underwater

I’m four years old, standing in a very yellow kitchen. Mustard walls, mustard and brown patterned floor tiles, a small window by the sink, shaded by green. The sunlight filters in, fighting its way through. My grandmother stands at the sink, and I am by her legs, looking up. In preschool that day Kimberly dropped a bombshell - you can get dead if you go under water and all the blood falls out of you. There was a hollowness starting at the very pit of my stomach. I can’t really understand what she is talking about, but in this snapshot of a moment, I am looking up at my grandma and crying, stunned that this dead thing applies to PEOPLE and that means there is going to be a time that my grandma is not here, and that revelation is unbearable. She gathers me into her arms and we move to sit at the bottom of the stairs, and I’m crying and she’s talking and I don’t really understand what she is trying to tell me, but the loss is real and palpable and I can’t shake it off.

I decide to avoid water for the moment since I prefer my blood to stay inside me. The hollowness of the idea of my grandma not being with me is already too much; I can’t also comprehend a world without ME in it. I return to this idea over and over in quiet moments - I try to picture the earth spinning around, people moving, things happening, and me not being there to know it. I try to remind myself that things happened before me, so of course things will happen after me, but lord, the emptiness that punches me in the gut every time I grab a moment of actually GETTING it, is both unbearable and addicting.

I’m nearly ten times the age I was then now. Ive spent a lifetime trying to escape that early pain, denying to myself that time moves forward - if I just dig in my heels and refuse to commit to anything, refuse to accept that THIS is my one and only precious true life, maybe it isn’t. Maybe if I shop and Facebook and eat that truth away, I can forget. So, not shockingly, that doesn’t work all that well. I’ve moved a zillion times, had a zillion (or 6) babies, lost that precious grandma, and lord, I’m tired.

Another moment - I’m seven now. It’s a hot, un-air conditioned Long Island day. Leaning on the bathroom counter, arranging my head on it so that it looks like it’s just a head resting on the counter, not attached to a body at all. I practice making weird faces, pulling my mouth in every different direction, squinting my eyes. I pause and just look into my own eyes. Thats ME. That is the face that is me, I tell myself. That big Russian forehead, gray eyes, buck toothed face is mine. Thats the only face I’m ever going to get. I try to reserve judgment. Its not a pretty face, I think. I turn around and look in the full length mirror behind the shower door. Knobby, bony, horrendously ugly knees jut out. Pale, pale skin, purple circles under my eyes. Hmm. How odd that I can feel so special and fancy in my imagination, and then there’s this irritating mirror-me, making it impossible to keep dreaming.

I don’t really know where I fit. My parents came from Russia in their early thirties. Russia in my head is a bleak, snowy empty space, the space of before-ness that I can’t remember. The few grainy black and white pictures they managed to save don’t give much context, they just add to my feeling of grayness. I erase the fact that my parents had a life before being here really. Here is what I know, with its greens and browns and blues. I believe them when they talk about the past but I don’t really. 

My dad has to call the plumber. He stumblingly introduces himself on the phone, formally announcing his full name before starting to make arrangements for the help he needs. He repeats himself a few times, struggling to be understood through his accent. I feel a twinge of something, pity, shame, and I turn away, back to my english, my homework, my daydreams. I agreed to move myself and my kids around the world to Israel two years ago. I know and I knew then that my kids might look at me just that same way, as I struggle with my hebrew, fumbling over the rolling R’s of the language. I know its not the same - you canNOT compare being an American in Israel with being a Russian immigrant in America. Here, English is everywhere, you can get by because the country is made up of immigrants and everyone understands that this language that only a few million people on earth speak, its not so simple, it takes time, and there are all sorts of cushions to protect you. Everyone can switch into English whenever they need to, and so we get by pretty much fine. But this society will still never fully be mine, just like my parents had to accept that their other-ness will always be a thing. My kids are still struggling here, but they will not struggle forever. They will begin to blend in more and more, and though they will always have the edge of richness that English brings, they will not feel other here eventually. I don’t know how they’ll feel about me, I guess its not really in my control or my business. I do get edgy when I remember how embarrassed my immigrant parents made me feel.

I read an essay another immigrant mom wrote here the other day. She used the image of a mermaid - not from here, not exactly of this place, always a little off because this is not where we were born and bred to exist - but still captivating and powerful. We're underwater, blood inside, faculties basically intact. We're in the air, wishing we were still in the water. Nothing feels quite right.

I keep going back to that in my head, wondering if I can turn upside down my 7 year old self’s idea of what it means to be other. Maybe this entire mermaid concept is more apt even than about this whole move/immigration thing. Maybe it’s a bigger answer to my four year old self’s giant existential dilemma. Maybe we are all kind of mermaids in this world - not from here, not destined to stay here, always feeling kind of unsure and other when we let ourselves think about it too much, always kind of flopping about on our imperfect tails and wondering why we don’t feel more at home on this planet, why we are always struggling. Like my 4 year old says, its weird to be a human animal.  

baby guru

I have an almost 18 month old in my life, for the sixth time. In some ways, it is repetitive enough that I just do it on complete auto mode: mirror their feelings when I'm feeling like a good mama, help them verbalize and own them, wipe up their ridiculously messy high chair trays, read them Sandra Boynton 32 times in a row, tolerate their frustrated tantrums, cuddle, repeat.

Yet it is nearly 18 years since I first had an 18 month old, and lord, the world has CHANGED. So, this is what happens pretty much nightly now: I put her in her crib and lay down on the bed nearby, and stick my hand between the slats so she can cuddle holding my hand as she drifts off, as she likes to do. So far, pretty much the same as the other 5. But this one, this baby that felt the vibration and buzz of a cellphone in my pocket in utero and every day afterwards, she is just DONE with all that come bedtime. In my other hand, I like to hold my phone and catch up on emails or whatever. She is not having any of that though, thank you VERY much. She screams bloody murder if I break eye contact with her and glance at my phone. She is literally forcing me to be present and pay actual, unadulterated, perfect attention to her as she drifts out of consciousness. She does not want to look at my face and see it staring at the phone, my expression shifting in tiny ways as I react to whatever I am reading...she wants full, calm, and undistracted presence, and will accept nothing less. This is the only time of day where she seems to have an opinion on the issue. 

I honestly find this absolutely fascinating. It feels like she is a more evolved iteration of myself, saying to me ffs, ENOUGH already - just be here. It kind of gives me hope for the next generation. I know people worry a lot about the downhill slide into screen-y life. But I really think our generation, the one that grew up without and has to adult (somehow) with, we are the ones that can't seem to find a balance that feels ok. I really believe that our kids, that grow up immersed in it, intuitively will find their balance, because their very development was in the presence of this thing, and so their entire being rejects being swallowed up whole by it. SO that is my optimistic read of the future of humanity. Because my 18 month old baby is totally my mindfulness guru.

goodbye homeschooling

I have this narrative in the back of my head kind of constantly, when I think about the life choices that have brought me to this point. I worked in a Montessori school for a year, teaching, before I chose to switch to teaching a small homeschool group, and then shifted to homeschooling my own kids for the next 9 years. I’m technically still homeschooling one of them, and also have a baby (turning one tomorrow!) at home, but since I have three kids in various school institutions, I feel like I’m winding down on the homeschooling. 

