Happy Mother’s Day
This was my morning routine during my first pregnancy:
I pulled myself out of sleep which got increasingly uncomfortable with each passing month.
For the first few months of my first pregnancy I had round-the-clock “morning sickness.” Women around me said that was a wonderful sign, as all those pregnancy hormones swirling around my body making me nauseous were kicking into high gear to protect the growing fetus, which was taking over EVERY CELL of my body.
Yay, I have to puke again, I thought. Lucky me… but still…. kind of hard to be a budding PR career woman when you spend most of the day with your head in the toilet.
I’d start my morning around 5:45 by taking a shower. Luckily the toilet in the bathroom in our first garden apartment was right outside the shower door because invariably, standing up in the morning in the shower stall would cause me to become nauseous.
Shampoo. Lather. Vomit into toilet. Rinse. Repeat.
I’d try to keep down some kind of breakfast and then my husband would drop me off to catch a 7:28 (I!) NJ Transit Train, Raritan Valley Line, into Midtown Manhattan.
Just in case, I’d carry a paper bag with me.
I prayed that I could find a seat, and that seat would either be next to no one or not next to someone who smelled of cologne or stale cigarettes, which would open another invitation to feel like puking.
Once, in my second pregnancy, I was not quite showing yet, but my legs were already killing me as a result of the varicose veins acquired during my first pregnancy. The morning commute was disrrupted by signal problems and all NJ Transit commuters had to transfer in Newark to take PATH into Manhattan.
Roused from my precious 40 minute snooze provided by my NJ Transit seat, I made my way to PATH to cram onto a train. No seats. I had to sit. I even asked a man if I could sit, explaining I was pregnant and felt really tired.
He scoffed and refused to get up.
So, I sat on the filthy PATH floor until a seat cleared because that’s how tired I was.
On the morning commute, I made puking an art form.
I told you about the paper bag.
But on my crosstown walk from Penn Station to my office at 33rd and Park, I’d traverse through an area known as Little Korea. On some mornings, especially the hot summer mornings, the smells of garbage left out from the night before from the restaurants – rottting fish, meat – sent me hurling right there on the pavement.
I got pregnant shortly after I took a great job with lots of room for promotion at a high tech PR firm. But, fearing what my managers would think if they knew I was pregnant and just took this job, I kept it, and my all-day morning sickness under wraps, including the time I had to sit on a PR call with a journalist and a client with my head on my desk, waste paper basin at the ready.
As my pregnancies progressed, my varicose veins got worse. In my legs, as well as inside my vagina to the point where I felt I was turning inside out, as if my insides would drop right out from under me.
Hey men, are ya still with me?
Into the city I commuted in two pregnancy summers, wearing support stockings and a special contraption I wore over my underwear to give me better support.
Towards the end of my pregnancies, I had what you’d describe as a toothache in my back that lasted all day.
But. But, I was so happy to be pregnant.
These, and my third, were planned, wanted pregnancies, with babies born into a loving relationship between me and my husband.
What struck me most during these pregnancies, when I arrived at my office each day, were people kneeling and praying outside my office.
You see, in my building on Park Ave. and 33rd Street was a Planned Parenthood clinic.
Every day, Christians would kneel and pray for the unborn, holding up the most horrible photos of aborted fetuses. Clutching their rosary beads.
Looking out from my own pregnant body, I wanted to choke them by their beads. Kick and rip up their signs.
To mothers to be out there and to the mothers of all generations past and future, being pregnant is not about baby ducks and cute dresses. It’s hard work to make a baby, but, when you WANT to have a baby, it is the most exciting and joyful time in a woman’s life.
When you don’t want to be pregnant, and you’d have to be FORCED to carry and have a baby? I would not wish that on any woman.
This Mother’s Day, think about skipping the flowers and candy and jewelry. That’s not what women, or mothers need right now.
We need you to back us up. Give to places like #PlannedParenthood #NationalOrganizationforWomen #AmericanCivilLibertiesUnion or any other cause that will keep abortion safe and legal in these United States.
We need you to use your vote and your signatures to get abortion and reproductive rights on the ballot.
Because no woman should have to carry a baby for nine months against their will.
That is not “pro-life.”
That, is slavery.
Happy Mother’s Day.
Every kid in quarrantine gets a puppy
I have to write this right quick before someone wakes up and starts chewing on the hem of my leggings from under the table.
I have a dog.
I never thought that would sentence would ring true in my life.
I’ve always wanted a dog from even my earliest memories.
I was about six or seven and two dogs were chasing me through an apple orchard somewhere upstate New York. I remember screaming as I ran through the grass and the smell of rotting apples as my grandfather called after me to stand still! The master, the owner of the orchard, also called his dogs to also stand still.
My grandfather caught up with me and explained the dogs, now circling around me, were only trying to play. The more I ran, the more they would chase me.
But once I stood still, they let me pet them. I remember the feel of their shaggy black and brown coats and the warmth of their wet tounges as they licked my palm. One, who must have been a mix of a lab and a German Shepard, had a black face except for its brown eyelids.
I started begging my parents for a dog. But they retorted, reminding me of the long-term, enormous responsibility. Of walks outside, no matter the weather. Or not being able to travel. Or not having enough space.
So, I got my doggie fixes through the canines of others: my friend’s dogs, dogs in the park who didn’t look mean. I’d ogle at puppies in their cages at the pet store in the Staten Island Mall, all the while my parents telling me that buying a dog from a pet store was a bad idea because they were most likely from a puppy mill. I learned that adoption and rescue of a mutt, and not a purebred dog, was always the most humane route to doggie ownership.
