Two weeks ago was my birthday. There’s something about reaching a new decade that is a big deal, and turning fifty felt particularly momentous to me. That’s a serious age, you know? It’s the first time I feel almost self-conscious to say how old I am.

My daughter and her family came to stay with us that Shabbos since they were about to move and their house was packed up. It’s always nice when they come, and that week was very quiet since it was just the youngest six kids and my husband and I at home. We had a birthday circle for me; it was low key but nice.

A week or so ago, my son-in-law told me that as a surprise for my daughter’s birthday at the end of November, he was getting a photographer to do a family photo shoot on Friday and they asked my husband and I to participate, which of course we were glad to agree to.

On Friday morning, my husband offered to get the kids ready for school since he knew I had a very exhausting and physically challenging week. (I had traveled to Beit Shemesh to pack up all of my mother’s things, gotten a serious asthma reaction to the dust and was completely out for the next day with terrible muscle pain and breathing difficulties, then slowly coming out of that for the next couple of days.) I was glad to be able to sleep in for another hour, and since he took dd6 to get her stitches taken out (she fell and cut her chin open to the bone a couple of weeks ago) after getting the three boys to school, when I got up, the house was quiet.

Soon after our three teenagers came home and I suggested they join us for the photoshoot. I was sure their sister would be happy to have pictures with them. But they refused, saying it didn’t make sense for them to be there if all of the siblings weren’t going to be in the picture. I disagreed, but Shabbos preparations had been done and they wanted to go to shul to learn, so I wasn’t going to force the issue.

My husband and I went over with my mother to my daughter’s house. When we got into the house, I heard many voices shout out, “Surprise!”, and start singing Happy Birthday. I couldn’t believe it – every single one of children and grandchildren were there! I was so deeply touched and overwhelmed, and of course I started crying in the first few seconds when I realized what happened.

Since four of five of our married children live in Jerusalem/Beit Shemesh, it’s a really big deal for all of them to have coordinated being there together. One had asked to come for Shabbos and was staying with us. All of the others had made arrangements without me knowing anything.

As far as the boys who ‘went to shul to learn’, they had all headed over to their sister’s house to be there for the surprise. What about the four youngest children who were supposed to be at school? My husband had taken them all to my daughter’s house instead of to school, though I did get a call from a teacher asking why ds11 didn’t come. Not knowing anything about the plan, I told her my husband had taken care of the kids that morning and I didn’t know what happened, but probably our son had wanted to stay home to spend time with our daughter who was visiting from Jerusalem.

Then they told me not only was everyone there for my birthday, but the photoshoot wasn’t for my daughter’s birthday, but for mine! Well-known to all of my children is my huge disappointment that at the last two weddings we didn’t have a family photo with all of our family members present. We tried to do a family photo when we had Shabbos sheva brachos in February, and then tried again when four of the five married kids were here for Pesach (the other family took a photo when they came and we thought we could photoshop it all together), but it just didn’t work out.

In fact, that morning when I was thinking about the photoshoot for my daughter’s birthday, I was thinking about how much I wanted a family photo and wondering what it would take to get one done. I concluded that at this stage of life, getting everyone together at once was highly unlikely short of at another family wedding. So maybe each time one family came to visit, I could take a picture of them, then take a picture of our core family living at home, and put the pictures of each family around our family picture?

You can only imagine how moved I was that they were all here to participate in the family photo.

In our family photo from 2016, we were just two parents and ten children. It was so easy in those days to set up a picture! Everyone was a different height, and there were so few people.

Less than eight years later, our new photo has almost three times as many people – my mother and nineteen new family members. It’s incredible to have so many additions in such a short time. As much as I love the family picture that’s been on our wall for the last 4.5 years, I’m looking forward to replacing it with something up to date.

After the pictures were taken, my daughter told me we were having a festive birthday breakfast. I was so overwhelmed by seeing all of our family members when I walked in, that I didn’t notice the table beautifully set up.

Everything was ample and delicious, and then my son announced he had planned a game. I’m not one to enjoy games, but this was very special and showed a lot of thought and planning. He prepared eleven questions about me, and then everyone had to choose from a multiple choice response about how I would choose or respond in a given situation. Then people explained why they chose the answers they did. Being able to do this showed me how closely he listened to details I had shared at different times during phone conversations.

After that we had the birthday cake, and while we were finishing up, my husband announced he had written a grammen for my birthday. (A grammen is a rhyming song, consisting of rhyming stanzas of four lines, sung to a specific tune. It’s usually performed on special occasions.) The grammen began with telling about when I was single, and covered points of our 31 plus years of our marriage, summing up our years together. It was so beautiful.

I’m telling you, I was so tired from all those happy emotions, from seeing so many people show up with so much love and thoughtfulness.

And then my daughter told me we would all be having the Shabbos meals together in her new home! I knew she started cooking for Shabbos on Tuesday but I didn’t realize it was to prepare for the huge crowd that would be present.

After the Shabbos lunch meal, there was a birthday circle, with only those who weren’t present two weeks ago at my scaled down birthday circle sharing.

It was the most amazing, beautiful birthday celebration. I couldn’t have asked for anything nicer or more meaningful. And I’m still just so touched and astounded when I think how all of them worked together to plan this surprise and keep it from me.

Avivah