The day after Mother's Day

Me and Mom on Mother's Day, 2012, her last

I couldn't write on Mothers Day, the feelings too raw, the wounds still unclosed. Yes, even here, more than a year out and counting. So I gave myself the day to muddle through.

I shined at breakfast - lox and bagels produced by my offspring and husband - but then faded midday. In spite of abundant sunshine beaming in through our windows, the winter's accumulation of grime rendering them near opaque white in the brilliance, I took to my bed in the early afternoon.

"Mom gets to nap on Mothers Day!" I declared, making it sound fun. But really it was a retreat from the empty space my mother should have occupied.

Ethan was mad that I had slept though our potential stroll through the park. Instead we had a rushed half jog along Riverside to Jake's playing field, peeling off as we got there, me to accompany Jake to his weekly baseball game, Dan joining Ethan on the basketball courts nearby.

I love my son dearly, but must admit, watching special needs sports is simultaneously like watching paint dry and having your heart ripped open repeatedly. The pace is glacial, the triumphs beautiful and painful. I sat on my blanket in the sun and baked myself into a semblance of peace.

Afterwards, waiting outside the boat basin cafe for our table to come up and Ethan and Dan to appear (hopefully somewhat concurrently, and in the right order) Jacob befriended a dog named Sophie and talked to me about classical music. He picked up a stick and wanted to conduct violins "like Squidward" so I lazily googled "violin concerto" planning to let YouTube entertain my boy. I had forgotten the landmine there.

My mother loved music. My childhood home had been filled with it, from classical to folk to jazz and then rock as her musical taste evolved through the 60s and 70s.

My mother's amethyst and glass beads moved with a sweet heaviness around my neck as I swayed to the tinny Tchaikovsky pouring out of my iPhone. My mother also loved sunshine and the water, flowering trees and children. I was surrounded by the things she loved, as I often am, she who took such joyous bites of out the scrumptious world.

The rest of my boys arrived with perfect timing and we were seated at an outer table overlooking the sunset river, just as I had desired. Ethan was a bit grumpy surveying the menu, declaring nothing to be quite to his liking and questioning why we had to eat there.

"Because I love it here. It makes me happy to eat outdoors and by the water, and it's Mother's Day so I get to choose." I was trying not to whine. I really didn't want a scene.

For once he took my answer without a fight and resigned himself to a dinner of calamari and fries, supplemented with bites of everyone else's dishes.

I then did something I rarely do, I ordered a "Mommy drink" something silly and frozen and alcoholic, because dammit it was Mother's Day. It came with three maraschino cherries on top which Ethan devoured with abandon, his first time encountering such beasts. 

"Is this what they mean when they say 'and a cherry on top?'" he asked. Yup.

We walked back home through the park as the twilight thickened, the air heavy with the promise of a soon-coming summer. Up ahead the the George Washington Bridge's majestic sway cut through the haze, spanned over to the other shore.

"Look, Grandma's favorite bridge"  I pointed out. But I didn't have to. They knew.

They all knew.

Of Years Old and New

It's been forever...

Dozens of posts started and abandoned, written in my head, in the shower, never making it to screen or paper...

I can't say "I'm back!" Because I don't know if I'll be able to do this again tomorrow...

But I'm here today.

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year, indeed.

Telling you that I want to write again, that I need to...

That I feel diminished in the not writing, that I miss my voice, too. (Thank you so much to all who have written words of encouragement whenever I have chanced to scratch out a post, these past desert-dry months.)

This has been a tough year.

In a little over two weeks, it will be exactly one year since I lost my mother. (January 17th, to be precise.)

It feels like both yesterday and forever ago that I held her hand, watched her die, wept my goodbye.

I have been treading lightly on this earth ever since, simultaneously here and not here,  Gratefully bound by love and obligation to those, my family (sons, husband, cat), whose need for my presence keeps me tethered in the now, I am nonetheless also floating in the ether, stretching out my open, empty hand toward my mother who keeps drifting farther beyond, never again to reach back and claim it.

I know I need to return, fully, to my life; that this dual, quantum existence cannot spin on indefinitely. I am a paler reflection of my old, colorful self and my family deserves more. I deserve more.

And yet I also know this mourning is a process that I need to go through to come out the other side. There is no around. No shortcut. No easy out. Only through.

I am hoping the year's anniversary will spiral me upward, into a higher orbit, the next stage of mourning that spins me out toward the future.

~*~*~

Tonight I gave away my mother's beanie babies.  A woman of normally impeccable, modern, sophisticated taste, she nonetheless had a soft spot for stuffed animals in general, and beanie babies in particular. She thought them "cute" and had amassed quite a collection of them before, I believe, my father threatened (idly) to divorce her if she purchased any more.

