(Too) Frequently Asked Questions

1.  How are you doing?

Fine, thank you.  How are you?

Oh yeah  right.  
Let’s tip over that Cart O' Bullshit, shall we?  Some days I’m fine.  Some days, I wake up, and brush my teeth and wiggle the mascara wand through my lashes and flat iron my hair, and walk to work, and only realize how fucking ridiculous the situation is when I have to check my ex’s twitter status to find out how my kids are doing.  

(#UsuallyJustFine.)

And yes, some days, the hours slip by while work engulfs me and I’m buzzing with caffeine and creativity.  I ping B. on Google Chat and ask how the night went.  He answers.  And usually it’s fine.  

Some days are like this.  I watch time pass through the window.  I measure out my life in status updates and the occasional tweet.


I watch their day-to-day routine on Youtube.  B. uploads cute movies, and I see how they’re really  fine.


And I’m fine.


Really. I’m fine.  


But some days, I wake up from a dream that shakes me into submission where I swear I hear my children screaming.  And then I’m not fine.  

And then there are nights when B. calls me because my son can’t stop sobbing.  He wants to hear the song about the clock.  


“Clock song!  I want the clock song!”

(And It takes me a while to figure out he means Ke$ha's “Tik Tok.”  And so, we sing it together until he stops gasping through his tears.)


“Don’t stop make it pop DJ blow my speakers up tonight Imma fight til we see the sunlight.”  I call.


“Woah oh oh oh!”   He responds.

And he’s fine.  

But I’m not.  I watch old movies of the four of us.  Moments captured where we all remember to smile for the camera.  Our pain disguised in playful quips.  But we look fine.  Even if we weren’t.  

And there are some days when I call to check on the kids and I hear them wailing in the background.  


“Mama will come on Tuesday” doesn’t cut it when you’re shaken and scared and want your Mama right now to make everything OK again.


Which begs the question:  

2.  OK, so where IS Mama?


Mama is at work.  Mostly.  Mama loves her job and the people she works with.    

Yes.  Mama goes out.  Mama is making friends.   


Mama is lucky that she has no shame and has asked her friends “back home” and from the kibbutz to introduce her to good people living in Israel.  And Mama is even luckier that her friends have readily agreed.    

3.  Why don’t you come back to Los Angeles?


Because Israel is my home.  My kids are happy here.  I am happy here.  And yes while I wish things were different, they aren’t.  And I stand by my choices.   Besides, if I were to move back to LA, I’ll just be just one of too many blondes wearing skinny jeans and high heel hooker boots, and where’s the fun in that?  I’d have to start wearing Tevas and and sharwal just to be different, and that is so not my style, yo.  

4. How are you and B. getting along?


B. and I are being true to ourselves -- for the first time in too long.  We are owning our shit, and doing the best we can to help our children feel safe.  And it all boils down to this:  We have to be kind to each other.  We have two beautiful children who will forever bind us together, and we do not take this for granted.  Not ever.  Sure, there are times when our “conversations about the kids” devolve into a Wagnerian opera, but for the most part, we’re fine.


No, really.  We are.


And the kids are fine, too.  In the last few months, they’re balancing and blossoming in their new normal.

And so are we.  




5.  Kids should be with their mother.


Ok, so this isn’t so much a question as it is a statement.  And, it’s one I hear.  A lot.   Sure, sometimes it’s softened with a sympathetic pat on the hand, but more often than not, it isn’t.  We’re talking a dagger straight to the heart, people.   And I’ll be real -- a few years ago, I probably would have said the same thing.  


But when the father has a strong support network and the mother doesn’t, when the father is fluent in the spoken language of the country and the mother is still struggling to learn, when the father is able to pick the kids up from gan because he is able to live in the community and the mother lives 30 minutes away because she has to, you adjust.  You change the rules.  


(Wait.  Who wrote these rules anyway?)


Yeah, kids should be with their mother.  And their father.  And everyone should gather round the G.D. table and join hands and say grace.  But our family is more Andy Warhol than Norman Rockwell.  

But hey, at least we’ve got color.  And texture.


Lots of it.


And from the depths of this churning chaos comes energy and change.


Because In the Beginning there was darkness.

Rocking My Inner Ke$ha

About a year ago, I started highlighting my hair, wearing skinny jeans, and painting my nails black.

“What, you think you’re Ke$ha all of a sudden?” B. asked while he watched me zip up my high heel hooker boots–the ones with the gun metal grey studs on the sides.

I feigned indignation. But as visions of brushing my teeth with a bottle of jack flitted through my mind, I was secretly thrilled.

Edgy and raunchy sounded good to me. A little dangerous, a little chaotic… why not? (Nevermind that you won’t catch me dead in a halter top because after two back-to-back pregnancies and breastfeeding for three years, my boobs are intimately acquainted with my belly button. But still.) There is part of me that wants to wake up in the morning feeling like P Diddy and fight until she sees the sunlight.

There, I said it. And by saying it you all now know that I actually listen to Ke$ha. (And here I thought the whole boobs and belly thing was TMI.)