Its been a defining part of my identity for most of my adult life. I love the jaw drops, the stunned stares, the incredulous people basically communicating, you are a fucking GODDESS, I could NEVER do what you do. And also, looking at my awesome, creative, free kids, living life on their own terms, connecting to all sorts of diverse people, and just reveling in a sort of smug feeling of them having escaped the jaws of the soul crushing system that is school. No peer pressure, no bullying, no grades…seriously, I felt like I was doing something amazing, mostly by not-doing, by not-sending. 

Of course I understood that most people couldn't or wouldn't want to make that choice, and I honestly respected them and lived in a sort of awe of the grown-up-ness of people that were actually a part of the productive adult world and work force. Deep down (or maybe not even so deep) I believed that I was not capable of functioning in the grown up world of bosses, accountability, and paychecks. 

So, this whole situation, even when it was supremely challenging juggling kids from newborn through teenager and all of their needs, fit into my psyche perfectly. It let me keep my self-talk intact and consistent. And now, I look around and wonder what next. I’m 39. My life is moving along, the weeks flying by faster than I can even believe, and I am struck with a sort of deep and abiding terror. What am I doing? What can I be if I stop letting fear of the adult world be the driver? To add to the issues, I moved into a country where my lack of fluency with the language will also be a factor holding me back, making me feel less-than, if I choose to allow that into my narrative. 

I’m just emerging from the postpartum haze, and this final baby of mine’s one year old birthday feels huge and significant. I feel like I can lift my head up, open my eyes for a few brief glimpses around me, take a breath, survey the landscape. 

being right

I was at the country club with 5 of my kids. That sentence is actually a little misleading. Country club sounds like an elite den of tennis-playing, tanned, bouncy wealthy individuals. In Israel, they call every gym/community center a country club. It does have its share of tanned exercise loving shiny people, but I didn't want to give the wrong idea of what brought me there. My kids take random classes there - pottery, soccer, zumba. While the three bigger ones do that, I let the 4 year old swim while I wrestle with the 11 month old to keep her from plunging into the pool. I could theoretically take her in also but that would involve me being wet, and in this rainy, chilly weather, that just feels deeply unappealing.  

So, I’m juggling the kids and my cell phone rings. I see its my oldest, home, off from the army. I had asked her to bring the kids here so I wouldn't have to deal with the two littles here - its one of the most draining 3 hour chunks of my week, and I was hoping to skip it. She had responded that with her bad PMS, she’d rather not. I sighed and accepted that. So, when I saw her name on the caller ID, I had a flash of hope that she was coming to switch spots and relieve me. “Ima, can you get me some pads?” Grrrr. I responded, basically, no way. Im juggling 5 kids including an overtired baby - there is no way Im walking into a store with them after this. I suggested she ask her boyfriend, who was hanging out with her and (presumably) not busy at the time. 

At home an hour later, I see her. I say something along the lines of, why would you call me when I’m out with 5 kids rather than asking your boyfriend who is not doing anything?? Granted, mega PMS time was probably not the best time to call her out on that particular point. But to be honest, I was far from at my best. I was drained and kind of bitter after having just endured two 8 day slots of my husband being abroad in one month. I had been fantasizing about his first day back being a relief, and it just wasn’t. Mostly because I didn’t ask and make that happen. (Will I never learn to ask for what I need rather than expecting him to know?? But thats an aside.) Anyway, cue the explosion. I am accused of resenting her having the nerve to ask me for something, she didn't know I was at the country club, clearly I have an issue with her boyfriend who isn't doing anything with his life, etc etc etc. Being, as I mentioned, not at my best, I yelled back. She stomps upstairs, and then, I was gifted with a strange moment of grace. I see my phone buzzing. There are 9 whatsapps waiting. Puzzled, I see that she accidentally sent me her ranting messages meant for her boyfriend, about me. 

Its a strange feeling, to see how your child speaks about you in her moment of intense emotion, to the one person in the world she trusts the most, the person she has basically replaced you with in her life - not precisely, but also not untrue. It was a mix of rage and shame that bubbled up inside of me. Was she right, was I trying to communicate my broad issues with her boyfriend through our fight? I didn't really think so. But, did it matter if I was right or wrong? Choosing to be right rather than to be loving was something Ive stumbled on in my parenting. It used to infuriate me that I could never win, never be right, no matter how I twisted and fought, in an argument with my dad. SO, unsurprisingly, I recreate that, only this time I get to come out on top. I’m aware of this, but it doesn't help in moments like these, where I pick up my cellphone with shaking hands, and write back, you are NOT RIGHT. 

Its the next day now. We still haven’t spoken. I know we will. I know we will talk this through, I know we will find an understanding, find peace. Neither of us are at an easy place in life, and we do have a deep bond - with a little time to calm down, we always always work through things. But my mind keeps going back to that moment, that little mistake. How do I not squander that? What do I do with that glimpse into her uncensored emotion? How do I use it to mother her better? Its a hard thing being the oldest, every single bump in the road, every single challenge, is brand new. She absolutely broke my heart wide open, changing my life forever, but its kind of wild to me that she continues to do that, with every new stage - she draws me into new waters entirely and forever. I don’t really know yet what to do with what she wrote. I guess, like every other new thing we’ve weathered, it will unfurl itself and make itself clearer with a little more time.

facebook christmas

The last time I lived in Israel, Christmas came and went without so much as a single wreath or Rudolph reference in my awareness. Fifteen years later, I'm feeling the holiday spirit. I’m seeing the sprinkle cookies, tinseled trees, the raw, too-bright festive smiles, with the concurrent grief of not having, in this time of everyone-everywhere having. 

I feel like I live in a million worlds all at once. 497 actually, to be exact. My Facebook feed colors my everyday perspective. I wake up to it and go to sleep with it. I kind of feel owned by it, to be honest. There is a long list of things I would love to do with my spare moments: read all the books, learn photography with the online course I bought on a black friday whim, do yoga, make more eye contact with my children, just be quiet and present. I know that i am not alone, probably by a factor of several million humans on earth that feel this way maybe. 

I’m grateful that I have a weekly 25 hour break in the form of the Jewish Sabbath, but somehow that doesn't translate to different choices during the week. I listened to a podcast yesterday while mopping my floor. They were talking about U-turns in life, about change. They quoted song lyrics: “no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, alright, yes.” It was so perfect that I had to smile. I guess I haven't hit enough “no’s” quite yet. Until then, it will have to be “ho ho ho” for now. 

core work

I’m standing with my back to the wall, eyes closed. The Avett Brothers are keeping me company this morning, the first morning in months that I’ve relegated entirely to myself. Bending my creaking knees, I slide down till I’m sitting on an imaginary chair. My brick red yoga mat stretches out before me, its rubbery edges curling up from the floor. I feel the right side of my upper back pressing into the wall, the left, concave side, has a gap which I struggle to correct with endless tiny shifts. My legs are burning and I’m frustrated, in shock that my 15+ years of yoga practice have come to this, starting over.

In the strange way that things sometimes unfold, I decided to start going to a weekly local Pilates group a few weeks ago. There are 3 or 4 women in the group, and to be honest, I have never taken an interest in Pilates before. The one class I tried years ago felt like everything I hate about exercise: boring, repetitive, and relentlessly painful. I didn't WANT to focus on my core, my weakest muscle group. Though I could do fabulous and impressive yoga poses till the cows came home, I compensated for a weak core by being ridiculously gifted with absurd flexibly. I didn’t want to think about what real strength is and where it comes from. I wanted to keep showing off to myself, doing what came naturally and easily. 

