Time to Cry Tuesday – The Honoree

Before I begin this post I would like to show my respect for the people of Boston for suffering such a blow, and say that I am so very grateful that my Boston family and friends are safe. In respect for this tragedy, I will refrain from the all-too-popular opportunistic tragedy blogging.

Ok, I am sure she thought she would escape my sentimentality. No ad from me in the journal, no video appearance, no public speech… this chick thought she was home free.

Not on your life, sistah!

This past weekend a dear friend was honored by a wonderful organization; one I have been involved in since its inception. It is an org that is close to both our hearts. She was asked to be the honoree because anyone in their right mind could see the fundraising opp tattooed on her arse. She is completely uncomfortable being the center of attention, but agreed more to help raise the big bucks and make a difference, than for the personal glory.

Humility. A quality so rarely seen. Especially in someone who has done so much for so many. Selflessly. Charmingly. With grace and a spirit of nonchalance. As if we all do these things everyday. Never asking for credit – at times actually giving it to others. And with that crazy smile on her face and infectious spirit that sweeps you up in her whirling dervish of excitement to the point where you never dare to say no to her. Nor do you want to. She wisely picks and chooses the times that she will actually ask. But even when she doesn’t, you find yourself offering to help because she makes it so damn appealing.

I truly believe there is nothing she cannot make happen. And if there is, don’t tell her. Or me.

So here’s to you, my friend.  My heart was so full on Saturday night, seeing you finally get the recognition you deserve. Not because you asked for it.

But because you didn’t.

Time to Cry Tuesday – Disappointment

Disappointment… such a lousy emotion. It comes tethered to expectations and rears its ugly head out of nowhere when you think you have ‘it’ all handled.  I have tried my best to manage expectations to avoid this nasty sucker. But sometimes shit happens, you are at its mercy, and it takes you down.

Big time.

To make it short and avoid a pity party, I have managed high blood pressure. It has been controlled for a long time, went a little wacky back in the fall and got back on track. Then I had a reaction to some meds that made me feel very ill and caused my ankle to swell (of course the one I sprained a while back) and the switch of meds set me on a BP roller coaster I do not wish on my worst enemy.

The net: I could not fly. And what was I supposed to do… you bet. Fly. To Spain. To see my boy who is studying abroad. Who I have not seen since January. On a trip we had planned forever. At a time when we really needed a break. On the first real vacation in many, many years. That we can’t reschedule. Not life shattering, just a piece of life that I can’t get back. One of the really fun pieces.

I am coming out the other side of this huge disappointment and all I can do is run through my head all of the things I have told my kids over the years when their expectations were shattered:

1. Sometimes you just have to feel like crap.
2. Misery gives happiness context.
3. Everything happens for a reason and sometimes we don’t find out what that reason is for a long time.
4. Who you are when things suck says more about you than who you are when they are great.
5. Sometimes its not fair. Period.

On the other end of that wisdom I was fully aware of how annoying that wisdom could be. (sorry kids)

Until a friend of mine posted a favorite Maya Angelou quote that made me smile and think about who I really want to be:

“I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way he/she handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.”

Even a Jewish girl gets the last one.

So if you see me knocking on a christian neighbor’s door asking to borrow their christmas lights in the rain wearing the same thing for 2 days in a row, you will know that it is just an exercise.

As is all of life.

 

Time to Cry Tuesday – Marriage Equality. Period.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013. The Supreme Court of the United States takes on the right to marry.

Incredible. If someone predicted this 10 years ago it would be followed with a roll of the eyes and an utterance of, “If ONLY!”.

Well… ONLY.

All sorts of polls are floating around out there, The NYT posted a great roundup here. In short, those in favor of same-sex marriage have risen from 30-40% range in 2003 to the 49-53% range depending upon who is doing the polling. A Pew Research Center report described the increase in support for same-sex marriage over the last 10 years as among the largest shifts in American public opinion on any policy issue.

Amen.

If you were on facebook today you might have noticed people changing their profile pics to this red equal sign box in solidarity and support. During the course of the day more creative, personalized versions started to pop up. I thought this would be a great place to do a round up.

Grumpy cat fans

Equal time for dogs (btw, Iko is a big supporter)

And Unicorns!

True Blood Fans

Members of the Tribe Celebrating Passover (subtitle: I found the “Afikomen”)

Red Velvet Chumetz for the goyim… from Martha, of course.

A crafty little play on symbols

Lion King (one day we will look back and say this is where we drew the lion) Hey, don’t blame the corny on me, it was not my lion.

C’mon, we all thought it…

Dumbledore for you Harry Potter fans.

Equality for statues!

Rothko for equality.

My friend Rina (hi Rin!, love it!)

And most dear to my heart… my ‘gay husband’ who waited WAY too long to be a husband to his true love.

