Un Bau Un Bau

Kinda been stuck wanting to write but not landing on a subject that could arouse the commitment.

But thanks to my crazy cousin who is now Israeli and who just now posted a very sweet reminiscence of his Passovers, I decided that, yes, my childhood Passovers too, are worth the reminiscences and I’d really like to share so here goes:

First, Pesach had it’s own smell.

Maybe it was the resurrected-like-Brigadoon dishes, maybe the new clothes from that frum place on Main Street with that creepy dressing room, maybe the beautiful blooming magnolia tree next door that belonged to the beautiful blooming girl next door; a tree whose leaves could be written on with toothpicks if u had a very short message.

Two whole weeks off from school and no more heavy jackets. The schlepping and schlepping from the basement. The shopping and shopping at Waldbaums. Shul, shul and more shul.

The way the table was set for Seder with those tiny silver spoons, bosom-round wine glasses and creative place cards —and the way we always went to Uncle Max and Aunt Jenny’s for the first one and we had the second one.

Aunt Jenny and Uncle Max. They filled up my childhood like giants in a puppet show. Forceful, funny and frankly frightening. They were rich, they were intellectuals, they were friendly with famous Rabbis. They were my parents-away-from-parents, and they had an outsized influence on my development.

Their seders were endless. The divrei torah—commentaries direct from Israeli boy-yeshivas brought home in reams by their son, the doctor. Their hilarious daughter-the-violinist whose faces made me giggle during –shh! shh!—Kiddish.

Uncle Max sang the German versions of EVERY song of the Haggadah. “Un bau un bau un Bau un BAU un B-A-U (!!!) dein Temple Shiloh.”

And sang in a voice of such tremendous teutonic timbre I swear Got in Himmel Himself could hear it.

Then, inexplicably, at the end of the seder—and I know it wasn’t the wine because Uncle Max NEVER lost control and anyway he only drank that icky sweet wine like we all did til I got married and brought a couple of bottles of cabernet to the seder for which I got verbally walloped for being a yuppie—Uncle Max would hang a spoon on his nose, and, magically—IT WOULD STAY THERE.

Every year. Chad Gadya and that spoon on Uncle Max’s nose.

Then the goodbyes and the this was the best seder ever—it was, every year—and then the walk home at 4 in the morning and once we even got a police escort (there really wasn’t much going on in Hillcrest those days…)

Second day came with Fox’s Ubet and Manischewitz chocochip cookies and matzoh and cherry jelly for breakfast and salmon croquettes when Bubby and Pop Pop Katz came (I miss them every day) and the most important taste of all: Daddy’s Charoset.

Daddy didn’t cook, or do much domestic stuff (he was European, after all) but for some reason, he took this on and no one, no one, no one else can make Charoset.

The apples, chopped not too fine. The mix of nuts, freshly shelled and chopped. The sweet Tokay wine that not one wine store in Englewood or indeed the world seems to have. The way he sat at the kitchen table, relaxed and working at the same time.

That was really the essence of Daddy.

You know, I feel better now. Just thinking about it and bringing it all back.

We’re gonna make our own second seder, Sruli and me, and I think this one is gonna be the best one ever so far.

The baby twins, 2, are primed to sing the Ma Nishtana—tho they might launch into If You’re Happy and You Know It, instead.

We have some old and new friends coming.

We are going to go through the Haggadah musically and Sruli is going to wax rabbinic in that sexy-smart way of his.

I’m not going to clean enough to make me crazy, and anyway, we still have that hole in the kitchen ceiling, so really how fancy can our house be?

And this year will be the last one that my stepdaughter is not a bat-chorin—next year in New Jersey…

And my beloved, and beautiful poopoopoo big boys will be there—Zachary fresh from his killer performance at The Bitter End and Aaron fresh from his starring role in Oklahoma. We’ve rehearsed a spiritual in four-part-harmony, a new old song for our family band.

And I will be making the Charoset. From apples and nuts and wine and memory.

Elmo Plates

I can’t even describe how frightened I have been feeling these last few weeks. I am cold and downcast and screaming inside with agita.

I can’t remember anything like this in my very nice and lucky life.

It’s like a squeezing weight coming from above and a freezing hole coming from inside.

