The Holocaust in Degrees of Separation
a photo of Jews, including Elie Wiesel and my friend's dad, liberated at Buchenwald
Leon Posen, a congregant from my synagogue, passed last week. He lived to the age of 94, blessed with a long life that could have been cut very short. His passing is still a sad one. Leon was a Holocaust survivor.
As the years and decades stretch away from World War II and Hitler’s war against the Jews, there are fewer people to tell first hand accounts of what happened in the ghettos and the concentration camps in Europe.
So who will bear witness in generations to come? Even if we don’t have a direct personal connection to the Holocaust, it is our turn to hear as many accounts as possible, and then tell them to the next generation. This is the only way to keep the vow of Never Again.
In Rochester, about 300 area Hebrew school kids in grades 6-12 watched their peers put on a play called “What Will You Tell Your Children” written by local playwright Jessie Atkin about her trip as a teen to the concentration camps in Poland. The play focused on the reactions of contemporary teens as they toured Auchwitz and faced anti-semitism and a general lack of understanding of Judaism at home.
I wonder if this new take on the Holocaust – telling the story second-hand and not directly from survivors’ accounts – actually disturbed,unsettled, and horrified the young audience enough to make them really remember. To make them relate. Was it too much of a softball throw in teaching the Holocaust? Is there – should there ever be — a gentle way to teach the Holocaust? How can it be unforgettable if we do not teach the inhumanity and the horror?
As the students watched the play, I watched the students. And then, I looked them as a whole – a bunch of healthy, creative, sometimes fidgety, teens and preteens. This was the same age demographic that Hitler selected for his Terezin concentration camp in Prague. A room with this many kids, multiply that number until you reach 15,000 kids. That’s how many died in Terezin, I thought. I shivered.
In my Hebrew school, we were spared nothing. My teacher, Rabbi Tzvi Berkowitz, was born in a displaced person’s camp in Cypress. The one depicted in the historical fiction novel “Exodus” by Leon Uris. He was the child of concentration camp survivors. Because of this, in our Holocaust education, we watched many horrible films shot in grainy black and white of the ghettos and camps filled with emaciated bodies. Some tortured and barely alive, some already dead.
But, still, it happened to someone else’s family, not my family, all those years ago. They were disturbing and yes, the first year I really learned about the horrors, I spent many nights curled up at the foot of my parent’s bed to sleep.
Now, I live in Rochester, a small town with an unofficial, intimate club that no one wants to belong to, yet they are proud members of it. Rochester has many Holocaust survivors whose families are now second, third and even fourth generation survivors.
It wasn’t until I had friends in this club, that I began to think: if his mother, if her grandfather didn’t survive, than this friend wouldn’t exist, or certain friends of my children would not be here.
Unlike the Yom Hashoah services of my childhood, when it seemed that everyone in my synagogue attended, it seems that Yom Hashoah services are attended mainly by those directly touched by the Holocaust, survivors and their decendants, leaders of the community, particpants in Rochester’s march of hope or our teen trip to the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. So, going to these events, I still feel, thankfully, disconnected.
But in 2006, I had the privlelege of attending in Los Angeles the United Jewish Community’s General Assembly. That year I was the recipient of my community’s young leadership award, along with my traveling companion, Ron. Ron has the biggest heart of anyone I know, and lots of energy. An entrepreneur, he always seems to have three or four business ventures going on as well as several philanthropic projects. This is the kind of guy he is: we were stuck in an airport on the way home waiting for a delayed flight. It was late and people were crabby. Ron goes to the only remaining open store in the terminal, buys a bag of candy, and walks around, offering candy to the stranded travelers.
One part of the trip, young leadership delegates from around the world were taken to L.A.’s Museum of Tolerance. The museum, chronicles the Holocaust and current genocides in world history. Sadly, it shows visitors that vows of “Never Again” cannot ring true. In the decades since the Holocaust, there has been genocide in Cambodia, the Balkans, Rawanda, Sudan. Our docent said that the museum has been a destination of feuding gangs of LA to teach them the consequences of hate.
Further into the emotionally-charged museum, we came to the tail end of the Holocaust exhibit. There, transported from a concentration camp, in the corner of a dark room, was an actual bunk where prisioners slept, stacked three levels deep. Two to three men slept on planks on a bed the width as narrow as a twin bed. In the background, behind the bunk, was a life-sized photo, a well-known photo of survivors of Barrack 66 in Buchenwald. In this photo, is an emaciated Elie Weisel. I had seen this photo dozens of time in my life. Then, all of a sudden, Ron grabs me by the arm and points. Impossibly, my friend Ron’s face was peering out from the bunk one level above Weisel.
