SuperMommy's Passover Traditions

Grandmommy and SI after the seder

Chag Samayach to all!

Passover began at sundown on Monday evening, and lasts for eight days and nights.  The start of Passover is a seder, which is the reading of the Haggadah (similar to the Book of Exodus), the eating of the festive meal, much partying and revelry, and of course a host of personal traditions passed down through the generations.

This year we had our family seder in Michigan, at Aunt Genocide's house.  DD, SI, and Grandmommy (Poppa is still in Europe) stayed with Aunt Genocide, and me and M got to stay at a hotel.  Two whole nights, off duty from children.  On the other side of town.  In the traditional Mid-April snow.

It was magical.

DD and SI like Yul Brennar as much as I do

Passover is, for many Jewish families, what Christmas is for many Christian (or even those who identify as secular) families.  A time to get together, to celebrate, to be with family.  As with Christmas, there are a many traditions around Passover.  Some families read "A Christmas Carol," or "The Night Before Christmas," when the season come's 'round.  In our family, we watch my great-grandfather's copy of "The Ten Commandments," which he taped off of the television.  It's not just that it's the Passover story that makes this tape great, it's the commercials.  The tape is from 1986, and things have changed somewhat.  To save this masterpiece of American and Jewish culture, I've burned it to disc.  Just in the nick of time, too.  Just when Moses approaches Ramases to demand the freedom of the Jews, we get a nice four seconds of blackness, with static bars roaming the screen.  Aside from that, the tape is preserved in all of its glory.  Cadbury Creme Egg commercials, complete with camels and lions in bunny ears.  Double Mint twins, riding bikes and sporting matching '80s shoulder pads.  The chant of, "Buuuuuuuy Mennen!"  Lincoln advertising their longest car ever.  Previews for the NEW episode of "Moonlighting."  Highlights of the Mets, off to a great start of a baseball season that they'll go on to actually win.  (Poppa might want to pay more attention to this tape, huh?)

Aunt Genocide leads the seder, surrounded by children

It's a wonderful thing.

There are a few other traditions that my family keeps.  Aunt Genocide makes the ingberlech.  Ingberlech is a kind of traditional ginger candy- it is DELICIOUS.  And it's tricky to make.  It's one of those things where you have to be apprenticed in as a child, and then you can grow up to become a master artisan.  Of ingberlech.  Aunt Genocide has been making it since she was about seven.

I, on the other hand, make the charoseth.  Charoseth is also extremely delicious, but plays a very different role.  It represents that mortar with which the Jews in Egypt made the bricks to build the cities and tombs of the Pharoah.  I make awesome charoseth.  And then it becomes my primary food source for the rest of Passover.

My daughter the plague

I also am the traditional crafter of the place cards.  Place cards are important, because seating cannot be a free-for-all.  It is family tradition that married couples aren't allowed to sit next to each other, that children and those who have never been to a seder sit close to the seder's leader, and most importantly that the people who are running back and forth from the kitchen be close to the kitchen.  Seating is a complicated art, and I am its master.

Because we were slaves in Egypt but now we are free, we recline while we eat.  That means that collecting pillows is important.  Usually this task is delegated to the children- "Go, kids!  Find all the pillows in the house!"  Because we're supposed to get all chametz (bread, or other leavened items) out of the house, that's another slightly older child task- "Go, kids!  Get all the bread out of the pantry!"  This one is super fun because then you get to set it on fire.

DD playing with her salty herbs

Then there's the seder.  Our seders are, I think, fairly traditional.  They last more than three hours.  We read the whole Haggadah.  We eat heartily.  We drink four glasses of wine (at least) apiece.

Yeah, that's in the Haggadah.  Jews are pretty much party people.

But most importantly, in our family seders we invite any and all questions.  The more questions, the better.  Everyone learns when somebody asks a questions.  This is one of the reasons that the children and the "uninitiated" sit near the leader, so as to be all the closer in order to ask questions.  At the beginning of the seder, four questions are always asked- traditionally by the youngest person present.  "Why do we recline tonight?"  "Why do we eat the matzoh tonight?"  "Why do we eat bitter herbs tonight?" and "Why do we dip our herbs in salt water tonight?"  All under the blanket questions, "What makes this night different from all other nights?"

Our youthful questioner

And the leader of the seder responds that those are the questions that we will answer as we tell the story of our liberation from slavery in Egypt.

The seder (finally) ends when we eat the "desert," which is half of a piece of matzoh called the afikomen.  Because the seder is so fun, and children are so clever, the children STEAL the afikomen.  The adults, who understand that they've been reclining at the table and drinking wine for four hours, and would very much like to go to bed, must ransom the afikomen back from the children in order to start cleaning up the dishes and singing merrily.  And thus, the children are bribed with presents to return the afikomen, and the merriment can continue.

There are songs, and more wine, and everyone becomes very silly and sleepy.

And before we all go to bed and pass out, we remind ourselves, "Next year, in Jerusalem!"

DD and M eating Hilllel sandwiches together

We were slaves in Mizrayim...

For those of you who are unaware, Passover begins this Monday at sundown.