My love of dogs never has abated. Not through young adulthood, or motherhood, or later on, watching my brother and wife with their sons and their dogs.
As it happens, like me, my children have also wanted a dog. Even when my youngest at 18 months was bit in the face by the spooked black lab of a friend and needed a visit to the emergency room and stitches, no, that early trauma never carried over. And the daily persistent pleas for a puppy never ceased for the next 16 years.
“Mom, can we get a dog?
Hey mom, guess what? Can we get a dog?
Mom, if I clean my room for a week, can we get a dog?
Mom, you said after we moved to Michigan, we’d get a dog. It’s been seven years.”
So, why, you may wonder, did I choose a purebred Siberian husky, the first dog I’ve ever had after a lifetime of wanting dogs?
Turns out, it was not a deliberate choice, just circumstance and fate.
It’s funny how a global pandemic changes all that hesitancy to, yes. Yes, we will look for a dog.
As it turns out, everyone else in the age of Coronavirus is looking to adopt a dog. In fact, right up there with shortages in toilet paper and hand sanitizer, there is a shortage of adoptable dogs as Americans are emptying out shelters as they are ordered to shelter in place.
We searched on Petfinder.com. We asked all our friends and neighbors where they adopted their dog and they gave us listings of local shelters. But none of these shelters were doing in-person visits. And most of the dogs listed were pit bulls or pit bull mixes. I do not mean to offend pit bull lovers, and I have met some loving pittie pups in my day, including those of my brother’s. But living in my neighborhood with many small children, I did not want to take my chances.
A few weeks back on a Tuesday, I walked with my son and husband in the neighborhood on our daily-after dinner jaunt. But we didn’t go our normal route. And as we walked, we talked about how the shelters were not responding to our applications to the dogs we wanted, or how some dogs we wanted required extra medical care, or were not good with children, or required physical fencing.
And there, sitting in a crate in someone’s driveway decorated with sidewalk chalk, sat this guy:
Outside of labs and goldens, huskies are one of my favorite breed fantasy dogs. I’ve always admired their beauty, the way they get along with everyone, and … those eyes.
So, of course, we squealed in delight at the sight of him and asked the owner where he got him and that we were looking to adopt a dog too.
Then, the young man in his 20’s said, “Actually, I need to get rid of him because I live with my mother now and she had an allergic reaction to it.”
No way. You’ve got to be kidding.
We texted our daughter to come by. She put her XC and track skills to use and sprinted over to the driveway in five minutes flat.
So, after the family got to know him, we negotiated on a fair price. And by that Friday, we were dog owners.
So, why a husky, as so many of our friends have been asking? That’s why.
How did we find such an incredible puppy in a pandemic?
That’s how.
Did we truly look for and want to adopt a shelter mutt? Yes, but there were none to be had that was right for us.
Is a husky the most practical and easy breed for first-time dog owners? No, not exactly. More of that in my next post. Each day, we are making it work and learning as we go along.
This little guy (getting bigger by the day), who shares a birthday with my grandma (“zl), well he just fell into our laps.
In the age of Coronavirus, school as we know it has been canceled.
Plays and performances have been cancelled. Sporting meets have been canceled. Graduations have been canceled. Summer internships and summer camp, that’s all been canceled too.
But dogs? No. Dogs don’t get canceled.
So let it be. Let this be the summer of the dog. The summer of Simba.
And let sleeping dogs lie.
Taking a Leap Part I
A long time ago, I leaped for joy.
Upon my move to my current town, I was so excited when we bought our house, I jumped up and down so hard there was a pop and a buckle. My right leg bent in such a way that a leg should not bend.
Did you ever play with a Barbie Doll and bend its legs at the knee in wrong way?
Yeah, like that.
I thought at the time it was a temporary thing. That a few weeks of rest, and then a few weeks of physical therapy, I’d be over it.
That was not the case.
My family made the big decision to welcome Jonah to live with us in his final months before college starting in early April, right after Passover. He headed to a country cottage with friends for spring break, and we headed to our family to New York for Seder and a bite of the Big Apple.
There were just a few things I wanted to have in order at home before Jonah moved in. My oldest son agreed that he would give up his room and sleep in the basement for the summer. He was a college man now. He didn’t mind. He liked the privacy. He had the whole basement to spread out, be close to his instruments … access to the TV all night….
So I cleared out drawers and one of our double closets to make room.
Jonah said no worries, he didn’t have much stuff anyway.
I made room in our home. We all did.
Another thing I wanted to happen was to fix the shower in the kids’ bathroom.
Right before we headed to New York, Elias came to me one morning with a metal rod.
“Hey mom, was this supposed to come out of the tub? Because now the shower won’t work.”
A call to a plumber, a wrong part ordered, and I realized I was not going to have the shower fixed before Jonah’s move in date.
So, for about a week after he moved in, until we finally ordered the right part and then instructed people that you have to GENTLY pull the lever to change the water flow from the tub to the shower, we all shared the same shower in our master bedroom suite.
First world problem, I know, but it was instant family bonding with me hiding under my covers in bed as the three men in my house took turns ducking in and out of a very busy bathroom before sunrise.
More on that first week later.
First, let’s move Jonah in.
On a sunny morning in April I drove across town to the home where Jonah had lived since October when he turned 18.
The SUV was empty. I folded the seats down to make room for his stuff, which he said he didn’t have a lot of.
