Tag Archives: mothering

The single working mother’s slump turned rant

18 Tuesday Jun 2013

Posted by in Parenting

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First let me tell you about the slump.

Why have I been writing blog posts about plastic surgery and birds? Believe me, I already know that people love to hear and read about other people’s misery. Even when someone writes about their happiness there is someone out there who doesn’t really believe it. Sometimes all of that happy sunshine bores people. Give them a good war, a good fight, some gory accident or an attempted suicide, but happiness? I mean, she can’t be real, can she? Nah. It’s all a front. She’s such a whore, always smiling and prancing. Yah, she’s such a happiness prostitute.

The funny thing is that people respond even more crazily to unhappiness. So screw the judging, I will let it all out because believe it or not even single, working mothers gets into a slump every once in a while.

I am not sure what came first, the chicken or my eggs. My doctor keeps telling me that I am tired because I do too much. I tell her that I have always done too much so since when did things change? Maybe it’s because I am turning 36 in a month? Now how’s that for adding a little insult to my aging eggs.

My typical day lately seems to go something like this. I wake up to a pile of laundry to fold and one to put into the machine, beds to make, and three billion lunches to prepare. Somehow through all of that we are still finishing up some left over homework from the night before because either I got home too late, they were too tired or a combination of the two. One of the kids keeps asking me the same question over and over again but I can’t hear them because I am busy talking and listening to two other kids already.

Then finally, when I can concentrate I realize that the question was simply, “Can you give me water?” and unlike the mother I should be, I become the mother I don’t want to be as I lead my poor innocent child over to the fridge and show them the built in water tap on the door and say, “Now why couldn’t you get some water yourself? Huh?” And I know, in my heart of hearts that my kids want me to be the one to give them water because it makes them feel cared for and loved but with everything going on around me I can’t help but be a bit cynical.

That is a typical morning for me and I eventually reach the point where I am standing behind the counter serving breakfast to the kids who are sitting across from me and making lunches on the counter in front of me. I have already been awake for two hours if I was lucky enough to hear my alarm the first time at 5:30 and get up for a run. If not, then I got up at 6:30 and I am still wondering why I am so tired if I went to sleep at 10 the night before. Oh right, I know why I am so tired. Because at the end of my work day, after picking up my car from the garage, taking my kid to a doctor’s appointment and dealing with a leaky ceiling at work I came home to find backpacks by the front door that needed dealing with, a sink full of dishes, tons of laundry and a pack of hungry kids looking at me with those puppy dog “feed me” eyes.. This pack of kids are MY beloved hungry kids and I need to feed them.

And when I got home from work I couldn’t even concentrate on what they were saying, because I could only think about how much I wanted to get upstairs and kick off my heels and my work clothes and slip into my jogging pants a t-shirt and flip flops. After kissing everyone hello, I finally do the classic Israeli hand motion of regah (just a second) with my thumb and fingers touching each other and climb the stairs to my room, place my heavy laptop backpack and purse down, kick off my heels and do the switcharoo from working mom to just plain working mom.

When I go back downstairs, I start to cook dinner and the kids start to chatter. I love to hear them talking and they already know what I am going to say, since I have said it a million times before, “If I had a shekel for every time someone said mommy, I would be heading for early retirement.” Alas, I don’t.

Which reminds me: money.

I hate money and I love money but money seems to hate and love me too. I can’t stop thinking about how my oldest is going into high school next year and her tuition has now gone up tenfold. I am making supper while trying to figure out in my head where I can cut corners to make it possible for her to attend high school, which isn’t really a debate anyways, but since I am not going to start sewing my own clothes, growing my own wheat (sorry people) or walk around with a uni-brow, there is a limit to where I can cut back. But nonetheless that’s how the money part of my brain works.

Maybe I should get rid of my 13 year old car. I am so super fancy shmancy, I know. But then I cringe at the thought of living without a car again, which I did for 2 years after my divorce. I remember what it was like every time I had a sick child or they were stuck somewhere and would call me, their mom, the queen of solutions, who sometimes had no solutions. So I would then call someone who was close to me and ask them to help me out but even asking for help wears thin after a while and if you have any pride at all, you just get sick of asking.

And so I brush aside the thought of giving up my car and think of other ways to make those overdue payments this month. But even with my innovative mind there is no freaking way I can come up with the thousands shekels needed to pay for the kids summer camps, the overdue payments to the ganim, the apartment maintenance, the car license renewal and the down payment the high school asked for while still paying payments for the current school year’s tuition.

And through all of these thoughts going through my mind I feel this shooting pain in my neck which I forgot about momentarily with all of the other things going on around me and that has been plaguing me since I woke up this morning. This pain probably developed as a result of my car being in the garage yesterday, having to carry my heavy laptop bag too much and totally doing myself in. I keep waiting for the pain to subside because it freaks me out and reminds me of the car accident years ago that is the source of this mostly dormant pain I endured and which I always fear might make a comeback.

I would just like to mention that somewhere in between morning and evening, I tend to somehow miraculously make it to work.

And then there is today while packing up to head home it hits me that I have a year-end party for my 4 year old at preschool and not only do I need to prepare myself emotionally because I will be going alone and sitting alone but I also need to prepare myself physically for the mad insane rush of running home from work and through the door at 5:30 PM, putting my stuff down and running out again with my four year old in tow leaving everyone else at home alone without a chance to really connect. Now I may be the solution queen but even her royal majesty hasn’t yet found a solution for working mothers everywhere on how to feed your kids and spend time with them even in your own absence.

Case in point.