In the many downsizing moves I had boxed them up, except for a few that followed her into the nursing home - a beanie cat perched here, a flamingo there - on her paltry few furnishings.

I don't really want them (except for her favorite cat and flamingo) and yet could not bear to throw them out, so they became yet another box cluttering up our overstuffed apartment, the belongings of the dead commingled with the living.

And then tonight, New Year's Eve, we had an invitation to a party, for the first time in ages. A simple thing really, just three families, hanging out together, but so right for us. My friend who was hosting has three daughters; the middle one has a shortly upcoming birthday and loves nothing in the world so much as stuffed animals.

And so it came to pass that in addition to the champagne, strawberries and sparkling cider we brought to the party, came an enormous box of beanie babies.  Watching the sheer delight wash over my friend's daughter as she unearthed bear after bird after kangaroo from that box made my heart flutter.

My mother loved children so much (I'm sure it was part of her attraction to the beanie creatures, her real baby having left home so long ago) and I know that nothing would have made her happier than seeing her collection lighting up the world of a little girl.

~*~*~

We raised our glasses of champagne and cider to toast the new year as fireworks began to burst and boom in nearby Central Park.

And so I raise my glass to you, my friends and readers....

To a New Year, sweeter than the bitter one that has just come to its end.

May there be joy for us all. And healing hearts.

And fireworks, brightly hued and full of spangle; shimmering in the darkness, lighting up our midnights.

Happy 2013!

New Year's Fireworks in NZ by Neil Kramer

Happy New Year, Friends!

Also?

The kids go back to school, the kids go back to school, the kids go back to school!!!!!!!!

Don't get me wrong, I have loved much of my vacation time with the kids.

We went to my in-laws house in the country, we skied (well, some of us did), we sledded, we made a snowman, we drove in a blinding snowstorm in our decidedly NON-4-wheel-drive ancient Toyota and lived to tell the tale.

We came back to the city and went to movies and museums and watched WAY too much TV and made lots of cookies and popcorn.

But enough is enough.

I am dreading the rise tomorrow morning at 0-dark-hundred and the fight with Jake to get ready and down to the bus on time, but thrilled with the idea of a few blessed hours in the day to not be the cruise director and referee so that I can GET THINGS DONE.

Really, the laundry pile is close to the ceiling.

(Don't you wish you had my exciting life?)

Also? I really need to start writing again. Real things, not just lists and round-ups. Because as much as I love to obsess reflect on the past, it's time to turn my eyes forward and look towards the horizon.

2013... what will you bring?

Hope it's good stuff for you all, my friends.

Light all the candles (8th Night of Hanukkah)

menorah on 6th night

It is the 8th night of Hanukkah tonight, and so we're done. Hanukkah came early this year, putting us at a bit of a disconnect with the rest of the country. We'll be well all done before the Christmas frenzy is in full bore. But so it goes some years.

Last year Christmas Eve was the 5th night of Hanukkah, the holidays overlapping nicely. Next year, thanks to simultaneous oddities of the standard western and Hebrew calendars, Hanukkah will actually cross paths with Thanksgiving, beginning the night before!

I'm still weaving in and out of my seasonal ennui, some days lighter, others darker.  Holidays are always about family, family, family and I am missing some members of mine. This week the universe conspired to remind me of my father constantly, now gone nearly three years.

I sat down to get a cup of coffee in the middle of the day on Wednesday and gather my thoughts, when I noticed the man seated next to me in the cafe, heartily enjoying a bowl of potato leak soup, one of my father's favorites. I just had to get a some myself, the silent tears dripping off my face and dropping into the bowl rendering it a bit on the salty side. Just how Dad liked it.

I was thinking about the last months of my father's life, how even up until the very bitter end, when he was barely eating anything, becoming more of a skeleton day by day, I could still often get a little soup into him, if nothing else.

Nabeyake udon or vichyssoise, pasta fagioli or avgolemono, clam chowder or chicken noodle, goulash or gazpacho; the man loved soup. And every time I make some, I conjure Dad up, if just for a little while.

And then on Thursday night, my husband and I got to spend some time with dear friends who are a generation older than we are (but young, so young in spirit and full of life).  I love them to pieces and we had a wonderful dinner and lively conversation and I enjoyed every minute of it while simultaneously feeling so sad that my father is gone and my mother fading fast. And there was our friend Al (OK, I'll name drop: Al Jaffe) a year older than my mother, but still working, still living completely independently (yes, it probably helps that his lovely wife Joyce is a decade younger, but still, that makes her no spring chicken herself).

