Random Acts of Meme

Welcome to my first meme, thanks to Halfmama. Having never done this before, I'm not quite sure of the Rules, but I'll try to supply 8 random, yet entertaining, facts about myself.

Rules: Once tagged, you must link to the person who tagged you. Then post the rules before your list, and list 8 random things about yourself.

1) My pupils are inordinately large, even in bright light, so I have to wear polarized sunglasses even on a cloudy day. In addition, my pupils are not the same size. Once, during an eye exam, the doctor accused me of being on drugs and would not take no for an answer.

2) I have extraordinarily long thumbs. I can wrap them around the back of my hand. Freaks people out.


3) In September, 1992, I almost died in a hurricane on Kauai. My boyfriend at the time and I went backpacking on the NaPali Coast Trail on the North Shore. On Day #2, the island was slammed with Class 5 Hurricane Iniki. Winds up to 180 mph. We spent the first part of the storm wedged between a boulder and the mountain, with our packs on our stomachs. During the eye, we scurried down and sought shelter for the second part inside a rental car that had been crushed by a tree. Because of this shared experience, I stayed with this dude for way longer than I should have.


4) I love to do the Sunday New York Times Crossword Puzzle in ink. I HATE it when someone tries to "help" me by blurting out answers over my shoulder.


5) I love Coconut flavored Coffee-Mate liquid creamer. I also like Toffee Nut flavor. I don't like Blueberry Cobbler flavor, though I love real Blueberry Cobbler. Mmmmm. Cobbler.


6) In my career thus far I have done the following: sat with people as they died, watched surgeons remove all the organs from a brain-dead person, watched a baby be delivered, had babies taken from their mothers because of drug use during pregnancy, walked into a hospital room to see a mother holding her dead babies. After this last one, I quit that job.


7) I would like to write a book. Or more accurately, I would like to have written a book.


8) I'm excellent at reading maps.

The Outlook Wasn't Brilliant...

People who know me know that I love baseball. They know that, at our house, we always eat dinner in the dining room, except during October. They know that I adopted a dog from a humane society and named him Willie Mays. They know that I decided I was going to marry my husband when he surprised me on my birthday with plane tickets to NYC and two seats on the first base line to see the Yankees take on the Red Sox on a Friday night. They know that my most prized possession, prior to having children (who are not a possession, but you know what I mean), is my baseball signed by Bucky Dent and Derek Jeter. They know that I gave my oldest son the middle name Aaron for a reason.


Warts and all, I love baseball. And I believe that baseball is one of those things that you can't teach a person to love, just like you can't teach a dog person to be a cat person. Maybe you can introduce her to a really awesome cat, for whom she might develop a particular attachment, but when faced with her choice of pet, she goes canine every time.


I have a friend who says, "I don't trust people who don't like Bruce Springsteen." I feel similarly about baseball. I don't trust people who don't like baseball. And when I say that, I mean real baseball. Not the kind with the big, splashy home runs in every game (boring.) But the kind that involves strategy (Yes! Baseball has strategy!), psychological gamesmanship, and the balletic artistry of a sure-handed shortstop turning a double play.


So being a lover of baseball, this has been a difficult day. I don't like to see my game disgraced, and I do think this is utterly disgraceful. It's not the prevalence of the steroids: I'm not naive, I've noticed that certain players have developed muscles on their ears. (you'll notice that my Baby Daddy, Derek Jeter, was not named anywhere. He's all real.) It's the way the game condoned it and even encouraged it. Having read most of the Mitchell Report today, when I should have been working, the most disturbing part was how the scouts, coaches, and team staff would assess certain players by saying, for all intents and purposes, "he was on the stuff, he's not on the stuff now, but he needs to get back on the stuff if he's going to be of any use to us." So not only do they not care that he abuses these harmful drugs, they want him to get back to doing it so they can squeeze a few more useful years out of the old guy. At the same time, these businesspeople are doing all they can to stall any attempts at testing players randomly.

I will leave it to the sports pundits to eloquently analyze the evidence in this report. And I will leave it to the cynics to say that baseball is a business, pure and simple, and that thinking otherwise is childish. Instead, I'm going to survey the horizon for baseball's next great hero...and there will be one. Baseball always resurrects itself.

Baseball has survived many horrific scandals. It has a long history of racism, greed, cronyism, corruption, and drug abuse. So why do I love it and continue to believe in it? I love it because, aside from being a fantastic way to spend a hot summer afternoon, it reflects so perfectly our American culture and society. It acknowledges its problems--though sometimes only under duress--then attempts corrective action. Maybe not consistently, maybe not successfully, but always in public. Based on that history, I'm gambling that baseball will right itself. In a few years, there will be a sincere, hardworking, talented young player to guide the game in a new direction: back to double steals, sacrifice bunts, screwballs, and inside-the-park home runs. In keeping with current trends, he'll likely be from another country (Korea?!) where this is the common style of play. Better yet...Hapa All Stars anyone?

Too Much F*cking Perspective.

Max was my “first best friend,” as he likes to say, back when he was Judy. Max was born intersexed, and the doctors performed an immediate sexual assignment surgery after his birth, then told his parents to raise him as a girl. So they did. And that girl, Judy, was my constant companion from kindergarten through junior high. Judy was a wonderful friend. Unlike other girls, she was never catty, cliquish, or cruel. She accepted me unconditionally and we didn’t squabble or compete, like I did with other girls. Her family invited me over every year to decorate their Christmas tree. We had frequent sleepovers. She was creative and brilliant. In first grade, we wrote satirical “newspapers,” skewering our teachers, families, and general issues pertinent to a suburban 6-year-old. She liked Root Beer. She had a T-shirt with the iron-on initials JEB, so I called her Jeb. She introduced me to Mad and Cracked magazines. We memorized the dialogue of “Star Wars,” (the first one, the real one) and would recite it to each other.

When I got back in touch with Max, he told me he had cancer. Vaginal cancer, but he seemed to be in a remission and was working fulltime, raising a family. This didn’t last long. The cancer spread to his lungs, and probably elsewhere in his body, and did not respond to treatment. He is terminal, with a life expectancy at this point of 3 to 4 weeks. I wanted to be among the faces he saw in these final days, so I flew to Atlanta for a weekend visit. I took a cab from the airport to the home of Max’s friends, Jennifer & Dale. They put me up in their third-floor nanny’s quarters and had generously also offered to chauffeur me around. Upon arriving, I learned that Max had been hospitalized that day because of constipation. He hadn’t pooped in nearly 2 weeks and was in significant pain. So the plans were going to change around a little, but I didn’t mind. That first night another of Max’s friends picked me up and drove me to Max’s house so I could meet his family. I visited a little with Tamara, Max’s wife, and met their kids. We ate ice cream and I helped her give baths and read books. Then she packed them in the car and drove me back to my accomodations.

I slept somewhat late the next morning, then showered and went downstairs to deal with the day. I played with the kids for a while, and had a couple cups of coffee. I was in no hurry to get to the hospice, even though this was the stated reason for my visit. I knew it was going to be rough and was procrastinating. Dale offered to drive me to the hospice and pick me up when I was ready, and finally we headed out. On the way, we stopped to get some supplies that Max had requested like “decent coffee” and some Vitamin Water.

The hospice looked like a regular doctor’s office from the outside. It was by the side of a road, not far from a strip mall, just kind of unassumingly sitting there. We buzzed to get in and found Max’s room right away. He looked horrible. Like someone dying of cancer. Gaunt. Gray. Weak. I put down my things and hugged him. He grabbed ahold of me hard and held onto me for a long time. Dale excused himself and left. I pulled up a chair so we could face each other and talk. We had about 15 or 20 minutes of conversation about how he was feeling, his current medical issues, and some other facts like that. I was handling the topics well, albeit clinically, and felt like I was on solid emotional footing. We talked about his parents, his kids, and his plan to come back as a red-tailed hawk.