I was lonely with this latest move across the world. In this coastal Mediterranean town, Pilates seemed to be everywhere. I joined a group that had some women I thought I might become friends with, because a simple outing for coffee seemed too hard to arrange. The group was happening weekly, so it seemed like a natural way to see people regularly. Making myself vulnerable socially by reaching out just didn't feel like something I wanted to have to do, all the time. I can do it sometimes, but I didn’t want to rely on myself to keep it up - my moods fluctuate too much here, my energy levels tank randomly with a baby that won’t sleep, and I just didn’t have it in me to keep doing the work of building new friendships. So, to Pilates class I went. Immediately the teacher noticed my scoliosis. I literally hadn’t thought about my scoliosis for 20 years, maybe more. I was diagnosed at twelve, told I was too old for a brace. My parents chose not to do the aggressive four hour surgery that would place a metal rod into my spine. So, we ignored it. I figured I would just live my life, do yoga to strengthen my back and hope for the best. By the time I would be old enough to develop a noticeable hump, I figured, with the arrogance of youth, I’d be too old to care what I looked like. 

On the eve of my 39th birthday, I realize what a crock of shit that idea was. Leaving aside the very real pain involved in structurally deformed musculature, of COURSE I would care, at whatever age I developed a more noticeable hump. With every new wrinkle I develop, I marvel at how inside I continue to hold onto my image of myself at 20, with unshakeable faith. THAT is what I look like to myself, probably forever. The need to feel good in my body, beautiful (even if only) in my mind, was basic, elemental, part of my core. A pronounced hump, scoliosis that can be seen just by glancing at the way one side of my ribs protrudes slightly more than the other, the way one shoulder rises just a tad higher than the other, suddenly bothered me profoundly and deeply. I felt like there was something flawed about me, exposed and raw, for all to see, and I did not like it. 

Googling led me to the next problem. Numerous websites, with all sorts of expert testimony, declared that yoga poses can worsen existing scoliosis. Photographs of my beloved Half Moon, Cobra, Scorpion poses flashed across the screen, big X’s stamped over them, words like “exacerbate” and “contraindicated” casually displayed. I did not want to believe it - I felt betrayed. My yoga practice, my years of studying and teaching, collapsed around me. I taught yoga, for godssakes. How could I have missed something so basic, so essential, so core?

I felt like I was breaking up with a beloved friend. No more yoga till I figure this thing out. I read the articles, I downloaded books onto my kindle. It turns out that I can still do yoga, I will just have to bring a very specific intentionality to every single pose that I do, and some poses I simply will not be able to do. I will have to rebuild my practice, relearn poses that seemed so basic and obvious just days ago. I realize, in the scheme of world problems, this is so tiny. Minuscule, really. I just found it interesting how humbling this week has been. How we can go through life thinking we’ve got this, and be missing the entire center of whatever “this” we might be talking about. 

damn snapfish

Every November since 2005, I make one of those cheesy Snapfish family calendars. It takes a few weeks to find the best pictures from both sides of the family over the past year, double check all the birthdays, holidays, and yahrzeits, and get all the pictures uploaded and arranged in a reasonably coherent and attractive way. Then, relieved, we can get it printed and sent out as an end of the year gift to family members. Its usually a fairly pleasant and sort of meditative process, as long as I dont start last minute and have a full on freak out. WHY do they ALL need their birthdays remembered EVERY single year??

The last bunch of years, my eldest has helped with the project, logging into our account and doing lots of photo editing and arranging. To be fair, she did the bulk of the work the last two years. So this year, with her living on the other side of the planet, I wasn’t sure how it would go. To her immense credit, she logged in whenever she had a few free minutes, and did a lot of work. It was kind of sweet and touching and insistent, reminding me that despite her very palpable absence in our house, she is still so very, very, here. My 10 year old got in on the act too, having some photo editing fun, and causing her sister to re-assert exactly what the hierarchy was here - there was to be NO messing with her work by a younger sib.

So, all was cruising along in a lovely sort of mother-daughters long distance ball of energy and flow, until I got to the part I hate most in the making of the calendar every year, the yahrzeit dates. For the vast majority of family members, I add the same dates year to year, often using the same photo taken of them in various stages of old age. It makes me sad every time, but I accept that this is a positive way to remember them, and so we do it.

But a year and a half ago, I lost one of my oldest childhood friends to suicide. Last fall, I added her picture, numbly, even though she is not in the family; it felt right to do. This year, I found myself adding her picture AGAIN. I had to use the same picture I used last year, because unlike every other category of picture, there would be no more updated versions.

Its a picture of us sitting on the couch together, with my two eldest daughters, one a seven year old, and one a baby. We are leaning towards each other, and laughing at something, and I cannot make myself remember what was funny, except that she was always laughing, a full-throated, booming, life-affirming contagious laugh.

It made me suddenly absolutely furious at her, to have to use this happy picture, again and again and again, for the rest of my life. How did it happen that I was collaborating with those two tiny girls in the picture, creating this massive monument to memory and years gone by, and needing to put her glowing, laughing face into the yahrzeit slot: 29 Tammuz, over and over and over again. I am just raging at the unfairness and impossibility of what she did. My brain still reels, 18 months later: how can it be that there will never be a new photo again?

teen-shaped hole in my house

Somehow I managed to make myself really and truly not believe that this day would ever really come. In my head, there was a calendar of the summer, and it stopped abruptly when it came to August 25th. As in, it just ended, cut off, no more daily boxes to check off, just a sort of mysterious blank. We were planning madly, with a whirlwind of shopping trips, sorting through stuff, packing up the teenager’s room, seeing if we could somehow attain her goal of getting all of her 17.5 year’s worth of valuable stuff into just one duffel bag and one backpack, to bring with her as she moved to Israel. She is doing a hesder program, so she will study for one year, and then serve in the army for two. Her plan is to stay on, do college, build a life there, so this August 25 thing loomed over us, larger than life, too big to comprehend in its insane finality, so I just opted out of really actually comprehending that it would come, and with it, she would actually, really go, and somehow, mind-bogglingly, not be here and living in my house anymore. 

The last week rolled around, and with it, a series of uncomfortably real goodbyes, and “lasts”, her last Friday night dinner with us a family, her last havdalah living here, and finally, her last Sunday. We planned to spend the day at Lake Lanier, and got a reasonably bearable Atlanta summer day. The water was brown, the sky was gray, but we had fun anyway, swimming and hanging out in the sand. She asked for a family viewing of the Princess Bride when we got home, a movie she literally has seen at least 50 times in her childhood. Bizarrely all of her young siblings sat through it without disruption or massive meltdown. I think they sensed that these days are all about their big sister and what she wants, and that is just how its gonna be. 

After her boyfriend went home that evening, she cried in my arms, and that just sent me over the edge. Suddenly the impossible 25th looked like it was actually going to be happening, and fast. The next few hours, her Abba and I helped her finish packing, taking breaks to hug and cry. I think, looking back, that there were two especially hard things going on. Leaving her boyfriend of a year, someone that she could always turn to and rely on, and striking out alone, is just a really, really tough thing to do at 17 or any age. So there was that. Moving out of her family home, where there were always people who absolutely loved and supported her, and took care of her, and again, striking out on her own, was starting to also feel pretty scary. It took everything I had to comfort her through my own tears (because honestly, seeing my strong, independent girl sob and doubt herself is one of the toughest things I’ve had to see in a while.) I think that until I saw her crying, I could hold onto my illusion that either this wasn't actually going to happen or that if it somehow did, she would be fine and happy and we would be the only sad ones. I’m actually fairly surprised at how little I was really ready for the moment. Its bizarre, but I’m finding over and over again, that until I live through whatever hard thing, I just can’t really properly stand in awe of others that have done it already. Who knew that there are millions (billions?) of parents out there that have sent their kids out of the house, and lived to tell the tale? And are now normal and functional, and dont cry into their cups of coffee all day long?? Its amazing.

