Tag Archives: Kids

Dad’s 89th birthday dinner

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So, another family celebration.  We all talk at once so no one hears anyone else’s opinion.  When we don’t want anyone to argue with us, we start our opinions with, “unencumbered by fact or information.”  Of course, no one is really listening. 

At one point we were talking over each other about which candidates won the run-off primaries in New York City.  My 7 year-old son asked innocently, “who did you vote for and why?”  So we all talked at once but at some point we fell quiet when my brother-in-law was explaining in earnest to my son the differences between the investment strategies of candidates Yassky and Liu, and the issues of defined benefit plan. 

Trying to stop my brother-in-law from needlessly getting over-wrought at the flagrant injustices of our system and my son’s seemingly impassive expression, I kept interjecting, “he is only seven” and “he was born in 2002” and finally, “you need to be more specific about the meaning of the defined benefit plan and the applicable law.”  It took my brother-in-law a minute to realize the joke.  By this time, my son had already tuned us out and was reading his magazine.

The good news is that Dad was just happy that three generations were gathered around the table, celebrating his birthday, and my sister let him have a second glass of wine.  (And, since we weren’t really listening to each other, we can have the same conversation on Sunday night when we have our weekly family dinner.)  

Another successful family gathering.

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David Letterman, Senator Ensign, Roman Polanski

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There are no parallels among these men.

David Letterman did get out in front of the “scandal”. That was smart media.  As long as the women with whom he was intimate were consenting adults — that means without fear for their jobs or career advancement — then it is just another philandering person.  What makes it news is that he is a TV star.  What is sad is that sexual harassment happens everyday and there is no famous star to blackmail to make it stop.  David Letterman has a lot of heartache ahead of him.  But he doesn’t need to apologize to me.

Conversely, Senator Ensign needs to apologize to his voters because he is a fraud — he is not the “family values” candidate that his constituency elected and he broke the public trust in the cover-up. His extra-marital affair was not criminal or actionable — consenting adults without any specter (so far) of harassment in the workplace.

Roman Polanski is, based on the information available, a scoundrel and a sexual predator.  A thirteen year-old is a child and is not capable of consent in sexual circumstances.  Justice delayed is justice denied.  Lock him up and throw away the key.

Let’s not lump these men and their actions together.  None is a shining star, but in only one case was there a sexual criminal.  In another, it was the cover-up that is criminal.  The third, well, unless we hear more, is just disappointing and ooky.

There is one guy, whose handle is TheFlaCracker on Twitter, who refers to all Libiots (liberal idiots) as defending Roman Polanski.  That’s unfair.  I am a G-d damn Democrat and liberal and a Hillary-lover.  I am proud of it.  But, child abuse is not a liberal or conservative issue.  It is solely about our expectations and demands for the safety of society’s and our children.

The true measure of our society is how we treat the children others have “cast off”and those who abuse them.

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Yom Kippur

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First, to everyone, Jewish and non-Jewish, I wish you happiness, health and prosperity in the year 5770 (or 2009-10).

With the Yom Kippur fast came a blogging fast.  Both fasts have ended.

This Yom Kippur had bloggable moments, some profound and others, well, let’s just say that I have already started the list of sins for next year’s atonement:

Muslim-Jewish Greetings. A Muslim cab driver wished us health and happiness in our new year.  And I told him that we hope that he had had a blessed Ramadan with his family.  There is an advantage to living in NY.  There are no territorial, ideological or historical impediments to honoring other traditions and religions.  (We are cramped in this City, but for purely capitalist reasons.) I am a conscientious objector when it comes to religion (but not tradition), but I see G-d in these ordinary exchanges between individuals of different backgrounds.  These seemingly mundane holiday greetings have transformative power, precisely because they were between Muslim and Jew.

Gay, Muslim and Palestinian. There was a gay Palestinian Muslim at our Yom Kippur services as a guest of our synagogue (we flew some GLBT Israelis here after the attack on a gay center in Israel, so they can feel a part of a huge community of supporters).  Now, that is bizarre on so many levels.  But closeness to community, to spirituality comes with the setting, not the liturgy.  And, I know, I feel more at home in a mosque than in a church.  The lack of iconography (i.e., no depictions of suffering Jews) and the Sephardic melodies are familiar to me.  Spirituality doesn’t, I believe, require belief in a deity, or a particular theology; rather, a sense of essential goodness in (most) people who are inextricably tied one to another because of our inherent humanity.

