Nothing But All of Us

I think—I hope—the honeymoon is over, and my Fairy Stepdaughter and the rest of us can start the happily ever after.

The party we had planned for five and a half years, the planning of which had kept us going—and connected-- through the dark ages was, if I say so myself, a smash.

She was radiant in a (oy a shande!) short short black velvet dress with a very elegant beaded décolletage and high high heels. Her crown, her refulgent hair, curled and luxe.

People came from all over to share the poignancy—her KlezKanada homegirls and boys, school friends, as well as our friends, musicians, artists, professors, Yiddishists—and lawyers-- from Toronto and Boston and Syracuse and Philadelphia and DC.

Her friends spoke about how much they loved her. Aaron likened their siblinghood’s bond to a hydrogen atom or something that couldn’t be broken even by free radicals. Zachary composed a song, which he and Aaron performed.

And, in front of all her Ortho high-school peeps, who sat quietly listening for over an hour, grownup after grownup said she was their hero.

I spoke too, first about Sruli. About the hell and humiliation he went through and about how I wondered why—and how—as he watched every precious thing being taken from him, that he didn’t just jump off a bridge.

And how he was one of the lucky ones. Sruli’s friend from his law school days was there, too. This was the friend who took him in and let Sruli sleep on his couch for two weeks when the judge told him one fine afternoon that he had fifteen minutes to take his stuff from his house and get out. The friend had had the same judge. This friend, a successful tax attorney, looked out at the room. I haven’t seen my kids for six years, he said.

The Angels spoke. The musician angel whose voice broke as he talked about his own broken childhood. He had testified at the trial. The artist angel who provided the safe house on that fateful last night when her mother sent the police looking for her. The lawyer angel who brought her to court and whose passion and smarts are the only reason she is free today. I had to rescue the princess who was trapped in the tower, she said. Indeed.

And Sruli, the real Daddy from this fairy tale spoke and cried. I have never seen him like this and I hope I never will again. It was raw and ecstatic and naked and frightening. He thanked me—which I deserved, hey!—and held his daughter tight as he looked around the room at the village who helped raise his child from the dead.

Then a hora with an all-star band, really, and special sno-cone ices a la New Orleans, and then the DJ rockin’ the house. A party.

At the end of my speech I told everyone how for 6 years-- 5 lawyers, 4 judges, 3 police departments, 2 forensic psychiatrists, 2 court appointed supervisors and 1 multi-millionaire mother conspired to keep one little red-head girl’s life a nightmare until she turned 18.

I told everyone how, on that last night, she was barely one step ahead of the police and the court forensic whom her mother enlisted to forcibly commit her to a mental institution. An institution that would finally cure her of loving us.

I didn’t say how she might never have escaped that institution since the mother would have had complete control over her fate for the rest of her life (“Can you imagine what I had to do to my own daughter” she would say piteously, as her sedated and medicated daughter turned 18, and then 28, and then 38) and that’s what delusion and anger and immaturity and paranoia and a crazed sense of vengeance can do when it has millions to spend.

I told everyone that my fairy stepdaughter had run out without her shoes, her clothes, her stuff, her books, her papers.

She has no more trust fund. She has no money for college.

She has nothing. Except happiness, pride--and all of us.

And—for all of us—for our happily ever after--it is enough.

Hi Res

Two weeks into the New Year and already they’re telling me to give up. No way to lose weight. Gotta be superhuman to do it. My leptin is fighting with my ghrelin; my peptides and genetics are consigning me forever to shop in Women’s.

A pox be upon you. I am determined to be determined.

I once went to this diet guru who told me that she has to dress like a movie star every day. I guess it’s how she tells herself she’s worth it.

Growing up, my sense of worth came with mixed messages—as the daughter of a professor and scholar I felt it unseemly to focus on the superficial; it was embarrassing to be the kind of girl who “takes care of herself.” But I’m sure there was a bisl envy mixed with disdain for my glisteningly blonde friend who treated herself to manicures when she was only fourteen.

I discovered Neutrogena sesame body oil at a sleepover once—it felt amazing on my naked skin after a shower. But in the store I discovered that the bottle was like, 9 dollars and even later when I was making a fortune in advertising, I couldn’t fargin myself.

