Just another Saturday

Every other Saturday, SOS (our son, who is (mostly) our source of sanity) has Hebrew School.

POB (partner of blogger), G-d bless her, takes him, while I have a trainer session at the gym.  I meet POB and SOS at the synagogue afterwards.  Usually, I get there for the lunch and kids playing.  We eat, we schmooze and I desecrate the Sabbath with loshen hora (gossip).  Just the kind of religious experience I like: light on G-d; heavy on bagels and lox.

This week there was also a parenting discussion.  In the past, there has been a know-it-all couple who dominated the discussions and I long ago decided that I would rather hang by my toenails and sway in the wind than sit through one of these roundtables. This family moved away, so there is a possibility, however scant, that I would come off the clothesline and in from the cold.

Last month, the parenting discussion was led by our male queer-identified social justice rabbinical intern who is married to a woman and they have a young girl whom they gave a traditionally male name.  I needed to hear about parenting from Rabbi Gender Bender?  We are just a lesbian couple raising an emphatically heterosexual boy in a Jewish home and we are trying to navigate the issues that come up socially and emotionally — both the mundane and those created by our non-traditional family — so that he grows up to be a mensch.  Rabbi Gender Bender’s additional parenting issues made me tired just thinking about them.  So, I took a nap in one of the side rooms, while POB was at the discussion and SOS was playing with the other children.

This week, after my trainer session, I really didn’t want to schlep down to the West Village for gluten-free bagels and soy cream cheese (new rules in the shul intended to put us at the forefront of the digestively hip).  And the parenting roundtable was about how to deal with Christmas.  POB and I decided that the best way to respect other’s traditions is by not co-opting them.  What else is there to know?  And “No” is a complete answer to following requests: mega-sized, expensive presents for the 8 days of Hanukkah and trees in the house.  There, discussion over.  Let’s also collect our kids and have a Saturday afternoon nap.

Still, my family was expecting me and what if POB or SOS fell ill?  What if I needed to save them from tasteless, though hip, food?  I had to go.  On the way down I saw mini-Santa flash mobs on the streets and in the subway.

(This was taken by my dear NYCFOB from another part of town, but it gives you the idea.)

It made me rethink going to the parenting discussion (but only for a New York minute).

I arrived after lunch (people were benching the blessings after the meal).  SOS was having too much fun with his friends to want to kiss me hello.  As a parent, I took this as a great sign.  As a Jewish mother, I see it as something I will hold over his head for a lifetime.  Win-win situation, I think.

POB had had a very hectic morning. Two people sign up for each week’s set up and clean up.  Apparently, my ex signed up with POB for this week (my ex has a daughter who is in SOS’s class).  My ex didn’t show up (don’t know if I should read anything into that).  That meant there were no bagels.  So, POB had to run around the West Village where you can get any type of fancy, schmancy bread from anywhere in the world, but a bagel, a BAGEL, is too low brow to carry in any quantity.  REALLY?  REALLY?  This is New York, for Goodness Sakes.

POB is one fierce and determined woman, and saved the day.  Unfortunately, the shul was not digestively hip this morning.  Necessity must prevail.

POB recovered, SOS was having a blast, and I was tired.  I kissed my family and friends and went back to the Upper Upper West Side and had such a wonderfully long and luxurious snooze.

I could really get into this religious thing, in blogger-size, small quantities.