A River Runs Through It. The rabbi reprised her Rosh Ha-Shanah theme of the colors of the river.  It reminds me of when I tell a joke (or make what I think is a witty comment) and no one laughs.  I assume that no one heard.  I have to remember that everyone heard but no one thought it funny.  So, the rabbi didn’t get that no one could follow her metaphor at Rosh Ha-Shanah, let alone ten days later when people are hungry and have caffeine and nicotine withdrawal.  My head was pounding and all I heard was the light of the river, river, river, and whether we saw the light or not and whether we followed the changing light of the river, river, river.  And I thought, I will wait until the light of the river is a major motion picture but please get to the part where the Shofar is blown and the fasting is over and the pounding in my head stops.  The river, river, river made me dizzy, dizzy, dizzy, AGAIN.  Torture comes in many shapes and size and pretexts.

Our Child, Our Oracle. Ok, so here is the best part of the whole Yom Kippur.  Our son was prone to melt-downs this holiday season.  Maybe it was his bow-tie or his blazer that caused a karmatic imbalance (although he was such a chick magnetic and he was in Heaven being kissed and adored by women old and young). So, we had to leave for a while (to relieve everyone from having to hear the meltdown) but PRECISELY because we wanted to leave, our son then wanted to stay.  My partner asked him to rate his behavior in the children’s service.

Our 7 year-old responded, “Mommy, I was a complete ass.”

Parenting manuals don’t teach you how not to laugh and how not to applaud the razor-sharp analysis even though your child used “bad words”.

Choking back laughter and “bravos” for spot-on analysis, we told him those were not words that we used and his choice of language was not ok.  His response:

“Mommy, I don’t think I am being brought up well.  In good homes, children don’t say such words.”

Ok ok ok ok ok ok, it is Yom Kippur, and we are tired, cranky, hungry and our precocious child has laid down the gauntlet.  My partner says something that adjourns the conversation, so that we can prepare for battle or, more precisely, litigation, with our 7 year-old. I have called in reinforcements.

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Principality of Sealand

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Principality of Sealand is a nutty kind of place:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand.

Commenter Chuck mentioned it in a comment.  This is not how I envision No-where-istan.  Also, fighting and power grabs are not allowed.  I will use my powers for good.  And no in-breeding in No-where-istan because it is gross and we have no health care plan so anomalies cannot be treated without bankrupting the in-breeders. 

We are “carnivoratarians,” a word my son made up which means “eaters of chicken fingers, french fries, hamburgers and ketchup”; however, we are not exclusively, carnivoratarians. Vegans and vegetarians are welcome as long as I don’t have to eat that Tempeh stuff.

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An excellent day

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Every morning POB (partner of blogger) brings a mug of coffee for me and puts it on my bedside table, so I have coffee as I am waking up.  I am a lucky person.

I am especially lucky this morning because the coffee is delicious and warm and my body is stiff and sore from my run yesterday and our son bounds into our bed and lunges over me to get the remote control lest we miss one moment of the senseless cartoons available to numb our children’s minds. Warm coffee (as opposed to piping hot) spills all over my jammies.  Even if it were piping hot, I may not have been able to move. POB is already dressed and going out to get some groceries.  No wonder I am tired.  POB’s schedule is enough to exhaust TWO people.

I speak to my cousin who is recovering from major surgery and he says some chicken soup would do him good.  What does POB do?  Starts making chicken soup.  I need a nap now and it isn’t even 10am.

By 10:45am, I am able to limp into the shower.  Then we dash off to our son’s schoolmate’s birthday party.  New school, new friends, new challenges.  Our son is a little scared. We go to the amusement park and we meet up with the group and all is good.  Except amusement parks remind me of horror flicks, sad clowns and freaky sideshows.  There is an odd, clown-like man working at this place and I am as fascinated by him as I am ooked out. 

Then pizza and cake and chaotic running around.  The kids are so friendly and I can see that our son feels right at home.  He has a crush on one girl whom he has known for many years — more than a crush really, because even though he is 7, he asked her to marry him and she said yes.  But he is talking up another girl, too.  Bad form, dude.  It is your first week, so be circumspect with the girls.  The other girl’s mom says that her daughter and my son may be competing for the affections of the same girl. I think, wow, this place is too groovy and hip for words.  But I can tell already that there are back stories.  I’ll ease into those.  For now, I am happy because my son is happy.