Passover, or Pesach, is the celebration of the Exodus from Egypt.  It is for Jews what Christmas is for Christians, the time of year when we get together as a family to celebrate.  We eat, the children get presents (actually bribes), and we relax as much as possible, because once we were slaves.  And now we are free.

I'm sure all of you are familiar with the culture that goes along with Christmas.  There are endless films that show dysfunctional families, coming together to try to have one nice night.  That's very much what Passover is like.  Only instead of going to church and having a nice dinner or party, all of those activities are combined into a Seder- a three plus hour long event including the reading of the Haggadah (the book of Exodus plus a ton of commentary from historic Rabbis), dinner, desert, and festivity.

It frequently goes horribly wrong.  This is the one Christmas-style film I've ever seen that deals with the chaos that is Passover.



We have our own family traditions.  Including the watching of my great-grandfather's copy of The Ten Commandments.  He taped it off of local television in 1986, and as a result it's about seven hours long.

Seriously.

And I love it.



This year is going to be CHAOS.  Between the fact that M and I are gearing up for finals, that we're driving into Michigan with my mother (who will have only been in the country for about twelve hours), bringing with us all of our dishes and chairs, and that sometime between now and when we leave (that's about 36 hours) we need to pack, clean, and buy an additional travel crib.

We're staying in a hotel while the girls stay with Grandmommy and Aunt Genocide.  That will make it almost like a 36 hour vacation.  Almost.  The seder is being hosted for the third time by Aunt Genocide and Aunt Something Funny.  They've never done this before, but I have.  Four times.  Once in a dorm, once in a tiny studio apartment, once at me and M's first place together, and then last year.  And it is a lot of effing work.  I worry that my sisters have no idea what they've gotten themselves in for.

This is going to be fun, right?  22 people in a tiny house, a five hour drive each way, unpaid leave for M (because you don't get Jewish holidays off but you do get Christmas off), and one big happy dysfunctional family seder.

Stay tuned for the results.

Because, as M keeps singing, "Everything's coming up Moses!"

Oh, Today We'll Merry Merry Be!

Hamantaschen!

Chag Samayach!  (For you non-Hebrew speakers, that means Happy Holiday!)

Today is Purim- without a doubt the biggest party holiday on the Jewish calendar.  As a kid, I LOVED Purim!  It was a cross between Halloween and Channukah/Christmas- you got to dress us in costumes and eat all the cookies you could!  And oh, the cookies!  Purim boasts, in my opinion, the best holiday-specific cookies of absolutely any holiday.  I know, Christmas cookies are hard to beat.  But Hamantaschen?  Pretty much the best thing ever.

"Esther and Haman Before Ahasuerus" - Jan Victors

Like pretty much all Jewish holidays, we're celebrating the same thing.  Not being completely annihilated.  Channukah?  We didn't get killed by the Greeks.  Passover?  Didn't get killed by the Egyptians.  Yom Ha'Shoah?  Didn't get wiped out by the Nazis.  Yom Kippur?  Didn't get killed personally by God.

A lot of folks have tried to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth.  It makes us a bit twitchy as a people.

At any rate, here is a very abridged version of the story of Purim, otherwise known as the Book of Esther:

Once upon a time King Ahaushverous, the King of Persia (known in the Greek as Xerxes) had a very beautiful wife named Vashti.  She was so beautiful that one day he asked her to dance for his friends.  She absolutely refused, and he sentenced her to death.  He then declared that he would chose the most beautiful girl in the land to be his new wife.  Esther was a very beautiful girl, and her cousin Mordecai (who had raised her from a child) told her that she could be the new queen, but that she must keep her Judaism a secret.  King Ahaushverous chose her to be his bride, and her cousin Mordecai found favor in the King's eye by uncovering and foiling an assassination plot.  King Ahaushverous's Grand Vizier, Haman, was a proud and egotistical man, and disliked Mordecai.  When Mordecai refused to bow before him (because Jews bow only to God) he was so incensed that he went to the King,  "There are a great many people in your land who defy your rule and would see you overthrown!" he said, "And you must exterminate them all!"  The King agreed to Haman's plan, and the date was set to round up and kill all of the Jews in Persia- a great many people.  When Mordecai heard of this he told Esther that she must go to the King and beg him to spare her people.  Esther fasted for three days, and then went before King Ahaushverous.  She fed him a giant feast, and then told him that there was a plot to kill her.  The King wanted to know who would do such a thing, and she told him that it was Haman- that she was Jewish and that he had condemned her and all her people to death.  King Ahaushverous was so moved and angry that he ordered Haman to be hung on the gallows he had built for Mordecai, and with his help the Jews fought off those who would have killed them all.

Dough!

And then the Jews lived in remarkable peace and prosperity in Persia for a very long time.  Ancient Persia was actually a pretty awesome place to be a Jew after all of that.

So to celebrate there is MUCH drinking and eating of Hamantaschen- cookies in the shape of Haman's triangular hat- whilst wearing costumes and making enough noise to erase the sound of Haman's name from the memory of men.

It gets very loud.

