The Lilith Blog

August 5, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

CEO, Home

I recently finished reading Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. I did skim, quite liberally, many of his more philosophical chapters, which tend to begin with a question like, “What is Power” and end, fifteen pages later, with the conclusion that, “Power is Power.” Overall, though, I loved each page, and loved the experience of sinking, fully, into a rich novel, living each day with the shadows of Prince Bolkonsky, Pierre, Princess Marya, and, of course, Natasha, by my side.

Natasha, a spirited girl, full of vigor and passion and potential, marries happily at the end of the book. She is something of a feminist, insisting on nursing her own children, “in spite of the opposition…who revolted against her suckling the child.” But, Tolstoy writes, when she marries, she “abandons at once all her accomplishments,” for “she had absolutely no time to indulge herself in these things.” In embracing, fully, her home life, she must abandon the passions, talents, and pursuits that had defined her as a full human being.

In my own home, which my husband and I have worked hard to make a space of equals, there is no question that, with time and children, the daily decisions, big and small, have become, more and more, my responsibility. It has been my choice – albeit a choice that seems straight out of Tolstoy’s philosophical chapters, a choice that has felt, to some extent, inevitable, dictated by some Greater Force, making me “subordinate to certain laws…[such as] gravity,” Maternal Love, Responsibility, and, perhaps Guilt, laws with which I did not quarrel “once [I] had learned them.”

A friend recently shared his winking outlook on the subject. He claims that his wife makes all of the small decisions – like where to live, where to send the children to school, what home to buy – and he makes all of the big decisions – like who God is, world peace, and how to split the atom. Another friend often refers to his wife as the “CEO” of their household, and refers any questions he receives from me to her. My husband mused that, in the male view, the woman can be CEO of the home since The Man, secretly, perceives himself as President of the Board. In Israel, where it is incumbent upon all couples to take a religious course before they marry, the woman is often referred to as the “Minister of the Interior,” and the man as the “Foreign Minister.”

Can we have it all? One might have expected that our society would have changed more since Natasha decided to stay at home, nurse her children, and stop singing. Is it inevitable that, in embracing our roles as wives and mothers, we abandon, or significantly modify, or, even, simply forget, our personal dreams?

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

July 30, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Instructional Swim

It is finally upon us – the Jewish annual summertime killjoy – Tisha B’Av – the ninth of Av. My daughter came home from her Chabad day camp last week with her bathing suit. “Why did they send this home,” I wondered aloud as I scraped the remnants of her peanut-butter sandwich off of the straps. “We’re not going swimming anymore,” she told me somberly. “Because of Moshiach (the Messiah).” I made my best muppet face and tried to nod understandingly.

Tisha B’Av, an annual fast-day, marks a number of calamities that occurred throughout Jewish history, most notably the destructions of the first and second temples. Traditionally, the period of mourning which culminates on Tisha B’Av begins three weeks earlier, on the seventeenth of Tamuz. During this period of time, referred to as the Three Weeks, some Jews refrain from listening to live music, shaving, or cutting their hair. Weddings are traditionally not held during this time. The mourning intensifies after Rosh Hodesh Av – the first day of the month of Av, and continues through the nine days preceding the fast day. During this time, some refrain from eating meat, doing laundry, and – swimming. Precisely when most people in the Northern Hemisphere are splashing in the water, we remember that we have been singled out throughout history, and, in commemoration, put our bathing suits on the shelf and sit on the side, trying to shade ourselves from the hot sun.