Now if that wasn’t rant enough, let me just tell those of you who think I need to have more faith that you are not George Michael and I HAVE faith so you can keep your faith to yourself. I am a realist so instead of sitting around hoping for the winds to change, I just adjust my sails accordingly and sail on. And if something does possess me to go and visit the Kotel sometime soon, it is most likely that I am going there to stuff my unpaid electric bill into the cracks between the wall with a little note to Nir Barkat or Yair Lapid that says, “You cut back on my child payments so pay this one for me and maybe we can call it even”

And don’t offer to lend me money because that just messes things up between us and makes me a debtor and you the creditor of me. No no no. That just won’t work.

But I do believe in myself and in the future.

I do believe this time will pass, sometimes so fast, too fast, that I am scared of missing out.

I do believe that every step I have made up until this point has helped build and strengthen me as a person and in so much as I am strong, I will overcome this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

I do believe that everything I am doing is because of the love I have for my beloved children and for myself.

I do believe my rant is over.

Giving it up for love

04 Saturday May 2013

Posted by in Parenting, Relationships

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As I held the little bundle in my arms, a brand new baby girl, I looked down at her and knew that she was mine. All mine! I continued to purvey her little hands and feet the size of my thumb, that oh so delicate nose, and I knew, without a doubt, that I had no freaking clue what to do with this baby!

The years have gone by, and now I am a mom of five kids. Five rambunctious, personable, make me laugh out loud, sweet, infuriating and all consuming little people. I still don’t know what I am doing, but I do know today that the mamma love that I had when they were small, is not even comparable to the love I have for them today. Truth be told, back then, at a time when I had three little kids under the age of 6, I probably didn’t have enough consciousness about me to even decipher any grander thoughts than when my next nap was going to be. As a new mom you really don’t realize that these little delicate creatures are going to become people one day. It is only a matter of time and invested energy coupled with mutual experiences that will allow you to learn to love them in an unyielding way.

But there is something else that I have learned about love. Something that was staring me point blank in the face. I had to experience this for myself to truly believe. (Life Epiphany number 33)

It is not those who give to you that you love the most, it is the ones YOU give to that creates within you a drop dead, do anything for them, never stop until you die, always thinking about you LOVE.

Now it seems so obvious (slap my forehead) as I look at all of the evidence pointing to this fact. Our ancient language seems to have figured it out already since the word for love in Hebrew, “Ahava” is based on the root “hav” which literally means: to give.

Giving is what love is all about.

Tell this to all of the people who write on their dating profiles that they are looking for a woman/man that knows how to pamper and give to them. Tell that to couples who fight because they don’t think the other one is doing enough for them.Tell that to parents who can’t connect to their children because they don’t feel like their kids are giving enough back to them or appreciating them for all of their efforts.

I think about my role models growing up.

The love I saw that was all about giving, not about taking. My grandmother who supported my grandfather’s rabbinic post, who looked after the kids and the home, who loved unconditionally. When my grandfather would arrive home and he would see her looking distressed he would sit her on his lap and play with her hair while she spoke to him about the problems and issue she had dealt with that day.

From the first time my father met my mother he let her sisters borrow his sports car, he gave her whatever she needed and just continuously took pictures of her all day long. I love to look at those pictures of young love, of my mother brushing her long, thick hair in the mirror with the reflection of my father in the background. Just the other day I was sitting in the kitchen with my parents and my mother offered my father soup. His response was one that I have heard over and over again throughout the years, “Whatever makes you happy!” because although he loves her soup, he knows that when she serves it to him it makes her oh so very happy. My father doesn’t buy my mother things simply because she wants them, he does it because he truly wants to make her happy. They allow each other to live out their own lives and yet, they are joined in a way that is truly a blessing.

Ma and dad

Love is my Mom and Dad

Even when I went away to University, back to Toronto, I lived with my Aunt and Uncle whose love had never diminished over the years. This was a true example of that type of giving with no holds barred. When it snowed and my aunt had to get into the car, my uncle would reverse the car into the driveway so that she wouldn’t have to walk all the way around to get to the passenger side. Every week she would bake his favorite cake for him and every week without fail, he would exclaim wholeheartedly that this was the best cake he had ever tasted in his life!

Even the older generations such as my great uncle loved my great aunt oh so much. But he was not a shmoozer and after a family get together he would say goodbye and leave. He knew that my great aunt was one of “our kind”, and loved to say goodbye for half an hour, so he would sit patiently in the car and wait for her.

That was love.

And my other aunts and uncles whom I spent a lot of time with growing up were in love from their youth, they had grown together, were best friends and were used to giving to each other for many, many years.

There was no account balance that was tallied daily in their lives. In their minds, there were no withdrawals. Love was all about those never ending deposits, day in and day out.

I want to tell you one other little secret that I have discovered about love. When you give, it can’t be in order to receive in return. It has to be true giving, straight from the heart, no strings attached. You don’t need to be a doormat, but you need to realize that the account balance for love is not about your half in the pot.

I don’t give to my children because I hope that one day they will look after me in my old age, (after all, there is a huge excess of retirement homes in existence for a reason people!). I give to my kids because I want to, because I love to, because it makes my bond to them even stronger than you can ever imagine is humanly possible. I give to my siblings because I know that it makes me love them more and, as an adult, I try to give to my parents in the same unyielding, unconditional way that they gave, and continue to give, to me. I know that I will never be able to reach the level of love that their kind of giving entails, but I will damn well try.

Because love means never checking your account balance.

Don’t count your love, make your love count!

(Published originally in the Times of Israel, February 2013)