And She Was...

Testing the crossposting feature while managing someone else's crisis and waiting for Naomi to get home so we can go out this afternoon.

Working on exporting everything from here to Dreamwidth as most of you are. I've needed space for longform noodling but haven't felt comfortable here. My username there is the same for the sake of convenience, but I don't know if it will stay that way.

In the last three weeks there have been three bomb threats at our local Jewish Community Center. The JCC is a great spot-terrific camps, love their kid programs, wonderful pre-school, lots of great things about it. But the world has become threatening, and bomb threats at the JCC, while not out of the ordinary were not frequent; I'd always treated them as a "comes with the territory" sort of thing...that being Jewish, just like various other things comes with a certain amount of being threatened.

So with three bomb threats in three weeks of course, people have talked about this a whole lot lately. Today, as I was just about ready to leave the house to pick the kids up from school and head to Girl Scouts, my phone rang. the number looked vaguely familiar, but not enough to be in my contacts or for me to know it, so I answered it. It was the reporter who interviewed Naomi a few weeks ago, wanting to know if I could talk to her on camera about what's happening at the JCC. I consulted with Andrew (it's his family too, and I need to make sure he's ok with how public things are,) and agreed to do the interview-the catch was I couldn't do it where she wanted (near the JCC)-I had to have her meet me near the kids' school so I could get in car line, then do the interview while I was waiting.

I arrived, she hugged me, we slipped the microphone on, answered a few questions, and raced off to get the kids and head out. I hope that next time she calls me for something, I'll have time to do things like take a shower and do my hair before I show up. I wasn't expecting the hug-it made me think about what the female equivalent of the handshake is though. Maybe that's it.

Anyway, here's the story in the print and video format..



http://www.mynews13.com/content/news/cfnews13/news/article.html/content/news/articles/cfn/2017/1/19/fbi_investigating_th.html?cid=facebook_News_13

Also, when did Naomi grow up so much?

Normally I'd have posted this kind of long form thing on Livejournal, but once I decided to submit it for publication I couldn't post a full story anywhere else until I knew what was going on.

Look what Naomi did that I wrote about and someone else published

You may or may not recall that two years ago, Naomi wrote a letter to the mayor of our town about the lack of Hanukkah decorations in the city light displays, and he wrote back to her promising to correct that. Two years later, there are still no Hanukkah decorations in the city-sponsored display, and when we were talking about this with a friend of mine, (who happens to also be the pastor of the local Presbyterian church,) she suggested that Naomi go to the public comment period at the city council meeting and make a statement.



( Naomi's statement and mine... )

I also read a statement from my friend the Pastor, who had planned to attend but got called away to church at the last minute. The mayor was visibly uncomfortable with the statement. I was busy watching Naomi, more than the mayor, but Andrew says that it was kind of like "Uh oh, I did promise this, I've been caught and shamed by an 8 year old and now it's public record." We were really prepared-we even brought a copy of her letter and the mayor's response, which were collected by the city clerk and entered into the record.

I have no idea if it will matter in the end, if anything will change. But my kids are learning truly how to make waves, how to hold elected officials accountable, how not to let things be if they're not right. And that's an important lesson.

I also submitted my first piece of writing for publication. We'll see where that goes...probably a dead end, but if it happens, that would be awesome.

Naomi and Miriam go to a "casually uniform" school; their school has uniforms but most of the time, unless a kid is violating the county dress code, they don't really do anything about it. So I told her she could wear her "A Woman's Place is in the House and the Senate and the Oval Office" shirt on Election Day next week as long as she wore proper uniform bottoms and put a school uniform shirt in her bag in case they told her to change.

