Screen time

B.A. was not pleased. The girls were off to gan and I was davening. Usually, he plays by himself quietly or eats breakfast while I pray, but today he wanted my attention. He planted himself between me and the meditational print that I use to focus my intention in prayer. He turned his anguished face up to me and howled, “Ima nooooooo, stop daveniiiiiiiiing!.”

At least he’s honest about his motives.

He grabbed my skirt in fistfuls and tugged until he heard threads rip. He stomped around the apartment, raging and sobbing. This is a common scene in our house. B.A. and A.N. have, let’s say, heightened emotional responses. And Y.B. is an epic sulker. I’ve got a high threshold for pint-sized drama.

But it was difficult for me to concentrate. I thought, “Maybe I should start letting this kid watch videos.”

Going nowhere

Happy Sukkot! Moadim lesimcha! Do you have any trips planned?

That’s what everyone seems to be asking during these days. And every year—twice a year, at Pesach and Sukkot, I feel pressure to Go Somewhere. So we make a plan, and we get everyone ready to go and we pack the food and the water and the diapers and the hats and the sweaters and the toys and books in case we need a distraction and on and on and on and we try to work the trip around the naptime and . . .

And then we get where we are going and Everyone Must Have Fun because we have put in the effort and it is a holiday, after all, and holidays are Supposed to Be Fun. Seven days of nonstop, action-packed fun.

Here's how it was

Hey, Rosh Hashana was great! How was yours? My mornings (if morning can be said to end at 3:00 PM) at home with the kids were relaxed and pleasant. We didn’t get stir crazy, and I even got to fit in quite a lot of davening. I really liked not having anywhere to go, just focusing on prayer, teaching the kids about the holiday, and getting ready for our guests. We had a lot of guests for lunch both days, which brought a lively and festive energy into our home.

I was worried that it would be hard to step into the awesomeness of Rosh Hashana without the physical environment of the synagogue. I found that it wasn’t so challenging after all—the liturgy itself is awe-inspiring, and that was true even for solitary prayer.

I wasn’t sure how I would fulfill the mitzvah of hearing the shofar. This is a mitzvah from which women are technically exempt for exactly the reasons that made it difficult for me. But historically, Jewish women have accepted shofar as an obligation. And really, what’s Rosh Hashana without the shofar. I thought about going to shul with my kids and standing just outside during shofar. Don’t think Chana’s comment didn’t haunt me! In the end, my husband blew the shofar for me and the kids, which was really special. And I heard multiple other shofar blasts through my open window—our neighborhood is packed with synagogues.

So it was a wonderful holiday. And throughout it, I thought about my choices, and how personal this beautiful outcome was, how dependent on the specifics of my life and my family. For example:

Staying home on Rosh Hashana

I’m not going to shul this year.

I have spent every Rosh Hashana in synagogue since I can remember, except for the year my family went to the Grand Canyon instead and read from texts my mother had put together.

When I was little, the thing that helped me sit through temple services was knowing there would be cookies at the oneg afterwards. And on Rosh Hashana, for some reason, there were no cookies. So my earliest memories of Rosh Hashana in a synagogue are of sitting in a pew and thinking, “ugh, what’s the point?” Then, when services were over, I would walk out of the sanctuary with my mother and peek hopefully into the social hall, just in case the temple staff had changed their mind. They never did.

9/11 and 9 Av

I woke up this morning in my usual pre-coffee haze. I recently told my friend Leah about my dependence on caffeine to set my mind right, and she said something like, “That makes me glad I don’t drink coffee.” But I disagree. I love waking in confusion and suspicion towards reality, and then slowly returning to humanity as I slurp a hot drink. I remember my parents waking up that way, and somehow it’s sort of comforting to start each day like that.

Anyway, as I was boiling water and thoughts were flying around in my head unbidden and unorganized, I suddenly thought of how much I love the Jacky Handy quote, “It’s too bad that whole families have to be torn apart by something as simple as wild dogs.”

Drawing close and the gift of distance

Inspiration comes from unlikely places. I’m no big fan of Elizabeth Badinter and her views on the current mothering culture, but I just came across a quote from her in a New Yorker article that I love. She says, “If you’re a mother, you are either too present or too absent; you can’t win. You have to be a Mozart of maternity to reach the right absence-presence balance.”

Bandinter is referring to actual physical presence—the time a mother spends in the home with her children, versus the time she spends on her own pursuits. But it’s also true of emotional presence and absence. Deciding how involved to be in my children’s relationships, in their decision-making, in their play is a delicate balance as well.

My evening out

My children are on summer vacation.

And every conversation I have with another adult and every status update I post on Facebook seems to be a variation on the same theme: I am slowly losing my mind from all the time together.

Yearning for closeness

One morning last week, B.A. and I were shopping in the Machane Yehuda shuk, Jerusalem’s famous open-air market. It was early on a Wednesday, before the shuk is too crowded, and we were taking our time.

I pushed him in his stroller, loading up a knapsack with fruits and vegetables and nuts. As I checked produce items off my shopping list, I taught B.A. their names.

I held up a sweet potato before him.

“What’s this? Sweet potato!”

“Cucumber,” he replied.

“Eich omrim beivrit? How do we say it in Hebrew? Batata!”

“Cucumber.”

“What’s this? A radish!”

“Cucumber.”

And so on. He seemed pretty solid on the cucumber thing.

What's keeping me here?

It is early morning, the sweet and quiet moments before my children wake up, and I am standing in front of my bedroom mirror. On the wall next to me hangs a collection of colorful scarves. I study my outfit and select a coordinating scarf: intricate patterns of flowers and vines. My father bought it for me when his band was touring in Italy. I wrap it carefully around my head, covering my hair entirely.

I choose another scarf from the wall: black and grey swirls with silver threads shot through. I bought this one for myself. A friend returned from Israel with a selection of headcoverings to resell, and I chose it and wore it happily while living in New Jersey. In that community, where many women cover their hair with beautiful wigs, wearing that artsy-looking scarf made me feel pleasantly unique but a little conspicuous. Now that I have returned to Israel and settled in a more eclectic neighborhood, I fit right in with the funky scarf. Now I wear it and remember how I longed to go back to my homeland, and how I finally made the trip.

The patterns of the scarves clash and complement each other at once. They pick up the colors of my outfit, and I complete the picture with matching jewelry. I like what I see in the mirror, and then the thought arises in my mind.

I love covering my hair.

Hey, look at this!

The afternoon walk home from gan. How I loathe it. Shuffling two preschoolers and a toddler the few short blocks to our home under the unforgiving midday sun seems to take forever. It’s right at B.A.’s naptime, so he’s cranky. But at least he’s in a stroller. The girls dawdle, insist on stopping to climb everything.  And the hour grows later and the day gets hotter.

Last week, Y.B. just stopped and refused to walk. She was tired. It was hot. This wasn’t the first time one of them tried this. On this particular afternoon, I dug in my heels and found myself engaged in a game of chicken with a four-year-old.