Resolute, Shmesolute

Back on topic I am having a SERIOUS case of the munchies.
(Yes, wiseacres, even though I am a professional musician I have never even TRIED pot so it’s not that.)
Today I added carbs to my pasta—butter beans, OMG!--extra peanut butter to my pumpernickel bagel and tossed back a few crackers to go along with my potato chips.
Whole wheat crackers and baked Ruffles, but still…
Not one salad or green thing the entire day.
Hey, it’s a snow day!
The shoveling (into my mouth) started this past week:
My darling Zachary turned 21 (legal! poopoopoo!!!) and whatsa good Mama do?
We took him to Altantic City.
At precisely midnight he ordered his first martini.
(I ordered one too—yummy yum—make sure they make it
with Bombay Sapphire…)
Then Sruli took him to the Blackjack tables.
He happily, eagerly, delightedly, gleefully, showed his ID to the bartender, the security guards and the dealers—that, of course, was the whole point.
And he won 15 bucks! (And walked away, smart boy.)
They have Wawa markets down the shore—my FAVORITE place to get food!
The mashed potatoes are amazing, and the Philly pretzels are so good even I stopped getting them—600 calorie (!) bastards…
Plus we were stuck in our tiny vacation shack. I know and you know that EVERYONE eats out of ennui…
Thank God we had to shovel ourselves into our driveway to park when we got back—the only exercise so far.
I also think that our new business venture is making me anxious so I eat to delay doing what I have to do, but I am also excited about it and I eat when I am happy.
Obviously this is not a good equation.
Ahh—and the New Year looms. Sruli is the Rabbi this Shabbos and I LOVE his sermons and Torah service—he really cracks you up and makes you totally rethink everything—he gives great shul.
That and the big boys will just be coming home from KlezKamp which means sleeping off an entire week of no sleeping, so I don’t think we will be going out a la New Year’s.
I am actually glad—the best kissing is done at home!
PLUS my fabulous sister-the-doctor just told me that the progesterone I still have to take (yes, you go have twins at 45 and see what meds light up your life) is causing my “distended abdomen.” No kidding.
As that New Yorker cartoon captioned recently over a picture of a woman doing the dishes in stretch pants while her husband is on the phone: Myrtle? She’s testing the tensile strength of Lycra.
Me too, this week, Myrtle.
Like in Atlantic City--sometimes you’re up and sometimes you’re down.
So-- my New Year’s resolution is-- be happy all the time. Won’t you join me?

Tuesday the Rabbi said No

On my cell phone is the friend of a friend of a friend.

We don’t know each other and she is already crying.

Here’s the story: She’s 45. Remarried after being divorced and alone for many years. She has an older daughter from her first marriage and a poopoopoo young son with her wonderful and very religious new husband who learns half a day in yeshiva.

They’ve been trying IVF unsuccessfully, they are considering a donor egg, IUI, etc, and they are very frustrated.

They really, really want another child.

The Rabbi said no.

The Rabbi said no?

It’s not the right time, said the Rabbi. Not for you all those treatments. Not now.

Fuck the Rabbi, I say.

Did you ask him his opoinion when you got divorced? Had your first child? Had your second?

She laughs softly, No.

Her husband learns in one of those kind of yeshivas.

We’re not in that place, she says.

Not in that place not to ask, she means.

I remember my urge to talk to my shul Rabbi when I got divorced. But he had been to my house many times with his family, and us to his. He’d been out with my then soon-to-be new husband and me for drinks. And talks.

Although he was Orthodox, he was enlightened and he knew that his fiats could really affect people. He counseled, he didn’t coerce.

He also knew that a breezily given yes or no isn’t helpful. It’s cruel.

I ask the woman if there was another Rabbi she could ask. You know, one that comes more from her side of the family.

She says yes, that she actually already has an appointment to see another Rabbi in the new year. With my husband, she adds, gently.

I am cheered.

That rabbi also said not now, but that was 5 years ago.

I am floored.

It was too bad, she goes on, too matter of factly. Then, when I was 40, it would have been easier. That’s what the doctors say.

That’s what the doctors say because it is TRUE.

I’ve been through IVF. I saw those charts where my age was at the very bottom next to 3% chance.

I had a lot of help—a lot—and poopoopoo my beautiful twins are 21 months today.

I went to the doctor first. My Rabbi friends gave me blessings on the way.