Growing up in the modern Orthodox Jewish world, I went to summer-camps where, during this period of time, Instructional Swim was allowed, and Free Swim was taboo. You couldn’t have too much fun in the water, but they had to somehow fill those long summer days. I remembered those doggy-paddling days when, after the girls were tucked into bed, on the Eve of the Eve of Tisha B’Av, I snuck out for a swim. As I flew through the water, I tried unsuccessfully to suppress the overwhelming dolphin-like joy I feel half-way into the swim, and then wondered why I was trying to suppress it. On my way home, the week-old moon peeked at me from the twilight sky. We looked at each other, and I realized that I still hadn’t quite figured out my belief and practice system. I then had a moon epiphany: everything I’d thought was true about grown-ups, including the notion that they knew what was right, let alone what they thought was right, was illusory. Instead, our cycles are like the moon’s – moments of shining clarity, moments of hidden uncertainty.

This week, to fill the time that she’s not swimming, my daughter is, together with the other three-year-olds at camp, building the Beis Hamikdash – the Temple – brick by brick, by doing mitzvot, good deeds. I love her camp. I love the idea that we, with our little dimpled fists, and our passion, and our vision, build the world we want to live in. I wonder, though, if somehow, we could build in our bathing suist, splashing and soaring through the moonlit-water.

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

July 22, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Road Trip

My husband, Noam, and I just returned from vacation. Swimming in a lake, hiking in the mountains amidst a sea of wild flowers, late afternoon ice-cream cones, and French toast for breakfast. Each activity, though, was asterisked – “swimming” meant spending hours gathering rocks, putting them in pails, and making sand mud-pies. “Hiking” involved the number of footsteps we could take before running out of pretzels, raisins, and juice boxes. The ice cream included enough napkins for us to feel personally responsible for the destruction of the natural forest around us, and the delectable breakfast was consumed at 7am. We took the kids.

The trip involved many hours of driving in each direction with two children under the age of four. We did the hokey-pokey (yes, you can do it sitting down) several hundred times. We sang “Hello, Everybody” several thousand times. I told stories about Maki the Magic Monkey and did my monkey-face for so long that my cheeks hurt for hours afterwards.

On the way back, the kids immediately both fell asleep. Noam and I looked at each other and let out a deep breath. We grinned. We’ve tired them out, we told each other. They’ll sleep at least three hours, maybe four, and then we’ll be nearly home. We put on Nick Drake. We busted out the chocolate. After about half an hour, I fell asleep, only to be awakened, five minutes later, by the baby, who was yelling her sister’s name at the top of her lungs. I stuck the pacifier back in her mouth, but to no avail. We became possessed with trying to prevent her from waking up her sister, who had spent the majority of the way there screaming, “When are we going to be there?” I gave her a box of raisins, which was, within moments, dumped in the car seat. I gave her toys, which were, immediately, flung to the floor. We got desperate. I gave her some old batteries, which she clanked together for a few minutes. Finally, Noam passed me his phone – the Holy Grail. That would buy us at least six minutes of silence. I sighed, and looked out the window. Only three hours and seven minutes left, I thought. Suddenly, my phone started ringing. “Shut it off,” Noam whispered. “Put it on vibrate!” I scrambled to retrieve it, pushing aside peeled crayons and doll clothes. When I finally found it, I held it in my hand, staring. The screen said “Noam.” It took a minute to register, and then I started laughing. “It’s our daughter calling from the back seat -she’s trying to reach me.” I turned and looked back at her. She gave me a newly toothy smile, and yelled her sister’s name, finally waking her.

Vacation with children is asterisked. Its elemental components – sleep, the free choice to do what you want when you want, and feeling cared for – are severely compromised. And yet, those moments – the toothy baby smiles, the wonder in their eyes as they see snow-capped mountains for the first time, and, forgetting to whine, run through patches of yellow wildflowers – glow within, lingering, like sun-kisses, as true vacations do.

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

July 9, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Babysitting

I was roller-blading with my kids in the double stroller this past Sunday, heading from morning mud-pies in the park to summer peaches at the farmer’s market. As I weaved my way through the crowd of shoppers, a woman who attends the same yoga class that I do caught my eye. She smiled, and asked: “Are you babysitting?” My eyes widened with surprise. I had to stop and think for a minute. Then, as I skated by her, I found my voice, and shouted – “No, they’re my kids!”