I made room.
He greeted me happily at the door. I was excited. Nervous. I think so was he.
The only others in the house was a large (friendly) dog in a crate, and a cleaning person.
No one to help him with his stuff.
No one to see him off.
To say goodbye.
I thought it odd, but Jonah said he had a nice goodbye dinner with his host family the night before and everyone was at school or work.
So, we began to move his stuff into my car.
He had already transferred most of it to the downstairs living room to save us some flights, but there was some more clothes upstairs in the room he stayed in.
A few boxes of books.
Some childhood mementos. Stuffed animals. Yearbooks from middle school. I think some photo albums.
And lots of clothes.
Up and down and up and down the uncarpeted stairs we went until everything he owned fit in the back of my SUV.
“Are you a little sad?”
“No, not at all,” he answered. “I’m very happy. The M’s were good people and we had a nice conversation last night. I’m just excited.”
Okay, I thought. I wondered, was this family going to miss him, now that he was moving out? Would they keep in touch?
After we closed the hatch, we were off.
Then, a bit of an awkward silence.
I mean, I think most teens do not have much to say to the parents of their friends. I mean, as adults, we are hardly human. I remember being completely uncomfortable around the parents of my friends.
But this was the beginning of an arrangement that was completely different from most teens have with most of their friends’ parents. If he wanted us to help him, we were going to have to accelerate this get to know each process, he would have to trust us, and with his background, trust was something that would be hard to win.
So we sat in silence and drove.
And he.. he did this thing, this quirk that would become endearing to me at times when he didn’t know what to say.
He clucked his tongue, alternatively with humming a tune. Not that I minded. The kid could sing. He is a born crooner that always reminded me of a throwback from a different age. He sang and hummed all the time, while doing the dishes after dinner, folding his laundry in his room, sometimes doing his homework, all the time in the shower… those were the good memories.
So.. we were on our way to his new home but first, a stop to the records office at the high school.
My first line of business with him was to make sure he had a check up before college, and for that, we needed his immunization records, if he had any, and we needed to figure out health insurance eligibility.
He had taken the day off. Second semester high school senior. Into his three top choices for college. We both figured that getting other parts of his life in order, like his financials and establishing health insurance, etc, took priority over sitting in class.
There was still silence in the car, so, I took a breath and broke it.
“You know, Jonah, I really don’t know what I am doing. And I’m going to make mistakes with you, probably lots of them. ”
He nodded in understanding.
“And I’m not a social worker. I’m just a mom who cares for her children, and you are a good friend to one of my children who needs some help. I’m just going with my heart here, okay?”
Okay, he said.
We pulled up to the high school and in about 20 minutes he emerged, his immunization records in hand. That was easy.
First step accomplished. First of many.
Then we drove home and unpacked.
That was a Tuesday.
After a week on the road to see family and then a day of moving Jonah out of one home and into another, my body and soul were in serious need of me time.
Me time would be the next day at Yoga.
I couldn’t wait.
When you have something big to say, say it with Lava Cakes
I temporarily fell off the blogging bandwagon, but again for a good reason of chasing after the news for my paid writing jobs.
But then I saw Hamilton. And for a $10 donation to Broadway Cares/Equity fights AIDS, I got a pen.
A pen to write my story.
So, let’s get back to this story.
The story I started about a month ago which I plan to tell piece by piece until its end. Even though people are telling me to get on with it, get over it.
People, this is my getting on with it and getting over it.
If you need to binge read to be all caught up on the story so far, you can start with this post. and then continue from there.
Again, names have been changed to protect identities.
If you know who I am talking about, please kindly shut up and don’t reveal who I am talking about.
….. 3 p.m .
A sunny afternoon late March
I drove home after working out as quickly as I could at my son’s bequest. There was something important he needed to tell me. Some kind of proclamation. An announcement.
The smell of a fresh-baked chocolate something hit me as soon as I opened the door to the mudroom off the garage. A smell that would lead me to undo the benefits of my workout.
There they were, Elias and Jonah, baking up a storm, there were measuring cups, bowls and an empty box of Dunkin Hines on the counter.
“Mom, Jonah has something big to tell you.”
Now this was after a week of figuring out just how I could take in another kid, well, young adult, really, into my family’s life.
A week where my husband and Jonah and I had met, without his tag along friend Elias, my son, to discuss how his life had gone so far, and where he wanted his life to go, and how and what kind of help he needed – both from us and hopefully a good therapist – for him to get there.
We came to the agreement that in order to live with us, there would be chores.
No problem with that. He’d done most of the chores when he lived with his father.
We came to the agreement that he would need to seek out therapy to deal with the alleged trauma of why he needed a home in the first place.
And we agreed that he could not drive our car. Not because we did not trust him with our car, but that we just did not have the budget to insure another male teen driver under the age of 25 on our policy.
With that understanding, driving Mr. Jonah around would be my responsibility. No problem there, nothing Mrs. Mom the chauffeur wasn’t used to, what’s one more kid to drive around?
So, to make sure I had covered everything, I overstepped my boundaries and, in advance, called the director of the day camp where he would be working at that summer to see how he would get there if he had no car.
Was there a bus that picked up the campers and where and when did it pick up and is it okay if Jonah rode that bus to camp too, because he has no car?
Because I had to ask.
Because, ultimately, I would be playing the mom. And moms think of everything.
“You know, I don’t know who you are lady, and I know Jonah,” the camp director told me over the phone. “He is an amazing kid, but he is an adult and to my knowledge he has not yet sent back his employment contract for the summer and I shouldn’t have told you that either.”
