Ima 2 Eight

Today I was blessed to attend a fabulous class by Rabbi Aba Wagensberg of Israel. I went to a beautiful brunch (a spread of food prepared by others), learned beautiful Torah from a wonderful Rabbi, and had the honor of driving him to his next destination, with an uninterrupted 90 minutes to talk to him. (I am proud to count him as a client of my firm at the moment.)

After some adorable homemade cards, a breakfast I didn’t want and adorable hugs, I ran past the DISASTER of a kitchen filled with the supplies used to make the adorable homemade cards and the breakfast I didn’t want, and left. By myself. I spent the majority of the day not mothering, which was the best Mother’s day gift I could have asked for. Sorry if that makes me sound like a terrible Ima, but this year that is what I needed.

The topic of the class was “Coping with Pain and Suffering”.  Rabbi Wagensberg reminded me that everything that we are given is precisely what we need in order to help us become the best person we can be.

But this is also true for everyone we are given; our spouses and our children are just the challenges Hashem knows that we need to learn and grow. While he was addressing the serious, hard sufferings of this world people must deal with, I was also reminded on Mother’s Day that my children are the most amazing gifts in more ways than one.  They do teach me so much, and help me grow.  Each one is an awesome responsibility and often a huge enigma. But gifts. Not only for all of the good and wonderful things they do, but for the acting up, acting out, and just plain stumping me that occurs on a regular basis.

Having “abandoned” them for almost the entire day, sure enough my re-entry was met with a sudden list of traumas, complaints, boo-boos and of course “we’re starving“…..

…. thank you, Hashem, for the Mother’s Day gifts……

I am suffering from allergies.

I don’t suffer from allergies, but I have learned that if you live in the Garden State long enough, sooner or later you, too, will become an allergy sufferer. It is one of the many, many reasons that living in NJ is not my favorite thing in the world. Mostly because I belong in Israel (don’t we all?). But I digress…..

Because of the dry allergy cough, I have also lost the use of my voice. Not competely; it just hurts to use it.

One might say that losing the ability to yell at your family is a blessing. You have to find proper and healthy ways to communicate. It really isn’t, believe it or not, the loss of the yelling that is making me crazy. It’s the rest of it.

Taking the voice from a mother is like taking the scalpel from a surgeon. How can we do what we do? I don’t know sign language very well, and even if I did, my kids don’t. And we don’t live in one room or on one floor. And they don’t stay put or come to where I am to speak to me.

Furthermore, apparently having the big ones read bedtime stories to the little ones isn’t good enough. And the child who only agrees to be diapered with the “itsy bitsy spider” song sung to him (performed with Music Together sound effects of course) isn’t going to accomodate and get changed without.

This post is sounding a lot more like one long complaint than I meant it to. Laryngitis is truly not the worst of problems. It certainly curtails lashon hara.

However, motions, and speaking quietly so that they will all quiet down to listen can only take me so far.

I parent with food, I parent with hugs, I parent with gestures, with carpool, with laundry. But most — a HUGE most — of my parenting is done with those two, very precious, very sore vocal chords.

No, I am NOT “ima2nine”.  I am just really proud of two friends who have given birth to their own Jewish Mommy Blogs. Welcome to the blogosphere, ladies.

I would love to think I have inspired them, but I happen to know that they have been reading blogs better and more successful than mine. I hope they take my advice and check out  Hannah Katsman’s advice to new bloggers. Yet one more reason A Mother in Israel impresses so many of us.

Please visit http://immahlady.wordpress.com/
and http://tricolon.wordpress.com/ and give them an encouraging comment!

While I am making shameless plugs, I am really amazed by Allie Brosh and her blog success. She is hysterically funny, and I just could never, ever do what she does. he blog is http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/, or Hyperbole and A Half. It isn’t Jewish, and it isn’t a mommy blog; in fact, it isn’t even appropriate some of the time.  This interview with her is even better; I learned a lot about her, her humor and how she is the kind of multimedia blogging phenom that she is. (Two million hits a MONTH!)

I owe anyone who is kind enough to visit here a more significant post.  Working on it.

We were invited to be guests in someone else’s home this past Shabbat. That’s right, 8 out of the 9 of us picked up and moved in with another family for Shabbat. This very brave, gracious family has twelve – yes twelve – children.  Don’t worry; only ten of them were home.

