by Ruchi
Three years ago, nearly to the day, I sat at the business center at a Montreal hotel and rambled the following:
Three years ago, nearly to the day, I sat at the business center at a Montreal hotel and rambled the following:
"Ahhh...
weddings. They bring out our deepest emotions, about the passage of
life, about family, and about... ourselves. We are now in Montreal
celebrating the wedding of the next Koval brother, Motti.
This
is the first wedding where my brain has shifted from focusing on my own
wedding 15 years ago, to wondering, What might it be like to marry off a
child? It's been a strange consciousness.
The
weird part is, the bride is closer in age to my daughter than to me.
Could this freak me out? Fill me with fear of aging? Worry about where
the years are flying? Sadness that life escapes so fast? Sure. But I'm
trying to choose the following emotions instead: Joy, that we have
happily married off so many siblings so far. Gratitude, that we have a
warm, large, loving family to celebrate with. Excitement, at the joy
still to come. Prayerful hope, that God will continue to shower us with
His blessings.
And (I confess) just a teeny-tiny bit of freaked out."
So
here I am, three years later, celebrating the two weddings of mine and
my husband's youngest siblings. Now we've been married 18 years. The
bride is a mere two years older than my oldest daughter. Two days ago, I
faxed in the contract confirming Miriam's acceptance for her year in
Israel this fall. Last night
we enjoyed her school's biennial musical performance, in which she
played a directorship role. Her last high school performance.
It was my sister, eleven years my junior,
who really put it in perspective for me last night, as we sat together
at the show and whispered to one another.
"Ruchi," she said, "You'll see. Moving on from high school will be the beginning of Miriam's happiest years."
Last month, I spoke at a Sunday School for
Aish Detroit, about bnei mitzvah. I compared the preparation that
families invest into the bar/bat mitzvah, vs. the time invested into the
child's Jewish future following that celebration, to a wedding. Most
couples and their parents spend far more time preparing for the wedding
than for the marriage - a mistake with deep ramificaitions. Same with
bnei mitzvah. What is the child left with when the party is over? How
many people even ask the question?
Celebrating our family weddings was in many
ways the end of an era, as each sibling is the youngest in each of our
families. But we know that both of them, and their fiancees, have spent
a significant amount of time preparing for the marriage. For the
relationship. For life.
And it is this that we celebrate. It is
this that, with a heart full of prayer and a life full of preparation, I
look with an eye of tremulous anticipation toward the future happiness
of my children, please God.
