“I’m too old to cry… but it hurts too much to laugh.”
Adlai Stevenson
My “baby’s” bridal shower is in Cleveland tomorrow and the whole fam damily is converging on the shores of Lake Erie.
Why can’t we all just get along?
They’re coming by plane, train and automobile.
From the east and from the west.
By day and by night.
Because they love Stacy.
I never had a bridal shower, so I want this one to go well.
Oh, we’ll have Harriet for balance, but true family balance….not yet.
Why, oh why can’t we all just get along?
I don’t pray for peace in the family—only love. In time that will bring a willingness for peace. Has to be.
This will be an assembly of those that mean the most to me, with all the mishigos.
And they’ll all be in town—
Those that love each other, those that like each other, those that speak, those that grit their teeth. A somewhat different blend of the four sons in Passover’s Hagadah. And like at the Seder, they’ll all sit together.
Because.
My kids are all hurting; I feel for each of them. I don’t care which came first, be it the chicken or the egg. It doesn’t help to know that every family has its backstory. I only know that my kids are in pain.
In a hurricane, the calmest place is actually in the eye of the storm.
In many ways, today, that’s me. And from that vantage point I see and hear…and know that in time it will work itself out.
As Ben Selzer would say, “Soon…not tomorrow, but soon.”
Next Year In Jerusalem.