On Celebrating Holidays

I was quite saddened during this past Jewish holiday called Rosh Hashanah. And I anticipate many sad holidays to come. At least for a while.

I am not Jewish. My husband is. Before we got married, by husband requested that we raise our children in the Jewish faith. Not comfortable at that point to consider converting to Judaism, we elected to raise our child through what is known as Reform Judaism. In Reform Judaism, at least one parent must be of the Jewish faith. In more strict areas of Judaism, the mother of a child MUST be Jewish in order for the child to be considered Jewish. This is not the case in Reform Judaism, where only one parent, mother OR father has to be Jewish.

I chose to raise my child to be Jewish for several very important reasons. My first is that although I am a spiritual person, I do not have any direct connections with any particular faith, as my parents were not very religious. My feeling is that if a child is going to experience a religion, this child should be exposed to religious family gatherings, rituals and traditions on a fairly regular basis. I felt that although my husband was not terribly religious (and is even less so now), that at least there would be my husband’s family who would introduce and carry out these important customs for my child to eventually relate to and internalize.

We have been sending our son to religious school, at the Reform Temple we belong to, for going on three years now. Our son enjoys his religious classes and we can tell is learning, and retaining a fair amount of his studies. But now that my divorce proceedings are underway, I’m in between a rock and a hard place.

Since I wasn’t raised in the Jewish faith, I am hardly equipped to truly raise my child with the customs and traditions that become assimilated into a person if the religion is practiced routinely, beginning in childhood. I did take a 7-month Introduction to Judaism class along with a 3 month Beginning Hebrew class...still, I feel lost. My husband has practically no interest in celebrating the Jewish Holidays. In fact, he blew off the second day of Rosh Hashanah to go to the Jersey Shore with his friends. He is working on Yom Kippur, the most holy of all Jewish holidays. And he is planning to be at a convention the first 5 days of Chanukah. My husband’s family wants nothing to do with me, so there goes the family support for the traditions and customs. I am at a loss. I did not choose to do this alone. Had I ever thought I would be teaching religion to my child by myself, I would have at least chosen a religion who’s customs I am much more familiar with. But it is not fair to my son to suddenly redirect him towards a different religious path at this point.

Since my husband is choosing to disregard the holidays of his own religion, I felt that the minimum he could do would be to drop our son off at religious school, pick him up, and do our son’s religious homework with him. My Rabbi, a warm, sweet, loving woman, is going to help me learn more as my son and I go along. She wrote down family get-togethers and child focused events, such as helping to build a Sukkah (an outdoor dwelling where all meals are eaten and you can choose to sleep in the Sukkah, weather permitting, for 8 days. It is actually a celebration of the harvest season and typically is celebrated in the Fall.), as well as some Chanukah family events we can attend together.

It is somewhat comforting to know that several of the children in my son’s religious class have also been in one of his classes at his elementary school, so I am at least familiar with some of the parents at our Temple. Still, I feel overwhelmed and abandoned in yet another area of my son’s and my life. I chose to do this in the best interest for my child and with the understanding that I would have family support. Now, I have none of that, and I am resentful. I guess I just have to resolve that this is yet another area in my life where my son and I are going to plod through as best we can.

And, of course, it doesn’t help matters when my son loudly asked in Temple the other day, “Mommy, when is Christmas?”

School Already???

That was the phrase uttered by my son just the other day. I have to admit, the summer has certainly flown by. With the exception of a planned vacation, much of the summer has just whisked its way through many hot summer days.

I don’t think I was able to see my friends as often as I planned. I did spend more quality time with my son. But except for a few cute movies and an exciting theatre excursion, we really didn’t take advantage of the summer activities as we usually do.

I think much of it had to do with the almost endless clean up from the tornado that hit our town at the beginning of June. There were weeks and weeks of clean up going on in local parks and pools. That certainly put a damper on our outdoor activities.

Daily day camp occupied my son who almost always came home exhausted. And we had a reading tutor come after camp twice a week. With almost daily homework given. Except for the endless laundry, summer really hasn’t felt like...summer.

We didn’t use our outdoor grill even once this year (I plan to rectify that next year!) Except on his camping trip with his Dad, my son didn’t have the energy or time to even catch fireflies, as we did together last summer. There were very few gatherings or get-togethers with even just my friends.

And now school is back in session. By the time this blog is posted, my son will have completed his first day of Second Grade! I am as excited for him as he is. But also wary. With higher-grade levels bring larger homework loads. I wonder whether my son can deal with the greater workload. Or will I be writing many explanatory letters.

My son will be heading into school with a long list of modifications already outlined by the professionals who follow him. But will he need more? Will the school provide him more?

