My 4-year-old Twins Tattletaled on the Babysitter

My 4 year-old twins just ratted out their babysitter. 

They’re only with her a couple of nights a week—when we’re out playing Bar Mitzvahs—but gigs are long and there’s travel time and the babes end up with her for hours and hours.

The Babysitter, whom I’ll call Fabiola, is a mom herself, in her 40’s, very attractive, and often comes with her 10 year old daughter who seems to adore the twins. She is Spanish, and I encouraged her to speak a little Spanish to the twins—never too early!

She’s been with us for almost a year, and I never noticed the twins—a boy and girl who have that “WE” thing totally down—cringe or complain when I told them Fabiola was coming.

But tonight, there we were in the big family car on our favorite family outing—a trip to Target.  And Johnny (the boy) and Charlie (the girl) were chattering in their carseats.

“Fabiola says that if we don’t listen to her she’s going to give us away.”

We turned the volume down on 50 of the Greatest Silly Songs.

What did you say?

This time, Johnny verified it.  “Fabiola says this to us. Only if we don’t listen.”

My husband and I shot each other a look.

Now what?

Nobody gives children away, I tell them later as I shower them and comb out their crazy blond curls. Fabiola shouldn’t say that, but she doesn’t mean it.

Now what?

I trust her with the important things—she keeps them physically safe, feeds them from her own table, can sit through a zillion episodes of The Littlest Pet Shop and makes Charlie the most magnificent hairdos.

I guess I will talk to her about the other stuff that I feel is important. Talking to children honestly and patiently without threats—both real and not real. 

I will ask her if 7 or sometimes 9 hours is too long—and maybe I should split the time with another babysitter.

I will tell her not to say things like that to my children.

Or maybe I will say nothing and find another babysitter.

And she will always wonder why she doesn’t get called anymore.  And I will always feel guilty because I know she needs the money.

The twins are four but I believe them. And I don’t know if I would believe her not to scare them again.

Now what?

Shvitzing

My cousin’s husband Norman is the gold standard of Sweaty.

It drips from his ruddy forehead, pools at the edges of his beard, and (remember Roseanne Roseanneadana?) makes a good sized sweatball at the tip of his nose, so no matter which way he swings his head—that drop is gonna get you.

Unfortunately, I am not one to talk.

Sweat regularly frames my entire face, dampens my décolletage, and threatens to spray my pitying friends.

I apologize for my shvitzing on a regular basis—on a regular basis.

I’m shlepping speakers and a microphone bag—to the coifed Bar Mitzvah mom.

I’m playing my violin vigorously—to the horrified senior ladies after our concerts in their gated communities.

I’m making chulent/latkes/soup/tea—to my concerned congregants.

I’m circling the hot and steamy city for camp permits—to the surprisingly elegant workers at the Bureau of Child Care.

And, of course the easiest--I’m running after 4-year-old twins.

Still, I know my super-sized sweating has to do with weight, stress and a not-yet-settled life. (Same as Cousin Norman, frankly.)

But, as I sit—oy a mechaya!—in my AC’d bedroom at our “shul house,” I tell myself it’s because I am engaged with life.

I sweat not only the small stuff. I sweat it all.

Some people can deal with it—like 9-year-old Shoshi in KlezKanada who once, matter-of-factly said “oh, that’s how you always are” after hugging an apologetic me and barely letting go.

Some can’t—like the rich husband of a friend who pointedly looked at me while saying how much he loved his wife because she has barely any scent.

I happen to smell good—so there!—but I guess that wasn’t his point.

Lucky for me, Sruli sweats even more fiercely and I feel positively ladylike in comparison. And he always smells delicious.

I once saw Savion Glover live—tap dancing on a wooden platform while a Juilliard ensemble played for him. He was wearing this pale yellow shirt that billowed gloriously as he whirled like a tornado, but after a time clung to his torso and darkened in color.

At first I didn’t know what was going on—and then I realized. Jeez, that guy was sweating.

You could see the cloud of spray, too—we had good seats—surrounding him, following him like a comet’s tail, dangerously close to those (oy vey!) Juilliard instruments.

But there was something so raw and real that the audience held its breath—and when he finally stopped--panting and soaked—the people let out a loud and sweaty roar of approval.

If you can’t take the heat, baby…

One last story about my Cousin Norman—takke a very generous man who will perspire on anyone’s behalf:

Sruli and I were in Israel to play a gig and we stayed at my cousin’s apartment in Ramot. This was years ago.

Everyone was up late, yakking, and finally it was time to turn in.

