Happily Ever After?
Thanks to EK for brightening my day with this fantastic comic by Mike Peters of Mother Goose & Grim.
Spoke Too Soon…
Poppyseed has it too 😦
Bleckh!
Send happy thoughts ’cause Frume Sarah is home with three vomiting kids…and isn’t feeling so swell in the tummy department herself.
It All Makes Sense Now
Norovirus. The cause of Peach’s vomit on Saturday. And Sunday. And yesterday. And today. And the awful bowel movements. And PC cutting our anniversary dinner short yesterday. And Beernut waking up in the middle of last night in order to violently release every single thing he’d eaten all day. And me @ about 3am this morning.
At least we know Poppyseed’s not responsible for this plague!
Poppyseed’s Take on God
“God is a She, Mom.”
Really, Poppyseed. She’s a girl?
Poppyseed rolled her eyes. “No, not like us. She’s God.”
Much clearer.
“She told me that. She told me when we were playing in your tummy. Remember…before I was born?”
Sometimes this kid frightens me.
“When She’s inside a girl’s heart, She’s a girl and when He’s inside a boy’s heart, He’s a boy. Now do you understand?”
What I understand is that there is a most wonderful Midrash (Niddah 30) about the time we spend inside the womb learning Torah. Just as the time of birth approaches, an angel comes and strikes us above the lip, causing us to forget all that we have learned. According to tradition, our tears are over the loss of our knowledge for never again during our lives will we feel as close to God. But we spend the rest of our days in pursuit of that knowledge and of that nearness to the Holy One.
Over the years, Poppyseed has shared with me stories about what it was like for her before she was born. Stories that make me wonder if the angel missed his mark…
For All The Wrong Reasons…
I wound the scarf around my head, making certain that no hair was showing. Glancing in the mirror, I saw someone both familiar and unknown. As an egaliterian American Jew, it is not my custom to cover my hair. In fact, had my staunchly Reform grandparents caught glimpse of me, they would have been shocked for this is just the type of Judaism of their youth that they have rejected.
On a trip to Germany some years ago, I found myself in a shul where the custom was for married women to cover their heads as a sign of respect. Not only was I not bothered by this, but I was excited by the prospect. To cover one’s hair was making a public declaration that I belonged to someone else. That I have been set aside for just one person in a sanctified relationship. Isn’t that what marriage is?? (Remember, they don’t call me Frume Sarah for nothing!)
Keeping one’s head covered is a constant reminder. For observant women, it is a reminder of their status and, I imagine, of God. For women struggling with cancer, it is a reminder of both their illness, and I hope, their cure. For me, it was merely a precautionary reminder of the lice. And yet it was something more.
A week ago Shabbat, I led services in my Reform shul with my head covered. For an entire Shabbat, every time I left the house (which was to go back and forth to shul) my hair was covered. Though it set me apart from everyone else in attendance, the experience certainly made me feel just the slightest bit closer to the generations of women who have found meaning in this practice. The scarf helped define the public domain from the private one. Upon unbinding my hair, our home became a much more intimate space.
I know that my community would be uncomfortable with a hair-covering rabbi. But if circumstances would allow…
Slippery When Wet
Babies. Yes, indeed. Wiggly, slippery, silly little things.
Let me back up…
As I was enjoying a quiet motz’ei Shabbat last night, from out of nowhere it came. Or to be more specific, from the depths of Peach’s stomach. A deluge of vomit. Warm, sticky, putrid smelling. All over me. And all over our linens.
PC stripped the bed and I immediately set about the task of removing the stentch from my hair, neck, and face. By some small miracle, Peach was not only clean but happy too!
It took hours and hours for the mattress pad to dry. PC, whose many skills have NEVER included time management, thought it would be a waste of time to put sheets on the bed only to have to remake the bed once his beloved, cushiony mattress pad was dry. Did I mention how long it took the darn thing to dry? Having no more Law & Order:SVU or Criminal Intent episodes left on the TiVo, I figured I’d take the opportunity to catch up on the current political situation, turned on some talking heads, and promptly fell asleep on top of the unmade bed. Sometime around 1:00am (I think??), PC came in with the newly washed and dried sheets (and mattress pad!) and we got to work. Which took twice as long because my coordination is not so sharp after being woken so abruptly in the middle of the night.