Intermittently, Max would wince with abdominal pain. His belly looked distended and he told me about his constipation. He also told me that he had a “fistula.” Fistula is kind of a general medical term, but in this case it refers to an opening that had developed between his rectum and his vagina. More like a tear, really, from all the strain. And since Max’s vagina was created in the operating room, it was not meant to withstand much pressure. Consequently, anything that came out of his rectum also came out of his vagina and vice versa. It also meant that enemas were useless to resolve his problem as the fluid just looped back around came out the va-jay-jay. I could see that he also had double nephrostomies, which are tubes that go through his back and right into his kidneys to drain his urine. His insides are so full of cancer that it is choking off the ureters that lead from the kidney to the bladder. The urine backs up into the kidneys then. So they put these tubes in and his urine drains out the back into two little bags.

After talking for a while, Max told me he thought he was going to “get some action,” and would I help him to the bathroom. He cautioned me that he had trouble moving his legs and would need assistance getting out of bed. When he drew back the bedcovers, I could see that his emaciated upper body sat atop distended, bloated hips and elephantine legs. It was as if he was wearing the back end of the horse costume in a cartoon. He had severe edema in both legs, left over from his chemo, and was probably carrying 40 lbs of water in just his lower half. Amazingly, he steadied himself on these pilings, and shuffled to the bathroom. He was wearing a Depends, which I helped pull down, and I seated him on the toilet and left to get him some rubber gloves, as he was going to have to perform a manual disimpaction on himself.

Just after I had my first son, I had some pretty severe constipation and ended up passing out once on the toilet. I was afraid this might happen to Max, so I pulled a chair up to the door of the bathroom, which I kept ajar, then asked him if it would be okay if I sat there to be sure he was safe. He was fine with that. As I read the issue of Mad magazine I had brought, I could hear him grunting, straining, moaning, and ultimately succeeding in moving his bowels. After that first passing, the floodgates were open and he began to have explosive and unrelenting diarrhea. Every time he tried to get up and clean himself, it would strike again. We called for the nurse several times to help him get into the shower and rinse off, but then he would soil himself in the shower as well. So there I was, sitting in the visitor’s chair outside the door, talking to Max while he painfully shit his brains out all over the bathroom. Shit coming out of everywhere. The stench, I might add, was staggering. Occasionally he would ask me to get him something, and I would deliver it to him while he sat on the can: Some water, a tissue, a washcloth, etc. In all the years we were best friends, I had never seen Judy on the toilet. But Max did not hold to these formalities.

After about an hour of this torment, Max was ready to get back to bed. He rose from the toilet, blue-lipped and shivering. I helped him to bed and wrapped him with extra blankets, like I would my child. I lowered his head a little as he said he was dizzy. Then I brought the chair close to the bed and held his hands, which were like ice. He closed his eyes and said to me, “I’m okay with this. Are you okay with this?”
“This is the reason I came to see you,” I answered. “There is no place I would rather be right now.”
“I love you,” Max said.
“I love you, too, buddy. And I always will.”
Then we talked a little about what brought us together as friends. Then Max told me, “I have to go to the bathroom again, but I’m too weak to make it. I’m just going to go in this diaper. I hope you don’t mind.” He did that several times and then fell asleep. I kept holding his hand. He dozed for about 15 minutes, talking unintelligibly in his sleep, then awoke. I went to get the nurse to help him get cleaned up. She got him back into the bathroom, where he endured another bout of this painful, uncontrollable expulsion. Again, I sat outside the door and talked with him while he moaned, bleeted, and sweated through this episode. This time he went into the shower afterward and was able to get back into bed. Once comfortably settled there, he asked for a few items from the store. I made a list and ventured out to the Publix market about ¼-mile down the road. It felt good to be outside in the fresh Georgia air, not breathing in the stench of old shit, but I was still bracing myself, kind of talking myself through it. Once I had the Chap-stick, Gatorade, ginger ale, toothbrush and toothpaste in hand, I walked back to the hospice. This time, Max’s door was shut. When I opened it, I saw two nurses at the bedside with Max rolled on his side. By the smell it was obvious that he had soiled himself and the sheets. They asked me to wait outside, so I went to the TV room and watched American Idol Rewind.

About 20 minutes later, the nurse let me know they were done. Once again, Max was all tucked in, but totally exhausted. By now I realized he really wanted to sleep, but was trying to stay awake for my benefit. I held his hand again and let him know it was okay to close his eyes. I eased his head back onto the pillow, and he began to breath rhythmically. Thinking he was asleep, I began to cry. Tears of pure grief. I felt his other hand gently pat my head, and his whispered voice saying, “it’s okay. I love you.”
I told him, “I wish I could say something deep right now that would really help, but I can’t think of anything.”
“Just love,” he said.
“I will always love you and always remember you,” I blubbered. “Whatever happens, Max, I hope it doesn’t hurt.”

Again we sat in silence, holding hands, and Max dozed off again. He talked in his sleep, but nothing I could understand. Except for one clear and distinct, “Wow!” I decided it was probably time for me to get going, so I phoned my hosts and Dale started out to pick me up. We agreed that he would call me when he was outside so I could say my good-byes in private. For that last 15 minutes, Max and I talked about our friendship, how we never had a fight, why we grew apart, and how pleased we were to have found each other again. I told him I would think of him always. Part of me couldn’t wait for the phone to vibrate in my pocket, letting me know my liberators had arrived. Another part of me dreaded the thought of walking out the door. When the time came to do it, I hugged Max one last time, told him I love him, and forced myself to walk away.

As soon as I hit the fresh evening air, tears came. I buried my face in my hands, walking toward Dale and his red mini-van. Next thing I knew, he scooped me up into a big bear hug and let me weap and sob all over him. I barely know this person, having spent an hour or two chatting with him for the first time that morning, and now I am dissolving into a vulnerable heap right before his eyes. But he handled it, and I thank him for that. It takes a unique person to surf that kind of emotional tsunami, especially from a stranger.

I’m kind of exhausted just from typing all this out. Not sure I have a point, exactly. I just needed to purge it. If you’re still with me, thanks for reading it.

Is Giuliani "Interesting?"

I read the following on The Huffington Post today:

"Per the Jewish news service JTA, top Giuliani aide Ken Kurson told a Jewish audience last night in New York that if Bill Clinton was "the first black president," than the former New York mayor would be the first Jew to reach the White House. Kurson was referring to Giuliani's support among Jews in New York and, presumably, his backing of Israel."

Of course, after reading this I was intrigued. Is Rudy really a Brew? They found out that John Kerry had a little Hymie in him, remember? And General Wesley Clark does, too. So I thought it was worth taking a look at this possibility. Let's examine the evidence:

Rudy was born in Brooklyn. So far, he's looking pretty Jewy. Not a Bronx Indian, but still pretty strong.

His father was a criminal who did time in Sing Sing, after which he became a Mafia enforcer. Hmmm. That sounds less than completely Yid to me.

Giuliani is a Yankees fan. This could swing either way, and surely there are plenty of Burger Yankee fans. So we'll put this in the neutral column.

Most members of his family are either policemen or firemen. Are you kidding? Unless you count that whole Burning Bush thing, Jews aren't firemen. Or cops. Have you ever known a Jewish cop? Jews are lawyers, and maybe even criminal prosecutors, but they aren't cops.

He was the Chief of Police of New York. This is a position never held by a Jew before or since. And since Giuliani is not identied yet as a Jew, it's a position that has never been held by a Jew. I rest my case.

He was the Mayor of New York: Big-time job for the Red Sea Pedestrians in recent years. Beame, Koch, LaGuardia (part Jewish), Bloomberg. You get the picture. So he gets some points here.

Rudy married his second cousin--very shtetl-fabulous--but then had the marriage annulled because he said he thought they were third cousins when they wed. What kind of mishegoss is that? Annullment? No such thing for the 5-3-9. In the tribe, if you want your marriage "annulled" you stop talking to each other and instead communicate via your children. e.g. "Tell your father to put the leftover brisket in a tupperware." "Tell your mother that her brisket was dry and not worth saving."

I'm sure you will agree, that after this complete analysis of the evidence, I must conclude that Giuliani is about as Jewish as paying retail for a Christmas ham.

