An Immigrant Mom Learns Israeli Persistence

Being an immigrant mother means a lot of things. It means struggling to instill your native language in your kids while they slowly start to speak to their siblings in their new language. It means your kids become hyper conscientious about the school supplies they need and their homework assignments because they know mom struggles to read the daily emails. And it means you can’t be the parent who was once on top of everything, which usually doesn’t matter much (I have missed a few bake sales) but sometimes it matters a lot.

The rest of this post can be found on The Times of Israel.

Something Between Trophies for Everyone and You Suck

My daughter started elementary school this year which in Israel is the first grade. My husband and I attended a “Back to School” meeting where the principal addressed the parents of the three first grade classes and spoke about the school’s mission and policies. It wasn’t especially inspirational and she didn’t have a microphone so I only heard about 30% of what she said and, of what I heard, I only understood about half so that left me feeling very bored and annoyed. My husband promised I wasn’t missing much. One thing I did hear sounded something like, “if a student is good at something we encourage him to further pursue that direction. But if he is not very good, then we say, this activity is not for you, and we encourage him to do something else.”

The rest of this post can be found on The Times of Israel.

Revolution Number Nine

Hey Kiddo,

How did you get to be NINE? That's bigger than any other kid I've ever had actually. I look at you now and there are no remnants of the chubby tomato faced baby who came into the world nine years ago today. You are tall and frog legged and I marvel at your metamorphosis. I like this age actually. I know you don't want me to hug and kiss on you all the time, or at least during the day, but at night you still need your mommy to tuck you in and sing you songs and smooth your hair and kiss you goodnight. So even though I would sooner never sing another one of those effing songs I have sung every night for the last nine years, I keep singing them for you because soon you won't want them anymore and I'll be sad.

A lot has changed about you this year. Like you're willingness to wear something besides yoga pants. I know they're comfortable, but...a little variety right? Also very excited about your willingness to wear your cousin's hand-me-downs and your new interest in chess. And I love how you let your little brother tackle you and sit on your head. Very generous, especially now that he's potty training and often naked. Also delighted by the way you've taken charge of your social calendar by calling your friends yourself to set up your own playdates and then riding there on your bike! And, my favorite, your ability to wipe yourself without using an entire roll of toilet paper. You've become quite the conservationist.

But some things have not changed and may never.  Like your love of the Beatles. And how much fun you have with your cousins, even though you barely get to see them. Your mad biking skills. Your disdain for ball sports. All the silliness you share with your grandparents. Or how my sharpies and micron pens always end up in your desk drawer. How you continue to obsess over smart phones. How a quick jaunt to Office Depot followed by frozen yogurt at the mall is your best afternoon activity ever. How you love camping despite a tendency toward fanatic hygiene. And let's not forget your relentless teasing of your sister. That actually needs to stop. You're grounded. Just kidding.

Above all, you are still the bright, sensitive, stubborn, curious, persistent, focused kid you always were. I hope all of your birthday wishes come true, but no, you can't have an iPod Touch 5 or a Samsung Galaxy Pocket.

I love you.
Mommy

My Montefiordieth

Yesterday I turned 40. I had been telling Mr. Rosen for the months leading up to my birthday that all I really wanted for my 40th was to be chilly and wear a nice woolly sweater. Because by the time it's September I have had enough of summer and yet I know that there are still at least six weeks left of hot weather but my Polish skin just cannot take it for one more moment let alone six more weeks of moments, all of which leaves me feeling depressed and miserable. So we started thinking about getting out of the Middle East. My first choice was Norway. I would spend my 40th in the fjords. It would be my Fjordieth. Alas, those tickets were too expensive. We also looked into Berlin, Warsaw, Northern Italy. I would have flown to Greenland if I could have found a cheap ticket. But then with my birthday falling this year during the Days of Awe, that reflective week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kipur, and with the kids off of school and our bank account depleted from our very recent trip to America, we decided to rent a hotel/flat in Tel Aviv for a long weekend and turn up the air-conditioning really high so I could live out my birthday fantasy and, wait for it, sleep under the covers.

