Running. A marathon. (Not really.)

I am getting back in the groove of things in one particular area of life.

I used to run. Sort of. I never ran very far or very fast, but I reached a level where I didn’t feel like a fool for saying, “I have to go out for a run,”(versus a jog) or taking up precious suitcase space with my running shoes and clothes.

It is something that I stopping doing upon our aliyah. In addition to the emotional and mental shocks to the system, arriving in the summer had a deleterious effect on my physical being too.

(Read: It was HOT. Hot hot hot. All day. Into the night. Fry your kishkes kind of hot.)

I tried to deal with the heat by getting up progressively earlier to run, until it crossed the line of ridiculousness. I am a morning person, to be sure, but once I was waking up at 4:50 (to leave the house at 5 to be finished at 5:45) was “too late,” I sort of gave up. Because of course then I had to go to ulpan and parent my people all afternoon and learn how to do things like buy yogurt and not cry when other people spoke to me.

A year later we joined a health club. Despite the expense, I had a hard time getting motivated to go run on the treadmill. Frankly, treadmill running is boring. The gym was often crowded. I never felt comfortable.

The health club membership lapsed. The weather remained hot for six months a year. I tried other exercise programs in fits and starts, like jumping rope while watching TV or being tortured by Jillian Michaels. Nothing stuck like running had.

Finally, in the middle of this past winter (that’s “winter” to you North Americans), when the weather was cooler, someone posted on a local facebook group that she wanted to run in a pack on a weekday morning. So I went. Even though she was training for a half marathon (!), she was willing to run at my pace. I didn’t fare too badly. We met once a week for a few weeks, before her race training took her away. But in the meantime I felt like I was gaining strength. Stronger, going for longer distances. I missed running with a person (I am more social than I thought), but just those few weeks had kickstarted me back to the elusive feelings of accomplishment. I reactivated my iTunes account. I signed up for RunKeeper.

Now the weather is turning warmer again. But I am less concerned. I can run in the evening now. Putting a 7 and 9 year old in front of the TV for 30 minutes in the evening, alone at home, is a possibility that I couldn’t have contemplated four summers ago. I can deal with the heat better. I seek the shady side of the street.

But mostly I am more forgiving of myself. If I don’t run 5 kilometers, I run 4. If I don’t run 4 kilometers, I run 3. If I run with the dog, we run two and a half, and then I am grateful that I don’t usually run with her; she’s a terrible pacer. If I don’t run in the morning, all is not lost – I can run in the evening. Or later in the morning. Or 2 kilometers instead of none. It all counts.

I haven’t signed up for any races, so far, but I might. Perhaps in the fall. In the meantime, the Boston Marathon bombings cast a pall over the worldwide running community. Community in the largest sense, because everyone who has put on a pair of running shoes and run even one mile can appreciate the challenge of running 26 IN A ROW ALL AT ONCE. Running is a sport that, if you take away the fancy shoes and high-tech clothes and energy gels and corporate sponsorships, really can reach a wide swath of people. So reading the stories of people who had run in the Boston Marathon that day – and those who had come to watch – was inspiring and touching. I decided late in the day on April 15^th, watching Twitter bury network news once and for all, to run a marathon’s worth of distance in two weeks.

It took me an extra day; I finished my 42.2 km on May 1 instead of April 30. It was hot towards the end; I forgave myself. I had a lot of support. There were thousands of us around the world running for Boston. There was a Twitter hashtag and a Facebook group. When solidarity runs cropped up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, I wanted to go, but they were at inconvenient times. So I made my own run locally; about 25 people came. I ran my own 5K in 33:30, which I haven’t come close to matching in the two weeks since. I’m back to slow and steady, apparently.

I’m going to get through this summer. Running. (I hope.)

Humans don’t eat their young. Even though we want to, sometimes.

Last week was trying for me in a lot of ways, mostly because AM was sick and kindly shared his germs with me. He gets very snuggly when he’s ill, and while I find this endearing, the fever and deep, rumbling chest cough were not appreciated. To add insult to injury, he got a pneumonia diagnosis and therefore got on some kickass antibiotics while I had “clear” lungs and muddled through on cough meds and fever reducers.

(There was also the night when I was so tired I took Tylenol PM and had a paradoxical reaction. And was even more tired the next day. Plus extremely bitter. But “one tired, bitter ema” does not have the same ring to it.)

So, to recap: sick, tired, sick-and-tired. Plus all the usual backtalk from the children, mess in the house, and, you know, life. (Taxman was around a lot, to make up for the times when I just could not leave the house, or drive Miss M to various scheduled appointments, but by Friday he hadn’t thrown in a load of wash either. Bought milk, yes; laundry, no.)