POB and I are so happy that we do not want to ruin the moment by discussing wedding plans.  As founding members of the Bridezombies, we have to set a standard for detail avoidance.  We set a high standard.  We are proud.

Family dinner tonight, but my sister and brother-in-law bag out.  My sister cannot seem to follow doctor’s orders (even though she is a doctor) and her foot is not healing.  She over-exerted and now can’t move.  Let’s work through this problem together.

Let’s say you are a competent doctor (as in you didn’t get your medical degree from the internet) and another doctor whom you respect (as in it is ok for the doctor to examine you but not cut into you) tells you to use a cane and stay off your feet as much as possible.  Then let’s say you have a conference where if you were really healthy you would stand all day and present an interesting case (work with me here; I know we are talking about diseases).  So, even though you aren’t healthy, you stand all day and don’t use a cane. 

Ok, so maybe my sister did get her medical degree from the internet.

Bottom line, Sis and the Man cannot come to Sunday night dinner.  I call them afterward to tell them about the fun and the food they missed so they feel really bad.  It is, in fact, the least I could do.  My brother-in-law sends a grovelling email.  A little more grovelling ought to do the trick.

A young cousin comes over.  My son wants to know why he didn’t become a professional hockey player since he played in college.  I want to know, too, because he is depriving the extended family of an element necessary to the true American family.  We need a sports star.  We already have doctors, lawyers, artists, entrepreneurs, felons (ok, only one), mixed marriages, gays and lesbians (ok, only one), etc.  What a crowning achievement for a Jewish family to have a member who suits up in armor and carries a club to do battle on ice and someone keeps score.  But, he is taking the easy way out and going to school, going into debt, to become a professional.  So old school.  Still, he is a lovely guy and it will be great to see more of him.

I am so happy to have (some of) my family together around my table.  I think wistfully of a bigger gathering, one that includes my sick cousin, my dear cousin who is his niece, all together.  I know my cousins who are uncle and niece need to work out their issues, but I love them both and family is so precious.

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Visiting Mom

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So I let my son wake me earlier than usual on a weekend [dulcet tones of “wake up, WAKE UP, Mom, there are CARTOOOOONS on!!”] because I need to pick up my sister and father to go to visit Mom at the cemetery.  My son didn’t want to come because he says cemeteries are creepy and make him think of ghosts and skeletons.  I get that.  Cemeteries are creepy, I tell him, but I have to visit Grandma’s grave.  He says he will visit us but he is not ready yet.  We are not ready to be visited there for a really long time, I tell him.  He nods and then asks to turn on cartoons.  Good, I think, death and destruction before the pilgrimage to the cemetery.

Lots of people are buried in Queens and on Long Island.  Very convenient if you need to pop in on two funerals on different sides of the family on the same day. We had to do that once. Very convenient, indeed.

I pick up my sister who is limping badly, even with a cane.  Her husband who is NOT coming with us (he hasn’t met Mom yet) is feeling sheepish but he needs to focus on a painting.  He is trying not to look like a heel by carrying my sister’s stuff to the car.  He even offers to carry her cane.  Ok, he IS funny.

We drive to Dad’s and set off to Long Island.  Once, when I mentioned that Grandma is in Heaven, my son asked, “Heaven is on Long Island?” [ To some, yes, I guess, Heaven is on Long Island.]  I stammered that her body is there but her spirit is somewhere else.  Then I called for my partner because I was WAY out of my element.  Kids are smarter than adults.  But I digress.

Dad gives me helpful driving hints like, “is there a reason you are driving behind the slow car?” and “go straight. no, make a left.  I said make a left!” and “well, I guess I told you to get off at the wrong exit.”  It is really ok.  My dad is going to be 89 in October, and he is in terrific shape (spit in the evil eye, a Jewish superstition).

