My father-in-law turns 93 this week. Happy birthday, Julian! Julian is an endocrinologist who ran his own practice for 40 years. Now, he commutes an hour each way to his part-time job as a doctor at a New York state prison, and he still reads all the current medical journals.
My mother-in-law, Sima, ran the family’s private practice. She managed everything from accounting and billing to maintenance and supplies. Sima’s motto in life is simple: Know how to do everything. Then, you can decide which things you don’t want to do. Guided by this adage, 85-year-old Sima still replaces rotten shingles, fixes faulty wiring, lays new linoleum, and cooks every meal from scratch.
My in-laws live just outside of Manhattan, in the same house where they raised two boys (one of whom is my husband). Julian, an accomplished musician who speaks eight languages, plays jazz every day on his beloved baby grand. Both of my in-laws are voracious readers, opting for dense, complicated books about history, politics, and science, with an occasional mystery thrown in for good measure. They’ve traveled the world, visiting cathedrals and museums as happily as they’ve explored the Amazon and the Alps. They could teach seminars about art and art history. They are crossword-puzzle whizzes.
The last time Julian and Sima visited us, they defrosted from their New York winter in my sun-soaked California backyard. We had a few ideas for the weekend ahead—maybe visit a gallery, see a play, go out for dinner. I quickly realized that all my in-laws wanted was to feel the sun caress their skin while we read, talked, ate, and tackled a crossword puzzle or two. (In between, Sima also repaired the upholstery on a chair that had burst a seam more than two years ago. She pulled homemade butter cookies from her suitcase. And she folded my unwieldy King-sized fitted sheet into an impossibly perfect rectangle with precise ninety-degree corners.)
Julian and Sima are Jewish immigrants from Romania and Poland. They survived—barely—the horrors of World War II and have both known way too much discrimination, tragedy, and loss. In 1962, they left their families in Israel and Europe and made the long trip to the United States. They had no idea what adventures, challenges, setbacks, and successes lay ahead. Over time, they built a business, and a life, and taught their sons to value hard work, education, determination, family, and freedom.
More than sixty years later, during our dinner together before my in-laws headed back East, three generations of our family sat around the table and told jokes. We laughed at punchlines that were variously dumb, rude, and genuinely funny. (I told the only one I can ever remember: What did the blonde say when she found out she was pregnant? I hope it’s mine!) As we giggled and groaned, it struck me that a lot of our laughter stemmed from the simple, pure joy of sharing a meal, and this precious time, all of us, together.
And I thought to myself, I’m just so grateful they were able to make the trip.
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