morning rant

I think we all need to hear this right now. It's okay to say this is hard. I have so many friends who say, "I know I'm so lucky and shouldn't complain, but..." There is no but. You get to complain. You may have a roof over your head, and still be earning your wages, and have family in your home and heart, but you get to hate what is happening right now. Because, man, is this hard. My husband and I are working a room away from each other (when we said years ago that we could never work together) while the children try to do their own work and yet they are fighting and needing help and he is on a work call and I am trying to virtually teach (which isn't a thing, no matter what they tell you) and it is raining again and I have no more coffee and I don't want to wear a mask so I can stand in a cold, dreary line outside a supermarket for four items which will take an hour because of social distancing, and did I mention my kids were fighting again? I am exhausted and drained, and did you hear about Zoom fatigue? Yeah, I have that too. And, damn it, I am sad that I missed my Florida vacation, which is a ridiculously privileged thing to say, but I am saying it. I wanted that beach, and my skin to be warm and tan and to eat grouper sandwiches in a restaurant overlooking the water. And damn it I miss restaurants!  I miss nights out without my kids. I miss hiring babysitters and overpaying them because they end up watching the neighbor's kid as well. Taking out food and bringing it to my kitchen table (half covered by an unfinished puzzle) and eating it while I stare at the mess of my house and knowing that cleaning it just means the kids will mess it up again, and trying not to care, and to enjoy my half warm food is just. not. the. same.  So, say it. Say it loud and scream it into the void if you have to. I HATE THIS QUARANTINE. It is spirit and soul crushing. But look outside, right now, quickly (because it might be gone in seconds!). The sun is shining.  Everything still sucks, but there is that.  I'll take it.

Midnight on a Corona Sunday/Monday

So, it's midnight and I've had a pretty horrible day.  I was lying in bed tossing and turning, and I decided that probably a lot of people were doing the same thing, and maybe someone would do well to hear what I have to say right now.
Today was tough. It rained a lot. The kids were inside all day, which meant we were inside all day. My daughter decided that the only thing that could possibly get her through all of this change was to own a bird, and own one now. My son decided that there was NOTHING in the world that could possibly make him happy, and my husband and I at some point decided that the ban on cursing in front of our children was lifted. We were done.
And it's unlike me to really feel done, but as I lay there in bed tonight, I realized what it was. I have stopped laughing. I barely smile (and you all know that is not like me). And it's not because I fear the fate of the world. I know we'll get through this.  It's because I fear that I am not only not doing anything particularly well right now, but I am doing it all particularly badly. I AM NOT a stay at home, home-schooling mom. I don't know how to teach my fifth grade daughter to find the area of the shaded part of the square using fractions. I don't have the patience to sit with my second grade son as he refuses to write a sentence of his informational writing assignment, even though two seconds ago he told me every word he needed to write down. My house is a mess, because it's always a mess, I am not using this time to write the novel I always wished I had the time to complete, my cooking has gotten no better, and the thing that I know I am good at...this teaching thing...for me has always relied on my being in the room where it happens. So now, hey, I am failing at that too. I just felt, this evening, that I can not do this for some "unknown quantity of time."  And I got mad, and really sad, and I could not smile.
So I cleaned. I went out to the car and drove to a pet store and bought my daughter a goldfish named Chickpea to take care of.  I came home and helped my son rearrange his room and we all sat down and watched a silly show on tv.  It didn't get better, but while I was busy doing all of those things, I realized I was breathing. The air felt a bit lighter, and my chest felt less tight.
Obviously (it's midnight and I'm still awake), I didn't solve the anxiety of how we will make it through this new time (I refuse to call it my new normal...we will go back to the old way. I know), but I realized that maybe we all need to give ourselves a break.
My daughter didn't get her bird, but was happy to have a fish.
I will never teach her math, but someone else will down the road.
I will become better at virtual mom hugs and brightening your day over a computer screen, and your colleges won't care about these last couple of months, because, these are the months when THE WHOLE WORLD shut down. So, you will be fine too. We will hone the skills we have and do the learning together that we can, and we will all be fine. Because that's all we have to be. Not great, just fine. Until we're together, and great again. We'll get through this.