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OK, this post was supposed to be going up yesterday, on & about the 7th night. I had written this much by Thursday and was going to finish Friday. But then I came home from my intense all day appointment in Brooklyn (the impartial hearing concerning Jacob's schooling) having been pretty much in a bubble all day, to find the news... the school shooting... all anyone can talk about, think about. And I froze.

How can I write about a cheerful holiday, about missing my father who got to live a long, fulfilling  life and become really, really old before he died, in the wake of this immense and senseless tragedy, in the wake of twenty dead children? And yet, there were my thoughts, up until Friday evening.

And so I am walking around dazed and shell shocked today; doing what I have to do, boys to basketball, lighting the final menorah, feeding everybody and washing up the boys weekly five loads of laundry. Because life, for the living keeps going on.

I cannot write about Newtown yet. I don't know if I ever will. There is no sense to be made of it. And, for once, I truly have no words. Except to say that we need vastly better mental health services in America, and with less stigma attached to getting them when we need them.

And so I'll end here, rather abruptly perhaps, because there is no way to stitch this into a smooth and seamless post. There was regular life, skipping, trudging, shuffling along. And then... the thousand ton boulder dropped into the middle of it. And aftermath. There's always aftermath.

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To conclude: last year I shared the Maccabeats & Matisyahu's wonderful Hanukkah song with you, this year I'm sharing a new song from Matisyahu... and hoping everyone had as happy a Hanukkah as possible, in spite of all the insanity and tragedy in the world.

Hanukkah Lights

The light of a thousand menorahs (actually about 20)

This past Sunday was my husband Danny's family's annual Hanukkah party. It's a giant extravaganza that has been going on forever. Early in my husband's childhood, it took place at Aunt and Uncle's homes, and then, as the family grew and grew, in his father's Bronx kosher catering hall.

Since the demise of that, it has continued, every year in varying locations, public and private, the common factors being: large, latkes, and loud.

I married into a BIG family. (Did I mention having come from a tiny one, I had always wanted a bigger family? Did I mention that one should be careful what one wishes for?)

Fortunately they are warm and welcoming, inviting and inclusive. My first experience with the Danny Family Hanukkah Party took place in 1998, the year we began to date. (That year it was in the city, as we took over half of Ben's Kosher Deli.)

It's the tradition in his family for people to bring someone to the party when it gets "serious" because it will be noted that there is a date along and there will be kind-hearted teasing about it. It is also where new engagements, upcoming Bar Mitzvah dates and impending additions to the family will be announced with much joy and congratulations.

As I may have mentioned here before (in last year's Hanukkah party post, as a matter of fact) as we walked to the subway together afterwards, heading back to the Upper West Side where we both lived, I remarked to Dan: "I've never been hugged and kissed by so many people I just met in my life." Like I said, warm and inclusive.

Big cousins = big fun

Since then we have stuffed our faces with latkes in the city and the burbs - both Jersey and Westchester - at cousin's homes, kosher delis, synagogue social halls, seminary dining rooms and hotel banquet halls. This year's constellation was Westchester & hotel. Well suited to the growing cadre of young ones who needed halls to run and play touch football in.

When Ethan and Jake were born there had been a baby lull in the family, the youngest cousin's kid being four, with a huge gang in their late teens to late twenties. But when the boys were nine months old, another little cousin joined the family, and since then every year has seen the addition of one to two new ones.

My estimate is that there were about eighteen in the ten and under crowd on Sunday.

A big part of the tradition is that every family brings a menorah, and they are all lit together at the end of the meal. This year, for the second year in a row, we let Ethan do the actual lighting of ours (sniffle, he's no longer my baby, sniffle).

Ethan chanting the candle-lighting blessing (Hebrew School paying off)

Jacob loves all the lights

There is also an obscenely huge Table of Presents that everybody drops their gifts onto when they come in (not pictured this year, for some reason, my documentary photographer skills falling somewhat short). And the final official event of the party is the present toss, where the gifts are handed out to the (mostly) kids and an unwrapping frenzy takes place amidst squeals of delight.

Presents!

"Thanks, Aunt Patty!"

Jacob groking his Star Wars book

One note of sadness crept into the festivities for me: the absence of my mother. Part of the inclusiveness of Dan's family is that my parents were invited to any and all events. Even though they were from a rather different side of Jewish culture (secular, bohemian) they did often come to the Hanukkah parties and other festivities and were warmly welcomed. 