I felt crappy pretty much every afternoon, so in the mornings I tried to do the minimum I had to do for work. Sometimes with company hanging over my shoulder. Or dancing on the couch. Because why go to school when you can stay home and play Fruit Ninja on my phone? Or whine at me to play backgammon until I give in? Because the alternative — is not pretty.

Humans don’t eat their young.

I don’t know why I thought of this so suddenly last week. Perhaps because I’ve been reading a couple of books right now where mice are prominent (The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo and Intuition by Allegra Goodman); mice, of course, do sometimes eat their young.

But we are not rodents. We are in this kid-raising thing for the long haul. At first it’s all about how to keep them alive. When they are asleep at night we sigh in relief because we managed to keep them from harming themselves…sometimes with varying success rates.

We are past that stage. Honestly, we had it pretty easy (my toddler nephew is a climber; we never had to deal with that, or lock picking, toilet drinking, street running or other particularly hair-raising toddler things).

Now we are in the long muddle of making our children socially acceptable. Table manners, polite conversation–hell, any kind of two-way conversation–empathy, friend-navigating. It’s harder to score how you, the parents, are doing. The metrics are totally foggy.

• What if other adults find them lovely but they don’t get invited for playdates?
• What if they are happy to eat three kinds of raw vegetables but never salad?
• What if they get great grades but collectively blitz through a box of carefully hoarded pencils from Target in 2 weeks? (Seriously, do they EAT them? Are they not children but beavers? Do beavers eat their young?)

I decided that this is part of why parents are so joyful at their kids’ big events. It means that other people find them socially acceptable and want to celebrate that too. It’s a big cosmic reward for not eating them.

Graduation –> Your kid earned a degree! They applied themselves! You probably only had to do 50% of the work/80% of the cajoling!
Good job –> Somebody else wants to PAY your child to work at something! Someone else is trusting them to be responsible! Let’s hope the job doesn’t entail putting laundry into a hamper!
Wedding –> You’ve been so successful at child-rearing that somebody else wants to live with your child on a permanent basis…and even finds some of your child’s qualities worthy of passing to a new generation. (We hope. Because how else will you exact your revenge?) Cute and breedable! Good job, parents!

This last part occurred to me because an Internet friend married off a child last month. She projects the picture of calm and happy level-headedness, but through some private messaging I know that some of her children have provided a few sleepless nights and therapy sessions in the past. But here she is, walking to the chuppah and sending off to be amazing grownups. So there is hope!

So, no, we won’t eat them. We’ll try to raise them right and turn them into real people. But if anyone would like to, say, borrow a 6-year-old who will play backgammon all day and night or an 8-year-old who is up on all kinds of 19th century diseases (yellow fever, cholera, scarlet fever), just, you know, give me a buzz.

NB: In the time that elapsed between me wanting to write this post (last Thursday) and actually writing it, I served a dinner everyone ate. It was teriyaki salmon and rice. Everyone had seconds. Civilization is coming faster than we think.

We are what we are

For some reason I can’t just let this blog go.

I’m working 90 hours a month at a job doing things I like, mostly. I feel lucky to have it. I have benefits. I got a bonus for the first time in my life, and I was in disbelief for a few days. Taxman assures me that this is how good companies operate–they reward good work with something other than a paycheck. It is still bewildering to me. In a good way.

I spend every afternoon playing mommy, in which I prepare one of 3 lunches (pancakes, pasta, or some sort of melted cheese sandwich, in rotation). We do homework and run errands. I break up fights and soothe feelings. I cajole and scream and wind up with a messier house than I had at noon. Which, let’s face it, sometimes isn’t much of a stretch. Still a terrible housekeeper.

Sometimes we go out to catch the fleeting sunshine. The winter is rough on my mentality; the weather turns chillier (from 70) starting at about 3pm and the sky is dusky by 4:30. It’s hard to get everything done and out to the park before I want to turn around and pack it in. Games and books, violin practice (for AM), showers and baths, more cooking (dinner! like lunch, only with more courses!), more fights. Bed. At 8pm, work at home mom comes back…until I curl up into the pile of clean laundry on the couch. I would curl up into the pile of dishes in the sink instead, but it’s just not comfortable.

We’ve adjusted to life in Israel. I no longer feel bad about my Hebrew. It is what it is; I can understand a lot. I can’t have great conversations. It’s ok. My work is in English. I speak English to other Anglos. My kids are fully bilingual. That was the point; they’ll fly while I walk. Isn’t that what all parents want?