The Piece of Myself I Didn't Know I Needed

My Jewishness has long been a defining factor in my life, though I might not have said so in my youth. I grew up in a suburb of Hartford, on the side of town that houses a majority of the Jewish population. I lived near what was called "The Reservation," also predominantly Jewish (though all the streets boasted Native American names, not rabbinical), and my school included a large group of Jewish students. Almost all of my friends were Jewish, many of them attending the same Hebrew school as I did, all of us equally uninterested in our Judaism, but thankful for the shared history and the extra time to hang out with which Hebrew school provided us. We loathed going to services, dressing up, sitting for long hours at a time, reading a language we didn't understand, being crowded into seats next to family members who glared at us or shushed us in equal measure.

I read The Diary of Anne Frank in both Hebrew School and middle school, and understood a bit about the Holocaust, but didn't see how it pertained to my life. Here was a young girl in a terrible situation, but it could not have been more different from my own situation. Here was a girl surrounded by rapidly changing beliefs about herself and her family. Where once people had befriended her and played with her, she was suddenly shunned. She was surrounded by images that did not represent her own understanding of herself, and yet, had become accepted as the definition of who she and her family were (and somehow always had been...the figurative wolf in sheep's clothing). I felt for her, but didn't feel like her, so it was all somehow lacking in meaning for me. 

In high school, I don't particularly recall learning much about the Holocaust, but I imagine we must have gone over it during history classes. I feel as though if I had read Night by Elie Wiesel it would have stuck with me. Looking back, I would hope that that novel, as eloquent as it is, would have made me reflect in a way that other books could not have. But perhaps I was too immature, thinking too much about my own social life and dramas to understand what others had been through so that I could be this complacent.

The only time during my youth that I ever felt "outside," or "separate," was during the Jewish High Holidays and during Hanukkah. Most years, when Yom Kippur came around in the fall, I would set my determination to fast for the day. My mother explained it to me as a worthy sacrifice, a time, once a year, when we could make ourselves uncomfortable for the purpose of reflection, and I liked the idea. But hunger usually won out over my lofty goals, and more often than not, by two p.m., I was sneaking snacks from the cupboards. I didn't resent my non-Jewish friends the day off from school, unless it was during the 2 1/2 uncomfortable hours spent in temple, when I knew they were fast asleep. I didn't even realize that most of the world did not get Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur off from public school. Most Jewish kids had to take the day off if they wanted to attend temple. I would not have then understood that there was a level of acceptance here that did not (and does not) exist elsewhere. I got through the day by thinking of the break-fast celebration that my family would have with a huge spread of bagels and lox and egg dishes, cream cheeses spread across the table, and brownies and cakes for afterwards. At the first sign of dimness in the sky, we would converge in the kitchen, mumbling prayers and grabbing food. The laughter and warmth made the day worthwhile. This is what I take with me from those days. I didn't think about the people not celebrating this holiday, nor wonder what they thought of me. That was a luxury for which I am now incredibly grateful. 

Christmas time was always a bit strange, however. I understood, of course, that ours was not the religion of the majority (even if it seemed to be in my group of friends), but the barrage of Christmas trees and holiday music that began at Thanksgiving and continued into January always made me a bit uncomfortable.  I smiled when I saw the occasional menorah, and appreciated the token Hanukkah songs at the Christmas concert (as it was still titled in the '90s), and was only the tiniest bit discomfited by the Merry Christmases that the teachers sang out in each classroom, as though we all celebrated this holiday, or as though the other holidays that we did celebrate were not important enough to mention. My otherness at this point was subconscious, there, but not yet frustrating. It lay below the surface, but just barely. 

There were moments, of course, when my difference was thrust in my face. I buried these times, for the most part, allowing myself time to deal with them when I had matured enough to understand the motivations behind the comments. In first grade, a classmate called me a kike. I did not know what he meant, and I am sure that I just looked at him, confused, and walked away. I certainly did not ask my teacher about it. But I could tell by his sneer that the word was unkind, meant to belittle. I am not completely sure that even he understood the term. I am confident, however, that it was a term much used in his house along with other hateful epithets meant to make his parents feel stronger, better, more secure in their own relative superiority. Children don't come to these terms on their own. 