As it happens we found a lovely rental on Montifiore Street which is walking distance to just about everything. We arrived Friday evening and made our way to Jaffa Port where we had dinner at The Container. On a Friday night where we live you could hear a pin drop and even then it makes only a very dull thud. But at the port in Jaffa, it is a frenzy of diners and revelers. There were no tables at the restaurant so we sat at the bar which was a charming stack of shipping pallets. Port chic. I had salmon sashimi and smoked beets on arugula salad and Mr. Rosen had the lamb kabobs. DELISH. Then we took an evening stroll down the boardwalk and up through the twinkly lights of Jaffa's old city.

The next morning, despite our best efforts, we could only sleep in until 7:00. We walked to Rotschild Avenue and had a cup of coffee with the other early risers (moms and runners) before we slowly made our way toward Dizengoff and settled on a cute cafe called Streetz where we had an Israeli breakfast for two. Let's give it up for Israeli breakfast because it is damn good. Eggs any way you like them, chopped salad, fresh bread with all manner of cheesy spreads, jams, tuna, shredded halva...with coffee and fresh squeezed juice. It's the breakfast of champions. By the time we were finished it was getting hot so we decided to walk to the Cinemateque and get out of the mid afternoon sun. We saw an Italian documentary called Caesar Must Die about a group of felons (murderers, mafia kingpins, drug traffickers and the like) in a Rome prison who put on a production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Powerful stuff.

After the movie we walked back to Montefiore and took a nap. Around 5 PM we drove to north Tel Aviv port and had an early dinner at the marketplace in one of the hangers. Steak sandwiches, crispy potato wedges and apricot soda. A foot volleyball tournement was happening on the boardwalk so we watched that for a while and then watched the sun set. At that point we decided to walk back to our car and head over to a nearby restaurant with live music only to find that our car had been towed. Though Mr. Rosen had taken such care to perfectly parallel park at the bus station cum parking lot by the port, we both failed to remember that after sundown, the parking lot returns to its former self as a functioning bus station. So we took the number 4 bus back to our hotel and decided to leave our car with the Tel Aviv municipality until we drove home the next day realizing that was the only way to guarantee "free parking" for the rest of our trip.

On the morning of the 8th we celebrated my Montefiordieth first with breakfast at the eclectic brunch favorite Puah in the Jaffa flea market and then spent a few hours doing one of my favorite activities in the world, delighting in treasures, old and new, in south Tel Aviv. We dreamed of one day buying a fixer upper apartment and living in this funky, gritty part of the city and filling it with flea market furnishings and having an art studio or a gallery or a cabinet making workshop under our beautifully renovated home. By 2 PM that dream melted as the afternoon sun drilled down upon us. So we refueled with fresh carrot, beet, apple, ginger juice and decided it was time to start heading home to the Jerusalem hills where cooler weather trumps south Tel Aviv charms. Mr. Rosen went to pick up the car at the tow lot and I checked out of our flat and right before we got on the highway we stopped at my favorite hole in the wall for stuffed pizza.  My cousin introduced me to HaTanor (the Oven) in Ramat Gan fifteen years ago and there is nothing like it. Imagine a puffy pizza crust stuffed with cheese and sauce, boiled egg and zaatar (mideastern spice). And nothing beats the ambiance of this little nook near the Tel Aviv stock exchange where ultra-orthodox diamond dealers, suited stock brokers, scruffy software engineers, Russian mafia and scantily clad persons of questionable profession share the one thing they have in common. Their love of good pizza.

We got home in time to spend dinner and the rest of the evening with the kids and Mr. Rosen's parents who graciously babysat for three days so we could live it up in the big city. By 7 PM Mr. Rosen had to go to a school meeting and it was time to get the kids in the bath. Funny how quickly life returns to normal. As great as it was to stroll around the big city for a birthday weekend, soaping up my two year old is it's own kind of birthday gift.

Thanks to all for your birthday wishes.

Three for the road

We are nearing the halfway point of our big summer adventure and America does not disappoint. It is a potpourri of sparkly and dazzling and comfortable and weird. Do you know how wide the highways are here? They are unbelievably wide. As are the parking lots. Like you could actually drive in a parking lot without folding in your side view mirrors. And Americans are so friendly that it is startling to me. It also turns out that I have become a very aggressive driver in the year and a half that I have lived in Israel and so I have had to keep myself from honking at people and power merging. And I am often caught off guard when everyone at the four way stop is waving for the other three to go.

