The word “whirlwind” comes to mind as I think about these
past two weeks. Now sitting in the quiet of our home in Riverdale, with Barry
back teaching his class while I putter around the house, I barely know where to
begin.
It was just two weeks ago today, during the final hours of Yom Kippur, that Dina and Aaron headed
off to the hospital where just two hours after the holiday their fourth child,
our sixth grandchild, made his excitedly anticipated appearance. By the next
afternoon we were able to take the older children to the hospital to meet their
new brother.
We spent those first couple of days arranging the details of
the Brit Mila (ritual circumcision),
which was held on the morning of the eighth day. It was a bit more hectic than
usual because the first days of the Sukkot
holiday were during that week, so decisions had to be made quickly to book the
caterer and shop for drinks and paper goods. The older children returned to
school and Barry and I took care of all that on Friday.
We had an enjoyable Sukkot.
We had the evening meals with Dina and family. The first day we had lunch with
Simmie and family, and the second day we went to the home of friends who host a
large group lunch on the second day of Sukkot
every year. Aaron’s parents, brother, and young nieces came up on Wednesday, so
we spent the middle days of the holiday with Simmie and family, including going
to an art class and a piano lesson with Maya.
The Brit Mila was very nice. The weather fully cooperated: the
sky was clear, the sun shining, and it was cool enough to keep the bees away.
It has been fascinating watching Julia’s reaction to all of
this. At first, she was very sweet with Noah, looking at him as if he were a
gift someone had brought for her. After a couple of days, like all toddlers,
she began to get the hang of it and realized that he is definite competition
for her parents’ attention. But she has a lot going for her with two older
siblings who are quite entertaining, so she is taking it in stride.
I am most anxious to get into the City to buy a new charm
for my baby shoe necklace. I am also planning to rearrange the charms. Up until
Julia was born I had the charms in the order in which the children were born.
But when Julia came along, there was one boy and four girls, so my love of all
things symmetric (the title of my PhD dissertation in Statistics was “Components
of φ2 and Tests of Symmetry”) forced me to place two girl shoes on
either side of the one boy shoe. Dina was never crazy about that arrangement, so
her having a boy this time allows me to put the charms back in their proper
order while maintaining the symmetry! And having this new little man brings our
family to an even dozen. It just does not get better than that!
My new laptop just arrived today. Hopefully over the next
few days I will be able to get it up and running. Since my old one died, I have
been using one of Barry’s old laptops, one that seems awfully large and heavy
by today’s standards. I am looking forward to starting with a clean slate, so
to speak, and considering setting up to have it automatically backup somewhere
in the Cloud. I really did luck out this time because Aaron was able to recover
the contents of my hard drive. Next time I might not be so lucky.
Love,
Rebecca
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