Fear is ugly, and once you wake up at 5 in the morning and see it, you can’t get back to sleep.

I’m not sure why building this business is affecting me this way—lots of people get stressed while doing something new and very, very hard.

Maybe it’s the time pressure, maybe it’s the complete new world of it—maybe because I’ve just spent a week in Atlantic City with the titans of the industry and THEY are stressed to boiling point (although the nicest people in any business I’ve ever seen except Math professors) and no one has any answers.

Oh well—I’m trying not to let it get in the way of my day. Really.

We’ve been playing lots of concerts and simchas which has been wonderful and Purim was a highlight:

Sruli and I dressed as each other and went to his Shul where he is the High Holiday Cantor and substitute Rabbi. He in my long black dress and peacock feather hat from Zachary’s Bar Mitzvah and me in his Kittel, Tallis, and white cantorial yarmulke.

We stopped the place. There was a silence—then an eruption. Very cool.

The baby twins, of course, rocked as Thing One and Thing Two.

Purim day we played at this fabulous Jersey shul and then packed up our Crazy Caravan and schlepped to Chabad in the Berkshires. Great party, great original Megillah slide show (Ahmadinejad was Haman—or vice versa) and the Rabbi’s kids were whip smart.

Ok, so they only had dark meat chicken.

What’s really, really important is that my baby twins are going to be two on Sunday.

We’re delaying the party til the following week cos we have gigs and they won’t know the difference but I finally got to do something today that I had been looking forward to for over 2 weeks: bought the paper goods.

Just shopped, leisurely at the dollar store, with happy tears in my over-rubbed eyes.

Elmo plates. Matching cups and napkins. Big red tablecloth. I also got a Pin the tail on the donkey kit and those blow thingies.

And you should see the dress that little girl is going to wear. (He will wear artist’s black as usual, the little cherub, with his blond blond curls.)

I want to celebrate them because they have brought poopoopoo nothing but delight to everyone in our family, our community and all the strange, hilarious and nutso people we meet from Pathmark to Target.

Delight, like nakhes, every single minute.

And I think--Maybe all this pain is for them. I am old and they are very very young. I want to provide for them and power is slipping from my grasp. I don’t know if I will be able to protect them from everything I want to protect them from, including uncertainty, like money uncertainty.

It is almost unbearable. But then I think.

Even if I fail, it was still worth it.

I can’t even describe how frightened I have been feeling these last few weeks. I am cold and downcast and screaming inside with agita.
I can’t remember anything like this in my very nice and lucky life.
It’s like a squeezing weight coming from above and a freezing hole coming from inside.
Fear is ugly, and once you wake up at 5 in the morning and see it, you can’t get back to sleep.
I’m not sure why building this business is affecting me this way—lots of people get stressed while doing something new and very, very hard.
Maybe it’s the time pressure, maybe it’s the complete new world of it—maybe because I’ve just spent a week in Atlantic City with the titans of the industry and THEY are stressed to boiling point (although the nicest people in any business I’ve ever seen except Math professors) and no one has any answers.
Oh well—I’m trying not to let it get in the way of my day. Really.
We’ve been playing lots of concerts and simchas which has been wonderful and Purim was a highlight:
Sruli and I dressed as each other and went to his Shul where he is the High Holiday Cantor and substitute Rabbi. He in my long black dress and peacock feather hat from Zachary’s Bar Mitzvah and me in his Kittel, Tallis, and white cantorial yarmulke.
We stopped the place. There was a silence—then an eruption. Very cool.
The baby twins, of course, rocked as Thing One and Thing Two.
Purim day we played at this fabulous Jersey shul and then packed up our Crazy Caravan and schlepped to Chabad in the Berkshires. Great party, great original Megillah slide show (Ahamadinijad was Haman—or vice versa) and the Rabbi’s kids were whip smart.
Ok, so they only had dark meat chicken.


