Justice on ice

About a month ago I was summoned for jury duty. My gut reaction to these things is rarely negative. In fact, I'm quite eager to fulfill my civic responsibilities. I've always voted, and almost always make the effort to research the candidates and ballot initiatives. I actually look forward to serving on a jury, and serving as impartially, dispassionately, and judiciously as I can, considering my Latina passions that never lie too far beneath the surface. However, until now, my number was called only once, while I was a college student living in another state. Since then, the summons never came, until a month ago.

As much as I yearn to serve the cause of justice, for as it is written, "Justice, justice shall you pursue" (Parshat Shoftim, my son's Bar Mitzvah Parshah, B"H), the timing bites. Who's going to take the baby to day care while I begin my multiple modalities of transportation to arrive at the downtown courthouse in a timely manner? Who's going to pick up my kids from school, take my diva to ballet, and pick up the big kids from homework club while I weigh the scales justice? Certainly not the law school hubby who is in the midst of his own judicial pursuits.

I managed to get out of it, but only after taking a train (a cool double decker Metra) and a taxi to get to the court house 30 minutes late, waiting in a really long line, and explaining to the clerk with the French accent that I did send in a request for a hardship deferment, but, apparently, in the wrong format. I was required to write a note explaining my predicament (motherhood), and a date when I could serve (when my youngest turns twelve?).

In the end, I was able to defer jury duty until, theoretically, this summer, and I made it to work with plenty of time to spare. The best thing to come out of this superfluous errand was the discovery that those super-cool Metra trains allow parents to take up to three kids under the age of twelve free! I see a fabulous Spring-time adventure in the making...

Speaking of adventures, this week has been replete with them. On Wednesday I had to drag my mildly feverish baby to work with me, since she was not well enough for daycare. On Thursday I stayed home with her. On Friday morning at 4:00 am, she crawled into bed with me burning hot, pointing to her ear and complaining of a boo boo. Several hours later I whisked her off to the pediatrician who confirmed the suspected ear infection. Amoxycillin was dispensed, and I'm happy to report she is on the road to recovery (hamza, hamza).

She was well enough this afternoon for a different kind of family adventure altogether. After the usual Sunday morning shuffle of piano lessons, which I'm happy to announce are going really well, and swim lessons, which aren't going badly, we drove downtown to take in an outdoor winter art exhibit known as The Museum of Modern Ice. It was really cool, no pun intended.

The paintings were painted onto sheets of ice. It was as beautiful as it was fascinating. The artist developed his own technique for keeping the ice sheets below freezing, not that it was necessary this month, but we were more fascinated by how he got the paint to stick.

For the duration of our short walk to the exhibit, my little Texan Diva kvetched about the cold. She was miserable. Interestingly, she stopped complaining once we reached the exhibit. Unfortunately, she didn't stop frowning. I could hardly blame her.

After an obligatory stop at the "Bean",

we found our way to an even stranger sight. A "heating tent" with free tango lessons where my kids warmed up and drank free samples of pomegranate flavored Kefir, while puzzling at the hypnotic strains of Argentinian accordions.

Were we in Chicago or Tierra del Fuego? Who cares? We were warm, if only briefly. We made it another few blocks before we had to stop for another blast of warmth, this time, courtesy Starbucks, and some warm drinks.

We finished off the adventure at the Ghirardelli chocolate shop and ice cream parlor. Where else does one go to warm up on a blustery day in Chicago? I passed up on ice cream and chocolates, figuring the kids would never finish theirs. How wrong I was. Not a bite remained.

We got home right around bedtime. I bathed the kids, fed them some cereal (after all, they had sandwiches for breakfast), and sent them off to bed. I uploaded my photos onto the computer and gasped. I had gained ten pounds in my cheeks alone over the winter!

Thank goodness I passed up on the ice cream. Justice has been served.

The project

A couple of weeks ago my son came home and informed me that, "I have to go to my friend's house to work on a school project."

School project? What school project?

"I dunno."

I called up his friend's mom and she filled me in on the few details she knew. "Israel fair, Caesarea, my house on Sunday with one other girl". Hmmm. Okay, I grunted. I dropped him off on Sunday, and picked him up a few hours later. I asked him several pointed questions and felt no better informed, but I assumed it was all under control.

On Thursday I got an email from the same mom updating me on the school project situation. "They need to build a model, but I don't want to be supervising this alone."

