Last night True and I went to a fifteenth wedding anniversary party for our best friends. These are the people we feel closest to, the people we can go months without seeing and pick up right where we left off. These are the people who rejuvenate our love for each other, for our children, and for our life. Almost fourteen years ago, True and I sat at the dining room table of these newlyweds, amidst a lavish dinner party, and suddenly saw the rest of our lives flash before us -- and knew, in that moment, we would be together forever.

Since that moment which True and I count as among the most spiritual of our lives, our friends have bought a house, had two children, changed jobs, traveled, and, in the last few years, endured the most terrifying series of health scares I hope anyone I know ever has to go through. The husband/father, after years of constant small seizures that left him unable to work or drive, finally had surgery this year, and is now seeing life improvements they could not have imagined a year ago. This anniversary party -- held on 08/08/08, a lucky-feeling number -- was the celebration of more than just an average fifteen years of marriage. It was the celebration of life itself, of what matters, of the simple things they were not sure they'd see.

In their lives, our friends have immigrated to this country -- the wife from Russia to the US as a little girl, the husband from Russia to Israel as a teenager, then from Israel to the US in his very early 20s. They've worked to bring his parents, sister, brother-in-law, and niece and nephew to the US from Israel. They've had two beautiful children. The wife has dedicated her life to social work, helping people in the very community her family joined as immigrants decades ago. In every aspect, this family's life is an inspiration.

Last night, the party was held at an over-the-top Russian restaurant complete with live musicians, stunning centerpieces, and a room full of people dressed to the nines. His best friend came all the way from Paris to celebrate with them. In the tradition that True and I have finally come to remember after all these years, many people brought large bouquets of roses for the happy couple. Shouts of "goika, goika!," which I am told means something like "make the bitterness sweeter by kissing!" resounded all night. Our friends' children -- who we love like our own -- ran with their cousins all night, darting in and out of the dancers and laughing happily.

I watched as my friend came suddenly into the room around 10pm to the strains of "Here Comes the Bride," clad in the wedding dress she'd worn fifteen years before. Her husband took one look at her and visibly swooned, then gathered her into his arms and buried his face in her neck. They held each other as half the room fought tears.

How fortunate True and I are to have a couple like this in our lives as our friends -- two people who absolutely adore each other and their children, who know what joy is and how to find it, and who open their arms to the people around them in a gesture that seems to say "come, be happy with us!"

My baby is three.

Putting aside -- just for the moment -- all the accomplishments she's made in the past three years, I have felt it necessary in these past few weeks to ruminate a little bit about what it means to me to have no little babies in my house. In this past few months, I've slowly passed on all of the "gear" that I associate with real babies. I've used Freecycle to find new homes for my breast pump, fancy nursing bras, and covered diaper pail (called "the diaper champ," and boy, was it ever!). I packed up our well-loved diaper bag into a corner of our closet. The spoons and forks in the drawer used by the kids seem slowly to become bigger and pointier as we discard those made for feeding new little eaters. I stopped buying the tiny yogurts that were a staple of every grocery trip for years.

In short: the "things" associated with my parenting are changing. Some are going away forever.

With our little shmoo weaned, I no longer need to lift my shirt for her to nurse, and suddenly I find that my breasts are my own again. What to do with this rediscovered section of my body, so de-sexualized over the past six years that I had to dig in the darkest recesses of my closet to find the bag of pretty bras I'd hidden there? Oh yes, there was that brief period between Doodlebug's weaning and my pregnancy with Shmoo where they once again had made an appearance, but it seems almost like a dream. Now here they are again, colored, frilly, lacy, wrought with innuendo, and I almost want to laugh as I put them on. How did this work, again?

Who am I, again?

Shmoo wants to stop using the little potty that sits on the floor, the one that needs emptying after every use, the one I've emptied a thousand times, disinfected every few days in a stolen moment, covered with stickers for accomplishments in toilet learning for both girls. She prefers to use a stool to reach the "big potty," which certainly eliminates a dirty job from my day. I see this tiny little person sitting proudly up there, grinning ear to ear, and feel the strangest pang of melancholy for the day -- imminent -- that she will no longer need me to hold her up to wash her hands.

In my big purse -- a replacement for the diaper bag -- I carry a pair of tiny toddler-sized underpants, a weathered baggie of crackers, and sometimes, a toy or two. I am suddenly aware that someday it may hold only my own things. There have been so many moments when I have pined for a life and body all my own, and yet, as that time approaches, I feel myself standing with feet on either side of a crack, noting that as it widens, I may need to jump to one side.

It's time to redefine my place, though, and that's for certain. I'm looking for a ceremony of closure as my last baby grows past babyhood, and I am lucky enough to have friends warm, creative, and loving enough to help me with that. For today, however, I scooped a scraped-up Shmoo off the sidewalk where she fell, took her into the house for a swab at her scratched knee, and grabbed our beloved sling off the table in the foyer. Pulling her close to me, I carried her to preschool in that sling, snuggled up against me, with her head on my shoulder.

My father has taken on the intensely time-consuming and often thankless task of family genealogist, and over the past dozen years or so, has compiled an astounding amount of information about his father's and mother's sides of the family tree. He's collected, among other things, hundreds and hundreds of photographs, immigration documents, stories, and even the occasional sound recording. He has kept painstaking records of all of this information and build a sizable web site for members of our now-expansive family to visit and enjoy.

I appreciate all of this in a kind of future-thinking way, realizing that while it might be interesting to me now, there will come a day in my mid-life when it will suddenly and inexplicably become absolutely fascinating. As I wait for that to happen, I have tried to show my father the appreciation he deserves for all of this work, even when I have to just pretend that I remember how that distant cousin he's telling me about is actually related. It is so desperately important to him -- and while I don't yet feel the urgency he does to create these connections, I know that someday, I surely will.

Some time ago he tried to create a page on his web site for family recipes, those important cornerstones of a holiday table or family gathering, collected from the many branches of family he's found. He was not very successful when he started; perhaps the fast-food culture in which we live now has stifled that sort of kitchen creativity that makes items like "Auntie Joan's chocolate cake" a thing of the past. However, recently one of his cousins discovered a cache of several recipes written in the handwriting of my grandmother, my dad's mother, who died when my dad was only twelve.

My grandmother!

Never having met her, she is a hazy, mythical figure for me, certainly with no ability to bequeath me anything but eye color and a light sprinkling of freckles, and perhaps a lullaby my dad still sings, even to my daughters. But recipes! In her own handwriting! This is a gift from fifty years ago, saved in a drawer and waiting for a granddaughter named for her. What was she thinking as she wrote them out for her cousin's wife, imagining her instructions followed, the pinches and tastes probably never quite as right as when she made it herself? Could she have squinted and flashed on a woman in a kitchen in the midwest, little girls running underfoot, reading the loopy handwriting and measuring the same amounts, trying to conjure the soul food and the soul together?

Here it is: my grandmother's noodle pudding, lovingly known to us as "apricot kugel." Thank you, Grandma. It was delicious.