I knew that in the off-season the camp director was an attorney. I stammered. I had nothing to say, and I guess he caught on that I was a bit stymied for my lack of saying anything over the phone.
“It’s okay, lady, I know you are just trying to help him out,”
“That’s right, I am. And I am just trying to cover every scenario in terms of what he will need over the summer.”
“I know. It’s okay. If he can make it to the bus in the morning, he can ride it to camp.”
Okay.
So, legally or illegally I had settled that.
But still, on that drive home from the gym, I thought he had made his mind up to live with Sabrina’s family. And I had to be okay with that. This was not about me. I still am telling myself that. It never was about me.
Do you ever have to tell yourself that?
This was what would be best for Jonah.
But there they were, Elias and Jonah in the kitchen, with big smiles on their faces.
And they had baked me lava cakes. If my memory served me correctly, they also bought whipped cream and strawberries for a garnish. The works.
“What’s all this?” asked. A very Merry Poppins sort of question. I joined them around the granite island, an island we would have many conversations around, and laughing, and arguing, and sometimes tears, in the months to come.
And then Jonah spoke. He said he knew Sabrina’s family offered him to live with them as well. And it would probably be more practical because they would have let him drive their car.
But…
“But, I have to say, since I have been coming around here, no one, not even my aunts or uncles or my grandpa, has treated me more like family than you or your family in a very long time. If it’s okay with you, can I live here?”
And then we hugged.
And just like that, like the inside of a lava cake, My heart melted.
Next up: A move. A complete tear.
What Does Neglect in Suburbia Look Like?
This is based on a true story. Names have been changed. 
“Mom, Jonah really likes coming over for dinner.”
Elias told me on a dark winter night early last January.
A year had passed, and so had another high school musical season. This time, my son was now in high school and Jonah, a senior, had been in another musical together and were now at the beginning of forensics season.
No, we’re not talking CSI-styled forensics. No, this was not about a bunch of high school kids investigating the scene of a crime. Forensics, when taken from its original Latin, forensis means ‘in open court, public’, from forum. Say forensics to any high school kid in the midwest, and they know it’s all about speaking, oratory and acting competitions that take place in the winter and spring months.
More on forensics later.
Back to the kitchen we go.
So, I was in the kitchen making dinner. Dark and cold and snowy outside. School had been in full swing now for a few weeks after a two-week Christmas/winter break.
Jonah was now living with another family in the school district, who had traveled without him over winter break, which meant that Jonah spent a lot of time during that break alone.
Alone was a thing that Jonah had grown accustomed to, since about the age of nine.
But after having him over for several family dinners with not only my youngest but my son and daughter home on college break, including his first Shabbat dinner with homemade chicken soup and challah, and another special birthday dinner for my husband, I think he started to realize what he had been missing out on all these years.
Outside of hanging around the kitchen table, I was getting to know Jonah through various outings, like the time over MLK weekend when my son and I went out with him to see a movie and go for dinner at the nearby mega mall.
“Mom, Jonah said before he came over here for dinner, he never really had a home cooked meal.”
To this day, I cannot wrap my brain around that sentence.
To me. food, especially prepared my grandmothers and mothers and aunts (and YES I know there are men and uncles and dads who cook, but not in my family) and then eating that food as a family, is the foundation of loving family bonds and relationships.
An absence of that, that was the first real sign to me of the extent of Jonah’s neglect.
Over time, I learned that when he lived with his mother, who was a substance abuser, Jonah and his brother had mostly survived on eating cereal for dinner. Or a can of tuna. Or PB & J sandwiches.Or hot dogs.
To this day, if offered a hot dog, he’d politely turn it down for something else.
Over time, I learned Jonah lived with his father full time because of his mother’s substance abuse. Jonah said his father expected him to cook dinner.
Nothing wrong with that in different situations.
I started cooking in middle school for my family when my mom went back to work, but only after years of learning by mom and grandma’s side, and mom would prep meals more than halfway and leave me copious notes on the kitchen table when I got home from school. And, considering how broken Jonah’s family situation was, some home cooked meals provided by his dad could have provided that nurturing he needed.
Basic rule: If you are a parent, it’s your job to provide meals for your kid. Leaving raw meat in the fridge and expecting your kid to cook it doesn’t cut it.
Worse yet, according to the story, his dad would leave him and take off for the weekend or the week with his new girlfriend, without leaving a contact number or a family member to look after him. Was his big brother still around at this point? I cannot remember the timeline just right.
So, from the getgo, Jonah said he prided himself on being a “DIY” kind of guy. He had basically raised and cared for himself. Since around age 9 or 10.
And somewhere in this timeline, he had made calls to Child Protective Services, both at his mother’s and father’s homes. But upon inspection of his father’s home, located in a nice, upper middle class subdivision cul de sac with food in the fridge and pantry, CPS found nothing to be wrong.
What does neglect look like to peers in the halls of an upper middle class high school?
It might be hard to detect. Jonah was always nicely dressed with the clothes he had purchased with his own money working two jobs. He had saved every receipt in hopes of getting this money back somehow.. from someone or some lawsuit?
… Maybe his shoes were worn, because he’d been wearing them since the seventh grade. But other than that, he always was nicely dressed.
But when it comes to one’s health, friends of the neglected may start to notice, especially when these friends compete with you in forensics. Jonah may not have had family bonds, but his friends became his family.