Of course, 3 pregnancies later and no body oil, guess who has stretch marks?

Meantime I’ve been getting up earlier and getting on the bike. I’ve been shlepping to yoga and risking all kinds of kooky injuries to mimic that tight-girl next to me. Who the hell can do the “Crane?” Jeez.

I consider myself an optimistic gal, though Sruli assures me that anyone who grabs the first possible parking spot like I do, rushes to get to a movie as early as I do, and bids as frantically high on Ebay as I do isn’t a half-fuller. Nevertheless I made him promise me that if I fit into a certain red dress (I know--me! Red!) by Valentine’s Day, he is going to take me someplace good. Overnight.

And I am trying to count my blessings: superficial—good hair, good skin, good teeth (poopoopoo) and the not so superficial—good health (poopoopoo) and to recognize that although age has brought a stubborn midsection, it has also granted a smiling patience. It has taken all of me a long, long time to get here.

I am going to try to be kinder to myself.

Neutrogena sesame body oil is $7.99 at Target. I am planning to spring for it.

Sno-Ball

The very first food I ever wanted and couldn’t have was a Hostess Sno-Ball. I was 4. It was on the low shelf by the checkout at Key Food, pink and round and glistening.

Pink. Round. Glistening. And Treyf.

Sure, I knew from treyf, even though I never used the word. Not Kosher, that was all my mother had to say. Couldn’t have it, no argument, nothin’ to discuss.

Nowadays everyone reads food labels for polyunsaturates, trans fats and allergens.

Back then I read labels for one word only: gelatin.

“GEL-atin!” we’d say, our lips twisting in disappointment in the aisles of Key Food and later Waldbaum’s and later Food Emporium and still later Stop and Shop.

It was like finding a piece of doggie poo on your living room floor, or a boy in the girl’s bathroom, or (now, oy) a new grey hair, or maybe just Waldo. Aha! —great, now get rid of it, on to the next.

Many yummy-looking things had gelatin like Oreos, and Lucky Charms and something else chocolatey I really wanted that I forget right now.

Such an innocent looking word; didn’t even make it to the top ten on the ingredients list, and all lower-case unlike those chemical compounds at the end.

Sruli says, whenever I kvetch to him that I am too fat, (which is way too often, but he got me at middle age, and knocked me up, and it’s very hard to lose baby fat now even after two and a half years and anyway I am noticing lately that most women my age have that thickness around the middle that marks them as middle-aged, so I have a double whammy that makes it doubly hard, dammit, and do you think Sensa really works because those pop-up ads on Facebook are kinda cool the way they shrink that red dress and I have a red dress from Lucky that I was hoping to wear for Thanksgiving but my stomach might stick out too unattractively, see above, and at this rate I will never ever get to wear it with that cool dangling gold oak-leaf necklace, the point being that it would dangle and not just rest on any protrusion) that I should go back in time and make all fattening foods “treyf” in my head the way I used to with gelatin. You didn’t even want it, he says, didn’t even tempt you.

I see the way my beautiful and slim fairy stepdaughter eats: small sensible meals, a fruit, some soup. She doesn’t crave, the way I crave, and food is just not that important. Just not that important. Ha!

And it’s not like I don’t have a million things going on.

Sometimes, ok, most times, I suspect that I would get more done if I stopped thinking about food, but I also suspect that that is tantamount to exhorting a seventeen year old boy to stop thinking about sex every 17 seconds or whatever the statistic is.

One of my theories about food and treyf and the reason that so many Ortho Jews are so fat is that when you deny yourself in one department you tend to go overboard in another.

Sure, no Ortho is eating Sno-balls, but watch them at the pizza place on Motzei Shabbos.

I am trying, of late, to be in control, and matter of fact and not greedy at all those buffets at all the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs we are doing every weekend; trying to absorb the concept of moderation and ease and the fact that the platter of pasta, or fried chicken cutlets or brownies that the caterer put out is not, repeat, not my portion, and I shouldn’t be eating that stuff anyway since there is almost always a grilled something and a nice salad and an even nicer fruit display.

Calm is good, calm is sexy. I’m going to try to be calm about food.

