Tel Aviv: the Sequel

We arrived Tel Aviv 3:30 AM on Saturday, after what you might call a Swiss sandwich: two red-eyes with a thin slice of Zurich in the middle.  “We” in this case are the girls, myself, and my mom, who joined us at the Zurich airport.  I was very proud of myself for actually getting the girls to leave the airport, take a train into Zurich, and walk down to the lake – no small feat given that Rebecca has 17 new Kindle books on the iPad, and Leah was perfectly content to go around the airport putting stickers on other people’s hand luggage for six hours.  Neither of them particularly wanted an excursion, but I won, and they earned the stamps in their passports. 

It is a core part of my travel ritual to leave something important on the airplane, usually a coat, but this time I disembarked in Israel with all of our possessions.  To make up for it, I forgot the car seat at baggage claim and didn’t realize it until we were in line for a taxi.  This may not seem like such a big deal if the word “airport” brings to mind a place like SFO , but just try getting back into baggage claim after passing through customs in Tel Aviv.  It would take a diplomatic escort, a solid foundation in black ops, and the ability to dig a tunnel without anybody noticing.  So we convinced ourselves that Leah would be OK for the 20-minute ride to Tel Aviv and got in a cab.  She was fine. We’re still trying to retrieve the car seat.  It’s Tuesday.

Other than that, it’s been a great trip so far.  We’re all struggling with the jetlag – it’s hard to convince a four-year-old that you should try to go to sleep, even if you don’t feel sleepy – and by the time I’ve cajoled her into bed at 2 AM, my own body clock is not so cooperative.  But the apartment rental is working out great, the kids love the beach, and they’ve started to explore beyond Tel Aviv with my mother (who, while perhaps out of practice with things like forcing a trip to the bathroom before you are nowhere near one, seems to be enjoying this).  Yesterday, the girls were tearing around the hippodrome at Caesarea, pretending to be horses in an ancient chariot race; today, they’re doing the Dig for a Day program at the Beit Guvrin Archaeological Seminars Institute.  Everyone who has done this program tells me that it’s an experience they will never forget.  They’re having fun, and I’m trying to retain my position that just being here is an adventure.  Coming home to them at the end of the workday is admittedly more exhausting than flopping down with room service, but the ache of maternal separation that I usually feel when I’m overseas, waking up every day just after their bedtime, is blessedly absent.  

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fit in running, but I made it out yesterday morning, petting cats and gazing out at paddleboarders along the way to Old Jaffa.  At the top of the hill, I stood on the Wishing Bridge.  According to the sign (and Wikitravel), legend holds that if you grasp the statue of your zodiac sign, face the sea, and make a wish, it will come true.  It sounds like a legend that the Ministry of Tourism conjured up, but who am I to pass up an opportunity to pause connect with what I wish for?  I cycled through all the usual suspects, recalling the scene in Groundhog Day where Andie MacDowell says “I always drink to world peace” – but I decided to wish for my kids to have a good time on this trip.  I care about this more than whether they learn anything, deepen their appreciation for other cultures, or eat something other than toast in the next two weeks.  It’s somewhat related to world peace, as there is a tiny voice in the back of my head reminding me that I’m in a volatile part of the world – but mostly, I just want them to look back on this trip and say, “That was fun.”  

So far, it seems as if my wish could come true.

Everything you need

Last weekend, we had a housewarming party.  It was the confluence of all the rivulets of love in our life: friends and family, neighbors and classmates, colleagues and former colleagues, softball teammates and book club members. From three generations of Paula's family to Rebecca's best friend since birth, we were swimming in a sea of joy.

As throwing a party is not something I often do, and as I love to cook for a crowd, I approached the date with great anticipation.  I spent weeks planning.  I stayed up late at night, pulling recipes from Cooks Illustrated and Martha Stewart, creating shopping lists in Excel (with a "category" column for Type A shopping), making a schedule of what was to be done each night leading up to the party.  Buy avocados; shred cheese; juice limes; make pie crust.  The little cells in my spreadsheet swelled with a sense of purpose.