Anyway, the sweetest part of the whole 2 hour tearfest, was the fact that after we finished stuffing her face-hugger stuffed animal and homemade deodorant into the last available centimeters of space in her duffel, she asked if i’d mind sleeping with her that night. i said, um, yeah, of course, since I was just glad she asked so that I wouldn't have to be that pathetic mom that asked. We cuddled under her blankets, and despite the fact that she hadn't washed her sheets in weeks (months?), a fact that would have bugged me any other day, I settled right in. We watched 3 episodes of Coupling, a british sitcom that has a friends-like vibe to it, which was funny and distracting enough to let us stop crying for a bit and relax together. Then we cuddled and talked and cried some more, finally dropping off to sleep from around 2 till 6:30. 

Then, crazily enough, there it was, the dreaded 25th. We headed to the airport, after more tearful hugs from Abba, which left me nearly unable to drive. With the help of some perfectly cheesy Atlanta country music, we managed to lighten the mood, joking and talking till we got to the check in line, where i turned to her sister and brother, and said, guys, this is the exciting part, now we can be really happy for the amazing adventures she is about to begin. Which I kind of honestly thought was a safe, happy thing to say, but it started the tears for her, which I have zero resistance to, so there we stood, two crying fools in the check in line. Red-eyed and frizzy, we checked in her (overweight, unsurprisingly) bag and the siblings took turns weighing themselves on the bag scale. We walked towards security together and she said, ok, this is it, and we all hugged one more time. Then we got on the down escalator, and as we slowly descended, watched her walk towards the security line with her gigantic backpack and brave, shaky smile. 

weanings

Tomorrow morning I will nurse my 2.5 year old for the last time. Im trying to prepare myself to be in the moment, rather than mostly asleep, early in the morning. I know and have experienced over and over again, that a child’s “lasts” generally pass unnoticed, until you suddenly look around days later, and think, huh, i guess she’s all done with THAT. So this time, this one little moment, I plan to show up. To be there, and feel it, and say goodbye to the closeness of a soft cheek nestled into me, sleepy eyes, calmed by the ritual nursing. I usually DON’T want to be there and feel the last anything, because it hurts, and pain is something I tend to avoid. 

The fact that this coming morning is also the morning where I fly with my teenager on a mother daughter trip, a 3 day spell of togetherness, cementing the fact that it is to her that I say goodbye as well - she leaves, moving out, just 13 days from now. This trip is my last fleeting moment, my grabbing of the experience of having my gorgeous, strong, gloriously free firstborn living in my home, a permanent part of my life, until she suddenly wont be anymore, 13 days from now. The thing she calls “home” will now be the thing she makes plans to visit. So our whirlwind trip will be just that, a way to settle into the utterly inescapable fact of yet another last, to savor it, to sense it in a way that I cannot at home surrounded by the others, to mourn it, and let myself move ahead. 

How perfectly perfect that this trip is the impetus for that weaning. My oldest and my youngest, conspiring to keep me awake and aware of how fragile and blindingly fast all of this is. No matter how much I’d rather turn away and not look at the blindingly bright reality set before me, this time I choose to be present with it. I’m thinking (hoping) that if I let myself really experience these lasts, with all their glory and loss, maybe it will be easier to open up to the excitement that the next stages will bring - potty training? the adventures of an adult child? who knows what all lies ahead??

B Book

Big brown bear, blue bull, beautiful baboon, blowing bubbles….the B book. A total classic in our house. I can read it backwards and forwards after having read it (mostly forwards) for the last 17-ish years. 

I didn't think there was any depth to the book that i hadn't yet experienced. So the other night, when my two year stunned me with her question, i wasn't really expecting any kind of spiritual moment from bedtime reading. 

Looking longingly at the bubbles in the illustration, she said, “Can I have those bubbles? When I go inside this book, can I have some?” At first I giggled, and then I thought: “When I go inside” - how crazy that she completely believes that it is fairly certain that at some point, she will enter into the reality of a work of fiction. What a sliding, shifting place, her reality is. She can talk sentences around everyone in her little life, but she still believes in fiction with a faith that most authors would love their readers to feel the tiniest fraction of. To her, entering inside a book is just as likely as fitting inside a teacup (something she has also tried lately.) I wish I could step inside her head for a bit and just remember what its like to feel like literally anything is possible, again. 

powderkeg summer

I think my news feed is killing me. I cannot get through a day without tears coming to my eyes, over and over and over. My two year old looks quizzically at me, asking, “Are you angry? Are you sad? I am angry also.” She assumes an exaggerated pose of anger, lip stuck out in defiance, arms crossed, head bowed. I have to laugh, and hug her, my voice still shaky for another minute till the day’s demands take over and pull me back to the present. 

I thought this was going to be a crappy summer. I knew it was. My husband left for a month for an archeological dig, I was perpetually nauseous from a surprise pregnancy that we didn’t feel quite ready for, and my oldest baby was moving to Israel at the end of the summer, for good. I wasn’t prepared, and didn’t have time to prepare, for homeschooling a kindergartener, second grader, and fifth grader this coming fall (only days away!) The deck was definitely stacked against me feeling any kind of peace.

And then they kidnapped the 3 boys. 

Since then, its been spiraling into more and more grief, the tears coming every single day for more loss, more unbearable sadness and the world’s condemnations of a nation that deeply loves life. 

So I follow every moment of it feverishly, and in those moments of tears, feeling like my own personal troubles are tiny, petty, nothing. And then I’m yanked back into daily reality and back to my own worries, snapping at my husband, my children, feeling the weight of exhaustion crush me and make me reactive and un-thoughtful, in a way that i haven’t been in quite some time. 

My two year old and five year old sit on either side of me with books in hand for me to read, and then fight each other over whose turn it is to be read to first. My two year old swings her hardcover copy of The Pigeon Wants to Drive a Bus and slams me on the head. I am immediately furious at the pain, at the unfairness and hopelessness of trying to do something nice for them and feeling like theres no way to win, no way to have it go smoothly, peacefully. It just makes no sense to me, this fight of theirs. I blindly, furiously, grab the two year old and put her in her room, wailing, and slam the door. 

There was a day once where I would have never dreamed of yelling at a two year old. Two? Barely verbal, minimal impulse control, raging passions and emotions, just a hint, a whisper of the civilization that will take years yet to fully emerge. Yelling? Physically handling them with fury etched in every muscle, every line of my face? I feel sick immediately after doing it. 

Is this what it is to be ruled by your raging, swirling, unmanageable emotions? Is this in some tiny way like what Israel’s enemies are feeling? Is it calculated and thought out, a philosophy of absolute hatred and murder, or is it just blind, unthinking rage? 

This way no one wins. Deep breaths. Vague glimmerings of memory that there has to be a better way. I remember reading Maria Montessori’s On Peace and Education years and years ago when I was doing my masters degree. “Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.” (And sometimes not even that apparently.) 