WTF

Once again, I find myself struck dumb by a post on Kimchi Mamas. Here is today's pearl:

"I've dated many Jewish guys (am dating one right now) and many of my BFFs (Best Friend Forevers) have been Jewish too. I've noticed that what Asians (regardless of religion) and Jews have in common is the drive for success. Jewish comedians often talk about nagging moms, moms bragging about their sons and daughters' education, jobs, etc...I'm wondering if others on this board have noticed this too...
Posted by: Cynthia C Thursday, November 01, 2007 at 08:20 "

First, I love how she literally tells us that some her best friends are Jews. Then the knish queen lumps all the Jews together, based on stereotypes she has heard from Jewish comedians, and indulges in some facile, race-baiting sweeping generalities about Jews & Asians. Who is this broad? And does she mean to imply that Latinos, African-Americans, Whites, and Christians do not have a drive for success?

TMI

As a corollary to yesterday's post: Last night, Booper and I are doing the whole night-night snuggle routine.
He asks me, "When a lady has a baby in her tummy, how does it get out?" (There are several pregnant moms at his school, so this topic has been getting a lot of air time.)
I responded, "Ladies have a tunnel where the baby comes out."
Booper: "Is it your belly button?"
Me: "No. It's down lower, in the private area."
Booper: "Can I see yours?"
Me: "No. It's private."
Booper: "But I'm in your family!"
Me: "I know you are in my family. But there are some parts of a lady's body that are private, even if you're in the same family. "
Booper: "I want to see it."
Me: "You can't see it. But I will tell you about it. It's called a vag!na. And it's a tunnel that opens up so the baby can come out. Sometimes a lady has a doctor with her when the baby comes out, to help her, so that's why she goes to the hospital."

Christ, almighty. I can't believe I said the word "vag!na" to my kid. In fact, I can't believe I had this whole fucking conversation with Booper. Lately he is walking around the house with a stuffed penguin under his shirt, telling me that he is going to have a baby. Two nights ago, he fell asleep like that. Then this morning he had the penguin on the kitchen table and notified me that he had delivered my grand-penguin this morning. He hasn't picked a name yet.

Oh, and yesterday we were in a ladies room where they had a tampon/maxipad machine. Of course, he wanted to know all about it and what "those things" are used for. Fuck. I thought having boys was going to free me from these conversations.

Reveal Yourself?

Booper likes to play a little game at night after his bath. Once Daddy has toweled him off, he runs downstairs in the buff and jumps on the couch next to me, yelling "Here is your nude dude!" He is very sad if he doesn't get a chance to do this at night.

This morning, I was getting dressed for work and Booper was hanging out with me in my room. He is now 4 years old and in the throes of ,what I believe is, his Oedipal phase. I was standing there in my "altogether" and realized that maybe he is getting to the age when I shouldn't allow him to see me like that anymore. I told him, "Booper...when it starts to make you feel weird or uncomfortable to see me without my clothes on, just tell me. I'll stop doing it, okay?" He said, "I will never feel weird to see you without your clothes on, Mommy."

Sometimes it's purely a logistical issue. I am home alone with both boys in the morning getting myself ready for work and them ready for school. I'm bound to be naked at some point in this process, but need to keep the door open so I can keep an eye on them.

And all this got me to thinking....

What's the consensus out there? Do you still let your (male) kids see you naked? If not, why not? And at what age did you stop? Did you see your parents naked when you were a kid? At what age did you stop seeing your opposite sex parent naked, and how did you feel about it?

Reveal Yourselves!

Once again, I am following in the footsteps of the much-beloved Halfmama, and asking my readership to Delurk Now! It's lonely at the top, one is the loneliest number, misery loves company, etc. So c'mon you MoFos, show yourselves!

In other exciting news, The Caboose pooped in the potty last night. A completely unprovoked and spontaneous act of dumpage. I guess preschool and the Booper have inspired him to get on board with the commode. I'm sure I looked like a total idiot dancing around the house, carrying a piece of Baby Bjorn molded plastic filled with sh*t, but a mother's love knows no bounds. He looked so cute sitting there, with his book, that I took his picture and now have photo documentation of his first foray into getting a fax from Mr. Brown. You know that's getting whipped out on prom night!

Where the Wild Things Are

In case you haven't checked out his blog, linked to this page, I want to introduce you to my friend Max.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/gender/beck.html

I've known Max since kindergarten, when we became best friends. We were inseparable. If you think of the kid that is best friends with your kid, that was me and Max. We stayed that way until 5th grade, when the unique and confusing pressures of junior high conspired to put distance between us. We were in a play together in high school, but once we went off to college, we fell completely out of touch.

For the last year or so, I have been lucky enough to have Max back in my life. But he is not doing well. Right now, he is asking everyone and anyone to put their spiritual energy behind him to bring him comfort, relief, and an end to what has been 41 years of unbelieve suffering, often in secret. If you pray to anything or anyone, and you have room in there for one more, please include Max. Thanks.

Turtle Droppings

I had a mysterious message on my cell phone yesterday. The Caboose's preschool teacher left a voice mail saying that one of her "friends" bit the Caboose on the back because he wanted to look at her book. She kept saying, "my friend" bit the Caboose, "my friend" didn't want to share the book, etc. At first, I thought there was some grown-up pal of hers hanging out at school biting toddlers. And while the Caboose is about as delicious as they come, I do believe one should show some self-restraint when it comes to actually sampling the goods. When I phoned her back, she explained that it was another Turtle that bit him, but she can't tell me who, so she calls this person "my friend." What gives? I mean, they're right. If she told me who it was, I would no doubt judge this child mercilessly and harbor secret resentment toward her parents. (I was able to ascertain that it was a girl Turtle.) But goddamit, I want to know who bit my kid!

In other news, I am starting to get the feeling that one of you loyal readers is also the parent to a fellow Alligator at the preschool. If you are, please give me the secret handshake or something so we "come out" to each other. Why do I say this? Well, this morning we all approached the school together, me with my two and you with your adorable Hapa son. Mr. Blog Reader said, "So Booper was out sick on picture day, huh?" Now either he is an incredibly observant parent who somehow noticed that my son was not in the class photo, nor did he receive any individual pictures, or he HAS BEEN READING MY BLOG! If it's the latter, come out come out whereever you are.

Can you stand it?

Caboose's first official school photo. Sadly, The Boop was out sick this day so we don't have one for him this year.

I found this amusing.

Diversidad

While reading some of my favorite Mommy Blogs, I notice that a lot of families out there are bumping up against racial intolerance, ignorance, and idiocy, especially when it comes to their Hapa children. I have experienced this also, but only when we travel outside our blissful liberal bubble. In our day-to-day lives, we remain largely untouched by this pervasive problem. In fact, one of the great pleasures of living in the city by the Bay is that we don't have to deal with this AT ALL. My hetero-normative nuclear family is downright Republican by SF standards, and we raise nary an eyebrow. If people notice anything it's that I am taller than my husband. If you really want to shake people up, trying messing with the "rules" that the man has to be taller and older. (One year, I wanted to go to a Halloween party dressed as Angelina Jolie and Maddox, but the Handyman wasn't into it. Killjoy.)


To back up my stance, I did an informal poll this morning at preschool. In Booper's class, of 22 kids--many of whom are there only parttime--there are 8 biracial (mostly Hapa) kids and 4 kids of color. There may be more mixed-race kids that are not immediately obvious to me. In the Caboose's class of 12, he has 4 Hapa kids, a special needs boy, and 3 children of color. Caboose's teachers are Persian, Ukrainian, Korean, and Mexican, some immigrants, some children of immigrants, some adopted from their homeland. Booper's teachers are Brazilian and White. BTW, this is the only white teacher at the school. The school boasts a map of the world on one wall, with photos affixed to the home countries of all the teachers and staff, including the above plus Peru and Guatemala.