We don’t go away very often, especially for Shabbat. We rarely go out for Shabbat meals locally in our own community. It is truly a lot of work, and usually easier to stay home. Not only is it invariably someone’s bed or nap time during a meal, but my picky eaters will usually come home from a meal telling me they are starving, so I have to make food anyway.

This last week was an intense work week for me, and my thinking was that with 10 children home (ages 22-3) there would be mess, chaos, noise and lots of food without my having to worry that it was all caused by my family. I also brought sleeping bags and pillows for my kids. The thought of anyone having to do double the amount of laundry I do just makes me woozy.

We had a fabulous, fabulous time. Two things struck me: 1. There was far more unanimous happiness and joy than there ever is at any “family outing”, which usually take more money and a lot more effort. 2. Being a host is good for a person, but so is being a guest.

We spent our Shabbat away in Lakewood, NJ, a black hat (or haredi) community, if not THE haredi community in the US. (Forgive me, Monsey).  The community as a whole observes Judaism in a lot of subtle little ways that are sharply different from our family.

One great thing about coming outside of our home, our neighborhood, our comfort zone, was to have a different role. In this case, mine was blissfully passive! Another was to get a new perspective. We didn’t just glimpse a different Judaism, we discussed it. We asked, we compared. We got a taste of something else.

When I was younger and single I encountered so many different Jews with different views on Torah and halacha. I saw and experienced such a wonderful range of minhagim (family traditions) and opinions. Then I settled down, had a family, and wanted to build a wonderful consistency for them. The break from that consistency was wonderful, and allowed us to understand a piece of Klal Yisrael just a little better.

Another wonderful thing about being a guest is seeing different styles in parenting. It is obviously clearer during a 26 hour visit than a two hour one. It is wonderful to digest what one can learn from others and to break the routine to the point where things aren’t happening by rote so that maybe you can “see” them.

There are some who claim that communities like Lakewood are insular, judgmental, close-minded, etc. Perhaps I am not looking for such negativity so I am not finding it. But I must say that the warmth and kindness from everyone I met was just amazing.  It is obvious to anyone there that I am an outsider who does things differently. I was greeted much more warmly than I have been in some other places. (As I always have been whenever in Lakewood.) By being there, I could ask questions, as so many people ask me, about why things are done the way they are. And as with so many other things in the Torah, the answers are often simple and beautiful, just with a perspective I didn’t previously have.

The informal and extensive hospitality is one of the many things I miss about Israel. I was recently told that travelling to another’s home routinely means bringing one’s own linens.  I bet that helps a lot.

I also enjoy being a host(ess) for many of the same reasons. I love hearing a different person’s story, their point of view, their Jewish journey. (I think this particular part I owe to many meals at Alan and Bonnie Cohen’s home opposite the Old City of Jerusalem. One of the many things I owe them…) I like the new “flavors” that different people bring to our meals. It isn’t always easy to be the host, especially if you feel compelled to make a certain kind of impression. (Of course I have never felt that way.) It is often easier to keep things routine, just family; simple. I have never been known for preferring easier for its own sake.

It isn’t always easy to invite a whole family into your home, especially overnight. Nor is it ever easy, I think, to travel somewhere with six of your own. But the experience was so very worth it, and I feel invigorated not only by the rest of letting someone else “make shabbos”, but by the fresh perspective and the watching and listening.

….. I will just have to hope that someone else, at some point in time, is crazy enough to once again invite all of us to be guests.

My role as a stepmother isn’t a subject that I have blogged about much.  My stepson is 16,  and I remember being pretty embarrassed by just about everything my parents said and did when I was sixteen. I especially hated it when they talked about me to their friends.

The truth is that to be a non-custodial stepparent who is religious is lonely. There are almost no forums, communities, books or resources. Much of what applies in the non-Jewish world doesn’t translate, and most of the books I have seen address being a custodial stepparent. When I wanted some help navigating the road I am on, I looked in every place on line and in the library that I could think of.  Nothing.

It is as if the publishers out there make the same mistake as a lot of other people that I don’t have to parent much, or work hard, or focus energy on my stepson because he doesn’t live with me.

Of course the opposite is true! There are many times where more patience, energy, work, skill, communication…. in short parenting, is required because he doesn’t live with me.  And of course I don’t love him less than my other children. I do love him differently, but I love each of them differently. Each relationship is unique.

