A day of many emotions

First thing this morning Judah and his mother came by to pick up his tallit with the completed atara.

Judah doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve. He tends to express his emotions is muted ways.

I was delighted to see a large smile on his face when he saw the completed atara.

A couple of hours later I met a new to me cousin and his wife.  We had connected through 23 and me.  The combination of trauma and hurt feelings has left earlier generations of my family with many bruised feelings which led to rifts and splits.

I arrived to lunch with my mother's photo album. When my cousin and I first set eyes on one another we searched one another's faces for signs of familiarity. I showed my cousin photos of his grandfather as a child, of his great grandparents, of his great aunts. I sketched out the branches of our joint family tree.  As we talked and talked it became clear that our connections and similarities had less to do with looks but with things that are far deeper. Again and again one or another of us would make a comment that made us realize that we were indeed close relatives despite having set eyes on one another only today.

I should have spent the afternoon sewing but our conversation kept running through my head.