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Let me count the ways

August 25, 2008 by

How do I love them?
1. I love their happy little faces
2. I love their smiles and giggles
3. I love their excitement (at milking goats, at chickens in the trees)
4. I love their curiosity
5. I love their energy
6. I love their ways of pronouncing things
7. I love when they use big words
8. I love when they are kind to each other
9. I love the sparkles in their eyes
10. I love to watch them learn
11. I love seeing their first steps
12. I love seeing them learning and studying
13. I love hearing their questions
14. I love watching them eat
15. I love their sense of humor
16. I love the way they run instead of walk
17. I love that they see everything as new
18. I love when they laugh because others are laughing and they have no idea of why
19. I love when they grab me around my knees for a hug
20. I love having special travel partners
21. I love watching them grow
22. I love taking them places and talking to them
23. I love how they make their parents smile
24. I love when they are fresh and clean
25. I love them covered with chocolate and ice cream

And as for the big ones:
26. I love seeing them as parents
27. I love watching them care for and nurture their children
28. I love the gentleness they show their children
29. I love to watch them teach their children
30. I love seeing the pride they take in their children
31. I love seeing them accomplish important things
32. I love seeing them getting satisfaction from their work
33. I love seeing them receive recognition for what they do
34. I love knowing I’m their mom

Filed Under: Family life, Parenting, Ramblings

Since you asked

August 19, 2008 by

Ida Mae was a woman who helped me with the cleaning sometime in the period or 1972-1976. She would come once a week and when she left, the house not only looked clean, but it felt clean. Often she would fold laundry too.

At the time she worked for us, we had only the four older children and they were all very young. In August of 1972 when we arrived at Fort Campbell, KY, they were 4 months, 20 months, 3 years, and 5 years old. Ida Mae was not responsible for any child care, but sometimes if I needed to run out for milk or something quick, she would look after the children.

Once, when I returned, I asked where the two little boys were. She didn’t know. That worried me. She was sure they hadn’t left the house, but it was very quiet and they were nowhere in sight. By then the older of them was approaching 4 and the younger was 2.5. after looking in every room, I opened the large hall closet. The light was on. Immediately the older one came out holding a pair of school scissors (the kind made for children with the round edges that actually can’t cut anything). And then, the little one came out. Scalped. There was some hair on his head, but it was not near the hairline at the top of his face. He looked as if he had been attacked by a lawnmower. And then I looked at the older one* a little closer. He also had areas of missing hair. Ida Mae looked at me and said, “Well, they was quiet.”

Sometime later, the following summer, I was in the living room and I noticed “the barber” walking into the house on tiptoes holding a paper cup in one hand and the other hand covering it. He went to his room, spent a few seconds there, and left again. He came in once again, still walking in a stealthy, little-kid-like manner, with the cup, and then went back out again. This was repeated many many many times. I was curious, but being that he was occupied and wasn’t bothering anyone else, I didn’t ask him what he was doing nor did I try to investigate. After about the 30th time, I decided to go to his room to see what was going on. The room was clean. Nothing was out of place. I decided to look in his drawers. I opened one after the other and found nothing notable. Until the bottom drawer. I opened it and immediately tens of bees came flying out. Inside the drawer, there must have been a hundred bees. I quickly opened the window to shoo them out. “The barber” came to the room and started shouting, “My bee collection!!!! You ruined it!!!! You ruined it!!!!”

Ida Mae had taken care of the 9 children of a doctor in her town. One of those children was Ralph. At times like these, she would say to me, “Well he done remind me of Ralph.” At times like the hair disaster, at times like the bee fiasco, at other times or disaster when I was ready to turn in my mommy card and go home. I was afraid to ask her what ever became of Ralph. I was pretty sure that Ralph was serving 10-20 for mayhem. It took a couple of years, but finally I got up the courage. I asked her, “What ever happened to Ralph?” She paused. I held my breath. She smiled. She said, “Ralph…. well Ralph, he turned out the best of them all– he got all his foolishness out when he was young!”

