This is the next step in realizing that you’re getting older: My eldest niece called me – sort of – to tell me that she’s getting married. Wow.
I mean it wasn’t unexpected – she and her boyfriend just built a house somewhere in suburban Birmingham, Alabama. And he came down here with her for the bat mitzvahs last month (so everyone who hadn’t yet could get a good look at him). I knew it wouldn’t be long.
I have mixed feelings. This is the niece from whom I have never received a “thank-you” card (or e-mail) for anything, and who has distanced herself from my (my brother’s) side of the family whenever possible. I’m quite sure she won’t take me up on my offer to help with anything she needs for the wedding – after all, she does have her mother, sisters, and her other Aunt R (we both have the same first name!). I’m sure I won’t be asked for a thing. I’m sure I will be expected to provide a nice gift (read, money).
But she is my brother’s eldest. My sis-in-law had some problems with her pregnancy and had to see a special OB/GYN who was based out of a hospital in Broward County and they had to induce labor. The night J was born, my brother had no one he could go to, to vent and gush and qvell (it’s Yiddish, and if there were an equivalent English word, I’d use it). So he showed up at my apartment at midnight, drank half a bottle of his favorite scotch that I always kept for him (fortunately, he lived across the street back then), and went on and on about the miracle of birth, his joy, his worries for the future.
When I got married, she was my ring bearer. I asked her to wear her gorgeous long hair loose. She wore it in a french braid.
I think that was the beginning.