The difference isn’t in my unconditional love – it is that my unconditional love for him is one way. His loving me conditionally is a result of lots of different factors. I could say that it is “normal” for a stepchild, but I don’t think one can generalize in this case. There are stepchildren who freely adore their stepparent. Hold on to them as a buouy of sanity in their lives.  There are stepchildren who simply don’t love their stepparents at all. And everything in between. But the love, conditional as it may be, is just that, LOVE. And sometimes I am amazed that he lets himself love me, given loyalty issues and other factors in his life.

At another time I would like to describe all of the ways that I think the one-way unconditional love makes me a better parent for my whole family. It has made me a better person. Loving, and giving with no illusions of control is freeing. It is a challenge, but it is freeing, and strength-building.

I cannot sum up the complex relationship filled with challenges and love that I have with my stepson in one blog post. In fact, it is a book’s worth of stuff that I will try to write someday. (Maybe when he is old enough to not be mortified by such a thing.)

Most of the parenting issues we have now are 99% about being sixteen and 1% about being a step-relationship. Which is great! But I never know when it is one or the other, and I am often insecure and don’t have enough confidence in that ratio. I keep learning the lesson over and over again.

Tonight there was pushing away, and pushing away, and pushing away: ” I don’t want to commit to following up with that. I can’t come that day. I don’t want to talk about it. Nothing new is in my life, I mean it. I don’t know when I will have them. Yeah yeah, okay, etc.”

…. and then “Yeah, I would prefer it if you packed me a lunch for school tomorrow, if it is okay.”

And in one instant, I feel needed, I feel loved.    :  )

I seem to have hit a selfish phase lately. I think it has been brought on, like most things, by a combination of factors.  I am not saying it like it’s a bad thing, it just is.

Pesach was a  long two weeks of break from school, with my husband spending a lot of the time home.

I turned 38, which I already blogged about, but feels, well, older, for some reason.

I got sick, and it took a while to feel better.

And my youngest child turned two.

For some reason I have yet to understand, something happens to me in my subconscious when my littlest ones turn 2. It is as if an alarm goes off in my body that screams “enough!”. I give a lot of time and attention to my kids, not as much as some, but a lot. I nursed a lot of my kids until 2 or close to it. And after two years (not even including pregnancy) of giving up so many of  my own needs and desires,  I get restless. I think the restlessness is good. It helps me allow my children to become more independent and grow.

So, with all of these reasons brewing, I have taken half of a day off for a massage and manicure / pedicure. I have taken naps when I feel like it, including at 7 pm. I have planned an overnight trip, on the weekend, without my family, just to spend time with friends. (I can’t wait!)

I am sure that many of you cannot see what the big deal is. “Me time” is an important given for many. But it hasn’t always been easy for me. My guess is that moms of a large number of kids are a self-selecting group for whom this is often true.

I know the old idea that I am taking care of my family by taking care of me. It doesn’t go down that way with the troops in my house. Especially since taking care of me lately means getting away from them. :  )

I have mentioned before that this year I am feeling older – and wiser. I think the selfishness is part of that unfolding wisdom.

It isn’t that I haven’t done things for myself before. The selfish phases do come.

More often then not, when I have a child that has recently turned two.

We are in the middle of changing the house back after Pesach. I am actually not procrastinating by blogging, but rather making good use of a break forced upon me to nurse the baby to sleep.

I still want to write an email about our sedarim. Lack of Hol Hamoed combined with all of the strep throat in our house has made it tough for me to write.

Every year, around this time, I have developed the habit of sending myself an email. If I write myself notes for next year, I will lose them.

I can send it to myself, or save it as a draft. I have a  list of the recipes that worked, the number of boxes of matzah we needed (4 more than last year,) and what spices and other things I am packing away for next year, vs. what I have to buy.

This is more or less what mine looks like this year:

Only spice needed to buy is paprika. Saved the rest. Have dill. Two sippy cups left, and no bottles.

Don’t buy coffee filters; they are w/ the coffee m aker.

Do buy saran wrap.

steam bags are in with pareve stuff.

Handle on “nice” negelwasser broke off.

___

Have you sent yourself an email yet?

Hope it was a great holiday for you. (It was for us.)

Chag Sameach. I hope your seders were as uplifting and meaningful as ours. I will look forward to writing about them in the coming days.  I unfortunately fell ill with strep this year, which is amazing given that I actually had less stress going into the holiday than ever before.  But it certainly translated into lots of sleep and time alone with the family as I quarantined myself.