Ida Mae. She was the best family therapist I have ever met.

*Heretofore to be termed “the barber”

Filed Under: Family life, Parenting, Ramblings

Renovations- Chapter 2

August 14, 2008 by

So…

We engaged an engineer who looked at the plans of our apartment and said that there was no problem in doing what we wanted to do. (My genetically programmed paranoia prevents me from being specific.) He has drawn up some plans that begin to address our needs. Since part of what we want to do involves stairs, we went to look at stairs yesterday with the intention of perhaps replacing our heavy, thick staircase with a lighter wood and metal one. We found some very nice options.

Since we are still struggling with the use of space, we are beginning to interview interior designers and the first came over this morning. She offered an option we hadn’t even thought of that makes a lot of sense. Of course she also thought that we should rid ourselves of those useless upper cabinets in the kitchen and open the wall up to windows across the entire side of the kitchen. When we explained that we liked to put our dishes and glassware away, she suggested we cut a hole in our dining room wall… which I had thought of, but because of the open plan of the living room/dining room/kitchen area and the window and sliding doors at the back of the room, there is almost no wall space as is…

I think that so far, aside from trying to reconcile two people’s priorities for what we need (my husband’s and mine) the hardest thing is the uncertainty. I haven’t even started and I’m already thinking:

Wake me when it’s over

Filed Under: Ramblings

About renovations

August 12, 2008 by

When I first moved into my house, I wrote the following article. I am posting it now because we are soon going to be starting on renovations and I am recalling the first time.

Note, I skip the part where I had hired people who *said* they were expert electricians, plumbers, and floor tile layers who ended up not only being disasters in all three areas (I had experts in each field come into the house and all of them pointed out the same problems with the work in their area of expertise) but actually did damage to the house that I ended up paying to repair. Later they threatened to sue me for the remainder of the money, but armed with pictures of the destruction they wrought, we were able to convince them that they were getting off easy if we didn’t sue them.

but I digress…

Here is what I wrote then. I hope that this time I will come out of it as well as I did then.

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“My blood pressure is HOW high!! my cholesterol is up; my ankles are swollen. This can’t be happening to me. After all, I’m only 26. Well, OK, my oldest child is 31, but I only feel like 26. How can this be?”

That’s what I said to myself when I made my last visit to my doctor in Jerusalem last May, about a week before I was scheduled to move to Modi’in. It was hard to believe that I had let myself get to this point. The doctor was not worried. But all I could think about was that I was slowly killing myself with the weight I had gained and the troubles it was causing in my body. I thought it would be really ironic to have come this far and done this much just to throw my life away over croutons and salad dressing, the high calorie stuff I poured over my tomatoes and cucumbers in an effort to diet.

But the move to Modi’in turned out to be my salvation because the inept shiputznikim [renovators] I had hired enabled me to go on the “no-kitchen diet.” Here’s how it works: You bring over a lift [shipment] from America that arrives exactly one day after you move into your apartment which is just fine except for the kitchen. So by the time your lift arrives and you place huge boxes containing all of your major appliances completely filling the living room and dining area, you have demolished two walls of the kitchen and realize that to open any of the boxes is dangerous because there will be days or weeks of flying debris to say nothing of the deadly quantity of dust and plaster that can invade anything that would make life pleasant (like a TV, for example.) But finally, after two or three days, you open the box with the refrigerator which now stands somewhere in the middle of what will be the dining room (probably in the next millenium, you think) and is separated from you by only a hallway, several piles of broken cement, cinderblock, concrete, plastic sheeting, electrical tubing, and a sand covered surface that will be under the floor tiles once they are replaced. Of course to protect the refrigerator from the debris, it remains in the box with only three seams cut to create a makeshift door in the box and a small area for air circulation behind it.