What’s really, really important is that my baby twins are going to be two on Sunday.
We’re delaying the party til the following week cos we have gigs and they won’t know the difference but I finally got to do something today that I had been looking forward to for over 2 weeks: bought the paper goods.
Just shopped, leisurely at the dollar store, with happy tears in my over-rubbed eyes.
Elmo plates. Matching cups and napkins. Big red tablecloth. I also got a Pin the tail on the donkey kit and those blow thingies.
And you should see the dress that little girl is going to wear. (He will wear artist’s black as usual, the little cherub, with his blond blond curls.)
I want to celebrate them because they have brought poopoopoo nothing but delight to everyone in our family, our community and all the strange, hilarious and nutso people we meet from Pathmark to Target.
Delight, like nakhes, every single minute.
And I think--Maybe all this pain is for them. I am old and they are very very young. I want to provide for them and power is slipping from my grasp. I don’t know if I will be able to protect them from everything I want to protect them from, including uncertainty, like money uncertainty.
It is almost unbearable. But then I think.
Even if I fail, it was still worth it.

Banded Together

Today an older lady said something to me that’s probably going to haunt me for the foreseeable future of my life.

First, though, I should back up.

I’ll start with last weekend. We were hired to play at the Dance Flurry—this HUGE dance gathering in Saratoga—5000 crazy contradancers crazily contradancing for hours.

We were the Jewish flavor and we were hired as a Family Band.

We did a Yiddish Jug Band, a grand Klezmer Concert, and played 2 huge dances for hundreds of people. Zachary wailed on that Baritone Sax and Aaron held down an amazing and complex rhythm on Keyboard. The whole thing passed like a beatific blur because THE definition of the Yiddish word “nakhes” is playing music with your children.

They got their own hotel room, the big boys. They danced with every pretty girl at the festival. They had ice cream every day and we all hot tubbed and swam. They were ogled and admired and fielded a million texts from those pretty girls on the car ride home.

Oh, the baby twins garnered their usual spectacle and had an enormously good time, too.

So, what’s with the older lady?

So we are doing a concert for her Yiddish group this weekend and she asked about the “kinderlakh” and I joked that by next year the baby twins will be in the band.

Oh, she said, mentioning 2 other Klezmer musicians we all know, “Well if they can exploit their children, I guess you can, too.”

I got me like you can’t believe.

When I was little I HATED playing my violin with my Dad—from whom I got my musical ability, the violin itself, lessons, and too many fiats to stop playing with my friends right now and come in and practice.

We played each year, as a Family Band, at what they used to call an old age home. I hated to practice but as you can imagine, I LOVED being on stage.

Sruli and I have met some family bands in our travels.

It’s a fascination: each kid playing a different instrument, the rivalry between them, the weird Mom/ Dad /Bandleader dynamic and of course the creepy feeling that maybe Mom and Dad ARE using these cuter, younger people to make a living.

Most people though, think its sweet.

Sruli, of course wants to drop everything, buy a circus trailer and travel the country as Hoot ‘n Annie and their Tappin’ Twins.

Meantime we are the Oy Vey Klezmer Family Band.

I asked the big boys if they like doing this with us, if they feel comfortable playing with Mom and Step-Dad, traveling around and shlepping to all these festivals, being on time for sound checks, and having to stop playing with their friends right now and come in and practice for a gig.

They looked at me, incredulous.

We LOVE it, Mom, they said.

Exploit, Shmexploit. So long as they’re happy.

To B or not to B?

My old friend Morris used to boast that he never had a job a day in his life. He is a rich man. He started as a shick yingl—a gofer—for some successful diamond merchant, just hanging around, making himself useful. Soon he found himself ferrying around (to me, hearing the story, alarmingly expensive) diamonds in those little tissue tufts, matching up buyers with sellers, and soon after that he had an office and a partner of his own.

Pretty much everyone I knew growing up had a job. Actually the same job, just at different places and of different strata—teaching.

My Dad is a professor, my mother was a Kindergarten teacher; all their friends and most of my relatives had some university or school connection.

I got a GREAT job soon after college at a fancy NY Advertising Agency—I had decided that a classroom was too small for my outsized sense of my own imagination. I enjoyed every minute of those 15 glamorous years.

And now, here I am with my own business, starting yet another one, and this afternoon, Sruli (ever so lovingly) looked down at me hunched over the computer and said: wow, you really have bags under your eyes.

We were dealt a really bad blow this week and we have been scrambling and stressing and struggling to survive.