I guess I could take it as a compliment. Though, I had thought that after birthing two children I would no longer be confused with a graduating 8th grader. (And I’m sure that she wasn’t using the term in the way that supermarket women use it with my husband when they smile at him ask if he is “babysitting,” implying that, somehow, a father’s spending time with his children is a perk – especially impressive if he’s also doing the shopping). But I was surprised by my reaction – that momentary pause, during which I actually had to think – am I babysitting?

There have been multiple times – last week, in fact – during which I look at my girls and think – who are these creatures, and what are they doing in my bedroom? I wonder – how long does it take to sink in?

I remember buying prenatal vitamins for the first time. I’d been married for almost three years. When I looked up from my wallet to give the guy at the check-out counter my credit card, I was surprised by how cute he was, and how he was looking at me, and I blushed. I was pregnant! I was buying prenatal vitamins! Happily married! It’s like buying tampons. It took me years to feel comfortable. I’d have a running dialogue in my head – they’re not really for me – I don’t need these. I’m buying them for my mom. For a friend. Please don’t look in the bag. When I was working at my first job, I had a meeting with a woman at her house, and her four-year-old daughter answered the door. She looked me up and down and asked: are you a grown-up or a kid? I could not answer.

How long does it take for your life to catch up with you? To realize that those kids in the stroller are your kids? And, is it okay, when, on that rare occasion, you’re skating solo, no stroller to set your course, to, for a moment, forget?

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

June 24, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

A Modest Proposal

Don’t worry. I’m not going to purport that we eat them, nor will I wax poetic on how juicy and delicious those baby pulkes would be with Soy Vay. Though I’ll confess that the idea has occurred to me. And it has been confirmed by other parents who have told me – “when they’re little, they’re so cute, you could eat them. When they grow up, you wish you had.”

It’s summertime, and, as is our custom, we are preparing to visit family on the East Coast. We fill carry-on knapsacks with enough food to last a week, enough toys to keep our children busy for what turns out to be at least ten minutes, and never quite enough diapers and changes of clothes. My husband tries to sneak in the New York Times, but I always pull it out and stick another coloring book in instead. We go to see our parents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins, friends, and, our grandmothers.

Whenever we go to NY, we head over the George Washington Bridge to visit my grandmother and Genya, my childhood nanny. Both of these women live alone in big apartment buildings. Both are witty, smart, curious, and fun-loving. Both have outlived their partners and many of their friends. Both have loving family members who live nearby, but who are also busy with their own lives. Both have ever-glaring televisions. Neither can drive. My grandmother, a self-proclaimed Luddite, has learned to navigate the Internet, opening new avenues for interaction – but virtual ones, nonetheless. Whenever we visit them, they confess to me that it is so hard to be alone, so lonely.

I remember the profound loneliness I felt when I first became a mother. I had left my job, and was spending day after day alone with my infant, nursing, changing diapers, timing naps, taking walks. It got so bad that I studied for the GMAT just for fun. That phase passed, but the feeling of being alone in the world with a new baby made an impression on me. There is a window of time, after the initial exhaustion of giving birth, and before the busy days of preschool and play-dates and Music Class and swimming lessons, where the baby and her caregiver are alone. And today, so many of us live far from family members who can fulfill a primal need for “oohs” and “aahs” and “I remember” stories during that window of time.

Here we have two groups of women – lonely, desperate for meaningful human interactions – who can fulfill profoundly each other’s needs. The older women will ooh and aah, and share their stories, and the new mothers will have an audience for their precious little ones. Can we somehow connect these generations who have so much to gain from one another, but whose interactions are often limited to squirming supermarket aisle conversations or cross-country trips across a long bridge?