I love this about San Francisco. What I also love about the City by the Bay is the other types of diversity. One example involves this guy:




This is Woody. He works the counter at Orphan Andy's in the Castro. He makes the city's best chocolate milkshake. And one of the boys' favorite things to do is ride the vintage F Line (see above, an example of a vintage train from Milan, Italy) to his little cafe and order one of these delicious cups of creamy goodness. Woody is what you might call "a colorful character." He always wears a kilt. He frequently wears a studded black leather belt that says "Nudist." (It tickles me no end that he wears an article of clothing that reads "nudist." That's like carrying a gun that reads "pacifist.") And he usually has a T-shirt on that makes me glad my kids can't read. This past Saturday, his shirt read, "Girlie Man." He also is incredibly friendly and loves kids. He takes the time to answer all of Booper's questions about "Why do you have an earring in your nose?" "Did it hurt when they put it in?" "Why are you wearing a skirt?" and "How do you make this milkshake taste so good?" We look forward to visiting Woody and he is part of the fabric of life here.


But this last can prove thorny when dealing with preschoolers, who like things to be concrete. There is a boy in Booper's class who has two Mommies. Because all the kids quickly become attuned to who is whose Mommy/Daddy, this family set-up did not go unnoticed. In connection with that, there has been a lot of talk at school lately about marriage. One of the girls in Booper's class says she is going to "marry him." She says Booper is her "prince." (So I think we know where she is getting this from, thank you Walt Disney.) Booper asks a lot of questions--about everything--and has asked me many times if he can marry me. I tell him, "You can't marry me because I am your Mommy. Plus, I'm already married to Daddy." He will answer, "Will you and Daddy help me find a [FingKASIL] to marry?" "Don't worry, you will find someone wonderful to marry when you are grown up, and if you would like our help we will be happy to help you." He asks if, when he is married, he can still live with us. He also asks if he can marry The Caboose, figuring this would keep things simple since then they could just keep living in our house and we would all stay together. But I told him that brothers can't get married, either.


So putting all this together, the other night Booper asked, "Mommy, can two boys get married?"


Deep breath, and here we go. "Yes, but it depends where they live. In some places, it's okay for two boys to get married, and in some places it isn't."


"Can two boys get married in Africa?"


"No, they can't."

Why?"

"I don't know. But in Africa, it's against the rules. In some places, like Hawaii, two men can get married if they want to."

"I love Hawaii."

"Me, too."

So while we may have had that go-round wrapped up in a tight little bow, I know there is more to come. I feel like I want to be honest with the boys about the world. I want them to be open to people and not judge the way others live their lives, especially not based on the way they look. This is a complicated world, and I want to help them navigate the complexities and appreciate the textures. But when is the right time to start, without confusing them?

Great Moments in Parenting

Booper bounced back incredibly today, after spiking a 105 degree fever yesterday and subsequently being diagnosed with pneumonia. (Don't get me started.) Through the miracle of modern anti-biotics, he was feeling back to his old self today, albeit a little fatigued from fighting this nasty bug. So we decided to go out for dinner to our favorite sushi place, Blue Fin Sushi on Clement St. http://bluefinsushisf.com/

For reasons that remain a mystery to me, The Boop kept talking REALLY LOUDLY throughout the meal. I kept having to remind him to use his "inside voice" and take it down a decibel or three. Granted, it was kind of noisy in there in the first place, but his voice really travels. Mostly, I think he was just excited to be out of the house after being cooped up indoors since Wednesday, unable to raise the energy to even play Chutes & Ladders.

After dinner, Boop needed to go to the potty. (One of the unfortunate side-effects of the antibiotics is frequent poops), so I escorted him to the John and back, with the Caboose in tow. (He wouldn't want to miss anything important.) Once we returned to the table, Booper announced, "Daddy. I just went to the potty. AND I HAD A BIG DIARRHEA."

Hey buddy, I don't think they heard you on the East Coast.

Super.

Needless to say, we paid our bill and slithered out the door.

Day of Atonement--Please G-d, if I say sorry will you let the Yankees win the World Series?

It's that time of year again: Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. While this holiday is kind of confusing for kids (who rarely do much worth atoning for) it is kind of cool for adults. The deal, historically, is that everyone in the village gets together and publicly apologizes for all their transgressions during the previous year. As a group, we read aloud a list of "sins," apologizing for everything, whether we did it or not. In this way, we provide for each other a veil of secrecy because only we know which mistake actually applies personally to us. (i.e. "I apologized out loud for cheating on my taxes, which I didn't do, but I also got to apologize outloud for coveting my neighbors buttery suede purse, which I did."

In the olden days, the service was followed by a tradition of personally approaching each individual we had wronged, confessing our error, and offering a sincere apology. If done during the Yom Kippur holiday, the wronged person was obligated to accept the apology regardless.

Of course, like any human being, I am secretly hoping to get something in return for all this soul-baring torment. And this year, I am hoping G-d will see fit to let my Yankees win the World Series. They are making a run at their division right now, and I'm getting October baseball fever. To that end, I am paying tribute to the Chosen people who are currently active in the Major Leagues. Don't worry...it's a short list. While it would surprise no one to know that Jews have always had a prominent role in the management of sports, it may shock you to know that we also represent on the field.

Shawn Green: Currently on that great Jewish team, the NY Mets, Shawn started his career on the Dodgers (historically also strong for the Jews. Can you say Sandy Koufax?) According to a friend, he started a near riot in the synagogue circles of LA as they all competed actively for his membership when he first moved to town. Plus, he's hot! He posted 3 100-RBI seasons in the past, though this year he is struggling with injuries and not doing as well. Shandah, really.

Gabe Kapler & Kevin Youkilis: Two players for the Red Sox (puh puh puh.) Kapler has been around a while and is a solid player, but he spent the past year in a management role. He intends to return to active play next year. The life of a professional baseball player can be quite stressful. There's all the travel, the pressure to perform in a spotlight, your life constantly under a microscope, the invitations to Bar Mitzvahs. Youkilis is a rookie phenom at this time, so I am going to overlook the fact that he plays for Satan's team: The Bosox. He was involved in a mini-scandal in last week's game. The Yankee pitcher hit the firstbaseman with a pitch, and it was clear that this was unintentional. (He was in mid-swing when the ball hit his wrist.) The next time the Yankee firstbaseman came up to bat, the Red Sox pitcher promptly retaliated by throwing the ball right at him. Evil. But de rigeur for the majors. If he hadn't done it, his team would never let him forget it.

There are a few more players, none of them prominent enough to mention. sigh.

Whether baseball loyalty is more often passed on via matrilineal (like traditional Jewish identity) or patrilineal (the Reform movement theory) descent is a question for more extensive research. Nevertheless, my father's loyalty was to the Brooklyn Dodgers. When they moved west, he was forced to choose another team. Reluctantly, he went with the Yankees, and my love of Yankee baseball was born.

The Yankees haven't had many Jewish players (one exception was Ron "Boomer" Blomberg, who is remembered most for his having the distinction of being the first designated hitter in baseball history), but that has been more than made up for in my own mind by the Yankees' wise decision to bring a certified-kosher hot-dog stand to the stadium, something only a few other teams have done. Also, New York has probably had more Jewish mayors than any other city (Mayor Bloomberg keeps a box next to the dugout, which he recently loaned to Spike Lee, Brad Pitt, and their offspring for thenight.) Plus, I'll bet my Loehmann's membership points that their accountant is an MOT.

So during this most important of Jewish holidays--the holiest of the holy--please join me in atoning sincerely for any transgressions during the year. (Trust me, it feels good.) And while you are in touch with your own personal diety, would you mind asking her/him/it/them to give the Yankees a little extra push this year? If sports personality post-game interviews are any indication, it seems She/He/It/They is the one who deserves the credit anyway. But that's another post....

Quietly murmured
at Saturday services,
Yanks 5, Red Sox 3

Question of the Day

I linked over to KimChi Mamas today for OpenThread Thursday. Here is the question: "Would you send your child to a different-faith school? Would you be okay with your kid learning about a religion very different from your own? I went to an Anglican school, and while my religion, Roman Catholicism, belongs in the same category (i.e. both Christian), there were plenty of non-Christian students there too. But my Jewish boyfriend found it interesting/shocking that parents would do that. What would you do?"