FYI, I am updating this post as new ones show up, feel free to send me any a2zdes(at)gmail dot com.

Time to Cry Tuesday – Family

Are they, now?

Would you define a 15 day black out, allergic reaction to antibiotic, a BP fiasco with a trip to the ER, a couple of sinus infections, the loss of a dear friend, a hip replacement, shoulder surgery and a sprained ankle all in the course of 3 months… ‘well’?

How could this not make me laugh out loud in the middle of all these calamities? And of course the english as second language fortune is always a source of entertainment.

But you know, the fortune is not really wrong. With all the tough times we have had over the past few months, there has been so much to remind us that our family, in fact, ‘are’ incredibly well.

After a particularly stressful few weeks our doorbell rang with a delivery of chocolate strawberries from… our kids! With a note telling us that we have always been there for them and they hope that they had been there for us when things got rough. And they certainly had been. In a big way.

Yeh, our family are well.

With two trips to Florida to help my parents through their rough times, I spent more time with my brother than I have in years. And even in the most stressful of times, through all the tough decisions and insane logistics, we kept our humor and enjoyed each other’s company. And I think it is safe to say that even though the circumstances sucked, neither one of us can deny how special it was to have that time together.

Yeh, our family are well.

With all their troubles, and they have had many over the last 10 years, my parents have both come through their latest surgeries with the kind of courage and fortitude that leaves me in awe of how tough they really are. They don’t complain, they work hard to get to where they need to be, and they never stop letting us know how loved and appreciated we are. It is truly an honor to be their daughter, and to be able to help them in their time of need.

Yeh, our family are well indeed.

Time to Cry Tuesday – Letting Go, Global Version

As a parent, every few years you are faced with another rite of passage, another adventure your child is about to embark on, another chance for you to show your chops as a parent. Although your heart is hanging on to the hem of their pants as they walk through that door, your head is ready to let them fly…

again.

The last time I wrote one of these my boy was off to college. Seems like yesterday, yet here we, are 3 and half years later and he is off for a semester abroad in Seville, Spain. I thought now would be a good time to give him one of my famous lists of advice. I do this every so often to remind him, or more likely myself, that I am not quite through imparting wisdom just yet. If I write it here instead of tell him all this to his face, I spare myself the humiliation of the sighing and eye-rolling. So here goes, in no particular order.

1. Don’t be THAT American. This is similar to what I told my kids when they were first starting to experiment with drinking. Don’t be THAT girl/guy, the one that gets wasted and pukes on themselves. Don’t be THAT American simply means respect the local culture.
2. Try to really SEE Europe, don’t just drink Europe. This is obvious to me and quite ridiculous to him. Hopefully somewhere in between will be his reality.
3. Keep your eyes open and soak in everything. You never know what might wind up being the answer to what you want to do with your life.
4. Be Smart. If it feels wrong, it probably is. If it seems unsafe, it probably is.
5. Eat Everything, within reason. No explanation needed.
6. Don’t be a dick (not that you ever would be). Again, the international version. This is like number 1 on steroids. Check the ego at the door and you might as well leave the egocentric there to keep it company.
7. If you have to play beer pong, make sure you win the 100 Euro. Self-explanatory.
8. Amsterdam – you MUST see the Anne Frank House. As Jana said, as a Jew it is your responsibility. Period.
9. The rest of your time in Amsterdam. I do not need details, thanks.
10. Have the time of your life. This one should be easy.

In all seriousness, you are an amazing young man and have always made us proud. We have no real worries about this trip. We are just a more than a little jealous.

Time to Cry Tuesday – The Beach

Yes, I am back. And after quite a long break I have decided to blog regularly again. I am not quite sure why I stopped, probably a little burnout and a lot busy. But I missed it, and hopefully you did too.

Here goes. Funny that I chose to come back on a Tuesday…

The beach. If you know me, my definition is not that place you go in the summer or on vacation. Sure, those are nice, but the beach is part of my soul. For my kind, off season beach is as enchanting as on.

As you know, Sandy beat the crap out of a lot of places in the Northeast.  The greatest victims were the beach communities. And with that she took a piece of many of us that is hard to reconcile.

Long Beach, NY. City by the Sea. To me, this is not just a town by the ocean. It is that part of me that threads itself through the fabric of my life. A constant.

It is 3 little sunburnt girl cousins in an outdoor shower of their Nana’s house, giggling and screaming after a long day in the sand and surf. It is those same little girls running barefoot to the stores ‘Around the Corner’ to buy candy, feeling the freedom that only a small beach town can offer a child. It is the entire extended family spending weekends together. It is the teenager who hitch-hiked to the beach in the off season with her friends, not because she did not have bus money, but because it was part of the adventure. It is under the boardwalk and all the experiments and rights of passage that happen in that magical space that are better left untold. It is new loves and old ones. It is my first summer as a mom, dragging that stroller and nursing that little baby non-stop under the shade of a beach towel. It’s a little boy on a skim board till it is almost dark. It is beach club cabanas and showered kids falling sleep on the car ride home. It is the boardwalk – that poor ravaged soul – where we took our 3 generation stroll every Friday after Thanksgiving for the past 25 years. And long walks on that same boardwalk to think something through or just calm down and BE.

