Get On Board

I might as well have yelled, “Don’t you get this is magical?!” What I did do was let my right eyebrow arch halfway up my forehead and say, “Knock it off or I’m cancelling all of this.” 

Go me. 

I had this magical Polar Express Day planned with a train ticket and bells, an Oreo “gingerbread” house, the book and the movie, hot chocolate and a build-your-own train STEM activity from recyclables. 

We are making memories, damnit. Get on board (the Polar Express).

All he wanted to do was negotiate with me to watch A Very Monkey Christmas on Hulu and pick the marshmallows off the top of his hot chocolate.

After I got mad and guilted him into our forced fun, he did humor me the rest of the day. He later even admitted he didn’t want it to be over. So, you see, I was right, it was magical after all. 

Chris Van Allsburg, the author of The Polar Express said, “The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It’s also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.”

Once I got over my indignance and quit mumbling words like “it’s never enough,” I began to see my part in it. I put so many outrageous expectations on Christmas. I want my kids to find magic in all of the things I found magical as a kid, instead of all the things they are finding magical right now. 

I want him to love the things I did, like The Polar Express (back in the days before the Polar Express had been completely exhausted) and Peter, Paul and Mary’s holiday album. But, he thinks that Rachel Isadora’s African-inspired Twelve Days Of Christmas and the Jackson 5 Christmas Album are the best things that ever came out of Christmas. (Seriously, go check out Rachel Isadora’s Twelve Days Of Christmas.)

Beckett will figure out his magic. And Oliver will figure out his own magic in a few years, and he will undoubtedly disappoint my expectations in his own way. I just need to step back and let their Christmas magic be theirs, because I can’t expect them to find it in the ways I did.

At the end of the day I want them to know how to sustain their magic. 

#polarexpress

#christmasexpectations

#badmomming

Glowing All Along

I remember my father chanting over the menorah during Hanukkah, as my brother, sister and I passed the shammash around the table, our faces aglow from candlelight in the dark dining room.

I remember the matriarch of a family friend, the backs of her hands aglow from candlelight in their dark kitchen, as she covered her eyes and recited the benediction.

I remember standing around the same friend’s table, holding my days-old baby, as their friends joyously and reverently sang the Maoz Tzur, their bellies full of latkes, their faces aglow from candlelight.

Those experiences were on my mind this week as I read Beckett the book Oskar and the Eight Blessings by Richard Simon and Tanya Simon, about a boy whose parents send him from Nazi Germany to New York by himself to find his Aunt Esther. In desperation after Kristallnacht, presumably knowing the risk, they send their young child alone to a big city, knowing it was safer than keeping him with them.

His father’s last words to him were: “Oskar, even in bad times, people can be good. You have to look for the blessings.”

Oskar, a hungry, scared little boy….a refugee, journeyed from the ferry at Battery Park to 103rd street in Manhattan. Along the way he encounters eight “blessings,” people that help him with food, joy, protection, or motivation. With their help, Oskar makes it to his Aunt Esther’s in time for the candlelight of the menorah to glow on his face.

Although we could argue that it had been glowing all along.

I wasn’t raised an observant Jew, except for lighting the menorah each December and spinning the dreidel with my brother and sister for some chocolate coins. But it is a part of my family’s story, which means it’s part of my story. It is why, today, we have mezuzahs mounted in our doorways and a wooden menorah for our kids to play with as we tell the story of Hanukkah each year.

Because they have to know. They have to know what a blessing it is to come not just from power and privilege (which, as little white boys, they do) — but from hope. Hope, and maybe even a little faith, that the light will shine on you in surprising ways whether or not you actually light the candle.

#oskarandtheeightblessings

#hanukkah

We Had This Dog

We had this dog.

Beckett rode him like a horse and Oliver tugged on his ears. I treated him like slippers as he sat at my chilly feet and Nathan rough-and-tumbled him on the rug like a kid brother.

On Wednesday, we took him for a walk late-morning as we have done many a Covid-day. We got down the hill and he had, what we assume, was a massive heart attack and he died.

Dan, or Beckett’s “Brubby”, died.

Our old boy was round as a barrel and heavy as a horse and, until the moment he died, had the energy of a black lab puppy.

Beckett was devastated, and all we could do is let him feel his pain and affirm his grief.

As to be expected, many questions about death followed, and we have had no concrete answers to offer him. We have assured Beckett that he is safe. We have assured him he doesn't need to be afraid. We have assured him that Brubs is with God and gets nothing but love and care.

We read a picture book called Duck, Death and the Tulip by Wolf Erlbruch, about a duck at the end of its life. A personified Death spends Duck’s final days with him, floating in ponds and climbing trees, seemingly doing nothing but hanging out nearby, just in case. This gentle, yet aloof Death reminds Duck that he has been there all of his life, though Duck didn’t notice him until the end. He was always nearby, in case of foxes or colds or whatever life may bring.

Duck asks Death questions about the afterlife, but Death doesn't take the bait. Death is a higher power, of sorts, something Duck just knows to accept, despite his curiosity.

Duck eventually dies peacefully in his sleep. While Death sends him down the river with his tulip laying on his chest, the book says, “When she was lost to sight, he was almost moved. / But that’s life, thought Death.”

That’s when it hit me. Death is something we will all get to know, but we are not served by worrying about it. (Still, wear your masks.)

Grief, though...grief is for the living. When we lose those we love we are moved because we loved and love is all we’re here to do. This book reminded me, and hopefully Beckett, not to fear and just to love deeply.

Just like he loved his Brubby.

#duckdeathandthetulip