Birthdays come and birthdays go

This morning it was just me and Jacob, his brother away still, at camp; his father off at a comic convention in Chicago.  When he woke up at the ungodly hour of 6:30, I plopped down next him on the sofa. "So is there anything you want to say to me this morning, Jake?" Expecting.... I didn't know what.

"Happy birthday, Mom!" he piped up, the first of many birthday wishes from him today. Most delivered with a big hug and a kiss too.

It was odd not having Ethan around, as well. Though we had celebrated our birthdays last Sunday on camp visiting day -- his a week late, mine a week early -- it was still not quite the same as spending the actual days together.

But the biggest, oddest absence is, of course, my Mother.

This was the first birthday of my life that I didn't see or speak to her, she who has been there since the beginning, she who birthed me. It felt so odd, that sense of "something missing" hanging about me all day. That phantom limb whose faint ghost-pain keeps the bite of absence keen.

"Who else called to wish you Happy Birthday? Dan asked from Chicago when we finally connected to catch up.  "Not my mother" was my immediate reply.  "It just feels so strange to have a birthday without at least a happy birthday call from her."

"Well, it would be stranger if she DID call, wouldn't it?" He shot back, parrying with the gallows humor that those of us with dead parents use to lighten grief's load.

And yes, I laughed. And that was good.

And thus this was neither the best nor worst birthday of my life.  Fun was had. And the melancholy came and went, as it is now wont to do.

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law sent a luscious, glorious floral arrangement that took my breath away (and I then spent the day fending off the cat from devouring it).

Friday night I was taken out to dinner by a small bunch of good girlfriends.  We had a completely lovely evening, full of laughter and talk and wine and good middle-eastern food.  Conversations swirling on, we bounced from movies to kids to husbands to jobs and back around again... getting older, middle school transitions, summer reading lists... travels or lack thereof (one of us confessed to sitting on a park bench and crying whilst reading the Facebook status updates of another of us from Paris, and I could so relate).

Presents came: handmade, floral, yummy, bejeweled, and from Paris.  Many many hugs were given and taken;  my heart light as a breeze, the whole walk home.

And no, my parents never called. Not my Uncle Walter, either.

Never again.

And yes I know it's just the price of growing older, of becoming the eldest generation, as countless families before me have so evolved.

I don't like it.  I don't have to like it.

But it surely beats the alternative.

They go to 11!

Summer 2013: Ethan, off to camp!

Summer 2013: Jacob, waiting for the school bus!

Today my boys officially become Tweens! (Though, truth be told, Ethan has seemed like one for some time now.)

Eleven years ago today, right now, I was being wheeled out of surgical recovery and into my room, groggy but eager to hold my new sons tight and never let go.

I had fallen in love the minute I'd seen them, floored by the fierceness of the lioness awakened, that feeling that I would fight tooth and nail, would die to protect these tiny beings I had just officially met moments before.

Though of course I knew them already, intimately, for months as they swam inside me, tumbling about, tussling for space, occupying my every waking thought and visiting my dreams.

And now, of course, it's time to start letting go. And it has begun.

Ethan is off at summer camp this year. Two whole months.

The strangeness of mornings and evenings without him still shocks. I miss him sharply, and on this day most keenly.

We have visited once, and will again before he comes whirling home, tanner, taller, grown and matured in ways I cannot yet know.

Jacob is once more at his school's Summer Academy, which, joyfully, they make as much like camp as school. They tackle academics in the morning, and then the afternoons are for fun: swimming, art, cooking, playgrounds, plus a weekly all-day field trip.

Jacob keeps asking where Ethan is, even though he knows. And while he is now getting the lion's share of my attention, he would still rather have his brother along for the ride.

And now, today their birthday, it will feel so odd to celebrate with Jacob alone, Ethan phoning it in, as it were, the call from camp scheduled for 7 pm.

