Our Garden

An explosion of color from the garden.

Spring has delivered another batch of color and sound to our little corner of New Jersey. I awake to the whip of the sprinkler, which silently waters the garden but pings its way loudly across the shingles of the house. Bird songs provide the sound track for my morning coffee as I stare out the window to spot what has blossomed overnight.

If I ignore the high pollen count, these are blissful moments to cherish.

When we moved into this house, it wore a sad pall after more than a decade of neglect. Though I will save the tale of woe and repair for another post, suffice it to say that our friend Jeff lovingly called the place a “dump” upon first inspection.

But it was the state of the large garden that unsettled me most. This house was about to anchor me --- a city girl at heart – right in the thick of suburbia, and I wanted the silver lining: the regal boughs of a glorious maple, the swath of green grass blowing in the summer breeze, and the raucous garden exploding with color.

There were four-foot tall weeds with an endless intestinal network of roots that I tried in vain to yank out of the ground. They resembled a jungle in a Rousseau painting and I spent more than an entire day conquering them. Even now, so many years later, I catch a small one popping up and pounce immediately, lest it get the best of me.

Once I cleared the area, I positioned two burning bushes at either end. They provide a spiritual anchor to the garden, and their bright red leaves in autumn make my heart leap out of my chest. It is shameful, but without seeking expert guidance or solid botanical knowledge, I have added more flowers and greenery over time, foolishly planting what feels right with completely blind faith.

A few years ago, I planted Chinese lanterns because I loved them as a child, but like difficult memories, they have become all-consuming. To that I added spearmint, because I find the aroma breathtaking, and the nana tea I steep with its oily leaves can trick me into thinking I’m sipping it at a café in Jerusalem. Alas, the spearmint and the lanterns are stubborn, kindred spirits. Each spring, I am required to wrestle and tame them into submission.

One fall I planted hostas, which settled in during the winter and learned to thrive in our frightful sun while staring down the deer who feast on their lush leaves. Then came lemon balm, because I’d been wooed by its soothing properties, and roses for their scent and their thorns, because I wanted to flash some mojo. Chicks and hens followed, because I needed to show my maternal side, and silver mound, just because its name sounds so tender to me.

Eventually, I dug in with some boxwood because I needed something that didn’t make a statement.

Later I planted the lavender, because my husband spent happy childhood summers on the Istrian coast, where it grows wild. Finally, I stuck in some heather, because the tag said it was South African, which reminded me of my friend Carmel, who would tell me to stop attributing so much meaning to each inch of the garden and just enjoy it.

So I did, and I am. In the wee hours of the morning, I head outdoors to observe in complete silence what nature has wrought on the side of our house where weeds once reigned. The image – a random assortment of plants that might not agree with a skilled gardener -- paints a happy memory. It is that explosion of color, I sought. Though nothing fancy, it makes me a little more grateful for what the suburbs has to offer.

The Nutcracker

Everything we cook for Pesach is delicious,
even if it all tastes like matzah.

One of my earliest – and fondest – memories of Pesach is this:

My grandmother, my mother, my sister, and I are sitting around my mother’s kitchen table. There are bags of whole walnuts in a pile at the center, and the broken shells are slowly filling up a large Pyrex bowl. Three of us grip our metal nutcrackers, and one lucky soul – the one whose turn it is to give her knuckles a rest – is cranking the clumsily shelled nut pieces in a hand-turned nut grinder.

It was hard work shelling those nuts, and the process left cuts across our fingers. But we needed them for charoset and nut tortes and ingberlach and all sorts of other holiday confections.

This was the early 1970s, and contrary to my children’s tongue-in-cheek humor, dinosaurs were, in fact, already extinct for some time by then. Still, the Pesach dish soap came only in a bar and we cooked with something called Nyfat, which looked in the jar as I imagine it did in our arteries.

The selection of Pesach mixes was paltry by today’s standards, and we eschewed most of it, with the exception of that delicious crumb cake. Bottles of schav, borscht, macaroons, soup nuts, and jarred gefilte fish floating in a gelatinous sea claimed prime prepared food real estate. It didn’t matter, though, because Mom and Grandma made everything anyway, and each item they concocted was delicious, even if it all tasted like matzah.

The number of available products multiplied with each passing year. Some we tried; others we simply ignored. The arrival of shelled walnuts, however, we embraced as if we’d been redeemed from slavery, even though it stole that time together out from under us. Time wrought other changes in our lives, too, but we never veered from the family seder menu. Farfel stuffing was one of our only constants.