“Stacy!’ my friend cried, “That’s my DAD!”
And that is my degree of separation from the Holocaust. What is yours?
Idea #95: the secret jazz pianist stylings of the janitor
A few days ago, WordPress asked us to write about a rare, hidden talent no one knew we had.
I thought, why should we only blog about ourselves? Who cares about reading about me all the time (except, maybe my mom)? Are bloggers really that narcasistic?
So, I’m dedicating this post on hidden talents to the janitor at a local community center.
On Sunday evenings, as I hone my little-known rare talent (that will go unmentioned in this blog post), I take breaks and wander the hallways of my community center. Not much else goes on in the building on Sunday evenings, so this little group I mingle with has the place to ourselves.
As I strolled in the lobby, I stopped in my tracks when I heard what I thought was a recording of Jazz piano music. It was coming from the darkened, empty senior lounge.
I peered in and it was not a recording, but the janitor. The janitor with the wiry, stringy dirty blonde hair and thin drawn face. The janitor who looks like Shaggy from Scooby Doo. The janitor who carefully vacuums the lobby was seated at the grand piano in the corner of the room, playing the finest jazz piano I had ever heard without paying for a door cover charge and a two drink minimum.
I asked if I could come in and listen and he nodded to me wordlessly. I was in awe of his playing and told him so. I told him about the column I write and asked if I could intervew him for it, when, with an annoyed look on his face, he told me no. But, he did tell me his story.
He grew up down south and was a pretty serious musican. He was in a jazz group and had regular gigs. They were about to get a recording contract, but something – the pressure of playing before a crowd and the pressure of the music industry – made him snap inside.
Since moving up north, he tried to get his musical career off the ground again, but couldn’t shake the stage fright.
So, there he sits, after he cleans up after us, and plays piano in the dark.
Now, if we travel in the same circles, and after reading this, you may say “ooooooh, I know who she’s talking about! I never would have guessed he could play piano that well!”
But, gentle reader, I beg you not to bring this to his attention. Because he doesn’t want the attention. Just, when you pass him by as you go for your workout or as you see him vacuuming up after a community event, know that you are in the presence of a brilliant, but clandestine, musical genius.
And never look past anyone or underestimate anyone’s talent based on the way they earn a paycheck.
Conversations with Playground Princesses
Today in Western New York it was one of those first spring days when it felt like spring – warm spring – was really here for good. Not only was no jacket required, but you could actually venture outside and feel gentle warmth and not bitter cold on bare arms and legs.
So, as soon as all our little students arrived at school, we raced outside to the playground.
Among the chirping of the robins was the falsetto operatic voices of some of our three and four-year-old girls. They sang as they followed each other up and down the play equipment, down the slide and through the tunnel.
I had to ask what they were playing.
“It’s Princess Day!” One of them said.
So, what is on the agenda of Princess Day?
“We stayed in bed all morning, went on an acorn hunt, scrubbed the floor, went to the ball, and then we went to sleep.”
… .. Not bad. It’s all in a day’s work for the playground princesses.
The endangered “average” child. My thoughts on Race to Nowhere
I started the evening at Rochester’s screening of the documentary “The Race to Nowhere” as a columnist hunting for my next big topic. Would this movie light a big enough spark to generate action in the towns I cover? Would this mobilize parents to put an end to the endless hours of homework?
The screening of this independent documentary was widely anticipated in Rochester. For weeks, as in the rest of the nation, Rochesterians have faced the grim news of deep cuts to school budgets. Increased class sizes. Cuts to Advanced Placement classes. Cuts to arts education, even at Rochester’s prestigious School of The Arts.
But this film was not about budget cuts. Or maybe it is. Maybe, the stories in this movie are the direct results of the mess our nation’s education system finds itself. Race to Nowhere is the product of cuts to funding in education: too many teachers forced to teach to the test, classes stripped away of anything creative, kids stripped away of their zest for life and the excitement of learning, replaced by the constant pressure to churn, absorb and perform.
Even though I got my ticket in advance, finding a seat was a challenge. The lecture hall at Nazareth College was packed. But still more educators, students and community members filed in to see a film that is sparking heated discussions and stirring people to act and rethink the cost of constantly pushing our children to always excel, always succeed and NEVER take it easy. We are pushing them fast, according to the movie, to cheating, burnout, stress-related illnesses, and in the most extreme case, suicide.