Model? Of what, exactly? When I interrogated my eight year old again, I got a scramble of: "homemade clay! We're going to paint it! It's going to be an aqueduct!" Aha! I responded knowingly, but really, I didn't know a thing.

This afternoon after piano lessons and swimming lessons, with nothing more substantial than an apple, granola bar, and small bag of pretzels in my kids, we met up with the other girl and her mom to sort out the project.

Our first stop was the Frankel Teacher Resource Center, a little known gem in the community. Unfortunately, they were on a tighter deadline than we were, and we had arrived a mere hour before closing. "You're going to have to come back another day." The woman informed as calmly as she could, so not to cause me to break down into tears.

So we resorted to plan two: Michael's. We went in armed with a couple of internet print-outs and a handwritten sketch from the teacher with a picture of a Roman aqueduct and a column. I grabbed the first Michael's employee I could find and assaulted her with questions. What's going to be the easiest way to build a model of a Roman aqueduct? The least messy? How do we paint it? How do we glue it? What aisle is all this stuff on? Once again I found myself being spoken to slowly and calmly by a woman trying desperately to keep yet another panicked school-project-mom sane.

For the next half an hour, two harried and confused moms dragged four children around Michael's trying to disabuse them of the notion that we were going to be making homemade clay. In the end, we followed the Michael-lady's advice and settled on a styrofoam model. We left the store with a bizarre assortment of posterboard, sheets of styrofoam, glue, cellophane paper and sand, and headed back to my place to combine it all into a masterful work of third grade art.

Back at home I laid out a sheet of plastic table covering, and we set the kids to work gluing sand on a posterboard while I cut the styrofoam with a serrated-edge knife. What did you know about this project? I asked my friend. "Nothing. I couldn't get anything sensible out of my daughter. You?" She asked, not really expecting a different answer.

You kidding? I've got a boy!

"I tried emailing her teacher, but she never got back to me."

Are we doing this right? I asked, looking nervously at the glue, sand and paint my frenetic toddler was whirling frighteningly near. My friend motioned at the third girl and reassured me, "She sort of knows what the assignment is." Aaaah, I said, feeling slightly more ill at ease.

"How much of this project should we be doing?" My friend asked me as I was putting the finishing touches on the styrofoam sculpture, while she cut and glued pieces of cellophane to the posterboard.

Aaaiiieee! I thought. I'm turning into one of those mothers who do her children's projects! You couldn't miss them. Some school projects look like the kid has taken a lump of clay, mashed it into a potato shape, stuck some toothpicks in it, and has declared the masterpiece to be Abraham Lincoln; while the "good" mom stands back a healthy distance, showering the child with praise.

Then there are the "bad" moms who hover over their children, pushing them out of the way to put the finishing touches on the authentic wall paper and working lights of the model oval office. "No!" they screech at their child, "the vase goes on the other coffee table!"

Was I that mom? I immediately set the kids to work gluing the styrofoam bits together. My friend wisely suggested sticking in toothpicks to hold it while the glue dried. Then we put the kids to work painting the structure. This turned out to be far easier in theory than in practice.

Hey, kids! We hollered. This is your project, not ours! Get over here! I ordered, as I put the finishing touches on a styrofoam arch. "Yeah! Quit playing around!" called out my friend, as she glued more cellophane to the board.

Interestingly enough, the one kid who had half a clue what the assignment was about, came immediately and set to work. My friend and I fumed at our two spacey slackers. I'm glad it was a group project. I said. Otherwise, I wouldn't have heard a word about it until the morning it was due.

My friend concurred. "My daughter mentioned something about some project, but I couldn't get anything more out of her." We smiled approvingly at the little girl sitting at the table, carefully gluing down cellophane.

After a couple of grueling hours - more from keeping our two little twittering birds-of-a-feather on task than from the actual craft labor - we finished it up. I expressed a deep sigh of relief to have survived my son's first major school project. Thank goodness that's over!


"What's he got for the Chicago fair project?"

I shot my son a vicious glare. The WHAT?!

"I have to build a model of the Museum of Science and Industry!" He smiled sheepishly, speaking calmly to keep me from having a complete breakdown.