But I suppose it's just a shadow of years to come when Ethan has flown the coop while Jake is still here with us, moving ahead at his own pace, tethered by need as well as love.

On birthdays we look back as well as forward, and the years have just whipped by, haven't they?

I documented this last year, with pictures from every birthday leading up to their tenth, in my post: Counting up to TEN! as well as telling you about their Last Day of Nine.

And two years ago, I shared more details of the day of their birth, here: Nine Years and Counting.

And the year before that, I wrote my boys a love letter on their eighth birthday: A Good Day to be Born


So, Happy Birthday, my beautiful Boys!

It's been a wonderful eleven years with you and I can't wait to see what this next year has waiting for us around the bend!

Happy Birthday, Daddy Jim

My Dad, September 2009

Today would have been my father's 96th birthday, had he still dwelt among the living. I almost feel guilty, so raw and fresh is my grief in having just lost my mother, that the pain of my father's passing - three years ago - feels most pale and ghostly by comparison.

Mom & Dad on his 89th birthday, 2006

Thankfully, the vivid memories of the horrible three months of his dying are fading, and what remains are wistful, warm memories of the loving father he was, my whole life.

Me & Dad on my high school graduation day, 1977

Dad loved celebrating birthdays, and there were so many memorable parties. I traveled to Sarasota Florida for his 80th, a bash he threw at Pelican Cove - the retirement community my parents were living in. Dad was in his element, surrounded by friends and family, drinking champagne and telling stories.

Mom & Dad at his 90th birthday party, 2007

For his 85th, I couldn't travel - being in the middle of my pregnancy with the twins and grounded by my OB - so I threw him a party here in New York.

The cheapest space I could find turned out perfect - the local Hungarian Hall, as my dad was always proud of his Hungarian (Jewish) ancestry, even though the only words he could speak in Hungarian were "Jo Istenem!" (pronounced yo ishtenem, meaning "Oh, my god!") and something filthy taught to him by a Hungarian cook at summer camp that caused his mother to wash his mouth out with soap when he repeated it to her upon his return home.
 

Dad with daughter-in-law Bern and his 3 grandsons, 2007

One unfortunate consequence of having the generations in my family so spread out, is that my children never got to know the vital, full of life man he was, as his fading away began when they were toddlers still. My kids' main memories of their Grandfather are of him sleeping on the sofa through most family gatherings. Though in pictures there is evidence of how much he enjoyed his grandsons' presence in his life.

 

Dad, you were a good man, a good father. Mom loved you right up to the end and missed you, acutely, every day of her nearly three years without you.

Happy Birthday Daddy, wherever you are.

March 25th will always, for me, belong to you.

Dad, 1961, photo by Bruce Steinhardt

90 is the new 90

My mother turned 90 yesterday, and she is finally starting to look close to her age. It's something of a shock to both her and us, who have assumed her youthfulness would go on forever.

This year has been harsh on her. Tough on all of us.

Last year at 89?

Mom & me on her 89th birthday last year

Still going strong. We drove out to Coney Island to visit with friends, made a full day of it, took Grandma out to dinner at a diner near her NYC home when we got back to Manhattan.

But this year?

Wheelchair bound now, post broken-hip fall; sleeping much of the time (her heart not pumping efficiently enough to give her a full day's energy). Living in a nursing home. Still bruised from her latest fall.

Danny and the boys and I came out from the city by train (the car is still in the shop) and my Uncle Walter - my mother's 85 year-old "baby brother" - picked us up and drove us to the nursing home which is just a mile from his house.

We gathered in one of the small lounges, just off the dining room, where there was a table, sofa, chairs.
 

Uncle Walter & Mom

Three generations

Walter brought flowers. We brought a cake (chocolate - is there any other kind?) and candles - nine, one for each decade.

 

We visited for a while, ate cake, interspersed hugs and kisses with stories. Mom napped in her chair, on and off throughout the proceedings.

