Ordinary Woman, Extraordinary Life

Honestly, who needs a placenta afterbirth? After the baby comes out, he or she (or they) should be followed immediately by an instructions booklet and a troubleshooting guide.  Wouldn’t this scenario be lovely: What to do when she won’t stop crying, p. 3;  How to encourage sibling problem-solving without letting the fights drive you crazy, p. 264; When to stop enforcing his curfew, p. 805; How to discourage her relationship with a boy you don’t like, p. 1092.  I firmly believe that each child has a different set of rules, mostly because of the child’s personality and genetrics,  but also because of the parent’s, or parents’, emotional state at any given time. 

I look at child-rearing using a trimester schedule that eerily mimicks pregnancy.  The first trimester, covering the newborn to age five period can be challenging but exciting at the same time.  Especially for first time parents, the anxiety over “doing it right” can cause this to be a very stressful time.  I found this description on a website about pregnancy: “The first stage of pregnancy… is often a mixture of the best and worst feelings of pregnancy.” (http://www.pregnancy-calendars.net/pregnancy-stages.aspx) Substitute the word “pregnancy” with the term “child rearing” and you will see what I mean.  All of the information on milestones can drive the most informed parent crazy.  Lack of sleep will do the exact same thing.  Well-intentioned advice from other parents will ice the crazy cake beautifully.  These first five years, just like that first three months of pregnancy, offer tremendous ups and downs.

The second trimester is the best! These are the school years, and can last up to the end of middle school or even into high school.  You are watching, supporting and providing experiences to help your offspring develop into an adult you can be proud of.  You are learning to find joy in her joys and wonder in her wonders.  Seeing the world through his eyes is seeing the world in new ways.  Strengths and weaknesses show themselves, affinities and natural talents grow, tears and smiles take their turns;  it is all a very cool package.  You are getting almost enough sleep and have some routine to rely on.  Even though this can be a busy time of life, it tends to be one that just feels great.  You can introduce the kids to the movies, music, books that you enjoyed growing up.  You can take them on longer and longer trips that you think will enrich them.  They are learning to think, criticize, problem-solve; they say things that hit you right in the belly; hence the saying “from the mouths of babes.”   They are honest to the point of embarrassment, sometimes saying something to someone you wish you could say.  This is the time of their lives where what you say and do really matters, and when you start to recognize your own behaviors or those of family members asserting themselves in these little and not so little tykes.  Just like the second trimester of pregnancy, this is when you feel the best and the most positive.

And just like in pregnancy, the third trimester is the toughest.  You can’t wait for it to be over, and by the time you realize that it never will be over, you have adjusted your entire attitude towards your life.  I kid you not.  They are adults or nearly adults, and they often struggle in that huge transition.  Their anxiety becomes your anxiety; and often after they lay it on you, they feel much better and you lose sleep.  You have hopes and dreams for them, and you watch how that goes- two steps forward, one step (two steps, three steps) back.  Our goal for the kids has been for them to be happy and financially independent.  Sounds very generic, but it’s a tall order these days. 

I’ve heard it said that when you are raising a child, each hour is like a year and each year feels like an hour.  This I can vouch for.  Every day drags by in exhausting infinity with its responsibilities and schedules and issues; and then all of a sudden the child is a year old! And five years old! And going into Middle School! And graduating college!!  I look back and think, how can my children all be adults; when did twenty years happen?

I realize as I write this personal essay that these are strictly my interpretations and my choices.  I am well aware, after teaching for twenty-nine  years and having friends with children for almost as long, that each family’s values, goals, tolerances and daily lives are as different as snowflakes.  Please feel free to share your thoughts on raising babies!

Here are some quotes from famous people on the topic:

“Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children, and no theories.”  ~John Wilmot

“You don’t really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around – and why his parents will always wave back.”  ~William D. Tammeus

The source for these and many other quotes: http://www.quotegarden.com/parents.html

One is a dense, high-energy place where anything can happen; the other a quiet refuge for the soul.  Having lived in both New York City and a lovely little town in Northern Westchester for many years, I find a constant comparison occurring inside my head.  Especially now that our nest is empty and we have the possibility of relocating to a place that will foster the next stage of our lives,  the list of pros and cons of each choice plays perpetual leapfrog. 

