Adventures in Judaica

*sigh* I never come over here to post anymore, do I? (Do you like how I said that, as if there was a time when I did come over here to post?) (And do you like how I said that, as if anyone ever reads this blog? heh.) In the interest of full disclosure, I think I only created this blog so that when I commented on other blogs I wouldn't feel like some anonymous phantom, swooping in under the cloak of anonymity. This way, even if it's out-of-date, if someone wants to know who it is expressing that "This is the most hilarious post EVER," they at least get a sense of me, right? In my defense, I have been busy, mostly with sewing and not so much with editing and indexing. It doesn't pay the bills, but it does make me happy.

Eli just finished his first year of preschool and there was a mad rush for all kinds of end-of-the-year gifts. One of his teachers "commissioned" me to make a couple of gifts for other teachers. I put "commissioned" in those quotation marks because how do you really charge a preschool teacher (your son's preschool teacher, no less) true market value for something? So, with the cost of my materials covered, I made one teacher a table runner and matching challah cover, and the other teacher just a challah cover. I'm pretty proud of both of them, and it was nice to move beyond bibs for the first time in a long time.

This first one was for a teacher who is leaving the school to move back to Israel. I wanted it to remind her of the school without it falling into the trap of "let's put kids' handprints all over the fabric because teachers love that!" So instead I took the architecture of the building as the inspiration. The rise and fall of the center band mimics the school's roofline and the tan squares and rectangle represent the natural playground in the courtyard (four stumps and a balance beam log).




The second one was for one of Eli's teachers. The two larger flowers represent his two teachers and there is one smaller flower for each of the children in the class. I hadn't worked with linen before and I have to say, I'm in love. Sewing with nice fabric is why I do it at all. It just makes me happy. And this was also my first time doing reverse applique, which gave me a few headaches along the way, but after two failed attempts, I feel pretty good about the results.



Coming up next... the sewing machine meme from Sew Mama Sew.

Phew!

That was quite a month. I think I mentioned - before the chaos and general insanity began - that I managed to drum up some freelance work. I sent out marketing materials for my book indexing business (one advantage to being a former academic is knowing plenty of people who will write books in the future) and it yielded some editing (and later, indexing) work. For the last six weeks or so I have been helping an old colleague edit a book, the topic of which was so closely connected to my own research that it may as well have been my own. And, to sum it up, it was awesome (and tiring).

At first, it sort of made my head hurt, this whole "thinking" thing. It had been a while. But then I got into a groove and I was just digging it. Sure, I neglected Eli a bit (two days ago, in the heat of the final crunch, he was introduced to the joys of Blockbuster, which I utilized to plant him on the couch for a morning) and he didn't love that every spare second brought me to my computer, but given that I pretty much just covered his preschool tuition for next year, I think he'll forgive me. Which brings me to the other awesome part: this whole working thing? They pay you for it. You work, and then they give you money. It is remarkable how easy it is to forget how good that feels. But now I remember. And I'm hooked.

Money has been so tight for us recently that the money I just earned is pretty much already spoken for (preschool tuition, some car repairs, things like that) but in the midst of it all I did manage a couple of splurges. First, instead of regular coffee, I got lattes - not every time, but often enough. (That had been a place where I cut back. I just love going out and buying a hot cup of coffee but couldn't justify $4.50+ for a drink, so I went to the regular American stuff.) Yum, lattes. And, I also bought myself a pair of expensive jeans. Oh, how I love my jeans.

There's a store in Boston's North End which has a reputation for being able to find the perfect pair of jeans for your body. So, one weekend afternoon when there was a lull in the work, I took off in search of my destiny. Unfortunately, the first pair was a miss. I got them home and just though, "eh." So, I took matters into my own hands and emailed the store owner (hey, if you don't want emails, don't put your address on your store's site!). She was very gracious and told me when she'd be there and said she'd be happy to help. And help she did. I love, love, love my ridiculously overpriced denim.

Somehow, another benefit of all this work was some clarity in thinking about the whole grow-this-family plan. We haven't made a final decision yet, but we're leaning very heavily toward raising Eli as an only. Lately I've been increasingly aware of the sense of relief (combined with a healthy dose of disappointment, but still) that I feel each month when there's no pregnancy. I know I'd still be thrilled if it happened, but there's a part of me - a significant part of me, it seems - that would look forward to a family of three. That, combined with the fact that the largest age difference we would like is four years, and the fact that I will be 41 in four months, has led us to believe that we'll probably try for a few more months and then call it a family.