The kids are thoroughly their own ages and their own selves. We are trying to mold them to social acceptability, but it is impossible to repress the personalities. Not that we’d want to.

Anyway, I started the blog, all those years ago (SEVEN!) because I was feeling lost and trying figure shit out. Now I’ve come to the conclusion that some things get worked on, some things get forgotten, and some things just change, both for good and bad. I found people to be lost with, both “in person” and “virtually,” with the understanding that we are no more lost than anyone else. I had that years ago, back in junior high, and finally have it again.

Being earnest was never really my style; being wry and jaded fits my personality better, but I had to come to that conclusion on my own. So, to a large extent, the blog has outlived its usefulness. But it really is the baby book. I can’t leave it.

Hoping 2013 is happy and healthy for all of us and all of you.

Temper, temper

Well, there is a cease-fire. Does this mean I can stop worrying about my friends in the reserves? About the yeshiva boys down the street who are serving now?

Does this mean I can walk the kids to school without changing the route so we are always near a building? Just in case there is a siren?

We had it easy here during the seven days of Pillar of Defense. Every night was quiet. Every day was sunny.

The kids asked to sleep in our safe room one night, the night of the first rocket sent towards Tel Aviv, when Taxman texted me from his building’s bomb shelter. I didn’t want to scare my children, but I wanted to tell them that if there were a siren in the middle of the night we would have to wake them up and take them downstairs to the safe room.

On Friday morning, after a quiet night, that seemed ridiculous.

Every morning dawned sunny, with a tiny touch of chill that burned off by 8 am. Typical November.

Yet somehow by each afternoon, after a half-day of seeing the bombardments of southern Israel continue, after listening to the army pop station constantly interrupt songs with the call for residents of towns and cities slightly to the south or slightly to the west or Tel Aviv or Jerusalem to enter their bomb shelters, I was tense again.

Every afternoon, I would trap the dog downstairs with us as the kids ate lunch, did homework, and played or did art projects. The better to hustle us all to the safe room for the siren that never came. (Given her druthers, she escapes upstairs in the afternoon, to avoid the inevitable loud noises and occasional chasing that happens when they are around.)

So now there is a cease-fire. Apparently this is affecting everything but my temper. I am normally not the most even-keeled. I am a yeller from way back.

But keeping calm in the face of questions about rockets and bombs and sirens has taken up my reserves. So the normal bickering has pushed me over the edge. Why can’t they see that? That now is perhaps not the best time to kick each other at the breakfast table?

I really want things to return to normal. But in the meantime, I’ll be here, dreading pickup time and when I’m going to snap next. (Really, though, when are they going to figure out when to leave each other–and me!–alone?)

PS It does not appear that Israel and Hamas agree on what “cease-fire” actually means. Let the good times roll!

Not going away

Like a lot of my friends in Israel (and elsewhere), we’ve spent the past week closely following the news.

There are rockets raining down on Israel from the Gaza strip, beyond the southwest corner (where it’s become, sadly, normal enough that there are indoor, reinforced playgrounds)–with alerts reaching all the way to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. My Truman-show like suburban city hasn’t had a single “Red Alert”–people tell me it is because it is not strategically significant.

I personally think that doesn’t matter. My city has more than 80,000 Jews living in it.

You could try to delve into the politics beyond this, why Hamas is launching rockets from densely populated areas, next to mosques and hospital, but that’s really putting too much gloss on it for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2012 or 1947, my conclusion is basically the same. While there are plenty of people who I am sure want to just live their lives in peace with their neighbors, there is enough of a core of extreme anti-Semitism driving people to, essentially, offer up their own children as sacrifices.

Except these people could not be confused for the biblical Abraham.

So once again, here we are. Except we never left this old trope. Israel exists. People hate it. It is what it is. Whether you believe in the Bible or in the UN General Assembly Resolution 181, enough of the world is at consensus. This is, after all, a democracy. Here we are.

Read this

Jonniker is someone I follow on twitter. She’s funny and wry and clearly is smarter than the baby fog I think she’s sometimes trapped in. Good lord, we have all been there, right?

So when she posted this, I found myself nodding so vigorously I got a neck cramp.

I struggle with the idea that I have had the world at my feet. I went to an excellent university, and blew off my mom’s advice about taking a well-rounded curriculum in favor of not one, but two, utterly useless degrees. I could have been anything I wanted! But I didn’t feel smart enough to get through chem lab. I didn’t feel motivated enough to really apply myself, because I couldn’t imagine what would make me jump out of bed in the morning, desperate to go to work. Unless it was reading books for a living, which…fresh out of careers there.