What’s great about the city can fill reams and tomes.  In fact there are 472,668 books on New York City on amazon.com right now.  I just checked.  NYC 2012 is a safer, cleaner version than the one I grew up in.  Each area and neighborhood of the boroughs I spend most of my roaming time in, Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, is like its own world. The personality of Jackson Heights where Spanish is the main language and you can get all things Latin has a completely different feel than, say, the Meat Packing district with its cobblestone streets and underground caves of the Chelsea Market (http://chelseamarket.com/).  Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Flushing Meadow Park in Queens (my own personal backyard growing up) and Central Park in Manhattan all offer grass and trees to a grass-and-tree starved populace; and yet each has a personality of its own.  Yes, there are museums, restaurants, landmarks, nightclubs, pubs, shows without end; but the best thing New York City has to offer this intrepid observer is people watching.  And listening.  And, as I have said in a previous post, photographing.  Okay, I admit it: I’m an eavesdropper and a stalker.  To me, there is little as enjoyable as finding a spot to sit in the middle of it all and watching the guy in the business suit yelling at his boyfriend on his cell phone as he hurries down the street, or the family from a foreign country trying to figure out what to sample first.  The latter is especially fun since each member of such a family has an obviously, to the careful observer, different attitude toward the assault on the senses.  And since I love languages, one of my favorite games to play is What Are They Speaking, followed closely by What Are They Saying. 

On the other hand, there is the lovely little town where we chose to raise our children.  We actually started the girls in kindergarten in the city, but when I realized how little had changed in the arcane school system, we were out of there before the end of the school year.  Our adopted hometown is hilly and green, surrounded by numerous hiking areas, and small and large bodies of water.  There are enough restaurants and pubs to keep us happy; but for the most part grilling in the backyard, photographing birds in the snowy winter, shooting off fireworks with the neighbors, and walking into town to window shop are the keys to happiness in suburbia.   Meeting familiar faces wherever I walk, run or shop has a warming feel.  Not something this city girl is used to, considering that I didn’t really know even the people who lived on my block.  The population density of Queens is over 20,000 people per square mile and our town has around 10,000 residents. 

At this very moment, I think we have the best of both worlds. We can spend 45 minutes in the car or train and emerge into the wild daily gala of New York City; and then drained and ready to renew, can wake up to the birds and the smell of warm, moist morning. 

Being a first generation American has some major advantages-  the best one is having relatives in many different countries to visit.  For those who don’t know about my family history, this is due to being the child of holocaust survivors and refugees.  My family on both sides was destroyed or splashed all over the world by that sledgehammer;  so I now have cousins in England, France, the Netherlands, Belgium,  Australia, and Colombia.  Through my childhood, mostly due to the fact that we could travel for free because Dad worked for the airlines, we spent time in Europe and South America.  In fact, while most of my neighborhood friends explored the United States on their family vacations, we almost never went outside New York except to leave the country.

The Netherlands was then, and still is, one of my favorite places to visit.   I have a lovely cousin that lives outside of Amsterdam and whenever we get together, my major complaint is that I wish we could do it more often.  Holland is a unique country, very small and quite cosmopolitan.  I could live on the herring and cheese and chocolate and croquetten that are so easy to find there.  I have found the people to be bright and beautiful; and it’s not just my opinion-my husband concurs.  Amsterdam is a city steeped in history and art, as well as the nightlife it is famous for.  The Anne Frank house, which I had visited often when I was younger, knocked the wind out of my husband’s sails, making the holocaust and my family’s history feel real for the first time.  The museums house amazing art displays that cannot be seen anywhere else in the world. The tram system makes getting around pretty easy, but the bicycles are so prevalent it is a little scary.  On our most recent visit, my husband estimated that there were several thousand bicycles locked up at the Centraal Station where the locals come in to work each day.  We witnessed several near misses between bikes and trams.  It was normal to see a parent with several children on one bicycle, with the kids packed into baskets and added seating.  As a teenager I had free run of the city, and rode the trams to explore every chance I got.  The zoo, the flower market, the parks, the canals, the Dam square…all places I roamed through and still remember fondly.  Outside of Amsterdam, other towns and small cities offer great experiences as well.

