In which she returns to her mommyblogger roots

.

There are times when I wax philosophical, or fumble with the minutiae of Israeli culture, or push the boundaries of my writing, or spend hours looking for that perfect shot. And then of course there's stuff like this, or this. Or this. Or even this. That one still haunts my dreams.
.

This isn't one of those times.

.

Yes, this is the obligatory "back to school" post.

.

It could have been a photography post, but not with these as the best of the first day of school lot -

.
.

Yes, his eyes were closed or nearly close in every single picture.

.

Or this one. At least she's happy, but she's much too busy to even look at me, let alone head for a less busy background. Oh, and the hair? A joint effort. My job is ponytails. Maya does the clips. So many clips. Oh so many clips. Dozens. All at once. Either her hair is down loose or else this. It's all about extremes. No middle ground with this kid.

.

.

Or then there was this attempt to get the two of them together. Herding cats I tell you.

.
.

As for the nitty gritty...

.

Itai's day went well. The only surprise there, albeit a major one, was a last minute teacher switch from the same teacher he had last year (who we were THRILLED with) to a complete unknown, but I have heard good things about her and Itai came home happy. (Why wouldn't he, he'd been complaining for months that the previous teacher gave too much homework. He thinks he's on easy street now. I suspect he's in for a fairly rude awakening in a few short days.)

.

Maya was our real star today. She started kindergarten (generally freestanding here in Israel, not part of the elementary school) in a small special education "language" kindergarten) as well as joined her brother in his afternoon program. Over the summer the kindergarten was moved from the brand new facility I'd originally blogged about in the link above to an older facility, but the building they're in is still more than enough for the eleven (11! Instead of 35!) children in the class and the teacher and the aide seem both nice and competent. Maya took a while to acclimate this morning, and was a bit unsettled when it was time for the children to eat breakfast (food can be a stressful issue for her) but she seemed to settle in well after that. They only went for two hours today and she was beaming by the time I picked her up, and is enthusiastic about returning tomorrow. As I've gotten to know the staff and the other children and families I've become more and more confident that we made the correct decision to place her in this program, that it is exactly what she needs to make a huge leap forward over the next 1-2 years. When the school day is finished at 1:30 she will be joining Itai at a private afternoon program. She knows several of his friends there as well, and has been happily playing in their playground and glomming treats off the staff for a year now, so that transition went a bit more quickly (though there too she didn't really eat, but hopefully that will settle itself soon). The staff there told me she was a bit reserved, but the fact that she was talking with the director right away when I brought her over (a first day treat, she'll normally take a van) showed me that she was feeling pretty comfortable. Maya herself told me that she had a "great" day and had "lots of fun" and can't wait to go back tomorrow. We're optimistic that this combination of specially-geared attention in the mornings and normal day to day kid stuff in the afternoons will be a good combination for her - giving her the extra boost that she needs without letting her fall further behind her same-age peers by becoming too insular in the special ed world. This is very important to us because the goal (of both us as her parents and of the professionals who understand such things) is to have her ready to enter a regular classroom by first-grade, two years from now. (Many children in Israel with fall birthdays are encouraged to stay in kindergarten for two years, with Maya's other issues it's practically a given.)

All in all we're off to a pretty good start. It was a long, stressful road to get here, but now that we're finally here the sun is out and things are looking good.

Bacon, bringing home and frying thereof

As a child of the seventies, I was brought up on one of the greatest myths of the twentieth century - the Super Woman. I was taught from the earliest age that I could grow up to be anything I wanted, that all doors were open. That it would be no problem to bring home that bacon, fry it up in that pan, and all the while make sure my husband knew well that he was the man.

There was only one problem.

They lied.

They lied through their teeth.

"They" told a generation of young girls - told us - that we could grow up and have it all. You could be a high-powered career woman. You could work hard and aspire to the good life. You could be a wife and a mother. You just couldn't do all of them at the same time. Something had to be sacrificed, compromises had to be made, pieces of your soul had to be sold off.

