Our Gigantic Family #MicroblogMondays

Chagall_JW_Tables_Law_M374Two new little boys will enter our family before the end of September.  We’re excited, happy for our lovely sons and their wives and very happy too that our grandchildren have such wonderful people as parents.

There’s another thing, that (even though it is, of course, obvious) I hadn’t thought about in a long time: these children, while we can’t trace personal generations very far back because so many records and stories were lost in the Holocaust, have a family that goes back to Abraham and to Moses and Mt. Sinai and to Sarah and Rachel and Rebecca.  Of course, we all, biblically, begin with Adam and Eve but because I’ve always known I couldn’t trace our family, I didn’t let myself consider what we might never know – it was too painful.

I think that’s why the sudden recollection of this spectacular Jewish lineage became an almost new discovery even though the reality has always been part of our lives.  We, and our children, and theirs, are part of something well beyond ourselves.  I am grateful to be part of the tribe – and pray that our boys, and theirs – and their moms – travel safely as the world continues on its magnificent, scary and complicated trips around the sun.

UNKINDEST CUT

Indians2_2 I’m having a very hard time.  For a project, I’ve spent most of Wednesday reading infertility, IVF, adoption and other blogs written by would-be parents who are unable to conceive.  This 25-year old photo is of two boys, my sons, conceived in no time.  Granted there was a miscarriage in between that hit us very hard, but the blessing of these two little boys came rapidly and without incident.

I’m familiar with this issue – I have so many friends with adopted kids — but the articulateness of these women and the agony of repeated technical failures they describe, is unthinkable.  It’s so ironic – years spent in your twenties worrying that you ARE pregnant, then this.

I can’t imagine many experiences more painful — though they existed even in biblical times (remember the pain of Sarah, Hannah and Rachel?) and they’re for a lifetime.  "Do you have kids?" is the classic ice-breaker.  It just reminds me one more time of the blessings in my life.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate my kids every day; as my sons will tell you I’m a bit over the top where they are concerned.  And I’m tiresome on that fact that they’re a blessing and a joy.

What I don’t often consider is the fact that we had them so easily – that they are, quite literally, a gift.  My heart breaks for my sisters not blessed with this privilege – and I won’t soon forget their pain.