For the past two years it was lovely to see my mother surrounded by the swirl of family and children, enjoying the scene, even if she wasn't quite sure who anyone besides her two grandsons were.

This year, wheelchair bound and hours of driving away in Long Island, taking her was out of the question. Sigh.

But let's end on a lighter note: Happy Hanukkah to y'all!

Second Thanksgiving

Mom, thrilled to be at her brother's house

Family schedules being what they were, we ended up having two Thanksgivings this year; one on Thursday at my in-laws' apartment in the city, and then a second feast on Friday, at my Uncle Walter & Aunt Eva's house on Long Island.

Mom and her brother, my Uncle Walter

Both of my cousins came in with their families and cooked up a storm. We sprang Mom from the nursing home and brought her over to Walt & Eva's house for the first time since her game-changing fall last May.

We cooked, ate, played, took a long walk in the woods, shot hoops and tossed frisbees at the local elementary school, and talked, and talked, and talked.

 

 

Mom sat with Eva (now completely bed-bound) for a long, long time, eating and talking and then finally dozing off together for a bit.

 

 

A lovely day.

Here are a few more pictures, and hopefully I will be back with more words soon.

Thanksgiving Blues

Jim & Pat's beautiful table at Thanksgiving

It's another year of Thanksgiving finding me full of mixed emotions, aware that looking backwards and feeling sad is so much easier than looking forwards and feeling hopeful.

This was the first Thanksgiving since my parents moved back north that I did not spend with my Mother. We will be seeing her today when my family does their day-late Thanksgiving celebration on Long Island. But Thanksgiving proper was spent with my husband's family in the city, a small quiet dinner with just two families (and our nephew's lovely girlfriend).

They live up high in the sky, on the top floor of their tall apartment building, and from a south facing wall of windows there is a clear cityscape view with the Chrysler Building standing out, central to it all.

The Chrysler Building is deeply significant to my mother, her favorite building in the whole world. She loves art Deco and it is a supreme example of that architectural style.  Whenever we came to events at Jim & Pat's (and we have for many many occasions since I've joined my husband's family) my parents were always invited, and my mother always seated opposite this window where her view of the Chrysler Building would be unobstructed. And she never ceased to wonder, marvel at the view.

One thing my mother has never been accused of is being unappreciative, ungrateful. She would thank Jim and Pat profusely every time she came over, would spend much time looking out over the city she loved, watching the skyscape shift from day to night, giddy in her good fortune at being invited for such a view.

And last night, every time I looked out the window and watched the Chrysler Building shining back at me, the unbidden thought kept welling up: "Mom should be sitting here, seeing this. And she likely never again will."

Two years ago, the first Thanksgiving without my father and Dan's mother was flat out hard. Last year, still, there such a sense of missing people, of present ghosts.

Three years ago, Thanksgiving day was the last time my father ever entered my home, and it was clear, that day, he was fading fast.

And now my mother is slip sliding away too; though slowly, so very slowly.

This may be her last Thanksgiving. It may not. We spin the big wheel and see where the fates take us. Either way, we're along for a bumpy ride.

I hate striding into the holiday season hand in hand with this melancholia. I long for simple good cheer. But that's not how life sits with me right now.

So I strive to feel grateful for the little things, those shiny moments, amidst the gloaming.

Shortly we will pile into our ancient but still serviceable car, drive out to Long Island to pick up my mother and take her to family, to the heart and hearth of her brother's nearby home.

It won't be the Chrysler Building, but it will more than do.

Halloween in the blink of an eye

This year: Batman & a ninja

It was Halloween yesterday, a holiday that is usually a high point of our year. Jake starts talking about it over the summer. By September it comes up nearly every day. Jake loves pumpkins and Jack O' Lanterns and all things Halloween in that passionate and obsessive way that autistic kids can love things.

For Ethan it's about the costume and the candy (the CANDY!!!!!) and the fun with friends. But for Jake it's so much more. It's something really recognizable that helps him figure out the passage of time. Halloween time comes around every year, and every year it is more or less the same.

He loves seeing his superhero friends come to life and walk all around town. He loves ghosts and witches and black cats. "Oooooh scary!" he'll say, not the least bit scared.

Jacob IS Batman

Jake loves the decorated buildings, the Halloween pop-ups that sprout in empty storefronts; is disappointed when they disappear in a sudden poof come November 1st.

But this year? I must admit that Halloween 2012 was a bit of a wash. Between the tragedy last week and then the storm, with the fear and preparations; and then the destruction all around us, I admit I was in a bit of a daze, hardly entering the holiday spirit at all.