Here is my initial comment in response: "I confess openly to a double-standard on this one. I would not send my children to a non-Jewish parochial school, but I have no problem with non-Jewish kids attending the local Hillel house. As complicated and anxiety-provoking as the elementary school situation is in our city, I could not get down with a parochial school if it's not a Jewish school. I am just too uncomfortable with the idea that they might come home and want to talk about the Big JC, and what "he would do."

Now that I am considering it more deeply, I think I am much more at home debunking orthodox Judaism than I am with criticizing any other religion. So if the grunion came home spouting off on why we don't keep kosher, I would feel very comfortable explaining the inherent contradictions and obsolete beliefs on which that ritual is based. But if they came home telling me about the Resurrection, I would feel less qualified, though more motivated, to give them my two cents.
I can offer no rational explanation of this stance. It fits right alongside the fact that I have been a devout vegetarian for 21 years, but I LOVE a pair of buttery suede shoes. (Or purse. I'm good with a suede purse, too.)"

Then another poster added this comment: "FingKASIL, what if this parochial school isn't really a parochial school? Many prep schools are historically Christian, and still require chapel attendance. Yet, they are not marketed as "parochial."

Also, would you allow your child(ren) to take a course on world religions that may require them to attend services of a variety of faiths?"

And that's when I started getting pissed off. Cynthia: I believe that any school that requires chapel attendance, is, by definition, a parochial school. To make a determination about whether to enroll my children, I would have to attend a service. If the service was based in Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., I feel it might be confusing for my children and discordant with the spiritual guidance they receive at home.

As for "allowing" them to take a World Religion class, even one requiring attendance at faith-based services, that is an easy one: Short of "Bombmaking 101" and "How to Hack Into Online Porn: A Seminar," I would support them in enrolling in any class about which they have a genuine interest. Should they elect to pursue one of these faiths because it rang true for them, they would have my total support. But that is a choice that *they* make, not one I make for them.

To me, this whole thing smacks of the kind of obliviousness that you typically see among dominant cultural groups, in this case Christians, but White Entitlement is the same animal. When you are comforably ensconced in the dominant cultural group, you accept your worldview as the "correct" world view or, worse, the only worldview. As if being Christian is the natural human state. And you arrogantly believe that everyone else should fall in line with these beliefs because that is "how we've always been." So when one says that a school , founded on Christian religious tenets, that requires chapel attendance, is not a parochial school, I am flummoxed. What if I opened a school and called it Joe's Secular Elementary School? I "marketed" it as an independent private school, but required all the students to attend synagogue daily, would this not be a parochial school? Does the same standard not apply when we're talking about a Christian School?

This reminds me of a business conference I attended recently. Nothing religious about it. At the group luncheon, we had a brief speech from the president of the company. After giving his little motivational talk for 15 minutes, he ended with, "Now let us all bow our heads in prayer. In Jesus' name, we pray...." Another perfect example of the clueless assumption that we're all Christians unless we prove otherwise.

Oh...brother

An argument for nature over nurture, also known as, He Gets That From My Husband. Overheard yesterday, while the boys were playing: " [Caboose], I am going to choose what game we play and you're just going to have to deal."

Overheard this morning while driving to preschool:

Caboose: Ambooyans! Ambooyans! (translation: ambulance!)

Booper: Aliens? Where do you see Aliens? Are Aliens nice, Mommy?

People Are Stupid

I'm grumpy today, I know. But that doesn't change the fact that people are stupid. Once again today I read a story in the paper about someone who left their child alone in the car, in some parking lot, while s/he went in a store for over 30 minutes. Fortunately, this time someone saw the child screaming and sweating in the car seat and called police to release her. The nanny was arrested for child endangerment.

What is wrong with people?

Every summer it seems like there is this spate of cases where the parents or caregivers "forget" that their kids are in the backseat of the car, then leave them there for hours, only to return and find them dead. And every time I hear one of these stories, I try to imagine a scenario in which I might become so overwhelmed by the day's tasks that I would also make this mistake. But I can't. I can't. I can't wrap my mind around it. Can you? I have two kids, work fulltime at a family-owned business, run a household, all that stuff. But I still can't imagine forgetting my kids are in the car and leaving them there, windows up, doors locked. What's more, I can't imagine not giving them another thought for the next 6 to 8 hours while they suffocate. That's the part that really baffles me. Have you ever gone that long without thinking of your children, and what they are doing at the moment? Do you not have a photo of them somewhere on your desk that would stimulate you to remember them?

My son has a friend. His mother is a wonderful person and lots of fun. Worries incessantly that her children should go to the right schools, etc. I know she cares about them deeply. But sometimes when she comes over, she'll come in the front door with her older son and I'll ask, "where's The Baby?" To which she replies, "He's sleeping in the car. I think it's safe, don't you?" No. No I don't think it's safe. I don't think it's safe to leave your baby sleeping in a car that is parked on a city street. I have even gone so far as to move my car out of the garage and move her car into the garage so at least The Baby sleeps inside the locked garage with all the windows down and not on some dangerous urban thoroughfare. (Okay, I'm exaggerating. My street is not a thoroughfare. But I do live in a city.)

Am I the crazy one here? Do other Moms leave their kids alone in the car? Why do people keep doing this?

The Halmuni Review

As advertised, Harabuji and Yoko came to visit last week. Sweet people, both of them, and we had a very enjoyable time. To be frank, I love anyone who loves my kids. And those two really dote on them and shower them with affection and complements, so what's not to love? Yoko has her heart in the right place, tries very hard to be helpful (even if this means cramming my fridge with unidentifiable food stuffs), and takes great care of Harabuji, which is a mitzvah, as my people would say.

So what up with the Halmuni?

Well...it went down a little something like this. Right from the get go, we stuck with calling her Yoko. This was fine until the day that H & Yoko took the kids to the zoo. I learned, via Booper, that on the outing they were encouraged to call her Halmuni. To complicate matters, later that evening we were talking about ways in which our sons are similar to the Huz, a.k.a. The Handyman, at the same age. For fun, Handy decided he would bring up a digital photo of himself and his family from back in the day. So there is Harabuji, Handy, HalfMama, Komo, and Halmuni (the real Halmuni) in living color. Booper asks who is who in the picture, and Handy runs it down. Once he says, "and this is Halmuni," there was utter silence. Crickets, people.

Long. Awkward. Silence.

But that's as close as we came to bringing up the subject. Healthy, huh? We just ignored it and hoped it would go away. Which it seemed to do. For now.

On another topic, I don't know how many of you out there follow baseball, but I do, avidly. And while I will save all my baseball opinions for another time, and warn you in advance so you can avoid that post, I just have to take the opportunity to say publicly that I feel Barry Bonds is a complete and utter tool. I cannot scrape together one iota of enthusiasm for his new "record" and I'm just counting the days until A-Rod or someone else can break it and rid us of this plague. It's no mistake that the Booper's middle name is Aaron.

Just Don't Call Me Late for Dinner

This week, we are getting a visit from the in-laws. Well, the quasi-in-laws. I'll explain. As some of you may know from HalfMama, my mother-in-law passed away a few years ago. I won't even try to explain how sad this is for all of us, even now, and I will move on to the point of my post. (And this is where you Kimchi Mamas come in.)

My FIL, harabuji, is coming to visit with his "lady friend" of about 2 years, let's call her Yoko. (I know this is linguistically/culturally inaccurate, but the name fits her on a pop-culture level.) One afternoon, after harabuji began dating Yoko, he phoned me at my office. I could count on one hand how many times my FIL called me at my office, and always it had to do with my MIL's medical issues, so I feared for the worst. After hemming and hawing for about 20 minutes, he finally told me that he was calling to say that "something happened to him" and that he had "fallen in love." He was calling to ask me to help him tell his children. While honored, not to mention astounded that I had the inside track on some juicy family gossip, I felt uncomfortable with this assignment and did not know what to do. (Was this a Korean thing? Just a My Family thing?) That evening, I sat the Huz down on the couch and spilled the Mung beans. He took it like a champ, and told his sisters, with all of them stepping up nobly to the plate to express their happiness to their father.