Now comes the fun part. You want to eat, but you can’t cook anything and the idea of even getting to the fridge is daunting. Fruit seems like a lot of effort. Cokes have to be poured and there’s no place to store a plastic cup or even to put one down should you want to pour, so the solution seems to be cottage cheese which can be eaten out of its container with a plastic spoon. To avoid excess fat, of course, you choose the .5% cottage cheese that, with a little nutrasweet, tastes almost like a treat.

Fast forward now to the chanukat habayit [house warming]. Yes, we made it. After a switch in shiputznikim [jokers] and a million missteps, the house was ready. The family came from far and wide, and here is the very best part: when we took the family picture, I fit. Yes, the “no-kitchen diet” did its magic.

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Ramblings

Sure, why not

August 5, 2008 by

So you want to hear about the family…

Well, there is my generation. We are a total of three people: my husband, my sister, and I. My husband was a chaplain in the US Army and a civilian rabbi until he came to Israel on aliya in 1999. My sister has been working in the Philadelphia Prisons for a very long time (around 30 years). She’s a social worker. See. That was easy.

I’ll tell you a little more about each of them.

My husband and I first met the summer he turned 21 and I was approaching 16. He had already graduated from college and was starting rabbinical school and I was returning that fall to start my junior year in high school. We were just friends. I had a kind of a crush on him, but girls that age are always having crushes and it’s probably only a coincidence that we ended up getting married. We simply stayed in touch long enough until both of us were in a position to think of marriage seriously. I’m not sure I knew what I was doing when I married him, but so far it’s worked out well (and it’s 42 years.) One of the big things he has going for him is that he is able to put up with me.

My sister has been with me for all but the first 4.5 years of my life. She has always been my friend. Even when I didn’t treat her very well, she was my friend. We supported each other through difficult, but very different childhoods. She was the favored child and I the child who was the recipient of most of our mother’s anger. I think she had the harder job. I knew I could never please my mother. She thought she could. Through the years, through ups and downs, we have remained close and although we live far apart, we never really *are* far apart.

So that’s this generation… next, some musings about some of my kids (hopefully in a way that won’t embarrass them too much.)

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings

The wind in my hair

August 2, 2008 by

I walked out into the hot sun this morning on my way to synagogue and suddenly I was hit by a strong memory, so vivid I could not only see and hear it, but I could smell it and touch it…

It is summer of 1952. I am six years old, going on seven. This summer my parents, my aunt and uncle, and my grandparents have rented a huge house in Atlantic City, New Jersey for the ten weeks of school vacation. All of us are living in the house- but my father and uncle and grandfather leave each Monday morning to go to work in Philadelphia. They visit on Tuesday and Thursday evenings and leave again the next mornings and they return on Saturday evening.

Life is good. My mother and my aunt Mildred have a lot in common and they get along well together. My grandmother likes sharing a home with her daughter and daughter-in-law and 3 of the 4 grandchildren they produced. My cousin Murray goes to overnight camp and is not home this summer.

The house is wonderful. It has about 20 clocks with chimes so that each hour, we have a symphony. It has two staircases and a room with a window seat and a porch that wraps around one side. We have a 45 rpm record player and we can listen to children’s songs whenever we want. We also hear a lot of Frank Sinatra and Eddie Fisher.

But the most wonderful part of this summer is that now that I am getting big, I have a lot of freedom to do things on my own. There is a pharmacy down the block where I went to buy my parents an anniversary card. It was a wonderful card with a paper disk that you could use to change the number of years. It made me happy to be able to get it for them. When I gave it to my mother, I expected she would be surprised and happy. I had kept it a secret. When she opened it, she said, “You have the number of years wrong.”

The best part of my freedom is that I am able to ride my bicycle on the boardwalk in the morning, all alone, by myself.

