D-Day

Today is the day.  Today is the day that my beautiful perfect little secret becomes slightly more public knowledge.  Today is the day we tell HIS family.

We see his family every Friday night.  His extended family is Jewish and so we get together for the sabbath and have a huge family meal.  My husband's relationship with his family is complex.  He was raised in Romania under a communist regime.  His mother hated the communist system and used her religion as Jewish to get a visa to travel to Israel.  My husband was 3.  She never came back.  The story is complicated.  She swears she thought that her husband would find a way to follow her despite the fact that he would not be eligible for the same visa.  She thought her son would join her.  He didn't.

My husband didn't see her for a decade.  By then he had been raised in part by an awful girlfriend of his father's, an aunt, a grandmother, a step-mother.  When he was 13 and now the elder brother of two young step-brothers his father capitulated and sent him to Israel. Whether it was because the 13 yo damaged young man was difficult to deal with in a house with two young babies I don't know.  Or if his mother had finally worn down his father... it could be.  But finally he was sent to live in Israel with a mother he didn't know.  Within a month of his arrival she had left to immigrate for Canada leaving him in the care of yet another aunt.  Within the year he moved to a 3rd country, started a life in a 3rd language.  Tried to fit in to a new culture.  He had a hard life.

I have mixed feelings about my MIL because of this.  I can't quite understand how as a mother she could ever leave behind her child.  I will say that my MIL has always been very kind to me.  She has accepted me and given me gifts and been considerate and kind.  But, at the same time, she can be a wee bit self involved.  On the day we announced our engagement her response was "I know just what I am going to wear [to our wedding]".  This came before "congratulations" or "I am so happy for you" or even "welcome to the family".  Her first thought was about her. 

My husband's relationship with her is complex.  On one hand he wants to have a comfortable typical mother-son relationship, but at the same time he has resentment and anger that can't just be washed away, especially since she doesn't ask for forgiveness.  He is much closer to his aunt, the one he was left with in Israel.  She is like a surrogate mother to him, and to me.  She is loving and caring and wants only the best for him.  When she learned of our engagement her first thought was about how happy she was we had found each other. 

So, today, we are telling the whole family sooner than i had hoped.  My MIL is going on vacation tomorrow.  I can not, in good conscience, let my husband tell his aunt and cousins when his mother is not there.  By right she shouldn't find out second hand.  And, by the time she comes back I am certain to be showing.  But there is something in me that is very petty and doesn't want to tell his family first, after all of their horrible teasing as i was going through a miscarriage (that they didn't know about).  It is hard for me to tell them when there is still a chance that something could go wrong, that something could happen to our little Shmily.  It is taking such a leap of faith to go to dinner today and tell them our precious little secret.

Tomorrow we tell the rest of my family.  I have no qualms about telling them.  Except my 10 year old nephew who would be devastated to have to learn that not all babies make it.  That would be horrible. Wish me luck... it is a long weekend filled with a lot of trust.