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?