(I am unsure that my mom ever got over that she broke out of the nurse-social worker-teacher mold, and then I sat on my sorry ass whining, “I don’t know what I want to do with my life!” Luckily, my brother is off being international and fabulous and exotic and gainfully employed. So, one out of two isn’t bad.)

Although I found it so difficult in a lot of ways, I am thrilled that I got to stay home with my kids. But now I am 37 and trying to make a career. Part-time, of course, because these people? Still need full time parenting. I still wonder what will be in 10 years, when they don’t want to talk to me, like ever, and I hypothetically will need to dress like a grownup and talk to grownups about grownup things. Scary.

I am ok with not making headlines, being comfortable, being content in my little corner of the universe.

Of course, where I diverge from Jonniker is that my daughter could not be more different. She has been charting her course since age 2 at least. She wants no lessons in being average and happy with her lot. She believes she was born to be extraordinary and believes that the world will bend to her will. (Where is the Disney princess who gets taken down a peg for that?) She’s not bitchy about it–yet–but is so steadfast in her belief that she will be famous and fabulous. I hope she makes it; I’ll support her as long as she’s not running over anyone in the process. But I am going to chalk this one up to NATURE, not NUTURE. Because where the hell did that come from?

Got me.

Zen sandbox

It felt like a very long Tishrei. Everything was long: synagogue services, the kids’ vacation from school, periods of floundering while thinking about how much work/chores/tasks I had to do and how little time I actually had to complete them.

But I got through it.

This was the first time in about a gazillion years that I spent big blocks of time in synagogue. The kids can be trusted to play in a nearby park; they stopped in, hot and sweaty, for snacks and drinks and maybe 5 minutes of looking in a prayerbook (we take what we can get). Although I still–18 years in!–feel really unfamiliar with the “high holiday” liturgy, the baalei tefilah (what’s a good translation of this? prayer leaders?) at our shul are quite good. There is a lot of singing, people are generally relaxed. So while it was serious, it wasn’t stern. If that makes sense.

I fasted well on Yom Kippur, which made up for last year’s 18 hour migraine from hell. Amazing how that one little factor can improve your whole…outlook.

From there, it was kind of sloggy. A ton of errands and things to do for Sukkot, sleepover company (which was nice, just requires a lot of planning), and children who sometimes get along and sometimes don’t. I came down with a cold–not a terrible one that required oodles of Kleenex, just one that sat in my throat, sinuses, and chest for a while and made me feel like crap when I attempted to exert myself. So no big trips for us, just a lot of going to the pool.

Luckily, the hot weather justified the many trips to the pool.

(I am ready for winter! Any time now!)

I continued with my tradition of using Isru Chag (the day after Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot) as a super-fun, out of the house day with the kids. Most people are back to work, leaving attractions that are packed during the holidays nearly empty. Yay for WAH-freelancing!

We joined forces with the big kids from Aliyah by Accident and went to the Clore Garden of Science (part of the Weizmann Institute). Lots of experiential things for the kids to touch and watch and play with.

Not sure how much they got in terms of the science, since nobody actually wanted to read or listen to the explanations, but it felt like we were contributing to their education. Good mothering, right there! Awesome!

Part two of the Day of Fun was the Palmachim Beach. I had been promising the beach for weeks, but it got subsumed by all the pre-chag/mid-chag tasks. Even our annual “Tashlich at the Beach” was reduced to, I kid you not, standing on the median across from the Tel Aviv boardwalk on Hoshana Rabba.

Once we finally got changed and down to the water (lunch first…I mean, priorities!), I felt like an idiot. I love the beach. The sound of the waves. The feel of the sand. Water temps were perfect; all that summer sun stored up!

Watching the kids be so happy by moving heaps of sand from one place to another place. Why hadn’t we come weeks before?

But I let it go. Bygones.

Live in the present. Sit in the sun. Make a castle. (Admittedly, I had forgotten a book. Also sand toys. Somehow this only bothered my kids for three seconds.)

(What I made. Actually, what I made was simpler; AM decided to, um, edit my work.)

I worried that a day in the sun and salt air wouldn’t have the same effect on my kids that it used to. They’re bigger now, so perhaps they wouldn’t collapse in a heap at the end of the day. (Which is partially the purpose of the Isru Chag Day of Fun–to correct the sleeping schedules back to school-appropriate ones.)

I shouldn’t have been concerned.

And now we’re back to regular life. I just really should go to the beach more often. It’s a tiny patch of paradise.