Birthday kisses from Jake

I gave her a bracelet, a simple string of blue-grey pearls on an elastic cord. Something easy to wear, not too valuable, as things of value are not possible to keep in a nursing home (the sad truth).

I had no idea they would be the exact same shade as the shirt she was wearing today, a bit of serendipity, something cheerful to cut into the sadness that was running a deep vein throughout the afternoon.

Walt told winding stories of their childhood together. Tales of their parents, and the candy store they ran together; of his father's earlier work as a waiter, filling in some details I had not heard before.

(The children were bored. They played video games. Hopefully, someday they will have interest in  the currently unimaginable past.)

I hadn't realized Grandpa Joe had worked in high-class joints like the Waldorf, and been instrumental in founding the waiters union, NYC Local 1.

They talked about their grandfather, their father's father, remembered only as Zayde (Yiddish for grandfather), first name obliterated by time. Walt remembered how harsh and bristly his beard was, like razor blades, and how his father had inherited that same rough stuff.

"You have a beard like none other I have ever seen!" declared his barber when Grandpa Joe went in for his twice monthly fancy shaves, "It's tough as nails!"

Walt doesn't have this. Did it die out with my grandfather's generation, or is a steel wool beard in store for my boys when, in a few years, they sprout facial hair?

(This is why I feel it so important to gather these stories now, while those who lived them first hand are still among us and remembering. That world has long faded away, and yet my children walk into the future carrying the genes of their ancestors with their every step. these are their stories too, even if they don't know it yet.)

We took leave of Mom as dinner was being served, handed out the remains of the cake to the folks at her table.  She looked so sad, sitting there in her wheelchair, dozing off, waiting to be served.

I had to work hard to walk away without spilling over into sobs, remembering my father's bountiful 90th birthday celebration just five years ago, with abundant food, family and friends gathered 'round; not this paltry, anemic thing we had just done, too slight to be called a party.

Mom with birthday flowers and cake

Mom, I know this is not how you wanted it to be, but you made it to 90.

And 90 is still 90, a big deal. Nine decades.

And I know you don't think so, are distressed by how much you now look like "an old woman" but you are still so beautiful, so beautiful to us all.

Happy Birthday Mom! We love you!

Happy Hopeful Birthday

It's August 10th, which means it's my birthday again (seems to happen every year, go figure) and so I'm over at Hopeful Parents again, with my monthly post:

Of Birthdays and Balloons

So go read me there. Please? (It IS my birthday, after all.)

(52, if you want to know.)

Thanks!

And if you're coming over for a visit for the first time from Hopeful Parents?

I'm sorry. It appears that you're going to have to dig back a bit to find posts on special needs parenting. I've been so caught up in all the care-taking with my elderly mother, and then there was that whole highly distracting BlogHer conference thing. And recent birthdays and whatnot.

Try clicking this link for my Posts about Autism.

Or here for Posts about Jacob.

And if you're interested in issues of siblings and special needs, may I recommend my Special Needs Sibling Saturdays guest post series, which has been on hiatus since last December but which will be starting up again in the fall.

Of course you can just noodle around my blog willy-nilly, any way you want, too. Make yourself at home and thanks for visiting.

Counting up to TEN!

Double digits?

Yep, we got 'em!

Ten years ago today at exactly this time, 10:12 in the morning, you came into this world, my sons.

(Jake I know your birth certificate says 10:13 but that's just a formality because your head was out and you were screaming your lungs out in protest while it was still 10:12. Believe me, even drugged up on the c-section happy juice, I remember that.)

I have already told the story here (twice!) of how amazing that day was: last year when you turned nine, and the year before that when you became eight. So no need to rehash.

Let me just say, I am so excited as you stand here, on the cusp of your official "tweendom," headed soon into teenagehood and so much more beyond that.

Being an older mom (and feeling more and more ancient each day) can be very useful, sometimes. It means I have friends with much older (even adult) children, helps me to have some perspective on this whole growing-up-process thingie.

