Thursday, November 16, 2006

traditions & tevye

Confession: I totally think Tevye is hot. And not the Harvey Fierstein Tevye. Topol. Topol is hot.

C'mon - in the wedding scene, when he's all dressed in black and trying to calm down the villagers while his friend Perchik tries to get a girl to dance with him? When he's singing "Sunrise Sunset"?! When he's pushing his milk cart and wondering about the state of the world?

Totally hot.

When I got home from my brother's wedding in Arizona, I popped "Fiddler on the Roof" into the DVD player and watched the wedding scene. It's my favorite scene. And that's when I realized that I would totally have married Tevye.

But I digress...

I love the wedding scene in Fiddler on the Roof. I love Jewish weddings period. All weddings morph with time...they're tailored to suit individual tastes and contemporary fashion. But the traditions that surround a Jewish wedding, for some reason, just seem so natural to me. I love things like that. Natural tradition. The signing of the Ketubah, the fact that the bride and groom put their rings on their index finger first - before moving it to the ring finger later. The stepping on the glass. And the dances. The horah, holding hands and moving in a circle around the bride and groom. Lifting them into the air on chairs. The "Mazal Tov" of it all...

As we made the rounds on the military base we stayed at on Monday, picking up and dropping off and packing for our flight back - F16's echoed in the distance. Their engines ripped through the cloudless blue sky with the sound of speed and movement...and I didn't want to go home.

When I'm in Arizona, the vastness of the land is what begs me to stay. It's a reminder that the world is everlasting and not simply what fits within the confines of a small town. It reminds me that problems lie in a great big world and not just on the narrow bridge of our shoulders - making them a little easier to bare. I miss the mountains when I'm not in Arizona. And the air. And that sky that goes on forever.

I've been trying to figure out how to write about the drama, the issues and the tireless self-introspection that came with the trip. I was in a bad place when I landed and I spend most of my time with the groomsmen who watched nonstop football, drank nonstop bud light and left some of the worst scents behind them in the rental car. It's also hard to write when you're not really...in it. Since I got home things have been hectic and stressful - much like when I left. I'm in the midst of trying to save my 4.0 GPA and drop a class and work hasn't been easy to fall back into. It sounds so tedious and self-involved. And it is. And that's why I don't want to talk about it right now. It's all in my journal - I'll post from it later.

I snapped 211 pictures at my brother's wedding. And flipping through them after the wedding back in my room on base, I found this one of my brother and new sister-in-law. All the crap that I carried with me through the weekend melted away. I could feel my brother's hug, his wife grabbing me by the arm and declaring she had a sister-in-law and the even littler things I found in my relatives that I recognized in myself. Laughs and habits and personality traits.

And everything else will come in time. Things still aren't easy at home....but the thing is - while the rest of the world went on - we gathered in a small corner of the world and celebrated my brother and his wife. And nothing should ever get in the way of that

So here is to traditions and Tevye. And to my brother & sister-in-law. And to the state of Arizona - which keeps asking me to dance.

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