Chag Sameach. I hope your seders were as uplifting and meaningful as ours. I will look forward to writing about them in the coming days. I unfortunately fell ill with strep this year, which is amazing given that I actually had less stress going into the holiday than ever before. But it certainly translated into lots of sleep and time alone with the family as I quarantined myself.
Today I just want to share my earliest and fondest Pesach memory:
Coming downstairs in the morning to my maternal grandmother “Nanny” in an old and ugly housecoat standing over the stove making the best matzoh brie I have ever tasted. I am sure there was a stick of butter in the pan.
She was the only one of my grandparents to live long enough to have a relationship with my kids, and we all miss her.
Today was the first matzoh brie of the holiday, and it always makes me think of her.
Chag Sameach.
It’s my birthday today. It is both my English and Hebrew birthday. Since the Hebrew calendar syncs with the Roman one every 19 years, I am either 19, 38, or 57 today. I will let you guess.
I don’t really expect or enjoy much fanfare on my birthday. I remember my 30th, because I spent it in bed with a stomach flu. The rest past about 16 are pretty unmemorable, and that’s okay with me.
For me, birthdays are a day for reflection and gratitude. (And handmade cards from my kids.)
This year, my 10 yo made me a beautiful necklace, with her Safta’s help, without my knowing, and managed to keep it a surprise. I am pretty impressed, but I am also bracing myself that my kids are getting older as well, and in a much more dramatic fashion than I.
When I was just turning 31, my neighbor and close friend told me how great it was to be in her 40’s. I thought she was CRAZY. I didn’t want to be getting any closer to 40 myself. But she said that her 40’s were about implementing the wisdom she spent her 20’s and 30’s accumulating.
That was very little consolation to me on that younger side of my thirties. Didn’t sound attractive to me at all. Now as I get closer by one more year, I totally get what she meant.
This year is about starting a very new chapter in my life. While I generally don’t rely on any plans I make, we don’t expect to be having more children. And that has never been true before since I got married. And the ones we have aren’t a household full of little ones any longer. I am also adjusting to my new work life. Conveniently for me it comes at a time that my schedule is minimized so I can prepare for Pesach, clean,feel the renewal of spring, and contemplate.
Now if I can just make this the year I get a decent figure back, and get in shape!!!
Someone posted this great article on facebook: “How to do your Pesach Cleaning Cheerfully in Less than One Day” by Rav Aviner. It is a great guide. I hope to read it every year as a reminder, which means sending it to myself.
… I don’t buy it that one can or even should get it done in one day, and I have already posted that I like the spring cleaning as well as the cleaning for Pesach. As of today I have unloaded about 10-15 bags of stuff we just don’t want or need anymore. Feels great. Someone else has given me an entire wardrobe for the 4 yo for the coming two seasons. (Thanks, Ronit.)
But the article gives a good perspective, and is blessedly brief. Of course the kitchen is only mentioned in a few lines and we all know that that is where the real work lies. I also think the article is specifically relevant for those living in Israel more than in the US. But Pesach, as all chagim are truly designed to be celebrated in Eretz Yisrael after all. There certainly is truth in the article for the rest of us as well.
Slow and steady seems to be working for me this year, more so in the past, as I juggle the schedule of a work at home mom.
I try – and it is always a goal more than an achievement – to remain focused on the removal of spiritual chametz as I clean and organize and prepare my house. That is, to remove grudges, old patterns, and the “yeast in mitzvot” which was explained to me this Shabbat by the very wise Rabbi Aaron Gruman, means that which allows us to get “puffed up” without doing much of anything. The combination of arrogance and laziness.
Someone created a facebook group called “facebook is chametz”. If one goes by Rabbi Gruman’s understanding as it was explained to me, then facebook definitely qualifies. It certainly allows me to become a) self absorbed, and b) very lazy – all at the same time. I am going to try and stay fb free for as long as I remain chametz free this year.
I have been making a lot of LISTS. Lists are what I do when I have lots to accomplish and no energy with which to do so. The lists help me organize that which I have to do, even if I am just too tired to actually do it.
I hope you are all making good progress; perhaps you are too busy to be reading my blog. : )
I also hope you will let me know what you think of the article.
Pesach is my favorite holiday, with perhaps the exception of Shabbat. It is also the time of year I miss Israel most, but that is for another post.
Funnily, I think Purim is consistently my least favorite. But I love Pesach. As with most things, I don’t think it is for any one specific reason. I love that spring is coming. I love sending the kids outside. I love to cook. I love the children’s enthusiasm for the seder. I probably wouldn’t like the preparations as much if I had to use china and then clean it, or if I had to bake a lot of Pesach desserts. I don’t bake during Pesach. No one likes the way most of it tastes, and I have never gotten my family hooked on the good stuff, so they don’t really know what they are missing.
