Ima 2 Seven

Rosh Hashanah was only a few days ago, and yet I find myself not at all sure just where to begin blogging. So much has gone on, and it has been so long since I collected my thoughts here.

I was determined to remain calm at holiday time this year. With unexpected guests, a steady pile-up of details, the kids’ intense first week of school, kids having off from school on the day I needed to prepare, two new jobs and that other minor detail of my SOUL BEING UNDER FINAL INSPECTION, consistent calm was a large enough goal to be the only one. I am happy to say that in the days leading up to and the days of Rosh Hashanah I did manage to remain calm…. I lost it a little once, only once, (with my husband) and promptly sentenced myself to some time in bed, which led to a half-hour long nap and a return to myself.

Early in the morning erev Rosh Hashanah I had gotten a last minute announcement from my DSS that he was coming for the holiday. I knew that three days of yom tov (and sibling time) in a row would be no small feat for a teenager who generally lives a completely secular life, primarily as an only child. It wasn’t easy for me to adjust to the change with basically no notice.  At the same time, it made the whole holiday feel more real, more complete. I had my whole family home, and it filled my heart. That just doesn’t happen as much as I would like anymore.

I missed Shofar blowing entirely the first day of Rosh Hashanah because the first night one child got sick and spent the better part of the night vomiting. We stayed home together the next day. I stayed calm. I wound up with tons of leftovers because some of our guests understandably didn’t feel like taking chances. ( Said child was on the trampoline and asking for food all at the same time by three in the afternoon, but I had to stay home with him that morning nonetheless.)There is a tzadik in our community who blew the shofar 100 blasts for a second time in one day, before eating his meal or taking his nap, so that I and his mother-in-law could fulfill the mitzvah. Other guests came hours earlier than my husband got home, trying to be very patient while lunch hour got much closer to dinner hour.

I had to miss (part of ) shofar blowing on the second day of Rosh Hashanah because a GANG of teenagers were on their way to my house without any adult supervision or permission! I took it as a backward compliment that any teen would be crazy enough to think that we are that “cool”… we aren’t. Part of me really wanted to resent my removal from davening…. but I remained calm.

Over the course of those three days, some of my possessions were damaged. My children got into it with each other, and younger children got hurt by older children. Albeit accidentally, there was a lack of care and restraint. After so much “together time” some of us forgot to “use our words”. And I remained calm.

I think that I have made a consistent mistake in the past to confuse excitement with seriousness. If there is no build-up, tension, excitement and drama then there is no serious “largeness” to the holiday.

The learning I was able to squeeze in during Elul this year kept returning to the idea of  our effort being the point, not the output, or other people’s expectations.  I heard repeatedly that accepting that this might not be my year to win medals in High Holiday davening, but that sometimes having small children  means showing devotion to G-d by refraining from davening and focusing on the needs of others.

I guess it was my time to hear this message, to learn this lesson.

I davened when I could, set up and cleaned up a lot of meals (gave away as much honey cake as I could so it wouldn’t stay in my house) and tried to prioritize remaining a calm presence in my home as a means of showing my service to G-d and my way of crowning him King.

I don’t know if it improved the holiday for any of my kids. Three days of yom tov, long hours at shul, too much dessert and too little sleep seemed to be a lot for everyone to handle, Ima’s mood notwithstanding.

I know the change made for a better holiday for me. The serenity I cultivated translated into a great sense of emunah, faith. There was no lack of noise and chaos throughout the days, but the lack of anxiety and stress or a “having to” feeling made my holiday more meaningful.

This is only the beginning in a long month of three-day holidays. I hope I can keep the calmness up. Only a few days out, I sit amongst piles of work, mess, laundry, leftovers and dirty dishes… and pray I am really up for the challenge!

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I had a parenting moment this morning that still fills me with consternation. We have one child who loves animals. I mean REALLY loves animals. He wants to run a zoo (the Jerusalem one, of course),  he won’t eat any meat, and will cry upon encountering any animal death from road kill to survival of the fittest, live or on video.

I have encouraged his love of animals, and I have indulged his choice to be a vegetarian. I believe strongly in encouraging his passions and beliefs, and I am glad that he has such a respect for and love of Hashem’s creation.

However…..