I know that the transformations to come will surprise and astound all of us. I look ahead three short years and see you already have a Bar Mitzvah date (October 10, 2015 if you're into long range planning).

Ethan, this is your last year of elementary school, and middle school awaits (and getting you into a good one, the bane of NYC public school existence, is my nearly full time job for the next few months). There is so much you have been looking forward to about this, your "senior" year, most of all when you will dominate the basketball court as a 5th grader.

Jacob, you have finished your two years as a "Level Two" student at your wonderful school, and are moving up to "Level Three" with new teachers in a new building. I hope the transition goes smoothly for you, and that this year's teachers will love you as much as your last. I'm thinking with how lovable you are, they certainly will, and promise I will be by your side to make sure you feel safe secure and happy as you negotiate the changes.

And, as much as I am looking forwards, birthdays always make me look backwards, too. So here it is, counting up to ten:

ZERO (1 day old)

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN! (and impossible to get them in one photo together)

Happy Birthday again, my wonderful sons, the adventure continues...

Last Day of Nine

Today was the boys' last day of being nine.

(Happy and sad, all at the same time, tumbling away inside of me: missing their little-boy-ness gone away forever now; excited about their growing, unfolding, becoming the big boys and young men they will be)

We had their birthday party today, a jam-packed affair: movie, pizza (burger for Jake) and then a hands-on tour of our local Rita's where the manager, Sandie, has become a friend. The boys made watermelon ice and got to taste a sample of their handiwork, yum!

Ethan and friends at lunch

Making ices at Rita's

And, oh, the cakes! Once again I was up nearly all night making the cakes. (Probably my last year for this too.)

Jake 2012 cake: Batman again!

Ethan 2012 cake: KNICKS!

That's it for today, folks, just a few pictures to share.

Ethan is FINALLY asleep (his plan to stay awake until midnight so as to usher in the first moment of 10 has failed).

Now to prepare for tomorrow, their ACTUAL birthday. We'll celebrate with a trip to Long Island to see their Grandma (my mom) and then back into the city for dinner at...  Clyde Frasier's Wine and Dine. And yes, there is a basketball court INSIDE the restaurant.

(Do I know what makes my boys happy or what?)

Monday Listicles: 10 Wonderful Things about BIRTHDAYS

I haven't done Stasha’s Monday Listicles in a dog's age. But today's topic is "BIRTHDAYS" and as the boys turn 10 at the end of this week and my (Ahem!) significantly-more-than-that birthday (52nd) is not far behind, I though I'd better participate.

And I want to be fun and light today, as my life so is NOT at this moment... so (conjuring frothy, frothy thoughts from the far recesses of my brain) here is my list of:

TOP 10 WONDERFUL THINGS ABOUT BIRTHDAYS!:

1.  People have to be really nice to you. OR you can make them feel really guilty if they're not. Either way, it's a win. (Wait, did I just say that out loud?)

2.  Birthday cakes. And have I ever told you I make kick-ass ones for my boys? No? See here:

 

3.  Childhood memories - mine. I could tell you about pretty much all the birthdays of my childhood: beach picnics and backyard barbecues, pointy pink party hats and unwrapping beloved barbie dolls. For a few years we found ourselves in Maine with my cousins' family in mid-August, and as Annette's birthday is a scant four days after mine, we would make these marvelous co-celebratory lobster dinners.

Another thing that occurs regularly in mid-August is the Pleiades meteor shower. One night in  Maine, smack in the middle of our birthdays, I remember the grown-ups waking all the kids up and hustling us outdoors in our PJs at midnight, wrapped in quilts and blankets to lie on the ground and look up at the heavens.  I saw the sky above us exploding in light as a seeming million stars streaked across, some appearing to travel all the way down to the cliffs we lay atop, to douse themselves into the ocean that lay just beyond.

4.  Childhood memories - creating them for the kids. Since we live in the city and don't have a yard, backyard barbecues are definitely out. We do, however, live right near a great city park - Riverside Park. And thus for the first seven years of their lives, the boys had wonderful, huge, blowout parties in the park.

