Two postings today…. for a very special reason…
Hadas was accepted to IASA – Israel Arts and Science Academy!
(This is the same Hadas who is my oldest granddaughter and my travel partner to China this past summer)
I am so very proud to be related to her. Kol HaKavod, Hadas!!!!!
You can see some pictures of her here.
The setting:
A non-descript three-story building of Jerusalem stone facing a mountain that was planted with trees last summer and instead has as most of its vegetation ugly brown and green weeds, oh yes, and those sticks (some sporting leaves) that are suspended between other sticks that are holding them up.
The time:
Saturday night after the stars had come out and at a time when little children are usually snuggled in their beds.
The characters:
My oldest son and his friend and her daughter; my older daughter, her husband, and her 6 children ranging in age from 14 years to 6 weeks; my youngest son, his wife, and their 5 children, ranging in age from 10.5 to 1.5; my younger daughter, her husband and their 9 month old daughter; and our “adopted” children who made aliya last summer. If you were counting, you would have come up with approximately 12 adults and 13 children. Of those 13 children, 5 were 3 and under.
The room:
Imagine a room that can comfortably accommodate about 8 people sitting on sofas and chairs adjoining a room that can comfortably accommodate about 8 people sitting around a table and try to figure out how that space will accommodate 25 people eating. Yeah. Well, part of the preparations for Pesach included taking the living room furniture out to the glassed-in room behind the house, so we had a place for the little children to sleep and for moms to attend to their children.
Facts about grandchildren:
If there is any time of the year that they will get sick, it is that exact time when they are visiting your house. From nosebleeds to teething pain to earaches and general states of discomfort, our house seems to bring out the best in them.
The seder itself:
Well, like every other observant family, we too started our seder exceedingly late. This was after a day with 5 of the grandchildren staying with us and the stress of the logistics of the seder itself. Naturally, the children were tired and some of us adults were a bit stressed, but once the singing began and we heard the four questions and saw the smiling faces around the table, it actually was nice. I had lots of help serving and except for the under-done turkey (I think this was the largest turkey I ever attempted to cook) the food was pretty good. We decided that we need a wall-stretcher for next year or some other plan…
Special thanks:
To our son Ben for the beautiful story he told at the seder and the extremely delicious charoset.
To our daughter Rachel and her husband Ohad for the exquisite flower arrangement that looks as fresh today as it did when it was delivered and PERFECTLY matched the table settings.
To our son Akiva and his wife Nurit for the cool veggie chopper that I am certain my husband will cherish for as many years as the one he got in Wiesbaden before our younger daughter was born.
to our daughter Leah and her husband Yaakov for a Pesach food processor that made preparing for 25 people infinitely easier. I blessed them about a hundred times as I was making the kugels, the coleslaw etc.
To our wonderful guests who lent us their brute strength and object placement skills to help us move the furniture and who lent us the all important folding chairs.
and most of all to our brilliant, gorgeous, and delightful grandchildren who bring us no end of happiness. And a special thanks to Ayala whose questions kicked off all of the explanations.
Recently I have been thinking about the whole issue of children and how their parents deal with issues that are difficult. No one ever said that being a parent was easy, but when it comes to dealing with difficult issues, parents have two obligations to their children that often require exactly opposite behavior. As parents we need to protect our children. That means that we have to keep them away from things that might hurt or harm them. We do NOT allow our children the freedom to run into the street, ingest toxic substances, or use dangerous implements.
As parents, we also have an obligation to mediate events for our children. By that I mean that when children are exposed to new situations, we must prepare them the best we can so that they are not traumatized (for example if we are moving homes, we need to tell the child in advance so that he/she doesn’t one day wake up to see his/her room being packed up.) Since we mediate events and experiences both future ones and events that are taking place “in real time” for our children, they must be able to trust us. If we say, “when we go to the doctor today you are going to get an injection, but it won’t hurt,” then we are risking our children not being able ever to trust that when we say something won’t hurt, it won’t. We have to be honest with them. If we are not honest with them, then they will not rely on our take on reality and will instead choose others to mediate it for them. This kind of trust is very important. For example, if they see someone smoking and they trust their parent, then when the parent tells them that smoking can be harmful to one’s health, the child will accept that. Lying to children is with very few exceptions, a very bad choice.