A week before the party, we announced some big changes at work.  I went from an individual contributor to a manager with direct reports in three countries overnight.  I promptly earned my new team's confidence and respect by coming into work for a grand total of four hours that week.  My bones ached, my throat swelled, my nose plugged itself shut.  I lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling because turning pages of Bossypants seemed too hard.  Thursday morning, I croaked my way through a 5AM all-hands meeting with the team in Israel, then curled up in a ball on the carpet with a fleece blanket over me.  The columns of my spreadsheet, each labeled with a day of the week, sat patiently waiting for me to get off my ass and chop something.  "Up and to the right", I kept saying to myself; but as the days marched to the right, I just couldn't get up.

Thursday night, my sinuses finally started to clear.  Paula came over.  "We'll get it done," she said.  I wasn't so sure.  My to-do's went from cell A1 to G23.  It wasn't possible.

So arrived the pivotal and predictable moment when it was time to redefine the "it" that would get done.  The moment of epiphany that our guests would not care whether they were having homemade key lime bars for dessert or Chips Ahoy.  The moment when the pie chart of "want" vs. "need" got refreshed and we relaxed into the realization that everything on that list, up to and including the party itself, was optional.

I am a sucker for wants masquerading as needs.  They fool me every time.  And yet the ability to distinguish the two spells the difference between a life of stress and one of equanimity.  Most of us run ourselves ragged with the list of things we "have to do", only to realize that very little of it is either necessary or all that satisfying.  Imagine if all the anger and anxiety associated with that to-do list got channeled into something positive.  What a wonderful world this would be.

Re-learning this lesson in the days leading up to the housewarming party was timely, as I am two weeks away from another two-week trip to Israel- this time with my kids and my mother in tow.   The plan is that I'll work during the day while Mom, who has been to Israel many times, explores with the girls.  We'll take a long weekend in the middle of the trip to go away together.

It's the opportunity of a lifetime - and yet traveling with kids is like the challenge round on a game show called Wheel! Of! Patience!  When people ask what we're doing this summer, I say with enthusiasm, "I'm taking the kids to Israel!" but the reality is that I'm stressed about it.  Their presence doesn't exempt me from productive days at the office, but it does mean that going running in the morning, collapsing into a chair at night, or catching up with Paula on Skype will be a lot harder.  They're good travelers, but that doesn't mean they won't be crabby, hot, jetlagged, bored, picky at the dinner table or at war with each other - and happy to let you know about it.  In other words, they're still kids.  For my mom, who doesn't live with this every day, will two weeks as their primary adult be exhausting?

So it's time to reset.  To remember that just being there constitutes an adventure.  To allow the trip to unfold organically, and to remind ourselves that whatever we see, do, or experience is perfect - even if it doesn't match the itinerary.  This isn't to say we won't set our intentions- only that we need to detach from the outcome.

Aided by a Costco-sized dispenser of what my younger daughter calls "hansitizer", we managed to pull together a glorious feast last Saturday.  I wore a new yellow dress I loved.  I baked the tamale pie I'd prepared, while Paula served up her famous chicken tacos.  I walked among our guests passing out key lime bars- feeling more like June Cleaver than like a workaholic mom for once, and loving every minute of it.  Every time another guest came through our door, I beamed.  I was reveling in the extended family that has made our life in California, thousands of miles from my own mother and sister, such a beautiful thing.

Mr. Jagger was right - you can't always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you do.

Here's a poem for you, to close out this post.  When I'm way out of balance, I find myself repeating the first two lines.

Everything You Need


Everything you need is right before you.
You will find it in the corners when you sweep.


Take out the broom from behind the coats in the entryway.
Bring what you collect to the ocean.


There is nothing to be afraid of.
Open your robe and walk out into the water.


If you fall, you will land in the hammock
you have woven from passions and tendons


and the muscle of your heart
will pull you to your feet.


When you emerge, shivering,
take a moment to absorb it in your bones


before wrapping yourself up again.
You have a gift you can open anytime.


Watch what your arms and legs can do.
You are capable of so much joy.

