The mohel called out, “Kvatter!” The baby’s two grandmothers clutched each other’s arms. Around the room, sisters, aunts, and friends closed their eyes and davened. As I rested my siddur on the shtender in front of me and whispered my own tefillos, I could not help but feel confused.
Several weeks before this bris I had called my own mother and mother-in-law to tell them my own good news, that we were expecting a baby. I would have loved a reaction that mirrored our excitement. Maybe not quite as dramatic as when we made our first announcement 13 years ago… that was a little over the top.
We had been married 15 months at the time, and from my mother-in-law’s reaction, you would have thought we were married 15 years. Or 25 from my mother’s, who broke down in tears at the news that she would be becoming a bubbe for the very first time. Sobbing, she repeated over and over how she’d been davening for us every single day, and baruch Hashem this moment had arrived. We didn’t really appreciate the theatrics, but this time around, the reactions definitely threw me for a loop. Some display of happiness would have been appropriate, I had thought. Instead, when I said, “Guess what? We have good news to give you!” one of them actually slipped, and blurted out, “Oh no!”
I didn’t make that up.
I won’t repeat what the other one said.
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