….I also love Pesach cleaning.
Every year I am reminded, along with everyone else, that “Pesach cleaning doesn’t mean you have to do Spring cleaning”. But I love spring cleaning. I am sure this is because I hire myself help to do it with.
I love the fact that for the spring cleaning part I only have to get through as much as I get through. I love the lack of clutter, the putting things in a place. Giving things away we no longer use. A fresher smelling, feeling house.
My office usually gets crammed with chametz/non pesach stuff I can’t fit anywhere else and locked up for the week of Pesach. Sold. As a result, it is the least cleaned room in the house. This year I did that first, and I just love the feeling. I actually want to go in my office again. I am perfectly aware that we aren’t eating in there, and that the beads on the floor aren’t crumbs. Still, the cobwebs and dust are gone, the lost checkbook found, and I can move on to cleaning actual chametz with a better feeling.
Check back next week as Pesach gets closer; most likely more of the last minute stress will be getting to me and my back won’t feel quite as good.
In the meantime, the sun is shining after two days of floods and storms and doom and gloom and all the stray lego lost in 10 rooms is slowly making its way home.
I love Pesach.
If my life had a theme it would be the old Yiddish expression “man plans, G-d laughs”. When I wrote my last blog post I was quite sure at an early hour how the day would go. I had been there before, and confidently typed out my plans for the day….
… I hadn’t counted on catching the stomach bug my 4 yo had just finished dealing with. Soon after publishing my blog post and immediately after eating a small meal, I knew that the day wouldn’t go as planned.
By late afternoon I had summoned my husband to work from home. By early evening… you don’t want any details of what went on early evening.
I lost all of that day and the next day, too. Turns out the recovery from such stomach bugs can be worse than the bug itself, as your muscles all try to recover from working backwards.
I cancelled my dss’s time to be with us that day in an effort to spare him similar agony. I almost never, ever cancel his time with us. I don’t like the message it sends. Luckily, at 15, he voluntarily opted to come the next day instead. Readers, please remind me of that when I am not having a great stepmom day.
I am now two days behind in both work and Shabbat preparations, and needless to say my Pesach prep will have to happen next week. That is what I get for so confidently declaring how my day would go.
While I was sick, I thought to myself that this was actually worse than labor. At least with labor while my insides are turning inside out I know there is something wonderful coming out of it.
The following day, while I lay there feeling like my guts had been run over a few times, losing patience with my recovery time, I became flooded with gratitude for my problems. My husband was able to work from home. My illness wasn’t going to be a long term one, didn’t require a hospital stay, or lots of chesed from my community (little bits, for which I am also grateful.)
There are a number of people in my community going through some tough stuff health-wise right now, and the day I fell ill I had also read this heartbreaking article about a woman trying to have a baby.
It occurred to me that when their children whine that they “want their Ima back” after one day of being sick, those Imas can’t really give them what they want and need, and how difficult and sad that must be.
I thought about this because most of my children came to me while I lay in bed, one by one, and told me that they “really, really, really didn’t want me to be sick.”Because my incapacitation was causing them to suffer. While I appreciate being valued and needed as the Ima in the family, I am looking forward to their maturing to the point where they can realize that Imas need compassion and sympathy too.
Of course then I realized that while I give my children compassion and sympathy, I really didn’t when the little one was actually sick!
The night the 4yo was up sick I lay in bed incredibly grateful that my husband was taking care of it all. Next time, now that I have lived through it I think I will drag my tired self up to make sure I give some soothing words and some hugs in the middle of the night.
I will still let my husband clean it all up.
4 yo complained consistently yesterday of a stomach ache. There really wasn’t much to be done other than sympathize, as she didn’t have any other symptoms.
Last night at about 1:30 in the morning she was up with my husband (that’s why I married him) expelling whatever was bothering her through all manner of bodily fluids. I don’t think you need any more details.
Whatever was in there making her feel rotten has now been cleaned off of several surfaces in my house, so she is feeling great. But of course school policy mandates that she stay home until she is vomit-free for 24 hours.
It’s a reasonable enough policy, but it does creates moments like today, which I call the “not-sick sick day”. She feels fine and dandy, but my day now has to be about entertaining her and giving her structure and substance.