It took us a full week just to recover from the twenty-four hours of travel and the ten hour time difference. It didn't help that we flew Alitalia via Rome at 5 am which meant that the entire flight was daylight and more daylight followed by some daylight. There was not much sleeping and I had my three kids solo. Again. And our seats were all messed up. The four of us were assigned four different rows until I offered that maybe the baby should fly the effing plane because that was about as logical as sitting him by himself in 37F. But the thirteen hour flight from Rome to Los Angeles is a very expensive form of torture no matter how you slice it because seven hours into the ride you still have another six hours. I mean, that's just math people. And no matter how long you stare at the little moving plane icon on the flight tracker screen, it stays on eastern Canada for a very long time.

But the worst was only yet to come. A ten hour jet lag means that your kids wake up at 2:00 am three mornings in a row and you have to wait until 4:00 am to go to Starbucks. And by 9:00 am you are ready for a glass of wine. Days that start at 2:00 am are very long and lethargic days. So we did very little our first week here besides destroy Grandma's house and wake her up at all hours of the night with our musical beds and wee hour breakfasts. And we watched a lot of the Disney channel which I considered research for our upcoming trip to Disneyland. We also swam at the community pool where one family was having a big birthday and the grandma brought cake over for my kids (I guess she figured out that my baby screaming OOGA meant he wanted cake). We went to my favorite art festival by the beach for a short twirl. We went to a science museum. One day we even took the train to Olvera Street in LA and bought slime and worry dolls and Mexican paper flags and burritos. Did you know that slime can totally remove varnish from a wooden dining room table when left there by a two year old? After a week of functioning in the correct time zone we attempted Disneyland where everything is beautiful and nothing hurts. We were there for twelve hours of rides and lines powered by coffee, peanut butter and jelly, baby carrots, cotton candy and joy. My almost nine year old spent much of the day asking me about the corporate partnership between Lucas Films and Disney (#AlexPKeaton) and pointing out how everything that looks real is just an image projected on a screen (this from a boy who still believes in Elijah the Prophet). The baby was out of his mind watching the parade and all of the characters dancing around and he went on most of the rides with us save for Space Mountain and the Matterhorn which I braved with only the big kids. I figured this was probably my thirtieth visit to the Magic Kingdom (you go a lot when you grow up in socal), but it was as spectacular as ever especially since we didn't lose my daughter this time.

And the last few days I have spent with my two oldest girlfriends, one of whom is getting married in a few weeks. The three of us went out dancing to a gay bar in downtown Santa Ana that we never knew existed and we marveled at all of the adorable, hard bodied, cutie pies. The next day her mom treated us to facials at Bloomingdales that she'd won in some auction and the lovely ladies at the Clarins counter did our make-up. And that's when I discovered navy eyeliner which may just change my life. And then today we went to her wedding shower which was a very traditional tea party complete with scones, finger sandwiches, tiny desserts and, yes, tea.

And that brings us to right now. In between the festivities and outings I have made stops at my regular haunts, namely Old Navy, Target, Loehmans, Trader Joes, Wholefoods and Michaels. There is still more shopping to be done. Being here makes me feel like I need more of everything because it's all so cheap. Even gas, which is insanely high priced right now and is still HALF what it is in Israel.  Today we are going to the beach and tomorrow we head up to Santa Cruz where we will meet up with Mr. Rosen who will happily deal with the baby at 6 am in the morning since he will have already been awake since 2 am.

More good times ahead.

MASH, Success and the The Declaration of You

The Declaration of You by Creative Career Coach Michelle Ward and Artist Designer Jessica Swift will be published by North Light Craft Books this summer, with readers getting all the permission they've craved to step passionately into their lives, discover how they and their gifts are unique and uncover what they are meant to do! This post is part of The Declaration of You's BlogLovin' Tour, which I'm thrilled to participate in alongside over 100 other creative bloggers. The topic this week is SUCCESS. Can I get some jazz hands?

Remember when we used to play MASH? Or sometimes it was MOSH. You'd make a square on a piece of paper and write MASH at the top. The M was for mansion. The A was for Apartment (the O in MOSH was for outhouse!) The S was for Shack. The H was for House. Then on the right side of the square you would list four cars, two favorable and two unfavorable. On the left side of the square you would list four boys, two favorable and two unfavorable. And below the square you would write four numbers, two small and two large. Then you would draw a spiral in the middle of the square until your friend told you to stop and then you'd count up the lines of the spiral across the diameter and starting from the big M you would use that number to eliminate whatever you landed on until you were left with a dwelling, a vehicle, a boy and a number of offspring. Voila! Your fate was sealed.