We arrive and get a little lost in the cemetery.  So many dead people.  But we find Mom and our other relatives.  Luckily, they haven’t moved.  We three say a few prayers for all of the family members, leave stones on the graves and reminisce about Mom.  My sister brings pictures of Mom through the years.  It is good to have the gravestone as a focus of our thoughts.  About 45 minutes into our visit, a couple stops and visits another grave nearby.  After they finish their drive-by visit, the woman comes over to us to say, “we come all the time and never see anyone else here.”  Gee, thanks.  Very thoughtful of you to say and I don’t really notice all your ugly plastic surgery.   

My sister needs to take pictures to document the occasion.  No joke, these go into our family photo albums. I wish she had taken a picture of the woman with the bad face lift.

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A Day in the Life

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Yesterday was a blog-free day.  Besides, I was feeling like a self-pitying character in a Lifetime made-for-TV movie starring Lindsay Wagner after she was the Bionic Woman and before she was a spokesperson for mattresses. Even I wanted to change the channel.   

Today, we started with the usual Saturday morning violent cartoons.  Too bad my son has outgrown “Arthur” on PBS.  Now, we have to watch mean aliens and anthropomorphized animals (as opposed to friendly talking aardvarks, rabbits, chipmunks and other animals on “Arthur” who learn to live and play and get along with each o-o-other-r-r).  Now we have totally demonic creepsters (even the humans).  Even the commercials are so bizarre I can’t tell it from the cartoon until the Skechers or Geox logo appears. There must be subliminal messages in all of this.

Cartoons, a run (me), a haircut (boy, does he look handsome), lunch, errands and gymnastics took us to 3pm.  A little note about the haircut.  He had $5 in tooth fairy money and wanted to buy a matchbox car at the hair salon.  He sees a silver one and it is $2.95.  We think, “hooray, no issue over spending more than his $5!”  We open it and it turns out to be a matchbox car replica of a HEARSE.  Yes, a HEARSE.  Why did it ever occur to the makers of matchbox cars to make a HEARSE.  We had to tell our son what it was because he was showing his new car to everyone who looked surprised and ooked out when they realized it was a HEARSE.  Our son understands what goes in a hearse but he decided it was a subterfuge for a mobile command station in the war of the planets.  He is such a good sport. I still don’t want him to bring it to show-and-tell.  EEEeeeewwww. 

We dashed to Tribeca to meet another family for a play date.  We live on the Upper West Side.  They live in Brooklyn.  Tribeca is mutually inconvenient, so it works.  There is a pretty nice park there (if you are careful not to sit in bird poop and are willing to stare down some pretty daring pigeons).  Until the family arrived and for sometime afterward, our son played pied piper to young Jasper, who had a Tribeca groovy name, Tribeca groovy long hair and a Tribeca groovy shaved-head, tattoed, goatee’d dad.  When our friends arrived — a couple with a boy our son’s age and two younger identical twin girls — the two boys went off to play and met up with a handsome-like-a-model young boy about their age with flowing blond hair and a Che Guevara t-shirt.  His name?  Herman.  Herman?  HERMAN?  With a name like that, it is a good thing he is model-handsome, with groovy t-shirts.  All in all, this park was CRAWLING with way too many groovy kids and parents.  And with my gray hair and my uncool running clothes, I looked like the ungroovy grandma.  So, this was an even un-groovier realization. 

At some point my partner needed to leave the park for ten minutes.  She doesn’t smoke or drink, so you ask what stealth thing required her to excuse herself without explanation?  Was she testing societal norms?  I know my partner, so it could only be one thing: she needed a “retail therapy” fix (was there some middle-aged angst afoot?)  She likes to buy clothes for our son. I remembered a kids’ boutique across the street from the park and I knew that she was having her therapy session there. 

As it turns out, it was a good time to have some therapy because our son proceeded to get drenched in the sprinklers.  Not just wet like most kids, but sopping as if submerged in water for days.  We are (who am I kidding, my partner is) usually prepared for these contingencies but not today.   As if on cue, my partner returned to the park with a shirt and pants she got on a fabulous sale.  Seeing our child, she sent me back to get underwear.  Of course, the store only carries Le Petit Bateau underwear for $15 a pair and you can only get in packages of 2.  So I spent $30 on a pair of stretchy boxers — he is going to wear these until he’s 13. Bargains always happens to someone else.  They see me coming and they double the price.  And they say Jews don’t pay retail.  I pay uber-retail.  Have I assimilated that much?  But, I digress.

