephen picked buckets and buckets of flowers and on Saturday he took a huge crew of cousins and friends to our flower farmer neighbor's fields and picked hundreds more blooms that were no longer marketable.  They spent Saturday afternoon decorating the huge bamboo structure (an icosohedron, or a huppah, or a 12-sided die).  It was a dramatic and wild work of beauty, tucked into the shady clearing that Jon had created years before for Anna's wedding -- but that space was never used because it rained on that day.  This time the shade was essential to our survival on that steamy July afternoon.

The ceremony was familiar but entirely unique, as the officiant was a long time friend of the bride and groom, and he was not tied to any tradition.  He is also a very funny guy, and his whole talk was full of self-deprecating, clear and honest observations about Jesse and Shalini and their 10 years together.  He teaches Classics by day, and he had no trouble being the master of the ceremony -- acknowledging that he had no power vested in him, except that Jesse and Shalini had given him this role.  Since they have already been legally married for a year and a half, he could say whatever he wanted. He was great.

Michael provided a brief musical interlude, singing and playing the guitar. Like a cherub, so calm and tuneful and full of sweet emotion.

Up at the tent near the blueberries, final preparations for dinner were underway.  We had hired three young women from the farm crew to help us set up and serve, and they are accustomed to following directions from me, so even though the work was entirely new to them, they were ready to do whatever was asked. It took me a while to realize none of them had ever actually been to an event like this, and explicit directions were needed.  Jon had thought of everything, all the platters and heating pans and serving utensils, and we just got it all in the right place.  He had also managed to get all the flavors right, so the sauces were excellent, the salads were not soggy, and if only the fish hadn't taken so long to heat up in the oven, there would have been almost no stress. A lot of work, but it was not stressful.Alissa's David stood at the grill and cooked the beef teriyaki skewers, handing platters to the servers to carry away.

Decorations were low-key and homemade, homegrown.  Party favors were also homemade by friends and family.  Stephen gave a best man speech for the ages, incorporating big brother stories, Dungeons and Dragons, Dungeon Master Jesse/God and gratitude.

Alissa and Rebecca spent about an hour in the cooler, decorating the cakes.  They had decided that since this wasn't an official wedding, they didn't need to make the traditional tall cake with the structural dowels, they would just make it with the same ingredients and have smaller cakes. Good thinking. And the frosting didn't even melt in the heat.  The sour cherry (from our cherry tree) and mango filling made it a very special cake.

Some day Alissa will teach me how to get pictures on this blog, now that they have changed the system and I can't get them from my phone easily, but of course there are bazillions of pictures and they would make all these words pretty pointless.  The view of the farm was expansive and green and mowed, with crops in the distance (unusually orderly because we knew we would be part of the scenery), the sky was full of color as the sun went down over the low mountain, the humidity was thick but the air was in motion.  The heat did not stop the crowd from dancing with abandon, well into the night, well after Jon and I packed up the van and headed home.

On the way home, I asked him if he would do this again (a day before he said he would never do this again), and he said, yes he would.  There will be more weddings eventually, and with every one, we all learn more about how to do it better. Jesse and Shalini really liked this one, and they especially liked not having to do anything at the last minute except be there on time, dressed and ready to be the bride and groom. They did their job with grace. No rehearsal, no fuss, they arrived and made it all come true.