Jake & me, in my annual "throw on a hat & call myself a witch" costume

For years now I have been obsessively making Ethan's costumes by hand (I would have done so for Jake too, but he dearly loves the store-bought ones) but this year I just knew I didn't have it in me.

Between the pressures of caring for my mother in Long Island, being in the thick of the intense middle school application process for Ethan, it having taken a month to get Jake's schoolbus straightened out and being in the midst of our legal process to get his school paid for, plus about a dozen other things I'm not even going to go into, I am worn quite thin right now, stretched to near breaking point.

Something had to give, and that was the handmade costume. So be it.

And then there was Sandy.

We live in uptown Manhattan in New York City, which means on high, high ground, well above the surge and North of the dark zone, the blackout line. We live in the land of heat and light and screens and open stores and restaurants. But all around us are those in cold and darkness.

 

So our building held its annual Halloween party, for who could deny our children their fun, their pizza and candy, their rides in the spookily decorated elevators run by the Hulk and Blackbeard.

 

But it felt strange to be celebrating amidst so much destruction and tragedy.

 

And now it's over. Jake was so sad to come to the lobby today and find the decorations all taken down. "Where did Halloween go?" he asked. Where, indeed?

Hope your Halloweens were full of less mitigated fun and joy. (And now I'm going to steel another mini Heath Bar from Ethan's stash and call it a night)

It's October 6th again, isn't it?

I was having another rollercoaster day yesterday. Actually they are all pretty much rollercoaster days, these days. Just the nature of the beast right now. But yesterday I was really feeling it.

It started a few minutes before six in the am, when Ethan padded in to tell me he had gotten up to pee and just couldn't get back to sleep. Nearly an hour and a half before he truly needed to awaken.

When I went in to their room to get Jake shortly thereafter, he woke up crying and yelling, exactly the same way he'd gone to sleep the night before.

Getting both kids out the door to school?  Took everything out of me, and it was only eight am.

The sky was crackling blue. It was a beautiful, seriously beautiful day.

But my heart just wasn't in it. I felt off. Going through the motions, but not fully inhabiting my body.

My ten-thousand item to-do list shortened only slightly, in spite of much doing all day long.

And Ethan was a cranky tired beast when I picked him up from his playdate, on our way to synagogue for our Hebrew School's annual Sukkot celebration.

In synagogue, however, there were moments of grace, of beauty. Standing one arm around each boy, my husband just to the other side of Ethan, swaying and singing ancient melodies my ancestors had chanted unto hundreds of generations back, I felt my heart opening, softening. I felt connected to something vastly larger than myself, a thing braided of community and spirit; a rooting that was much needed, deeply felt and vastly appreciated.

Jake looked over to me at one point and offered up a rare spontaneous "I love you Mommy." Ethan leaned against me and snuggled into my shoulder (he may have taken a little nap).

And then Ethan melted down over the lack of soda or pizza at the potluck supper. Declaring lasagna and other delicious food "disgusting." Sigh. He had Challah bread for dinner. And water. (But how come I'm the one who feels like a prisoner?)

And today? I was even offer (I know that's not an actual word - but do you really want to pick a fight with me today? No, didn't think so.)

And then I noticed the date.

It's October 6th.

A really crappy date for our family. (In spite of it being a dear friend of mine's birthday - Hello Elizabeth, this has nothing to do with you darling, YOUR October 6th is a lovely date.)

Two years ago today, we buried my 93 year-old mother-in-law who had passed on the 4th.

And eight years ago today?

Jake got his first autism diagnosis.

Some dates you just don't forget, even if on the surface you appear to. The sit subconsciously in the back of your skull coloring everything around them until the light bulb goes off and the connection is made.

Sad, bad, mad anniversaries.

I hate 'em.

Nothing to do but forge ahead, get through it.

And be glad that, to quote Scarlett and Jacob, "Tomorrow's another day."

Hunger

Me, pregnant in L.A., March 2002

Today is Yom Kippur, the last day of the Jewish New Year, the holiest of the holy of the Days of Awe. Also a day when adults are commanded to fast, to take in no food or drink for the entire day, from sundown to sundown (how Jewish days are measured).

There is something lovely about this tradition, and I have always enjoyed the fast, especially how it's the perfect excuse for a delicious little afternoon nap.  Also, Jews being Jews, there is always a wonderful full repast immediately afterwards, a gathering of family and friends to break the fast with, because food is truly what we do best.

But I haven't fasted since 1999.  I married in 2000, at nearly 40. So, time being of the essence, we got "to work" right away in our attempts to start a family. Thus there were two years of trying to get pregnant and then two years of being a nursing mother, and since then, just being an exhausted mom of special needs / high maintenance kids.