The multiple team rehearsed after school every day. I realize it now that my son’s team practiced maybe more than most because Jonah was the director. In his chaotic teen years, perhaps he felt this was the one place he could be in complete control of every scene block, every plot twist.
Indeed, during the season, multiple team members often make each other the center of their lives, with all the teen drama, for the duration of forensics season, which runs from late December auditions until the end of April with state finals.
When multiples spend most of their free time together after school rehearsing, all day on Saturdays and sometimes, sleep overs and parties on Saturday nights and then of course, brunch on Sundays, someone is bound to get sick. And if one gets sick, the rest are bound to catch it.
A few years back, when Jonah had a hacking cough and fever and his dad had instructed to pray it away, a forensics teammate was so worried about him that she pleaded her mother to drop off some OTC cough medicine at his house.
And she did. Only to get called into the office that week by his father and counselor for a rash scolding. The father telling the mother to stay out of his business.
Flash forward to the winter of 2018. It was a particularly deadly strain of influenza was going around if you can recall.
Perfectly healthy, young people being struck horribly ill, or even dying from it.
Health care professionals urging all to get their flu shots.
Since turning 18 and living independently from his father, Jonah had figured out a lot for himself. Even FAFSA! (We’ll get to that in another post).
One thing he didn’t have access to, and didn’t have time to figure it out, was access to healthcare.
Since his estrangement from his dad, he had no health insurance. Not like his dad took him to doctors. Or believed in keeping up with immunizations.
One night last winter, Jonah came to sleep over. He was coughing pretty badly.
I felt his forehead. It was pretty hot. But he refused to take any medication, not even Advil.
“As it is,” he shrugged it off with a laugh, “My family has very strong immune systems, and we just fight it off, whatever it is, and we eventually get better.”
I expressed my concern and his need to see his pediatrician right away.
“You can’t afford to wait it out, Jonah, this could get very bad. You have to get better and see your doctor, they’ll give you a flu shot.”
Problem is, he told me, he had no doctor, and no access to healthcare.
To this I just shook my head.
It was very generous and kind of the family who took him in, considering they hardly knew him or his family situation. But, did it not trouble them that he had no access to healthcare?
How could they let him use their car, but not care if he has health insurance? Was he under their auto insurance policy?
I mean, what if he got in a car accident?
What if he needed an emergency appendectomy?
What if his cough is bronchitis or pneumonia and he just needs an antibiotic?
What if, and who even knows if his immunizations are up to date?
What if… and what if… other horrible scenarios played out in my mind. I am a Jewish mother, after all.
So, at that point, on a cold January Saturday night, what could I do?
The night went on and Jonah’s cough got worse. Finally, Elias came up from where they were crashing in the basement and said Jonah needed some relief.
Mr. DIY gave in to my maternal suggestion. I think I gave him some OTC cough suppressant. Or NyQuil. Or something.
To cut the fever and the cough. To make it better.
All this time, I just wanted to make him better.
The next morning, I sent him back to where he was staying with two quarts of my homemade chicken soup.
Because at that point, before he lived under my roof, that really was all I could do.
So what is the difference between a kid who is cared for and not cared for in the suburbs?
The difference is, the other kids have parents or even a loving guardian to take care of them if they got sick.
The other kids had doctors.
And Jonah at 18 had no living memory of seeing a doctor. Ever.
That’s neglect.
Next up: Some statistics on LGBT youth
The Roles We Play
All what I am going to tell you in this post and consequential posts is true. Or based on the truth.
At least that is what he told me.
Only the names are made up.
……It’s early February and that means another season of the community theater company I volunteer with is in the books.
I was in musicals and student theater competitions in high school. The memories I had from being in shows, even just being in ensemble, were some of the best of my life.
So when my youngest came home in the fifth grade to be part of a community theater production of Fiddler on the Roof, how was I to say no?
Newly transplanted (I used to write about being a transplant a LOT), we knew next to no one in our new suburbia. So getting involved with a community theater production run out of our town’s rec department that encouraged kids to be in shows with their parents seemed like the perfect way to meet people.
Community theater led my son to the middle school and the high school stage.
It led me back to the stage too, in roles like a pick-a-little lady in The Music Man and a dead nurse in Addams Family and Mrs. Teevee in Willy Wonka.
And the stage also led Jonah to my family.
The first time I saw my “fourth child” he was on stage.
It’s now surreal that I ever thought of him that way. As my fourth child.
We – my son, older son and oldest daughter, did not know him. Only of him.
Tall and gaunt, with dark eyes and cheekbones that most thespians had to find the most skilled makeup artist to contour in, he played the part of the Bishop in Les Miserables.
Now, he didn’t have the biggest part, and I thought I knew all the boys in our high school who were the theater kids, but this kid seemed to have come out of nowhere.
He gave a standout performance with a deep, sweet baritone voice and later on in the play, he’d be one of the barricade boys that passionately fought and died for the cause.
Little did anyone know that off stage, he was fighting his own battles.
But after the show, kids did start to hear.
That he had no mom.
That he barely had a dad.
Because dad said no son of his could be gay and he had to find another place to live upon turning 18.
And until then, he could pay his own way, including paying for food, clothing and yes college admission fees too.
So, the Bishop worked two jobs. The role of a babysitter and the role of a waiter on top of playing the role of a high school junior.
Back then, in November of 2016, I didn’t realize the role I would come to play in this teen’s life.