Please don’t get me wrong, a 4 yo doesn’t need to be in school at all in my opinion. There have been many times when I have been the all-day source of programming for a 4 yo all year round. It is just that she is accustomed to school and I have work and Pesach-prep obligations as well as important plans I had expected to accomplish today. I wish I could declare a not-sick sick day for myself too, and simply see it as a vacation opportunity with only two kids home. I don’t have that luxury.
What will happen in the end, at least based on past experience, is that she will get half of that fun, happy, home-with-Ima experience she wants and deserves, and I will get half of my work and prep done. (Okay, half is probably optimistic.)
She probably isn’t too sick for the grocery store, which means shopping with two kids. That is seriously one of my most hated experiences EVER. Mind you, it is better than what my husband was doing at 1:30 in the morning.
I will probably spend most of the day preparing an activity for as much independence as possible, then scrambling to work while she is focused, until clean up and set up of the next thing. In those spurts I will try to work “adjacent” to her vacation, rather than really participating. Not as fun for either one of us, but today, well, that’s the best I can do.
I attempted to make hamentashen with 6 children last night.
Dear stepson is 15 and interested in lots of things; baking with 6 little kids not being one of them.
My 22 month old wasn’t really baking, more like “interfering”, but he definitely felt part of the process, and wore an apron sewn by Safta just like everybody else. My ten year old patiently showed him how to “pinch pinch” and then had the restraint to let him try while she sat on her hands, so to speak. There are many times a day that I am struck at how much better a mom she will be than I am. Thank G-d.
We used Homeshuling’s “Best Hamenstaschen Ever” recipe, which is my new favorite. If it isn’t the best ever, it is the best I have ever used.
Interestingly (at least to me) her daughter and mine both came up with the “mini hamentashen” version… I would argue there is a direct connection to Polly Pockets. Hmmmm………………..
So my lesson-learned-the hard-way of the day:
We made two batches. With the first, everyone took turns doing everything. We went in turns measuring and pouring the ingredients, and then took turns rolling the dough, cutting circles, filling, pinching, etc. Sounds great, right?
That was not really a lot of fun. No one was happy with their lot, and they all spent a lot of time “critiquing” their fellow chefs. While trying to manage them all at once, the baby somehow managed to spill popcorn kernels all over the floor.
There was a time in my life that would have phased me, too.
Second batch: I made the dough, told them to deal with that; they had to let me do that part. I then rolled 5 approximately even balls of dough, and let them each choose one to make into hamentashen from start to finish, one at a time, in ascending age order.
I believe that such plans aren’t necessary when you are baking with two. But baking with six (five, really), well, it made a huge difference. Everyone had their chance, without interference, to do it “their way”. They each had the same number of hamentashen come out of their “batch” (6) and peace and order (relative of course) was restored.
In my own defense, batch number two probably wouldn’t have gone as smoothly as it did without the “tutorial” of batch number one that we did together. Still, next year we will bake together — separately.
5 of the 6 all in aprons sewn by their Safta.
1. Peel a clementine/tangerine. If you start it, they can peel off the rest. It gives you more time, and they are sooo happy, with a yummy reward for a job well done.
2. Putting the silverware from the dishwasher basket into the drawer. So it won’t be sorted properly. You can always do that later. Just take out sharp knives first.
3. Turn off the lights in their room at bedtime. Very empowering.
4. Put their own shoes on the right shelf, in the right drawer, or in the right closet.
5. Push the stoller… okay maybe only for fives steps, but still.
6. Get out of the car, once mobile. They like the extra time it takes once you have taken them out of the car seat to climbing out of the car — sometimes it is a lot of extra time.
7. Putting the groceries into the back of the cart. (Bet you already knew this one.)
8. Play with push pins. No; it isn’t too dangerous. Tlhey can put them into the top (or side) of a cardboard box, especially if you do it first and make holes. Great for their dexterity, and keeps them busy and out of trouble for a number of minutes. Works best when they are in a high chair, so you don’ t have to worry about push pins everywhere. They also get that the ends are sharp, and avoid them. This is also a great lesson. Not for every kid, I admit.
9. Sprinkle on cinnamon and sugar. I use this instead of honey and syrup on food. Much less sugar. They love to do it themselves. A one year old can sprinkle it on unsweetened apple sauce without any help.
10. I was waiting to post this until I came up with a tenth. But I think it would be more fun if you sent me your suggestions….
... and how do I get this off, exactly?
I like the idea of hiding my housework from myself…. in theory.
In what has to be the all time highlight in my career as a mom, this morning I have managed to melt plastic all over my oven:
what I wasn't able to scoop out, soft, with a wooden spoon...
Someone in my community taught me this great secret she learned from our rebbetzin; if you can’t stand looking at the larger pots and pans that are dirty for all of Shabbat, hide them in the oven.
