Blogging Away From Home

I am in California, with Co, for a family event (a Bat Mitzvah).

(We do not live in California. This is kind of a Big Trip.)

I cried at the Bat Mitzvah, which shocked me, because I have never cried at one before. A Bat Mitzvah involves lots of 12 & 13 year old girls running around and giggling and hiding in the bathroom and, in 2006, doing cell-phone related stuff...making calls and taking pictures and sending email and making Belgian waffles (okay, perhaps that last was a slight exaggeration. but only slight). However, as a person who is thinking as mindfully (not to say obsessively) about having children as I am, seeing the ritual of passing a tradition down through the generations actually brought up something in me that made tears run down my cheeks.

I am here with Co, as I said, and also with my father, and his wife, who is not my mother. I lost count (I was counting at first) of the number of times people assumed she was my mother. I've been letting it go because they're not people that I'm going to see again, so that's okay, and I don't want to create ugliness. (There's a Jewish Thing about Not Getting Divorced.) But She. Is. Not. My. Mom. We get along now, okay, but I repeat: Not. My. Mom.

But my father's first cousin and her husband (the parents of the Bat Mitzvah Lady) are wonderful people and I would actually choose to be related to them, if I had a choice, which is amazing. How many of those people do we get in this life? And I have another set of cousins on my mom's side, that I would choose. So that's Good.

I'm going to go now and soak up more California calm.