I bite back the urge to rail against the arbitrariness of it. The misogyny of it. That this kind of orthodoxy has become a cage, a club, and a wasteful way to live. That she isn’t the first woman, or even the second or third who I’ve heard come up against a Holyman who doesn’t have the courage to say yes. Show me one orthodox Rabbi these days who says yes!

But here she is, on the phone with me, still crying, but less so.

I carefully spell out my doctor’s name and give the number.

True she asked the Rabbi. But she also called me.

There is a chance.

Jubilee

Last night we celebrated a once-in-two-lifetimes event—a 50th Wedding Anniversary.
My Mom and Dad’s.
It was glorious—becovidike--honorable, fun and full of warmth. They had gathered the people who meant the world to them—and everybody they invited came—and so so happily: from
Israel, Arizona, Maryland, New Jersey.
The last was us. My big boys in sleek black trou and glossy button-downs.
Our baby twins: he in a black velvet vest and she, refulgent, in a black velvet dress with satin roses—and RED SPARKLY SHOES!
(My first girl!)
French bread, Cabernet, beet salad, steak, fries, chocolate mousse cake--oh yeah.
Three other couples there—old friends of my parents, had also hit this milestone. I wondered if they had gotten married 20 or so years ago like I did, instead of 50 years ago, if they would still be together.
Betcha at least one of them wouldn’t.
There’s an old Jewish joke that starts with a guy waking up on the morning of his 50th wedding anniversary—and he is crying hysterically.
His wife wants to know what’s the matter. He says: That very first night—oy--I wanted to kill you—but my best friend told me I’d get fifty years.
He sobs. “I’d be a free man today!”
My Mother had her role—housewife, Mommy, pretty and accommodating hostess. Daddy was the breadwinner, the intellectual, the instigator of community contact. Mommy couldn’t really have a career—it would interfere with Daddy’s vacations.
We three girls were groomed to model ourselves after Daddy now, growing up-- and Mommy, after we got married.
Of course it didn’t work out that way.
But watching them both, last night, speaking lovingly into the mic that we schlepped up two flights to the party room of the glatt kosher steakhouse—
I realized that there is something to the acceptance of one’s place on the gameboard.
That when you have a happy marriage, the world looks different.
That Daddy really thinks that Mommy is the most beautiful woman in the world, and even though he sees every Scarlett Johanssen movie, he still thinks so, and it’s really nice for Mommy.
That they are really great people who moved with the times to accept our new relationships because they value happiness and are not jealous with it.
That when you live with someone for fifty years and that person gets a kidney removal operation you sleep on the chair by his bed in the hospital and neither of you would have it any other way because you are always together.
That your friends are just your friends—not His friends or Her friends-- because at some level you are really one person, one unit.
That you are fused.
And I realized that it might take 50 years which is an awfully long time and there
are no guarantees in life but my parents have something which makes 50 years
and all the risk worth it.
Contentment.
Mazel Tov, Mom and Dad.

Eight Crazy Nights

1^st Candle: We play for our absolute favorite senior citizens home EVER—we are regulars there, but there must have been some new residents.

I play my violin and sing my little Yiddish heart out. After the show an older lady comes up to complain to Sruli. He shleps me over. Lisa—this lady said you didn’t sing any Yiddish songs. Why don’t you sing a Yiddish song especially for her? She looks at us. “I don’t like Yiddish songs.” We stop. How about a Hebrew song? So I sing BaShana Haba’ah right there, just for her. “BaShana Haba’ah? Next year?” she says. “I need luck THIS year!”

A few minutes later an older man came over to complain that I didn’t play the violin.

2^nd Candle: Two concerts— one at City College and one at yet another senior residence—yay! only encomium and eydlekeit.

Afterwards I crisscross the GWB twice in one horrifically trafficky hour to pick up babies and make it back to Family Chanukah party. Meantime

Sruli has a supervised (yes) visit with 16 year old daughter who tells him:

“she steals you from me, doesn’t let me speak to you for over four years even on the phone, lies to the judge, threatens me daily, fights with me physically, and now my mother gives me a new laptop for Chanukah and tells me I should love her.” The supervisor gives them an extra 10 minutes and they light Chanukah candles in the car-- together for the first time in 5 years.

3^rd Candle: We play for the fanciest elementary school—Hogwarts in Long Island. My big boys come home for the night (Oy I am dreying from delight) and together we light-- as 20 month old Charlie Re say-- the “Chammika Candles.”