This morning there was an ant in our kitchen. Our current houseguest,  I don’t mean the ant) a 12 year old young lady, asked me to kill it. Which I would have done happily, had I been wearing shoes.  :  )

At being alerted to said ant, animal-loving9 yo and his twin proceeded to try and catch it. They used a morning cereal bowl at which point their 10 yo sister declared that she would never eat breakfast out of the purple bowl ever again as long as she lives. I wonder to myself if she knows that her uncle and I used it as a water dish for his dog a few weeks back… but I digress.

They were entirely unsuccessful at the trapping of said ant. At which point DH walks into the room, unaware of all that has transpired, and simply steps on the ant so we can get back to our morning.

9 yo animal lover stomped up the stairs in complete outrage and despair. He cried in his room until I told him that if he didn’t come down for school he would miss his ride and have to walk. So he agreed to go with the ant-murderer to school, but only after much yelling about the horrors of his homicidal and cruel parents.

I told him:  ”It is an ant. It isn’t a creature with a large brain that understands what is going on and is feeling lots of pain. It is an ant. Get over it, and go to school.”

Well then. What a sensitive Ima, right? I mean, it isn’t like there are another five kids about to be late to school, and a career in the balance needing to be tended to that matters as much as the boy’s love for the ant, right?

Outraged 9 yo went to the car, as did most of the rest of the troops. And that is when I got it. 9 yo’s twin turned to me and said:

“I thought you said that when someone is upset it is important not to make them feel worse, Ima. Isn’t that what you just did?”

Um, yeah. Isn’t that what I just did? I actually told 9 yo twin that there are times when in the process of educating and raising our children, parents have to have different rules than their kids. Which is true. And is also a total cop-out, and I can’t believe I said to him the equivalent of “do as I say not as I do.”

At the same time, at what point is it my job to stop being sensitive to one’s feelings and teach him to get over the death of one ant and get back to a rational level of reaction to the bumps of life and go to school already!?!?!?!?

I wish I knew the answer, because they have forgotten all about it, and I am left feeling like I gave a super bad response.

Gee, I wonder where they get their overreacting from?

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“You have seven kids? Wow! That’s a lot… I only see six. ….Oh? He’s your stepson… so he lives with you? …………….No? Oh, so you have six kids of your own………..”

“You have seven kids?! What’s the age range? …………………Oh, so one is your stepson. So you really have six kids, then.”

I cannot tell you how many times I have heard comments like these, or countless variations on them.  Almost all of them are conversation with well meaning, kind, good people. I am certain that if they knew how hurtful and upsetting these comments are, they wouldn’t dream of saying such things.

I am an “Ima” to seven children. The first, my stepson, who I love and who yes, does not live with me, chose the name of this blog. So, yes, I am an “Ima” to seven children.  My relationship with my stepson is different than my relationship with the other six of my children. My relationship with each of my children is different. I have one child who has another parent, another house, another way of doing things. It is different. Not less, not more. Different.

I could write a long post about the credentials that give me the “right” to say that I have seven children, although I did, yes, give birth to six, and I do, yes, have six children living in my house. I could regale you with tales of cleaning up vomit, wiping tushies, midnight peepee accidents, holding hands during scary stuff, scheduling and logistical gymnastics, school meetings, laundry, flexibility on every tiny detail of life, etc. I could talk about tailoring meals, trying to build character, discipline and learning from as well as teaching to this child. I could, in short, tell you the story of 11 years of parenting.

I could tell you that I would jump in front of a bus to save seven children without a moment’s thought. I could tell you that stepparenting can take more time, more energy, more patience than parenting a biological child living in your home.

I could also write about how adopted children are “counted” by strangers as our children. Children who go to boarding school are “counted”. Neither womb dwelling nor number of days living in one’s house each year constitute parenting.

There are women with children who have addiction problems (G-d forbid) that they are not in touch with, or barely see. There are women who don’t even have a speaking relationship with their children. And I seriously doubt that someone they just met would suggest to them that they need to edit or clarify the number of children they “actually” have.

But I don’t think any of that really gets to the point. The bottom line is that when I say I have seven children, I have seven children…..because if you could shrink yourself and get teeny tiny and crawl inside of my heart, you would find special little spaces that have grown in it. Spaces that weren’t there before, spaces that have caused me growth and pain and joy and  limitless capacity for love.

And there are seven of those spaces.

The next time you meet a mom and she tells you the number of children she has, and she mentions that one/some of them are stepchildren, I hope you don’t qualify her numbers for her.  I hope you don’t ask if they live with her. I hope you smile.

I really cannot presume to know how much this does or does not bother all other stepmoms. I also cannot, however, believe that it is just me.