The one relief I have, that I blogged about last year, is that the PTA came up with an interesting fundraising idea this year, to help out overburdened parents (such as myself!). The PTA sent out  flyers at the end of the school year, last year, offering to have every single item your child’s new teacher requested, for the new school year, available for a reasonable fee! All the way down to 24 sharpened pencils! Heck, it is worth a few dollars just to have someone else sharpen 24 pencils for me! Each child would be presented with their own, boxed supplies (almost like a gift!), presented to them on the first day of school! No dragging of heavy items into school the first day. No misplaced pencil cases, erasers, notebooks. Everything is right there waiting for each particular child whose parents chose to utilize this service.

As I was walking through Staples last week, I saw several frantic Moms, with trails of their children, holding pieces of paper with their school supply lists. The Moms were blowing hair out of their eyes while their children complained in unison that either the items Staples had were not the right brand, too large, to small, or just plain sold out. As I quietly picked out the proper ink cartridge for my printer, I just stood there and smiled. No sharpening of 24 pencils for me this year! I have plenty of other things to do!

Cruisin’

I must admit, I was scared taking my son out of the country for the first time, by myself. My security in knowing that I could carry it off was prompted firstly because I was very familiar with the Carnival Cruise line. Secondly, because I had already been to our destination, the Bahamas, several times, including once by myself.

For the most part, the beginning of our cruise went off without a hitch. My son never left my side for a moment. The Jet Blue television stations the entire flight to Orlando, Florida occupied him. And he followed instructions while rolling his own luggage to transportation areas and through airports.

We were taken to the cruise ship and again, my son complied through security, all the way through check in, and finally to our room. Since we were up early to begin our adventure, we rested in our room until everyone was called for attending the mandatory boat drill. Once that was over, we went back to our room, changed into swim attire, and went up for a bite to eat and some serious swim play!

The boat was equipped with three amazing slides! One was a twisty, swirling slide, while the others were straight, but steep slides. I chose to just relax on a lounge chair and feel the warm Caribbean breeze rush by me as my son continuously used these slides, no exaggeration, for 2 1/2 hours!

From here it was off to get changed for dinner. My son wanted to take advantage of Carnivals’ Camp Carnival, with children his own age. I perused the shops before picking my son up from Camp Carnival and retiring for the night.

The next day we docked in the Bahamas! Ahh! Home, sweet home, for me! My son was excited because at his annual physical the week prior, he was told he reached 48 inches! The minimum height requirement to use ALL of the water park rides at the Atlantis Resort, which was our destination!

My adventure son turned me into adventure Mom! He convinced me to go down the steep, Mayan float rides (twice!), the adventure slides, and I convinced him to go down the lazy river! Then our fun began to slide downhill.

It was nearing late afternoon and my son wanted me to go down the River Rapids. I agreed until we proceeded to the top of this ride. The only way I could describe it would be an enclosed roller coaster with a float. My fear of heights, I conquered, but an enclosed roller coaster in a float, was my limit. I sadly announced to my son that I was too afraid to go through the rest of the ride, but if my son wanted to go, he could. There were eight and 9-year-old boys behind us, so not to lose face, my son chose to go down. I promised to meet him at the bottom. My son came out a bit shaken up. He admitted that it was scary. He only wanted to do calm, safer water activities from then on.

Now here is where our fun goes downhill. I was trying to take a photo of my son coming down a slide. I kept edging my feet closer to the edge of the step to get as close a picture as possible. My left flip-flop slipped off the edge of the step, I didn't want my camera to get submerged in water, so I held the camera high in the air with my left arm, reached with my right hand to break my fall, but my head hit the metal handrail while my right hip broke the fall on the step. I also got a deep abrasion on my right knee. But I saved my camera AND got the picture of my son!

The next day, we were back on the boat. My son was going down all of the fun slides at the top of the ship he had gone down before. I was lounging my sore body on one of the lounge chairs, again, taking pictures of my son as he came down the slides. Out of nowhere, it started to downpour. Since my son was on the swirly slide, I took cover under an overhang near the steps where I knew he would be coming back down. I didn't see what happened, but some concerned parents, who saw what happened, waited at the bottom of the steps, as my son came down, crying and holding his head. I ran over and brought him to the overhang, and saw that the whole right side of his face was bleeding from abrasions. The parents, who DID see what happened, said that he was at the top of the spiral staircase when they closed the slide and told everyone to walk back down. Brandon looked out, I guess tried to find me, saw no one in any of the lounge chairs, panicked, because he didn't see me, slipped on the very wet stairs, and fell down 3 flights of spiral stairs! Then he slowly made his way down to the bottom where these parents were.