Now that the boys are ten, it's feeling a bit ridiculous, the never-ending excuses; so today I am semi-fasting - taking in liquids only - easing into it as it were. Plus it's still my reality that I need too much energy to look after my kids to truly fast.

So I am experiencing some hunger today, which is making me think about past hungers in my life, and an amusing story from my life, that I have yet to tell you...

When I was about four months pregnant with the twins, I took my last business trip to LA. (although I had been a frequent visitor until then, I haven't been back since). My husband, Danny, came along, both to carry on some of his own business and take care of me.

He had also accompanied me on my (similarly last) trip to the Sundance Film Festival that January, and I had truly needed his help as the "morning" sickness combined with altitude sickness to leave me in bad shape some days. (See this post for my entertaining story about nearly puking in a famous actor's lap.)

So, back to the L.A. story... we landed in the late afternoon, and it took MUCH, MUCH longer to get the rental car straightened out than we'd planned. By the time we finally arrived at our hotel, I hadn't eaten for hours. I was famished in the way that only a woman pregnant with twins in her second trimester can be famished.

And then? And then? It turned out that our lovely hotel? Had no onsite restaurant open for dinner. (Breakfast through lunch "coffee shop" only. Grrrrrrr.)

It being L.A., we were expected to retrieve our car (10 minute wait) and then drive up and down the street looking for a suitable restaurant (15 to 45 minute process). Yet I, being about to start gnawing on the desk clerk, found that idea impossible. And might have said so in less than polite terms.

We were then directed to the joint across the street, the House of Blues. Nobody's idea of fine, L.A. worthy cuisine, quite truly a tourist trap. But I didn't care. At this point I was a ravenous, crazy pregnant-with-twins starving lady.

And of course: there was a wait for a table. And once we were seated: the service was molasses slow.

At the table next to us was a couple paying their bill, clearly done with dinner. And their basket of fresh cornbread? Untouched.

Yes, I swiped it. I ate left-behind food off a stranger's table in a restaurant. I had turned all Pregnant She-Hulk: MUST. FEED. BABIES.

And my dear husband, who normally would have been mortified by such uncouth behavior didn't bat an eye. (By this point in the pregnancy, he knew better than to get between me and FOOD.)

Also? He very gallantly manhandled a waiter into taking our order pronto and putting it in as a rush.

(Possibly because he saw I was eying the uneaten half of a steak about to be left behind by a different couple at the table on our right.)

That was truly the hungriest I have ever been, or ever hope to be.

And it's good to remember that right now, today, as 5 pm rolls around and I am feeling a bit peckish, impatient in my wait to return to synagogue; eager to hear the final notes of the shofar's blast reverberate through the sanctuary, echoed by the rumbling of a thousand empty stomachs (including mine), yearning to be filled.

L'Shanah Tovah, my friends. And have a Tzom Kal (easy fast).

Days of Argh

This morning barely seems like morning as I awaken disoriented, dry-mouthed, thick-eyed; crumpled snot-filled tissues forming a crackly halo about my throbbing head. The light seeping in through the gaps between the blinds is wan, green, presaging a stormy day; dank and heavy.

It's not how Rosh Hashannah should be, these Days of Awe nearly always crisp and autumnal, sporting achingly blue skies to be glimpsed longingly from inside the synagogue's hush and thrum.

But I have not been this year, sending the menfolk off without me, this virus hitting hard as the holiday's just begun. We have managed the bare minimum tradition requires: a round challah procured, apples honey-dipped, a family meal shared, a sweet new year requested.

And now all I long for is sleep, sleep, sleep. And the room to stop spinning. And the unholy pile of dishes in the sink to wash themselves. And for my mother to walk again.

No matter how far I go in my thoughts, it keeps coming back to that: this huge lump of sadness lodged deep under my heart like that bubble of acid that would not go away throughout my entire pregnancy, spilling out if I tilted just the tiniest bit off true, to the left or right.

My mother has not been my compass for many years, yet I am hers. All she has left. But I am spinning, spinning, spinning right now, unable to find my North.

The storm outside will not come on, teasing all day with skies darkening and lightening and the air growing thicker and thicker until we are all covered in a sheen of our own sweat though we are doing nothing more strenuous than engaging in yet another internecine battle of the homework wars.

Finally, as dusk comes on and the winds begin to lash, the heavens clearly ready to finally open up at any moment, I must leave the apartment for the first time in days, driven by an empty medicine bottle of Jacob's plus the deep need see something other than these walls and my children.