There is also the tradition of the Mishloach Manot.  Michloach Manot are packages of cookies and other assorted treats that you send to friends, family, or charities for Purim.  You know how for Christmas people send around boxes of cookies?  That's a Purim activity in Jewish circles- all the Hamantaschen you can eat!  This year I'm passing out Mishloach Manot to my neighbors, a few Jewish friends I think could use a taste of home and some childhood nostalgia, and a friend in the military.  She will probably be very excited.

There are three standard flavors of Hamantaschen.  Poppyseed, apricot, and strawberry.  Now, I know what you meshugganah goyim* are thinking.  "Poppyseed?  I don't know about that.  Apricot?  Okay, I guess.  Strawberry!  Yes, I'll have some strawberry cookies!"  Meshugganah goyim!  Resist that impluse!  You have the order of Hamantaschen superiority COMPLETELY BACKWARDS!  Strawberry and apricot are there to give you the occasional flavor break- no matter how good something is, variety still helps.

I remember my husband's first Hamantaschen.  He went for the strawberry because it was the most familiar.  And he said it was okay.  And after I pinned him down and forced him to eat the poppy Hamantaschen... he was hooked.  I think he's probably had about eight in the last 12 hours.

My daughters- toddlers, mind you, won't even eat the apricot or strawberry Hamantaschen.  It's poppy all the way as far as they're concerned.

Trust M, the former meshugganah goy.  Trust the babies.  Trust the Jewish people.  Eat the damn poppy cookie.

This year I followed my amazing sister's advice and also made a few Nutella Hamantaschen.  And they are amazing.  I always consider making prune Hamantaschen, they're also traditional, but I never liked them as a kid.  But you can always experiment!  Why not, right?  You can never have too many cookies!

Lightly flour your surface

Aunt Genocide's AMAZING Hamantaschen

• 1/2c + 3tbs butter- softened
• 1/2c sugar
• 1 large egg
• 3tbs sweet Jewish wine
• 1tsp vanilla
• 1/4tsp salt
• 2 3/4c flour
• Filling: 1 can poppy seed pastry filling, 1 jar each GOOD strawberry & apricot preserves

Beat butter until smooth, and then gradually add sugar- beating until light and fluffy.

Beat in egg and vanilla, then wine and salt.
Add flour slowly until a you have a very soft dough, then wrap in plastic and chill at least 3 hours.

Let stand at room temperature until workable but not soft, preheat oven to 375.

Cut 3" rounds

Roll on lightly floured surface to 1/8" thick, and cut into 3" rounds

Put 1tsp (or more, if you're feeling brave) filling into the middle of the circles, then pinch together into triangles.  REALLY blend the edges together!  Otherwise your Hamantaschen will just fall apart!

Place 1" apart on ungreased baking sheets, and bake for 13 minutes- or until just starting to get golden at the corners.

Form your cookies!

Remove to wire racks to cool immediately.

Serious awesomeness ensues.

And last but not least, to share a little bit more of the cultural flavor of the day, here are the lyrics to "Wicked Wicked Man," my personal favorite Purim song!  (It's sung almost to the tune of "Old MacDonald," if that helps.)

Wicked Wicked Man

Oh, once there was a wicked, wicked man
And Hamen was his name sir,
He would have murdered all the Jews,
Though they were not to blame sir 

CHORUS:
Oh today, we'll merry, merry be
Oh today, we'll merry, merry be
Oh today, we'll merry, merry be
And nosh some hamentashen

And Esther was the lovely queen
Of King Ahasuerus,
When Hamen said he'd kill us all,
Oh my how he did scare us

CHORUS

But Mordecai her cousin bold,
Said what a dreadfull chutzpah,
If guns were but invented now
This Hamen I would shoot sir

CHORUS

When Esther speaking to the King
Of Hamens plot made mention,
"Ha, ha" said he, " Oh no he won't.
I'll spoil his bad intention."

CHORUS

The guest of honor he shall be
This clever Mr. Smarty.
And high above us he shall swing,
At a little hanging party.

CHORUS

Of all his cruel and unkind ways,
This little joke did cure him,
And don't forget we owe him thanks,
for this jolly feast of Purim.

CHORUS 

*Meshugannah goyim is Yiddish for "Crazy non-Jews"

Being Weird

unt G

My Grandpa Stan

Olah Momma! prompts, and I answer...

For me, strangeness is a proud family tradition that has been passed down through generations.  My father's family, for example.  There were some weirdos.  My late grandfather was a man of epic bizarrity, he was known to carry around a rubber change purse that looked like a vagina.  His eyebrows melded seamlessly with his hair.  He was sure that he had a perfect solution to create peace in the Middle East- just open up an amusement park on the west bank.  My father joked that you could call it "Jihad Land."  And that just scratches the surface of his oddness.



I have some of his voicemail messages saved on my computer.  His messages were epic.  This one was odd, in that he didn't repeat, "This is Stan," at lest twice.

  PinkPussy by leargrover

My father graduating... in antennae.

My father and his brothers all went on to be very strange people.  My father in particular prided himself on it.