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I am suffering from allergies.

I don’t suffer from allergies, but I have learned that if you live in the Garden State long enough, sooner or later you, too, will become an allergy sufferer. It is one of the many, many reasons that living in NJ is not my favorite thing in the world. Mostly because I belong in Israel (don’t we all?). But I digress…..

Because of the dry allergy cough, I have also lost the use of my voice. Not competely; it just hurts to use it.

One might say that losing the ability to yell at your family is a blessing. You have to find proper and healthy ways to communicate. It really isn’t, believe it or not, the loss of the yelling that is making me crazy. It’s the rest of it.

Taking the voice from a mother is like taking the scalpel from a surgeon. How can we do what we do? I don’t know sign language very well, and even if I did, my kids don’t. And we don’t live in one room or on one floor. And they don’t stay put or come to where I am to speak to me.

Furthermore, apparently having the big ones read bedtime stories to the little ones isn’t good enough. And the child who only agrees to be diapered with the “itsy bitsy spider” song sung to him (performed with Music Together sound effects of course) isn’t going to accomodate and get changed without.

This post is sounding a lot more like one long complaint than I meant it to. Laryngitis is truly not the worst of problems. It certainly curtails lashon hara.

However, motions, and speaking quietly so that they will all quiet down to listen can only take me so far.

I parent with food, I parent with hugs, I parent with gestures, with carpool, with laundry. But most — a HUGE most — of my parenting is done with those two, very precious, very sore vocal chords.

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My role as a stepmother isn’t a subject that I have blogged about much.  My stepson is 16,  and I remember being pretty embarrassed by just about everything my parents said and did when I was sixteen. I especially hated it when they talked about me to their friends.

The truth is that to be a non-custodial stepparent who is religious is lonely. There are almost no forums, communities, books or resources. Much of what applies in the non-Jewish world doesn’t translate, and most of the books I have seen address being a custodial stepparent. When I wanted some help navigating the road I am on, I looked in every place on line and in the library that I could think of.  Nothing.

It is as if the publishers out there make the same mistake as a lot of other people that I don’t have to parent much, or work hard, or focus energy on my stepson because he doesn’t live with me.

Of course the opposite is true! There are many times where more patience, energy, work, skill, communication…. in short parenting, is required because he doesn’t live with me.  And of course I don’t love him less than my other children. I do love him differently, but I love each of them differently. Each relationship is unique.

The difference isn’t in my unconditional love – it is that my unconditional love for him is one way. His loving me conditionally is a result of lots of different factors. I could say that it is “normal” for a stepchild, but I don’t think one can generalize in this case. There are stepchildren who freely adore their stepparent. Hold on to them as a buouy of sanity in their lives.  There are stepchildren who simply don’t love their stepparents at all. And everything in between. But the love, conditional as it may be, is just that, LOVE. And sometimes I am amazed that he lets himself love me, given loyalty issues and other factors in his life.

At another time I would like to describe all of the ways that I think the one-way unconditional love makes me a better parent for my whole family. It has made me a better person. Loving, and giving with no illusions of control is freeing. It is a challenge, but it is freeing, and strength-building.

I cannot sum up the complex relationship filled with challenges and love that I have with my stepson in one blog post. In fact, it is a book’s worth of stuff that I will try to write someday. (Maybe when he is old enough to not be mortified by such a thing.)

Most of the parenting issues we have now are 99% about being sixteen and 1% about being a step-relationship. Which is great! But I never know when it is one or the other, and I am often insecure and don’t have enough confidence in that ratio. I keep learning the lesson over and over again.

Tonight there was pushing away, and pushing away, and pushing away: ” I don’t want to commit to following up with that. I can’t come that day. I don’t want to talk about it. Nothing new is in my life, I mean it. I don’t know when I will have them. Yeah yeah, okay, etc.”

…. and then “Yeah, I would prefer it if you packed me a lunch for school tomorrow, if it is okay.”

And in one instant, I feel needed, I feel loved.    :  )

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This is a posting by the very talented “A Mother in Israel”, titled; “Tips on Staying Home and Staying Sane”. I could paraphrase, but I hope you read it. It is the best advice distilled. Not only do I concur, but I really wish I had had access to such a list when I was starting out with my oldest.

http://www.amotherinisrael.com/2009/05/18/tips-staying-home-staying-sane/

Yasher Koach, Hannah Katsman.

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