Decades later, as I struggle not to be a dinosaur myself, I quietly make my way down the supermarket aisles in these weeks leading up to Pesach. I appreciate how the teeming shelves have made a cumbersome cooking experience less traumatic for some. For now, I marvel, but never buy, still clinging steadfastly to the concept of making it all myself.

My affection for that moment at the kitchen table, shelling walnuts with the women in my family, has also never waned. When I first made Pesach as a newlywed, I bought my own nutcracker and hand-turned nut grinder because my mom had already long ago parted with hers. I’ve never used either, but I unpack them each year to keep the memory fresh.

For now, I’m off to the races, cleaning and shopping and preparing for the arrival of the big day. Wishing all of you a happy, healthy and memorable holiday – chag kasher v’sameach!

Let the Games Begin

Like wearing white before Memorial Day, thinking about Pesach before Purim is a faux pas best kept under wraps. Any mention of the “P” word while everyone else is packing mishloach manot raises eyebrows at best, and it can set others entirely on edge. But Pesach is where my mind was, even as I was baking hamantaschen.

Now, just days after Purim, that thinking has gone into overdrive. For the moment, the house is still teeming over with nosh from the recent festivities, but I am walking around in a kind of pre-Pesach stupor. The cleaning and the shopping and the spiritual cleansing are off on a mad, three-legged race to the finish line, and I’m cheering them on at the top of my lungs.

Like a whirling dervish, I twirl in an ecstatic housekeeping frenzy that limits writing and crafting time. I thumb through my Pesach recipe binder and begin stocking up on potato starch. Eying cabinets and closets, I plot out a new and improved approach to turning over the kitchen, all the while daydreaming about setting the seder table with my grandmother’s china.

One son rolled his eyes last night and reported that I’d gone into “Pesach Crazy Mode.” The second, my squirrel, offered his irresistible grin as a preemptive apology for the crumbs I am destined to find in the least likely of places. The third asked if it was time for him to burn the chametz.

My sweet husband knows more or less what is going on in my already Pesadik head, so he does the heavy lifting and asks few questions. He has even made his own quiet mark on our preparations, buying new stove hood screens to save me from having to scrub off a year’s worth of grease with acid-based solvents. That, my friends, is love.

Meanwhile, life goes on. I still have to drive carpool and laundry continues to amass at the foot of the washing machine in the basement. But it all plays second fiddle to the bigger, Pesach picture looming on the horizon.

This is my season. Game on.

Do I Want It or Do I Need It?

It’s time for true confessions, so I beseech you not to judge me harshly. I have sink envy. There. I’ve said it.
It’s not as though I have the number of the vasser tregger on speed dial. We do, thank G-d, have indoor plumbing. There are sinks with running water where they need to be – one in each bathroom, one next to the washing machine in the laundry room, and one in the kitchen. And therein, my friends, lies the rub.

For a kosher kitchen, one sink presents a challenge. To turn over from meat to dairy or dairy to meat is like changing stage sets at an opera -- if the first act opened in Venice during Carnivale and the second in Siberia during a winter storm. Constant vigilance is required, lest someone, without thinking, drop a grilled cheese plate into the sink with the roast pan.

Others may pine for jewelry or Caribbean vacations, but I long for that second sink. Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean a double sink where my single now resides. I want the big kahuna, a completely separate bowl deep enough to accommodate soup pots I could swim in on a summer’s day.

She doth protest too much, you say, and perhaps you are right. I’ve never actually lived in a house with separate sinks, and I’ve managed to keep my kitchens strictly kosher. Lately, though, I’m finding it more and more frustrating to get by with one. I mean I am daydreaming about being able to clean a chicken in one sink while the mugs from my morning coffee rest in another.

Who fantasizes about sinks?

When visiting friends who’ve recently redone their kitchens, some ooh and aah over the kasherable granite countertops or the Viking wall ovens. They drool as they gaze upon the specialty tiles and the hand-painted backsplashes. But I make a bee-line right for Sink One and Sink Two, staring longingly at them to the point of utter distraction.

They needn’t be fancy or graced with a professional-grade pot washer. No hot water tap is necessary either. Just give me a no-nonsense stainless steel bowl and a faucet.

In desperation, my husband called in the contractor, who said he could make it happen… if I were to compromise my minimal work area, part with the cabinet storing my fleishig pots, and let the equivalent of a few yeshiva registration fees pass from my hands to his.

Thinking about it further, I started to wonder if I sounded like my boys, who need cable television, must have another pair of sneakers, or require those special karate gloves. We always ask, “Do you want it or do you need it?” before considering their requests. I soon began to wonder the same thing about my missing sink.