Then there's my mother's family.  To be frank, my father's family was out-weirded without even putting up a fight.  The joke is that my mother's family was the Addams Family, complete with a Lurch and a cousin It.  And they all had a bit of a knack for the macabre and unusual.  One of the things my parents bonded on when they met was that they had both convinced their classmates that they were actually aliens from another planet.  They were both vegetarians, and I believe that they met because my mother stood up for homosexual equality when another boy accused him of being gay.

My mother and her siblings

My granddaddy would have been an Olympic gymnast, if that had been a lucrative career in the 50's and 60's.  Instead, he got dual Ph.D.s in physics and math.  He had a grad student who would hang around, a tiny guy with a high pitched voice that nobody could get rid of.  He was cousin It.  One of her brothers went bald at 16, started wearing a cloak, and made a bit of a side business selling amulets to the other boys at his boarding school.  He was very much Lurch.  My aunt joined a band in Hawaii and followed the Grateful Dead.  She also painted some lovely (and fairly trippy) paintings that I had hanging in my bedroom for a while.  My favorite was a landscape of a hillside, overlooking the planet earth.  My granny is a fabulous lady.  I love her like crazy.  And she is a little bit mad.  She has no sense of modesty or awkwardness, spins a marvelous yarn.  My other uncle is a Filker.  His big hit is a lullabye called, "The Demons Underneath Your Bed."  Then there's my mother.  My mother who kept a tub full of pet worms named "Squiggly," who collects rocks and lizards, who we would give millipedes and tarantulas for Mother's Day.  My mother, who has filled her living room with mounted stuffed animal heads (moose, lion, walrus, hunter...) of her own creation.  My mother is a weird lady.

So it's no wonder that their kids turned out to be just plain weird.

Aunt Something Funny and Aunt Genocide as teenagers

First, there's my older sister.  While she was in jail (for walking in front of a police station in the nude on a bet) she would write me from jail about harnessing methane from cows to power my grandfather's amusement park.  Her letters were filled with sentiments that she was, "the only one in here for something funny."  When we were little, she created a Barbie sized guillotine to teach my younger sister and I about the French Revolution.  Several dolls were lost to The Terror.

My younger sister, well, she's a Master of Genocide.  She's a die-hard comic geek.  She knows every single word of Harry Potter (read by Jim Dale) backwards and forwards.  As a teenager, she covered her walls in polka dot fleece fabric and photographed protests for a local gay newspaper.

Yours truly at age 7

Then there's me.  I'm not even sure where to begin.  First of all, just being a vegetarian with gigantic glasses and big hair in suburban New Jersey made me pretty weird as a little kid.  I started writing horror stories in elementary school- while I was in third and fourth grade I spent a lot of my free time working on a novel called, "The Globe," about an eeeevil high school teacher who used a gigantic, ornate globe in his classroom to incite horrific natural disasters.  It had a lot of the teen-gore genre failings, including the murder of all characters who got too hormonal and sexual.  I printed a book of one ghost story about my classmates being haunted by a ghost Trick-Or-Treater on Halloween.  My horror poems started getting published when I was in 5th grade (although generally only locally) and I begin writing short horror stories (much better than "The Globe," I'm happy to say) when I was in middle school.  At the same time, I began covering my bedroom wall with eyes cut out of magazines.  This continued for five years, until the entire thing was one massive collage.

My Eye Wall (me age 16)

I was a goth teenager, but I didn't really know that at the time.  I had eschewed all color in my wardrobe, and would wear layer upon layer of black and white skirts, slips, and other assorted lacy garments.  I dyed my hair black, wore heavy black eyeliner, and would occasionally tell my classmates that if they kept pestering me, "The halls of the school would run with the blood of the wicked and the obnoxious."  I had up to eight rescued ferrets at a time, living in my increasingly schizophrenic bedroom with me.  For a year or so I made my bed on a big pile of pillows on the floor, before my mother helped me construct a loft bed with a hidden reading nook on the inside.  It was awesome.

My brands of weirdness changed drastically when I started going to college, which I did at 14.  I learned to embrace colors, ALL of them.  When I was 18, I transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the only transfer student on my floor, and definitely the only one my age.

I took a few master's level writing classes, and spent much of my tenure in the role of Kramer to a friend and neighbor's Seinfeld.  I even had my own Newman.

"Dream Interpretation" 2003

I started making both close friends and bitter enemies of my art teachers.  I was intentionally antagonistic at times.  When my collage professor insisted that a good collage was small by definition, I would turn in mural sized assignments.  I got in shouting matches with my portraiture professor for making all the model's breasts green (which I still insist is the best color for breasts).  I alienated other students by taking assignments far too literally- in a mixed media class we had the homework of creating a box that visually represented what was inside.  People brought in shoeboxes covered in shells (with shells inside) and ceramic boxes in the shape of a butterfly (with a dead butterfly inside).  I made a vaguely boat-shaped contraption out of broken guitar strings, blank manuscript paper, and a shattered violin.  It was filled with silence.  Nobody but the professor got it

Now I'm essentially an adult.  Once again, I find that I'm weird by different definitions.  I'm a new mom in my mid-20s who's working on their degree.  I don't meet very many of those.  I'm pretty much a crunchy mama, but I vaccinate and I don't do the family bed thing.  I try to recycle and garden and use cloth diapers, but throw away a full trash bag nearly every day.  I'm a vegetarian chef, but I cook meat (very well, I'm told) for my husband and guests.  I sew as much of my own clothes as I can, but I'm a total fashion snob.  I'm an artist and a free thinker, and I'm in school to become a career bureaucrat.  I cultivate a love of horror films and musicals, that somehow manage to come together in such works of genius as, "Cannibal! The Musical."

