L'Chaim: The Week I Became An Aunty

It has been a strange week. A week of awe and new beginnings.

On Thursday, I received a text at about 1400 hrs from my little brother, obviously referring to his fiancee, who was 9 months pregnant. It said, quite simply - "Waters broken."

I heard nothing for several hours, so later in the afternoon I gave them a ring to see how things were. The answer was, very relaxed. Nobody was in a rush, least of all mother and child. I tried to chill out but I was very excited, and a little nervous.

That evening, I attended the Yom HaShoah service at the Newcastle Reform Synagogue. Death and life. Life and death. As I drove there, I tried to put it all together in my mind, as I repeated over and over again: "Baruch ata Adonai, m'kadesh ha'chaim. Baruch ata Adonai, m'kadesh ha'olam." I thought of Lisa hundreds of miles away, and her struggle to push her son out of the safety of her body and into a complex, flawed, vortical and beautiful world. I thought of sex and dying and love and need, of cruelty and self-sacrifice and joy.

Blessed are you, Eternal One, who makes life holy.

Blessed are you, Eternal One, who makes the universe holy.

The service was exactly as you imagine it. The epitome of the shocking contrast between the abstract and the personal. Yes, we should all hate injustice and inhumanity. We should hate it every day. We should hate it all the time. Ideologically, politically, morally. That is our duty. But sometimes, too, we perhaps have a duty to stand in a quiet room with a dozen elderly people whose hands we shake every week, and listen to the names of their murdered mothers, and fathers, and sisters, and brothers.

I drove home. It was dark.

Things still didn't make sense, but I felt no sense of wrongness.

The next day at about 1300 hrs, my brother called.

Hello, Aunty Katya....

he said.

Your nephew is here.

I feel almost paralysed with a strange sort of joy.

Kolya Nathaniel Segura was born on Friday 2nd May at 1053 hrs, weighing in at 3kg, and measuring 54cm. Mother and child are both well. Father is ecstatic. I don't quite know what to say.

Nothing makes sense, and yet everything does. Welcome to the world, little one.

L'Chaim.