But one insists on coming with: Ethan who will not be separated, even though that age is coming on soon when I will be the one clinging and fearfully watching his back as he strides away. He proceeds to be helpful, carrying bags as we make a few stops to stock our waning pantry as well as pick up his brother's necessary pills.

By the time we trudge back, laden, dying to peel off the rain jackets that were not really necessary but instead have encased us in our own steamy dampness, it has grown near dark and the wind pushes against our bodies, something substantial to resist, fight against, instead of each other, as we find our way home.

SOC Sunday: Sweet and Sour and Harlem Globetrotters

It has been a loooong time since I've participated in Stream of Consciousness Sunday. So long that when I went to find it at Fadra's joint, I found it had moved... to Jana's Thinking Place. Well, okay then.

What I have tonight is not a post, really, it's a brain dump. And since that's the definition of Stream of Consciousness Sunday, I thought: perfect! And then when the optional prompt for this week turned out to be "Who has dropped into your life and made it better?" -- even better! Because I was planning to write about a wonderful serendipitous connection, although it's group, not an individual, but still, they did quite just drop in.

So, here goes...

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Tonight is the start of Rosh Hashanah - the Jewish New Year - and we have done virtually nothing to mark it, because Danny and I are both under the weather, big time, with a nasty cold/flu/virus.

I am sick as that proverbial dog today: sore throat, chills, body aches, nausea, snot galore, clogged ears, dizzy, woozy; you name it, I've got it.  Dan is over the worst of it but still dragging his ass, and down for the count as soon as he starts to build up steam, trying to get anything done.

So the New Year which is supposed to be marked with sweetness and family and apples dipped in honey has turned into my lying on the sofa wishing the kids could possibly be quieter and just let me sleep.  I sneak off into the bedroom for short bouts of slumber but they follow me in there, not wanting to be disconnected. This is the weekend, dammit, THEIR time.

Lousy timing to be this sick, four days off for the kids and all I want is for them to be elsewhere so I can be sick and sleep in relative peace.

Also? I was supposed to write my first big post for this cool thing that dropped int my lap - I am a Harlem Globetrotters associate blogger now! (I will be at and promoting their October 7th game* in Brooklyn)

So as such, I was invited to a meet and greet and PLAY BALL with some of them this past Thursday and so I grabbed Ethan and away we went...

Ethan and I and the HARLEM GLOBETROTTERS, yo!

There is a whole large post here, that I do not have the energy or brain cells to write yet, but I wanted to say SOMETHING sooner than later, because it was a wonderful experience for us. Ethan got to go 1-on-1 with professional ballplayers. For a basketball-loving kid that is just the greatest, sweetest thing in the world.

And know what they said? He got game. Uh, huh.

So even though I'm feeling mighty sour right now, there is some sweetness too, as we head into this New year.

Happy 5773 y'all.  L'Shanah Tovah. (Cough cough cough, ack!)

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New to SOCS?  It’s five minutes of your time and a brain dump.  Want to try it?  Here are the rules…

• Set a timer and write for 5 minutes only.
• Write an intro to the post if you want but don’t edit the post. No proofreading or spell-checking. This is writing in the raw.

You can do it, too!  Click on the picture link and let's hear your 5 minutes of brilliance...

 
*I have a discount code that gets you $7 off each ticket to the Globetrotters local game - at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (the Nets new home) - on October 7th at 5 PM. I will be there with the whole family and it should be a great fun family event.

Click on this link: GLOBETROTTERS BROOKLYN EVENT and then the "Buy Tickets" link on that page, and then enter SQUASHED in the "Promotions and Special Offers" section.

**Disclosure: I am being compensated for my promotion of the Globetrotters in two ways. As an associate I will be receiving a small percentage of the money for tickets sold with my discount code. I will also receive tickets to the game for my family. All opinions of the Globetrotters and my experiences with them are unbiased and wholly my own.**

Cousins on the 4th!

Mom & cousin Annette

So my Aunt Eva is not doing well. This past Monday she needed to go from the Sub-Acute Rehab Center (what we used to call a Nursing Home back in the day) that we had specifically moved my mother to, to be near her, back into the hospital.

And so her daughters - my cousins - came wheeling in from parts North with most of their children in tow.

Greta and Mom

This turned into a bonanza of visitors for my mother, and an unexpected family-reunion style 4th of July for me. I LOVE my cousins. And there's a whole post about that percolating. But for today, just a few annotated pictures of the gang and carryings on.