Daddy love

Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance. ~Ruth E. Renkel

I've been thinking about fathers lately. Back home in San Antonio, a dear friend passed away leaving behind his wife and three daughters. We had been very close to the family. We carpooled together and our children took music classes together. We went to synagogue together and our children attended the same schools. I will always remember him as a quiet, scholarly man with a beautiful soul. Mostly, I remember how sweet and patient he was with his three little girls, how they looked to him for comfort, love, and attention.

My friend was ill for several years, stricken with a brain tumor. His wife had lost her own mother to a similar ailment when she was a young girl, just becoming a woman. For the duration of his several treatments she struggled to come to terms with her own loss and that of her precious daughters. She struggled with God daily, trying to understand the meaning of her pain. In the end she accepted her fate and poured her love and energies into her girls, supported by the generous and caring community that surrounded them.

Her life had never been easy. She lost her mother at a young age, and several years later her father passed away, as well. For years she struggled to have children. She visited doctors and rabbis, prayed fervently, and never gave up hope. Finally, she was blessed with three bright, beautiful, charming daughters. But tragedy was never far, and two weeks ago, she buried her husband. Yet, my dear friend has not lost her faith, nor her capacity to love and accept love. She still smiles and expresses gratitude to her friends who call, come by, bring a meal, take the girls for a few hours. She can still appreciate the blessings she has.

While I am hopeful that my friend will overcome her grief, I worry about three young girls who have to go on without their father.

These thoughts make me think of a different friend who is also raising her daughter without a father. The circumstances are completely different, but her example gives me hope, nonetheless. She is a single mom who bubbles with life, intellectual energy, creativity, and joy. She is a single parent, more or less, by choice, and is giving her beautiful child as much, if not more, than most two-parent homes could muster. She is spending the semester in Israel, teaching at a highly regarded university. Without family or language, she is pressing ahead, finding her way in a new land, a new culture, a new way of life.

By choice or not, moms everywhere raise children without the benefit of a father. Smart, successful, beautiful children emerge from these loving one-parent homes, despite the many struggles.

Two grown friends of ours are mourning the losses of their own fathers, who lived full lives and were blessed to see their children grow into parents, and their grandchildren grow into beautiful young people. What does the loss of an older parent mean to an adult child? My husband lost his father a year before our second child was born. He is still sorely missed by us all.

Fathers hold such a special place in our lives. Traditionally they are the breadwinners, working hard their entire lives to support their families. In some families they are the disciplinarians. I remember the feeling of dread when I was a child, when my mother would throw up her hands and declare, "Just wait till your father gets home!" And as a harried, frustrated mom, I now get it. When you're stuck at home all day with your children, you easily tire of being the enforcer of rules and the judge and jury of all transgressions. It's often easier to leave it to dad.

Dads are often the voice of calm and reason. That certainly is the case in our home. After hours of playing, reading, cooking, and cleaning, and pulling one particular crazed toddler off of walls and out of trouble, I often lose my sense of perspective and humor. It's always a relief when my husband comes home from school with a smile and a fresh attitude. I rely on him to step in and take over when I have reached my parenting threshold.

Daddies offer wisdom and advice. My own father would set aside time almost every night for our beloved "tuck and talk". At bedtime he'd bundle me up under my comforter, sit on the side of my bed and tell me stories, or listen to my own childish narratives. It never failed to calm me and put me to bed feeling happy and loved. I still seek him out for those same virtues: wisdom, love, happiness and comfort.

Daddies come in all shapes, sizes, and stripes. Calming or strict, wise and wonderful. I was floored a few years ago when my mom came home from her best friend's 65th birthday party with a CD of various kid's songs compiled by her musical son, a childhood friend of mine. Most of the songs on the CD were recorded by famous musicians, the Beatles, They Might Be Giants, and others. But the first one remains my children's favorite; a song written and recorded by my childhood friend. A song about his 3 year old daughter and her blanket, "little b".

What kind of a daddy is my husband? The perfect daddy: warm and wise, calming yet capable of enforcing discipline when necessary; fair and empathetic; full of wisdom and silly, on occasion. He can't write and record love songs, and no one can sit on the edge of my son's six foot high loft bed for "tuck and talk", but he's there for us, law school or not.

Sharing my friend's losses has given me the opportunity to appreciate the blessings I have right here and right now. And as my heart pours out to my friends who have experienced so much loss, my friends pour confidence and hope in me that whatever bumps in the road we may face, life, love, and hope go on.