Are two sinks really too much to ask?

I love our house. It isn’t too big and it isn’t too small. That a pair of sneakers and a sink are the only things my family is missing means that life, thank G-d, is good. And not getting those karate gloves – or the sink -- is a reminder that we probably can do without them in the first place.

When it came down to it, I realized that I just wasn’t prepared to lose my counter space. After all, where else would I store all those drain boards?

But a girl can dream, and while I’m dreaming, why not long for a third sink? One just for pareve…

Please, May I Have a Do-Over?

Decoupage is Queen of the Crafting World and I am her loyal subject.   

It is a happy obsession, one that enables me to rescue the old, the garbage-bound, and the utilitarian and transform them into something colorful that makes me smile. My family knows this is no trifling matter. The long–running joke here cautions you not to sit for too long, lest you find yourself covered in giant paper tea roses.

My boys, who still believe the floor is the best place to store almost anything, possess an uncanny reverence for my art supplies that is generally reserved for their Eli Manning posters. I’d even bet they’d be able to differentiate between Mod Podge and regular white glue in a blindfolded smell test.

My husband, who is well-versed in my preference for glossy over matte varnish, has made many an emergency run to craft shops for me throughout the years of our marriage. He has a sixth sense that enables him to gauge my mood based on what I’m crafting and knows that my studio is my holy of holies. He may visit at any time, but not stash his own tools or medical magazines within its small, beloved confines.

Alas, there are moment s when, gulp, even decoupage cannot save the day and times when I must accept its impracticality. Sharp scissors and cross-country road trips shouldn’t mix, for example, and Mod Podge is a bit messy for watching a movie on the couch in the den. But a crafty girl needs to craft, so she’s got to have options. 

Enter the crochet hook. You see, when I’m not potchke-ing with paper, I’m making afghans. Lots and lots of afghans. Most recently, two for the basement man cave we set up for the Teenager.  Before that, bedcovers for the younger brothers, who – with their very own feet – embellished my work with decorative toe holes. And my favorite, the one that kept me sane on the drive from New Jersey to Mount Rushmore.

Occasionally, my husband will gently remind me that a family needs only so many afghans – at least two per person seems reasonable, no? -- and that our house isn’t that big.  Still, he understands this oddball need of mine to constantly be making something, and pretends not to notice when I begin yet another project. To be fair, I stop for a spell to consider what it is about these crafts that keeps me coming back for more.    
For starters, they both anchor me in one place while I’m awake. They provide fleeting moments of calm, too, little commercial breaks from the action-packed adventure that is life in a household of boys.  For brief interludes, they enable me to shut out the rest of the world, or at least let it in at a smoother, more digestible pace.

When I have to rip out a row of an afghan or recover a mirror because my paper choices feel all wrong, I am reminded to cut myself a little slack. Almost magically, I can make these crafty mistakes disappear – poof - without over-analyzing them or questioning my decisions well into a sleepless night. 

Unlike real life, they are forgiving. They allow for a do-over. And if I don’t catch a misstep, I can cover the evidence with a toe hole in just the right spot, as if nothing was ever wrong in the first place.

Make Way For Ducklings

• My brother-in-law, Zarko, is the genius behind the design of both my blog and my website.  Sadly, his father, Ilija Jovanovski, passed away suddenly last week.  I decided to take a moment of wordlessness in the blogosphere to honor his memory by delaying this post until now.
  (Thank you Merri, Zarko)

With all the books I’ve read, I should be able to make a more esoteric reference, but Make Way for Ducklings – that classic from my childhood – just gets this whole mommy business like nothing else. All the essentials are there as if it were an illustrated parenting manual, complete with an avuncular traffic officer watching our backs while steering us in the right direction.   

Lucky Mom Mallard has an innate ability to raise fine, upstanding ducklings, and she passes along some solid advice to her non-aquatic counterparts.  Teach your little guys to stick together. Find a nice neighborhood to live in and spend a lot of time hanging out in the park. And most important, let your children have snacks, because snacks are one of life’s greatest pleasures.

With her chest out, she makes her way around the city, leading her crew in an enviably neat row.  Such pride in her waddle! She never doubts herself, and why should she? Her offspring don’t squabble. They listen the first time she says something. They never sass. When challenges do present themselves, she gets back-up from a fine team of Boston policemen.

Over on my side of the river, you’ll hear a lot quacking, but that’s where the similarity ends.  

The seeds of my insecurity were sown while skimming the parenting magazines in the waiting room before my first sonogram fifteen years ago. The bar they set was just too high. Let’s face it. I was never going to look like the glowing celebrity in the designer maternity dress or puree my own organic baby food.