Another of my favorite places to go in the world is Paris.  The first time I went I was twelve, but I clearly remember every minute.  Of course we had to go to all of the well-known places, to which I also took my husband on our recent trip.  Paris is one of the few places that I don’t mind being a tourist- the history and beauty of its famous landmarks deserve the attention they get.  The cousins we visited there were warm and welcoming; but you are not in Paris unless you have been served by a grumpy waiter on the Champs Elysees.  The cheese and wine are made in heaven!  A close friend (one of my Hunter girls!)  now lives in Paris, so my husband and I were tourists by day and locals by night.   At the end of the week, my husband decided he could live in Paris one day.  Who knows?!

And then there is Colombia…a country that makes headlines for all the wrong reasons.  Underneath that layer is a place that is as welcoming as coming home.  My cousins there are more like the sisters I never had.  Once again my biggest complaint is that we can’t do so more often.  At a wedding in Cali this past winter, my son and I enjoyed experiencing daily life with the family; and he can’t wait to go back.  We took him to see the store my grandparents opened when they wound up there in the 30’s. The Jewish star is still on the gate.  Behind the store, I showed him the rough path my brother and I used to climb to the loma de las tres cruces.

As we raised our kids, we did not own much in the way of fancy cars or clothes.  We spent any of our spare dimes on traveling and showing them the United States and the rest of the world.  It gave them a perspective of life that was worth every cent.  It helped them see their family as part of world history, and opened their eyes to the culture (and food of course) outside of their lives.  Because of these experiences, my kids are open-minded and love to explore.  If that is my legacy to them, I’m satisfied.

Mother, wife, daughter, auntie, sister, cousin, niece, friend, teacher, college professor, home owner, pet owner…these are some of the hats I wear every waking second, and sleeping ones as well.  Each one in and of itself is a full-time commitment and it is only at the quiet times (yes, I try to find some periodically somehow) that I can reflect and realize how overwhelming my life really is.  For the most part, it is overwhelmingly amazing and wonderful. But by definition and sheer quantity, overwhelming is a pretty good description.

As I was growing up, I was a cussedly independent young lady.  I never hurt anyone, but I did as I wanted. Luckily for me, I was also cussedly driven and smart enough to know that school was a priority and was, in fact, my ticket to get what I wanted-  even though I will admit that I had no idea then what it was that I wanted in the long run. Still, it was enough to keep me in mostly forward progression towards a productive, constructive life.

I was still in high school when I met my husband, a handsome Navy sailor, and he almost got run over by the train that I was then.  Luckily for me he was cussedly persistent.   He followed me out to Arizona after I graduated, and we became engaged that week.  At eighteen, my idea of “forever” was not well-developed, but I knew I had a good man and shouldn’t let him slip away.

What I also did not know at eighteen, was that “wife” would challenge “independent” to a duel.  I wish I could say who won that duel, but it is still being fought in small ways thirty two years later.  This might not be a bad thing; I am not one to give up something as near and dear to me as my personality easily.

We were married eight years before the children came along, and in the meantime, I had become a teacher.  It was hard work and a huge adjustment to make room in my heart and head for the time and energy these major undertakings required.  The thing is, I don’t do anything halfway.  If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing with every cell in my body.  The law of physics would say, if it applied to bodies, that this is impossible.   I see it as a challenge.

Family became the most important thing in my life, the nectar to this hummingbird.  From my family I drew the strength to take on everything else.  Don’t let me lead you into thinking it was easy, or that I put on my superwoman cape each morning to face the world. It would be more accurate to say I dragged myself out of the house with a huge sigh and worry wrinkles on my brow, wondering how I would live through another of these intense days.  There have been times when I am not sure I would actually live through it; it is only when coming through fire I look back and say, “well that only burned a little.”  In Spanish there is a saying, “Lo que no te mata, te engorda.” What doesn’t kill you, makes you fatter, is the literal translation.  I think they mean fatter is a good thing, as in enriches you; at least I hope that is what it means since that is how I take it.