The challenges of being a gay parent

Some of the things I struggle with most as a gay mom:

1. There are days when, for the life of me, I cannot get my younger daughter to put on her shoes.
2. When I see the things I dislike about myself in my older daughter, I react to them with a vengeance.
3. I struggle between wanting to raise fit, healthy girls and wanting to let them make choices about their food and activities.
4. Some evenings, I come home from work and let them play too long on the iPad, just so I can sneak in a few rounds of Words With Friends and collapse on the couch- only to spend hours after they are asleep going through digital photos of them on the computer.
5. Although they still both openly adore me, the days until my daughters find me utterly, embarrassingly uncool are dwindling.
6. Whether I tell them "no" or "yes" can depend as much on my mood as it does on the Family Rule.
7. My older daughter is getting to an age where girls can get mean.  I want to protect her from it, and yet I know that adolescence is itself a rite of passage.
8. No matter how many Build-a-Bears they have, they always, always want more.
9. Being a role model gets exhausting.  Sometimes I relish an evening in a hotel room because it is such a relief to have Pringles for dinner in bed with the TV on.
10. My girls are scared by what they see as a world full of problems too big for them to solve.  I struggle to keep their hope alive without sheltering them from reality.

Sound familiar?

Tikun Olam

The other day, a friend and I were talking about electric vehicles.  He asserted that electric cars actually have a larger carbon footprint than gas vehicles.  I told him he was nuts; the sheer scale of electric power generation vs. the internal combustion engine made the electric car a clear winner.   A few days later, after some Googling around, he came back to me with more information: the gasoline vehicle wins by a nose if you assume that you will, at some point during the 130,000-mile life of the average car, need to replace the battery in the electric vehicle – because there is so much carbon tied up in the production of the battery itself.  If you don’t buy that assumption, the electric vehicle is a much better choice – unless, of course, you happen to live in a state that derives so much of its power from coal that electricity is actually quite dirty.

So the choice is clear.  As mud.

This is frustrating, because the answer really matters to me.  Jewish philosophy includes the concept of Tikun Olam, or "repairing the world". It is a phrase with roots in classical rabbinic literature.  In modern Judaism, it has become associated with societal change, including environmental stewardship.  The interpretations of Tikun Olam are myriad, but what seems common is that we all have a responsibility to fix what's broken - however we define it.  To face the world's problems with resignation is just not cool with the tribe.

I want to do the right thing… I really do.  But here in downtown San Jose, most of my family's purchase decisions are at the end of a long, dark tunnel, illuminated only by advertiser-sponsored billboards.  Doing the right thing isn’t always so obvious.  Who grew our food?  Where is our electricity coming from?  Why is bamboo so much more expensive if it grows so much faster?  What chemicals were added to the “organic cotton” T-shirt I’m buying to make the dye adhere?  Where exactly do cage-free hens live?  In a world where we are so distanced from the source of most of the goods and services we consume, it’s hard to know what choice we’re really making when we pull out our wallets.  

I know I’m not alone in this struggle; so many of us set out to do the "right thing" and wind up like lost tourists, glancing nervously at our maps and forcing weak smiles.  It's enough to make you give up and just ask the barmaid to bring a pitcher. And yet, as a dear friend once said to me, all the divine can ask of us is that we try.

So we embrace the effort to make good choices.  You can see our hopeful faces everywhere, trying to be responsible consumers.  Take farmers’ markets, where urbanites flock to buy directly from growers.  According to the USDA, there were 2,863 operating farmers’ markets around the US in the year 2000; in 2011, there were 7,175.  There are also nearly 13,000 farms with community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs around the country.  And consider the burgeoning backyard chicken-farming movement and the online communities aggregating at sites like BackyardChickens.com.  We may buy our pants from an anonymous factory halfway around the world, but dammit, we know where our eggs came from.

There is a silver lining to this effort: in our quest to reconnect with the goods we buy, we reconnect with each other.  Farmers' markets gather communities. Your neighbor with the avocado tree barters with you for oranges from yours.  Schools become pickup spots not just for our kids but also for CSA programs.  And from these connections sprout relationships that enrich our lives.