So tonight at the supermarket, Charlie Re noticed something on the low shelf by the checkout, something pink and round and glistening.

Mommy, she said, holding it up.

She is two and a half and the world is her oyster.

Ok, I said.

We checked out. I opened the package and handed one to her and one to her drooling twin brother.

She took a tiny bite and held it out to me, the coconut sprinkles (I never realized what they were!) yes, glistening, and I slowly leaned in for a taste.

She watched me carefully with her green eyes.

Mmmmmm, I said. But it was awful.

The Redhead Badge of Courage

I’m almost afraid to say it—she’s here. After five and a half years of waiting and hoping and crying and screaming and paying and praying, she is doing her science homework on our dining room table.

At the end she did it herself, really—escaped by a single night her being khopped, grabbed and committed to an institution that would “cure” her of loving us.

She knows how close she came, and how far she came—from that 12-year-old who would scream Daddy Daddy in agony as he was threatened and prevented from seeing or even speaking to her-- to a courageous young woman who is now liberated and free from fear.

There were angels who helped her—a brilliant and beautiful family friend who took her in that last crazy night and a young saintly matrimonial lawyer who fought passionately against a teeth-gnashing monster in Family Court.

And there is a legal document out there called an Order of Protection. I am ashamed and sad that our kids even know what that is.

I have to let go of this rage and, as the shrinks say, move on. Yes it took up the entire first part of my new life with Sruli and yes it took up our entire nest egg and yes it took its toll on our children and our families and our music and our love and even our dogs but it’s over and the wicked witch is, legally anyway, dead.

Our happy ending includes eight suitcases overflowing with teenage girl belongings overflowing my living room. My sons are bemused and fascinated—they have never seen so many “products”—for hair, skin, eyes, lips, nails—or so many sweaters or so many shoes.

Sruli and I both tuck her in—it’s a surreal moment. She says “it’s so nice to be in a place where everyone loves me.” We look at each other and smile on the outside and fume on the inside, then shrug and hug and kiss.

She seems to be past the poison and looking only forward. College looms, life looms but happily she seems to have chosen a blessed career path that will do good in the world.

The boys of the world have taken notice as well. Sruli is kvelling.

I will try to convince her to write about what happened to her— the lies and the bizarre reality that is the courtroom and the incompetent judges and the new, replacement judges who admitted that although the verdict was wrong they wouldn’t do anything and the seedy greedy lawyers who stoked an angry and obviously unbalanced, vengeful, cruel mother—who happens to be a multi-millionaire—and most of all the New York Divorce Inferno which includes “supervisors,” “forensics,” “law guardians,” and “psychiatric experts,” who screwed a little redhead girl out of a father and out of a normal life.

Maybe she will write about it to help herself or other kids and maybe it will be a warning to divorcing parents everywhere but right now, as she says—“I’m so happy just to sit quietly and eat Cheerios with you.”

Five and a half years. When she officially turns 18 we are going to throw a kick-ass party for her and you are all invited and you should wear your happiest outfits and your most waterproof mascara.

I feel like a new Mom. And I can’t stop crying.