May they all find comfort in their loved one's memory.

Snow bound

Snow has descended upon Chicago yet again. Everything is blanketed in layers of cold white fluff. It trapped us indoors all Friday, while I struggled to clean the house and prepare for Shabbat. It threatens to strand us again. I am beyond weary of the cold and slushy. I dread it. I hate it.

It's been a rough week. Besides the cancellation of school and day care on Friday, I had to prepare for a guest for Shabbat. One of my son's classmates was coming to spend the weekend with us. Things started off well enough. My husband took the boys to the synagogue while I got the girls ready to go to a friend's for dinner. The walk to and fro was difficult with the stroller. Sidewalks weren't plowed, and the snow was piled high. We heaved and pushed through snowdrifts, and often resorted to walking down the middle of the street, but we finally made it.

On the way back, we picked up the boys whose evening event was finished. As far as I could tell, that evening event consisted of nothing but eating twizzlers. I came to this conclusion the following morning when I found my son's floor covered in mounds of red vomit. His friend had either overdone the treats or picked up a bug, but he was a clammy shade of green, either way. I sent my husband and son to synagogue, and I stayed behind with my two girls and a sweet, but very sad little boy.

The poor kid had the misfortune of getting sick in a strange house on Shabbat when he couldn't even call his mom, and worse, being stranded with two little girls who were going completely bonkers. "I'm glad I don't have little sisters!" He remarked. Out of the mouths of babes. I hovered over the dear offering tea, toast, dry cereal, blankets, anything to decrease his misery, and make him feel less alone.

By the afternoon he was well enough to go back to the synagogue with my husband and my son. We all felt the relief, except for the two little girls who really hadn't noticed anything out of place.

Sunday was the usual crazy day, on steroids. The weekly piano lesson followed by the weekly swim lessons was succeeded by an ice skating party and a Super Bowl party. Naturally, I took the two big kids to the ice rink, while the baby napped and daddy studied. It was only the second time my son ever ice skated, and my daughter's first time out on the rink.

I learned to skate, as a youngster, in Houston in an enormous shopping mall. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized I had never learned to stop. I had always just slowed down into the wall. I couldn't begin to imagine what kind of advice I was going to give my own children. I asked my former figure-skating Skokie Sistah for advice. She told me to have my daughter march on the ice. Hmmm, it was worth a shot. Of course, Miss Thang would have nothing to do with that suggestion. "I don't want to march. I want to SKATE!" So I held one hand, and with the other, she clung to the wall. Slowly cautiously, we made our way around the rink. My son confidently skated on his own. He certainly didn't need my help! At least, not in front of friends.

After our second slow rotation, my daughter needed a break and I was happy to oblige. Before long, she had struck out on her own, and I was amazed to see her, ploddingly, making her way around the rink solo, often without holding on to the wall. I was amazed and proud of my daring, coordinated, brave and graceful Texans. We showed those Mid-Westerners a thing or two, today! March, indeed!

By the time the Super Bowl party came around, I was done. Stick-a-fork-in-me exhausted, but we had already told our host we were coming. So, we packed our kids in the car, brought fruit and refried beans, and joined friends to enjoy the game. The girls ran off to play with our friend's daughter, appearing, now and again, in one or another Disney costume. My son, the motor-mouth sport's fan, chatted incessantly during the game, cheering good plays, booing bad, and asking a million questions, which our host answered with the patience of a saint. My husband and I just looked at each other, knowingly, and smiled. He'll be at this all night. In my weariness, all I could manage was a blank stare at the big screen TV.

One bright ray of sunshine arrived in the midst of the cold and snow - a gift from Grandma Shooshin. We opened up a plain brown box to find a magical garment inside. A dress, the color of midnight, sprinkled with starlight and moonbeams, was lovingly sewn for my wide eyed baby who thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. She insisted on trying it on that minute. A more awestruck little girl could not be found.

The snow is continuing to pile up outside. The kids are warmly tucked into bed, my husband is predictably pounding away at his new computer keyboard, and I am beginning to succumb to my intense fatigue. As my brain gels into mush, words and ideas keep seeping out.

Tomorrow a new week begins: carpool, volunteering at the kids' school, teaching phys ed, ballet classes, dishes, cleaning, work.

My battery is running low, and I can't find my recharger anywhere. Is this, then, the default condition of motherhood?

Or is it the snow?