On Being Doh-Dah

The greatest joy of my life is being doh-dah (דודה), which is Hebrew for "aunt" and what my adorable goddaughter calls me.  My mom and I made the long drive to central PA last week to visit her and her family. Unfortunately, I have to be back to Berkeley before her 3rd birthday - which is Sunday - in order to start my job on Monday, but we were able to spend several days with her and celebrated her birthday early. I had kept in touch with her and her family via Skype, Facebook, email and text, but it had been 10 months since I had seen her in person. She looks essentially the same, only bigger, but she has such a little personality! Of course, she already had her own personality last summer, but oh my how it developed in a year!

Within a day or two of our arrival, my goddaughter changed her loyalties; rather than wanting to play with doh-dah, she suddenly wanted Sharon (my mom).  Whereas previously she wanted to play kitchen and hide'n'seek with me, now she wanted to "hide" upstairs with my mom -- to go upstairs to her room and play. She would refuse to let me enter, telling me she didn't want me and to go away. I may have stooped to holding Baby (her favorite doll) hostage so she would let me in. (Low, I know, but I was desperate for time with my little girl!) Despite only wanting to play with Sharon, it was still doh-dah who got called on to go "tinkle" or when she had "snots" or even when she "did a stinky" in her nap-time diaper. Sharon was not allowed to participate in any of these activities. It was all doh-dah. This included multiple trips to the bathroom during meals -- particularly twice during birthday cheesecake, during the ice cream social and four times at Long Horn (most of which were false alarms).

When I commented about my goddaughter only wanting me for all the less-than-pleasant tasks but not wanting me to play with her, her mother (my seminary classmate) said, "Welcome to motherhood." I tried to point out that I am not a mother, just doh-dah, but that didn't really change the facts. And despite my protests, I really didn't mind. I loved being part of the potty-training process and was so proud of how well she did. Her parents even joked that if she reverted when I left, they were going to make me come back because she did such a good job for doh-dah. It was even cute how she would blow her nose! Of course I wanted to play with her, and I did get to play with her quite a bit, but it really touched me how she wanted me to take her to go potty and all that.

I am not a mother, and I don't know if I will ever be a mother. I love kids, have always love them and always wanted kids, but one thing being doh-dah has taught me is that one does not need to be a parent to have kids. Being doh-dah, being a godmother, is a big responsibility -- helping make sure my goddaughter grows up into a beautiful, happy, well-mannered woman -- but being doh-dah has given me at least as much as I have given my goddaughter. Being doh-dah has taught me how to live and how to love, how to put another life before my own, how to be a person worth imitating, how to just be. I am in a PhD program, I have been in school for something like 23 years, and I have learned a lot in the classroom, but the real lessons in life, the ones that really matter, are taught elsewhere, in the course of living -- in the course of being doh-dah.

Coming Home

I went to the church I grew up in this morning. As I sat there, I kept thinking about something one of the graduating seminarians said at New Spirit last week. He talked about how growing up his mom always told him no matter what he did, no matter how long he spent in jail, he would always have a place to come home to--and that was what New Spirit was to him, the church to which he could always come home, no matter how long he'd been away.  That was how I was feeling this morning. I came home, home to the church that raised me, home to the church that has always loved me, home to the church that has supported me and prayed for me throughout the years.

There is not much that my church family says and does theologically that I agree with these days. But they are my family, the people who raised me and the people who have always had my back. As I was getting ready to move to Berkeley, they joked with me about Aurora movie theater massacre, telling me to buy a one-way ticket home if I ever started to feel homicidal. Someone responded, "No, call us and we'll buy you that ticket. Come home and we'll take care of you." I know we were just joking around, but I also know that if I made that call -- if I called and said for whatever reason I needed to get home -- a ticket would be purchased before I got off the phone.

So even though their theology makes me cringe and sometimes I just want shake them, every time I come home, I come home to my church too. And every time I walk through the church doors, I am swarmed by people wanting to know how I am, what I have been up to, what I'm learning, how my family is (as they no longer go the church) and so on. I can barely make it into the sanctuary before worship begins and I am always one of the last ones to leave. I am covered in hugs and kisses and well wishes. It is the picture of love.

I am the golden child who can do no wrong, although that is largely because I know to keep my mouth shut and not challenge their beloved theology.  Whether this is the right approach or not is debatable. It has worked well for me, but I also know that these same people who love me so well would not offer the same opening arms to some of my nearest and dearest friends, the friends who are also my family--the family who supported me through the ups and downs of academic life, the family who always knows what I need even when I don't, the family who understands me and loves me for who I am even when I don't know who that is, the family who teaches me the most important lessons in life (which can never be learned in a classroom). These people are my family, but so are my church. They are both my family, in different ways--in contradictory ways.

There is, of course, also my biological family, which adds yet another complicated level. They also love me in their own unconditional way.

All these families, all this love, all these homes. If only I could make sense of all this love and all the complications they bring. If only I knew what it meant to come home, if I only knew where home was. If only everyone was so lucky. If only everyone had one family, one love, one home. I am blessed with multiple families, multiple loves, multiple homes. Every time these families collide, every time I start to wonder how to make sense of them, I am simultaneously reminded of just how blessed I am. So I may not know how to reconcile my families, but I know they are my families. And I know family isn't about always agreeing with one another but with loving one another anyways. We challenge one another while we also respect one another.

This is family. This is love. This is what it means to come home -- whichever home it is, wherever it is. This is home.