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The Melding

By: wendy

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Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek
and find all the barriers -within yourself that you have built against it.
My husband and I came from different religious back-grounds — mine Christian, his Jewish — and moreover, we were both fiery and determined individuals. Consequently, our first few years together tested our ability to respect and combine our two Bulgari Replica religious traditions with love and under-standing. I remember raising the subject of a Christmas tree the first December after our marriage.

"Christmas treel" LeRoy exclaimed incredulously. "Listen, there are two things I won't do. Buying a ham is one of them. Buying a Christmas tree is the other. "
"If I can grate my knuckles while making potato latkes and clean up drippy candles at Chanukah,you can suffer through a Christmas tree!" I snapped back.
"No way," he retorted. "Remember last month? Whom do I meet at the grocery store when I have nothing but a ham in my cart? The rabbi. If we went shopping for a Christmas tree
together,the whole synagogue would probably pass by on a bus while I was loading it into the trunk! Forget it!"

Naturally,we got a tree. A big,beautiful,feathery spruce that claimed half the living room in our tiny apartment. Or, as LeRoy scornfully referred to it in front of our Jewish friends, a "moldy-green matzo ball with colored lights." However, despite LeRoy's professed antagonism, when Christmas morning arrived, I noticed that the number of gifts beneath the tree had doubled — and the tags they bore were written in Leroy’s hand.

By the time our daughter Erica was born, we had faced and solved many of the problems of an interfaith marriage and agreed to combine our heritages in an effort to provide the best for our children. By the time Shauna arrived three years later, we had settled into a way of life that was comfortable for both of us,although a bit unusual. Holly around the menorah. Chicken soup, matzo balls with oregano,and potato latkes for Christmas dinner. Merry Chanukah. Fa-la-la-la. Happy Christmas. Shalom. We were discovering that peace means the same in any language.

At holiday time,our home was decorated with a potpourri of blue-and-white streamers, menorah lights, Advent calendars and a creche. Our friends from both traditions joined in the spirit. A Christian neighbor brought us a glass mobile made of multiple Stars of David from the Holy Land. Our Jewish friends made and gave us many ornaments for the tree.

I became adept at reciting Hebrew prayers and explained Chanukah to both girls' classes every year. When LeRoy bought me a beautiful homemade guitar one Christmas, the first thing I taught myself to play and sing was a Jewish folk song. Dressed in a blue velvet shirt with buttons from Israel and a matching yarmulke(the skullcap worn by Jewish men at religious functions)that I had made him, Leroy learned to warble off-key versions of the better-known carols.

One year,my husband brought home a little blue wooden Star of David. "This is for your tree," he stated crisply. "I want it to be the first ornament hung every year. "

"I'll see to it personally,General," I quickly assured him, and from then on,it adorned the top of our tree.

One disconcerted Christian friend asked me, "Don't you feel hypocritical placing a Star of David on the top of your Christmas tree?"
"No," I replied and meant it. "Jesus was Jewish. And there was a star shining high over a stable. Remember?"

By this time, Chanukah had become almost as much a symbol of freedom and light to me as Christmas. And Cartier Replica Watches Christmas had become increasingly meaningful as the birthday of one so special that he gave light and freedom to everyone. As people of all races and religions gathered in our home, we found that their differences enriched our lives. The holidays seemed to become even more joyous.

Then,not long after we had celebrated our eleventh wed-ding anniversary, my forty-two-year-old husband suffered three heart attacks within two months. On December 17, our daughters and I crowded onto his narrow hospital bed in the intensive care unit to sing Chanukah and Christmas songs. The next night,the first night of Chanukah,I was driving to a friend's house where Erica and Shauna would kindle the first Chanukah lights. Suddenly, in my mind, I saw a dazzling burst of light, and then the image of a smiling, healthy Leroy.

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