Time Does a 180 Sometimes

What a difference 30-some years make! I contrast my first visit to my in-laws with my current visit and it’s like night and day.

I first came to Detroit in 1974 before we were married to meet his parents and attend his 10th high school reunion. That was before I was Jewish also. It was as if I was a ghost in his parents’ house. His mother asked him what he wanted for breakfast while looking straight through me. My enthusiasm for embracing his family was squelched as I pondered what in the world I was getting myself into in this relationship.

In their eyes I became a real person when I converted to Judaism, which I always reminded my father-in-law was at my choice and not because of their threats not to come to our wedding if it wasn’t in a synagogue. From that moment on, they were courteous and attentive to my feelings, but the initial meeting always lingered in the back of my mind.

Today my mother-in-law constantly compares me to her daughter-in-law born of Holocaust survivors and I come out on top. On this current visit, she has invited several extended family members over just to meet me, bragging to them about how I read from the Torah and how I made the brisket that was in the oven. The joke is that David really made the brisket (I cut up the onions and garlic), but cooking is still a woman’s job in her eyes, so I must take the credit.

So while some things are exactly as they were 32 years ago – we’re still sleeping on the same lousy beds with the exact same sheets and bedspreads – my status in the family has improved incredibly. Time has this way of wearing away the early misconceptions and proving once again that people are not so very different after all.