So I try to inhale consciously. Let go of a little of my anger at myself for being so damn reactive this entire summer. All we can do is keep fighting our own tiny (or not so tiny) daily battles, trying to let peace win and our roiling swirling emotions be, without owning our every move. No one said this would be an easy summer. Accept the chaos, and let the tears flow. Something tells me there will be more before this gets better.

a loss

I was outside playing with my two youngest: a hot, sweaty July Wednesday. I had had a large cup of coffee early that afternoon, hoping to get me (cheerfully) through the day. It worked so well that I had pulled out the hose, washed off the old sand table, filled it with cool water and buckets, sieves, and spoons. Feeling pretty proud of myself, I sat down and pulled my phone from my pocket.

Message from my oldest friend on this planet: Call me asap. Nervously, I dialed her back, and she asked me to please sit down. She had some terrible news. Could I handle hearing it now, was I somewhere that I could talk? Cold terror gripped my heart. Is it my family? I whispered.
No, its XXXX. She died, the funeral was on Sunday. What? What? What?

My brain could form nothing but that single word. I felt like I had been punched and could not breathe. Her name paired with this strangely textured word made no sense. The word died simply didn't fit in my brain. It felt like a massive pill, something harsh and garish and orange and just wrong, that I could not swallow.

I met XXXX twenty-three years before. We met shortly before beginning high school together;  it was a small private start up school, and there were to be only five girls in our grade. We became nothing short of family, fast and firm. XXXX had long thick blonde hair, freckles, speckled hazel eyes, and a laugh that you could hear across the school. She was tall, loud, confident in her opinions. Curious about everyone and everything. I was much more reserved, quiet, unsure.

The thing that I first really loved about talking to her is that she was just a crazy listener. The most intense I've ever met in my life, to this day. When you spoke to her, she would squint and furrow her brow, focusing, concentrating, listening, listening, listening to every nuance of every word, spoken and unspoken. It was one of my first friendships in my life where I felt heard, in this incredible way. She was just genuinely seeking, constantly looking for wisdom and answers and truth, from anyone and everyone she met.

I don't know if she found the certainty she was looking for in her life. 24 hours after that phone call, I am still reeling, disbelieving. How can someone so vibrant, so completely alive, be gone? Where is she? She has to be somewhere.

I hear her laugh in my mind - she would throw her head back and belt it out. Our years together in high school had many sleepovers, long nights filled with giggles and laughter. I'm remembering a couple, not particularly remarkable, they just float up to my memory, silly and juvenile as they are (as we were).

She was always ready to laugh at herself. She was an atrocious speller. I remember one night we went through her address book, where she had phonetically spelled everyone's names that we knew. I, being an intuitively perfect speller, found it enormously amusing and started to laugh. She joined in, only half aware of the actual multitude and breadth of the errors, but we were soon hysterical on the floor, crying from laughter, imagining what the people would say if they saw their names written so "creatively".

Another night: I had had an x-ray earlier that week while experiencing some (extremely painful) trapped intestinal gas. I was telling her how I had done my utmost to control myself from releasing it, trying to be polite. And then they placed the xray up on the viewing board, and there they were: huge, clearly visible, gas bubbles in my intestine, right on display. I was whispering the story to her, (my father was pretty strict about us staying quiet late at night), and we both lost it, hysterically laughing, biting our pillows to try to stay quiet.

There are hundreds more moments like those.

We were a family, the five girls in that class. We stuck together after high school, sharing apartments, navigating college and boyfriends and household chores.
We drifted apart, some of us getting married, some traveling, experiencing the full extent of beautiful, brutal life. But there were always these invisible threads of connection. I have spent the better part of the last 24 hours on the phone with the other three girls. Girls? Women I guess. Somehow, I feel fourteen again, raw and terrified. I want nothing more than to have been told earlier, to have been able to attend the funeral, to process, to try to comprehend what this hole in my heart means.

I have seen her once or twice a year when we were able to, and every time its been instant, the comfort, the familiarity, the deep and still knowing of one another. I saw her last a few months ago, when I was visiting family for Passover. She was in pain, had had an injury, needed so much help with her beautiful daughter (her first, born just three days after my fifth child, also a girl, was born.) We sat at a park in the sun, the babies gloriously beautiful, exploring, examining each other. I just keep going back to that day, the peacefulness despite her pain, her absolute loving gaze at that perfect one and a half year old, and I am trying to understand that I will never see her again, never speak to her, never hear her voice, her laugh, her thoughts. I cannot comprehend it.

on stuff

I have a little bit of a lot of a tendency to occasionally sink into obsessive online shopping. Like, if, for instance, I needed a new blender, I could spend literally hours reading reviews and driving myself mad comparison pricing.

I get that this is not necessarily a bad thing, but I'm thinking that for me it a lot about the security that "stuff" brings, and with better stuff, better security. Gotta love the illusion of stuff bringing happiness, filling in the empty holes in our being. Ever since high school where I spent hours upon hours debating philosophy and the most burning questions in life, it's been a fairly obvious point in my head. Yet it has never translated to any ability to control this tendency, whatsoever. Stressed? What do I need from amazon? Lonely? Lets see if anthropologie is having a sale. Frustrated? I hear they're coming out with a fabulous new stroller that will  just change the way you parent. I MUST check it out. And so it goes.

Except lately, we took a vacation from life, at a family camp. It was a break from all the routines, all the pitfalls of shadowy illusory satisfaction, and it felt good. Coming back, I feel a bit more self-aware. Just a bit. Enough to at least see the behavior clearly for what it is. The tricky part here is that sometimes we do need stuff, and thats where it all gets murky. Is the pleasure I get from getting stuff we actually need a part of the problem, or entirely harmless? It reminds me of when i struggled with eating issues; the fact remained that food was simply always going to be a fixture of life, and I had to find a way to live in peace with it.

There is no simple happy ending in either of these cases, just a sense that I need to remain vigilant and aware, and that life is a constant, constant practice - and like my seventh grade teacher once said, if youre not moving forward, you're moving backward. Eyes open eyes open eyes open. Or else those shadowy illusions that this new pair of shoes or this chocolate bar will fix your discomfort, will sneak up on you. How terrifying to be in the discomfort, but how ultimately necessary and good. Soldier on.

unsubscribe

For years, I would start my day by deleting 20-30 items of junk mail from my inbox. when I would randomly check my email, I would delete a bunch more. saturday nights (after 24 hrs electricity-free) there would usually be 50-75 items to delete.

somehow this seemed like a normal way to handle things; i felt kind of important getting all that mail, even if it was an assortment of everything from sales on children's shoes to petitions to save the puppies.

delete, delete, delete.

i felt powerful, and like i was accomplishing something, judging between worthy and unworthy, sending the poor losers to eternal damnation in my spam folder.

and then one day a few weeks ago, i decided to try something different. instead of hitting delete, i would take an extra 3-5 seconds per email, and go through the unsubscribe process. i have to say it took some discipline, as i'm not your world's most committed person as far as sticking with a process, but i did it.

as the days went on, i felt this miraculous lightening. i would wake up to only 5-6 emails, most of which i was actually interested in reading. there was a delicious silence on the other end of the line. my inbox was my own, and i realized how freeing this was: no more incessant noise being thrown at me, no more needing to fend off words and images and ideas that i chose not to entertain.

i've felt a parallel happening in certain areas of my social life. apparently (and i realize that 35 is pretty late to come to this realization) you can choose the kinds of energy you let people bring into your life. you can choose who you allow to affect your day. mind-bogglingly obvious perhaps, but there you have it.