In a year’s span, I would come to play to Jonah the role of the mom of a good friend and soon the role of an adult he could trust. Later, I played the role of an advocate and a full-on Sandra Bullock The Blind Side grizzly bear mama.
And later than that, and even though it may have caused pain and confusion, I played the role of mom. Or .. .like a mom.
My role as mom, what he wanted, what I wanted for him, eventually got us both into some trouble.
But in between all that, there were some happy memories and laughs.
I try to hold onto them the most.
One night, over a family dinner, discussions led to as they always did, musical theater. My son Elias and Jonah were listing their favorite musicals and what roles they would love to play most.
I am not sure if by this time he had already moved in yet, but in the winter of 2017, he had started coming around the house a lot for dinner.
He had already been kicked out (or left?) his father’s house and was living with another family of a student he hardly knew. They took him in and treated him more like an exchange student.
They did not get involved. But they let him use the extra car.
For my son, it would be the lead in Catch Me if You Can. Don’t ask me what the male lead’s name is, that’s a job for my son.
Jonah wanted most of all to play Link from Hairspray.
“Oh I could totally see you in that role,” I said, readying at the stove with a pot full of pasta.
Two teen boys at home meant for a LOT of pasta.
“Um, I don’t know,”my son said into his pasta dish., “I mean, Link is attracted to…”
“–Yeah so what,” Jonah beat my thoughts to the punch. “As an actor when I get on stage I can become ANYONE. I mean, come on… I played a BISHOP!”
We all laughed at that one. The irony of it.
So, for a while, I played the role of the stand-in mom.
And now?
For reasons that will later be revealed, be it partially his fault or partially mine or no one’s fault at all. I play the part of a stranger.
But writng about it helps. Helps the pain.
I just wish the kid would have stuck to theater.
It’s been nearly a year since I’ve blogged. Here’s why.
Hello?
Is anyone still out there?
Do I still have any readers left?
Well, if all my readers and followers have dropped away, I cannot blame them.
Why would anyone follow a blogger who, well, has not posted in nearly a year and her last post, written the day after the Parkland Shooting, was, well, so dreadfully dark?
If you are still out there, dear faithful readers, it’s been quite the year in my household.
And for me.
My paid writng gigs have landed me lots of great stories.
I wrote about Detroit’s March for Our Lives.
I’ve been writing about, and continue to write about, unfortunately, anti-Semitism.
But that was not the biggest thing that happened.
Not even having ACL reconstruction surgery was the biggest thing that happened.
Here is a photo of me sunning myself, full metal brace and all, in July.
Yay that was fun.
But if I wrote about the biggest thing that happened to me in 2018, it would seep out of the confines of a humble blog post and become..
I don’t know…
A novel?
A cautionary tale?
So, readers, I’m asking you, and if I change the names to protect the innocent…
Would you want to hear how I tried to save a life this year?
A life that was so previously broken that by the time I got to it there was little I could do?
Even though I spent the better part of 2018 making it better?
Even though I think I may have done more harm than good, for he and I both, now looking back?
Dare I write something so personal, and something that does not yet have an ending because right now it is not very happy and I so want it in my bones a happy ending?
I see it has been so long since I’ve posted that even privacy and sharing settings have changed and I cannot share this on Facebook.
That may be a good thing.
So that means that only YOU, my true followers, my subscribers, can read this.
So, tell me if you are intersested, and I will start sharing this story.
And thanks. And I hope you’ve missed me.
I’ve missed writing in my own voice.
I think it’s time I returned to it.
The things I’ve learned from Community Theater
Wordlessly, a bearded man dressed completely in black pointed at me and gave me directions.
“Hold this.” He whispered, shoving a clump of black curtain into my hand.
“When Frumma Sarah finishes singing, open the curtain from here very quickly so we can wheel her backstage,” the man in black ordered. “This will be your job at every performance.”
And just like that, I had my first job in community theater. While my son was doing his thing onstage being a shtetl boy, I had my part backstage helping Fume Sarah get offstage. And I did my job proudly, all the while pantomiming Frumma Sarah’s motions and words, with another stagehand who I had not met until that final tech dress rehearsal, every night I was not in the audience watching my son with pride.
I was a suburban mom. This other stagehand was a young woman at most in her 20’s. We had never met before that night, but though “The Dream,” we had an instant connection. And at that moment, I realized: I am not a soccer mom. I am a stage mom!
That was last year, the year my son came home buzzing about how he wanted to audition for Fiddler on The Roof with a local community theater group. He heard about it from a poster hung up at his new school. I drove him to every rehearsal and instead of dropping off and running home or going for coffee, I hung around.
This year, I was asked to serve on the board, and perform on stage, as a member of a long-standing mainly volunteer community theater group in the Detroit Metro Area.
As a transplant, getting involved in community theater has proven the best way for me to plug into a community. Now that the curtain has closed on our most recent production, here is a few things community theater has taught this newbie:
You cannot produce any old show you want – Planning to produce a show in community begins nearly a year before opening curtain. Music Theater International has strict licensing guidelines and a catalog of shows available for community theater production that is regularly updated. Nothing running on Broadway, or that is a Broadway national tour, can be produced. And licensing rights for some musicals, especially the Disney genre, are extremely costly. Being that our company is geared to be a family, multi-generational theater company also restricts our choices. Hair and R.E.N.T. are definitely no-nos.