I had just brushed my teeth and Sruli was waiting his turn when we saw Norman coming from the kitchen with a huge hunk of—wait for it—gefilte fish, mounded with horseradish, dripping with saucy, stinky yoych, a plastic fork protruding upwards—on a paper plate. A PAPER PLATE.

We stopped.

Sruli asked. Where are you going with that?

To bed, he said.

Sruli waited til Norman was gone, then he turned to me.

“THAT would be a dealbreaker.”

I cracked up.

Not yet did I know about the coming nightsweats of the 6-year hell and heartbreak of Sruli’s divorce.

Not yet did I know the years of hormonal torture I would endure to bear his children.

Not yet did I know about future job uncertainty, hastily sold businesses, moving 3 times or cranky board members of future shuls.

Not yet did I know about my current hot flashes that turn my head into one giant, flaming marshmallow.

“Ha,” I said. “No sweat.”

Vacay

It’s actually happening for the first time in 4 years—our own personal Brigadoon. We’re going on Vacation.

Oh, I had big plans; my BIG birthday’s coming up, etc. etc., and I’ve been dreaming of going to St. Petersburg, Russia, forever, and let’s just expletive go!

But what with twin babies and not so much time or money…

So Sruli suggested a quick, booby-prize jaunt to Paris—oolala—I’ve never been and even got so far as to get Instant French CD’s and download them to my computer and got the Frommers—but—not this year.

So—we are going to Atlantic City, 53 bucks a night at Harrahs and the big kids are watching the little kids.

And I’m actually pretty excited.

Four days, right punkt smack in the middle of crazy camp prep, 2 graduations, 2 packing-out-of-the-dorms, a zillion gigs and the Rabbinate. Sruli promised me we won’t talk about work.

So I am hoping to do some reflection, pre-half century mark.

Like, what the hell? How did I get here? And—why am I still not thin? And—when did they start calling them Medical Centers instead of Hospitals, flip flops instead of thongs, and covers instead of playing a song that really belongs to another, more successful band?

And why DID I really give up my advertising job all those years ago instead of trying to do music on the weekends, knowing full well I’d never hit the stratosphere of performance since I started so goddam late and I seem to be working on the weekends mostly anyway? I would have been able to send my kids to any college they wanted AND had an apartment in the city (although living in a shul is fun and you should try it sometime) and I would be wearing real clothes like the kind that actually might have to be dry-cleaned, instead of yoga pants and long n lean tanks from Target. Every day.

And why am I still not thin?

And why do I have to pee ever goddam 5 minutes?

And why do I self-sabotage (this still has to do with the why am I not thin question) and ten years ago I managed to make myself look great for my last big birthday and  our big trip to play at the Cracow Festival and that Ann Taylor dress is still hanging in my closet, but this year I will, for sure, be the fattest parent at Aaron’s Heschel graduation dinner.

And I will also reflect why we go to bed so late, and why I can’t think straight any more. You know, remember things. And did I mention, why am I not thin?

I want to reflect on my next chapter, pending the Good Lord’s benevolence.

What I can do better. For my family, my shul, my community and maybe even the world.

How I can help Zachary more—as he battles the odds and gets up on a big stage tomorrow night—his first concert produced by a producer.

How I can help Ilana more—as she negotiates her new, free life, and help her make choices that even her Dad can agree with.

How I can help Aaron who is still figuring out how unbelievably fabulous he is—and how much I freakin’ love him and would help him if he would freakin’ let me. Like never sending emails to important grownups without me vetting them.

And—re the Twins: are we EVER going to really send them to school?

And Sruli, well—I can’t really change anything about him, can I? He’s even older than I am.

I want to be more patient.  I want never to grimace. Or roll my eyes. I want to stop sweating so much (see thin question above) but also not to anticipate fights and problems. Which I really do. It’s a double-bad whammy—you get the cortisol coming and going. Not a good situation for a flat belly according to the pop-up screen on my Yahoo.

So I will use the few days to calm down. Sleep. Read. Beach.

And count my manifold blessings.

And revel (ha! Atlantic City pun!) that at this crazy middle-age I can still go one or two rounds with my partner at the bar, and again, later, upstairs.

Every Day is Mother's Day?

There is one question that people ask me most often these days—after “Are you sure you’re ok, you look tired?”  and it is: “What’s harder—boys or girls?”

In fine Jewish tradition, and in fine fettle after a fine Mother’s Day, I will answer the question—with a question. A long question, heh heh.