4^th Candle: We play for an old shul with a new Rabbi and brand-new Cantor—5 blocks from where I grew up. It’s now a chulent of ethnicities, ages, and everything else—tough to make EVERYONE happy—but I must admit we rock the house. At the very end we sit on the in the middle of the dance floor with the remaining 10 kids skooched around us and play accordion and violin and sing. It was Sruli’s idea and it was magical.

5^th Candle: We perform the service for a church in Englewood. Verrrrrrrrry loooooooong and sloooooooow Hasidic nigunim. You could hear a pin drop—just like back at the Young Israel of Scarsdale. Haha.

And I get to hear the word “chalice.”

6^th Candle: We have sequential dentist’s appointments. My one and only filling (from when I was 12! Impressed?) is replaced with fancy white stuff. Afterwards, I go to the gym, drooling from one side of my numb mouth. Can’t eat, good for the diet.

7^th Candle: My favorite: We play for a fancy synagogue in Queens—big Chanukah party. After the concert a woman comes up to me: “Oh! You were soooooooooo wonderful! But—there’s no toilet paper in the ladies room.” I tell her I will see what I can do.

8^th Candle: We play our traditional Chanukah Concert for a senior residence in Westchester. Our big band includes “my son, the Baritone Sax player” poopoopoo, and his adorable friend the drummer. Zachary does a jazz version of Bay Mir Bistu Sheyn that leaves me crying with admiration and love. The residents eat him up. Seeing the juxtaposition of my physical future (decrepit and wheelchair bound) and my real future-- my strong and handsome and talented son (poopoopoo again) leaves me crying again—a Life is Beautiful moment that only a parent can have. I plow through my recently adopted atheism and thank God.

The last day of Chanukah we play for yet another senior residence and manage to make many people happy. I am truly happy—and not only because I have 2 days off before our next concert. That night in a lame-o attempt at girlish cuteness I up-end myself onto the sofa where Sruli is splayed—we had been flirting—and despite a week of latkes and fried everything and only one gym—the sofa stays totally put.

Now THAT’S a Chanukah miracle.

Thanksgivingthanks

For eleven years I made Thanksgiving for 45 people. This included 6 pounds of chopped liver (ok, so we like to have a little left over…) 5 pounds of grapes, 4 chocolate cakes and fruit pies, 3 turkeys, 2 enormous trays of mashed potatoes, and 1 very, very busy but happy me.

Both sides of the family came from DC, Philly, Boston, Manhattan and Queens and our little New Rochelle house rocked.

I guess I’m allowing myself to look back at it this year because for the first time I don’t feel the guilt or the pull anymore about that time in my life.

I—and we all—have moved on.

Today I was a guest at my fabulous “little” sister’s—the same one I used to put on the back of my bicycle and take to the playground when I was 15 and she was 2.

The dinner was yummy and elegant and our baby twins (dressed like Thing 1 and Thing 2) played non-stop with their big cousins Sarah, 6, and Goldie, 3.

I am thankful for the human ability to move on.

I am thankful for my 4 children—and for the 2 step-children I will get to

see as soon as their mother learns how to move on.

I am thankful that I still have healthy parents and fantabulous sisters,

and that we are a close family.

I am thankful to my best friend Sruli who lets me touch him whenever I want.

I am thankful for my energy, even if I am not so thrilled with my appetites.

I am thankful that I circulate within a world-class group of true artists

and thinkers and kindhearted friends.

I am thankful that I have enough income to live in a nice house with 2 cars,

a full closet, a full freezer and a full liquor cabinet.

I am thankful for the hundreds of Bar and Bat Mitzvah Moms and Dads, the Brides and Grooms, Rabbis, Cantors, Ministers and program directors who put their musical and life-cycle trust in me and my band.

I am thankful to the State of New Jersey for being more fun than the State of New York even though New York is cooler.

I am grateful to the Obamas for really really trying.

I am thankful that I am in a country where I can truly change things about my life that aren’t working, whether it be a marriage, a business or a philosophy, and so can you.

I am thankful for each new day—and each yesterday.

Routine Cleaning

Since last writing I have gotten a new car windshield for an inspection I thought was this year but turns out to be next November, performed my favorite Moishe Oysher song, ran a kick-ass Bat Mitzvah, partied on the Staten Island Ferry for the 50^th (!) birthday of my super-cool friend who looks maybe 30, raked leaves with the babes running rampant, had dinner with the parents in Qveeeeens, and got my teeth cleaned.

This last item happened today.

It was not a good week for the thighs. Only 2 gyms and more than 2 binges.