What I Did This Summer

As I sort through euphoric, exhilarated, ecstatic and exhausted, I settle on—proud.
We have a camp.
It’s really ours; we are not working for anyone else.
We finished our first two-week session today and the kids were convincing their
parents to let them stay for another couple of weeks.
As one 10 year old boy put it to me on the second (!) day: “this is the weirdest camp, but also the funnest.”
It is weird—we have a stand-up comedian and we play butt-ball and we turned everyone into a jug band with washboards and spoons and limberjacks and shtumph-fiddles.
We built a giant hexagonal tent in the lobby with a hammock and a six-foot red beanbag.
It’s the lounge.
The gorgeous auditorium is set up like a disco, with lights and a killer sound system.
Kids can have as many twizzlers and yogurt-fudge cookies and lemonade for snack after morning yoga and as many ice-pops-on-the-terrace-at-3 as they want.
We have a popcorn machine.
We have a giant screen Wii.
Our kids are artists, jugglers, models, singers, musicians, dancers and fashionistas and loudmouths and kvetchers and goofusses and come from all over the city.
I LOVE them. Sruli loves them.
They know they are loved and they are happy.
Their parents are happy.
Both my big boys are counselors and teach everything from martial arts to chess to digital recording to how to build remote control cars. They are experts on all these things.
The younger girls chase after Aaron all day long.
The twins’ feet have not touched the floor in two weeks and the girls fight over who gets to hold them. Charlie Re loves being a Barbie Doll and receives new hair-dos every hour.
We have gotten a parking spot in front almost every day. We found a cheap deli.
And we are in the West Village.
It almost makes me forget the previous year’s heart-attack stress levels: getting the permits, the insurance, more insurance, more insurance, more permits, finding the place, losing the place, scrambling to find another place, writing contracts, searching for the right comedian, the right artists, the right actor, the right hip-hopper; meeting all the parent coordinators of all the schools, advertising and more advertising, The American Camp Association, the Tri-State Camp Association, camp fairs and conferences and open houses, dealing with the city and with Citibank, the Board of Ed, the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Fire Department, The Mercantile Office, writing safety plans and getting all the proper certifications from The Red Cross, plus dealing with over a dozen shuls as well as the Archdiocese of New York.
I haven’t been able to blog in a long time. I haven’t been able to fold laundry for a long time. I haven’t been to the gym in a long time.
Frankly, running the camp has been like a vacation.
Oh, and we even passed this week’s surprise inspection.
This is not what I thought I would do with my life but it is what I am actually doing (with a large part of it) and I have been truly happy every minute of every day at that camp.
I guess I didn’t think of doing this, maybe didn’t think I could do it, should do it, whatever, til one night at 4AM, 17 months ago when Sruli said—how about a camp?
Yeah—how about this camp?

The Kabbalist on the Upper West Side

A few nights ago, a Kabbalist from Israel, a great Rabbi with a rep for miracles, praved at an apartment on West End Avenue—receiving hundreds of visitors apparently all in need of blessings.

A donation was expected.

The host, a 30ish sweet ortho, came by to exult after the Great Man left, and he was shaking and holding his little son, his face lit up like Charlton Heston’s after the burning bush when Yvonne De Carlo says “He has seen God.”

Amazing—he was rocking back and forth with the little son—that couple you saw, who couldn’t have a baby—not 20 minutes, not 20 minutes after they got home from his bracha they got a call from the fertility clinic—they’re pregnant!

And a Kollel boy who never worked a day in his life and suddenly his father-in-law dies and the money dries up and he has to get a job to support his family—right then-- he gets a call from a big Yeshiva with an offer!

I could not understand why modern doctors and lawyers and professors and… well that’s pretty much the entire spectrum of frum professionals, would allow themselves to go all hoo-ha about some bearded hypnotist wielding 17th century technology.

Jeremiah was roundly ignored in his own time. And do any of us stop for those The- End-of-Days-is-Next-Week guys in the white vans?

A few months back I was up too late and saw this guy on TV, Murdock. It was unbelievable and it made me freaky sick. I couldn’t stop talking about it, and here I am still talking about it.

This guy was an evangelist shyster of the highest order. Take out your wallets he murmurs to the poor African-American (this was in South Carolina) congregation. DON’T open them. I want to bless them. (I want to bless your wallets?!?)

And right there, on TV, these folks take out their wallets. They don’t open them. Murdock smiles small and spreads his hands. One thousand fold, he says. It will come back to you one thousand fold.

Perhaps you have a bank account that no one knows about, he says, real smooth. Maybe not even your wife. One thousand fold. Maybe you were saving for a new car, or a vacation, or your son’s college education. One thousand fold. What good is that thousand to you—one thousand barely matters these days—but send it to me and it will be repaid one thousand fold. The Lord himself has blessed me and I will bless you. A thousand thousands—now that’s real money.

Google this guy, seriously. Why should I be the only one sick from it?

Anyway, growing up Orthodox in Queens, NY, meant, to me, anyway, that knowledge was respected and Chassidus and Kabballah were not.

My dad had and still has a Gemorah Shiur, and all his fellow college professors who met every week around a table laden with Shabbos delights with the wives standing by to serve the tea, were renaissance men with degrees in sociology and science and mathematics and history. And they could read the Aramaic.