If --you are changing diapers and you have to remember to keep some absorbent something over his little thing while you are also reaching down in what could be an advanced-intermediate yoga stretch, to pick up your entire ring of important keys that he needs to hold to keep his little hands occupied so they don’t end up in the poo-ish diaper, and which he threw down, mind you, in the first place—is that harder?

If--you are trying to get them into the car seat goddammit because you are late goddammit, and she has decided that the sequence of events must, by law, SHOULD have been: carry her out of the house, let her walk to the car by herself and climb up into the car seat by herself, but you, in your foolish and unforgivable haste, carried her out of the house, CARRIED her to the car and EVEN THOUGH you let her climb up into the car seat by herself, you must immediately go back in time and GO BACK TO THE HOUSE  and let her walk all by HERSELF to the car—is that harder?

If--you are at the playground with another mother who looks much, much, more perfect than you and there is a pirate ship that can easily and happily accommodate 15 toddlers, and your son and her son are the only buccaneers aboard, and her son will end up crying because your son will have walloped him because “I was standing there first, Mommy,”—is that harrrr-der?

If--you are again late goddammit, and you finally hold aloft a pair of CLEAN tights that match the dress that took many, many tries to be put, albeit with shrieking, on, they are deemed unacceptable because they have sparkles on them and you know, “Mommy, sparkles make my legs uncomfortable”—is that harder?

If-- you are at a diner, and it’s kind of crowded and you’re kind of starving and you know he never eats anything anyway, so what could be the harm if he climbs over all those built-in back to back mustard leatherette booths and she, the future chemist, who actually packs away pancakes and nuggets and pizza and soup with such efficiency that Sruli and I have no idea where she puts them--will be experimenting with the viscosity of an epicurean blend of ketchup, maple syrup and salt—which is harder?

In the meantime there are two of them and one of I, when Sruli and I tag-team which is often, and they say things like “WE want to go to the red swing playground” and “WE want to go to that place with the Ipads” and “WE want to go to the rice and beans store” and, almost every day, “WE want to go to Dunkin Donuts.”

AND they stick up for one another so that if Johnny cries because I potched him for RUNNING OUT INTO THE STREET RIGHT IN FRONT OF A CAR that was caroming down, Charlie will narrow her green eyes at me and say, with great articulation, “Mommy is bad.”

Or if it’s Charlie who is whining for yet another quarter to feed the evil machines, which, in their smug, glassy, colorful and silent ubiquity block the exit of every single—every single—store from the grocery to Wal-Mart, it is Johnny who wheedles it out of me, standing in my way and shaking his blond curls and holding out his firm, little, irresistible hand. He silently gives the coin to his sister, and reverently waits for her to twist those goddam twisters. “Are you happy?, he asks, when the plastic ring comes out in that stupid plastic bubble. Is that what you always wanted?

It’s a trip, what can I say?

What’s harder is getting ANY time to do what I have to do—call back my Bar Mitzvah Moms, call back my Camp Moms, deal with the camp permit, deal with my OTHER THREE KIDS, get on the bicycle, take a shower, write a little. And what’s harder is that being a Rebbetzin is also a job. A big, busy job.

What’s even harder to admit is that I am in serious need of an attitude adjustment, because I feel wicked complaining. I know it’s because my bum foot has kept me off the bicycle for a few weeks and my endorphins are low.

Sruli says I should be happy all the time—hey, he says, our life is working out! It’s true. We are going away together, week after next, for the first time in 4 years—the big kids are watching the little kids. AND I saw the podiatrist today and I can get back on the bike tomorrow (!) AND I finished a TV script that I have had in my head for TEN YEARS. It’s pretty good and I’m pretty proud.

So—here I am, mom of Boy/Girl twins getting back to the basic question. Boys or Girls?  Which is harder? IF you have boys—then you know. IF you have girls—then you know. IF you have both—do I really have to tell you?

And really, wouldn’t it be harder to imagine life without them?

Sister Joanne Has Nothing

Yesterday was free health fair day at our Temple. Sister Joanne from the big hospital set it up, mostly for poor folks who don’t have health care—free blood pressure check, free cholesterol check, free Body Mass Index.

She invited me for the trifecta, but the Fatso-Meter was all I really cared about. Oy, what a mistake.

Sister Joanne—herself a gezinte woman, if you can say that about a Roman Catholic Nun—laughed raucously at my stricken face.  It’s an evil chart, she cackled.

Sister Joanne wasn’t always a nun. She had a husband and a house in New Jersey.

For 6 months, until he died.

Joanne went to church to pray for him while he was sick, and continued to pray after he passed. As she told me, I was hearing things in the service that I guess I needed to hear.