Oh! And I was talking with the woman for whom I was working all these weeks about raising an only child, because that is what she is currently doing (a 15-year-old daughter) and her solution: get a dog. It might sound ridiculous initially, but think about it: She was saying that her therapist's opinion is that her daughter needed not to be so much the center of things, needed for someone else in the family to also "need." A dog accomplishes that. And for some reason, when she shared this with me, a weight was lifted, as if I suddenly knew how I was going to pull this off.

Anyway, that's where things stand right now. I'm looking forward to getting back to this blog in a meaningful way, and with that in mind, I'm changing formats a little - or at least introducing a new one. It occurred to me that I often put off writing because I feel like I'm writing to "you," (the small group of people who find their way here), and then I suddenly feel pressure, and I just don't write. My primary purpose in writing anything is so that Eli has a record of what his crazy mother was up to way back when. So, from this point on, many of my entries will start with "Dear Eli." I thought about switching blogs, primarily because I had all kinds of fun ideas for titles (like "The Eli Papers") but I'll stick with this. I want the option to have other kinds of posts and he's already going to have weed through about 12 different on-line sources to get the whole story (if he even cares), so it seems the kind thing to do.

So, coming soon: Letters to Eli.

And p.s., no that is not my butt in that photo. Ha! As if.

Warning: Profanity Ahead

When I communicate with other people on-line -- whether here in this blog, in other people's comments sections, or on LiveJournal -- I tend to avoid profanity at all costs. I do that for a few reasons, the most important ones being that I know that some people find it offensive, I don't think it's typically necessary, and while some bloggers have a way of weaving curse words into their prose in a way that's practically cute, in my writing I think it just sounds harsh. With all of that in mind, I have generally avoided a virtual potty mouth.

Until today.

I've had it. No, excuse me. I've fucking had it.

For the last year we have tried to make a baby and I've slapped this ridiculous Pollyanna attitude on the whole thing and I'm not sure why. In the beginning I was a little surprised that it wasn't going as easily as it did with Eli (who was conceived on the second month; when I was 37; boy was I lucky) but didn't get too down, aside from the to-be-expected pouting and disappointment. Then when more than a few months had gone by I complained, but only infrequently. And as it became clearer that things might not go our way immediately, or even ever, I still tried to put a bright shiny spin on the whole damn situation, telling people "We're very open to adoption" and "I realized recently that it's very exciting not to know where the next member of your family is going to come from" and "No, I really don't mind talking about it." More recently, my sound bytes have been along the lines of "We're open to all possibilities" and "I'm so lucky to have Eli,"* but the general idea is the same: "Yes, I know we're in this unenviable situation but look how gracefully I'm handling it! Surely you envy that, don't you?"

While painting on this happy face, I also dutifully request book after book after book from the library, devouring them as if the very process will alter the fibers of my being that so desperately want another biological child. I finish each one feeling more educated about our options, but still not really wanting them. I also scour the web for information on even more possibilities, again hoping that just the accumulation of a virtual mountain of information will change how I feel in my heart.

Simultaneously, we spend every cycle giving it our best shot. I chart my temperatures in a somewhat obsessive way (that's the researcher in me, insisting on complete data sets). After the thermometer beeps its shrill little beep I leap out of bed and eagerly log the daily nugget of information into Fertility Friend, as though each reading above the cover line is money in the bank - what bank, I'm not quite sure. Maybe some bank that sells healthy biological offspring for 98.6 cents. And I pee on my ovulation predictor paraphernalia so often that if I tell Eli I have to go, he responds with "On a stick!" And David and I faithfully do that baby dance until we just. can't. do. it. again. And every month we get nothing.

Excuse me: Fucking nothing. Also affectionately known as Jack Shit.

I'm tired of being positive about this. I'm tired of being emotionally removed from it. I'm tired of being reasonable. I'm tired of being optimistic. I'm tired of being a pillar of strength. Mostly I'm just tired.

A few days ago my temperature took a nose dive and I thought to myself, Great. This one's done and it's only a 22 day cycle. Of course I did the obligatory googling about implantation dips and was able to convince myself that it might be so. And then when, the next day, my temperature did shoot back up like a beautiful rocket full of pointless dreams, I thought This could be it! I kept my enthusiasm in check - after the 7-7-7 debacle I knew better. But I did hope, quietly and just a little. But it should have come as no surprise that this morning my temperature had sunk even lower than that first dip. And I've begun to feel that old familiar feeling, and Aunt Flo, that old biddy, she's on her way. And once again the dream has died.

And I'm so fucking over this.