The film, as our moderator cautioned, did take a very narrow focus on only the most stressed-out kids and teachers. I did not see any joy in these kids lives, and there had to be some point where these kids had a chance to kick back and enjoy, or maybe even once come home and bubble about something they learned in school.
I’m relieved to say that my kids still come home excited about at least some of the learning they do. How can you not get excited about creating a silent screen script as a way to learn about the 1920’s or learning about Beluga whales?
But, as I watched the movie, I felt the tension slowly rise in my throat. I got emotionally caught up in the struggles of the kids and parents on the screen. My thoughts drifted to my own three kids, aged 14, 12 and 7:
……About a month ago, my daughter came home from school “stressed” that she only got an 86 in her latest math test. Only.
My daughter is in the 8th grade in the Brighton Central School District in the Rochester Area. It is one of the most competitive in the country. She’s been enrolled in accelerated math and science ever since the fifth grade.
And my illustrious academic math career? I was never a good math student. I write. There are brilliant mathematicians and engineers who can barely weave together a paragraph. This is because we are wired differently, and that is okay.
So, I am pretty certain that in my New York City Public school, math classes were created for left-brained students like me. Just to shove enough math credits down our gullet to graduate.
So, hearing my daughter say “I only got an 86” in an advanced math class, evoked little sympathy from mom. But, she wasn’t looking for sympathy. She was truly stressed.
“I HAVE to get AT least a 91 or higher in my next test, or else I’m out of the accelerated math program.” Her emphasis was on “test” and not on learning a theory, or learning how to solve a problem.
I posed the possibility of failure to my brilliant daughter: “There may come a time in your academic life when you, no matter how hard you studied, might get a low grade on a test. A really low grade. What would happen, if you actually failed a test?”
“Fail?! No way. I’m never failing a test. Ever.” And she went back upstairs to study.
“Race To Nowhere” also talked about the overemphasis on Advanced Placement classes. My daughter is already talking about taking Advanced Placement classes at age 14. This is something that I didn’t think about until I was a junior in high school. I took AP English classes and AP biology classes because I was genuinely interested in them and wanted to take them. How it looked on a college application was only the second reason why I took them.
And for my daughter? It’s as if the last few months of eighth grade are already history. Onto looking good for the college application. Onto the next thing.
..My son, a sixth grader, comes home to discuss the Civil Rights Movement and the book, The Watsons go to Birmingham. He also threw himself into his optional science project and studied how airplanes fly. He is a voracious reader and absorbs books from authors like Stephen King, James Patterson, and Anthony Horowitz. With all this reading, he is capable of making excellent inferences and insights in class discussions. He is also in accelerated math and never throws his hands up in frustration because he doesn’t understand something.
Nathan’s downfall is that sometimes his completed homework fails to make it from his backpack, down the hallway, and into the teacher’s inbox. So, often, he is graded on missing homework assignments instead of his actual ability to think and solve problems while he is in class. And, like the movie pointed out to me, my nightly conversations with Nathan are not about what he learned, but what he has for homework, and did he do it, and can I see it? And our nights usually end up with him yelling at me to get off his back.
Lastly, the movie touched upon our society’s never-ending need to one-up our friends, family and neighbors with how much material wealth we gain. Making money is the whole reason for working so hard in school, for accepting acceptance from only the top colleges, so one can be gainfully employed and making a LOT of money. That is success.
At seven, my youngest already understands this.
“Mom, are you successful?”
I think about this. I am happily married and have three healthy, beautiful though somewhat kooky children. I have three jobs that touch a lot of people’s lives in my community, though none pay enough that I could actually independently support myself. But, I have been there for my husband so he could be successful. In turn, for his success, I can be home for my kids after school to take them wherever they need to go: be it Bar Mitzvah lessons or orthodontist appointments.
But I know what my son is getting at…
“Let’s face it mom. The “Jonses” are both doctors and they have a pool and a hot tub and a really big house. And we don’t have a pool. And our house is not as big as theirs. So, they are more successful than you are.”
So, I ended the night not a trailblazing reporter, but a weepy parent with knots in my stomach. I was too much in a rush to get home to my kids, NOT to ask them about their homework, or what they got on their latest test, but to give them a hug and tell them to find time to enjoy life while they are still kids living under my roof.
Swirls of Color or Standardized Dots? Keep Arts in Schools
What picture inspires you more.