Everyone counts: To the untrained eye, a theatergoer might think that the female lead with the canary-like voice or the dancer with the highest kicks or the tenor with the sweetest crooning is the most important facet of a musical theater production. But the ones you see on the stage, we are just mere puppets. It is everyone else: the sound engineer who follows the script line by line during every performance, whose fingers fly across the soundboard making sure your mike is hot only when it needs to be, the stage manager and their fearless tech crew who wheel stage sets around 180 degrees or pull the grand curtain open and shut within seconds, they are the backbone of any good production. As is the props master, whom months before opening curtain thought of every detail, and where it needs to be when not on stage, who matters. As is the costumer who hunts around at thrift stores and begs borrows and steals if she has to just the right costume from other community theater groups, who is up late at night sewing and resewing hemlines and taking in trousers, that’s who matters in a show. Not to mention (and OF COURSE they need mention!) the multi-piece orchestra that plays at your feet from the pit, whose musicians will even throw in their own laughter if a joke onstage falls flat. I don’t understand why they can’t join us on stage for a bow each night.
You gain an insane appreciation for people who actually want to do musical theater for a living – As much as I loved being in a performance, towards closing night I was wiped. How do people do this and keep it fresh, some for 3,000 performances in a row? Maybe it is because most of our company is slightly older than professional Broadway stars. But Broadway stars, for eight performances a week, have to give it all to their audience, even when they may not have it all that night. Even if they are under the weather. Or had a fight with their boyfriend. One night, while driving to rehearsal, I heard Seth Rudetsky on the XM Broadway Channel interview an actor who passed a KIDNEY STONE on stage while he played Horton in Seussical the Musical. After all, the show must go on, and the paying audience does not care if you are passing a kidney stone. When you need to be on stage, you must be on stage. Even if you have to pass a kidney stone. Or even pee. Yes, perhaps of all the things I learned about being on stage is that performers do not get to use the bathroom any old zany time they want to. For thousands of performances. Yet, they have to keep themselves hydrated? How is that all supposed to even out?
Hair and Makeup – This again speaks to the immense appreciation I have gained for professional actors, because this business is way too high maintenance for me, an otherwise hermit-like writer, when it comes to tending to hair and makeup prep that is worthy of the stage. To get myself ready for performances, I spent hours watching Youtube videos on how to create the perfect Gibson Girl updo from the Edwardian era. I found videos on proper contouring and learned how to apply blush not to my cheekbones but underneath. The first time I tried to apply my makeup, I looked more like a Geisha girl than someone who lived in River City, Iowa, but thanks to our volunteer makeup artist, a woman in her 40s who is also a national champion figure skater (!!), I got it looking just right.
Community Theater is not high school theater – You know where my favorite place in the theater is? Not on stage, under those hot bright lights, but deep backstage. Where the darkness is lit only by a string of lights. Where the smell of sawed wood and paint lingers in the air. Where you can find random things like an old stove or a stripped down Chevy Convertible from shows past. Graffiti that says things like “Best Cast Ever Guys and Dolls ’86” Because if only for a second, I can pretend I am backstage in my own high school. But this is not high school theater, even if this may have been the high school of others for many decades. It wasn’t mine. And as a transplant, few, if any of the audience members knew me, let alone knew me from high school. I also got that lonely transplanted feeling after performances, watching my fellow cast mates surrounded by adoring family and friends, awkwardly balancing bunches of flower and candy in their arms while they posed for a picture. When you are a transplant, this post-performance shower of adoration can feel a bit thin.
*sigh*
But this post is not about being a transplant. It is about showbiz! So let’s move on:
Breath Support, Personal amplifier – Just as a choreographer tells a dancer how to move their body, a great vocal director will tell you how to move your lips, teeth, tongue in such a way that you would believe that you never knew how to move your lips, teeth, tongue and even the roof of your mouth (did you know you can move the ROOF of your mouth?) before he taught you. Every note has choreography and a dynamic, and a good musical director will get this out of you if he has to beat it out of you to make sure you are sounding like a well-supported ensemble, a chorus capable of producing that building wall of sound. You might think that singing in the shower or singing in your car is singing, until you have taken actual formal instruction from a musical director. There really is a difference.
Community Theater truly is a community– My son discovered something that I learned this year. Yes, the cast and crew become like family. After all, in the intensive weeks leading up to opening curtain, you will see them more than your actual family. They are there for you – totally there – to celebrate your birthday, to say a community prayer of healing if you have a loved one in the hospital, to root for you if you are waiting on that job offer after months of unemployment. They are there for you to change you out of one costume and into another in under 90 seconds. Or loan you a favorite antique hatpin to keep your hat from flopping over your face, because, really, who owns hat pins in this century? They are there for you to hold your hand and wipe away a tear when it all becomes too overwhelming. And, if your cast is lucky enough to contain some medical professionals, they will do what they have to do to keep you healthy for those crucial last rehearsals leading up to opening night. Believe me. A month after closing curtain, and I am going through deep withdrawal missing my theater family. I cannot wait to do it all again next year!
Join me on the Road 2 College
For some us, it feels like we ourselves just graduated college.
How is it, that now we have children who are old enough to begin the college application process.
If you are a veteran college parent, or just getting started with having conversations with your teen about getting started down the path to college, I invite you read my series on the new online newsletter called road2college.
Staying Close, Hanging Together – One Detroit Family stays put for seven generations
Above:
Rebecca Nodler, 10, Oak Park; Seymour Zate, West Bloomfield; Adele Nodler, Oak Park; Danielle Nodler, 6, Huntington Woods; Alvin Nodler, Oak Park; and Gladys Zate, West Bloomfield
I’ve lived in my house for nearly four months now. And for the most part, my walls are blank.