It is where my family always goes to feel better. No matter what ails you, a little salt air and sea breeze is the best cure.

It is the place that never fails me when I am suffering. That great majestic soother.

So many have lost so much there, it is heartbreaking to comprehend. And it seems more than a little self-indulgent to speak of this type of loss in the shadow of shattered lives.

But anyone who grew up in those parts – or any beach community – will nod their heads and indulge me these thoughts. For you will understand that sometimes a place is more a part of you than you ever realized.

Let the rebuilding began.

Time To Cry Tuesday – Chicken Redux

Last year I wrote about ‘The Chicken”. If you don’t want to click back, I will make it short. When you live in a close-knit community and find yourself in times of need, people come out in a big way.

We tend to like to feed. I think outside the comfort piece, the idea of removing the hassle of the nightly meal for a family that already has too much on its proverbial plate makes sending in dinners seem like the right thing to do.

So basically, you love to make the chicken… receiving the chicken? Not so much.

This week we had two families in one close group of friends in need… of ‘chicken’. All I can say is that I sent out one email and within 24 hours there were six nightly home-cooked meals and a waiting list for one family and a Magic Bullet smoothie maker for the other, who for health reasons needed to puree, so to speak.

24 hours.

AND there were calls from more who wanted to help and text chains and emails and such an overwhelming sense of what community is, that it took my breath away… yet again. I never cease to stand in awe of what this means; how lucky we all to have each other; to try to imagine what my life would be like without this.

I cannot.

 

To have 2 dear friends in surgery on the same day is quite unnerving. There is not enough chicken in the universe that makes you feel like you are doing enough to ease the pain.

Until you stop an realize that you can’t. You can only love them. And their spouses. And their amazing kids and even their dogs. And be there for them the best way you know how when they get to the other side. Because they are the family you choose.

I am happy to report that both are doing as well as they can. And we want to let them both know:

There is plenty of chicken where that came from. Just say the word.

Because that is what we do.

Time to Cry Tuesday – When was the last time?

Now there is a question you need to ask yourself. Think about it. As you get older it becomes harder to to. Not that there we are necessarily running out of things to do that we have not done yet. It is more that we tend to become complacent. We don’t like to step outside the comfort zone too often. Life is hard enough, we tell ourselves. Status quo is really not so bad, right?

Wrong!

This is a challenge to go out and do something this week for the first time. It does not have to be something big, just something you have never done. Hopefully something you always wanted to do.

Let me know how it goes for you.

 

 

Time to Cry Tuesday – Start to Finish

 

Ahhhhh! The short race. This is something I can understand. Start here. Finish here. Not a whole hell of a lot of trouble in between. I wish I had been around to see the neighborhood kids racing here.

Downhill.

What could be better.

This made me think of my work. Sometimes it is a short race, wham bam, super rush, in and out in days sort of thing. Sometimes it is the I have given birth faster than finishing this project kind of situation.

I am not sure which I prefer. There is something lovely about working your ass off in a condensed period of time and surprising yourself with how much you can get done in so little time. On the other hand, it is not so terrible to have the time to review and finesse… or obsess, as the case may be.

Seems I never get the happy medium projects.

I suppose I am just a woman of extremes…

Time to Cry Tuesday – Welcome to the Family

This weekend, a young woman made not only the love of her life happy, but his entire family as well.

My nephew – the firstborn grandchild – asked his girlfriend to marry him. Not to get all Sunrise Sunset on him, but this one is huge for me. He was the first little guy to win my heart. The first baby that I held and felt my own blood run through his veins. The first little person that made me stop and think, holy crap, this procreation thing is something I could definitely subscribe to.

My brother and I vowed to not let long distance prevent us from being a big part of each other’s kid’s lives. When they were young, we took the trek back and forth as much as we could, to make sure the kids knew each other. And it worked. The four cousins have a bond that will carry them through a lifetime. And a not so great memory of always having to go to the bathroom on the Staten Island Expressway.

Now the gift of one more amazing young woman has been given to us in his bride-to-be. Corny? Shit yeah! And I don’t care. For she is all I could hope he would find in a spouse. Times 10. The look on his face when he is with her, the way they share their lives already, the respect and joy that you feel when they are around… that is the foundation you dream of for the ones you love.

So, Matt and Carolyn, I wish you a wonderful life together. I love you both to pieces.