This?
Or this?
If public school budgets continue to shave and slash away at the arts, the black and white dots of those “No Child Left Behind” standardized tests are all that will be left of our children’s public school education. Teaching to the test leaves no room for imagination, creativity, real thinking or problem solving. What it has resulted in is burned-out stressed-out teachers and students.
This is according to an independent documentary called “Race To Nowhere” that is sparking a grassroots movement to reshape how we educate our public school students. I look forward to seeing a screening of this independent movie in Rochester, NY, at Nazareth College on April 4. The movie screening is being sponsored in part by a private Jewish day school, Hillel Community Day School.
The film challenges parents, educators, and policy makers with this question: Are we doing right by our children? Is the pressure to succeed in standardized tests really preparing our children to become capable, inspired and motivated individuals ready to tackle college or the workforce?
When school budgets get tight, the arts are the first to get cut. In fact, schools in the Rochester area are seeking to reduce some of their arts budgets by 50 percent.
Is music, art and sculpture really that expendable? Is painting, singing, and playing an instrument such a frivolous part of a child’s education that it should be considered a fluffy extra that can be easily eliminated from his academic career?
Absolutely not, according to Americans for the Arts. Young people who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are:
- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem*
When was the last time your child stood at an easel and held a brush full of paint? Or perhaps, in the spirit of abandoning everything for creativity’s sake, she ditched the brush and instead joyfully found herself up to her elbows in paint, as her hands and fingers glided across the paper.
Indeed, art is messy. When was the last time you let your kid get messy at home with some paint or clay? Overheard once in a preschool hallway: “I’m so glad they paint here at school, because at home, we don’t let him do that.”
Might as well draw a dagger through a teacher’s heart.
Video games and television are not messy. But they don’t do much to fire up the brain neurons either.
Art on the other hand unlocks creativity in children that leads to story telling, pattern recognition, and understanding other cultures. It is simply the expression of life that makes life enjoyable. Art enables quiet kids to tell stories. Art calms and centers otherwise boisterious kids. It is a positive way for them to control the environment around them. A blank piece of paper or a lump of play dough can become a whole universe that they can master.
The above picture was created by a very precocious preschooler who patiently sat, cut and created a composition. Imagine what that same child can do when she gets older in an art class?
If a child is not going to be exposed to the earts in their earliest school years, then where will they get the opportunities? If arts are cut in public schools, there are private arts classes that parents can enroll their chilren in most towns and communities. But they cost money. So, cut the arts in public schools, and access to arts will only be possible to the families who can afford them.
And the rest? GThe only drawing less priveleged kids are going to do in school are the dots and circles they create on a standardized test.
Under the Purim Moon in Israel – 2008
It was just St. Patrick’s Day in America this week. I couldn’t help but notice all the people decked out in green, so publicly and outwardly showing their Irish pride. People were wearing the green and donning shamrocks in schools and restaurants and supermarkets.
Strangely enough, this visible expression of pride in one’s ethnic identity reminded me of the revelry and costumes of the people of Israel as they celebrate Purim. Purim is a story of kings, queens, and villans. A holiday of reversals. A holiday of masks, costumes, and feasting. And like St. Patrick’s Day, there is some drinking involved too!
In America, Jewish holiday celebrations take place mainly inside synagogues and Jewish community centers. But in Israel, the planet’s only country with a Jewish majority, all Jewish holidays spill onto the streets and shops. And Purim in Israel is one big nationwide party. A party celebrating a victory over wickedness that could hold true today. There was a wicked man in Persia back then that we defeated. There is a wicked man in modern-day Persia, or Iran now. Both of these men pledged to destroy the Jewish people. One wicked man defeated. Many more to go.
What could have been a day of great sadness for the Jews turned out to be a day of great joy. And, we are commanded to be joyous, intoxicated even, on Purim. So drunk in fact, that on Purim in Israel there are special parades called Ad Lo Yada, meaning in English, “That you Shouldn’t know,” meaning on Purim you should be so happy (drunk) you should not be able to distinguish between Mordechi or Haman (boooooo!). Friend or Foe.
Last night I looked up and saw the Supermoon. While this moon was indeed one of the fullest full moons I had ever seen, it did not surprise me that there was a full moon. Purim, always falls under a full moon in March. Or, more precisely, the 15 of the Hebrew month of Adar.
As I gazed at this body of luminescence, I took a deep sigh and reminisced about where I saw it three years ago. 