My other life roles take thought and effort as well, and being the reflective person that I am, I realize that each of these roles has give and take.  The thing is to try to balance these as much as possible- not so easy.   Somewhere in the mix is the same independent young woman, a bit bruised and battered but still in charge. She has learned a few key tricks such as prioritizing, not taking everything personally,  and how to say “no” as politely as possible.  All good stuff that will keep me moving in a good direction for my second half-century.

Here is a link to an article about another wife finding balance: http://www.realsimple.com/work-life/life-strategies/inspiration-motivation/cathi-hanauer-00100000081866/index.html

My husband and I were wandering through the bandshell area of Central Park, one of my old stomping grounds.  There we sat on a bench and watched people rollerblade around a serious of small, orange cones set up in a long row.  Many of them wound back and forth around the cones, coming out at the end with a smile. Then a tall, beautiful young woman lined up at the top of the row. She eyed the cones for one second, pushed off, and went directly over the cones, her legs singing back and forth, crisscrossing over each one and never touching any of them.  It looked like her legs were made of water; it was magical. And I said to my husband: “I am going to learn to do that.”  The next day, I bought my first pair of rollerblades and that afternoon at the top of our cul-de-sac, I strapped them on.  I stood up. I fell down. I stood up. I fell down.  The kids on the block all gathered around, fascinated by this mom’s repeatedly failed attempts to do something that came pretty easily to them.  They laughed at me, they stared, a few came over to offer pointers.  It took a year for me to be able to rollerblade around the cul-de-sac with some measure of owning it.  Then I decided to leave the block for the first time.  We live at the top of a hill, which until you walk, run or rollerblade down, you don’t realize how steep it is.  You also don’t realize that there is a wide row of small rocks and dirt that runs across the next street down, and that rollerblades don’t appreciate small rocks and dirt.  I wound up wrapped around a tree, hugging tight and hanging on for dear life. That tree saved my hide.  After another few months, back on the cul-de-sac, I took out the cones. Once again the kids gathered as I tried to do the cross-over trick.  I crossed over and over, always knocking down the cones. Eventually I knocked down fewer cones, and eventually I didn’t knock down a single one. Success!  We went to the bandshell shortly after that, sat on the bench and watched the rollerbladers. I had a new-found sense of comeraderie and a secret sense of “I can do that too.” Until a tall, beautiful young man lined up at the top of the row of cones, eyed them for a second, pushed off…and did the crossover trick backwards.  Guess what I said to my husband.

If I go back to the Habits list, I check off quite a few just with this one story.  Since I learned about the Habits of Mind, which by the way were put together by Bena and Art after observing thousands of learners around the world and describing what the successful ones did, I look at the world with new eyes. Maybe you will too now.  Please feel free to share stories if you do.

For more info, go to http://www.instituteforhabitsofmind.com/ and click on the icon that says, “16 Habits of Mind, click here for complete definitions”.

Thursday night, it’s midnight and I have just returned from a lovely day traipsing around Manhattan with one of my fav Hunter girls and then an evening with the rest of my fav Hunter girls.  My husband says, “we have no plans for the weekend.  Let’s go visit one of the kids.”  Say no more, twelve hours later, the duffel bags are packed and we are on our way to Buffalo to hang out with our son.  Poor kid- he had a midnight text and eighteen hours to polish things up before we came charging in. 

We arrived around eight in the evening Friday to the apartment he has been living in for a year that we had never seen.  When we were raising these babies, they were never out of our sight or out of touch.  When the evening news asked, “It’s ten p.m. Do you know where your children are?” we would laugh in a self-congratulatory way and say, “of course!”  That all changed as they moved into adulthood.  We had the birds’ philosophy of rearing children:  keep them warm, safe and fed until they could learn to fly.  Throw them out of the nest a couple of times for practice (ie: send them to the city on the train by themselves or allow them to drive a mini-van load of kids on small road trips), and then off they go!   So easy to say and plan, not so easy to follow through on.  Small kids, small worries; big kids, big worries.  Are they eating, are they drinking, are they safe, how are they doing in school, are they happy, who are their friends, are they working enough, are they working too much, does someone love them they way they deserve and need, are they being kind and helpful to others, are they having fun, are they having too much fun??  And so we unloaded our weekend gear into our son’s life for a couple of days of togetherness. 

