July 28, 2006: Milburn & Newton

More signs of the North:

• Toll bridges (e.g. the George Washington Bridge)

• Terrible traffic (e.g. I-95 between New York and New Haven)

• High prices

• Density

• Ivy League universities (today we drove past both Columbia and Yale)

• Friendly’s restaurants, where we stopped for ice cream (It brought back memories for Debbie of her college days at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, which we also passed through. From time to time, she and her fellow students would walk to the Friendly’s close by their residence and treat themselves to a dish or a cone.)

At nine o’clock this morning, we went to a bris for the son of Debbie’s cousin Miriam and her husband Matt at a synagogue in Milburn, New Jersey. Miriam is a researcher and faculty member in the Department of Child and Family Studies at Montclair State University; Matt is a gastroenterologist and surgeon.

Neither Debbie nor I had ever been to a bris before. It was a brief, joyful ceremony with many friends and family in the sanctuary. Miriam’s sister Elisheva sang with their father Michael,

Miriam and Matt read their dedications, and the rabbi and mohel performed the ritual surgery. The baby cried relatively little and settled down quickly. Our boys were intensely interested in an explanation of the procedure, so we later gave them one (an explanation, I mean).

Afterwards the baby, named Joseph, was cuddled by his proud grandparents, Mina Jo and Michael. Mina Jo is holding Joseph’s big sister Eve.

Debbie’s cousin Daniel, here with niece Margolit, attended from Seattle. He’s an activities coordinator at Hillel at the University of Washington. A busy man, we still haven’t had him over to our home. He was recently in Israel and is bound for a two-week project in Nicaragua, but we insisted he come for dinner as soon as he can upon his return.

Debbie’s cousin Brice, a concert booker, and his wife Dina, a cosmetics representative, came from Brooklyn for the ceremony. He told us about a trip they had taken to Washington State and British Columbia, and we likewise invited them to visit us the next time they’re in the Northwest.

We also saw Jonathan’s parents Harold and Phyllis, who live in Maplewood, New Jersey, near Miriam and Matt, but they left before I could take a photo of them. Harold hurried off to teach a class at Rutgers. I was able to take a picture of Debbie together with her many cousins.

The rest of the day was devoted to a long drive through New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts to Newton, a suburb of Boston, where Debbie’s high school friend Janine and her family live.

Janine grew up in Seattle, where her parents still live, and went to Lakeside School with Debbie. She got her doctorate in forestry at Yale and worked for the Environmental Defense Fund, first in New York and then in Boston. Her husband Benjamin, a Harvard grad, works as a computer scientist in the Information Technology Group at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

For dinner, Benjamin barbecued chicken on the deck outside, despite a brief storm that soaked him as he was finishing. Thunderstorms have been our frequent companions on this trip!

Little Jacob was scared by the noise and hugged his mother throughout the meal, but in a little while he was his chipper self again.

After supper, the three older boys played the Harry Potter DVD game with Benjamin. His son Isaac, the resident Hogwarts expert, was the winner, though Tommy and Danny acquitted themselves well.

Eliana pouted a bit, feeling left out. Four boys to one girl – it’s not fair!






Janine, Debbie, and I discussed a variety of topics: our travels, the health of our children, the contrasts between Jewish and Christian and Buddhist beliefs. The cicadas buzzed loudly outside, part of the soundtrack of our summer.