First of all, if you are lucky enough to have two dishwashers then you usually won’t have this problem. You can hide everything in there. We have one dishwasher, and it is dairy because we eat so much more dairy during the week.
Second, if you are going to use this little trick you have to either: make sure to wash your dirty dishes motzei Shabbat instead of relaxing, hanging out, or just being tired; or at least have to have the presence of mind to NOT TURN IT ON UNTIL YOU HAVE TAKEN THINGS BACK OUT.
Come to think of it, one probably should have the sechel (wisdom) not to put a plastic cutting board in the oven to store, ever, no matter how messy the kitchen is, or how much it bothers you.
I would love to tell you that this is the very first time I have preheated an oven and then realized I had left things in there. I wish it were the second time, or even the third. This is the first time I have ever been stupid enough to put a plastic object in there, never mind forget about it completely.
I think the holy and wise rebbetzin who uses this trick to hide her pots and pans is much older than me, gets a full night sleep, and has older children who help her DO the dishes motzei Shabbat instead of hiding them and leaving them there.
Now my house smells like melted, toxic plastic. I have no idea how I can safely burn the goo off without causing my home to become a toxic hazard too dangerous for my own children. I have no doubt it is going to be one of those lessons I have learned the hard way, with a lot of time, money and energy wasted.
Truly, mother of the year. : (
PS – if I figure out how to safely get rid of it all, I will write an update.
I am trying something new this year. I am now what I like to call a “work at home” mom. I am working as a PR consulant part time, from home. I also am home full time with my 1 1/2 year old son.
while the other six are in school during the day, that only gives me until 3:30 to work until basically 9 pm, when bedtime is over.
(I also carve out time for teaching early childhood Jewish music classes and some Torah learning.)
I have remained a “stay at home” mom for almost the entirety of the preschoolers-rearing stage — a long ten years. I am glad that I did, and it has always been because I felt it what was best for my kids. I even kept everyone home for a year, with 3 preschoolers and a baby having “Gan Ima” all day every day. (The horror others had that I was “homeschooling” my children who were all too young to technically be in school is for another post.)
But being home with my kids full time was always a struggle for me. I don’t enjoy going to the playground for hours. I don’t like fingerpaint. I don’t enjoy sitting on the floor with one cute little child and playing trains. Certainly not as much as I liked working. I LOVED working. I enjoyed my career. When I gave it up, it was never forever and it was never really completely. I found fulfillment in event planning or article writing within my Jewish community instead of for an employer. I joined the shul board, founded a Jewish girl scout troop… lots of activities to keep me busy and engaged at certain elements of my career.
Two years I began working again outside of volunteering. Very, very part time, and all from home. At first pregnant, with a sitter for my toddler. Then, with a little baby around. It wasn’t so complicated. He loved to nurse and sleep, and those things made it easy for me to squeeze in work. And parts of my brain started to buzz with activity again.
Now I have developed a business and a client base. (I happen to love the clients I have now.) My little one is a lot less little, and I find myself doing a challenging juggling act I never really attempted when my other children were this young.
A friend who has her children in the same school was laid off this year, and is having a go at consulting, and also at trying to be a “work at home” mom. Her little one is younger than mine, and still a tad easier. (He will catch up soon enough, I have no doubt)
“G” & and I are trying an experiment; we are going to try to work in the same house 2 – 3 days a week while the little ones play, sleep, whine, make messes, etc. The idea is to have a mother’s helper here with us, share the expense, be with our children, while successfully earning money.
When my now ten year old was 18 months I would have never made it past the guilt to such a plan. I needed to be spending my days at mommy and me, music classes, gymnastics for toddlers, and water babies — which very pregnant with twins was quite a picture, believe me.
Now, I am a different woman, ten years older with a lot more experience and confidence. Those classes were fun, but she didn’t need them. What she needed, and what my little one needs now is a happy, healthy, focused, centered mommy who can give her little one(s) attention and love with a whole heart and mind. She didn’t really like those classes any more than she liked the park. It was “Ima time” no matter how you sliced it, made it fancy, added programming, or spent a lot of money on it.
I am hoping that I can find the perfect balance for this child and for me – his Ima – at this stage. The experiment with his friend, my friend, a sitter and two laptops all in one house is a new one, and you will have to follow me in seeing if it works.
But I can tell you that I nurse him to sleep while writing letters and articles. I take a break between skype calls and emails to nuzzle his neck and tickle him like crazy and even to play with trains a little…. and so far, it is the most fun I have had being home.
Now if I can just find a way to get the 20 weekly loads of laundry done in the mix……….