This is the second time that Yoko and Harabuji have come to visit us, and this time they are staying in a B&B near our house, as opposed to in our house as they did last time. (Can you say awkward moments?) Before their arrival last time, I asked the Huz, as well as my FIL, what my son should call Yoko. I did not want my boy to appear disrespectful and I was unfamiliar with the mores of this particular situation vis a vis Korean culture. FIL told me it would be okay for him to call her by her first name. I even asked Yoko herself, and she said it was okay to use the first name. During the visit, however, when Huz and I were not around, harabuji asked my son to call Yoko halmuni. (As he had previously done with Buddy & Bean.) Later that week, I told Huz that harabuji wants the kids to call Yoko halmuni. He looked sternly in the mirror while adjusting his tie and said, "That's not going to happen." So we went right on our merry way, calling her by her first name.

Now they are returning, and both boys can talk, so we will have to revisit the issue, I'm afraid, with The Caboose. Huz, HalfMama, and I are all very uncomfortable with calling this woman Halmuni. She is not Halmuni. Halmuni was the Huz's mother, and we show the boys her picture all the time and call her Halmuni. This other lady, while sweet to my children, is not their Halmuni in our eyes. So here's my question to you, Kimchi Mamas:

Is it widely accepted, in Korean culture, to call an older woman Halmuni, regardless of whether she is your grandmother? Is there some other term of respect that my children can use that would be appropriate? In my world, Grandma is reserved only for Grandmas. Is Halmuni the same?

Lacking fins or tail
the gefilte fish swims
with great difficulty

Grasping at Straws

I don't know how some moms do it, but I can never find time to exercise. I work full-time, own my own business, and have the two spawn you have heard so much about. But recently I discovered something that is working surprisingly well. FitTV. Does anyone else watch it? I've TiVo'd a couple of shows, then I watch them with the boys in the living room. Mostly they are cardio shows from the All-Star Workouts series. Either hip-hop dance or kickboxing. They have music, colorful outfits, and vivacious teachers. Booper & The Caboose love to do it with me, and as long as they aren't lifting any weights, the doc said it's really safe. So they (pretty much) let me complete the class, then might toddle off to play with toys and return later. But I'm breaking a sweat. Has anyone else tried this? Know of any good shows that would fit the bill?

One caution: I try to avoid the shows with a lot of jumping. After two babies, I have a tendency to leak. Does anyone else share this secret shame?

Oh...and before I forget, today is HalfMama's birthday. Big shout out to Mo' Komo. I would wish her a night of drunken debauchery, but she had that already.

Jewish triathlon:
gin rummy, then shopping wholesale,
followed by a nap

The Invisible Woman

Monday is my birthday. I turn 41. Yawn. Nothing important or milestone-esque about it. Just another year under my ever-tightening belt. I am wondering if this means I am middle-aged now. If you get an average of 80 years or so, I am entering the second half, right?

I hear what you're saying, "it sure beats the alternative," and I agree. But it's on my mind just the same. Sure, some things are better now that I'm older, but none of them have to do with my body or appearance. My relationship with my mother is better, and this is no small thing. My level of confidence in myself to "get shit done" is better. I can always get shit done, and well, when I need to. I have a beautiful family, a devoted husband, lots of friends, a warm and safe home, blah blah blah. And I'm thankful, really. (I want to be sure that, if there is a G-d, he hears me say I'm thankful. Because it's widely accepted among Jews that if you are not appropriately thankful for your blessings in life, they will promptly disappear.)

Now comes the part where I start complaining. (It's also widely accepted among Jews that if you stop complaining for even one second, G-d will give you something new to complain about.) I am turning into an invisible woman, i.e. I am no longer hot. There was a time, long ago, when I would walk down the city streets and have all kinds of dudes check me out. All colors, ages, shapes, sizes. I know that some women don't like this, but I found it empowering. I would think, "that's right, *sshole, check out what you are never going to have." I will confess to you that my self-esteem got a little boost every time I heard a whistle or obscene proposition. (I used to live in NYC, and my female coworkers and I regularly had a contest for who heard the most creative lewdness on her way to work that day.) I ignored each and every come-on, but then went right ahead and tucked that energy boost into my back pocket. I'm sure this is shallow of me, and I admit it only under the shroud of blog secrecy, but I dug it. It gave me a little charge. And as my coworkers and I would frequently state: "Just because a man is filthy, homeless, schizophrenic, and a junkie doesn't mean he can't appreciate a good-looking woman."

Lately, however, these looks are fewer and farther between. I delivered two babies, after the age of 35, and I think we all know the kind of collateral damage that entails. I have no time for pedicures, facials, or any of the other maintenance that used to be a regular part of my routine. I rarely have time to exercise. Dinner usually consists of whatever does not get eaten by the shorties. If I am walking with my sons, there is the occasional look of "you're not bad for an old broad with two kids." But when I'm alone, on my way to work, nothin' doin.' I am now just another of the nameless, faceless schlub women strolling the streets.

Am I the only one out there mourning the death of her hotness? Is this what drives women to Botox or lipo or The Mommy Makeover? I know the Huz has no problem with the way I look, so it's not about that. It's the changing identity that I'm struggling with. Anybody else out there feeling the same way?

The same kimono
the top geishas are wearing:
got it at Loehmann's

Better late than never

I forgot to tag this onto the last post:

A lovely nose ring--
excuse me while I put my
head in the oven.

My streak remains intact.

Jew/Not a Jew?

Back when the Howard Stern show was on terrestrial radio--and was funny--Howard used to have a regular feature called Jew/Not a Jew. This was a dial-in radio gameshow during which Howard would mention a well-known celebrity, then ask participants to guess whether this person was, in fact, a Jew. (This was a correlary to his other hilarious game, Dead or Alive.) And Howard, as a Jew, had license to find humor in this game, much like the way that only an African-American can use the "N" word.

Jew/Not a Jew is a game I play with my MOT friends all the time. Because the fact is that we are proud of the accomplishments of other Jews, simply by virtue of their Jew-dom. I know we are not alone in this: my husband and father-in-law have often demonstrated extreme fondness for K.J. Choi and Michelle Wie simply because they are Korean/Korean-American. And the huz was pulling for Paul Kim during the American Idol finals, though he will deny deny deny if you ask him about it.

J/NaJ comes with an interesting set of by-laws: What to do with the half-Jews of the world? Well, I will let you in on a little secret. Jewishness is considered to be matrilineal. Meaning that if your mother was a Jew, then you're a Jew. If your Daddy was a Jew, but your Mommy was a shiksa, then you are SOL my non-MOT friend. Perhaps an example will help illustrate:
Kyra Sedgwick = Jew.
Gwyneth Paltrow = Not a Jew.

Ready to play? Here are some celebrity names. Take your best guess. I'll post answers in the comments section:

Natalie Portman
Adam Sandler (if you can't answer that one, then you got no biznezz here)
Robin Williams
Michael Douglas
Harrison Ford
Jake & Maggie Gyllenhaal
Scarlett Johansson
Joss Stone
Selma Blair
Zach Braff
David Arquette
Brook Burke
Kate Hudson
Chelsea Handler
Joaquin Phoenix (not to mention River Phoenix.)
Leah Remini
Fred Savage
Winona Ryder
Alicia Silverstone
Phoebe Cates
Robert Downey, Jr.
David Duchovney
Jack Black

Plenty more where that came from. We're just getting warmed up. Wait until we move on to Rock Stars and Professional Athletes!

Chaji Update

In response to some of the comments from my last post--did I mention how much I appreciate the comments? I'm amazed anyone reads this thing, let alone comments on it--I have done some cursory research into the appropriateness of the word chaji. I have found the following:

1. Chaji is an acceptable Japanese word for Tea Ceremony. It may mean that in Korean also, but I can neither confirm or deny.

2. My son said "chaji" once in front of his Korean grandfather and his grandfather's equally Korean , not to mention old school, girlfriend and they both just giggled. No signs of outrage or disapproval.

3. If you google the word chaji, my blog comes up as the 6th entry! That's hot!

4. My husband can shed no light on whether chaji is considered an acceptable word to use for p*nis. No surprise here.

5. My other SIL (not halfmama), who is quite proper herself, has used the word chaji and heard us use chaji without any untoward reaction. If you knew her, you'd know that she is not the type to tolerate a lot of potty-mouth. Halfmama, on the other hand, can be counted on to scream "c*cks*cker" at the drop of a hat.