it's totally a work in progress. because at this point i'm mainly just not reaching out to people and interactions that keep me functioning on a small scale. but its never so simple, because friendships have history and weight and multi-faceted appeal.

so it's a constant sifting and sorting and mainly just owning the fact that my time and energy is my own. and life is too darn short to get bogged down in pettiness and small-mindedness. and i'm just savoring the lack of it, tasting the silence, playing around with what to do with all this freed up energy.

unsubscribe, unsubscribe, unsubscribe. it's just a happier place to be.

field trip wreckage

so i had an irrational burst of energy this afternoon, and noticed that there was a special homeschool day at the history center (thanksgiving themed) going on right at that moment. despite the baby being tired and the kids sort of hungry and not all that interested (they voted 2-1 to go, but the 1 was extremely vocal in her anti-sentiment) i cheerfully packed em all into the car and headed off.

the first rude awakening was that despite us being members, there was a charge for entry to homeschool day events. darn it. ok, so after plunking down the discover card, i had that much more motivation to get something educational/enriching out of the afternoon.

having an agenda is generally a poor idea when bringing 4 kids ages 1-8 to any public event, but i was still feeling bold. we wandered through the exhibits, trying to find the "turkey trivia" or "harvest festival" areas. my 3 yr old ran ahead madly dashing into the pioneer cabins, entirely missing the point of just about everything. and stressing me out massively as i imagined losing the little guy entirely in the throng. my 8 and 5 yr olds wandered in & out a bit, enjoying seeing the other homeschool kids more than anything else. ok, so far, not getting much out of it.

but i pressed on optimistically:
"hey, how about the arts & crafts section? who wants to make a thanksgiving placemat or table centerpiece?!" grumbles from the older kids. 3 yr old screams his approval enthusiastically and runs ahead.

when we reach the art table, the 3 yr old climbs onto the stroller with the baby, who shrieks in protest. he refuses to budge, claiming to be tired and starving. the 5 yr old also realizes that his hunger is all-consuming and can no longer be overlooked. hunger and low blood sugar turn this generally sweet and cooperative child into a fuming ball of misery. the art table is nothing to him. sigh.

fine, at this point, im just hoping the 8 yr old will make a stinking placemat so we can get out of here.  i let her join the throng of kids clustering around the table. as i tend to the younger kids needs with the only lousy piece of string cheese i had stuffed into my bag, i look over to see what she is doing: she runs excitedly over, holding three pieces of yarn. "look! this yarn is perfect for my viking finger-weaving!!!"

at this point, i resign myself entirely to the fact that no one here is actually going to gain anything terribly much from this program, and its time to think about leaving before we actually lose anything much, in sanity particularly. so i smile, and carefully stash the precious yarn away. after all, isn't it all about being thankful for what we have?

im thinking organized programming is not going to be something i pursue again for a while. at least until my next irrational burst of energy strikes, and that tour-the-state-capital field trip (aka what-exactly-were-you-thinking-you-poor-misguided-woman?) beckons maddeningly at me from afar.

everybody dance now

my 8 yr old had a final performance for her modern dance class the other night. i was really psyched to go, since i love modern dance, and i know she has a great connection with this teacher; one of few adults that really "get" her, in all her glorious intensity.

so when she begged my 5 yr old not to come because she was embarrassed, i got an uncomfortable, pit-of-my-stomach familiar feeling. because this self-consciousness is so me, such a ginormously gaping cavern of anxious discomfort whenever i imagine performance of any sort, it was really hard to figure out where to put this feeling of hers in my head.

in a basic way, i was fine to respect her wish and be the only family member to attend. but it made me wonder: is it silly to have her in a dance class when she hates performing, being watched? is there any point? what am i building towards?

when i was eleven, my parents put my sister and me into an arts camp. it was pretty serious stuff, as we had to choose a major (3 hours) and a minor (2 hours). i chose ceramics as my major, pretty randomly, and ballet as my minor, also fairly randomly.

not entirely randomly: i had harbored fantasies of being a ballerina, even begging my mom to buy me leg warmers (not sure why i figured that was the one necessary key to success) and standing in my bathroom for hours over various slow summer days, pointing my toes and stretching in front of the mirror, in a random and pretty undisciplined way. but that was as far as it had ever gotten. my parents were hard-working immigrants that didn't really have the resources (i'm kind of guessing here) to put in to extracurricular activities, or camps, which is what made this summer at the arts camp stand out so much.

the few memories i have about that summer involve either being covered in clay and creating atrociously ugly bowls and deformed vases, or being asked to demonstrate ballet positions and movements for the class every day. apparently i was ridiculously flexible and had some sort of untapped aptitude for the stuff. i remember very little else except that on the final day, the teacher told my parents that i needed to continue doing this.

we moved at the end of that summer. i never took another dance class again, and i'm not sure to this day if that was a financial or practical decision. i guess on some level i kind of resent that, adding it to my list of what-ifs in life, although i know that that is a pointless line of thought. its too much of a played out sob story: the could've-been-washed-up-mother-figure, trying to live her dreams through her daughter. honestly thats not where i am in my head with this.

fast forward to my daughter's dance performance. the girls dance with feeling, expression, joy. they are light and free and the teacher, a lesbian buddhist mother of two who's been teaching and dancing for thirty years, revels in their energy. when they act up or get out of hand, she channels their energy instead of working against it. except for a few flashes of discomfort early on, my daughter is right in there, throwing herself wholeheartedly into the movements, often standing out with her extreme full body participation.

i stay after class to chat with the teacher. she tells me about her daughter who is 19 and currently obsessed with judaism. she reflects that the jewish children she sees all seem so into their religion, and so non-materialistic. i find this a little funny and not terribly true across the board; i feel like judaism as a cultural phenomenon is a pretty mixed bag, like any diverse movement. don't get me wrong, i love it, but i definitely don't have any blinders on.

my daughter asks her for her email address, "so that we can stay pals." the teacher responds by saying, "we'll always be pals. i've loved you since i first met you two years ago - i  know there is something deep and special in you." my daughter smiled and took the compliment perfectly in stride.

and thereby answered my question: of course it is worth doing, performance anxiety or not. all the world's a stage, and we are always playing, in every single interaction we have with one another: its all about the love and light and joy, and yes, about the twists and bends and wild whirling dervish swirls as well.

moments

My one year old walked a few steps for the first time this evening. I happened to be sitting on the floor with her at the time, and she stood up holding on to me, and let go, water bottle clutched for security in one hand. she took a few wobbly frankenstein-steps forward, beaming for all the world to see. i gasped & cheered and she collapsed and giggled.

I pulled out my phone, hoping she might do it again. i spent the next fifteen minutes or so futilely trying to capture the tiny miracle for posterity, but she vastly preferred coming right up in my face so there was no way i could get an angle in. oh, well.

so much for being in the moment. i sometimes wonder what our kids will think as they watch us fussing with technology rather than just being present. i think there's a feeling ( at least for me) of inherent distrust in my ability to remember, and if i dont remember, then what happens to all of these moments?! where do they go? what makes them matter? kind of a frantic, frenzied grasping at things, trying to make them just stay, darn it.

my 8 yr old's painting teacher had invited us to hang out in her backyard this morning and she described how she had laboriously and lovingly built up the garden piece by piece over many years. and that now she sits on a moonlit night and just is.

i had sent an email to my friend this afternoon describing my morning of, rather than being in the moment and connecting to my children, having: 

1. yelled at my 8 yr old for not remembering that the vav (hebrew) suffix means "his" 

2. yanked my 3 yr old bodily out of a sandbox with a threat to not let him play if he throws sand again (not going anywhere near the reason I knew he was doing it - the 5 yr old had beat him to a task: retrieving a toy from the bushes, that he had been dying to do, and a general sense of utter injustice that he is ALWAYS smaller.) 