I did everything I was supposed to do. I finished high school. Went away to college. Earned a degree. Met a boy. (Not in that order.) Got a good job. Wanted a better job. Went back to school. Earned a masters. Got a better job. Sacrificed a great deal of free time on the alter of career development. Worked nights. Worked weekends. Travelled on business. Often. Long trips to difficult places. Furthered my career. Developed a specialty. Became known for that specialty. I was what some might call a success. A minor success I admit, I was still young, but with great promise.

And then, somewhere around my thirtieth birthday, after nearly ten years of marriage, I realized that I was ready for children. More than ready.

And I panicked.

How could I possibly fit children into this high pressure lifestyle, into these 60-hour work weeks? How could I turn my back on the career I'd worked so hard to achieve?

How could I not?

My whole life I had been taught that I could grow up and have it all, but no one had ever told me how I could have it all. How on earth was I supposed to fit it all in? How could I manage?

It wasn't possible. It wasn't FAIR. How could I, we all, have been sold this bill of goods? By what right did they lie to us all these years?

To say I took it hard would be an understatement. A very big one. Months of months of existential angst.

Perhaps I was predestined to take this hard. After all, I grew up in a professionally successful, well educated family. Both of my parents had graduate degrees from an Ivy League school, my mother earning hers once she had two school-aged children of her own. It was always taken for granted that I would go to a good college, taken for granted that I would do well there and taken for granted that I would then go on to get a good job in the field of my choice. It was also taken for granted that somewhere along the way I would meet Mr. Right, get married, and have children. I internalized all these expectations and made them my own. There was a brief but quite successful rebellious period in high school, but it was still assumed that I would pull myself out of that and return to my "real" life before managing to veer seriously off course. Ever the dutiful daughter (well, other than those high school years), I did.

I agonized for years over the right time to actually fulfill this destiny and have children. Finally, after much soul searching and long discussions with my unbelievably patient husband, I decided that really the only thing to do was close my eyes and leap, trusting that something was down there to cushion my fall.

I got lucky, it was. In fact, I struck working mom gold - I was able to reach a deal with my company to move down to part-time after my son was born. I stopped travelling, stopped working nights and weekends, and began spending a significant portion of my life away from work. I found myself so enthralled with my child and motherhood that each hour we were separated was too much, and by the time my daughter arrived a few years later I was more than ready to walk away from the career track. Unforeseen circumstances kept me at home for nearly a year, and at the end of that year was able to get myself hired for a new position - a part-time, work-at-home, low key, low stress position, and one that I hold to this day.

I never would have thought that I would be content with a small job working on a very small piece of the puzzle - no glamor, no glory, nevermind that I would find even those minor demands on my time an intrusion but yet here I am today. I never did figure out how to be Super Woman; instead I found out something infinitely more important - how to be the best me that I can be - a mother, a wife, an employee, and any of the thousand other hats I wear on a day to day basis. Not the perfect wife and mother, far from it, but the best one that I am able to be. Others will define their best differently, but at the end of the day that's exactly what those choices they gave us way back when were all about. It is not the freedom to follow every path, but rather the freedom to choose and follow our own.

I just wish they'd been a little bit clearer on the whole prioritizing thing. Could've saved me years of anguish, but nevermind, I figured it out for myself in the end.

I can't be Super Woman, but I can do my very best at being Super Me, and that's pretty darn good.

This essay has been submitted to Scribbit's July Write-Away contest, on the subject of Wonder Woman.