I have a neurological disorder that causes synesthesia and phantom sensations.  My favorite foods are kik alicha and marzipan.  I'm Jewish and married to a Lutheran.  I often fantasize about cutting off my toes (even bought the tools once) but cultivate my toe hair.  I hate most things that might be considered girly, but I never wear pants.

I sometimes muse that the thing that I like least about being a mom is that I won't get to ride on any roller coasters for a few years.

I'm allergic to Swiss cheese and pretty much nothing else.

I'm afraid of butterflies.  Seriously.

My Droogies on their first Halloween

And M is pretty much weird, too.  He's a sci-fi and fantasy geek, he's a brain cancer survivor, and he's got a crazy sense of humor.  His family also has their share of weirdness in it, but that's not my story to tell.

Suffice to say, my daughters stand to inherit the family tradition of being strange.  Good thing, too.  I'm not sure I'd know how to relate to them if they weren't weirdos.

So there you have it.  That's my weirdness, mostly laid out for you.

Take it as you will.

Amy Chua's Hubris- Where the "Tiger Mother" Fails

SuperMommy and her Super Sisters as small children

 There are many different ways to raise children.  The standards are constantly changing, from the recommendations for breast feedings to the methods for potty training.  Every once in a while, a book on parenting comes along and there is a giant shift in the process people use to raise their children.  The public tends to trust the so-called experts when it comes to the nearly universally terrifying task of turning babies into productive human beings.

By now, most of you have probably heard all about Amy Chua and, "The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother."  My friends and beloved bloggers have been both up in arms about her techniques and eager to go for the same results.  I am neither.

You see, Amy Chua's parenting style is aimed, as she says, at "raising such stereotypically successful kids."  Right there, there is the flaw.  "Stereotypically successful."

What sort of success is that?  Kids that get straight A's and perform at Carnegie Hall?

I have a different measure of success.  Happiness, and the ability to lead a normal, emotionally healthy life.

My family 15 years ago, including DD's namesake

My grandmother, who DD is named for, was sort of the Midwestern American version of the Tiger Mother.  My father was reading before he could walk, and his childhood was spent as a Child Prodigy, alienated and under constant pressure.  The argument could be made that it obviously worked, that he went on to achieve his Ph.D. from an extremely prestigious institution and become a leader in his field.  However, after having three children with similar intellectual ability, he made the very conscious choice not to raise his children in the same way.

My father in high school

Why?  Because, "stereotypically successful kids" are not actually geniuses.  They're normal children who have been pushed to succeed to the best of their ability, and the best of their ability is very impressive.  The best of anybody's ability is fairly staggering.  But only about half of the children out there are "normal."  The rest are outliers for some reason or other.

My older sister was not a normal child.  She is, beyond any doubt, absolutely brilliant.  She is by far the most intelligent person I have ever known.  A decade ago, she wrote a 'zine about her life.  It was witty, moving, beautiful... every word chosen perfectly.  A heartbreaking work of staggering genius.  But as it is said, there's fine line between brilliance and insanity.  While she might not be insane, she is genuinely troubled.  Her emotional and intellectual needs have never, not for one minute of her life, been "normal."  A Tiger Mother approach to parenting would probably have resulted in her running away from home at the age of ten, never to be seen again.  God only knows if she would have survived.

My older sister, taken by my younger sister

Now I don't generally like to say this, but I am very very smart.  In addition, the Tiger Mother approach wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference in my childhood.  I had my older sister to motivate me, to inspire me to perform as well as I could.  I got straight A's, at five years old I begged my parents to get me piano lessons, I began attending college full time before I was fifteen.

None of that was particularly normal.  However, under the Tiger Mother's tutelage, my childhood would have been filled with much more heartbreak.  Under her rules, I never would have been allowed to quit the piano.  Until I was eleven, I never had the desire to quit the piano.  I had fallen in love with the instrument after hearing my grandfather play "The Moonlight Sonata."  I spent six years practicing, albeit reluctantly on occasion, knowing that someday I would be able to play that amazing piece of music.  At eleven my teacher reluctantly agreed to help me with the piece, and it was then that my heart broke... my hands were not, and would never be, large enough to play it correctly.  I can't make the octave-one stretch.

Learning from my aunt, a concert violinist

Would the Tiger Mother have taken the medieval approach of breaking my thumbs to give my hands better reach?  If that was the only way to succeed?

Had I been raised by a Tiger Mother, I might have become more studious.  I might have actually achieved a degree in my twelve years of college education, and I might be a little more diligent about editing this blog for simple typos.  I, like M, am a dedicated under achiever.  For both of us, this is one of the coping mechanisms we developed for being alienated by being somehow not normal.

