Love and Marriage

Wow – so much has been going on lately, but in this posting I want to make it clear just how freaking excited I am that my one and only awesome sister is ENGAGED!!!!!  Oriyah Lewy-Neuman is officially betrothed to the loving Aharon Nitkin and on behalf of the Lewy-Neuman clan (is it OK that I’m a self-appointed spokesperson?) we welcome Aharon to our family!

This is the first wedding in my immediate family (other than my parents’ – duh) and it’s a new and exciting territory.  Not to take away from Oriyah and Aharon at all, but yesterday someone congratulated me as the sister of the bride and that was so weird!! I’m the sister of the bride!  I kind of forgot about myself in this whole situation, and it is more appropriate that the focus should be on Oriyah, but it’s exciting that I’m a part of this celebration, too! 

The pink elephant in the room has got to be that clearly I’m the Pippa Middleton in this all… right? Ha – just kidding!  I feel so grateful in terms of the timing of all of this because Oriyah has been living in Israel for the past almost 5 years, and I just moved here about 5 weeks ago….. It is almost as though she was waiting for me to be here so that I can celebrate WITH her, in the same country and it’s AWESOME!!!! I’m so lucky to be able to be here in the thick of things and so present in the reality of it all.  I feel a little bad (really just a little because it’s hard to feel badly in such a good situation) for both the rest of my family (my parents and extended family) and Aharon’s family who aren’t here in Israel now.  Obviously the happiness is not limited to those nearby, but the fact that I can give Oriyah a celebratory hug in person feels great.

Having a celebration kind of reminds me how awesome love is.  I clearly love Oriyah, and I’m thankful to have a close sisterly bond with her (I recognize that not everyone does have that).  I don’t know Aharon so well yet (I’ve met him a couple of times and thus far he seems like a cool dude) but the fact that he loves Oriyah and makes her so happy makes ME happy and thus I am on my way to loving him as well.  To be as happy for someone else as I could be for myself reaffirms that I have a working heart!  Please Gd I hope to one day celebrate this same type of occasion for myself (and one day for my brother Moshe as well - although if he gets married before me, I’m gonna kill him), but this is Oriyah’s time and I couldn’t be happier for her, for Aharon and for both of our families!!!  Yay!!!

Here is a picture of us from the night the engagement went public - it is slightly blurry and the lighting is horrendous (it was a Chinese restaurant and they had lots of lanterns) but take what you can get...)