As for the Civic hybrid in my driveway… it sure seemed like the right choice back in 2003, but how can I be sure?  Does my vehicle have a smug problem, as they say on South Park?  Maybe.  At least I tried.  That much, I can say, feels right.  It feels even better when it's sitting in the driveway because I'm biking to work or walking to the store - which is pretty often.  And if I meet a neighbor on that walk or find a riding partner in the bike car on Caltrain, then that's one more connection pulling me into community.  If I list it on RelayRides and make it available when I'm not using it, that's another.  At the end of the day, maybe that's the piece that matters most - because if we're all in this together, the odds of our making choices with our eyes wide open increases exponentially. 

I came across this quote from David Levithan about Tikun Olam, and I think it's an apt way to close this post:

Maybe that’s it. With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces. Maybe, what we’re supposed to do is come together. That’s how we stop the breaking.

Why God broke our wine glasses

We have broken two wine glasses in the past two days.

Karen: I think this is God’s way of telling us not to drink so much.

Paula: I think this is God’s way of telling us to drink from the bottle.    

We were both joking, of course – but secretly, more often than I’d like to admit, I find myself trying to interpret the stream of events in my life as signs getting beamed to me from the great unknown.  Six red lights in a row on the way to the train station: I am a bad person in need of punishment.  Finding an all-day free parking spot in downtown Menlo Park: kiss my ring, world, I have been singled out for greatness.  Sunrises, hummingbird visitations, finding the silhouette of a wolf in the stucco of my bedroom ceiling… all these things make up a collective compass that is guiding me through a scripted and meaningful series of acts.  And superstitions: I love them.  Just pennies alone… I have spent countless hours wondering what the terms and conditions of “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck” are.  Is “all day long” 24 consecutive hours, or just until midnight, or perhaps nightfall?  Is it lucky only if you find the penny heads up?  (I find nothing in the scripture to support this, but still… I don’t touch the tails pennies.)  What if it happens to be your own penny that you find, in your own house, but in an unexpected place?  I think the equivalent of the Talmud could be written about this simple verse.

I started to wonder what makes this harvesting of signs and signals so attractive, if a little embarrassing.  Superstition has a negative connotation to most people – the stuff of simple-minded, uneducated Old Country women.  But say “I believe everything happens for a reason” in the quiet ceremony of an interpersonal dynamics T-group or a first date, and the response is likely to be a solemn and respectful nod and an appreciation of your spiritual depth.  We’re all looking for a logical trail of breadcrumbs that leads to exactly where we are today, whether there are black cats, or bad people turning into pillars of salt, or yoga retreats along the way.

If you Google “why are people superstitious”, you’ll come across a Web MD feature on the subject, based on an interview with Stuart Vyse, PhD, and the author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition:

Wanting more control or certainty is the driving force behind most superstitions. We tend to look for some kind of a rule, or an explanation for why things happen. "Sometimes the creation of a false certainty is better than no certainty at all, and that is what much of the research suggests," says Vyse.

This sounds about right to me.  I’m good with false certainty; after all, mindset is an important element of well-being and happiness, and having an explanation for things helps me feel that the next thing that happens to me may be good, or bad, but at least it won’t be random (and therefore entirely out of my control). 

But I think there’s more to it than being a control freak.  I think we all want to get to the end of our lives and find that our autobiography is a rich and meaningful story – one that ultimately had not just a sense of purpose, but an actual purpose.  We are constantly attuned to the circumstances around us that might somehow be our cues.  And we are worried that if we wave away the oddity of two broken glasses in a week, we might be missing something: perhaps the one cue we’ve been waiting for to pivot from our current trajectory and discover our true reason for walking this earth.

Well, actually, the wine glass thing was just a really funny conversation.  We got a lot of mileage out of it on Facebook (my source for personal validation.)  But it did get me thinking about this topic, and then writing about it.  And the next time I turn a corner and come face to face with a giant, orange moon hanging just above the horizon, I will think to myself: I am destined for greatness.