One thing led to another and she found herself taking her vows.

Three vows: Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience. My jaw was on the floor. I could MAYBE do one out of three—yeah, and guess which one.

She now lives in a house with 3 other nuns—one is the Mother Superior of her order in the US—but they don’t call them Mother Superiors anymore.

I, of course, tried to look cosmopolitan—the Rabbi’s Wife who basically got her knowledge of nuns from watching Maria in The Sound of Music.

So Sister Joanne sold her house and gave the money to her family. The house she shares now belongs to the church, and her only closet is a whopping 2 feet by 2 feet.

She doesn’t own the car she drives to work every day, and her salary is direct deposited to the church. She gets health benefits from the big hospital.

She gets an allowance—my jaw dropped again when she told me. $75 dollars.  A month. A month. A month. It’s hard when you want to buy a present for someone, she told me. You really have to learn to save up.

$75 dollars a month and she’s thinking about presents for other people. I told her I wasn’t rich myself, but if she EVER needed anything EVER she should come to me.

She laughed her happy raucous laugh. I don’t need anything, she said.

That night I told Sruli all about Sister Joanne. I couldn’t stop. He looked at me and smiled. You can use it for your Mishna discussion this week.

We study Pirkei Avot here at the Temple, every Friday night during services. The Ethics of the Fathers. I learned them with my father on Shabbat mornings when I was a little girl, imagining the ancient Rabbis as I spread my Challah thickly with Skippy super chunk peanut butter.

This week we are up to my favorite saying: Marbeh Nechasim, Marbeh Da’agah. The more stuff you have, the more stuff you have to worry about.

Usually Sruli leads a lively discussion but I had asked him if I could lead this one.

I thought I knew all about Marbeh Nechasim. I gave up a fancy job in advertising, a house in Scarsdale, a house in White Plains and a house in Englewood. I sold all my furniture, gave away most of my clothes, my kitchen stuff, and now live in the basement of a shul.

But $75 a month.

Someday, Sister Joanne will fly easily and lightly up to heaven, unencumbered by Nechasim or earthly ties. She will be bathed in the glow of gratitude from thousands of poor people whose lives she made healthier, more bearable.

I will be looking up without envy, without self-consciousness, my jaw open in awe.

I hope I will be able to hear her raucous laugh through the cacophony as the angels rush to welcome her as one of them.

Bill The Ice Cream Man

You could already hear the tinkle before the truck rounded the corner, came up the hill and parked itself –oh joy!—right in our driveway.

We—that would include Zachary, Aaron, Ilana and Toby—and any other neighborhood kids whose parents were as permissive—would actually jump up and down just like in commercials as we fished out our money and made up our minds.

Zachary, 8, would get a King Cone. Ilana, 3, ices, always ices. Aaron, almost 3, would get something Mommy picked out for him—usually an ice cream sandwich with three flavors inside. When baby Toby was still baby Toby she sucked on whatever Sruli got, which, of course, was ices, always ices, too. I, ever on a diet, got a Frozefruit, which, let’s face it, if you get the coconut, which of course was my favorite, was insanely fattening.

We had been happily waiting for close to an hour in the driveway;  Sruli and I playing music for all the kids, telling jokes, planning what we were gonna get “this time.”

We did this twice a week, in season, for the better part of 10 years. Ice cream night was a big deal.

Bill-the-ice-cream-man was white haired and smiley. And patient. He kind of matched his truck.  (He was always in Good Humor.)

And apparently he had been watching us too.

We had already moved out of the neighborhood a good 5 years when we saw him a few months ago at the old park—big hellos.

He asked me for my number. “I’ve known Zach now for many years, I watched him grow up,” he said. This was true. “I always saw how he took care of his brother and bought him and other children ice cream with his own money when you weren’t there.” This was also true. “I have a nice girl for him.”

Really?

“My wife and I want to have you all for dinner. Her family too. Are there any dietary restrictions?”

Wait. Won’t they just be serving ice cream?

So today we all went. Really. Because, IF she turned out to be the ONE for Zachary, how freakin’cool would that be—to be set up by your ice cream man? Already I was planning a milchig wedding brunch so we could park a you-know-what right inside our synagogue’s social hall—Candy Center Crunches for everyone!  Ices for Ilana and Sruli!

Well, Bill and the lovely Joan do NOT live in a truck. Of course I knew this, but I was a tad disappointed. So was Zachary I think.

The girl and her family were lovely, but she was not for Zachary, and maybe we all were a tad disappointed. I think.