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

June 9, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

East Meadow

CalTrain, which runs from San Jose to San Francisco, zooms by the corner of East Meadow and Alma, about five blocks from our house, numerous times a day. It stops about two miles north and three miles south of that corner. When I go to work at my office in San Francisco, I bike the two miles to University Avenue, to take the bullet train. I love every aspect of the commute. The train represents the best of civilization – a common good that benefits the earth, society, and its individuals, and runs with efficiency, speed, and trust. My time on the train is sacred – conducive to writing poetry, connecting over the phone with friends and family, getting work done, or, simply, staring out the window, lost in the motion of thought.

My daughters love the train, too. We often have to cross the busy intersection at Alma and East Meadow, either in the car, on the way to school or music class, or in the double-stroller, me on roller-blades, on the way to the “sprinkler park,” a popular spot in the summer heat. My three-year-old is always on the lookout for trains, which she can hear coming by its bellows and whistles, and the cling-cling-cling of the red and white arms, which lower to prevent cars and pedestrians from approaching the tracks. Whenever we see a train, she shouts: “It’s my lucky day!” and we sing the “choo-choo” train song. Late at night, when it’s quiet, we sometimes hear the train from our bedroom; I have always found it to be a soothing, joyous sound.

This week, work took me to Los Angeles for the day. Driving home from the airport, where I had parked the car, I signaled my right blinker, planning to make the turn from Alma to East Meadow, so close to home! Flashing blue and red police lights jarred me into the realization that the intersection was closed, and that, no, I hadn’t imagined it, and had in fact just passed a train, which stood silent, frozen, ablaze from within, a hiding behemoth on the tracks. Fire-trucks and police cars blocked the intersection, where, because of an interminable red light, I was forced to sit and wait. I looked. A dark shape, covered, lay on the street, a few feet from the tracks. It was strangely silent. Nothing was in motion. The light turned green and I drove on, out of my way, to cross the tracks at the next block, and then circle back home.

That night, a 17-year old teenage girl had committed suicide by stepping onto the tracks in front of an oncoming train. She was the second teen suicide, a student at nearby Gunn High School, to die in that spot in a month. Last night, a mother successfully talked her son out of stepping in front of a train in the same spot, while an emergency meeting for parents was taking place on at a local community center.

The past few days I have been trying to block out the sound of the train. When I close my eyes, I see its bright lights, and feel its enormous weight, its unstoppable power. The battles I have been having with my daughter about whether or not she can take her favorite toys to school feel frighteningly insignificant, and I shudder when my babysitter laughs when I recount them, sighing – “little children, little problems; big children, big problems.” And when I pick up my daughter from school, I quietly hope that we won’t see a train, lest we stop by the tracks, lest I have to answer her questions about the flowers and bears and signs placed by their side, lest I hear her cheerful voice, gleefully shouting, “It’s my lucky day!”

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

June 1, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Peaceful Protest

On Tuesday morning, my small office’s regular staff meeting took place in the plaza in front of the Supreme Court building in San Francisco, under a chuppah, amongst hundreds of waving rainbow “marriage” signs. We were awaiting the news from the court about Prop 8, which, in November of last year, banned same-sex marriage in the state of California, after it had been approved by the justices in May, 2008. Though expectations were not high that the court would reverse the ban, the mood in the plaza was hopeful, joyous, and full of anticipation.

That morning, I’d had a fight with my three year old. I didn’t know that one could fight with a three year old until I became a parent of one. We fought about the washcloth. I keep a washcloth beside the sink in the girls’ bathroom. I use it to wash the yucky stuff out of their eyes and the crust from around their mouths (a casualty of the pacifiers), each morning. Now, this is a good washcloth. It prevents the waste of many tissues (which saves trees!) But it must be used appropriately. I use only a very small corner at a time, so that it can be re-used, and, most importantly, can dry quickly. Because if it gets too wet, it begins to emit a nasty, damp washcloth smell. Then it is a bad washcloth. The smell, like the ring in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, sticks to everything it touches, including fingers, dolls, shoes, and toothbrushes. I find myself doing a load of laundry just to clean it. That wastes water, which is very bad for the trees. So, you will understand why, when, that fateful morning, my three year old was at the sink, cold water rushing around her, the washcloth soaked, dropping torrents of water on the counter, the floor, and the baby, I was not a happy mother. I know, and knew even then, that I should praise her for her independence. And talk calmly. But I grabbed the washcloth. And berated her. And gave her a time-out. And she cried, and I yelled, and a door got slammed. And I went to work with shame in my heart, and stood, in the hot sun, with people shouting, “we want justice,” thinking about my daughter.