The apartment appeared to be in a safe neighborhood; pretty nice for a college student’s place.  Certainly an improvement over any place we had lived during the hungry years.  We took him out to dinner at a restaurant he could not afford to go to on his own (meaning the meals were in the ten-dollar range, oh those lean days) and shared some drinks and laughs.  You know your kids are grown up when you can all order a beer with dinner; it’s a rather nice feeling.  A friend of his came to spend the night as well, and we stayed up until around two, solving the world’s problems.  I can safely say we all learned a lot from each other- another sign our baby is grown up.

The next day we took both (boys) young men out to a nice breakfast, and then we went to explore the Canadian side of Niagara Falls.  A very sunny, hot, crowded and enjoyable afternoon!  In the evening we picked up the college-aged daughter of one of our college friends who is in the area for summer work and went out to a nice place for dinner.  A lovely day overall.  The plan for this morning is to go play frisbee golf and then enjoy some Buffalo wings (duh!) before heading home. 

This weekend has been nothing but reassuring.  Our son is a good, kind, caring, well-liked, healthy young man heading in a nice direction.  We must have done something right;  and now it’s up to him. Fly!

Hunter Mini-Reunion

When Hunter girls get together in any number, there is going to be noise.  Laughter, gasps at the old photos,  even a couple of delighted screams  formed the music of our gathering last night just off the New Jersey end of the George Washington bridge.

Seated on the patio of  a cozy, delicious Greek restaurant, 14 of us along with one significant other (a man- either the luckiest one on the planet or…well obviously the luckiest one on the planet) shared memories and updates and yearbooks and pictures.  Who has the oldest child, who has the youngest?  What are you doing now, who else from our school have you been in touch with?  Marriages, divorces, college experiences, businesses; all discussed with the happy interest of people who knew you when you were just beginning to grow in to the person you became (and hopefully are still becoming- remember: green and growing or ripe and rotting).

At first there was the slightly awkward experience of not recognizing each other’s current appearances. Even names, in several cases, only evoked a slight recall.  But as soon as the old pictures came out, there were the smiles as solid recognitions and connections were made.   I remember you!  We had such-and-such class together…such-and-such teacher  And then the stories flooded out.

Hunter College High School in the early to mid 70’s was a unique school. Located on the 13^th and 14^th floor of an office building, 466 Lexington Ave, we newbies wandered in at the age of twelve from Washington Heights and Little Italy, different parts of the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn (I am sure Staten Island was represented but I don’t recall anyone from there).   New York City was in the middle of masssive corruption, and the streets were filthy and unhealthy, but there we were.  As we streamed into the building in the morning, we were greeted by prostitutes not much older than us standing in the doorways, as well as crazy bag-ladies screaming obscenities and hitting people with their overloaded shopping bags as they walked down the street.

The school was an all-girl haven for gifted city kids who had taken a test and passed, and then either tricked their  parents or cajoled them into signing the permission to go.  Since the school was in an office building, we waited in long lines for the elevators with people in business suits each morning.  Our gym classes took us out of the building to experience bowling at Bowlmor, field hockey on the field at the United Nations, swimming at Hunter College, ice skating at Wollman Rink in Central Park.  We were given tokens to subway there and told to be back for our next class period. Our cooking classroom was located next to the biology room where the older girls dissected dead animals.  The smoking bathroom was painted pink and purple, and being one of the girls who spent much time in there I learned last night that we smoking bathroom girls had quite a reputation (deservedly I might add).  Ah, the perspective of years past…

Stories and memories flew around the patio last night, and took me back back back.  Each of us had different recalled experiences that others had forgotten, and it was like filling in missing pieces of a puzzle.   Remember mini-courses? An entire week off of the regular schedule to sample a smorgasbord of choices: movies, meditation, cooking.  Remember our “big sisters?” Seniors who were supposed to ease our transition.  Remember the mascots? Giant overstuffed creatures that sat by the elevators on the 13^th floor to be hugged and photographed by all those blossoming young women.

It was a pleasure to spend some time with old friends, and new old friends, last night.  My aging memory has forgotten more than it remembers, and it was fun to hear those stories about those days and those people in that special place and time.