A little too spread-happy with the peanut butter on the wheat thins.

A few too many chicken wings.

Extra chocolate-enrobed pomegranate blobs.

HALVAH. (oy do I love halvah!)

Too many after 10:30 dinners.

A gingerbread muffin from Dunkin.

Too many crunchies and not enough crunches.

Found myself lumbering (lumbering!) up the stairs.

But enough of the Torpor and Turpitude.

I am BACK. Gym tonight and everything.

And last night we found ourselves at Eddies-the-bestest-ice-cream-

store-in-the-entire-world-you-should-see-the-whipped-cream-bowl-

when-they-bring-it-out-and-the-banana-ice-cream-is-to-plotz-for

And I DID NOT ORDER ANYTHING.

Ok, I made Sruli get banana in addition to his rum raisin (who the hell gets rum raisin anyway?) so I could have exactly 2 spoonfuls, but that was it.

Anyhow—today at the dentist.

So the hygienist was at my teeth in a major way, with that Mr. Thirsty thing sucking up all my crud and me spitting every 5 minutes anyway, and I’m kicking myself for not remembering to Chapstick beforehand ‘cos one’s lips lose all succulence from staying open that long, and she is talking and talking.

And talking. She is in her “mid to late thirties” (who says that? Why can’t she just say 37 or something?) and she can’t find a man and she is despairing and she’s been working since she’s 16, and my babies (who were, G-d Bless ‘Em, adorably destroying the Lego table in the reception area under Sruli’s watchful eye) were sooooooo cute, and she is really ready to be a mom, and dating is a disaster I should know, and ridiculous besides, and girls today are so aggressive and she isn’t.

I couldn’t say anything for obvious reasons, and what is there to say anyway, so I grunted sympathetically. Oy. Nebikh, Mizkeyna.

40 minutes of this later, my teeth were done. She smiled in that semi-crazy way some women have.

I felt that rush of feeling very lucky to be me, and a second rush of wanting to be rid of her quickly, this woman with no good things about her, lest her

sad-sack cooties infect like the dental decay pictured in all the brochures around us.

We looked at each other one more time, “I ran the marathon last week,” she said. “The whole thing. 26 plus miles. I’m in good shape.”

Yes, she is.

Smartypants

What is the cure for jealously? Maturity? Resignation? Spreading it around and being generally (but more evenly) jealous of more people?

Does anyone consider him/herself a jealous person?

I know lots of jealous people—not one of them I.

Until yesterday, when I was furious at Sruli, frustrated with Sruli, exasperated and exhausted and just wanted to yell and yell and make him stop talking.

We were working on plans for our new summer camp and it hit me that he came up with the fabulously fun daily schedule, the cool plan for associations with other businesses, the better email to send to someone important and the better strategy for dealing with another someone important. Oh, and the name of the camp, too.

Grrrrrr.

I’m the one with the fancy advertising pedigree and a piano-top full of writing awards, idea awards—I mean, I actually got awards for ideas.

What do I do with this situation—and where do I hide the body?

I think being jealous makes you fat, too.

Stress, cortisol, it’s all bad.

Come to think of it, he comes up with lots of good ideas for our music business, too.

He observes, he learns, he puts things together.

He can surf the web like nobody else and found me English lyrics for this song I needed yesterday in 2 seconds after I had been searching and searching and kept getting this damned video of Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.

He gets us fabulously cheap vacations.

I love hearing what he thinks about every single thing even if it’s a little too much about religion.

He has, naturally, come up with many wonderful diet solutions for me all of which would work if only I would really follow them.

(Eating wise mostly normal, BTW, but I am including one cider donut and one piece of blueberry pie, but it’s been a few days and I’m really, really eating much less. At today’s (excellent) Bar Mitzvah I barely ate and did not touch the yummy challah or the ice cream with a thousand toppings...)

I ask him every 10 minutes if I look thinner. He actually looks at me up and down before he gives his answer. It’s always a minimally optimistic yes.

He also found me free links to Mad Men, The Social Network, Sex and the City2 and a site that gets you amazing Coach bags for 66 dollars.

He also arranged for all my bills to be paid online and takes out the stinky diaper pail.

He will do anything for the babies, his daughters, my big boys, the dogs, the turtle, the fish and me.

His ideas are more advanced, his thinking more forward, and his philosophy more universal. He is really smart. The smartest person I know.

Which brings me to the smart way I figured out how to deal with it.

He works for me.