Thanksgiving

I had a really lovely Thanksgiving. My parents were incredibly wonderful and not only once again got a kosher Turkey, they also made sure the rest of the meal was parve pretty much (the exception was one cake: with the amount of other desert, no big loss). They did forget that regular marshmellows (marshmallows?) wouldn't be kosher, but it's pretty significant progress. ANd I had a lovely time with the family. Morgan is now 6 months old, getting ready to crawl (but still doesn't sit up: she's a bit out of order), and is a serious little one. I think she's absolutely adorable. And I actually had a really meaningful touching converastion with my grandfather. We talked about some Jewish history stuff, and some science stuff on the sides of it, but we also talked about his life as a colelge student, and how he felt about deciding not to spend the rest of his life supporting his parents ("like a rat"), and how proud he is of my academic plans (hopefully to get a Ph.D. and be a professor), and how I shouldn't let anythign get in teh way of that. Mom translates the last as that I shouldn't get married too early or have children too early, but I'd like to take it as more general than that. Still- Pop is usually hard to relate to seriously, and I was really touched to have had a real conversation with him. He was, in general, much more accessible than usual this visit. Over all I got treated much more like an adult this time around. Maybe having the little cousins (3 years and 6 months) around is wearing that idea into everyone's minds. It was a really lovely day, and nowhere near as wearing as THanksgiving often gets. Even Em seemed pretty ok and happy with it, and family generally drives her batty. I think that a lot of this is having very young people around: they're a wonderful distraction. One wonders if this is why families could live so much more closely together before, when the generations were also closer together. A more constant presence of babies might make people more content to get along with each other. Babies are so positively distracting.

Thanksgiving

I had a really lovely Thanksgiving. My parents were incredibly wonderful and not only once again got a kosher Turkey, they also made sure the rest of the meal was parve pretty much (the exception was one cake: with the amount of other desert, no big loss). They did forget that regular marshmellows (marshmallows?) wouldn't be kosher, but it's pretty significant progress. ANd I had a lovely time with the family. Morgan is now 6 months old, getting ready to crawl (but still doesn't sit up: she's a bit out of order), and is a serious little one. I think she's absolutely adorable. And I actually had a really meaningful touching converastion with my grandfather. We talked about some Jewish history stuff, and some science stuff on the sides of it, but we also talked about his life as a colelge student, and how he felt about deciding not to spend the rest of his life supporting his parents ("like a rat"), and how proud he is of my academic plans (hopefully to get a Ph.D. and be a professor), and how I shouldn't let anythign get in teh way of that. Mom translates the last as that I shouldn't get married too early or have children too early, but I'd like to take it as more general than that. Still- Pop is usually hard to relate to seriously, and I was really touched to have had a real conversation with him. He was, in general, much more accessible than usual this visit. Over all I got treated much more like an adult this time around. Maybe having the little cousins (3 years and 6 months) around is wearing that idea into everyone's minds. It was a really lovely day, and nowhere near as wearing as THanksgiving often gets. Even Em seemed pretty ok and happy with it, and family generally drives her batty. I think that a lot of this is having very young people around: they're a wonderful distraction. One wonders if this is why families could live so much more closely together before, when the generations were also closer together. A more constant presence of babies might make people more content to get along with each other. Babies are so positively distracting.