The court upheld the ban while preserving the 18,000 marriages made between May and November of last year. The crowd immediately mobilized. It boo-ed. It chanted “shame on you.” And then a man with a megaphone organized a march, shouting out street directions, as people, peacefully, full of emotion, hand in hand, began to walk in protest. I was overwhelmed. If a passionate crowd of brutally disappointed people could respond civilly, its dignity intact, then why was I losing it over a washcloth?

My friend lent me a book: “How to Talk So Kids will Listen, and Listen so Kids will Talk” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish. I liked the first sentence very much: “I was a great parent before I had children.” I read the first chapter, and, the next morning, the protests were more peaceful, from both our ends. We’ll see. In the meantime, I keep marching.

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

May 20, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Ornaments

A close friend of mine has a box in a chest in her house. It is filled with her grandmother’s Christmas Tree ornaments – delicate, hand-picked, beloved pieces. Golden orbs and shining stars, heavy ceramics and light, painted glass. The ornaments have been passed down through her maternal line for generations. She has no idea what to do with them. Her father is Jewish, and she was raised in an interfaith home, going to Hebrew school, and celebrating Christmas with her grandparents. When she married her husband, a Jewish man, she decided to convert; though she considered herself Jewish, she wanted to be accepted as a Jew throughout the Jewish community. She no longer celebrates Christmas, but remains very close to her mother and her grandparents. Recently, she and her husband adopted a beautiful little girl from China, and they are raising her in a Jewish home. She already has my friend’s twinkle in her eye, and her adopted father’s laugh. My friend and her husband also create opportunities for her to connect to her birth country and culture. But they have no idea what to do with that box of ornaments.

What is the legacy that we pass on to our children? How much do we get to decide? And, despite our intentions, how much of that legacy will bring them fulfillment and joy? How much will they have to work hard to reject, to find their own space in the world?

Another friend of mine was telling me about his Vision Quest – a multi-day journey in the wilderness, during which, after many years, he finally shed himself of the fear of failure that his father passed on to him from his father, and from his father before. He is now beginning a new career path, and shared that finally, after many years, no longer has terrible anxiety.

When we raise our own children, is it possible to do so with a heightened awareness of the undercurrents of the patterns and values and traditions that were passed on to us, and which have shaped our own lives? Is it possible to change what we felt was harmful, and accentuate that which brought us joy? Or do the patterns, like the genes we pass on, shining ornaments we wish we could lovingly pick, inadvertently fall from our own trees to delicately hang on the branches of our children? And will those ornaments, some which we so treasure, shine eternally, or, after an ephemeral glow, be stored in a box, opened each year, tears glistening, to remember that which will be left in the wilderness?

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

May 7, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

A Tyrannical Victory of the Common-Sense View

I was struck by the first sentence of Peggy Orenstein’s article, Kindergarten Cram, in this past week’s New York Times magazine. She claims, and I believe her, to have “made the circuit” of kindergartens in her town. And Berkeley’s no small town, mind you. I had to immediately put down the article to dodge the guilt wave that arose and threatened to soak me, Sunday bagel and all. For, you see, I have never made such a circuit. In my defense, my daughter’s not yet in kindergarten. She’ll be in pre-K next year. And I’ve visited, ahem, one pre-school, aside from the one she currently attends because, cough cough, that’s where my cousin sent his girls, it’s close to home, it’s the cheapest option we could find, and, of course it aligns with our philosophy of pedagogy and life. And, obviously, we’re NOT going to choose a kindergarten based on cost or location or convenience. Obviously we’re going to make the circuit and choose the absolute best school for our child, a school where they compost and play and don’t give homework and don’t confuse the shape of the Hebrew letter “samech” with an octagon.