My younger sister becomes Aunt Geonocide

My younger sister was perhaps the most normal of us.  She moved through her social groups well, she was certainly smart enough to get straight A's without too much effort (although she didn't always put in ANY effort), and she had few of the emotional problems from which I and our sister suffered.  Perhaps the Tiger Mother could have kept her more in line as a teenager and made her put in that extra mile to do well in grade school, but even without the extreme rigidity of that parenting style, she finished her Master's Degree in Genocide Studies in record time.  She has made herself invaluable to her current employer, and has very exciting job prospects in her field.  (None of which actually include genocide.)  Ten years ago, the Tiger Mother would probably have looked over her body of academic achievement and her derelict appearance and considered her a total failure.

Most parents have the good sense to hope for a normal child.  A normal child can be pushed around, and you know how they will react.  Normally.  Amy Chua's children, while obviously smart and talented, are just as obviously NORMAL.  And this is vital to her success.

Me and Aunt Genocide in middle school

I am sure that she would say that the Tiger Mother model is not intended for children with severe disabilities, with low functioning Autism or Down's Syndrome, but I would argue that it is also not to be used for children who might otherwise be abnormal.  Who might be outliers for other reasons.

As a mother, I have some very strong ideas about how to raise my own children.  I always planned that they would learn instruments very young, at least as young as I was.  I've already decided to start SI on the recorder (she's quite remarkable on the flutaphone considering she's 15 months old) and DD on the piano when they're three or four.  I always planned to encourage them to succeed academically.  I always planned to push them, but only enough to motivate them to push themselves.  I will let them choose their own extra-curricular activities, to follow their own dreams and ambitions.  I never wanted to be the mother that ruined my children's live by making them unlivable.  Or by making them what I always wanted my own life to be.

Poppa reading to DD and SI

I watch my children grow and learn, and I constantly look for danger signs that they might be outliers.  I worry so hard for them, knowing how isolating it can be to be not normal.  And I remember how my own genius-sister had more influence on my academic life than my parents ever could, how siblings hold so much more sway on how a child develops than any meddling and well-meaning parent can hope for.

David Brooks of the New York Times poses another interesting point in his opinion piece about Amy Chua.  He says that by keeping her daughters so focused on their academic and musical successes she neglected their social education.  He argues that learning to navigate the social world of a teenage girl is a much more difficult task than completing 2,000 math problems a night.  In many ways, he is right.  Those social lessons are vital to survival in a social world, and they are not teachable by any way other than trial and error.  That these social skills translate to real world achievement as well as general well being.  If so, I have no doubt that the Tiger Mother would find a way to create a regimen of social exercises.  Perhaps with the children of other Tiger Mothers.  I wish them luck.

Me and my older sister

Amy Chua is no doubt a fine mother, but what works for her cannot and will not work for all families.  I would remind you of my first General Rule of Parenting- whatever makes you a happier, saner person is good parenting.  If inflicting the rigors and hardships of a Tiger Mother style on your child would make you less happy, less functional, it becomes bad parenting.  And I posit a new General Rule of Parenting- remember always that your child is not you, and that they are an individual that requires an awareness of and respect for their own individuality.

Tiger Mothering cannot work for me, it did not work for my father, and I urge all of you who might be considering it to first consider your child, and then consider this.

Do you want your children to be "stereotypically successful?"  Wouldn't you rather that they were un-stereotypically successful?  Or even better, went on to lead happy, meaningful lives?  Are either of Amy Chua's daughters engaged in meaningful social relationships?  Do they have friends and lovers and a support network that might not include their parents?  Are they autonomous adults who can maintain balance and harmony in their own lives?   What you might consider success for yourself could translate to a life of misery for another person.  And that other person might be your child.

Isn't that a little more important that memories of playing Carnegie Hall?

Me at age 6 with my new kitten, the happiest of memories

A Glimpse into SuperMommy's OCD and Best Pictures of the Year

I have a little OCD problem.  It's under control- I've gotten good at forcing myself to take steps onto non-matching cracks and different surfaces, and I rarely find myself tapping each finger the exact same number of times on the exact same spot on, say, a button.  But my bedroom calendar is where my OCD completely takes off.

First of all, Facebook has nothing on me for birthdays.  Everyone I love- their birthday is on that calendar.  But don't go looking for yours toward the end of the year, because it will be gone, hidden underneath my constantly shifting scheme for marking off the days.

It started off simple enough.  I drew a face that illustrated how I felt that day, so I could keep track of my (then fairly serious) depression.  As the years went on, I began also keeping track of my sleeping and my menstrual cycle.  From this I learned, amazingly enough, that my depression, insomnia, and period all coincided.  The obsession became stronger.

This past year, I printed out about 380 tiny lists of my goal for the year.  Each day, I check off what I accomplished, and glue it onto that calendar segment.  This allows me to go back and actually quantify my success for the year.  Well dear readers, here's how I did this year.

I wrote in my journal on 257 days.  Not exactly close to my 365 goal, but not too shabby.