3. refused to accompany the 3 yr old to the bathroom bc he was scared of monsters, bc it wasn't a "legitimate" request. but more bc i hadn't had coffee yet. 

4. ignored the 5 yr old in a weeping heap on the couch bc there was no food he wanted in the house. 

she replied that today she felt overwhelmed trying to balance her home/work energy ratio, coming up short and feeling guilty. i don't actually have a truly separate work piece in my equation (unless you count the homeschooling, which i think is deeply intertwined.) 

i wanted to send her a beam of zen, to somehow make her just be, wherever she is, and feel that it is enough. and have it reflected right back at me, and feel all warm and bathed in light. instead i sent her a virtual hug and just moved on, accepting that this is just how it feels sometimes. 

that even when we try in vain to muck up the breathtaking moments that life throws unexpectedly at us with a cellphone camera, they keep on coming. maybe i should take a lesson from my family up north who have been without power for nearly two weeks, and put the darned electronica away. give in to the utter impossibility of holding on to it all & just relax into it a little bit. maybe a goal to work on hopefully over my next decade. anyway, here's to moonlit nights and teetering exhilarating first steps. 

the f-word

I was trying to describe a woman in our neighborhood to my 8 yr old daughter.

"she is somewhat older than me, light colored hair, and somewhat fat" I said.
"fat?!" she responded, "you said the f-word!"

I explained that fat is not exactly a bad word, it is just an adjective, although it is loaded with negative associations in american culture. I wasn't really sure how to convey the complexity of feelings that arise in many women when they hear the word, but I simply could not think of any other way to describe this woman to my 8 yr old that she would recognize. so I let the topic go, and moved on.

today, as we walked together in the sunshine, she broached the subject again. "ima, what is the f-word?" I was a little taken aback, as my 5 yr old was walking with us.  ive generally always had the policy to answer any question the kids ask me honestly and simply, and aim to give them exactly as much information as they were asking for. the idea being that when they're ready to tackle another aspect of the issue, they come to me with a further question. (this is the way, in bits and pieces, my 15 yr old acquired much of her information early in life.) the complication here was that my 5yr old did NOT ask me what the f-word is, and therefore likely did not have a brain compartment for that info quite yet.

so i said to her, hang on, i will answer your question in a few minutes. she and my 5 yr old drew their heads together as they walked, and took turns guessing what f-word could possibly be considered so extremely rude... they could not seem to think of anything adequately angry. "is it feminism?" my 8 yr old wondered.

i waited till my 15 yr old, who was walking ahead, took the 5 yr old's hand and walked ahead with him, and then i leaned down & whispered in my 8 yr old's ear that this word is considered extremely impolite. i proceeded to tell her the word, and then spell it for her upon request. she said, ima, im just warning you, sometime when im really angry at you, i MIGHT say that word to you. i said its really not a word that kids use in general, but there are a lot of angry words that kids do use.

the fact that "fat" and "feminism" were her first two running guesses was kind of wild to me. it is so fucking hard to grow up as a girl in this culture, that an 8 yr old (and a fairly sheltered, homeschooled one at that) guessed these two words might be the pinnacle of inappropriate. is being fat so uncomfortable in our society that we can't treat the word as a simple adjective ever? granted that she's observed her 15 yr old, feminist-identifying sister take some flak for her stances, so i can see why she might wonder if feminism is always an anger inducing concept.

maybe (probably) im reading too much into my daughter's random guesses. im just hoping (praying) that i haven't created an 8 yr old monster who will surprise the crunchy homeschool mamas & papas at our next gathering.  24 hours in, no sign of it yet. but i'll keep you posted on that one. sometimes following through on an educational theory is scary stuff. maybe not feminism-scary, but you know, really, fucking scary.

final birth

completely, obviously, maddeningly predictably, bittersweet. what else can i say about my final baby's one year old birthday?

i think the universe was kind enough to provide an excuse in the form of a bad cold/croup for snuggling her all night long the night before. i never sleep well when i have a young baby in the bed (young meaning under 2 or so) so i lay in a light, dreamy semi-alert, half-asleep state much of the night. it was oddly, perfect, as it brought me right back to that same night exactly a year before.  

i had been in labor for what felt like a million years, but was actually more like 24 hours by the time night fell. frustrating, 10 minutes apart, painful contractions had kept me awake all the night before. i spent the morning walking with a friend, confident that things had to speed up. they did not. i ached to sleep, but was jolted awake by a forceful contraction each time i would drift off. i decided i had no choice but to carry on life as usual. so off i went with my husband to my then-14 yr old's parent teacher conferences. as we parked, my contractions came harder. REALLY painful, and now 3-5 minutes apart. crazily, we decided to carry on with the conferences - it was perfect: each conference lasted 5 minutes. in between each one, i would kneel in the hallway, have a massive contraction & then another conference. the teachers somehow did not realize what was happening, as evidenced by her english teacher's comment the next day when he heard i'd had the baby: "your mom was in labor during the conferences?? your mom is HARDCORE!"

anyway, we made it home where labor promptly slowed back down to 10-15 minutes apart. i had a close friend come over around 9 just to keep me company & help me stay sane, as i was beyond exhausted & starting to despair. we conference called her work friends to get input on baby names, and laughed a lot, when i wasnt moaning in pain. after she left, i tried to go to bed, but the pains kept me awake. i started crying, and got a text from another friend close to midnight. i called her, and she gave me a serious pep talk. that i can DO this. that i just need to commit to this labor, and that i am so strong and just need to make it happen. get up, she told me. walk around that house. then call the midwife. so, in my exhausted, frazzled state, i clung to her simple wisdom, and did just that. i cried when i called the midwife, saying i was just so tired, but it wouldnt get any closer than ten minutes, and i needed something to happen. she said simply, lovingly, "sweetheart, come on in."

we got there at 1:30 am, and got checked in. the next hour was the darkest one of the whole labor. i was in a small room, with a window facing a brick wall, and my doula was not yet there. my husband was doing the best he could, but wasnt able to be proactive, and i needed someone to tell me what to do because at this point the pain was excruciating, and 2-3 minutes apart. i was 4 cm when i checked in, and felt that i must be progressing, and fast. i kept saying, i cant do this, im going to need an epidural (i did my previous 3 births completely naturally, and am a big believer in the whole process.) i felt alone, and in the dark, and terrified that i couldn't make it. then, and it feels ridiculous to describe it this way, my doula opened the door, bathed in a shining light from the hallway, carrying her giant bag of equipment on her back, looking for all the world like a angel come to save me. i could hear harps playing and birds chirping in my head as i looked at this woman.

she strung up her tiny christmas lights and lit a few candles, and promptly began supporting me in her incredibly intuitive way (she had doula-ed for me my last birth, so we knew each other pretty well.) she heard me saying"i can't" and she kept holding that statement in her hand, yet simultaneously utterly rejecting it, crooning, "you are doing it, you are so strong and beautiful and amazing" and her words were like rivers, feeding me image after image with each contraction, of climbing mountains, of waves cresting, of peaks scaled. i felt, deeply and solidly, saved.