This was the moon I saw hovering over Jerusalem’s Yemin Moshe neighborhood. Okay, from my amateur photo, it was not as big as the supermoon, but it was special all the same.
I thought about all I saw and ate and felt when I was in Israel. I thought about the people who opened their homes and families to me who hardly knew me. I thought about waving the American flag in a Purim Parade and listening to the cheers from the people along the route. I thought about the traffic jam I got caught in. The reason for the traffic jam? Israelis were clogging the streets because they were delivering baskets of Purim food to their neighbors. That’s the kind of country Israel is – one big family.
Then, I caught a bit of CNN’s Piers Morgan’s interview with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During commercial breaks, the same old images were shown to the world of Israel: The Kotel, The Dome of the Rock.
Excuse me, Piers, but you were in Israel during PURIM!
Are these tired images all you really can show about Israel? Must Israel always be covered with conflict in the backdrop? If you got out on the streets of Tel Aviv or Modi’in or Jerusalem, if you could do one sidebar story, you would have wandered the streets and been treated to the following faces:
Halvah for sale for the Purim Feast
my friend's brother, decked out for Purim, celebrating with a feast at his home
teen girls dressing up and having fun in Tel Aviv
mom and kids wait for bus outside of old city, Jerusalem
Will showing these images make Israelis seem just too normal, too human for media coverage? Would it portray Israel too much for what Israelis are, a people who love to live, who love to celebrate?
Until the media in America show photos like this of Israel, I’ll just have to share my own. And I’ll be taking more. Because we just booked our next trip for this December. Even though it is the first day of spring, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I can’t wait until the winter.
It’s March Madness … Baby!
My husband is a really big college basketball fan. Make that a Syracuse Orange basketball fan. I can watch a game but I refuse to get so emotionally invested in a team. And I admire, but I admit feel intimidated by, women who are big sports fans. I cannot understand my husband’s addiction to checking scores and talking stats the same way he cannot understand my addiction to watching news coverage of natural disasters – or checking my blog stats. But we have lived with our differences for over 17 years now. And, to prove that love rules above all were married on March 12, smack in the middle of March Madness.
I should have known what I was getting into back when we were dating. I remember going over to his house when he was home from grad school. It seemed his whole extended family was over to watch a Syracuse basketball game. I was not allowed to talk until the commercial breaks. I remember going to some Cal basketball games with his grad school buddies when we lived out in California. Back when Jason Kidd was their Center. He and his friends talked basketball stats the whole way home on the BART. They may as well have been speaking in Chinese, I didn’t understand any of it.
How does my husband want to leave this world? He has told me that when his time comes, and I hope that’s 100 years from now, it will most likely be in his Lazy Boy chair watching Syracuse play UConn in double overtime during the NCAA tournament.
Ever since graduate school, he and his lab buddies, no matter what corner of the country they live in, keep a bracket going this time of year over a small wager. Now, I don’t remember him being concerned about his bracket picks at our wedding. I don’t think he had a small transistor radio in his ear as we stood under the chuppah, or wedding canopy. And among our vows was one where he vowed that during our Maui honeymoon, he would not stay in our honeymoon suite watching the games. I’m just kidding.
Except one.
His alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania played against Nebraska that year and we watched that one game over Mai Tais by the poolside bar. It was the one game he said he really wanted to watch. Who was I to say no to my new husband’s one sports diversion – no obsession – on our honeymoon?
Years have gone by and I still don’t share this passion for watching sports. I just don’t understand how he can get so completely riveted in a game that in the scheme of the world will not change his life. Except maybe for the few dollars he will win on his grad school bracket.
But I do enjoy watching my husband watching these games. I will even tolerate him flipping between one of my shows so he can check the score.
To give you an idea of the excessive celebration that goes on around here during March Madness … our first child was born in December. You do the math.
A Fashion Statement I Regret Making
As I write this, I am watching the academy awards. No, my biggest fashion blunder thankfully wasn’t televised, nor was it as bad as Bjork’s Swan dress from 2001. But, in a time when one should try to act as cool as possible – the first day of high school – I truly missed the mark.
My 25th high school reunion is coming up. Now, I don’t remember what I wore my very last day as a high school student, but I sure remember what I wore the first day.
No, the picture below is not actually my legs. Thankfully, I dont think there is a photograph to document my first day of Freshman year of high school.