So today…off to a slightly rocky start with a really awful diaper requiring immediate bath for the Peach-ster. After that, Peach was really, really tired. And I’m still battling this bronchitis (although the meds seems to be helping a bit). So I took him to bed with me and we slept. And slept. And slept. I should have realized that something was up because Peach isn’t from the sleepers…
Bam! Got me again. In just under 18 hours, and with only two attempts, Peach has managed to perfect projectile vomiting. Only this time he wasn’t so lucky. He and I were drenched in it. It was like a repeat of yesterday. PC stripped the bed and I stripped the baby. Put him down so that I could get the shower going. He promply pooped on the carpet. Ay-yi-yi.
So I grabbed him and got in the shower…and that’s when I wondered if a wet baby was the motivation for Bon Jovi’s album, Slippery When Wet.
Transitions
We meet in the silence of the night. Sometimes he strokes my hair. My cheek. Even my back. For how much longer will we meet this way…I don’t know. I will miss these private rendezvous but for now, no matter how much trouble they cause for me, I cherish them.
And then tonight, it happened. He called me by the wrong name.
“Da-Da”
You’ve got to be kidding me!
NEW YORK — A Manhattan librarian emerged as a champion couch potato after three rivals gave in to sleep deprivation or nature’s call.
I am NOT making this up! Apparently Stan Friedman managed to outwit, outsmart, outlast his rivals by staying put for TWENTY-NINE HOURS.
Check this out.
Man plans…
So it’s a darn good thing that I catagorically reject the entire premise of “The Secret” or else I’d be worried that I was at fault.
But I think it’s just due to bacteria. Yeah, bronchitis. Again.
“Do you spend a lot of time out in the cold?” Inquired my doctor.
Mind you, we live in Southern California so I’d have to make a concerted effort to first find the cold and then spend “a lot of time” in it.
I told her that cold weather can’t really make you sick. That just an old bubbe meise. And my Canadian-Vietnamese doctor actually knew that because she went to a Jewish high school in Toronto! Anyway, she agreed that although it can’t make one sick to be in the cold, temperature can be bad for already weakened lungs like mine 😦
Sadness!!
So I promised to “just pop into the office” en route to the pharmacy. Apparently the rest of my town is sick because the predicted 30 minute wait was a highly optomistic guess. So I went next door to wait in the bookstore…with the other score of patients!! So the line there was awful.
Now I am back at the pharmacy, sick, hungry, tired, grumpy, not feeling well, and really needing to pump. Waiting for what they guess (based on ???) will be another 10-15 minutes.
But if I had not had this frustrating experience, I would have missed Rick Astley’s “Never gonna give you up.”
Takes me right back. Ah how I love 80’s music 😉
Truth is stranger…
I was once asked (hypothetically, of course) if I would perform a wedding ceremony for two non-Jewish friends. Though I cannot officiate at a wedding between a Jew and a non-Jew, the person wondered if there would be any conflict if neither party was Jewish.
An interesting question, I suppose. I replied that the only reason that the state of California has empowered me to officiate at weddings is because I am a leader in the Jewish community and therefore I didn’t feel as though I would have any real standing to join two non-Jews together in marriage.
[Not to mention the fact that as a rabbi I would be unable to perform a ceremony that was not overtly religious.]
In any event, take a look at this very interesting article about mohels performing circumcisions on non-Jewish babies. Certainly it has been the practise of the British Royal Family to engage a mohel for the purposes of circumcising its sons for many generations. But let us not forget that circumcision in-and-of-itself is a medical proceedure. It is the ritual of brit milah that carries spiritual significance. Since the mohel (or mohelet, if the practitioner is a woman) has been trained specifically for the purposes of carrying on a religious tradition, it is just strange to me that they would consider performing the circ without the meaning.
And apparently I’m not the only one who is perplexed by this.
Frume Sarah is Shabbos-observant -- in a Reform way, that is. Please note that from Friday afternoons until one hour after sundown on Saturday evenings, Frume Sarah will be unavailable, in observance of the Jewish Sabbath.
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Thank you for your understanding...and gut Shabbos!!! 
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