Survival against all odds

They say that a mother's love is the strongest thing on earth. Here's why. Two mothers who used their last breaths to save their children. My heart breaks for all those who have lost everything to the capriciousness of nature.
.
(taken from a lactation e-mail list I'm on)


China Earthquake - Baby Survival Stories
_____
Under the rubble, dead mothers tightly held their babies; baby girl stayed alive by breastfeeding from dead mother Singtao News (written in Chinese) http://hk.news.yahoo.com/080517/60/2u63i.html
.
In Duijangyan, Sichuan, a young mother tightly held her baby girl, who was about 3 to 4 months old, while using her own shoulders to stop the roof from falling onto her baby. The mother slowly lost her life, however the baby in her arms was still breastfeeding from her dead mother, until the baby was rescued. In Beichuan, another mother who also died using her body to protect her baby, left the last message to her baby: "my dearest baby, if you can live through this, you have to remember that I love you."
.
In the afternoon of May 13th, the second day after the Sichuan earthquake, scores of rescue workers were digging through a residential area of Duijanyan, looking for survivors. A volunteer doctor said that under the rubbles, they found a young mother holding a 3-4 months old baby. The mother was curling her body, her head lowered, and she had no sign of life, however her shirt was lifted up, and the baby girl in her arms was still sucking on mother's nipples.
.
Doctor wept as he recounted the scene, "At that moment, we saw a red (lively) little face, against the dead mother's gray breasts that were covered with dusts.it was such a contrast. Everyone at the scene cried.
.
"I can't imagine, a dead mother was still breastfeeding her own child. From the way she was holding the baby, you can tell that she was protecting her child, or perhaps the mother put her nipple into the baby's mouth just before the mother died. We carefully took the baby out. The moment the baby was taken away from her mother's nipple, the baby cried."
.
In Beichuan, rescue workers also found another dead mother protecting her
child: she was kneeling down, bowing her back; both arms on the ground supporting her body - her posture was like someone kowtowing, however her body was crushed so badly that it was deformed, and she was dead.
.
Since it looked like she was protecting something underneath her, rescue workers carefully removed the rocks and stones around her. They found a baby who was around 3, 4 months old underneath her body. It was because the mother used her own body to block the falling wall, the baby was miraculously completely unharmed. When being taken out, the baby was even sleeping peacefully.
.
A nurse removed the blanket from the baby to examine her, and found a cell phone tucked inside the blanket. Doctor looked at the screen of the cell phone, and saw a text message left by the baby's mother, "my dearest baby, if you can live through this, you have to remember that I love you."
.
.
And in the midst of the devastation, a local policewoman gives orphaned babies a chance at life:
.
The Face of Rescue: Women's Work
.

.
CHENGDU, China - A Chinese policewoman is contributing to the country's massive earthquake relief effort in a very personal way -- by breastfeeding 20 babies.
.
A newspaper in Chengdu, the capital of quake-hit Sichuan province, devoted a special page to the 29-year-old woman, calling her a hero.
.
The woman from the quake-ravaged town of Jiangyou has just had a child herself, the Western Urban Daily said. She is nursing the children of three women who were left homeless by the quake and are too traumatised to give milk, as well as five orphans, the report said.

The babies who lost their parents have been put in an orphanage which does not have powdered milk, it said.
.
Please look here and here to see why giving artificial infant formula in a disaster is extremely dangerous and puts the babies it is purporting to help at risk of serious disease and even death. Think twice too about which aid organizations you support. Dumping in a load of expired or nearly expired formula with no labels or instructions in the local language and then expecting mothers with no access to clean water or washing facilities to prepare bottles for the first time in their lives does not save babies' lives - it puts them in grave danger. Much more good could be done and many more babies saved through the provision of lactation support instead.

No Market For Used Teenagers

I had a pretty idyllic childhood - a loving family, long summers at camp, fondly remembered holiday gatherings, family vacations, ski trips, parents who put their all into raising two kids they could be proud of. I got good grades, minded my teachers, listened to my parents, didn't fight (much) with my sister... Exactly what you'd hope for in a child.

And then I became a teenager, and it all went to hell.

To say that I was testing my boundaries would be a gross understatement. It would be a lot more correct to say that I chose, yes chose, to fall in with a bad crowd because they were more "interesting". I wasn't interested in the goody-two-shoes smart kids, I didn't want the reputation that went (in my snobby high school anyway) with being in the marching band, I didn't have enough money to keep up with the in-crowd, and didn't really want to anyway. I wanted, or perhaps needed, to rebel, but the truth is I had a great life with great parents. I had nothing to rebel against.