But what does a parent do when those two obligations collide? What happens when telling the truth will hurt the child?
Sometimes it is not necessary to say anything. If, for example, a distant acquaintance of yours was killed in a car accident, it is probably not a wise idea to discuss it in front of a young child.
Sometimes it is not necessary to tell all of the truth. If someone the child knows well was killed in the auto accident, it is not advisable to describe the accident or the injury in detail. A simple explanation (“they car went off the road”; “the car was hit by another car”) is sufficient for the young child. Telling the truth does NOT mean telling all of the gory details.
When the event is something that directly affects the child, the parent needs to share the information to the extent the child is able to understand, carefully choosing words and choosing a time and place that allows for discussion, questions, and whatever emotional support that may be needed.
Sometimes it seems to me that parents tell their children too much too soon. Children’s brains are not just miniature adult brains. They actually work differently. They process information differently. They form images to remember information and sometimes those inaccurate images can stay with them and disturb them for a long time.
When sharing heavy, difficult things with your children make sure that you check to see if they understood what you told them. Have them tell you what they heard you say, but in different words so that you know that they haven’t misunderstood. Give them plenty of emotional support and don’t lie to them– but you don’t have to tell them everything.
(to the tune of “Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by***“)
Barefoot in the garden spraying my black oven racks.
Barefoot in the garden knowing that I must make tracks.
’cause you can’t get to Pesach by just wishing
or by sending in a fax
You’ve got to stand there in the garden spraying your sweet oven
spraying your sweet oven racks.
To “Clementine”
On a counter in a kitchen excavating for some grime
Were razor and a toothpick and a tired hand of mine
Oh my darlin’,
oh my darlin’,
oh my darlin’ it’s just fine
For together we’ll destroy it and be Pesachdik in time
To “Everything’s coming up roses”
Grab the bowl
Get the knife
We are having the time of our life
Now it starts, almost done
and then we’ll have a bowl of charoses
Apples first,
Walnuts next
Wine and cinnamon round out the text
Almost done, gee what fun
and we have our sweet bowl of charoses
********************************
What some people do to justify a break! The kitchen’s almost done, only 6 hours behind my estimate. It’s going to feel good to put my feet up and relax!
Oven: Done
Fridge: Done
Microwave: Done
Packaged Passover foods: In great profusion
Frozen gefilte fish: A virtual sea of mutated fish
Hallway obstacle course: More extensive than anticipated
Freezer: Clean and overfull– enough poultry to feed several African countries
Tablecloth inventory: Large, but virtually unnecessary as G-d has seen fit to endow us with clear plastic to put over fabric tablecloths.
Paper goods: Number of individual items approaching infinity
Still to be done:
Lining the shelves and fridge
Covering the counters
Purchasing fruits and vegetables
Purchasing dairy products
Making the kugels
Cooking the meal
Moving the furniture out of the living room
Taking a vacation
PPC= Pre-Peach Cleaning.
Assuming that I have now finished cleaning my fridge (I did), not yet done the freezer (I plead guilty) and only in a couple of minutes will turn on the self-cleaning oven, now I am officiallly at the point that I arrive at before every Pesach: panic.
No no. It’s not that I think that things won’t get done. It’s just that my house is starting to look unfamiliar to me. Suddenly there are newspapers around (waiting to line things), piles of packaged food items in the hall, paper towels strategically placed for drying the things I’ve cleaned and a general sense of disorder. At this point I begin to think that life as I knew it will never return. Of course the truth is that it will and that it won’t even take so much energy to make it happen, but the visuals on this one are hard to take. Add in the issue of shabbat and it becomes worrisome since all I want on shabbat is (strangely) a feeling of peace and order.