Bags? Suitcases I have.

Anyway, he also said I was being remarkably resourceful, and takke I am, and this after I “bitched out” at him for a full four minutes because there is nothing like a setback to make you re-examine your entire life, work, philosophy, and husband.

My old friend Morris said he could never work for somebody else. I could, happily, and I was damn good at it. But I’d be lying if I also didn’t remember that ice-cold fright at being fired, when layoff season rolled around.

And not just being fired. Also explaining the Ortho-have-to-leave-early-on-Friday thing. Each time. Finessing the politics. Jockeying. And not being able to say with certainty that you can make it to a family dinner, or home before your little ones’ bedtime.

I remember furiously cursing the red lights on Queens Boulevard because they were robbing me of another few minutes of evening with my little Zachary and Aaron.

Makin’ the Boss happy.

I don’t have that kind of stress anymore (and I don’t have that kind of money anymore, ha!) but the new stress is frankly overwhelming and all my new own-ur-own business friends feel it.

I am my own Boss. And I don’t always make myself happy.

And I still don’t know if it’s “better” to be In Business for yourself or to work for someone else.

Whatever “better” means.

I’ll let you know when I find out.

Encumbered

Today I interviewed an artist for our new camp.

She was home painting apples—you know what I mean. Major art school graduate. She had been in the Peace Corps. In Indonesia. Teaching art to kids. She once moved to California just because she felt like it. She had had a nice job in a public school but felt the administration was getting in the way of her artistic connection to the kids. She busks in the street—setting up her easel on a random corner in NYC—paints for a while, sells to passersby, and then hangs out, enjoying the view.

She does whatever she feels like, every day.

She is unencumbered.

There is no one I ever met in my whole life who is that fancy free.

Of course we hired her.

Wow.

An old friend of mine once shocked me by not totally congratulating me on giving birth to my first son. She said, yeah—but now what do you do if you want to go to the movies?

Unencumbered.

When I was a little girl, I used to learn with my father on Shabbos mornings.

I made myself a thick slab of challah and peanut butter and a big glass of chocolate milk and Daddy got out the Pirkei Avos.

One of the best lines that stuck in my head like that Skippy to the roof of my mouth was: Marbeh nechasim, marbeh da’agah.

A phrase that will forever prevent me from buying a white sofa or (even if I could afford it) a Jaguar.

“The more you have, the more you have to worry about.”

You know, encumbered.

Oh, but I am encumbered in so many many other ways now—with 4 (and on good days, 5) kids and a husband-type who I actually work with all the time so there’s no fudging my hours, 2 honestly insane dogs, a 55 gallon fish tank, and a turtle. Plants. Cars.

A shack on the Jersey shore.

A new business.

Clients. Expectations.

And I went to the movies last week, so ha.

I am encumbered with worry about our future, about my musician son’s future, about my other son’s math tests, about the fact that I am an old mother with tiny twins.

I am encumbered with grief for what happened to my future stepdaughters.

I am encumbered with the rabid need for revenge.

I am encumbered with hope for my fellow artist friends that they will make it with enough to pay for rent and medical and dental.

I am encumbered with fear like we all are for the fate of freedom and for the planet

and, more often these days, with guilt for not doing anything much about it.

I am encumbered with about 40 extra pounds (STILL AFTER ALL THIS BLOGGING!) which frankly sucks and is frankly my own damn fault.

I asked that artist today if she loves her solitary life and her freedom.

Oh yes, she said. Mostly. Really looking forward to getting to know you.

Well my new friend—welcome to my encumbered life.

I am Lisa. Encumbered by love.

