My Jenn-eration

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 ...

This has been the year of Hamilton for my family. Phil and I went to see it in the Fall and came home playing the music from the show. Our kids have been downright obsessed ever since. They always go in phases with this stuff but the Hamilton phase has stuck around for longer than I might have expected for a couple of little kids who haven't seen the show. Every meal, every trip to every store, every moment of everywhere somehow involves them singing and rapping. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised really. The show is positively extraordinary and both Phil and I agreed that it had been years since we had been so humbled by anything. I read a blog post the other day by Mike Schur who was going on, as most of us Hamilton obsessed fans do, about the genius of the whole thing. In the post, Mike talks about how there are these different moments in the show that just sneak up on you. Where the sheer genius of the whole thing and how you've probably never experienced anything...

On the day I went to vote in the 2016 election, I had Rachel Platten’s Fight Song on repeat. I played it so many times just before breakfast that Ruby nearly begged me in tears to at least mute it while she ate her cereal. But I couldn’t help it. I was amped. I was energetic. I was emotional. I had adrenaline pulsing through me. This time, after all of the lies and the insults and the petty shots that women had to take again and again, the physical intimidation – just all of it. This time, this time we were going to go to the polls. And we were going to fight. Of course, it didn’t happen like that. Who knows why really. Jill Stein, Russian bots, Wisconsin, Bill Clinton. Who knows why it wasn’t our time. It just wasn’t. I lay awake that whole night wracked with sickness. I could handle the results of the election I suppose. But what I just didn’t know was how to explain what the moral of all of this was to my kids. As parents, I think we do that a lot. We go through good times a...

On my last day of my thirties I did not wax overly sentimental. We were ready to part ways. It was time for new, and next. My thirties were a beautiful, hard gift. I got some version of everything I always thought I wanted. Sometimes it was more than I could have ever hoped for. Sometimes I felt lost. And I felt lost that it or I might not be enough. If you got everything you thought you wanted and still wanted more, then the problem, of course, must lie with you. I wonder, do other women walk around with this hole inside them or just me? This hole inside them where there is a deep unending well of love for their family, and this cavernous space where they used to nurture their own desires. That small but incredibly important space where you allowed yourself to dream, and where life seemed open to possibility. Strangely, to say goodbye to my thirties, I went to New York City with my husband which will forever be a nostalgic hat tip to my twenties. The very best part about New ...

As it always seems, winter drags its feet and leaves kicking and screaming while summer seems to just fly by. Literally, I can’t seem to catch it. It’s a firefly I’m trying to catch in a jar, a sunset I’m trying to snap before it disappears. It’s a wave, a breeze. Before I’m ready to really settle into summer, it seems like it’s already beginning to bid us farewell. Our summer swan song is always the same, a trip out to the west coast to visit my sister. I’m sure each of you have a place like California, one that you return to each year. We wait for California, we count down the days. It is our favorite thing. And it also means summer is almost over. California is as much a state of mind as physical destination. To be in California means you let go of the daily logistics and schedules that consume most of our daily existence. There is still laundry and dishes. But there are long, late mornings spent on deep couches with the people we love most in the world. There is lots of ic...