I read 21 books.  Just three shy of my goal.

I cooked at least 239 meals for my friends and family.  Again, this is significantly shy of my 365 goal, but I do feel pretty good about it.

I completed my homework on 246 days, including days that I didn't have any homework to complete, which meant that as far as I was concerned, it was done.  Cheating?  Me?  Never.

I played with my children for two cumulative hours on 351 days.  The days that I failed were mostly gearing up to finals, or during which I was ill.  While it makes me sad to know that two whole weeks of my year passed without my actually engaging my children in a meaningful way, I will try to keep from feeling guilty about it for the rest of my life.  I won't make any promises about that, I know myself too well.  I'm going to feel guilty about this for years at the minimum.

I lit Sabbath candles ten times.  That's less than a fifth of all the year's Sabbaths.  I am determined to do better.

I "cleaned" my house 269 times.  Or at least that's what it says.  But I know better.  I know that several of those "cleanings" are just laundry days, or just dishes.  I'm really not certain that counts.

I left the house on 269 days.  Again, a fair bit shy of 365.  And I must admit, THAT is a depressing figure.  Nearly a third of the year I didn't actually see the sun or sky a single time.  What is wrong with me?

I made art 25 times, although most of them weren't actually paintings.  This year, non-paintings absolutely count.  Halloween costumes, for example, counted towards my "paintings" last year, this year the goal has been changed to simply, "Make Art."  I feel pretty good about it.

This year's checklist, which M lovingly helped me cut out of 16 sheets of paper, is as follows:

Wrote in journal
Cooked a meal
Completed homework
Left house
Ate minimum 2 meals
Maintained hygiene
Exercised ≥20 min
Observed Sabbath
Finished a book
Made Art

The big difference that you might notice is that this year I'm focusing a little more on keeping myself healthy and functional.  I have to eat, bathe, exercise, and see the sky on a daily basis.  Let's see if it helps me maintain my humanity a little better.

And without further ado- my favorite pictures of the girls from 2010!!

January- a tie, the first time DD smiled for the camera

January- a tie, the first time SI smiled for the camera

February- Holy Rosy Cheeks, Batman!

March- taken on my old phone, and my wallpaper for a long time

April- in their beautiful dresses and smiles

May- Bathing Beauties

June- Another tie.  DD at Guppy Lake, aka the ancestral homeland

June- Another tie.  SI in a REAL jolly jumper and Daddy's hat

July- DD and SI are chubby grubling friends

August- Another tie, but OMG DD's eyes!

August- Another tie but OMG the SI cute!

September- Aunt Genocide reads her nieces their favorite bedtime story

October- My little penguins

November- Extremely happy grublings

December- SI finally walking

Narrowing in on the New Year

DD and SI under the dining room table

I find that, as a parent, my system for planning ahead has changed somewhat.  I'm always looking a few more steps ahead than I used to.  This time last year, I would probably be focused on Christmas/Channukah, our trip to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Minnesota, and FINALLY getting my holiday cards out.  Not this year!

You may recall my to-do list from a week ago.  Let's revisit that for a moment...

1. Make/hang curtains over dining room window
2. Make holiday cards (this involves both studio arts and fun crafts this year, so I'm particularly excited)
3. Bake holiday cookies (this year's selection: date balls, chocolate crackle-tops, ginger underwear-men, cocoa amarettis, and peppermint dusted candy-canes)
4. Make myself that skirt I've been so excited about since I saw one similar to it at Anthropologie in September and picked up fabric and buttons for immediately afterward
5. Set up Christmas tree
6. Wrap Christmas presents



Stockings, gifts, grublings and friends

My skirt is cut and pinned, but not sewn.  I just plain didn't get to the candy canes this year.  But on top of the list, I also threw a party for about 25 people, crafted Christmas stockings for the girls, and made dinner every night.  I even got my cards addressed and into the mail.  So what am I thinking about now?


New Year's.  Last year I decided that resolutions were meant to be broken, and I would set myself up for success rather than failure if I instead set myself a list of goals, not resolutions for 2010.  I've had some success, some bitter failure, and generally lived a richer life year because of those goals.  So, here is my 2010 list of goals, and a description of how I made it work, or how it all went down in flames.

1. Complete one painting each month all year
I came remarkably close on this one.  While I didn't actually complete one during each calendar month, there were a few months where I beat the goal.  I'm nowhere near where I'd like to be in finishing paintings, but I have to be realistic about how much a human being really can accomplish all at once.  Of course, most of the paintings are wedding portraits.  I love doing wedding portraits, but I would have preferred to have taken the time and actually make the art *I* wanted to make.  Which is to say, return to my quilting theme portrait series.  The one I still haven't made any progress on.  :::sigh:::

2. Complete one class each semester
Well, I failed at that one.  I completely spaced out on the summer semester.  However, I'm still on track to graduate, and that's something I feel fabulous about.  For the record, I aced every class I took in 2010.


