Most Important

Posted April 19th, 2004 by Sean Williams

I’ve had several Blog ideas running around in my head for the last week or so, incredibly disparate things from biblical quotes on justice to the paranoid alienation of the Muslim world to the most recent Actor’s Nightmare I had about the wedding, but almost always, when my navel gazing gets too deep, something happens to shame me into perspective.

Jordana grew up with her cousins the way I grew up with my brothers and sisters. Her mom’s sister’s kids are almost like step siblings, they saw each other all the time, most of their memories as children feature one another. The family stories I tell are about Steve’s babysitting and Michelle helping me to the basement, for Jordana they are about battling affections and secret plots shared among the five cousins. In the same way that Jordana is getting the other ten people in my immediate family, I’m getting the ten others in hers, including the cousins.

Gabby is the oldest cousin, a great student who followed in her father’s footsteps and became a doctor. She is beautiful and tall, the most like Jordana in many ways (although a little less oddball), and the sense you get from the stories of their shared childhoods is that she was the one who was the most mature, most organized. There is always one in every family who is alphabatizing the crayons, and organizing the play time. For us it was Michelle and for them, I feel like it was Gabby. She was always the surrogate parent in the room.

She fell in love with and married a really awesome guy, Adam. During family dinners, Adam and I find a way to sit in a corner and crack each other up. He’s also a doctor, and he’s actually terribly shy, the only way we can talk shit is if we happen to be sitting next to each other. He took classes at UCB and really loved breaking out of his skin for a bit, but with the family he still barely talks above a mumble. The cool thing is that he and Gabby stick together with such affection and love, they’ve been married for four years, almost five now, and they stick together as close as Jordi and me.

A week after they got married, Adam’s father literally up and died. He hadn’t been sick, no-one saw it coming. My feeling is that the shock of that has made it difficult for Adam’s mother to be happy, and that’s made it really hard for the mothers-in-law to have any kind of a relationship, which is just a shame. But maybe that can start changing now.

Gabby learned last week, and let us know last night, that she is just barely pregnant. She’s less than six weeks along, but she couldn’t wait to tell us any longer. It’s the beginning of the next generation in this family, it’s the promise of a whole new life. A third generation doctor? This child’s grandmothers on both sides were heads of their temples. She could be. Or He could be. A comedian, a lawyer, maybe just a great cook who makes people laugh or a beautiful girl that breaks everyone’s hearts or… This is the beginning, again, all over again, one more time, another life learning all the same bullshit it takes all of us a lifetime to learn.

I can’t wait to see this baby. I can’t wait for Gabby to be the mom she’s been preparing to be for years and years. This kid couldn’t possibly ask to be born to better people, funny, smart, sensitive, beautiful people and this family that I’m joining a few months before he/she does is about as great a group of people as this kid could want.

I can’t even write about this very well… My affection for them is boundless and I’m so damned excited for this, for them. My wedding is important, but this is the good news.