My Jenn-eration

I wanted to write a special note to the parents out there and just let you know that you did such an awesome job this year. This was the year where we couldn't hide from our kids who we really are anymore, or what we really feel. 2020 was a brutal reminder to parents everywhere, that one of our core responsibilities to our children, is to live and feel and experience this world in a way that is authentic. To model for them what it means to feel happy and sad and angry and hungry and weak and overwhelmed. You did such a fantastic job this year, modeling and giving them permission to be a feeling person in this world.    Parents of 2020: take a bow. What a phenomenal job you did trying and failing miserably to homeschool them. It was genuinely awesome the way you lost your temper again and again, and had to figure out how to constantly keep composing yourself. What a great job you did showing them that all teachers are special, magical creatures akin to unicorns. I love the way ...

I know that other people developed hobbies and stuff during quarantine, but I spent my time doing extremely important things like conjuring up a fake relationship with someone who accidentally used my email to order DoorDash. Please enjoy this 1,800 word description of this alternate reality. Also, if you know Jenn in California, tell her I say hi. 

  I remember the very first moment I knew I was pregnant. I hadn’t taken a single test yet undeniably, this was a thing that I knew. I felt different in a way I had never felt before, in a way I couldn’t even articulate. My husband didn’t believe me and of course who could blame him? I was being silly. Why did I think I was pregnant? Because I had slept a little later that morning, or had devoured that cheeseburger at the airport? Maybe. But I was different. I was changed. And six different home pregnancy tests later he believed me. Indeed, I was. We were expecting our son. The thing is that women always know. We know our bodies, we know our children before we even know them, we know when people are trying to lie to us, or intimidate us, or control us. We know what it feels like in our gut when someone comes for one of our children, that feeling when our minds go blank and all we can think of is the feeling of hot rage and mixed with the cool steady calm that guides us toward that ...

As I approach my 43rd year, I have to be honest and tell you that I’ve been struggling lately. That for most of my peers - those parents that in every way possible are in the trenches right now, it is genuinely hard. In the spring, I felt like I could get through this thing. And maybe in the summer too. But as I watch all of us scrape the very bottom of whatever we’ve got left in us to parent and teach and work and just generally survive but also put on some sort of moderately positive face for our children and parents, well honestly that’s been hard lately. One of my all time favorite quotes is from Leonard Cohen's 1992 song, Anthem. In it, he describes: Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in As I close out 42 and look ahead to 43, it's requiring me to dig deep this year, to ring the bells I still can ring. And looking back over the past year, it seems indeed there was so very much to celebrat...

It is summer. The woman, mid-life, bathing suit at mid-calf, emotionally deadened enough to her bizarre current state of reality where she really feels nothing beyond the mid-point of her still beating heart, climbs slowly into the lake. The water is cool but not cold. It soothes her hot, pale skin and surrounds her fully. Here in this moment, there is not noise or Twitter or barking candidates, global pandemics and recessions and worries and constant planning. In this moment, held by nothing but the arms of the lake’s ripples and her own weightlessness, there is nothing but the glorious silence and stillness of the water. As she comes up for air, the silence is punctuated by reality. The beach is full of wet sandy feet. The water is full of noisy children. Her own children tug on her suit and she scoops them up, big and small alike. She reminds them that no matter how big they get, they will always be her babies. Besides, in the water we are all weight less. We are not weighed down...

Come join me and the Today Parenting Team where I'm talking about my deepest wish for all of us moms this Mother's Day...

Could we have a brief chat about something I've been seeing pop up all over my FB and Instagram feed?  Here is what I can say for sure about this time of life: nothing. I can say absolutely nothing for sure.The only thing I can say with certainty actually, is that absolutely nothing is certain right now. What will happen today or tomorrow, when schools will open, when I will be able to hug or visit you, when I feel predictably sad, or happy, or predictably anything at all with any kind of regularity. The one gift I’ve given myself these last few weeks, and the one gift I’ve given my children without apology, is that whatever they are feeling or needing to do right now, whatever they think they need, is exactly right. I’d like to talk to you about the real snake oil salesman of quarantine. I’m not talking about the odd sort of COVID truthers who think this is all a hoax or something of that ilk, but more about the folks who have some very specific messages about what y...

There is an odd sort of emotional exhaustion to quarantine. Though we go nowhere, I find myself doing a lot each day and so at night I’m the kind of tired when I just sort of fall into bed and sleep overwhelms me. There is no gentle drifting. I am just awake and then asleep and then awake again. It’s a very jarring, sort of matter of fact process. And in between occasionally I will stop and really notice certain things if for no other reason than during this very busy and very not busy time, it seems to be a season that has afforded me more time for all the noticing. The laundry in my neighbor’s yard blowing in the breeze. An actual woodpecker in my tree this morning. The way that my grapefruit smells after I first cut it open. Have you ever cut a grapefruit for someone? Has someone ever taken the time to cut you a grapefruit? It’s actually an extremely precise and painstaking process where you have to make sure you go in between and on the side of every single piece of white fles...

We’ve been home for two days now. It’s the weekend and so I guess so far life doesn’t seem that unusual. But tomorrow when it’s Monday I expect things will start to get real. Ruby tells me that she believes God does everything for a reason. I am and have always been entirely unconvinced of this, but I sit with her long enough to see where she’s heading with this and she tells me she thinks this is God’s way of telling us to slow down. I’m not convinced God had any hand in this. But I can’t deny that perhaps this is an unintentional silver lining.  We did nothing this weekend. Although I suppose I did the kind of nothing that is actually more something than most of the nonsense I pretend is something on most weekends. I took nine separate walks this weekend. I used every single dish, cup and fork - twice. I FaceTimed 8 different people. I started a new book. I cooked all of our food. I played six games of Uno. There were no sports or hebrew school or Girl Scouts or visiting ...

Come join me over at Medium where I'm talking about why it's hard to be a parent in 2020.

Six years ago, I wrote these words on my first weekend home together as a family of five: “We brought Hope home with us on Saturday.” Indeed. It is true that Ashkenazi Jews (Jews of of central and eastern european descent) name for the deceased and Dylan and Ruby follow in that tradition. Dylan is named in honor of Phil’s Aunt Dora and Ruby for my mother Ronni. But Hope was to be my hat tip to her Sephardic (middle eastern) heritage. She is named for the living. We honored her great grandmother Helen and her grandfather Lewis and her grandmother Linda to come up with Hope Leigh. Right from the start, Hope was a symbol of life. I think I might have mentioned this before, but my c-section with her was one for the record books. It started routine, but turned into a nearly three hour ordeal, requiring a separate procedure to deal with old old scar tissue from my previous sections before they could even begin to unravel her from my body. A c section is a strange process o...