Baking Bread with My Grandmother’s Ghost

My parents didn’t cook, so I learned to bake from an old VHS of my Grandmommy.

Published in One Table, One World on Medium.

Rolls Photo by Monika Grabkowska on Unsplash

 

Mama, Are We Going to Live Forever?

An atheist’s guide to teaching children about death

Published in Home Sweet Home on Medium.

How do you teach death without Heaven? Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash

Bra Shopping with My Motherless Mom

I wrote this for P. S. I Love You's Mothers' Day Time Travel Prompt.

Photo by João Silas on Unsplash

Writing is Healing for Children Too

Writing is Healing for Children Too
Your kid knows everything is not okay.
Published in Writing Heals on Medium
"She chose to wear a wig, because she lost her hair from chemo. Ellen, like her mother, had the Jewish breast cancer gene. Like her mother, she died young, leaving behind two children.

This was before gene tests, but the pattern was clear, and my own mother could only assume she was next."

My 1st grade journal, the day after my aunt died. (Author’s personal photo)

 

My Rapist Wrote Me an Apology.

This is a really hard one to share, mostly because I would rather my mom never, ever had to read any of this.



But I believe that by sharing our stories, we are stronger, we can heal. We are always getting stronger. We are always healing.

Writing this was one piece of that healing for me.

I have been going through the stages of grief this past week and a half since the Kavanaugh hearing. Bargaining, Anger, Denial, Depression -- everything but Acceptance.

The day he was sworn in, it was all about Denial. Previously glued to the news, I knew the vote was coming, so I shut myself off from internet news and NPR. If I didn't hear it, then it wasn't true. I made it to night before I mentioned to my husband that the vote was supposed to be that morning but I didn't know what happened. He told me they confirmed him. Still, I told myself we were probably confused, and it was just some committee vote or something.

Denial.

When it comes to my personal story in this piece, I'm mostly at Acceptance. It still disrupts my life, perhaps conjuring disproportionate responses to small breaches of consent that I could otherwise overlook. Fight or flight.

It weaves together with other things that have happened to me, like the man who full-on choked me without warning during a first-date kiss, and when I struggled to escape, let go and said, "Fine, we'll work up to that."

If it was just one story, or if my friends didn't all have stories, or if society didn't keep showing me that powerful men can do anything to anyone and half the country will just hand them more power over us, then I could Accept.

But right, now, I Dissent.

Here's my story: My Rapist Wrote Me an Apology.

Death, Contests, Drag Queens

Remember that time Tzivia saw Charlotte's Web and asked me if the kid who played Charlotte died at the end too?

Well, we went to Pride last weekend, and Tzivia was really taken with the drag queen who was MCing the Pride performances. So we watched a bunch of YouTube videos featuring drag queens, starting with Kids Meet a Drag Queen:


She was really enjoying herself, as she's very into performing right now, and it was cool for her to see a kind of performance art she'd never seen before.

We were watching a faceoff between two drag queens, a clip from RuPaul's Drag Race,  and I was trying to explain to her about contest TV shows, about contests in general. We really haven't stressed the ideas of "winning" or "losing." (When we play Candyland, whoever makes it to the Candy Castle first is like, "C'mon, everybody, come party with me at the Candy Castle!") Her main contexts for contests are the watermelon-eating contest from last year's 4th of July, and the little green peas on bikes in a "race" in the book LMNO Peas.

Anyway, I thought I'd explained contests well, but her response was,

"So if the judges don't like the performance as much, then that's the person who dies?"

I love my kid.

Real Vs. Pretend

Two days ago, we saw a FANTASTIC rendition of Charlotte's Web, put on by the 5th/6th grade class at Sunfield (Waldorf school). Tzivia has communicated a desire to perform on stage for a long time now (well, a long time for a 3yo anyway), so it was especially great to show her other kids rockin it on stage.

Charlotte's Web SPOILER ALERT...


Charlotte dies at the end. I knew it was coming, but I was still bawling, even after the standing ovation was over.

Anyway, this morning over breakfast, Tzivia asked me,

"When Charlotte died, did the kid who was playing Charlotte die too?"

I was happy to be able to give her some good news.
 

It was a good reminder, though, of how unclear the line still is between real and pretend (even though my kid is super-clever and we talk about everything a lot lot lot). She's always assuring me that pretend things she does are "just pretend, Mama," and Charles thought she was doing it for me (like, that she thinks I care a lot about real vs. pretend, because I'm always talking about it, so she wants to reassure me).

Today, at library time, Teacher Jeanne did adorable peas-in-a-pod crafts with us, and most of the kids were drawing little faces on their peas. I asked Tzivia if she was going to, and she said, "No, because real peas don't have faces."

I let her know she was definitely right, but she could still draw faces on them if she wanted (like the book Little Green Peas, which she loves), but she was adamant today that plants should remain faceless. 

How does this discovery of real vs. pretend play out with you and your kids?