No Thaw

It’s really cold outside, and the snow that I shoveled a million years ago is still there, a-blockin’ half my driveway and causing the babes still to clamor for “snow snacks!”
You can’t let innocent babies nosh on week-old snow, right?
And my beautiful-fairy-stepdaughter’s mother will still not let her visit us and just took away her phone for the umpteenth time.
It’s cold and all I wanna do is eat.
Had a great weekend visiting all the grandparents—you can’t believe (oh yes you can) how much nakhes they get from those babies.
It’s hard to get back to work today as the yucky icy rainy whatever that is that is falling from the dullest sky ever click click clicks down.
I’m not sure sometimes that this is really happening—this brilliant red-headed beauty is actually being kept prisoner.
Her mother knows how much pain she is in.
She’s run away a few times already out of desperation.
She cries all the time and has missed way too much school.
She is being threatened on a daily basis with “hospitalization.” The kind where they khop you in the middle of the night and keep you under sedation until you “come to your senses.”
By that time one’s chance for a normal entrance into say, NYU, is long over.
She will be 17 next week and nobody is helping her.
We tried but we have run out of money.
We secretly Skype—she looks cold and bundled up.
They say it’s going to be in the 20’s for many many days.
She told us, this beleaguered young lady that her mother is deliberately keeping
the house cold because it costs too much money to heat.
I guess the 700 thousand dollars, yes that’s right, that the mother spent on the courts
came right out of utilities.
She is an heiress with millions more and nobody can reason with her and her lawyers are making darned sure that no one does.
When we can’t sleep at night from sadness and anger and desperation and frustration and the sick unfairness of it, the cold makes our teeth gnash and our bodies curl up like scared puppies.
We try and tell her to be strong and we tell ourselves to be strong.
We try to send warmth through Skype.
Spring is a long way away.

6 foot 2, Cootchie Coo

At sixteen he is by far the tallest in the family with a shoe size that would make

you gasp if you knew it.

The only typical thing about him is his teenage bravado—that lovely (groan) chulent of uninformed independence, a habit of never calling home, and a you don’t need to tell me anything ‘tude and that sing-song two-note downward cadence--- “Mo-mmmmm…”

Over the years (we counted) we have ascribed to him 22 sobriquets from Scoopy to Kebab (!) to Vi to Little Person.

Poopoopoo he is quite an accomplished little person.

He has won awards for his piano playing and has performed at International Festivals as well as the Bronx Zoo, he is an actor (Yiddish theatre, a quick appearance on HBO, star of all past and current school plays) a writer and formidable raconteur (the entire school uses his name as a verb, a loverboy (he got asked out by a senior to the prom when he was only a freshie), and a black belt in TaeKwonDo.

He is a serious Nintendo Contender, no really, boys everywhere bow to him,

He is a three-time winner of the Usdan Chess Tournament.

He is on the cross-country team, in the philosophy club, the chorus, the swim club, and I’m not sure but I think on the debate team too.

He does not have time for all of these things, frankly.

He loves to hang out in the city with his truthfully very nice and heimish friends and stay at his Dad’s place which is much, much cooler than being in New Jersey.

But when he’s home here he relaxes and let’s me cuddle him for exactly 2.7 seconds and tells me he is grateful and that I take care of all his needs and I am the best mom.

He set up my new computer and carefully crafted a cheat sheet for all the commands.

Today a teacher tried to bully him and I wanted to smack her.

I worry that his Lucky jeans aren’t washed often enough, that his lips are too chapped, that he has styled himself “transportationally adventurous” which means he takes the subway everywhere.

Tomorrow night he is playing in a downtown bar— keyboard-- in his big brother’s pop/jazz band playin’ songs about things more grown-up than he has ever experienced.

I will buy him a Ginger Ale.

I am extremely nervous for him, because I think he is underrehearsed, but he will probably do great just like he did on his Permit test when I thought he hadn’t studied enough.

Every time I tsitter over him he gets annoyed, but in a polite way.

I go out of my way to delight him and it is not hard:

I always stop for a smoothie when we pass “Get Fruity.” I always keep one of those 25 cent gumballs in my pocket for him. I’m always up for a trip to DD. Not even counting the storytelling festival in Tennessee, a roadtrip to Colonial Willamsburg, the water park at Great Wolf, KlezKanada ever year, KlezKamp this year and countless movies and trips to the mall.

I lie and tell him the babytwins were just for him too, but he isn’t buying.

He is the most unknowable of all my children at this moment and I hope that I am doing right by him because he deserves it and I think he is special.

I am hoping that he accepts my help and my love and my advice on his assignments because I was an English Major Goddamit and a professional writer and he should listen to me if he really wants to get into Columbia Goddammit.

He is growing up too fast and I guess that’s why I had this crazy and dangerous urge to write about him.

I miss him.