My mom had just started a subscription of Seventeen Magazine for me. The preppy look was totally “in” for the fall, according to Seventeen’s big, thick back-to-school August issue. Maybe if you went to a prep school in New Hampshire, but back in Staten Island, not so much.
So there I was, high school freshman, which is cause enough to get egged or suffer a head full of shaving cream the first day of high school. But no, I had to draw further attention to myself with khaki knickers, argyle socks and penny loafers.
I just got it all wrong.
Stuck at the Airport with Kids? Here’s what to do!
As I write this, the curse of the Philadelphia International Airport has struck my family once again. I last saw my husband through half-asleep eyes as he kissed me goodbye at 4 a.m. last Sunday. A conference out in California was taking him away during our February “vacation.” My vacation home with the three children. He is now stuck in Philadelphia. I’ve shoveled nine inches of snow off our driveway. I really don’t know when he will be home.
I am sure that the curse of delayed or canceled flights due to the weather is not reserved just for those in the Philadelphia airport. No, with this winter, and this winter vacation coming to a close at the same time another snowstorm rattles our air traffic patterns, our story is not unique.
So this blog post is dedicated to all of you out there who have been stuck at an airport with children.
I really think that going away to get a few days of sunshine over February break is just not worth it in our age of “Welcome to the Hellish Skies.” Indeed, we did a few years ago make an attempt at a Florida getaway. But due to storms, we instead had a 13-hour destination vacation to the Philadelphia International Airport!
My son, an avid New York Mets fan, was dressed head to toe in Orange and Blue Mets paraphernalia. He cowered the whole time in his jacket, hood pulled up all the way. He actually believed that because he loved the Mets and hated the Phillies, someone in the airport of the City of Brotherly Love was going to kill him.
Our efforts to escape the cold of Rochester for just one week had failed. We missed our connecting flight from Philadelphia to West Palm Beach. Every flight to southern Florida was booked and overbooked for the next three days.
As we looked at the flight board, we slowly came to the harsh realization that the palm trees of our vacation dreams had been yanked out by the roots. We could stay in the airport as standby refugees, or head back to cold icy Rochester. We were not going anywhere.
But then I had an epiphany. I realized, Hey! We are still on vacation! Vacation can be a state of mind, even if you did not make it to the Sunshine State.
So here are my hard-earned tips of what to do you if you are on a 13-hour standby hoping in vain to get your flight to paradise:
- Immediately go to the “customer service” line and demand you get a pillow. Take two or three and don’t feel guilty. The airline has ruined your original vacation destination and they owe it to you to make you as comfortable as possible.
- Forget the food court. You are on vacation and deserve the best of airport dining. In our case, it was Applebees. Any frugalities of ordering from a restaurant menu with children- like sharing – should be lifted. We were on vacation. Kids, if you want a beverage other than water, go for it! That naturally blue-colored smoothie? Go for it!
- As far as the adults in your party, order an alcoholic beverage. You are going to need it.
- After your meal, order dessert. Those desserts that stare at you all throughout your meal from those triangular placards placed strategically on the table. Remember, this may be your only vacation meal!
- After your meal, don’t bother checking on your flight status. You know you are not boarding any time soon, if you board at all.
- Find out if the airport you are stranded in has a Sharper Image or a Brookstones. Loiter there for an hour or so. Spend most of this time on one of their massage chairs. Ignore looks from salesperson.
- Is the hot stuffy airport getting to your children? Do what my kids did and let them pretend that the bathroom is their own personal water park. Cool off by dunking your child’s head in the sink. Just like dunking into the pool at grandma and grandpa’s condo. How refreshing!
- Around 10:00 p.m., entire sections of the airport should be clear enough to let your kids run completely wild. Make sure you pack a jumprope and maybe some in-line skates in addition to some healthy and sugary snacks.
- At 11 p.m or later, if you are still waiting on standby in a nearly empty airport, abandon the rule about indoor voices. And the no running rule. And the no climbing and jumping on furniture rule. Moms, that glass of wine at Applebees must have worn off by now. Use the extra space to do a little yoga stretching to relieve the stress.
Airport authorities, if you cannot tolerate the wildness of unruly children, who have spent over 10 hours cooped up in your airport, you should have done more to get good, hardworking parents to their original vacation destinations. Airlines, you should have done the decent thing and not have overbooked your flights. So go ahead kids and parents, make all the outdoor voices, and screams, and wild laughter you can conjure up. This is family time!
YOU ARE ON VACATION, REMEMBER?
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Stacy Gittleman 