*By the way, I don't think it needs to be said and yet, somehow, it must be said: I know how lucky I am to have this kid. I know how lucky I am to have conceived him so easily. I know how lucky I am to have conceived him at all. I know how lucky I am to have a healthy child. I know how lucky I am to have a child. My bitching and moaning should not take away from that at all. But focusing only on that is what leads me down that Pollyanna path and I've begun to realize that that's not healthy for me because it doesn't acknowledge all of what I'm feeling. Sometimes I need to bitch and moan because even though my entire heart is full of love for my one and only, I'm greedy, and I want more.

Massachusetts Gleaming

It's a funny thing about reading blogs: You find yourself fully immersed in the worlds of complete strangers. So much of it is anonymous. I tend to think of it like a long, long hallway of viewing rooms with one-way mirrors that allow you to peek in and see what's going on in other people's worlds. If you're inclined to make a connection, you can press the little button on the wall, speak into the mic, and say a few words, but then, usually, you slink back into the dark silence for a while until you're moved to say something else. In my own little exhibition hall I'm just kind of flailing about, doing my own thing. I venture down the hall every now and then when something compels me to. There is humor. There is the banal. And sometimes, there is tragedy.

Right now there is a mother going through perhaps the worst thing a mother can endure - the loss of her child, Hannah. I came to her blog in the typical way, through a link on someone else's blog, and have cried tears with everyone else who reads her words. I have left comments here and there, but not as many as I wish I had. I find myself returning to her blog time and time again and it was only recently that I realized why I go back so often: I want to know Hannah; I want to memorize her. And now, I want to be part of the army of readers that keeps her memory alive, through thoughts and actions and, quite simply, through life.

Hannah's mom Rachel is very clear on the fact that Hannah simply sparkled. She loved to be fancy. Her memorial service was a festive affair with mardi gras beads and feather boas - what a sight it must have been! The world most certainly sparkled more because Hannah was in it, and it should continue to sparkle more because she was here. With that in mind, I took Eli on a shopping trip. We went to the party store to find ourselves some sparkle of our own.

I've mentioned before that Eli is decidedly not fancy. It's not his style to to make a spectacle of himself in any way. He'll dance, but only until you point out that he's dancing and then it's done. He hasn't yet found a love of costumes or pretend. But boy did he help me find the sparkle that day.







While we were gathering our objects of glitter, something else caught my eye: a rainbow pinwheel of sorts. The reason it caught my eye is that we had been searching for one for quite a while. Another family in our neighborhood had one on their deck for the longest time and it was one of Eli's favorite landmarks on our walks. Sometimes we would just stop across the street from their house to watch it spin for a while. And then one day it disappeared. As two year olds do, Eli did not forget about it. In fact, it became even more a focus of our conversations because it wasn't there. You would think it a relatively easy task to find one of our own, but that quickly proved not to be the case - until we went shopping for sparkles, and then there it was, just waiting for us.

It now sits in our yard, under the shade of a pine tree, next to the hammock. As we put it into the ground, I told Eli that a little girl named Hannah must have wanted us to have a rainbow of our own. We named it Hannah's Rainbow.


Thanks to the magic of the Internet, Hannah is here in Massachusetts. She's in the extra bit of sparkle in Eli's play. She's in her beautiful rainbow as we rest peacefully in our hammock. She's in our thoughts. She won't be forgotten.

I decided to write about this today because Rachel, Hannah's mother, wrote that her own blog has become a source of comfort for her, that the comments from her readers are helping her get through. It seemed to be time to come out from the shadows to show how we celebrated a little girl we never got to meet, but will always remember.

Spin!

Well, I haven't done particularly well getting this blog up and rolling, have I? You know what happened? Right about the same time I started the blog I also discovered even more blogs that I just fell in love with. I already had a short list of women's blogs that impressed me beyond words but my recent finds really took it to a new level, not just in the quality of the writing (which is impeccable) but also in the topics these women address. Their words make the most mundane events poetic and the most tragic situations palpable. These are books I can't put down; these are blogs I can't live up to.

But the conclusion I've come to is that I don't need to. I admire these women and I drink in their words. My own words still need to be said. Sure, I won't think they're as eloquent and I'll probably never have Starbucks wanting to advertise on my blog, but I still need to say them, right? Today seemed like a good day to start. One blog where I've been lurking is Picture This, run by a very talented and wise photographer, Tracey Clark. She's just instituted Thursday Themes and I happened to have a shot I like for today's theme: SPIN!

So, in keeping with the theme I'm dusting off this blog and taking it for a little spin and I'm sharing the shot of Eli and David up top. Let's see how long we can keep this thing moving. :)