That didn't stop me from doing it anyway.

I made a conscious decision to become a burnout, with everything that went along with that. I looked around, decided they were the most appealing group, and cultivated the habits I'd need to be included. (God I was stupid, and arrogant, and foolish, and careless, and did I mention stupid? So completely, unbelievably stupid. And so very lucky to have survived fairly unscathed.)

There is no reason to detail all of my misspent youth, suffice it to say that the one-quarter of it that my parents found out enough was more than enough to ground me for life. The part they didn't know? Well that would have gotten me grounded until long after I was dead.

I pulled stunts that put my parents through hell, and even today I cringe in shame at the mere memory of some of them.

As I carried out my senseless rebellion my parents never wavered. No matter what I pulled, I always knew they loved me unconditionally. Even when they were unspeakably, and justifiably, angry, I always knew that they loved me and that I had a home and that that home was a moral touchstone.

This wasn't true for many of the others I knew. There was B*, who was always getting thrown out of the house by his mother's new husband. Seems this cop didn't like getting a screwup burnout for a step-son. We'd all leave our cars unlocked every night in case B needed a place to crash. Then there was I*, whose parents didn't even bother showing up to his high school graduation, leaving him stranded and alone when it was over. (I drove him home, while he talked about cutting up lines of cocaine in the kitchen while his father watched, afraid to say anything.) Or A*, whose mother was so helpless that she didn't even try to exert any control over what went on in her home. Or T*, who'd share bong hits with his parents. Or J*, whose single mom was so busy working 3 jobs that she was never home long enough to know what he, what we all, got up to in her living room when we should have been in school. I could go on and on... There were of course others like my parents, who were probably just as devastated as they were at what their beautiful, formerly sweet and innocent children were getting up too, but for every loving family there was at least one more that was equally disfunctional.

It took years, four of them away at college, before I was able to grow up enough to move past all of this and back towards my family. Looking at us today, 20 years later, you'd never dream of all the strife and discord that ran rampant through the house for a few years. My parents are two of my closest friends. Instead of choosing to run away, we choose to run away together - on joint vacations. On purpose. Without being forced or bribed, just because we enjoy being together. Our biggest obstacle these days is that in a fit of college-age idealism I picked up and moved halfway across the world, leaving all of my family behind. We need to work even harder to stay close emotionally since we live 6,000 miles apart physically.

During one of these early joint vacations I asked my mother why she never threw my sorry ass out of the house. Her answer has stuck with me all these years. She said:

"I'm your mother, and I love you, and I would NEVER EVER throw you out of my home, no matter what. I did however try to sell you to the gypsies once, but there was no market for used teenagers."

She then added that had the technology been available she would have happily locked me in a deep freeze for about 6 years, not letting me out until I hit 22, but that she would have kept that freezer safe at home.

I'm not in touch with many people I knew from high school anymore, but from the few that I do speak to occasionally I've seen something. We were all headed together down the wrong path in those days. The difference lay in who stayed on the path, and who managed to get themselves together and return to being happy, well-adjusted human beings.

The answer? Those with loving, supportive families. It's a terrible cliche, but true nonetheless. The ones who came from very difficult places had a much harder time clawing their way out, and often didn't, while those that came from good strong families were more able to return to their roots. I look around today at my innermost circle of high school friends, the ones from families like mine, and see that we have become doctors, and lawyers (at least 3), real estate tycoons, corporate hacks turned lactation consultants (that would be me), stay at home moms... Whatever and wherever our passions led us. And you know what? We could never have done it without our families.

So for all that you did Mom, by raising me right, by loving me unconditionally even when I probably didn't deserve it, and by welcoming me back with open arms and forgiving all my sins, I say "Thanks, Mom. (And Dad.)"

I could never have done it without you. I love you Mom. (And Dad.)

This essay was written for MamaBlogga's July Group Writing Project, on the theme "Thanks, Mom".