Atlantic City has a rule that you could ride on the boardwalk from 6:30 to 9:00 a.m. and so I walk down the brick steps in the front of our house, open the garage, get out my bike, and take it up to the boardwalk to start riding. Sailing along the boardwalk, at first I see the ocean to my right beyond a long stretch of white sand. The sand is so fine it just falls away as you walk on it, but when the sun has been beating down on it, it gets very very hot. I love building sand castles nearer the water where the sand is damp and packed down.

I look to my left and see the beautiful lawns with hydrangeas in pinks and purples and blues and petunias in pinks and purples and white and red and the marigolds in yellows and oranges. The flowers are so bright I feel as if I want to make them part of me. I want to keep their beauty with me all of the time.

Now the shops begin. They are wonderful. There is the “Million Dollar Pier” that has rides and games. My grandfather goes there to win stuffed animals for us children. There is the shop where they have a pitcher of orange juice that keeps pouring but never runs out. There is “Teepee Town,” a store that has all sorts of Indian items including feathered headdresses and beaded bracelets and beautiful leather and suede jackets with long fringes. Walking into “Teepee Town,” you can enjoy the smell of the leather. There is the salt water taffy shop where my mother often buys us “paddles,” chocolate covered salt water taffy on a stick. Farther up the boardwalk are shops that sell beautiful ladies’ jewelry and dresses and hats. There is “Mr. Peanut,” the Planter’s store just opposite the “Steel Pier” and the place on the corner of Virginia Avenue that sells the foot-long hot dogs. I haven’t even mentioned the beautiful hotels– the Traymore, the Shelbourne, the Chalfonte-Haddon Hall- many built in art deco style. And then there’s the Traymore Fountain- beautiful by day, lit in colors in the evening.

My ride is a feast for the senses- the wind in my hair, the sun on my face, the wondrous smells, the beautiful sights, and the feeling of freedom. I ride until just past New Jersey Avenue to where I get to the end of the smooth bicycle strip and turn around and return home. Nothing I will do today will be as wonderful as this ride– but tomorrow, I get to do it all over again.

Filed Under: Ramblings

Home

August 1, 2008 by

Our last day in Los Angeles was eventful. We spent the morning picking up last minute items, packing our things, and straightening the place where we were staying. I was seated at the computer when suddenly the room began to move– it seemed one corner of the the room lifted and then the other and the mirror on the wall went swinging and the blinds were moving back and forth. There was no mistaking that it was an earthquake. I thought about having seen the Wizard of Oz display in Kansas and I thought about the fact that the guest house we were staying in was not very different in size or shape from Dorothy’s house and it too was being buffeted. I can’t say I was afraid. I only worried that somewhere people were being hurt.

Fortunately, when the news media funally reported the quake, it was determined that there had been very little damage and no injuries. They said it was the strongest quake felt in the city since the Northridge earthquake in 1994! What a farewell!

We went out for a pleasant lunch with friends, and then at about 6 pm, we headed toward the airport to return the car and begin our journey home.

Good things about our trip home:
1. No overweight charges
2. They checked our luggage through to Tel Aviv
3. The planes left close to on time
4. Spending time with my sister in New York
5. It’s over

Bad things about the trip home
1. Cramped plane seats
2. Unpleasant people in front who liked to recline at all times, including mealtime
3. Unpleasant person in back who liked to put his feet all the way beneath my seat so that when I sat normally, the toes of his shoes scratched the backs of my legs. (When I turned around to see what was happening, he lifted his fingers, pointed to himself and smiled– but continued to put his feet there through most of the 8 hour flight.)
4. Not enough room to stretch out, causing me to adopt odd postures to try to sleep including the one where I moved my body to one side and my head to the other and stretched my neck to such a degree that I am sure I resembled a body discovered on CSI. It didn’t feel so good either.
5. Looking like a total dork with a blindfold around my neck (so I could use it when I wanted to sleep), earphones sticking out of the pocket of my magic vest* (from my iPod, so that I could drown out the ambient sound so that I could sleep), and one of those inflatable u-shaped pillows aroumd my neck. Despite all of that, I was still uncomfortable.
5. The sounds and smells of airline food by the time it’s the third or fourth time in the trip.