Jewish Gratitude

Not too long ago, I introduced HaMotzi, the blessing over the bread, into my dinner ritual with the kids.  It’s informal, and I don’t force the issue when the kids have friends over or when we are out to eat. If Leah sings the entire thing with “Blah blah blah blah-blah,” I don’t chastise her.  But most nights, we manage to squeeze it in before one child or the other shoves all the broccoli into her cheeks and says “My I pls b excsd?”  

I don’t remember exactly when we started… probably not too long after the Jewish new year.  Leah usually goes along with it – it reminds her of her old Jewish preschool, and she likes to sing.  Rebecca used to roll her eyes.  I’ve persevered, ending each recitation by taking the girls’ hands and turning to each of them, saying: “Thankful for you, and thankful for you.”  We all like that part.  Since I rarely manage to get all the kid food on the table and something for myself before the girls are ready to bolt back to their imaginary Schnauzer orphan rescue squad, or whatever fantasy they’re playing out that day, it gives us just a moment to pause – together – in thanks.

A few months ago, after begrudging participation, Rebecca piped up with a zinger: “Daddy says God isn’t real.  He says people made him up.”  My first instinct was to correct the anthropomorphism – to break the association of God with maleness.  But I had to be careful here.  This was important.  There was a lot on the line: the presentation of a unified parental front, even in separation, but more importantly, my precious Sunday mornings with Leah.  Without a notion of God, I might not have a leg to stand on when it came to Sunday School for Rebecca, and out the window my Leah time would go.  Think fast, Karen.

“Well,” I began, “Daddy may be right, or he may be wrong.  I don’t have any way to tell you for sure, and neither does anyone else.  It depends a lot on how you define God.”   

Rebecca pressed on.  “Do you believe in God?”

 “I believe in something larger than our selves.  And I’m uncertain about what that is,” I admitted.  “But what I can tell you for sure that I believe in is gratitude.  We have so much good in our life that it makes me want to say thank you to someone, or something.  So when I say Ha-Motzi, it makes me feel good.  I like it.”

Rebecca paused.  “I guess that makes sense,” she finally said.  And since then, she has sung along, loudly and without objection.  Occasionally, I even get a “thankful for you” back at me.

I believe what I told her to be true.  Jewish Guilt is legendary; it is at the root of much cultural humor, about mothers-in-law offering to take the bus and children being left to stare down overcooked asparagus because of the people starving  in Africa.  More gravely, it underlies our superficially care-free liberty in the wake of the Holocaust’s atrocities.    

But guilt and gratitude are two sides of the same coin.  If you are a card-carrying environmentalist, or a mother who travels regularly for work, or (yikes) both of the above, virtually everything you do leaves a grimy residue of remorse.  So you have a choice to make:

• You can sacrifice indulgence to tread more lightly.  To some extent, I do, but let’s face it: I’m an American.  We’re hogs.  My job requires that I fly around the globe, dress nicely, stay in hotels that insist on washing my towels every day (even if I follow the instructions on their damn ‘Because we care’ cards)… not exactly a “leave nothing but footprints” lifestyle.
•  You can walk around with your tail between your legs, using guilt as a questionable antidote for excess.  But there is nothing I dislike more than when people excuse their actions by “feeling horrible” about them, when they know they’ll go back out and do it again the next day.  Love it, or leave it.

• You can pry open Door #3: the one marked Gratitude.  Instead of being consumed by whether you deserve what you have, you can honor it with appreciation.  When I feel my heart sinking because I am a 10-hour flight away from a child with a croupy cough, when I buy myself something new to wear out of self-conscious vanity, when I eat a meal that would feed a family for a week in many parts of the world, I think to myself: there is beauty in this too.  And for that beauty, I give thanks. 

 My success here is intermittent and imperfect.  I still feel remorse, and sometimes I am so down on the world that I forget how fortunate I am.  And I’m not suggesting that you can justify excess simply by being thankful for it.  But still, when I think about core values, I identify more with Jewish Gratitude than with Jewish Guilt.  It feels more useful.  As a parent, it feels downright obligatory; to saddle a child with guilt that they are too young to process into anything but anger and resentment feels irresponsible.