Today I just want to share my earliest and fondest Pesach memory:

Coming downstairs in the morning to my maternal grandmother “Nanny” in an old and ugly housecoat standing over the stove making the best matzoh brie I have ever tasted. I am sure there was a stick of butter in the pan.

She was the only one of my grandparents to live long enough to have a relationship with my kids, and we all miss her.

Today was the first matzoh brie of the holiday, and it always makes me think of her.

Chag Sameach.

It says in Pirkei Avot that one should make for yourself a Rabbi. There are slightly different variations on how this is understood. However, there is consensus that a person can spend time with and learn from as many rabbis as they like, but should have A rabbi that gives them halachic rulings and advice. We are not supposed to shop around for opinions on each matter until we get the one we like. Or go to our “makel rav” (lenient rabbi) when we want a lenient answer and our “mahmir rav” (strict rabbi) when we don’t.

I am frequently amazed at how many frum Jews I meet who tell me that they don’t have a rabbi. They may live near a rabbi, or know several, but they don’t have one Rabbi that they trust completely, see eye to eye with on Torah, and not only are prepared to live by what he says, but feel elevated and stronger as a Jew through their psak (rulings.)

The common response I hear is that “I don’t know someone like that” or “I can’t find one” or “I like the Rabbi in my town/city/shul/yishuv I just don’t feel that we are 100% on the same page but it’s what I’ve got.”

This is so very sad to me.  I wonder why the Rabbinic leadership doesn’t encourage people to seek this out, especially in our digital day. The Rabbi of our community is my friend, teacher, role model. He is an amazing person from whom I learn all of the time. But my posek, my Rav is many many miles away, and most of my communication with him is “cyber-psak”.

We have the most wonderful Rav. I met him through my husband. I often feel through my questions and conversations with him closer to Torah, closer to Hashem. I just believe that is how it is supposed to be. I don’t know that his answers would elicit the same feelings in other people; that’s why we each have to make for OURSELVES a Rabbi.

His answers make sense to me, and make me feel supported. Even when they are not what I want to hear. They make me want to grow in Torah in mitzvot.  There are times when my husband and I just cannot agree on what is the right thing to do. And there is no worry, because he can give us direction when we reach an impasse.

I don’t understand why this process of finding one Rav both spouses really relate to isn’t a requirement or pushed part of the process of getting married.

There has been much concern from my non-religious and non-Jewish relatives and friends that I let my Rabbi do my thinking for me. That is absolutely not the case, but I do ask him to elucidate halacha and to clarify the role of minhagim (traditions) in our lives. (Not growing up with any religious family members on either side of the family means very few minhagim.)

Pesach time of year is one where I, like most, spend more time checking with the Rav.  And I never stop feeling tremendous hakarat hatov – appreciation – that we have him.

It’s my birthday today. It is both my English and Hebrew birthday. Since the Hebrew calendar syncs with the Roman one every 19 years, I am either 19, 38, or 57 today. I will let you guess.

I don’t really expect or enjoy much fanfare on my birthday. I remember my 30th, because I spent it in bed with a stomach flu. The rest past about 16 are pretty unmemorable, and that’s okay with me.

For me, birthdays are a day for reflection and gratitude. (And handmade cards from my kids.)

This year, my 10 yo made me a beautiful necklace, with her Safta’s help, without my knowing, and managed to keep it a surprise. I am pretty impressed, but I am also bracing myself that my kids are getting older as well, and in a much more dramatic fashion than I.

When I was just turning 31, my neighbor and close friend told me how great it was to be in her 40’s. I thought she was CRAZY. I didn’t want to be getting any closer to 40 myself. But she said that her 40’s were about implementing the wisdom she spent her 20’s and 30’s accumulating.

That was very little consolation to me on that younger side of my thirties.  Didn’t sound attractive to me at all. Now as I get closer by one more year, I totally get what she meant.

This year is about starting a very new chapter in my life. While I generally don’t rely on any plans I make, we don’t expect to be having more children.  And that has never been true before since I got married. And the ones we have aren’t a household full of little ones any longer.  I am also adjusting to my new work life. Conveniently for me it comes at a time that my schedule is minimized so I can prepare for Pesach, clean,feel the renewal of spring, and contemplate.

Now if I can just make this the year I get a decent figure back, and get in shape!!!