This meant we could invite everyone we wanted to, whole families always welcome. And we got incredibly lucky, because summer afternoons in NYC? Often means thunderstorms. But for seven years (7!) in a row, we had good weather on their birthday party days. And then finally for their 8th birthday I had the feeling our luck had run its course, plus the boys were getting big for just running amok or being entertained by a very patient clown.

Boys Birthday Party 2006

So we're now doing events. This year: a movie (Ice Age: Continental Drift) followed by pizza, followed by a behind the scenes tour at our local Rita's Ices (where we have become friends with the manager) and actually getting to help make a batch of Italian ice. And then eating it, of course.

5.  Having a nice quiet dinner alone with my husband. (Stop laughing, we may have actually pulled this off once or twice.)

6.  Having a cousin who paves the way for me. You may have heard me mention this before, but my other cousin, Jessie, the sister to Annette, is nearly exactly my age, having been born four months ahead of me, in April. We were incredibly close as children, and still are in ways I can't begin to describe, even if a month can go by, these currently busy days, without a phone call.

And thus I have always had four months to adjust to whatever age I am about to turn. Having the certain knowledge in the pit of my being that Jess and I are "the same age" as soon as she flips over to the next digit, I feel a part of me doing so in lock-step up as well.

So unlike folks who cling to their previous age until the day before their birthday, fighting the inevitable tooth and claw, I will find myself claiming to be my next age, quite unconsciously, from mid April on. Therefore all the possible trauma about aging has been removed from my actual birthday, and it's just a good excuse to eat and drink well, with people I love. Win-win.

7.  Being a tourist in my own city. For years I had a tradition of celebrating my birthday by doing the kind of fun, touristy things we tend to do only when we have out of town visitors, but doing them instead with a close friend or two, a mate, or by myself if necessary. I've been up to the top of the Empire State Building, out to see the Statue of Liberty, and circled my city on a tour boat.

What stands out the most is my birthday spent up at the top of the World Trade Towers, observing the city and surrounds from the observation deck, followed by lunch at Windows on the World. I had imagined taking my (as yet unconceived) kids there someday. Gone. Gone. Gone.

8.  Recalling, vividly, every year of my kids lives. As birthday time rolls around I always start to marvel again at how big they've grown in just a year, how far they have come in their development, albeit at different paces.  It sends me to the photo album - OK, technically to the virtual one that is the iPhoto program on my computer - to look up birthdays and years past, loving simultaneously the little boys they were and the big boys they have become.

9.  Recalling, vividly, every moment of the day my boys were born. Ethan and Jacob came into this world a scant twelve days shy of my own (42nd) birthday, and therefore I have claimed them as my best birthday present EVER.

At our birthday time, and especially ON their actual birthday I find myself reliving that whole special day; from the incredible anticipation of leaving our home as two, knowing that we would be returning as four, to the first time I laid eyes on my darling boys and my heart instantly tripled in size, to my first sleepless night with their little burrito-bundled bodies in my arms.

(Unless it's also the day of their party that year, when I would find myself running around like an exhausted headless chicken, getting everything and everybody ready for the ensuing fun and mayhem.)

10.   Cake. I know I listed it twice. Because it IS. JUST. THAT. GOOD. Especially homemade. Especially when topped with ice cream.

And there you have it folks. Not a single word about death or autism. For today, at least. Tune in tomorrow...

It's (almost) my Birthday, and I'll post if I want to

My birthday is tomorrow, the 10th, but as I'm posting this so late at night, well, by the time you read it, it most certainly WILL be my birthday.

I can't really put up a birthday post on the 10th because that's my Hopeful Parents posting day, so all you will find on the 10th is my jumper post leading you to read me on the Hopeful Parents site. (Note to self: WRITE the damn HP post already, OK?)

