Visit To The Relatives

My mom and I flew out to visit her Christian parents last week. Much of it was nice, but it ended quite painfully. There are a lot of family dynamics that I won't write about, but if the week were a song, the chorus would be something about Kashrut.

Every day centered around food from saying hello over breakfast to preparing lunch and dinner and every time we ate there was the hurdle of Kashrut.

(Reminder: my mother converted to Judaism and we both later had to have an Orthodox reconversion.)

My mother and I deal with it differently. I'm the sweet little granddaughter (or I always felt that way until now) and could just say, "Oh, I can eat this," or "I can't eat that but that's okay. Let's cook this together instead." I took great satisfaction during my last visit (3 years ago) of kashering their oven with a blowtorch. It made them uncomfortable, but they were fascinated and willing, and my doing that helped enable my mother to eat Kosher food which might have been too stressful without me there.

But my mother often tried to explain things to her parents, including miniscule details like looking for bugs, which just reinforced that she couldn't and wouldn't eat what they offered her or take any suggestions they made. To make matters more difficult, she is on a diet. So even if they bought the right thing, it wasn't good enough.

There were many other tensions but everything came to a head on our last night there. And again, the climax had nothing to do with Kashrut but with another family issue. But when I went in later to try to do damage control, what happened was that I sat with my grandparents and my uncle and chatted about what they were chatting about, then talked about food, eventually concluding that I would be happy to eat any cookies my grandfather made for us if I could help him do it and he used the oven we had Kashered. (Self-cleaning this year.)

That seemed to help, but what do you know, he got up very early and did it without my help which meant he also didn't use the dishes I'd put aside. The oven was kosher enough by then - it turns out someone had heated some bread in it - so I went ahead and ate 2 cookies to preserve the family peace. (Took a bag of several others home too. Haven't eaten them. They were too sweet anyway.)

But that last night, my mom couldn't sleep and we ended up talking for several hours in the middle of the night. I told her once again of things I thought we (she) could have done differently to smooth the ground with her family, but she cried and talked instead about very old wounds. Some are related to Judaism, some aren't. But in short, when she was young she always always tried to be her best and she had a lonely childhood because of it with the label of a goodie two shoes. Later in life, trying to do the right thing, she married a man that hurt her very badly. When she finally left him, she was considered at fault and the church abandoned her.

Everything she tried to do right backfired from where she was coming from. No wonder she needed a new community.

When she met my dad she became interested in Judaism and, like many women converts I know, became interested DESPITE their fiancees. Instead of her following him, he eventually followed her to a deeper appreciation of Judaism.

I've always been impressed by this.

But of course, when I was growing up, we weren't so observant. And when I became attracted to keeping Shabbat and keeping Kashrut more seriously, my father followed. My mother felt dragged into it.

So one day on this trip mom said, "It didn't use to be so hard to come home."

"What changed?" I asked.

"Your father changed he rules," she said.

I was stunned. The way I see my parents, it is always my mother that make the rules and my father that follows. But as I've grown to understand, she doesn't like to view it that way. She'll say, "Your father will get mad if I do that," which really just means he finds it annoying but certainly doesn't make him into a scary person and surely he would listen if she explained her reasoning.

I assume so anyway.

Anyway, back to Judaism. When she said Dad changed the rules I didn't know what she meant. She went back to talking about my teenage years when she feels he and I sided against her in increasing observance. (Again, this was a path I took on my own and that my dad chose to follow. I did not intend to bring them along on it.) I pointed out she is more religious than I am in many ways. (She is more strict about bugs on veggies, and is unwilling to discuss options for feminism within Orthodoxy.) I don't like being accused of turning her towards something she chose and was so proud to choose. I'm surprised she would wish to give up that power of having chosen to make this change.

But I understand, she's torn.

I can understand that.

I have always felt a certain amount of pride in having such a different family from other Jews I know. I like that I have roots in the south and in different perspectives even if I completely disagree. (You should hear political discussions at their house.) In fact, the only thing I want to inherit (not for many years) is a miniature Xmas tree that I've always been fascinated by at their house. It's made of beads and is under a small glass dome. My grandmother has seen me gazing at it and I think has always thought I was wishing for something that my mother wouldn't let me have. I've tried to explain otherwise.

But this difference cannot be bridged as neatly as I used to think. And part of it is religion, and part is personality conflict between family members.

It hurts.

I guess what makes us nomal is that, like most other families, ours is far from perfect. One of the things I love about Judaism is that it acknowledges that life is not all love and pink roses. Our family also has pain. I suppose that is as it should be.

There is more about this from my uncle's perspective, but I think I might write it later, if at all.