6. Someone's MySpace page contains the following: "massagie the chaji." Ew.

7. I see chaji listed in the lyrics of several Korean songs. This makes me wonder if it has some alternate meaning, or maybe Korean Gangsta Rap is a burgeoning genre.

Check please!

Remember when I said this? "I am okay with the idea that going to school means that he will be exposed to topics, behaviors, and words that we don't use at our house. Isn't that kind of the point? I can't control that and I can't control what the other kids see and hear when they are at home. I can only *try to* teach my kids how I expect them to behave, and control what they are exposed to in our house."

Well, the joke's on me. Yesterday I had Booper's parent/teacher conference at preschool. It all went beautifully and the teacher went on and on with his glowing review. At the end of the meeting, I asked her if there is anything we should work on with him or any areas where he needs more support. After reassuring me that we are "great parents," she offered some advice: "Booper is doing very well and is wonderful to have in class. But sometimes, when he is playing with certain older kids, he allows them to influence his behavior. They tell him to do things that he knows are wrong, and he can succumb to that pressure. So we are working on teaching him to stick with what he knows is right or wrong." I knew to what and who she was referring, and we resolved to reinforce this idea at home.

Cut to us at home that night, hanging out and playing in the living room. The boys were walking on my back (has anyone else tried this? It feels GREAT!) and we were giggling and having a wholesome family time. Then Booper dropped this bombshell: "I am going to touch you with my p*nis." SAY WHAT?! I knew this was something he picked up at school, especially because we call it a chaji at our house, not p*nis. But touching someone with it?! I tried not to panic and asked him,

"Where did you hear about touching someone with your p*nis?"

"I heard it from [Napoleonic Syndrome Boy]."

"Does he touch you with his p*nis?"

"yes. When we are at the potties." (The potties at his school are open and public. And during our occasional playdates I notice that they like to cross "streams.")

Has this kind of thing happened to anyone else? What did you do?

I felt that this was one of the "Slow down, buddy. I'm not ready" moments of motherhood. So I went over the idea that his chaji is private, so no one outside the family can touch it. And that he shouldn't use it to touch other people, for the same reason. He understood, and was sure to clarify that "I can touch my own chaji, right Mommy?" Say hello to my little friend. So, anybody out there have more experience with this than me? Normal 3-4-year-old development? Should I say something to his mother? And how to delicately broach the subject?

Harsh Scrabble discord--

someone has placed "putzhead"

on a triple word score.

Psychic Vampirates

My older son, let's call him Booper, age nearly 4, attends preschool. It's a lovely school and we are satisfied with it. So much so, that our younger son, The Caboose, is going to start attending in September. But like any school, there are the attendant issues. Lately, we have been grappling with two in particular. The first has to do with some of the other boys introducing Booper to words and concepts such as "shoot," "kill," "jail," and "dead." The other night he surprised me at bedtime by asking, "Mommy, how do pirates bite your neck and drink your blood until you die?" Ex-squeeze me? We have talked before about dying, which I consider to be a topic well inside my purview as his parent. But pirates that drink your blood? WTF? First, I clarified that it was vampires that are thought to drink your blood, not pirates, (verbal accuracy is important to me, even in these situations) and then explained that this is a "made up" story "to scare people" and not at all true. I noticed that the little friend who told him about this has a habit of telling Booper scary stories designed specifically to frighten him. He is somewhat older, but shorter, and I think this is his current manifestation of a nascent Napoleonic syndrome. Good luck with that, little man.

That seemed to satisfy Booper for the time being, and really, this is the secondary issue. I am okay with the idea that going to school means that he will be exposed to topics, behaviors, and words that we don't use at our house. Isn't that kind of the point? I can't control that and I can't control what the other kids see and hear when they are at home. I can only *try to* teach my kids how I expect them to behave, and control what they are exposed to in our house.

So what is the primary issue? At this point, the primary issue is not the talk of vampires, but rather the actual psychic vampires that loom in the form of other kids' mothers. What the fuck am I talking about? I'll explain.

There is another boy in Booper's class who is widely considered to be a monumental pain in the ass. He is very handsy with the other kids, doesn't listen well to adults, and is disruptive at every party/gathering/event. But this is not his fault, as his parents impose little structure and he is constantly testing the limits, with success in many cases. His mom made it plain that she wanted to arrange a playdate between her son and Booper, so we agreed to go to the zoo one weekend day. Pretty much from the get-go, the Wild Thing (about 10 months older and quite a bit taller) kept putting his hands on Booper. Hitting. Pushing. Pulling hair. One time he led Booper around a corner, out of eyesight momentarily, where he gave Booper a swat across the head and the Boop started to cry. His mother fecklessly told him to stop, with no results. I attempted to intervene, in that awkward way of wanting to discipline someone else's kid without coming off as a controlling bitch, but then he started manhandling the Caboose, and I was at my limit. Feckless Mom told him that, if he touched Booper or the Caboose again, they would have to leave. (I should say that she told him AGAIN that they would have to leave as she had threatened this in the past to no effect.)

Well you could see this stand-off coming like a parade down Main Street. The Wild Thing walked right up to Booper, and while looking his mother straight in the face and grinning his menacing grin, he smacked Booper again. FM turned to me and said, "What should I do? I don't know what to do." I looked her in the face and said, "You should take him home now. You told him you would take him home if he did it again, he did it, and now it's time to say goodbye." And with that, I took my kids' hands and walked away.

A week or so later, after multiple attempts, I thought I'd give FM and WT another try at a playdate. (She's Jewish, so I felt it was my duty to make the effort. If you are unclear on why I feel this level of guilt and responsibility, I refer you back to my previous post, Red Sea Pedestrian.) Here is the email chain:

FM writes: I am back from NY and around to schedule a get together with all of you when your schedule permits.We are open for any activity, if you all are interested. Let us know.

To which I respond: Looks like Huz is going to take both Saturday and Sunday off. Are you still free on Sunday? He is going to work on Monday, so I'll have the boys to myself. If Sunday is still good for you, maybe we can do something together then. What do you think?"

FM: Yes, we are available. Let me know what suits your schedule for time and place. We are open for anything.

Me: We are going to check out the Classic Car show tomorrow on Pier 45. It starts at 10:00 a.m., and we figure that we'll get there around 10:30. Some other friends plan to meet us there as well, also at that time. They have a son, 3, and another on the way. Are you guys interested? We are probably going to park downtown and take the F train to the Pier.

FM: Thanks for the invitation but I think we will pass due to late notice. Also, I guess I misunderstood your acceptance of our offer to get together. I guess I thought we were going to mutually agree upon an activity and spend some time together. Hopefully we can try and reschedule something in the future that works for both our schedules.

Where do I begin here? Is "we are open for anything" somehow code for "you must provide adequate notice of the plans, which may not include any other people, and I have veto power over them?" Did I miss the part where our one, arguably disastrous, playdate means that I owe you something? This may sound a little narcissistic, but I've got WAY TOO MUCH SHIT TO DO to worry about this kind of crap. If I want someone to make me feel guilty for not making enough time for them, I'll call my mother.

Am I over-reacting?

Anyhoozle, here's the real kick in the pants. I apologized to her! Why? Because I have to see her most every morning when I drop Booper off at school and I didn't want it to be awkward for him, or for her son, who can't help himself. We won't be scheduling any more playdates with them, but that's the price of playing poker. Now I am more cautious when it comes to these relationships. I put it right out there that I am not looking to playdate anyone exclusively. I'm telling you, it's a jungle-gym out there.

And now the moment you've all been waiting for:

Is one Nobel Prize
so much to ask from a child
after all I've done?

Red Sea Pedestrian

Now that I've opened the door to thoughts about race/religion/heritage, lots of ideas are trying to make a break for it. Most of these half-baked thoughts have to do with my relationship to my ethnicity, and some secret guilt about betraying my progenitors by marrying outside the religion. I've not shared this with many people, but isn't that what secret blogs are for?