So, we spent a long time at the park and went for dinner.  Our son eats his entire meal and eyed his friends chicken fingers.  His friend didn’t like the chicken fingers and our son was ready, willing and able to relieve him of his burden.  My partner and I were quite impressed with negotiation skills of our friends’ son.   People of lesser will power (like me) would have given in to his demands of dessert even though he didn’t eat any of the chicken.  But they are strong.  When the waiter came to the table and asked, “any dessert?” I yelled “NOOOOO!!!” so scared that my friends would be sabotaged in their strong resolve.  Strong work, ladies. 

So, the check came and our friends will not hear of splitting the bill because they are five and we are three, so out comes the calculator, but one of the parents was faster with a napkin and crayons.  Got to love the irony of adding “big numbers” with a crayon, so I took a picture.

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So, tonight, we thought our son would fall asleep immediately after a bath, and teeth brushing.  Nooooooo.  Just getting hyped up for a game of tag (in the house) or play fighting (with me) or for spilling out his cars and his animals.  Where is the “off” button?

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Blogcation Day 8

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Last night I noticed as I parked the rental car that the outer casing of the driver’s side rear view mirror was missing.  Oh, great, I thought.  Did some aggressive Escalade driver nicked me in an East Hampton parking lot? Or was it some Hummer dude (because one’s driveway is technically off-road driving) who couldn’t fit his tank into four parking spaces and tapped my ultra-safe, unpretentious and family-like Volvo sedan?  I was still a little wrecked about it even though I realized that buying all of that rental insurance paid off big time.  That, and the GPS and the EZ Pass are all worth it, because family vacation drives are epic enough without the added excitement of not knowing where to go or scrounging for cash and change at the toll booth.  I am sure Suze Orman would say that these are unnecessary add-ons that cost me money which, if properly invested, would pay for my son’s education.  Well, I will figure out another way.

We went back out to Long Island to visit with friends who are just wonderful people.  Our son swam in the pool, while the adults just kept eating and talking (someone was always watching him and poised to save him).  Seriously, there was food to feed an army, which worked out well because people actually dropped by.  In New York City, if someone dropped by unannounced, the person would be labeled a stalker and a restraining order issued.

I had to stop eating because, well, I didn’t wear loose enough clothing.  Our son didn’t want to leave — why would he, when he got to swim, explore the nooks and crannies of a big house, and he was lovingly plied with cupcakes and given huge goody bag (big like a serious Halloween trick or treating night score) from the “candy drawer”.

We didn’t stay long enough (I was concerned about the Sunday afternoon traffic back into the city) and we love seeing them.   And it was nice that we had the rental car so we did not to have to ask them to schlep to us in the City. (One of these days, I will recount the crazy story about how we met this couple and what we have lived through together — but no names and not now.)

I was very apologetic and self-conscious about checking my blackberry for texts from potential sitters for our son and constant phone messages from the owner of our beach house rental.  My partner said she would speak to the owner and I was scared for the guy.  She will put an end to his hysteria — either with (i) a charming and gentle touch or (ii) a verbal dressing-down that would be grammatically correct with poly-syllabic words for which he would need the OED (Oxford English Dictionary — when we were dating, my partner had to tell me what the acronym meant and she didn’t break it off — see, she DOES suffer some fools).  All depends on his approach.   Be afraid.

We just finished a rousing game of FDF (Fresh Direct Football).  I stand in the foyer and throw the unbreakables to my son in the pantry who then runs them to my partner in the kitchen.  No spillage and no bruised fruit (although I am worried about the orange bell pepper).

Our son is now reading his encyclopedia of trains (a gift from our friends some months ago).  Recently, he said to me, “I am not angry at you, [Mom], but I just get very frustrated that you don’t remember the names and types of trains.”  Oh, sweetie, if only I could remember most things I once knew.  If only I were young with a sponge-like brain.  If we were really smart, we would take you to the gambling tables and you would win because you would remember all the card that were played.  Then I would need a faster car than the Volvo family sedan because I would have to out-run child protective services agents.

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Postscript on “My very own urban jungle and I don’t mean the Bronx Zoo”

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So, my friend sent me a picture of this costume because she thought, given my recent urban wildlife challenge40andoverblog.com/?p=1085, I might consider this for Halloween. 

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