when the nurse came to check me 2 hours later, i was absolutely sure i had progressed. when she called out, "still 4" i could not believe it. i wanted to cry and wail again. the only thing that stopped me was her look of worry at the heartbeat monitor. she called the midwife in, who agreed that it was concerning, and she wanted this baby out sooner than later. she was so strong and calm though that the intellectual awareness i had that things were not looking great did not touch my feeling of utter safety at being in the capable hands of these incredible women. she broke my water, and the meconium staining confirmed that the baby was experiencing some distress. i turned around and labored leaning over the back of the raised bed, wearing an oxygen mask (which smelled beyond vile) and being pricked in the hand as a nurse tried to give me an iv to increase fluids (unsuccessfully, in the end.)

i suddenly felt an urge to push, and my doula said listen to your body. i turned around and with just 2-3 pushes, i birthed that beautiful baby girl. i remember thinking that it was the most incredible expenditure of energy of anything ive ever done in my life, and yet the most exhilarating.

a year later. so many first, so many lasts. i come from a family that has a lot of emotion in endings - every business trip of my father's we would do a good-bye "party", write him airplane letters, mark the occasion. every house ive ever moved from, i've spent a few minutes walking the rooms, saying good-bye. every "last" that i experience, i feel it deeply, and feel an urge to hold on to it somehow.

i'm trying, i'm learning, to see the sweet more than the bitter, to let things go and develop and move on, to embrace the next steps and try to not hold on so darn hard to things that must change, things that are so fleeting, but just enjoy them for what they are. its such an obvious cliche, feels SO like something i would have read in a reader's digest in my grandmother's apartment, sipping tea with her, and yet. im thankful to the universe that i had that sweet night with my suddenly one year old baby, a goodbye to that last first year. its a good thing. bittersweet, like the intense chocolate bars my father (the originator of the mile-long goodbyes) always prefers, without a hint of irony.

mercurial

I had the weepiest-all-around-frazzled-feeling day I've had in a really long time (I'm thinking since the end of my last pregnancy a year ago.)

it started, of course, with a (somewhat unwise) decision on my part to take four young kids to the supermarket midday because I was too tired the night before to go by my blessedly lonesome self. and these kids were hungry. and i had a raging headache. and I was hungry. bad, bad, bad combination of factors.

i'll spare you the not too exciting details, but suffice it to say that not many things in my daily life are capable of bringing me to tears; this one qualified. as i tried to unpack while simultaneously feeding a shrieking one year old, and dodging 3, 5, and 8 yr olds who were ravenously seeking fruit roll-ups, my husband called, wondering why i hand't taken him up on his offer of watching the kids so that i could go by myself. spouting of tears #2.

the answer was a jumbled assortment of reasons - mostly revolving around the fact that he's super stressed and I didn't want to add to that, but also, if i'm going to be honest, because i kind of enjoy being the martyr and doing "impossible" things and then kind of blaming him for my hard life. mature, maybe not so much, but there you have it.

i finally settled everyone and put the baby in for a nap, let the kids watch netflix and went to walk my stress out on the treadmill (for the first time in weeks.) i happened to put on glee, and honestly, its beyond corny but that show always makes me cry. something about the gorgeous potential of these young people always fleetingly brings me back to the dead poets society scene where robin williams is pointing out the old photos of long gone high schoolers who felt immortal. so there i was, crying for the third time in a few hour period.

i just think its funny, because yesterday i was telling a friend of mine how happy & on top of life i was feeling lately. and then these little tiny hardships suddenly whack me and i lose all perspective. kind of wild how ultimately tippable we are. the up side is that its also not too hard to get back up - a little starbucks, an advil, and a good cry all have some amazing powers of replenishment.

work dance

so I have this ongoing conversation with my 8 year old. apparently we have different views on what is the right way to homeschool. I've been doing this for over 10 years at this point, so I feel like I kind of have the weight of experience on my side, but to her that is blissfully irrelevant. her truth is her truth, you know?

so in the interest of full disclosure, I am not by any stretch one of these super-organized, hyper-accomplished homeschool mamas. I let the kids figure out for the most part how they would like to fill their time, but once a kid turns 6 or so, I generally get involved by starting a little (maybe 20 minutes) skill work daily. I personally like to do it in the mornings, kind of knock it out of the way, and then spend the rest of the day playing, doing outings, hanging out with the kids and doing whatever random things they might feel like, or just doing my own thing while they do theirs.

i find that somehow, strangely, in the long run, they learn everything they need to learn this way, and life is pretty chill. i'm lucky to have the proof in my 15 yr old who started school at 13 and was immediately placed in all honors classes, and is doing just dandy to this very day. I would actually say that, more than doing dandy, she knows exactly who she is in an environment that aims to make everyone pretty much the same, but that would be a subject for another moment.

anyway, I know all this probably sounds like utter insanity to the vast majority of people, but I've seen this basic truth in action (that children have an innate drive to learn, if we just get out of their way) so infinitely many times, it's second nature. but, I digress.

so, as far as a schedule, pretty loose. a casual observer might say so. however this child of mine sees a whole different picture.  apparently, i'm some kind of homeschool jail warden, heaping untold quantities of cruel and unjust work on her head. running with mark twain's definition of work (work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do. play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do) she kind of has a point. and i stand by the fact that i want her to have basic math and hebrew skills (her english skills are through the roof - she reads books written for adults happily and expresses herself with a frighteningly adult vocabulary.)

the part that gets tricky is that she inherited a certain tendency of mine to argue and turn situations upside down even when she doesn't fully believe what she is saying. she literally has a counter argument for every word out of my mouth when she is in one of these anti-work moods. "why do i need hebrew and math if i'm not going to be a rabbi OR a cashier??" "if you get to tell me to do work, i should get to tell you to do work, and not fun work, boring work like learning a language you don't want to know" "when you make me do work, it uses up all my work and learning energy, and i never get a chance to learn the things i actually want to learn, like about volcanoes and mushrooms! you are making me hate learning!" (this last one on the point of tears, lip quivering with ultimate sorrow.) that one especially hitting a nerve, as this is kind of the ultimate fear of any homeschooler. (the whole knowing exactly where you are vulnerable, she inherited, like her sister before her, but that's also a subject for another time.)

so this is where we stand, she and i, kind of doing this dance every few days. i'm not ready to make the leap into fully unschooling - though she claims she will for sure only unschool her children, because she will respect them! not like she is disrespected! i do hear some of her points; there is a fundamental truth about how she feels, and i get it.

but i also see her when she does her hebrew or math work - she is mostly doing beautifully and engaging (at least on good days) with the material, and honestly, it doesn't seem like quite the extreme form of torture she'd have you think it (though she'd say she is a really good pretender.) and i see many hours of her day, wide open and unplanned, and maybe i can help her find a way to fit volcanoes and mushrooms into those.

i don't know. maybe i'm a little bit kidding myself - its not just her energy for "work" that wanes, but mine - if i excitedly brought her a volcano experiment or whatever, i think she'd do both.

i guess we'll see where this goes - truth is, one of my favorite aspects of homeschooling is the fact that there are just these vast swaths of time in which these kinds of dialogues and dances can unfold. we don't have to have an answer this moment. and I'm willing to bet vast swaths of cash that my 8 yr old will not let this issue peter out any time soon.