Does anyone else remember this? Fifth or sixth grade? Maybe earlier... So you hoped you'd end up with a Mansion, a Maserati, the cutest boy in your class and two kids. And even though you knew it was just a game, you prayed not to end up in a shack (or an outhouse!) with a poolman car, the class dork and seventeen kids. Because it could happen if you didn't play your cards right. That game defined success when we were kids. It was just a game but you can tell a lot about a society by it's children's games. I guess my society valued the big house and the fancy car and the cute husband and an appropriate amount of offspring.

Nowadays my definition of success looks a little different. By MASH standards I'm doing well actually.  I live in house. I drive a nice (used) car. I married a very cute boy and we have three kids. My ten year old self breathes a sigh of relief.  And I am profoundly grateful for all of these elements in my life but my success is not defined by any of them. Nor is my success tied to any of my accomplishments. These days I measure success by my ability to thoughtfully manage all of the flying balls and find joy in the process. This takes practice and sometimes I suck at it. Many days I feel like my business is on fire but I'm totally neglecting my kids. Or my kids and the business are thriving but I haven't exercised in six months. You get my point.

For me, at this moment, success is three well-adjusted, happy kids only a year and half after moving them to a new house and a new school where they made new friends in a new language in a new country. Success is relocating my business to Israel despite bureaucratic hurdles all the while providing the same high quality products and services to my clients around the world. Success is finally starting to write a novel, something I have wanted to do for many many years. But my biggest success is being in the middle of all of it and not feeling overwhelmed by the loose ends.

You are Two

Dearest Babu,

Today is your birthday mister and you are TWO. And boy are you two. You march around this house like you own the place.  Which you do. You own it. You own us. You are our benign dictator and we are but your humble servants. And we are happy to serve you because you are the constant source of our happiness. And the occasional source of our aggravation. For instance, just the other day day you stood next to me crying to be picked up for half an hour while I did the dishes so I had no choice but to pour water on your head. But once I wiped you up and stopped laughing at you we sat together on the stairs and had yoghurt and peace was restored in your kingdom.

It's been a pretty awesome year, wouldn't you agree? I mean, you learned to walk for starters. Not bad. Your nose ran for maybe nine out of the last twelve months so that's pretty amazing. You started a very charming morning routine with the help of you brother and sister who alternate taking you out of your crib so that you can walk into our room, hand me my glasses and my iPhone and then ask for cheerios. For someone who only in the last month started saying words, you are a pretty savvy communicator.

Your brother and sister continue to provide the bulk of your education since me and Aba are too exhausted. You've learned to be exceptionally affectionate from your sister and we now rely on your neck hugs and your birdie kisses. It's like crack for us. And you have followed in your brother's footsteps by continually shoving pirate coins into the CD slot of our car. I always value a good family tradition. Thankfully your terrible two-ness is mostly just amusing for us. Maybe because you are our third and we just don't care or maybe because we know you are the last to go through it so we're feeling nostalgic. Or maybe because it just doesn't matter if you smear humus in your hair every night because that might be the only product that works on your Jew fro. Whatever the reason, we sure do love your funny ways. Like how you pump your arm when you're in a hurry. Or how you giggle when I throw your stinky diapers out the window by your changing table and onto our front porch. How you then go downstairs and outside to retrieve the stinky diaper all the while repeating poo poo bye bye. How you can spend hours playing in your sandbox. How you run to greet your Saba and Savta. How you kiss the computer screen when you skype with Grandma. How you say EOW every time you see a cat. How you pinch your fingers together like you're snapping when you want to play music on my phone. And how you always play Matisyahu. Motek, you can DJ this party anytime.

Everyday I look at your smiling head and I am grateful that you happened. We could have certainly thrown in the towel after the first two. We had our boy and our girl. The turmoil of early parenthood was finally settling down. But I knew someone was missing. I knew there was a big-eyed, curly-headed, toothy-faced gremlin just waiting to join us. That someone was you, Chicken. So you go be two as long as you need to be. You're really great at it.

Happy Birthday Sunshine.
xox Mommy

PS. This song is for you and me.
Matisyahu | - Breath Easy

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