But then—it got weirder.  As I started to talk to the Dad, and he began with the usual where do you live, etc., I said, “Well we lived in Englewood for a while until Sruli became the Rabbi of this CRAAAAAZY synagogue in North Bergen” and he shouted “Temple BETH EL?” and I shouted “YES!” and he said “I’m the president of the synagogue right up the hill from you!”

The synagogue that had been trying and trying to merge with us before Sruli came on board but our little band of congregants wouldn’t hear of it.

All together we were, this afternoon, at the house of Bill the ice-cream-man.

So he didn’t make the shidduch with Zachary and the girl, but he did get the parents together—we had LOTS to talk about and are planning—not to merge, ha ha!-- but to get together.

He really did something nice, that Bill. As did Joan. Something that people always say they’re gonna do, think they’re gonna do, really think they’re gonna do. One day.

Today, he went to a lot of trouble to set up a nice Jewish girl—from Barnard, yet!—with a nice Jewish boy he used to see out his window, summer after summer after summer.

Maybe, as the old joke goes, they were the only 2 Jewish people he knew.

Still.

After an elaborate lunch with plenty of wine, Joan went out of the room and came back with a big cardboard box.

Zachary had a King Cone. I had a Candy Center Crunch. (One of the biggest sellers, Bill told me.) Aaron was not there, but Johnny had an ice cream sandwich. Ilana was not there, but Charlie and Daddy had ices. Always ices.

To a Tea

When I was a little girl, my father had a Gemara Shiur-- a Talmud study group--of fellow professors. They met every Shabbos afternoon, about 15 men, and they rotated houses. When it was our turn the dining room table was laden—and I mean laden—with all sorts of goodies that my friends and I khalished over: seven-layer caked, sugar bowties, real bakery cookies with the jelly in the middle and colored sprinkles on top, fresh grapes and dried fruit, licorice, salty nuts, and my absolute favorite—chocolate covered almonds. All parve, of course.

My father would lead the shiur around that table, the enormous brown leather books open in front of all the serious men, a sea of sacred surrounding a profanely colorful spread.  All the wives would come too—and sit—with their own nosh—around the kitchen table, tsittering.

But here it is: at a certain point would come The Time To Serve The Tea.  Daddy would signal from the dining room and Mommy in the kitchen would jump up and Serve The Tea with all its fixins in frankly reverential silence. The women would wait, hushed. These were all their husbands and they did the same when it was their turn to host. Then—tea served—the tsittering would begin again.

Fast forward to when I was a young wife in Scarsdale. Robert organized a shiur, also with all the husbands we socialized with. As I set out the seven-layer cake, grapes, cookies, nuts and dried fruit I said, “Tell me when it’s time to serve the tea.”

Why, he said.

So that I can Serve The Tea.

He gave me a funny look.

“I don’t need you to serve the tea. I can serve the tea”.

He turned and started stacking up the china cups, got out the Chai, the Camomile the Peppermint, khopped the sugar bowl, and even cut up a lemon.

And just like that—I became not my mother.

Until… now. Maybe.

Every Shabbos afternoon after services we have a kiddish lunch here at the Temple. While I make the Friday night dinners for everybody, there are other people responsible for the Saturday kiddish. I’m grateful, because it’s pretty elaborate, with everybody sitting around the table-- Rosario passing plates and—hallelujah!--cleaning up.

Sruli has just finished doing services that started at 9:15 and he is the opposite of a morning person so by the time he sings V’shamru and makes Kiddish over the wine, designates the usual designee for the Challah, he plops down at the table. I take a plate, fill it with egg salad, regular salad and anything else I think he will like, and set it down in front of him. I keep an eye on, to make sure his water cup is full, and jump up when I think he needs seconds on the egg salad. I hustle to make sure the pepper shaker is within his reach. I carefully select a non-chocolate cookie and piece of cake for his dessert.

I throw some grapes on that plate, too.

Of course I also make sure to Serve Him Tea.

I’m a modern, educated woman who can support herself on the open market, runs a small business and deals with the world. All the women in this shul are modern, educated, and self-supporting. They are equal. They are wonderful and we have become friends. If I described how on tenterhooks my mother was (and IS—because she still does it!!) how alert she is, waiting for the signal to serve,  how careful to do it right—and how frankly elegantly she does it--they might laugh. Or worse, shake their heads.

Every time I serve Sruli, and it’s pretty obvious, every Shabbos afternoon at that kiddish,  I don’t say anything and none of my new women friends and congregants say anything.

But I see them watching.