3. Read 2 books each month, NOT counting graphic novels by anyone but Alan Moore
I cheated on this one.  I cheated hard.  I counted every trade paperback volume of "The Walking Dead" as a book.  I counted books that I read for class whether or not I enjoyed them, I and I counted such bits of tripe as "The Great Fables Crossover."  I did spend several days reading Anita Blake:Vampire Hunter novels to my girls while they nursed.  I have no regrets about that, and have to face the facts- I'm going to keep counting trade paperbacks of my comics as "books."  I'm so bad at staying cultured.  Two of the books I read were re-reads- "Ender's Game" and "Anna Karenina."  And of course, both were for classes.  See the left side of this entry for a few of my favorite reads of the year.

4. Cook 7 meals each week: acceptable meal=loaf of bread
This is another one I did a fair job with.  I did begin counting sandwiches as meals, and of course there were long stretches where there were no meals cooked at home, followed by a few days in a row of three squares.  This one gets easier all the time as the girls actually eat whatever I cook for them, meals the three of us can share.  I'll make a breakfast of eggs and toast, the three of us will eat happily, and et voila!  I cooked a meal!  Today I made breakfast, I didn't cook lunch, and I imagine I'll be cooking dinner as well.  Tomorrow I hope to take a break from breakfast, though.  We're running through eggs terrifyingly quickly, as the three of us will easily eat eight or nine for breakfast.  And I only get two of them.

Watching SuperMommy cook

5. Exercise three times a week
Again, fail.  During the spring semester I only took one class, so I parked in a garage a mile from the campus and walked two and from the car- that took care of twice a week.  During the summer I was VERY good at getting to the gym.  The fall and winter ruined me.  Thank heavens I can count sex as exercise, or I probably wouldn't be getting any.  In several manners of speaking.

6. Write daily, if only a haiku
Well, I didn't do that either.  However, I did start a new blog, forcing me to write longer, more involved pieces.  I've written plenty of haiku, but despite keeping a journal and a bunch of prompts next to my bed, I still go to bed thinking, "Too tired to write/haiku will wait 'til morning/if I don't shower."  And I do feel that much of the writing I've done as SuperMommy has turned out fairly well.

7. Spend at least 2 hours each day PLAYING with my children
This is another one that got easier as the girls grew.  I was wracked with guilt that I didn't exactly "play" with my kids.  But to be fair, three month old infants sleep and eat a lot.  That meant that most of my interaction with them was as the milk buffet, the diaper wizard, or a very warm cozy place.  When you get down to it, it was a silly goal.  I play with them almost every waking moment we're at home.  Even if I'm eating or writing, there's some sort of toddler game happening and I manage to be an integral part of it.

8. Celebrate every Sabbath spent at home
As my sister likes to remind me, Shabbat is the most important holiday.  It's the only one mandated by the ten commandments, and it's so easy!  Light some candles, break some bread, drink some wine, and recite some prayers I've known since I was too little to remember.  And I LIKE wine!  How hard is that?  Apparently, extremely hard.  50 out of 52 annual Shabbats have passed, and I can count the number that I lit the Sabbath candles on one hand.  I'm determined to be better at this.  My sister's right, it is a commandment, and in addition I do want my girls to grow up with an understanding of what it means to actually observe your religious traditions.  Whether or not they choose to when they're adults.  Or who knows, maybe they'll be like me and make excuses until they have to set an example.

9. Clean the house every other week

DD

Ha!  Like THAT happened!  I have gotten better at keeping up with some housework.  And again, as the girls have gotten older they're better at "helping," or at least at watching and keeping themselves entertained while I do dishes or change sheets or sweep the floor.  Not that the dusting gets done, not that I've swept underneath my own bed once in 2010, not that there aren't always messes lurking SOMEWHERE... but I have stayed fairly on top of a lot of the grossness in my home.  Plus, I don't have small people puking on my stuff so often anymore.

10. Leave the house once a day- the back yard is an acceptable destination
I wish I could tell you that I succeeded here.  I with I could tell you that I stepped out into the fresh air and looked at the sky and took a deep breath and reminded myself that there was a world outside of my own head and home every day.  But I can't tell you that, because it would be a bold faced lie.  I got out of the house most days.  I went to class, last semester four days a week, I went to the grocery store, I went to the DMV, to the post office, to Sam's Club...  but not every day.  There were definitely a few times (especially during school breaks) that I realized I hadn't been outdoors in four or more days.  In the spring I even modified my goal- I decided that the balcony off the living room would suffice.  It didn't make any difference.  I only stepped onto the balcony in order to be outside a handful of times.  I'm optimistic about next year though.  Again, bigger children leave the house more readily than infants when you're outnumbered.  So we'll be enjoying the fresh air a bit more often.  Add the that the challenges of toilet training and having twin toddlers getting into EVERYTHNG... well, I think I'm going to have my hands full.  Again.
 

SI

...and that was my 2010.  I'll be setting some new goals for 2011, returning to a few of the old, and hopefully some of those goals will eventually come off the list, being habits rather than semi-forced practices.  And at least one is coming off entirely, there's NO hope that I'm actually going to thoroughly clean my house every other week.  Sorry folks.

Happy Holidays to you and yours, and may your New Year be filled with joy, love, and success!