A couple of then-and-nows. Susan, Pam, Jean in the old photo, Regina, me, Judy in the recent one. I’ll add more when I get them…

Sleep is such a funny thing.  I just woke up, it’s eight o’clock in the morning, and last night I fell into a dead sleep before midnight. That means I got almost nine hours.  Normally during the school year I seem to need four to six hours of sleep.  Really.  If I fall asleep too early, say around eleven, then I wake up well before the alarm goes off at 5:30.  If we go out on a Saturday night and stay up til two or three, I’m still up by eight.  And when I say I’m up- I mean UP.  Two cups of java and I am ready to take on the world. 

I have heard about the studies that say you have some inner sleep bank. If you deprive yourself of sleep, you need to either even up soon or you will die at a younger age.  Something like that.  But I think that like everything else, people’s bodies need different amounts of sleep. It has to be- how else can I explain that some people can sleep for twelve hours at a time and still want a nap in the afternoon?  If I nap during the day, I wake up feeling crappy.  You should be aware that I have a bit of the disease F.M.S. (Fear of Missing Something) which basically says if I spend time asleep, there is some fun going on somewhere that I’m not.  And that is bad!  Life is  for living, and sleep is a waste of time-  I’ll sleep when I’m dead; these are all things I tell myself to explain why I seem to function on substantially less sleep than most people I know. 

Even the quality of sleep seems to vary.  My husband, for instance, can fall into a deep sleep on the floor in the middle of the afternoon with a screaming infant at each ear.  In the middle of the night, I could be woken up by hearing  the sheets rustle through two closed doors when one of the babies rolled over in her crib.  I thought this might strictly be a mom thing until I met some dads who said the same thing was true for them. 

So I guess I’ll just go with trusting my body to sleep when and how much it needs to, in spite of the research.  Like everything else, there is average and there are extremes that help form the average.  So when you add my six to someone’s ten and divide by two you get that eight hour requirement. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I’m an unabashed foodie- that is a confession I am really happy to make.  I love to smell it, see it, make it, buy it, eat it, share it.  Food is one of life’s pleasures, and living in New York makes an incredible variety easily accesible.  Each neighborhood features ethnic grocery stores or restaurants just waiting to be discovered.   Indian spices, freshly-made Mexican tortillas, seaweed wraps for sushi, Dutch chocolate sprinkles…you name it, I can probably find it.  Lucky me! When I travel  (one of my favorite things to do), I always try to taste and also bring home some food item that is native to the area.  Best souvenir in the world.

Sharing a meal is one of my favorite passtimes.  Whether it’s lunch at MOMA with the Hunter girls, dinner at the local restaurants where my husband and I are regulars, or a hugehome-made brunch during the holidays on one of the now rare mornings that my whole family is together in one place; this is the stuff new memories are made of.  Last-minute, thrown-together barbecues for 60 of our closest friends that had no plans for Labor Day, Passover meals at mom’s and quiet, wind-swept snacks during a hike on the tops of mountains with my kids; all warm experiences that involve food and leave an idelible mark on my memory.

I have already mentioned in a previous post that I cook for therapy.  I also find the smell of some foods bring me happiness.  Specifically,the smell of  food with a nostalgic connection is a great way to put a smile on my face.  The vent outside the bagel store on 108^th street in Forest Hills near the apartments where I was raised offers whiffs of the oniony, bready delight that surrounded our street games of Ringolevio.   Colombian coffee brewing in my uncle’s kitchen smells like warm Summer mornings.  Pancakes on the stovetop smell like Oma’s Sunday visits. Big, juicy burgers can evoke the first meal I had after giving birth to my twins.  Sometimes even certain sounds related to food, such as the Mr. Softee ice cream truck song can bring fun to a day.  I feel almost a bit of shame singing the praises of food when there is such an obesity crisis happening all over the country.  But eating well does not, in my world, mean overeating or eating badly.  In fact, eating well means eating healthy in both quality and quantity.

Below I put a link to some of my fav recipes.  Happy 4^th of July! Eat something yummy and enjoy your celebration…

http://pinterest.com/mobility61/favorite-recipes/