The gang who stopped by to see Sylvia & I on Tuesday

After taking in the new Spider-Man movie as a whole family in the morning, the boys and I drove out to the Island on the afternoon of the 4th, leaving their Dad home to "get things done" around the house. (And he did!)

We stopped in for a brief visit with Mom, and then landed at Chez Heimer, where we quickly changed into suits for a late day beach run to the Sands Point Castle Preserve just up the road. It's a "best kept secret" beach; quiet, LI Sound, with no waves but great swimming.

After the swim we ate a hearty dinner together. Badminton was played. Jess took the girls and Ethan out to get ice cream and then bring a hot fudge sundae to my mom, who was once again delighted by the hubub of a group of visitors.

Although I hear Ethan got disgusted with all the effusive girly-girl-kissy-face going on and declared "She's MY Grandma and I love her and all, but I'm about to barf."

The kids played Apples to Apples, Uncle Walt got a birthday cake, and Jake fell asleep watching TV in the basement. I drank a cup of strong coffee and we headed home, tired, happy, and sad that an era is soon come to an end.

Because this?

Back yard at dusk

Is part of why I love coming out to the "ancestral home" in Port Washington so much (besides the biggest draw: the people I love dearly). The woods and fields just beyond my Aunt & Uncle's house at the end of a dead end street that were the scene of much unsupervised cousinly roaming in my childhood.

Sitting on their back porch, looking out, it feels like you're in the jungle, deeply communing with nature.

And you are. But you're also a three minute drive from a store that sells organic rotisserie chicken, crusty fresh bread, and Haagen Dasz.

It was a lovely fourth.

Missing my Father, Passover Edition

Batman & Joker at the Seder table, 2012

Food is the great memory-soup-pot stirrer. And so moments with my father often rise up to slap me in the face when I am in the midst of fixing food. (I would have said "cooking" but anyone who knows me would have done a spit-take, as I don't really cook these days, mostly assemble.)

Passover began on Friday at sunset, so our house was awash in matzo. Making Ethan his lunch, I asked if he would like some, or if he thought he’d be sick of it by the time these next 8 days were over, but he responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” (Or as enthusiastic as a kid who is down for the count with a sore throat and bad cold can sound.)

And so I head to the kitchen to fix Ethan some (whole wheat) matzo the way he likes it… the way I liked it as a kid, schooled by my father because it was the way HE liked it: slathered with a thin, even sheen of butter and then salted.

He LOVED to eat matzo like that, and for years I did too. There is an art to it, making sure the butter is soft enough to spread, and spreading with a light enough touch so as not to pulverize the matzo as you spread. Then shaking on just enough salt. A delicate operation all around.

So standing in my kitchen, making my son his matzo I have invoked my father, tickled that such an un-religious man is so heavily associated with this very observant foodstuff.

He was a dedicated atheist/agnostic. He disliked organized religion. But we always did Passover and Hanukkah. I think because these were holidays in the home, about food and family.  And food and family were really important to him.

So every Passover of my childhood, we would head off to my Aunt & Uncle's (my mother's brother's family) where my wonderful cousins would be waiting for me.  We would go through the haggadah - a liberal, modern one, light on the "chosen people" & Hebrew and heavy on the social justice and unity of all peoples stuff - as quickly as possible. Then linger over the wonderful meal, finish up fast and roll home very late, very happy.

My husband's family is much more traditional and religious than mine, and in the years when my father was still alive and it was the year for us to Passover with Dan's side, my father would gamely sit through the long Seder, eat his matzo without butter, it being a Kosher meat meal.

As the years went on, his post-dinner sofa nap became longer and longer, eventually involving a pre-dinner one as well, encompassing most of the Seder itself. But still, it was good to have him with us.

He and my Mother-in-law passed in the same year, so my mother is the sole representative of their generation at Passover now. This year she appeared markedly more fragile than last, fading rapidly.

I feel her slipping away before my eyes, a pleasant smile always on her face, but less and less going on behind it with each passing day.  Caring for my father grounded her, kept her present, focused.  She is starting to forget people.  I do not know if she will still be with us next Passover.

This year my father is now two years gone; this our third Passover without him. But buttering and salting a square of matzo for my son, I feel him standing by my side, peering over my shoulder, reaching out for its crisp, crumbly goodness; reassuring me I've salted it perfectly, just right.
 

Happy Holidays

From my family to yours:

Coffee Shop Santa, by Jim Steinhardt, New York City, 1949

Whatever you celebrate (we're having a typical '"Jewish Christmas" - Chinese food & a movie - then lighting the menorah because it's the 6th night of Hanukkah), we're wishing you and yours:

The Happiest of Holidays and a kick-ass New Year!

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