So today, in addition to cleaning the freezer and buying shabbat food, I will be doing a little self-cleansing of my mind by sitting quietly and consciously relaxing and picturing the beauty of the seder that I am privileged to be making.
It took me a long time to realize that the anticipation of all of the Pesach cleaning, arranging, purchasing, and cooking was ten times worse than the actual work involved. Some people even become psychiatrically ill. But, with a schedule in mind and a little pre-planning, I have been able to get through it tired, maybe (OK, exhausted, for sure) but generally with little anxiety. Here are some of my coping skills and I recognize that different folks are really different, so they may or may not work for others.
1. For staples, I hit the best stocked supermarkets/stores early. I have already been to the two most likely candidates and picked up items that I might be crushed getting in another few days. All of the non-perishables are sitting in my entry hall and the one bag of frozens (OK, gefilte fish, if you must know) is triple-wrapped in my freezer.
2. I then make a list of what I still need (excluding fruits, veggies, and meats, all of which come later) and go out and get them (maybe what I will be doing today. Who knows?)
3. I pre-clean the fridge. Meaning- I one by one take out all of the shelves, clean them throughly as well as all of the space around them on the walls of the fridge, and then put down newspaper to keep them from getting dirty in the interim.
4. Since I have a self-cleaning oven, I put it on about now and have it clean. I do that because I was traumatized my first year with this oven when it cleaned itself while simultaneously blowing a fuse which I only found out about as I slipped my turkey into the oven erev Pesach. What ensued was much gnashing of teeth and punching of small objects (ouch)…. or perhaps only a frantic call to a repair man. And yes, Virginia, there is a G-d: the repairman, Claude Anton, may he be blessed with a long life, not only came within minutes, but knew exactly what had happened, had the part in his vehicle, and replaced it for an insignificant sum of money. But I still don’t trust the oven and so I clean it a week ahead of time to prevent a potential melt-down on my part.
5. I buy a couple of meters of that very wide heavy patterned plastic material that is usually used for tablecloths. That will later be cut and taped to all of my counters.
6. The three most important cleaning accessories for Pesach are:
a. a good supply of plastic gloves (fortunately there are no pictures of my hands at sdarim in the past before this discovery, but they were tell-tale gray from silver polish and dry and cracking from other cleaning products). This is not a “nice to have;” this is a requirement.
b. A supply of wooden toothpicks. Nothing does better on crevice dirt than toothpicks. If you are a dirt Attila as I am around Pesach, a large number is recommended as they break under the pressure of my dainty little hands.
c. Razor blades. Sad to say, I can’t find the plain blades like they have in the US that slide into a holder. Here I usually end up using one of those box cutters and make it do all sorts of things it would never do if given the choice. I turn it in every different direction to scrape off all sorts of things. Sometimes something that is stuck on just needs a little bit of extra encouragement in order to choose to come off.
Cleaning products:
In addition to all of the usual, I have two that I cherish.
a. Cilit (or other equivalent)- It’s that stuff that removes mineral build-up from toilets, sinks, and any other place that water may sit. One shpritz of Cilit can save minutes of scrubbing.
b. Cold grease remover: A couple of years ago I sent my oldest granddaughter, Hadas (sometimes known as my Beijing traveling pal) to the store to get me some oven spray for the rack of the self-cleaning oven. She came back with a non-aerosol spray that was a remover of cold grease. Since it had a picture of an oven on it, I decided that she couldn’t have been that far off. I used it and it worked amazingly. I then tried it out on the bottom of one of my pots. I sprayed it on and waited for about 5 minutes and literally wiped the blackened, browned, ugly grease stains right off the bottom of the pot. One more reason to love the kid!