I immediately took him to the medical center. They cleaned and dressed his wounds. They said that I should put ice on his face (I saw them earlier for my bruised face from my hitting the handrail the day before), so we both went back to our room and each put ice on our faces. They asked that I bring him back later that day, which I did, and he was medically cleared. I still felt bruised and beaten.

Since we would be leaving out of Orlando airport, I scheduled an overnight stay at one of the hotels on the Disney World properties. My hope was to see even a little bit of Disney before we returned home. No such luck. By the time my son woke up and we disembarked the ship, my son was showing signs of being ill. Once we got to the hotel, I quickly bought some children’s cold medicine and because my son said he was hungry, but too cold to sit in the dining room to eat, I chose to spend the $40 on a hamburger and French fries, via room service and gave my son his medicine. I felt some sniffles coming on, but I was nowhere as sick as my son.

As I wrap up my blog, I am disappointed to say that we never left our room, nor saw any part of Disney World, other than from our room. My son DID say that he wanted to come back next year, so that might be our adventure for next summer.

My son is feeling a lot better, although as I type this, my head is stuffy, my ears hurt and my throat hurts. Among my other bruises. However, through it all, I had an exponentially wonderful time with my son, which I wouldn’t trade for the world!

And selfishly, I proved that I CAN be a single Mom even through calamities and illnesses, I am ALWAYS able to take care of my little boy!!

The Sadist Day

I made probably the most difficult decision of my entire life recently. To end my marriage. Making this decision was so difficult that the only situation I can compare it to would be having a loved one in the hospital and having to be the one to make the decision to have them taken off life support. This decision was immensely heart wrenching, but it had to be done.

My husband is looking for the least expensive way to end our marriage and provide support. Because I have to look out for the needs of both my son as well as myself, I couldn’t afford to go the least expensive route. I chose to go through the much more grueling, difficult way. But it had to be done for the sake of my son and myself.

I also had to do it because my husband and I don’t have any semblance of life together anymore. And I grieve and hurt over this just about every single day. I have tried so hard to keep our family intact. My husband, however, keeps pulling farther and farther away. He has absolutely no interest in rectifying our marriage or family.

My own health has deteriorated significantly as well. I’ve lost 60 pounds due to stress induced irritable bowel syndrome. I can hardly eat liquids at this point and keep them in my digestive tract. My doctors have had to increase my anti-anxiety meds to a point where I think my brain is going to implode. I am weak, often dehydrated, often dizzy, and almost always nauseous. My body cannot afford to go on like this. Especially crying myself to sleep every night. I had to “pull the plug.” For the sake of my own health.

My biggest fear, besides my health, is my son. He will be devastated. And I am sure that this will impact his schooling. Since my husband is hardly around anyway, I constantly reassure my son that I will always be here for him. And I will never leave him, no matter what. He will forever be my number one priority. As it is now, we have established our own comfortable routine together. At least that will remain consistent for him.

The most difficult part of all will be telling our son that Mommy and Daddy will no longer be living together. I’ve been reading up on how to tell a young child that his parents will be divorcing. The most important emphasis from everything I’ve read is that both parents need to remain calm and unemotional when discussing a divorce with a child. I absolutely don’t think I can do it. I get teary-eyed just thinking of telling our son. But I want to hear what my husband says to our son, so I have to be present. I’m just going to have to take a few xanaxes before we sit down with him and try to hold back the tears. I honestly don’t know how I am going to get through it.

My husband and I had a child because we wanted to share the love we had for each other exponentially towards our child. The love for our child hasn’t changed, but I still continue to wonder where the love my husband and I had for each other went. And I still don’t understand how you can know a person intimately for 20 years and be married for 15 years, and have that love dissipate practically overnight. I guess I never will know the answer.

All I ever wanted was a happy little family who enjoyed spending time with one another and enjoying life’s experiences together. From last week’s blog, you could tell that I experienced my son’s first camping trip second hand, through texts and photos sent from my husband. And when my son and I leave for the Bahamas tomorrow, my husband will have to live our cruise experience, along with a stop at Disney on the way back, through scattered phone calls and shared photos. It is so utterly sad.