But coming home was the best! Our daughter Rachel and her youngest child Yirmi were there to greet us with a cold diet coke and lots of smiles and when we got home, there was her adorable husband and one of their gorgeous daughters and our younger daughter and her little girl whose hair now curls and is now taking steps!

Now there is only the task of putting things away and cleaning the house (I forgot we live in a desert and was not happy to note that while we were away a truckload of dirt blew through…)

It’s really good to be home.

*some day when I am out of things to write about, I will tell you about my magic vest.

Filed Under: Ramblings

Shake it up baby

July 30, 2008 by

My son Sam has always been kind of flamboyant. OK, not “kind of.” But today he arranged the most spectacular event. And who would have suspected?

As I mentioned, he and his wife went out of town (or so they said) yesterday, and this morning, as I sat in this very seat, the entire city of Los Angeles shook. Now this wasn’t a gentle rocking, like I had felt in Jerusalem about 12 or 13 years ago- this was a shake with the place we are staying moving side to side and up and down in a pretty uncoordinated way. For a long time– the mirror on the wall and the wand to close the blind must have still been swaying a couple of minutes after the shaking stopped.

It reminded me of something that happened about 30-some years ago… We were on a bus in the city of Worms, Germany, and the bus driver got too close to the side of the road and scratched the windows of the bus along a sign. Suddenly there was a hush in the bus and a little voice, Sam’s, that said, “At least I didn’t do it.”

I’m thinking he’s going to say the same thing this time. Like that time, I think I’ll believe him.

Filed Under: Ramblings

Was it something I said?

July 29, 2008 by

I don’t mean to be paranoid. Really. But let’s look at what happened:

I arrrived in LA to spend time with my son and his family. His wife’s parents and sister have graciously hosted us. Until yesterday. When my daughter-in-law’s parents left for a three day vacation. And this morning, when my son and his wife flew off to Las Vegas for a quick get-away.
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Yesterday, we went with my son and his wife and their children to the museum of natural history. We had a great time seeing the animals- African and North American and a dinosaur skeleton that was being restored and some lovely snakes and spiders and other creepy crawlies. After that we went to an ice skating rink where the children had a great time! Many of them skated with little walkers that helped them keep their balance.

Today we went to the sight most yearned for by Americans transplanted to Israel: Target. Yes, it was fun. We even spent a little money there. We bought another bag to transport our goodies in. Then we had lunch (fish) and cashed the rest of the US Savings Bonds we had brought and then went to The Grove, a lovely outdoor shopping area where we wandered around, enjoyed the scenery and marvelled at the amount of money people were spending on the American Girl dolls and all of the clothes and accessories that go with them. We saw one of the dolls set up to look as if she were ironing. I couldn’t help thinking that her owner *should* have the money to buy her a housekeeper.

My husband says I should mention that I displayed great self-control by passing up a blouse that had been reduced from $1800 to a mere $700.

Walking through the Grove, we heard nice music and watched the dancing waters of the fountain that were coordinated with the music. It was a bright and sunny day.

Tomorrow: Our last day in LA

Filed Under: Ramblings

LA LA Land

July 27, 2008 by

Our rides through LA on the way to and from my husband’s cousin’s home were really fascinating. we had heard many of the names of roads we drove and roads we passed, of places in the area, of sections of the city, but we were able to put a picture with the name now.

A picnic with the youngest twins (my older daughter has twins and my middle son and his wife have two sets of twins!) in the park was a perfect way to spend a relaxing Friday noon.

Shabbat was lovely– with kind people to talk to and nothing for me to prepare or clean up.

Not much to write… must be that laid-back California feeling is finally getting to me.

Filed Under: Ramblings
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