Better not delve into Kabballah until you’re forty, they would wink. Your eyes could fall out.

The synagogues were guitar-less, even the non-ortho ones, and there were no Tot-Shabbats, or synaplexes, or a Rabbi at my shul younger than 60--and I cannot remember one mystically laced sermon in all the years at all the Young Israels or, later, Beth Els or (gevalt!) Emanuels I ever went to.

(Sruli prodded me on this point during a general discussion about religion that we had—it’s his favorite topic bar none, oy--and got me to admit that yes, I did know one or two Queensniks who went to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, got their blessing and their dollar and put it right back in the pushke. But that was pretty much as far as mysticism went to my memory, and anyway, I don’t let Sruli read this blog.)

Things are way less stern now, of course. There was positively a country-club feel at the orthodox shul I belonged to in fancy Scarsdale. I hear to sponsor Kiddish there cost about 15 thousand dollars now. The chulent is really good, though.

And maybe that’s really what it’s all about. Not the chulent, the feeling lucky country-club thing.

It doesn’t explain the Murdock churchgoers—they are just victims of superior salesmanship— and he is an ugly crook who preys on desperation--and while I have experienced Rabbis’ sermons that make you cry in order to shell out more for the Kol Nidre appeal, there are no televangelist machinations in synagogues; Jews wouldn’t stand for it--they are too good a salesman themselves.

No, I think that people who feel lucky actually believe in luck. The God of Luck. And orthodox people with nice homes and fancy jobs and pretty wives and talented kids are the most superstitious of all.

So that sexy wow I don’t understand it, it’s bigger than me, it makes me warm and red all over just thinking about it, hey, it’s possible, maybe those mystics in Meron knew things—they weren’t just smoking hyssop leaves—and it all might be taken away at any minute, so get the blessing, pay off the Mekubal on the Upper West Side, and exult and feel humble in the real touch of ancient Jewry.

You’re gonna put a price on luck?

Princess Dreams

Thirty years ago, for the last Royal Wedding, Maurice, the boy who probably loved me more selflessly than any other boy ever will, shlepped into town, rented a tiny TV, magically rigged it up in the middle of his cabin, set it for 3 in the morning and came through the window of my bunk at Camp Hillel (where I was a counselor and he was a cook) and woke me up so that I could watch it.

This time around, I got up leisurely at 8, and CNN had the long version, the highlight version and the still version all awaiting my pleasure. And this time it was in color.

Of course, CNN did not do this especially for me.

Thirty years is an awfully long life-yardstick and plenty of time for even a much-loved girl to realize that she ain’t never going to be no princess.

So many of the smart and beautiful women who have let me into their lives and intimate thoughts have (was it Steinem who said it?) become the man they wanted to marry.

I have not.

Way, way back, when I was cute enough to collect a few, the proposals ranged from the family-spice-business suitor who informed me that I would, of course (OF COURSE!) not be able to work, but he would take care of me and our many kids in a beautiful house and give all of us everything we could possibly want. I said no thank you.

Another, a prominent Rabbi’s son, promised me that although we’d have to “hew” to his father’s orthodox regulations he would always get us really good weed. I said, no thank you, I don’t smoke.

A third was already supporting his parents and was already a rising banker and couldn’t take his eyes off me but I said, no thank you, and what I didn’t say was that I can’t even bear to kiss you let alone do anything else.

The man I actually married did not have that I will take care of you mentality nor does my current partner.

We women are on our own.

One of the business bloggers I read says that we are sold this fairy tale and that wanting to be taken care of means you are not dreaming big enough.

I am trying to dream big these days.

And Sruli and I rely on each other, in a modern Mom ‘n Pop shop kind of way.

So no glass carriage or convertible with the steering wheel on the wrong side for me. My waist will never be that tiny and I couldn’t possibly fit into all the requirements and protocols that the new Princess will have to “hew” to.

I hope her fairy tale has a continuously happy ending, unlike the one, nebikh, thirty years ago.

Meantime I am in the middle of creating my own tale, which has its magical moments, as well as some scary dragons.

I am not my own Prince, but my own Fairy Godmother, I guess.

I wonder if Maurice watched this time.