When my husband received the divorce letter, he was visibly shaken and shocked. Since then, however, he has failed to discuss it. All he said about the letter was, “I don’t know what to say.” I thought to myself, “For an intelligent man, you don’t seem to know much about anything concerning our relationship.” He is acting more and more like a bachelor, is giving up more and more time that he could be spending with his son, instead choosing to spend it with his friends or doing a physical activity. It is beyond sad. For my birthday, he gave me a gift, “from my son,” which was completely self-serving and did not take my son nor I into consideration at all. He had a bike race to go to this past Saturday with a barbecue to go to afterwards. He gave me tickets to go to see the play, The Lion King, at a theater in New York City. He specifically chose the day of his bike race as the date for the tickets, so that my son and I would be occupied. Firstly, my son hates the Lion King movie. I have offered to watch it with him over the years, and as soon as it starts, my son starts screaming, “Turn it off! Turn it off!” Why would I take my son to a play when he won’t even watch the movie it is based on!! Secondly, knowing my son would not like the play; he would be asking to leave every 15 minutes. And with his ADD, he would not be able to sit for that length of time anyway. It would be a horrible, aggravating, miserable experience for both of us. So I gave the tickets away. And my son and I spent a quiet, relaxing, productive day at home. I think we both much preferred that.

My husband’s attorney has up to 60 days to respond to my letter, so we shall see how long he puts off responding to it. In the meantime, I am learning a crash course in how to be a single parent, taking care of a high maintenance child and two high maintenance dogs. I’m not doing the greatest job, so far. But as they say, with practice makes perfect, which I don’t expect to aspire to! I think “staying afloat” is a much more reasonable goal for right now! Time will only tell...

My Little Camper!

My son went camping for the first time this past weekend. His father bought a spacious tent and invited one of my son’s friends and his father to join them. As told to me by my husband, my son, who was quite trepadatious at first, ended up having a terrific time!

The day before they left, I presented to my son some cute camping items I thought he might like to take with him. I bought him a children’s lantern which also had a base that served as a night light, emitting a soft, orange glow. He received a bug catching container for his birthday, so I packed that so that he could catch fireflies. And the most exciting item was a shark patterned, child’s sleeping bag (my son loves sharks!) to sleep in! My son took one look at the sleeping bag and pronounced that he had to take ALL (and I do mean ALL) of his stuffed animals to help him feel less scared.

The next day, my son was up and dressed at the crack of dawn! With ALL of his stuffed animals in the sleeping bag! I thought his father would object, but my son was so insistent, that the “animal sleeping bag” went camping along with everyone else!

Once at the campsite, everyone set up the tent. 

Then the boys found frogs (yes, boys love frogs), 

and even had a ride on the camp fire truck!

The campsite happened to be family friendly, so the boys got to swim in the pool and play games that were available! My son made more friends to play tag around the campground with and showed his new “friends” how to use the bug catcher container once the fireflies appeared at dusk!

Once it was dark, my son helped build a fire for roasting marshmallows and began roasting marshmallows for everyone since he does like roasting marshmallows but doesn’t like to eat them! 

After the marshmallow roast at the campfire, the camp had Disco Night! It is hard to believe that these kids had the energy to “do the hustle,” but hustle they did!

The day finally came to an end. My son crawled into his sleeping bag with ALL of the stuffed animals and put on his lantern night light until he fell asleep.

The next morning, my son was still tucked inside his sleeping bag, but the animals seemed to have “escaped.”

Once everyone was awake, the campsite set out a “Camper’s Breakfast” of pancakes and other assorted items. Then it was back to the tent to pack up and spend a day at Splish Splash water park!

For a boy who was so afraid to go camping and sleep outside (and have to bring ALL of his stuffed animals!), it seems that he fared very well! He said that he would go camping again...but that he STILL might need to bring SOME of his stuffed animals!

Let’s hope he doesn’t need to bring all of these animals on our cruise!!

You are Invited to Attend

My son’s birthday was this past Friday. We had his birthday celebration on Saturday, which happened to also be MY birthday! It was at a gorgeous local pool, and the weather was the best we have had in weeks! Warm enough to swim; cool enough to relax in the shade, and no humidity! We had a perfect birthday on a perfect day!

What irks me, though, is that I have found that year after year, I always have to hunt down parents who fail to respond to the invitations I send out. I always send them out about a month before the party date, because I know families are busy during the summer months, or go away. I additionally put not only my phone number, but also my e-mail address on the invite so that for someone like me, who has limited time to chitchat, the parent can send out a quick e-mail message indicating whether their child can attend or not.

This year was the worst. Not only did I have to make multiple calls during the week before the party, the parents whom I did get in touch with gave me some of the most ridiculous responses. For instance, one Mom said that she would have to get back to me closer to the day of the party because if the weather was nice. She wanted to take the family to the beach. When I mentioned that adults were welcome to swim at the pool and that her son could even bring his brother along, she said she still was not sure. She ended up e-mailing me late the night before the party to say that her son couldn’t come.