To complicate matters, I drafted my own impossible guidelines. My children would never fight. They’d see eye to eye with their parents, too, even as they approached the dark abyss of adolescence. They would be compliant and easy-going and like every dinner I’d ever place before them. They’d run to do their chores and go to bed in spotless rooms without a peep of protest after diligently completing their homework.   

The reality is that I cannot recall my darling ducklings ever following me in a neat little row. One is always out of line, though the errant one varies, and sometimes they’re all off flying in different directions, poking the nearest sibling with a beak before takeoff.   

From behind the exasperating cloud that obscures maternal confidence, I acknowledge that looking good in that designer maternity dress was more likely than my ever getting this right. On sunnier days, when the view is clearer, I can see that I just have to keep the bar I’ve set for raising my own ducklings a bit more down to earth. 

After all, their spiritedness may well forecast future success and their eagerness to negotiate with me on matters large and small a sign of their ability to swim upstream and think for themselves. By the time they start dating, they will have figured out on their own that shirts are not napkins, and we can always patch up the holes in the walls when they leave for college.

For now, though, I am focusing on what I know I’ve done right. I have taught them to swim and to cross the street safely. I never cower when it comes to watching out for the foxes in the woods or the turtles in the water. What’s more? No matter what lurks beneath, I’m not afraid to stick my beak into the muck at the bottom of the pond to care for them and groom them into menschen.  

As for Mom Mallard, even she allows her ducklings to dine on peanuts – without dining on guilt herself – when fishing yields skimpy results. But she isn’t perfect. If you are blessed with eight children, you probably shouldn’t give them all rhyming names.  And she molts. Need I say more?   

Right now, there are telltale signs that my boys are wrestling upstairs. I put on an apron and my best smile, pretending to hear nothing. I’ll get the blow by blow with laugh track over dinner.

The water’s boiling. In goes the mac and cheese. Right out of the box. 

All’s fair in love and parenting. The trick is to let any expectations of perfection slide off. Like water off a duck.

Quack.

The Art of Idling



Learning to let go and see the positive

It is a truth universally acknowledged that on the day I have a long-ago scheduled doctor’s appointment or an important meeting or even once-in-a-blue-moon plans for a social activity that one of my boys will awake with an unpleasant, uncomfortable – though, thank G-d, in no way life-threatening – ailment that will require him to stay home from school.

I will cancel my appointment/meeting/frivolous outing post-haste. I will take him to the doctor and, if necessary, the pharmacy. I will allow him, in between naps and for durations unheard of in healthy times, to watch all the puerile television shows I generally prohibit.

Now imagine a gerbil wearing a sheitel, logging miles on one of those little toy carousels. I spend my average day scampering to and fro, getting a million things done, but very little that leaves me feeling accomplished. There are exceptions, like my teaching and writing, and when I turn on the music and shimmy about with my (real) hair up in a pony, doing my crafty-girl thing.

But with sick children at home, almost nothing happens. Time stops, a challenge for someone like me who remains unskilled in the art of idling. Exasperated, I stare at my must-do list, a mountain of tasks

I fear I’ll never manage to climb.

I do a lot of sighing while ministering to the coughing child on the couch.

Of course, I don’t want to see the boys lying there – miserable, febrile, red-nosed. I want them well for wellness sake, but full confession: I also want them well so that we may all get back on the road at our standard mph. They need to return to school and I need to resume trying to do to everything.

Stuck as we are, I gradually begin to see these sick days not as a hindrance to productivity, but as a chance to let things go and take stock of my blessings. Two of my three are old enough to be mortified by my proximity during a public event, but sick, even they allow me – without rolling their eyes – to stare at them longingly like I did when they were very young.

They doze, and I begin to nest. I steal a moment for some housekeeping – straightening up a cabinet, organizing a shelf – and not begrudgingly. I dare say that I come to cherish what I do get done instead of stressing over what I do not.

The television is back on, so I’ll set a pot of chicken soup to simmer and a batch of challah to rise. Happy smells, these provide the olfactory backdrop to our family life, both on sick days and healthy ones. Hopefully, these memories will eclipse the ones of my running around like a chicken without a head when my boys look back fondly on their childhood.

Alas, what happens when it is I who get bit by the stomach bug or the flu or a terrible cold? There’s no nesting, just resting, and in that challenge I find the wisdom of the oracle: Most must-do list items can wait.

The boys are probably taking their favorite shirts out of the laundry to wear dirty when I’m not looking anyway.

There is an art to letting go, too.