Tribal Renewals

We come together for monumental milestones: illnesses, deaths, marriages, birthdays, and to celebrate the impending expansion of the family. A new baby girl is on the way and this weekend both sides of the family - men, women and children - gathered in the pink to eat pink food, drink pink punch and remind one another of the importance of family. The tribe is a powerful force of love and these gatherings allow us to feel the strength of connection and security of belonging to something bigger than ourselves.

MIH is beside herself with excitement and anticipation of becoming a grandmother for the very first time, and she threw herself into the planning, creating, and coordinating of her daughter's baby shower. She channeled Martha as she reacquainted herself with her baking pans and transformed stacks of pink tissue paper in to decorative puffs. She reveled in the joy of the process. she gets it -- that the joy is in the journey, not the destination.

A new life is renewal and possibility, it is love manifested, growth and perfection. How fitting then that we celebrated the possibilities and potential of this baby-in-waiting on the birthday of the family's matriarch who recently passed. The circle of life played out before us...

When we lose a member of our family, our lives are forever changed. So also it is with the arrival of a pure and perfect baby. Our  world shifts, and our lives and the tribe are forever changed, and as the Talmud so aptly puts it, "With each child, the world begins anew". And for that, I am truly grateful.