I'll give you some background: As mentioned previously, I went to Hebrew School from age 6 to age 10. Three days a week we attended, twice during the week after a full day at regular school. Tuesday & Thursday we learned to read, write, and speak in Hebrew. Fairly benign stuff, though our teacher often threw in some Zionist propaganda just to be complete. Sundays we attended Bible study, covering the usual Old Testament suspects (Moses, Miriam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, etc.) The school had one teacher: Sybil. She was a single woman, living in an apartment near the temple, which seemed quite exotic to me at the time. I went there once with my mother--can't remember why--and the apartment was tidy and smelled weird. Sybil always wore a black turtleneck, black tights, and a gray or hounds tooth skirt. Even in summer. She had long black hair, showing the first signs of graying, which she wore piled on her head in a quasi-bun situation. She kept a lot of pens shoved in there. She wore glasses. Because of the size of the school, each class was comprised of kids ranging in age from 6 to 11. (After 11, you transitioned into a Bar/Bat-Mitzvah prep course with the Cantor. Years later, Sybil and the Cantor ran off together to live in Semitic sin.)

Sybil was a strange broad. She was pious and devout in her Judaism. She loved children, it seemed, and was affectionate toward us regularly. She always had snacks and cookies for us. But she also had this warped need to subject us to hours-long lectures regarding the gruesome details of life/death in the Nazi concentration camps. Our textbooks contained graphic and deeply disturbing photos of the prisoners in these death camps, and she would force us to look at them while she described their brutal tortures. I'll give you an example (IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH, SKIP THIS PART.)

One afternoon, Sybil got on the subject of the death camps and specifically the gas chambers. She told us about the death selection process, which we had heard before. We already knew about the tattoos, the shaved heads, the pulling of gold-filled teeth, the giving over of all clothes, shoes, etc. We knew that the Nazis made soap, lampshades, and sweaters from the fat, skin, and hair of their victims. She frequently reminded us that all children under the age of 15 were summarily put to death by the Nazis, so we should never forget that we would assuredly have been among the doomed. But on this day she went further, to describe how the prisoners were stuffed into the showers/gas chambers and the door was locked behind them. She told us how, when the gas began to flow, the elderly, the sick, the disabled, the women, and the children suffocated. During the suffocation, their bodies would secrete a sticky gel through their pores that caused them all to adhere together in piles on the floor. After the gassing, the doors were opened and other prisoners (usually the surviving male Jews) were made to remove the bodies with a pitchfork. (can you imagine hearing this at age 7?) After being lifted onto wheelbarrows, they were carted to the crematoria, where they were burned. Some of the people at the bottom of the piles were still alive, so they met their deaths in this fiery hell.

After traumatizing us in this way, Sybil would remind her pie-eyed charges that it was our personal responsibility to replenish the world's supply of Jews by marrying only a Jew and having Jewish babies. Talk about your guilt-wielding. Not only would we be a disappointment to our parents if we married outside the religion, we would also be personally colluding with Nazis. Fuck. Inevitably, someone in class would tell Sybil that we didn't have to worry about this kind of thing because we live in the United States, where we are free to be whatever we want to be. You fucking idiot! We have been down this road with Sybil before! Don't give her the "it can't happen here" line again! But someone always would, and then we'd be in for another 20 minutes about how it CAN happen here, and that all the Jews in Europe thought it couldn't happen to them and LOOK! So we must never trust anyone who is not a Jew. "But Sybil, no one in my family died in the Holocaust. My ancestors were already in the U.S. by then." Her reply:"Selfish child. It is not always what's in your family that matters. You owe it to the 6 million to repopulate the world." Now go forth and multiply.

Certainly my parents--both of whom are Jews--made it clear that they would prefer if I married a Jew, mainly from the standpoint that that's what they did so it seemed like a good idea at the time. But they ended up getting a divorce, so this kind of took away their credibility to make demands on my marital choices. My aunts and uncles--many of whom refuse to buy any German automotive products--stated plainly that they would not attend my wedding if I married outside the faith. Of course, by the time I actually got around to marriage (at age 35) this stance was long forgotten and they were all just happy to hear I wasn't going to be an old maid. The take-away: On the shame scale, spinster trumps shagitz every time. (For those who don't know, a shagitz is a gentile man.)

I'm not sure I have a point here. I think I just needed to share. My secret guilt over marrying outside my religion has a secret but intimate relationship with my secret insecurity about whether my Korean in-laws will accept me. And my secret guilt harbors secret resentment against all the self-hating Jewish men I dated who rejected me in favor of a less ethnic model.

I'm afraid this post was not all that funny, so let me end on a humorous note. Another from my catalog of Jewish haikus:

Testing the warm milk
on her wrist, she sighs softly
But her son is forty.

The Unlikely Custodian

Hi. Welcome to my world. After reading a lot of other blogs, I've concluded that I am just as adorably self-indulgent as the next person, ergo I should have a place online to share my insightful musings. So here I go. Let me start by telling you some things about me that will be relevant to our discussion here. 1) I am Jewish and my husband is Korean. 2) We have two sons, ages (nearly) 4 and (nearly) 2. 4) My husband and I own a business together. Got all that? Great, then let's move on.

Let's start by elaborating on item #1. I am Jewish. I'm not particularly religious, though I did attend Hebrew School for 4 years, but I'm more one of those "cultural" Jews. You know the type. I don't keep kosher, but I love Woody Allen. I don't speak Hebrew, but I do speak Yiddish. I married outside the religion, but my sons are circumcised. I was not bat mitzvahed, but this is a separate matter. I could have been bat mitzvahed--my parents offered--but the prospect of standing up in front of a room full of people (three of whom would be my nuclear family) and singing....IN HEBREW...was more than I could stomach. Plus I was not exactly comfortable with the idea that I was "a woman" at age 13. I think my feelings can best be summed up by this Jewish Haiku:

Today I am a man.
Tomorrow I will return
To the seventh grade.

Also, my parents were going through an ugly divorce at the time, and having a big family party with all the meshbuchah didn't seem like such a pleasant way to spend a Saturday.

So I love my Jewish heritage, and I never miss an opportunity to teach my children about theirs. We light Hanukkah candles. We have a Passover seder. As their mother--and the reason why they are Jewish in the first place--it is clearly my role to educate them about their ancestors, customs, and culture. No problem. We even light a Yartzheit candle for their Halmuni, who is sadly gone for nearly 3 years now.

Halmuni was a lovely woman. I know that, way back when, she was strongly opposed to her son marrying anyone not Korean. But by the time he was 36 years old, still single, and living in San Francisco in a suspiciously tidy apartment, I believe she was somewhat relieved to find out he was getting married at all. When she met me, over dinner at a vegetarian Korean restaurant in Manhattan, she was cordial, polite, and reserved. It was a few years later, when our relationship had developed in some unexpected ways, that she said about me to a family friend, "Sometimes an American girl is better than a Korean girl."

And this leads me to the point of my post. I feel very strongly that my biracial/bicultural children should learn as much as they can about their heritage(s). While my understanding and knowledge of their Jewish culture abounds, I am woefully lacking in the Korean language/culture/history department. The boys have two wonderful Komos, who try to add what they can, but they live far away. And their harabuji lives far away also, which leaves quite a void. As for my husband, well...let's just say that being the ambassador for the Korean culture is not exactly his strong suit. I believe that if my MIL were still alive, she would be doing a bang-up job of teaching my children about their Korean background. In fact, we have the most touching and sweet video of her cuddling our older son as a newborn, whispering to him in Korean, asking him if he is sleepy, gazing in wonder at her first grandchild. What wondrous things would she be saying to them now, if she could?

Both of my sons had a Dol, but that's about all they had. They love bulgogi, but I buy it premade at Trader Joe's. They know they have a "chaji" and a "tushy." We hope to enroll them in the Korean-immersion program at one of our local public elementary schools when they reach Kindergarten. But are these gestures enough? Are they going to feel resentful one day that they were deprived of adequate exposure to their proud Korean lineage? Or will they be happy Hapa, satisfied with a little of this and a little of that?

Thoughts?