I aspire to a life of optimism.  And perhaps a whole new stereotype for Jewish mothers-in-law in the future.  Maybe, as I am dragging my valise to the bus station, I will remember to tell my children how much I appreciate them.  A girl can dream.

What Makes a Home

Here's a recap of the 48-hour period that began just before Passover began, a week ago Friday:

Fri 5:45 PM Arrived SFO from London after two weeks overseas. 
Sat 7:00 AM Picked up U-Haul.  Threw things into boxes while friends threw boxes into truck.
Sat 1:30 PM We-hauled second load of possessions six blocks down the street to our new home.
Sat 2:00 PM Realized that, in moment of dementia, had invited colleague from work and her family to share Passover with us that evening.  Started forging canyon through mountains of boxes to get to table.
Sat 3:00 PM Opened up wallet and proceeded to empty it into Whole Foods' bank account.
Sat 7:00 PM Dinner is served.  

Kids, do not try this at home.

A week later, here we are, the girls and the cats and me, in our new place.  The box mountains are shorter, the canyons are wider, and I have broken bread with most of the appliances.  The house is wonderful.  It was very well loved by its previous owners, who gutted it, restored its Craftsman heritage, remodeled from top to bottom, and appointed it with furnishings and art and Beautiful Things that made it wholly charming.  They subscribed to magazines like Traditional Home, maintained a perfect green lawn, and hung paintings that fit perfectly above the restored wood molding.

In comparison, my furniture is feeling a little awkward about itself.  Most of the things I brought with me are cast-offs from friends; I took almost nothing with me when Ted and I separated two years ago.  I used to say that my apartment was furnished with love.  The couch, the painting over the couch, the armoire, my desk, the toybox, even the vacuum cleaner came from friends who supported me through the painful transition of separation.  I felt their love every time I sank into my worn belongings.

Now, in our beautiful new home, my beloved furniture feels a little shy.  I haven't been treating it with the same affection.  I proactively apologize for it whenever people ask about coming over to see the new place.  And I make sure everyone knows that I fully intend to replace it.

I have to pause now and ask why I am so concerned about how this house feels about me.  I paid good money for the privilege of calling it mine.  The same friends who offered up their belongings to make me a home at my temporary address will be the ones whose love will fill our new abode.  And I've been alive long enough to know that there are lovely, well-appointed houses all over the world whose residents are bitter, angry people - and that there is joy pouring out of some very modest rooms.

You'll notice that I haven't even mentioned my girls yet in this post.  After two weeks away from them, during which I missed them intensely, you would think that I would have run into their arms and not let go of them for a week.  Instead, I was so focused on moving, getting settled, and cobbling together a Passover celebration that I barely attended to their needs for the first few days back.  Rebecca let me know how inadequate my response was in the way only 9-year-olds can.  She refused to help with the move, treated our Passover guests as if they were one of the ten plagues, and complained that there was nothing to do in our stupid new house.  She did everything she could to be uncooperative and hostile, and of course, Leah dutifully followed suit.

What's most surprising wasn't her hostility or her sullenness but the fact that it took me three days to get my head out of the place where the sun don't shine and realize that I was to blame.  Kids' minds are blunt instruments.  If a house, the friends who helped us move, and some casual acquaintances who came for dinner get more attention than she does, if the only times I give her my attention are when she's acting out at dinner or when I need her to lift something, what does it say about how much I care about her?

Sunday morning, I woke with the full weight of this realization.  The girls and I went to Trader Joe's to stock the pantry.  We bought a juicer and picked oranges from our tree to break it in.  I stayed home from work Monday to get settled, but by mid-afternoon, I realized that the kids needed a break.  We left the boxes behind and went to see The Lorax and get burritos.  We laughed and hugged and talked about Rebecca's time at California history camp the week before.  I started to patch the line that had become frayed during my absence.  I crawled into each of their beds that night to reseal the bond of physical closeness. 

At the end of the day, there is no new lesson here.  My girls are my home.  My Border Collie personality makes me forget this from time to time.  But this morning, with sticky smoothie handprints all over the table  and a single electric blue sock wedged in the front door, I realized that this place is perfect - because they are here.