Then there was the Mom who said that her daughter had a party to go to on the same day and that if her daughter wasn’t having fun at the first party, she would leave that party and come to my son’s. She never showed so I assume her daughter was having a good time at the other party.

And finally, one mother wanted to know if another particular child was going. She said that she would not let her son go if the other boy would be attending, because the two boys don’t like each other. When I said that the other boy’s parents hadn’t responded yet, she said to give her a call when they do, and that if the other boy was not coming, she would let her son come. (Incidentally, neither boy came because I never heard back from the first one, so I didn’t have any information to give the second one.)

There were also the no-shows. Mom’s who said that their sons would definitely be there but ended up MIA. And there were no follow-up calls indicating why the boys didn't come! To make this particular incident even more outrageous, one family happens to live six houses from the pool!! I just don’t get it.

Has the world become so bogged down with so much to keep track of that they can’t leave a simple message on the phone or through e-mail? I will give one Mom a little credit. She called me back very quickly after I called her home to see whether her daughter would be coming to the party. She apologized profusely and said that she had the party invitation in her pocketbook with the intent to RSVP, but the invitation got swallowed up inside her bag. At least she was carrying the invite around with her!

Until I can figure out a system that will work better, so that I am not scrambling to put goody bags together at the last minute with an undetermined head count, I guess I’ll be flying around, flapping my wings to make sure that I have everything ready, no matter who shows up or not. And I do want to thank those parents who actually did RSVP in a timely manner! One Mom even offered to come early and help set up! Two thumbs up for that Mom! Although I did decline her generous offer.

In the end, as stressful as putting a party together can be, the most important thing is that the kids had a great time! My son was ecstatic, and I had a terrific birthday, chatting with many of the Moms who are also my friends, while basking in the glow of my son’s happiness!

What more could I ask for on my birthday??

My Son is Turning Seven!

It all began 7 years ago, on a Tuesday evening at exactly 9:20 pm - according to my watch next to my bedside. I was reading a book, a Harry Potter book in fact, thinking, “It’s okay if I start this book now, I’ll have plenty of time during maternity leave to read the rest of it while the baby sleeps.” Well, my baby had other plans. And Harry’s story was left unread.

I had a relatively uneventful pregnancy. Especially considering that I was an “older” maternity patient at 39 with my first pregnancy. I saw my high-risk doctors regularly. I never developed gestational diabetes, which they all thought I was doomed to get. They also thought I was headed for pre-eclampsia (dangerously high blood pressure in a pregnant woman) since my blood pressure was slightly elevated at the start of my pregnancy. Never happened. In fact, about the only significant thing about my pregnancy (except for periodic night legs cramps which make you want to scream bloody murder at the top of your lungs as you massage the cramp out), was that I had real, but random, contractions, starting at 34 weeks gestation. The doctors wanted me to reach 37 weeks gestation so that the baby’s lungs would be fully mature, so I was placed on “modified bed rest” and went to the doctor’s office every other day to undergo fetal monitoring.

I met their goal of 37 weeks, but I wanted my son to be born closer to 40 weeks. See, his due date was 2 days before my 40th birthday. I wanted him to be my 40th birthday present. I would never need another present again for my birthday for the rest of my life! I wanted him to be IT! However, I also didn’t want him to be born ON my birthday. I wanted his birthday to be his and his alone. I didn’t want him to feel that he had to “share” his special day, even with his mother. I prayed that he was not born after me, because then the excitement of celebrating Mommy’s birthday may overshadow his own, especially at the age he is now - the grade school years. When birthdays are magical and completely eventful and young children want it to be THEIRS, and theirs alone!

My daily prayers were finally going to be answered that fateful Tuesday evening, August 5th, 2003. My own 40th birthday was 2 days away. At 9:20pm, the first of many contractions began. I didn’t wake my husband because I knew he needed the rest for the long day ahead. So I monitored, and practiced my labor breathing techniques all night long. Finally, around 5:30 am, the contractions were 5 minutes apart and I needed my husband to call the doctor. Our son was ready to be born! Oh how I prayed he would be born that day, Wednesday, August 6th!

After 23 hours of labor, 3:45 minutes before my 40th birthday, at 8:15 pm, my gift arrived! A gift like no other I have ever had or ever will have! And he came on the best day possible, the day before MY birthday!

Every year since, when I celebrate my son’s birthday, it is as if I am celebrating my own! The planning of his parties, the invitations, the party favors, the balloons!! I have not one ounce of resentment nor care that my own birthday is the one overshadowed or overlooked! This is EXACTLY what I wanted! So…to my son who will be celebrating his 7th birthday this Friday, Happy Birthday, my precious, beautiful, amazing boy!! I love you with all my heart, and much more! My gift!