My Jenn-eration

I have few physical treasures that have survived from the era in which my mother lived into the modern one in which I now reside as someone’s wife and mother. The last of these items that she had bought for me in one life and had endured into this one, was my spoon rest. It was the run of the mill spoon rest one finds as an impulse buy in the checkout aisle of Bed Bath and Beyond. My 12 year old unspectacular spoon rest had already cracked once, soon after she passed. My husband who isn’t often sentimental quickly ran out to buy the cheapest strongest glue and piece it back together because back then I was fragile and I couldn’t lose one more thing including her tchotchkes. So when I dropped the spoon rest on Sunday and just stared at it split cleanly and completely in two, the first words out of his mouth were, “I’ll get the glue.” “No,” I responded. “Not this time. Sometimes things are not meant to be put back together.” I have wanted to write something about 2018 for aw...

As I creep up on 41, I have learned a few things in this first year of my forties. To begin with, I am a half and half girl. No more playing with cream or skim or anything else. It’s half and half in my coffee or I walk. I know it’s a small thing but honestly it’s a big deal to me. It means I know solidly where I stand on something and I’m confident about it. The forties feels like the beginning of knowing more things about myself. I have also learned that I like being small and feeling small in the world. For someone who writes a lot of things all of the time and shares this information with many people, this is a strange reflection, yet nonetheless true. Small moments have become impossibly huge and special to me. A truly great hug from my son. A perfectly blue sky. A really great line in Harry Potter. The perfectly cheesed nacho chip. Small moments that sneak up on you when you least expect it like a tiny gift from the universe and offer themselves up asking nothing in retu...

I wish I could bottle end of summer me. She really is the best version of me. She is the most present, happy, let it go version of myself. Maybe this year I fin ally will. At the beginning of the summer I buy overpriced organic suntan lotion and I have a list of camps and stuff we need to do and by the end I am buying the stuff on sale for 25 cents at the Shell station and it's probably mostly made of gasoline and just whatever. We eat Pez like it's fruit and we play video games like it's our job. We wear 18 outfits per day but never anything with buttons. We stay up late. We laugh. Really deeply laugh. At life, at each other, honestly who knows maybe it's delirium driven by excessive sugar and gasoline laced sunscreen.  Just yesterday we went to the pool and when we got there, Ruby, who was on her 17th piece of gum for the day realized she couldn't swim and chew gum and so logically, rather than search for a trash receptacle, she put it in my hand. Somehow, t...

The most 2018 thing about 2018 is the constant daily, never ending, and always changing cycle of outrage. There is something inevitably new and fresh every day that enrages one group of people which provokes the other to rush to the defense of the first group and around and around we go. On the whole, 2018 is, if nothing else, quite mentally exhausting. But yesterday's dailyoutrage (or at least one of the things we were all supposed to be either outraged about or defend) was an Instagram post by Ivanka Trump lovingly embracing her son.  "Tone deaf!" shouted one side, as we read story after story of mothers and their babies being torn apart at the border. "Oversensitive!" shouted the other. It is a mother and her child. Why can't we all appreciate that? I sat staring at that photo of Ivanka for a while, and of the one before it on her Instagram page, where a young Theodore sits politely with a napkin on his lap at the world's most beautifully ...

The other day on an unusually brisk May morning at the bus stop, my friend and fellow mom stuffed her hands in her coat pockets to keep warm. She pulled out two erasers, a lollipop stick, a defunct key chain, and a band aid wrapper. In my coat pocket at that moment I had four hair ties and a spare pair of underwear for my daughter. We laughed of course, because as any mother will tell you our pockets are regularly stuffed with all sorts of hallmarks of our children and parenting, their trinkets and treasures and whatever they need or didn’t. The thing about us mothers is that it somehow always falls to us to be the ones to help carry their load. Mother’s Day is fast approaching and the stores and cards and Internet are full of ideas of all sorts of things we think a mother might want or need. But there is one thing we need more than anything and it's not a bigger bag for all of the stuff we carry. Tell us to empty our pockets. Mothers carry everything with the...

I wobbled into May 2 nd kind of like this. I opened my eyes to a text message from my travelling husband telling me how much he missed and loved my mother. I sent some happy birthday emojis to a dear friend.   I made a note to call my father later and wish him a happy birthday. And then I went in to wake up my sleeping son and then I stood there and watched him for a few minutes as he stretched into the day. God a lot changes in ten years. On the morning before the day that marks ten years since I last held my mother’s hand, I did what she most would have wanted me to do: get a pedicure. Manicures and pedicures and the general maintenance of womanhood were of the utmost importance to her. Even as she herself was actively dying and too weak to drive, she insisted that someone take her to get her nails done before flying up to see her doctor. If she was going to go anywhere including death itself, it would be on her terms and with flawless polish color that had some sort of ...

This morning at the bus stop I’m chatting with a neighbor who tells me that already his seventh-grade daughter is planning what her future apartment will look like, even college. We laugh about how she’s a bit ahead of herself, but really actually it makes me feel good to hear yet another story about a child making plans. About a child doing all of this wondering and dreaming about the future. I watched all those images yesterday of kids across the country walking out of their schools, making speeches and giving signs. In districts that sanctioned it and even in those where they were promised severe punishments if they did, our children stood up. They took a stand. God I’m so humbled by their bravery. But as mom, I’m feeling something entirely different. I’m feeling encouraged. As mothers, we obsess about teaching them all the stuff. How to sit on a toilet, zipper their coat, make eye contact, order a sandwich, hold a pencil, sit at the table, use a Kleenex, solve fractions. ...

As we do each year, we’re carefully mixing and measuring to prepare the dough for our hamantaschen. We add our secret ingredient (orange juice) and then stir a bit more before rolling it out the way I used to with my mother, like I do with them. I show them how to use a glass to make circles in the dough. A dollop of filling from the solo cans, and then three quick pinches. Before long, we’ve got a tray full of rather imperfectly pinched triangle cookies.  When they are done, we let them cool before we set aside a few bags to gift our teachers and neighbors. Many Jews give “shalach manot” on or in the days leading up to Purim. Tiny bags or gift baskets of food and hamantaschen, Jews give them out to fulfill the promise of Mishloach Manot in the Book of Esther. We give them to help include our friends and neighbors in the joy and festiveness of the holiday and because no one should go hungry. But we also give them out because Haman, the villain of our Purim story, insisted that J...

Our very first moment together was very nearly our last. In a way that now seems utterly unsurprising, you were quite literally tangled up within me. Wedged inside my womb, stuck between scar tissue from your brother and sister, and the rest of me. Right from the beginning, you accepted as perfectly perfect a pretty busted up version of me. For over an hour, a team of doctors, most of whom I'd never met or seen before and had been hastened to our OR with a sense of urgency consulted and pushed and tugged and carefully made space for you to leave me, or join me as it is. I should've known then as I know now so deeply in my bones. You and I will always be destined to be tangled up in each other.  When you were two I took you to a mommy and me gym class. The instructor introduced himself and his "friend," the other instructor. Then we went around in a circle and the other babies tentatively said their names. When it was your turn, you didn't hesitate: "I'm ...