I went home and asked my father about the word. He grew explosively angry, not defining the term, but telling me to punch him in the face if he said it again. I had to ask my mother, later, for the actual meaning. I don't remember her response. I couldn't empathize with my father's anger that arose from one small word. At six years old, I was secure in my world.

As a junior in high school, I got a job working as a counselor in the town camps. This was my first real interaction with high school students from the other side of town. It was the first time that someone was surprised when I told him I was Jewish. He looked at me differently for a moment, with a sort of appraisal, but it didn't feel negative, just odd. I was suddenly strange, exotic. But it became a story to tell my friends, nothing more. He hadn't seemed to be looking for horns, just changing his image of me, adapting to new knowledge.

The next summer, we had all become a bit more comfortable together, and that comfort bred a freedom of language. When I told my co-counselors that I had been accepted to Tulane University, one of them called it "Jewlane" with a smirk. I winced, but said nothing. It was just a comment, a fleeting moment. It didn't mean anything. I didn't think about the age old stereotypes that led to that comment: Jews and money; Jews and greed. Tulane was expensive. Was it greedy to go there? Was I conforming to type?

My parents always instilled in me that education was the most important part of my life. Grades and success were hugely important to them. Getting a C equaled failure in their eyes, and I was well aware of the expectation that I out-do my peers. This was true for all of my Jewish friends. We were expected to excel, to go to good schools, to push ourselves. We had to participate in sports and extra-curriculars and above all else, succeed. I didn't think about it. It was as much a part of my upbringing as the expectation that I eat healthy meals and be respectful to adults. My parents told me that education had always been important to Jewish people. I could see this in my community, but suddenly my success was being mocked. Suddenly my religion was a cause for embarrassment.

When I went to college, I surrounded myself with mostly non-Jews. My college boyfriend proudly wore a cross around his neck. I didn't talk about my religion. It set me apart. It was easy to ignore. When I walked across campus and was approached by a member of a temple just off campus, I shook my head when he asked me if I was Jewish. I can still feel the shame of denying my faith. It is a burning within me.

The summer after my junior year in college, my friend and I went to see the movie Schindler's List. I remember sitting in the worn down plush seats of the theater. The movie had been out for over a year, but I hadn't gone to see it. I didn't question why. He convinced me to go, and could feel the dread building. It was a nameless dread. Somewhere, deep within me was a young Jewish girl, hiding, and I was not yet ready to claim her. Halfway through the movie, the torture, deprivation, the absolute decimation of humanity broke me. I began to shake. My friend didn't notice. I clenched my entire body into a ball and trembled for the rest of the film. I couldn't speak. He looked at me, and I saw his gaze transform. I became a Jew to him in a way that I was not before. He was Christian. This was just a movie. For me, it was a turning point.

This didn't mean that everything changed, but that I began the process of accepting this part of my life, of questioning it as well. What did my religion mean to me? Did I believe in a God (absolute and terrifying? Generous and preserving?)? After college I moved in with a few friends, two of whom where Jewish, and we went to The Matzoh Ball (a dance held annually so Jewish young adults could meet). It was as awkward as you'd imagine it to be. I met and danced with who I can only imagine was the one non-Jew in the place. He had come with his Jewish friend. My parents scoffed, my friends laughed; I was more and more confused. What did I want out of my future? Could I truly abandon Judaism completely? Was there a part of me that had already made the choice?

But then I went back home, as I always did, for the High Holidays. I was surprised at the comfort and relief I felt. I was surrounded by hundreds of people who shared the traditions of my past. There was a deep, somehow innate connection, a tie that bound us all together irrevocably. There was, in fact, no choice to be made. I was home, not in the language being spoken (which I understood even less than I did as a teen), but in the unspoken language of faith. It became less about God, and more about family, heritage, and history. Here, we sat in a temple after so many had been destroyed by enemies of our religion. The sun shone through the stained glass windows and promised hope. There was not yet a policeman guarding the door, just my community clamoring to enter the sanctuary. Here was a place of absolute safety.