Both kids are frightened but interested in the current election cycle, at least for president. We had a fascinating conversation a week or two ago about candidates-the two candidates running to represent our district are a woman who doesn't reflect my values and a man who, while he and I disagree on many fiscal and financial matters, on most social issues, we're well aligned. I asked the kids who I should vote for-the man or the woman, and they immediately said "the woman," until I explained that she didn't reflect my values but the other candidate did. I explained that you have to look at which candidate lines up with what you believe in the most, and sometimes even that's not perfected, and went on with "What if you believe in saving trees and oceans, and one candidate says 'cut down the trees' and another says 'save the trees' and leaves out the oceans. Who do you vote for?" They picked the "save the trees" candidate, but I was fascinated with their conversation that followed. They discussed different strategies for helping homeless people, and environmental things, but most interesting was listening to them talk about school populations-about what to do if we discovered we needed more spots for students in our schools-they considered the possibility of expanding the size of our current schools or building more schools and we talked about the environmental impact of those choices and economics and the traffic patterns, and all sorts of complicated things that I don't think most kids think about. It was really deep and amazing.

What it did get me thinking about though, was how I perceived elections; I was a little older than Naomi in 1984. Ronald Reagan was a "bad guy" in my head, but the Soviets and their missiles were scarier and more threatening. I don't ever remember being as frightened as they are about the future of my own country though, when considering an election.

Things I am still not entirely used to in my adult life...

Being introduced to colleagues of my mother by first name and not "Title and name." Whether they told me to call them something else or not, I still feel like I'm my mother's kid and should be introduced to them by title and name rather than first name. (My mother works in an academic department at a university-most of her colleagues hold PhDs or other doctoral degrees, except for the grad students who, once upon a time were my contemporaries and who now are often younger than I am.)

Last year at shiva for my Dad people brought all kinds of food, and one of the professors brought a wonderful dish, similar to one I make, but I liked her version a little better (actually I'll probably combine elements of the two to get one that I like even more.) I didn't get the recipe then but I was thinking about it today, and so I decided to email my mother and ask her who it was who brought the food and could I get the recipe? In my email I mentioned the professor in question by first name, but it just didn't feel right. Is it imposter syndrome (as in "I appear to be a sensible adult but I don't actually believe I'm one,") or something else?

We celebrated someone's eighth birthday the other day. We gave her a choice between going to drag brunch the day before her birthday and going to fancy dinner on her actual birthday and she chose drag brunch. Not exactly typical for turning 8, but who said I had typical kids? They were telling their occupational therapist about it yesterday who was trying to choke back giggles...I looked at her and said "Not exactly a conversation you would expect to have with a six year old?"

( Two recent photos )

The interesting thing about having medium sized kids (which is what I call Naomi) is chatting with her about serious things. Today it was banned books and censorship. And while she still does distill some things into very simple, very black and white "That's bad" sentiments, to have a child who is aware, thoughtful and trying to make change is fantastic. I don't want her to ever be afraid to use her voice. At 4 and a half she wrote to the President of the US. At 5 and a half she wrote to the mayor of our city about a specific problem-lack of Hanukkah decorations in our town. Her heart is amazing and makes me cry just thinking about her. May she always be able to speak up as strongly as she does now.

Small victory...I made it through my trip to the store to buy Yarzheit (memorial) candles without crying.

I have a deadline that was technically this evening, but really isn't until 9/24...it was set tonight for the convenience of the person who needs the data and to give her some time to finish collecting it from the people who haven't turned it in. I'm grateful that when I called her today with a question about it she said to me "Stop stressing about it. You have a holiday today and tomorrow. I don't actually need to have paper in hand until Friday. Get the data entered into the computer and have your holiday. Stop by Thursday or Friday with the paperwork." She was right to remind me to take care of me and to not let this stress me out so much. I need to thank her for it.

I'm really trying to focus on not having to go through the first time again for a lot of things. I made it through the first Rosh Hashanah without my Dad. Now the first Yom Kippur. Soon the first Simchat Torah, which the girls will enjoy. Sometimes being able to sink into the ritual is helpful-it brings some of the emotion that I may not have given a lot of thought to to the surface and allows me to let go. Same friend who reminded me to take care of me also said "Grief doesn't end, it just changes." Someone else said to watch out because it may sneak up on you in a few months when something else is going on and to give yourself time and space for that. I had this moment a week ago where Miriam said something and I would have reached for the phone and told him about it and he would have loved hearing the story, and I looked at my phone and put my hand on it but I knew I couldn't just make the call. And what about when I upgrade this phone? Will I change the entry from "Mom and Dad" to "Mom" or what?

I'm working on it.