He Grasps the Heel

My mother found out she was having triplets a week before we were born.

As the story goes, she went in for a routine check up for her twins. Back in 1973, ultrasounds were just beginning to be widely utilized (but not in Blue Earth, Minnesota). As my mother trekked into Dr. Schotzko's office, she wondered with him about some of the movements inside of her. Her twins seemed awfully active.  The doctor ordered an X-ray, which was the method of in vitro sight in Blue Earth at least, and was surprised to discover a fourth backbone: one mother and three children.

My mother thought it best to tell my father in a more subtle way so she wrote him a note. I can see my mother's smirk now as she, a twenty-four-year-old teacher, handed the envelope to the front desk at the school where my father, a twenty-three-year-old teacher at Rake High School, taught. Supposedly it was delivered in person to my father in the staff lounge, a pistachio green basement filled with both fake leather sofas and cigarette smoke (it was the 70's after all). As he opened the epistle, his face turned ashen and his co-workers, all the teachers who knew that this young, rosy cheeked newbie teacher who was about to have twins, wondered if he was all right.

Pacing back and forth, my father put one hand on his hip and one on his thinning hair. "I've got to find another crib. I've got to find another crib."

Most families don't grow in this way. Incrementally they generally expand by one, but in the most blessed cases (I say that tongue in cheek) by two or more. I have always wondered how my parents dealt with the expansion. Were they overwhelmed by noise, or mouths to feed, or inconsistent sleep (if any at all)?

My guess is, they were all of those. Even with single children, a disruption of sleep, a disruption of meals and a disruption of quite solitude can be a challenge. But multiples offer a distinct other pressure.

As we find out from the story of Jacob and Esau.

To be honest, there aren't many biblical families that suffer more loneliness than Jacob's family. Prone to fits of deception, selfishness and fear, Jacob profiles to me as someone who you really want to like, but can never quite get there because you can't trust him. In essence, Jacob finds a way to isolate himself from almost everyone important in his life and his (and their) loneliness is apparent in the book of Genesis.

Right from the beginning, at birth, Jacob doesn't want his brother to get anything that he doesn't have. As Esau is exiting into the world, Jacob is grasping his heel (which is what the name 'Jacob' means - 'He Grasps the Heel'). Esau gets his name from his redness. Supposedly when he was born he had a full carpet of red hair and a shining red face. I think it's interesting that couples back then seemed to wait until their kids were born and then named them, rather than going through the lists of most popular names for the year 1840 B.C. and thinking, hmmm, we're really stuck between Mephibosheth and Maher-shalal-hash-baz.  What do you think?

I suppose it's best to point out the obvious at this point: family dynamics prove that there is no such thing as a 'normal' family. Throughout the scriptures, families struggle to thrive and survive in a harsh world and sometimes the difference between success and failure is putting oneself in the right place for blessing regardless of one's right to that blessing. Rebekah's chosen son, Jacob, who comes across as a beautiful, impish momma's boy, was about to be left out of the inheritance to his hairy red brother, Esau, who was Isaac's favorite.  Thus, Rebekah, forces the hand of her almost blind and slightly-deaf husband.

Perhaps it's just me, but I get a sense of loneliness in Rebekah and Isaac. In the midst of their wandering through the wilderness of life, we aren't told much about their interactions. Abraham gets roughly thirteen chapters to tell his story; Jacob gets about twenty-five. Isaac gets roughly three. Yet we find a pulsing narrative devoid of large amounts of speaking. This couple doesn't seem to talk and it repeats itself in Jacob's wives later on.

But for the moment, the twins don't really seem to get along. Their differences seem to be too great. And so these differences in interests, family dynamics and tradition all seek to cause a wedge of distance between them.

For Jacob and Esau, the stick that breaks the donkey's back is the deception over Isaac's blessing. On a very important day, Esau was to go out and bring back some wild game with his bow and arrow, prepare it for Isaac and then his father would download his blessing onto him. Did you ever wonder why the rest of the family was not invited to this momentous occasion? It feels like Rebekah and Jacob should have at least been invited to be in attendance, but from Genesis 47, it seems like this was a father/eldest son kind of meeting.

Would Rebekah have felt rejected that her favorite son would receive nothing? Would she have been lonely? Would Esau have felt isolated from his mother and twin brother? Perhaps those are 21st century questions placed on the backs of 19th century B.C. people. But it seems like this penetrating scourge of rejection, abandonment and isolation incubates an epidemic of loneliness that causes people to make difficult (and not always positive) choices.

As we continue the story of Jacob and Esau through the next days, reread these texts and begin to look at these narratives from the perspective of isolation: What would this text have looked like if the narrative told us about Isaac and Rebekah's journey in marriage which included mutual respect and communication? What would this have looked like if Jacob would have sought his brother's well-being rather than cheating him out of his birthright for a bowl of soup?

In my isolation, what are the things that cause me to be selfish instead of looking out for others?