Since we will be having around 25 people for seder and at least 10 per meal for the previous shabbat and for lunch on the first day, we decided to do it all on disposable dishes– something I resisted for years, but this time the decision had to do with saving my daughters and daughter-in-law the unpleasantness of dishes- since they are always the ones who insist on helping. So, a few weeks ago I went and bought all of the disposables we will need for several years (or so it seems). Pretty much everything is white as are the tablecloths, but I bought beautiful table runners and napkins and I think it will look festive. Surely the beautiful faces around the table will make it perfect!
So here we are, about 10 days from Pesach and a lot already done. Next will be the making of the shopping lists for the meat (I have someone who delivers), the dairy products, and the vegetables.
A second post with further instructions is on its way… but I am off to buy the raisins and ketchup I forgot the last time….
Thanks, first of all, to my daughter Leah, mother of little Kinneret (sometimes called “Monkilee”) who has updated my blog and added the most recent test post. Although I have been using computers for almost 27 years (oh my gosh!!! Can it possibly be that long!) I am still intimidated by them as relating to them becomes more and more complicated. It’s a long way from the TRS-80 Model III to where we are today. We certainly have lots more to see and do on these new computers, but trying to do anything more than use them intimidates me.
Thanks, secondly, to my dear friend Sandy whose comment on a recent post left me speechless. Sandy and I have known each other for a very long time and she is 100% correct about having stood by me in my journey through life as a young brunette to a young blonde, back to a brunette, all the way through to my light brown dyed hair that might be gray, but I choose not to see it. She was with me through camp and high school and college- seeing me through my awkwardness and through my misadventures with boyfriends, through my broken heart, and through the joy of my engagement and marriage. Sandy shared my joy with the births of my children and followed me emotionally through my wanderings throughout the States and over to Germany and remained connected even after my aliya. I have shared in her joy with the birth of her children and their achievements and accomplishments. I was there to see her daughter marry and from a distance I have shared in her joy as one after another her grandchildren have been born (may they increase.) Sandy has always been kind and caring and friendly and genuine. Although she is multi-talented, she is humble and down-to-earth. Having her as part of my life has been and continues to be a blessing. So thank you to you, Sandy. Ad 120.
This is a test post to see if my new blog settings are working correctly. This is a picture of my granddaughter, Kinneret Esther, eating a pyramid in memory of our ancestors who built the pyramids in Egypt.
When I was young, I used to think of what it would be like to grow old. It was hard for me to believe that I would ever get old. The years passed and although I had children, I didn’t feel as if I were growing older. As I entered my 40s, life was good and I was active and I didn’t feel old. When my children started getting married, it was OK. When the grandchildren started being born, it was wonderful. And as the years passed and I watched the little ones grow, I still felt young. At 50 I made aliya. I opened a whole new chapter in my life. Eventually we bought our house and we settled down to a stable life here in Israel. And it’s all been good.
But suddenly I am looking at the fact that I am getting older. I think I still have a lot of energy. I have decided to stop teaching and I do very little supervision and practically no therapy. I enjoyed it for many years. Now I look forward to the trips I take and even more to the trips I lead. Learning about new places– their history, their culture, their arts, their people is exciting and fascinating. Seeing the world through the eyes of a Chinese person or a Cambodian is wondrous. I get excited about the things I do.
But at the same time, harsh reality pokes me in the eye. My dear cousin, the one who spanned generations between mine and that of my parents, has died. And although I hadn’t seen him in years, we had begun writing to each other sporadically and I was looking forward to having him and his wife come and visit and asking him some of the questions about our family that I had never gotten to ask my mother. He was a good person. He had an infectious smile and a good sense of humor and a depth that was apparent when through all the turmoil of that family, he maintained his equanimity. He was always pleasant and friendly. I will miss him.
And that means that I am now the old one– and I am too young to do this. In my head, I am still in my 30s. Where did those years go?
Time is precious. We should never take it for granted and we should use it wisely.