After going through the home selling and buying process, I guess I’ve grown used to the “staged” look of a house.
No clutter.
Keep it impersonal.
The seller shouldn’t display too many family photos lest the potential buyer cannot envision their own life in the house.
Every few evenings, I hear a banging sound: it’s my husband’s vain attempt to hang a few more pictures on the wall, only to have ME take them down. No. I’m not ready. I don’t want that picture there. I never liked that baby picture from SEARS in the first place. I’m going to develop more photos on Shutterfly. Big ones. I promise. That was for the old house, now we’re in a new house.
Wall arrangements have become somewhat of an obsession of mine. My blank walls have become empty canvasses I don’t want to screw up. I’ve taken out library books about decorating walls. When I watch TV shows or commercials, I find myself ignoring the dialogue of the characters but looking instead at the set. I know there are set designers who have perfectly adorned the walls with the right balance of small and large frames. More than any other decor, the stuff you hang on your walls makes your house a home.
Maybe I’m not home yet. Because a few weeks ago, I visited a house that was just that.
Adele and Alvin Nodler’s house in Oak Park, the place where I interviewed Adele and her cousins over tea and homemade cookies for an article in the Detroit Jewish News,, is not big or fancy. But it’s been their home for nearly 50 years. No designer was hired to decorate, but what it is decorated with is love. There are family photos from many generations on every possible surface.
I came away from that interview not only with a great story on the importance of keeping family ties,, but a lesson learned in how to make a house a home.
Here is just a little of their story, published in the October 17 issue of the Detroit Jewish News:
Families come in many sizes.
Then there are families like the Levins that are so large and tightly knit that they have their own anthem. And a custom-designed logo.
Last Sunday, Oct. 13, the Levin clan, with most of its 200 members residing in Metro Detroit, sang their anthem and performed an original variety show in their logo T-shirts as they celebrated the 65th anniversary of the Levin Family Club at Congregation Shaarey Zedek in Southfield.
Joshua Chynoweth, 13, of Livonia lights a candle on the anniversary cake.
“We have lots of writers and performers, but no directors,” joked Adele Levin Nodler, 72, of Oak Park, who has been treasurer of the club for 48 years.
The Levin story is familiar to many Jewish American families. They are descendants of immigrants who fled persecution in Eastern Europe and wove themselves into the fabric of American society. What is unique about the Levins is how strongly they held onto family ties and Jewish traditions for seven generations.
“Family togetherness is a legacy that was given to us by our grandparents and is one we will pass onto our grandchildren and beyond,” said Nodler, as she sat with her husband of 49 years, Alvin, brother Seymour, 81, and her cousin Gladys Zate, 87, in her Oak Park home.
The love of kin was evident on the walls and bookcases adorned with family photos from every generation.
The Levins can trace their Detroit roots back to 1905 when Adele’s father, Morris Yellen, escaped Poland at age 16 to avoid the Polish draft. Yellen changed to Levin at Ellis Island. Working for years as a baker, he saved enough money to return to Poland and bring the rest of his family to Detroit. The Levins became established bakers and grocers and had stores on Chene Street.
The family would often gather on Saturday nights after Shabbat to play cards. In 1948, those casual card games evolved into the Levin Cousin Club.
Early Detroit Memories Adele and Gladys also recall living upstairs from one another in the same big house on Elmhurst Street. Adele was the oldest of five siblings; Gladys had three sisters. It was there the cousins started writing and performing shows about the funny antics that went on in their family.
The cousins recall fond memories of celebrating Jewish holidays in Detroit.
On Simchat Torah, they danced with flags toped with apples in Beth Jacob synagogue on Pingree Street and dined at kosher restaurants on 12th Street after Shabbat.
They also remember having large family seders — as many as 75 people — at the home of their uncle, Meyer Levin.
“As a kid, you’d have to sit very still at my Uncle Meyer’s seder. If you moved, you would get a knibble, or a pinch on the cheek,” said Gladys, who recalls her mother making gefilte fish for the seder from fish she kept in her bathtub.
The pace of life — and the state of Detroit — has changed since 1948. Parts of the family live out of town. The bakery on Chene Street and the old house on Elmhurst Street are no longer there.
To compensate for the distance, Adele and her siblings and their descendants chat on a weekly Thursday teleconference call to “catch up and wish each other a good Shabbos.”
“No matter what anyone is doing, we stay committed to that call. Even my grandchildren participate, and the one thing they notice is there is a lot of laughter,” said Adele, who taught middle school in Oak Park for 30 years.
“Though we don’t see each other all the time, there is a constant feeling of togetherness because of the Jewish family traditions we have built over the years,” said Michael Nodler, 43, of Oak Park. He offers backstage support to the show with his brother, Harold Nodler, 44, of Huntington Woods.
The family show is all the more meaningful to Michael this year as his son, Joshua Nodler, 12, a seventh-grader at Norup International Middle School in Oak Park, approaches his bar mitzvah.
Joshua created a PowerPoint slide show for the evening that traces his family’s history.
The show comes every five years; every year, they meet for a summer picnic, a summer hot dog roast, Chanukah party and Purim party.
The secret to a close family, Adele advised, is never hold a grudge.
“Our parents taught us you don’t stay angry at each other,” she said.
“Yes, we had fights and disagreements.
Sometimes someone would not play fair at a family card game. But you work it out and stay close — that is what’s most important.”
About Me
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Versatile Blogger Award
Stacy Gittleman 