Now, when I bring my children to temple, there is a guard who smiles at me and high fives the kids. I look warily at the gun holstered on his hip. I cannot help but think about the rise of antisemitism around the world: Attacks in New York City, swastikas in schools, hate speech elevated to political rhetoric. Every year I declare my Jewishness to my students. This is who I am. This is who we are. I talk to them about my holidays. For each of the memories of which I am ashamed, I have created another memory of standing up, making noise, demanding change.

• The picture of the Madonna and Child came down from the middle school office wall after a meeting I had with the principal.
• When swastikas were plastered across the walls of that same middle school, I spoke clearly and personally to my students about the physical pain I felt seeing that black sharpied shape on a place I held sacred.
• I taught the book Night to my 9th graders with pride and calls to action, teaching about those who resisted as much as about those who were forced to succumb.
• I teach all of my students to be not only an ally but a soldier for inclusion and understanding, to break down barriers, to talk to each other.

And I reflect, always, on the rhetoric of the powerful and the expected silence of the powerless.

Elie Wiesel said, "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." I chose sides. I chose strength. I chose to raise my voice. My mezuzah hangs as a proud identifier on my door frame and a menorah stands in my bay window for all to see.

a promise for the new year

When you have a child with ADHD or any set of initials that will follow him through life, you learn yourself anew. You find tiny triumphs and grasp them tightly, hold them high like the trophy he deserves. But you also learn exhaustion in a whole new way. His need is such that finding space to breathe is a luxury, that remembering yourself without him is harder and harder, that finding ten minutes to lift a weight, to type, to read, is a pleasure that holds you through the day. It has to.

When you have a child who struggles, you sometimes neglect the one who doesn't. The sibling who still needs but not as stridently. The sister who reaches out through tears and anger and kindness, trying to be seen. It's easy to divert your focus. To say, she is fine, will be fine, will land on her feet, is strong.  It's easy not to see that she is hurting too.

When you have a child who is so close to your heart that it seems he lives there, it's easy to forget you have a husband who remembers who you were before. Who needs your time, your thoughts, your dreams as well.

How do you work it out?
How do you balance?
How do you choose who loses?

Each day is a question of losses and wins, and trial and error, of so many failures and forgotten triumphs.

Each day is a chance to hug and love and laugh, and remember joy.

I can not promise I have enough to go around, just that each day I will offer what I have to give, remembering, as I do, to save a piece for me as well.

I am the kind of exhausted that stems from body, spirit and mind. It is the kind you feel in your bones. It is the kind that makes you question it all. Am I the woman for this job? Am I strong enough to parent and teach and exist as someone separate and unto herself? Can I also be a wife and a daughter? A niece  and a cousin? Am I a sister if I barely see my brothers?  Who is this person, after all?