Marion Milner, in her book On Not Being Able to Paint, cited in Avivah Gottleib Zornberg’s The Particulars of Rapture, describes the process of doodling, and how difficult it is, while doodling, to prevent oneself from creating a recognizable object. She writes:

It seemed almost as if at these moments one could not bear the chaos and uncertainty about what was emerging long enough, as if one had to turn the scribble into some recognizable whole when in fact the thought or mood seeking expression had not yet reached that stage. And the result was a sense of false certainty, a compulsive and deceptive sanity, a tyrannical victory of the common-sense view which always sees objects as objects, but at the cost of something else which was seeking recognition, something that was more to do with imaginative than with common-sense reality.

This is what Orenstein fears is at risk in our children’s schools – those rich moments of chaos, of uncertainty about what is emerging – moments of imagination and potential. Homework is part of the world in which sees objects as objects, but at the cost of something else.

Is it possible, though, that we too are caught in the clutches of homework’s tyrannical victory of the common-sense view? When we as parents research ad-infinitum the best possible schools and programs for our children, diligently doing our homework, aren’t we attempting to turn the scribble of parenting into some recognizable whole? Aren’t we prey to the compulsive and deceptive illusion that if we make the circuits, and at least spare them from homework until fourth grade, we will spare our children the chaos and uncertainty that we so fear?

–Maya Bernstein

The Lilith Blog

May 1, 2009 by Maya Bernstein

Adobe Needs Your Attention

The baby has another new trick. She’s taken to screeching. I’m not sure if, unbeknownst to me, and against my explicit will, she has joined the 15 month-olds Trying to Pass as Screeching Monkey Competition (very prestigious, really!), and is in the final weeks of rigorous practice. If that is the case, I have no choice but to be proud of her, feigning impatience but privately delighted – my daughter, the best screeching monkey of them all. I have a nagging fear, though, that this is not the case, and that I have on my hands, simply, a screeching baby, awash in a new awareness of the world around her, passionately desirous of it, and hysterically frustrated that she cannot articulate her needs, and, even worse, that they are often denied. Couple that with the fact that her big sister is so annoyingly verbal, using words like “actually,” and “lather,” it’s no wonder she’s screaming, using all of her weapons, very well, I might add, in the war for her parent’s ears.

I was answering emails at work last week when an icon popped up at the bottom of my screen, distracting me. It said: Adobe Acrobat needs your attention. I couldn’t believe it. It was as difficult to ignore as one of the baby’s cries. You want a banana? I almost asked Adobe. A strawberry? It just looked back at me, silently screeching, needing me, begging me to click on it, to put down the phone or the dishes or the book, and give it both of my eyes, and a smile. Then I realized that it was an icon on my computer screen, and not my daughter, and, with slightly too much delight and a crescendoing evil laugh (which, yes, frightened my colleagues), I closed the box.

So much needs my attention. It has become like a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I respond to the screeches in order of shrillness. I am especially baffled that our society’s response to this ill has been to create a culture of screeching monkeys. Facebook Status!!! Tweet Tweet Tweet! And, of course, the phenomenon of the Blogging Mom. Why are so many mothers, their time so delicate, their attention fraying and threadbare, giving their eyes and ears so completely to strangers? Are we all just screeching toddlers, desperately searching for the elusive word to express a need we cannot comprehend but which consumes us, the eternal need to be recognized, seen, heard, understood, and, finally, lifted up, and embraced?

–Maya Bernstein