Let me start by saying that I love my In-Laws, I really do. They are some of the warmest most loving and wonderful people I have every met in my life and they accepted me into their family before I was even "officially dating" their son. That said, they are also completely NUTS, and I say that in the most loving way possible...
I grew up with the usual superstitions, I'm sure they are familiar to you as well... Step on a crack, break your mothers back. Don't walk under a ladder. Never let a black cat cross your path. Break a mirror, 7 years bad luck. That sort of thing. Crazy, okay maybe a little.. But NORMAL crazy. My In-Laws have superstitions that are a whole other LEVEL of crazy.
I need to back up here a bit and explain. My husband's family is Russian. Of course even as I am typing this I hear his voice in the back of my head "LITHUANIAN!!!". Let me correct myself. My husband was born in Lithuania, which was part of the former Soviet Union. His entire family speaks Russian, and brought that, along with their crazy traditions and superstitions with them when they immigrated to Israel 20-something years ago and they still speak predominantly Russian in the home today.
A little background on the family, my husband is an only child, however his Mother has a twin sister who also has only one child and she and my husband were practically raised together. He refers to her as his sister and the three women together are an absolute force to be reckoned with. Superstitions run rampant in both the Jewish and the Russian culture, combine them together and it can be maddening.
When my husband and I had a string of bad luck early in our marriage, the family became convinced that an old flame of his's mother had put a curse on us and came over to our new apartment armed with candles and mezuzahs and other various chochkies to ward off the evil eye.
When I became pregnant with our first child, everyone was over the moon. Various baby items were promised early on from friends and family members that practically came out of the woodwork. It was amazing, we would hardly have to buy anything. The more pregnant I became, the more I wondered where these baby items were. 6 months passed, 7 months, and the nursery was still an empty room. I began to fret that the promise of baby things was merely talk, that it was not actually coming. We had not budgeted for these baby items and money was tight. I dreaded finding out at the last minute that we would have to make several large purchases with money that we frankly didn't have.
I began to bug my husband to speak to his family about when we would be getting the furniture. He agreed and asked. Turns out all of the baby items had been secured, but here is the catch. They were all safely packed away at my MIL and SIL's respective houses, not to be delivered until after the baby arrived. Aparently setting up a baby room ahead of the baby, or buying any baby related item was strictly forbidden as it invited... DUM DUM DUM... THE EVIL EYYEEE!!!
Now I am from the US where baby nurseries are furnished and decorated almost before the pee on the pregnancy test has a chance to dry. I could understand a bit of the superstition, not wanting to decorate for the baby and then G-d forbid something happening to it, but here I was, WEEKS away from giving birth and my nursery ECHOED!!! I demanded my husband do something. He tried. They refused. Its bad luck!! The Evil Eye!! Tfu Tfu Tfu (Insert spitting here, I WILL be blogging about this one in the near future... TRUST ME) This went on until literally days before my due date. I was nesting (well nesting minus the desire to clean, so I guess not really nesting, but I wanted my furniture damnit!!) and I was a complete wreck. We had no crib, no dresser, no car seat, no stroller. My mother was bringing all of my baby clothes and cloth diapers and whatnots from the US when she came so literally the only baby related items that we had in the house were a bottle of baby shampoo and some baby wipes. I was frantic. My In-laws promised that the SECOND that the baby was born that they would bring everything over to the house. Fantastic!!! The last thing I wanted when I brought my baby home was a house full of noisy people with power drills... I lost it. My husband finally realized I was going to cross my legs until I had some damned baby furniture and had a long conversation with his family. They finally relented. WIN!!
Plans were made for the delivery of the crib (which he has yet to sleep in haha) and the dresser. I felt immensely better. My nursery would no longer echo, it would finally look like a baby was going to live here. I was very pleased. Everything was delivered and taken into the nursery in pieces. I thought this rather strange but figured it had something to do with the space in the moving truck. No worries, we still had a few days until the baby would arrive. A day or so later we went to tackle the task of putting everything together. We lay out all of the pieces and my heart dropped as we noticed that a key component was missing... They had carefully and meticulously removed and pocketed the screws... Every.. SINGLE... ONE.......
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