I Will March

People keep asking me if I am excited for Saturday    I don't know how to respond.  Am I excited? No.  I am everything else.  I am nervous.  I don't like crowds.  I went to school in New Orleans and stood on Bourbon Street during Fat Tuesday once.  Once.  I am five foot nothing, and when I felt my feet leave the ground, I was terrified.  There will be 1,000,000 people at the march in D.C., and I am still five foot nothing.  I am frustrated.  I don't like the cold.  It is January.  I will be outside.  I want D.C. in spring, not winter.  I am annoyed.  I originally thought most of my friends would be making the trip.  They are not.  I am not a huge fan of busses or sleepless nights.  I will be on a bus for 6 hours in the middle of the night.  I am not excited.  But I am going.  Because I must.  I will be marching with my mother.  She grew up in the 60s. This will not be her first march.  She marched so that I would not have to. But Saturday, we will march together.  Because I have a daughter.  She is lovely and bright and filled with energy.  She had an "awesome" day today because, I kid you not, she had a math test.  This excites her.  She is and will be a force to reckon with, and she will never be touched or grabbed or violated in any way, if I have anything to say about it.  But I am tired of turning off the news when she enters the room.  Just the other day, her old school was on the news.  She attended a Jewish Community Center school until she was in kindergarten. On Wednesday, someone called in a bomb threat.  This was the case across the country, not just in our town.  Friends texted me.  They worried about their children, being walked across the campus.  I imagined their teachers, acting silly, trying to distract them from the abrupt change in routine, trying to ensure they felt safe.  My children were not there, and I felt relief, and guilt.  So I will march.  Because this, this new reality is not okay with me.  I have watched my friends in other states post about incidents of antisemitism.  In my naivety, I thought, "How sad, but not here. We will not have that sort of thing here."  We pretend, you see.  We are safe.  We are in a blue state.  I teach at a diverse school, in a diverse town.  My children will never be called kikes, or find a swastika on their classroom doors.  But just a week ago, someone made a swastika in the snow.  It was later turned into a peace sign.  But it did not negate the first iteration.  This is why I will march.
I am a teacher.  A good number of my students attended the inauguration of a president about whom I have grave reservations.  Will he protect their rights and their needs?  Will he allow them to be curious, to question and contradict?  Will there be security and safety for their parents who need it most?  Or will he tweet away their safety?  We have worked so hard to make them feel included, to feel they had a voice.  Do they still?  Will they always?  I will march on Saturday to let them know that if I have a say, so will they.  I will do what I can, what I am allowed, so that some day, they might choose to do the same. Some day, there will still be a place to make the choices that in my lifetime have remained a right.  Some day, there will be a person in the White House who sees them as an equal part of this great nation, who allows them all the chance to live, to prosper, to thrive, no matter who their parents were.  Someday, we will all remember that we are a nation of immigrants first and foremost, that women birthed this nation, and that children must not bear the burden of their fathers.
I am a mother, and a teacher, and a Jew.  This is why on Saturday, no matter my discomfort, in spite of my discomfort, because of my discomfort, I will march. And like my mother before me, I will do so, so that they don't have to.

My Pledge

Previously Published in Huffington Post on 11/09/2016:

I don't think I can say the Pledge of Allegiance today.  I teach high school students, and second period, when we all say the Pledge together, I will be sharing my room with my eleventh grade Advanced Placement Language and Composition students.  I have spent the last three months teaching them about the power of words.  I don't think I can use those words today.  I don't think I have any words to speak today that will be good enough or strong enough to quell my fears, or to touch the unnamed fears my students must be harboring.  I have brown skinned children in my class.  I have blue haired girls, and muslim young women.  I have strong women in my class.  I believed that I would walk in today able to speak to that strength, able to hand to them an America that I believed in.  But today, something has shifted, and I don't know how to form the words, to make them believe that I support this man.  He has bullied, and shamed, and hurt so many.  He has divided and belittled and served no one but himself.  He is now America.  As a teacher, how can I support that?  How can I tell them that their America is still alive and well, when we have now seen another country rise up in our midst. The Trump country is one of ignorance, resisting intellect with wild abandon.  The Trump country is one of ownership, of women's bodies, of guns and division.  It is one of dishonesty again and again and again.  It is anti-constitutional, even as he claims to hold up the second amendment.  He keeps the press out.  He holds no belief in the power of discourse.  He is a one man government, who will surround himself with men like him, who would have gladly joined him in his "locker room," and they will laugh together at the world that they are raising, and the future that looks more and more like a past we have tried to forget.
And perhaps that is the problem.  We allowed ourselves to forget.  We believed we were safe, because we had already created a sense of equality in our nation, we had already fought for civil rights, and women's rights, and marriage equality, and perhaps we forgot that each of those rights is not built on a cement foundation. That the wrong Supreme Court addition nominated by this man, can turn each of these successes into dust.  Perhaps we forgot that we still need to fight.  Perhaps we forgot that each of these victories left blood on the battlefield, but clearly not enough.
So maybe I have found my words as I write this out.  Maybe all I say to my students, is that we have to keep fighting.  We have to hold on to what we have built, and not allow it all to be demolished by the many angry people who won their own small minded battle last night.
We will fight for the words, for the language, for our beliefs that still can stand even in the face of this new America, which has risen from the shadows.
My Pledge is this: I Pledge Allegiance to civility, to brotherhood, and sisterhood, and goodness.  I pledge to protect those in my care and those who need my care.  I pledge to support those fighting for my safety and for my ability to share these beliefs with the world at large.  I pledge to love.  One Nation.  Indivisible.