And so I am posting though I don't have much to say. Or rather I have so much to say that it is an amorphous swirl in my brain, not coalescing into anything near brilliance anytime soon. And so I'm breaking all the rules here. Handing you a ruminating ramble today. Because it's (nearly) my birthday and I can do what I want to, right?

I am SUPPOSED to put up my fabu BlogHer11 recap post by today, or certainly tomorrow (not gonna happen) and I have also been told it is imperative to have something really wonderful, a strong post I'd prepared in advance to slap up on the old blog to wow folks that I met at the conference who are coming by to visit for the first time (also, clearly not happening).

What I am, mostly, right now, is a (by the time you're reading tihs) 51 year-old woman who is tired. Really really tired. Bone weary tired.

The BlogHer conference was wonderful and strange and so different from my day-to-day existance that now that I'm back in the thick of things it feels like a dream. One of those powerful dreams you mull over the next day in your waking state and want to write down the details of upon awakening so as not to lose the lessons therein; but a dream, nonetheless.

For four days I didn't have to think about what other people were wearing or eating or their bathroom habits. OK, maybe I had to THINK about it, as I did have 2 (wonderful) roommates who DID want me to eat with them and consult on outfits and we DID have to negotiate our showers so as to all be able to be on time. But I wasn't RESPONSIBLE for any of that for anyone but me.

So for four days I was off the hook of mothering responsibilities. And It. Was. Glorious. I could have been at the worst conference in the world, and I would have still been in heaven. But instead I was at a pretty terrific one. With some great people. In San Diego. California. On the West Coast. For the first time in nine years.

I love being a mother. I wouldn't trade that job in for anything. But it IS relentless and wearing me out sometimes. Especially the whole autism thing. I needed a break. And I didn't know how much I needed a break until I had one.

The problem is, this was a very busy, very intense break. And while it cleared my mind, it was four days of WORK in so many ways. Four days of being "on" all the time.

And so I came back needing a bit of rest, some down time, and instead found myself thrown back into full time mothering, as Ethan was already DONE with camp, and Jake's summer school ended with a half day today. And there is now a MONTH before the kids go back to school.

Yes, I said a month, because New York City has not fallen into lockstep with most of the rest of the nation and started sometime in August. A few days after Labor day it is then.

We'll be making the most of it, having fun in the city, trying to escape as often as we can. But still, looking down the barrel of a whole month is daunting. Especially when the kids don't get along. And they don't.

But I don't want to end this post on a whine, on a complaint, on the downside.

So I will say this: 51 years on this planet and most days I am still happy to greet the new day, eager to discover what it has in store for me.

I want my life to be like the Tardis, bigger on the inside, with ever expanding rooms for whatever I need. Like in one of those wonderful dreams where you go through a passageway to discover a whole new wing in your apartment you hadn't know existed before.

Some doors potentially opened at this conference, and I am looking forward to stepping through, walking into new territory, reclaiming parts of myself that are more than "just" Mom.

Because 51 is not too old to learn new tricks and I've got years ahead of me (hopefully) to dance on into. Anybody want to Rumba?



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Wordless Wednesday: Birthday Cakes & Flying Balloons!

For Wordless Wednesday? Scenes from the boys' 9th birthday party this past weekend.

Yes, I make "The Cakes" again this year. Jake changed his mind, no Flying Pig. I was a little disappointed and a little relieved.

Wanna see them? Good! Here they are:

Gogos for Ethan and Basketball for Jake

Yep, completely round (GF/CF) Basketball cake

We added some REAL Gogos onto the cake, because more = better, ya know.

And Jacob? Loves to set balloons free. Did when he was three. Still does at nine.

Jacob happy = Joy

Happy, happy, happy nine year old boys.

I’m linking up to Wordless / Wordful Wednesdays all OVER the place... at Angry Julie Monday... at 5 Minutes for Mom... at live and love...out loud... at Dagmar*s momsense... at Parenting by Dummies.


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