Ok. But see, the thing is, now that so much of my life is in chaos, sometimes I take it a little too far: Like last week while out with a few friends, let’s just say that some girls from New Jersey messed with the wrong blonde from LA.

Not since Biggy vs. Tupac has there been such an East Coast/West Coast smackdown. And right before I told those Bitches of Eastwick, “Hey, you want a piece of me? Bring it,” I remembered the following: I’ve got two kids. I can’t pull shit like this.  

Besides, P Diddy is not my friend.  

So, I backed off, and they backed off, and two (more) shots of whiskey later, we were all singing the Star Spangled Banner. In Tel Aviv.

See, the thing is, I got old before my time. I used to be the girl who careened barefoot down the road less traveled stopping only to bury her face in the jasmine growing wild by the side of the road. I used to be the girl who wanted to touch and taste everything, who wanted to live life out loud and unafraid.

“Life is a banquet, and most poor sons of bitches are starving” Auntie Mame trilled. And once upon a time, I lived by that rule. Within reason, of course: I went to class, I wrote an honors thesis, I worked. But I also liked skydiving. And walking barefoot on the beach in the middle of January.

But bit by bit, real life got in the way of my fearlessness.

My mom died, and the world felt a lot less safe.

And then, three years later, and five weeks into my pregnancy with M, I stared down at the toilet as a thin strand of blood sunk to the bottom of the bowl.  A lava lamp from hell. And for the next 35 weeks and two days I lived in fear. Even when each ultrasound revealed the twinkling star of a heartbeat, even when I heard the thump thump whoosh on the Doppler at each appointment, I felt like my baby was on borrowed time.

It didn’t get any easier after she was born: I worried about the big “what if’s” that were five years, 10 years, 15 years down the line. Instead of savoring the good times and breathing through the challenges, I could only think about what could possibly go wrong next. And then one morning, floundering in a fugue of fatigue after (yet another) sleepless night, it dawned on me that this was not how I wanted my life to be. So, I put on mascara, grabbed the black nail polish, and said, “Fuck it. I will not live like this anymore.”

I get one shot at life. One. Shot. And my kids only get one shot. And a life spent measuring out each moment in teaspoons just to get to the next step is not a life I want to live. Sure, while kids -- and grownups -- need boundaries, fear is the ultimate straight jacket.

And even though right now life is a big scary What If–even though there are moments when I want to scream with rage and frustration because I feel so damn powerless while I worry about child support and sick days and being in three places at the same time, I am living out loud.

And more importantly, I am teaching my kids these lessons. Sure, our days are not without our moments vegging in front of the TV. But most of the time, I encourage them to do all the things I was afraid to do for the last several years–to touch and taste and smell and listen to the world around them–to be in the moment with perfect trust in themselves.

Within limits. When the sun shines, we roll down hills and get covered in grass stains and mud. We dig our fingers deep into the earth and look for worms. We stop and smell the jasmine blooming all over the kibbutz. They pet dogs and look for snails. On rainy days, we bake chocolate cake and crank up the stereo and dance like sea-monkeys on speed. Yeah, it’s gangsta rap and 90s grunge and not something more “child appropriate” but hey, my kids are learning rhythm. And when they are exposed to this music later on–and believe you me, they will be–it won’t be something forbidden and taboo. “Oh, Tupac? Yeah, my mom and I used to dance to him when I was 3.”

We eat dinner together at the kitchen table–and if they finish all their veggies, they paint their faces with chocolate frosting. They wobble on their bikes. They fall and scrape their legs. When they cry, they know that I–or someone they love and trust–is close by to scoop them up and give them a hug and a kiss

And before bed every night, they brush their teeth. With toothpaste. Not Jack.

And even though we aren’t a conventional family any more–even though this is never in a million years what I imagined my life would be like–we’re rocking the life we have.

This post originally appeared here on Kveller.com. 

Sometimes, I am Still This Girl

I was shiny in 11th grade.  And not in an REM "shiny happy people" kind of way.  I was shiny like a pepperoni pizza with extra cheese.  The terrain of my skin was pocked and purulent, a BP oil catastrophe waiting to errupt all over my face.  If I could have spent the year with a paper bag over my head, I would have. 

I would wake up three hours before I needed to get to school.  First, I'd apply concealor.  Then foundation.  Then more concealor.  Then more foundation.  Then powder.  Then more concealor.  Then more powder.  I was a seven-layer bean dip.  Only bumpier and with more oil. 

I almost always wore black back then -- and not because I was Goth.  I wore black because I wanted to disappear, to navigate the high school hallways as a shadow, undetected. 

And even though I would furtively powder my face after every class, I wasn't fooling anyone.  

And people were mean.   

 There was one girl in my English class who was especially vile.  She was one of those more edgy than thou types who'd wear mismatched vintage Vans to disguise her lack of real creativity.  And, every day, she would use my forehead like a mirror to check her reflection.   


Ok, I guess that is kind of creative.  

Monday afternoons, Mr. A, the self-proclaimed poetry guru would come to our English class and teach us his craft.    We would sit hunched over our desks, stymied by the blue-lined notebook paper in front of us, twirling or chewing on our number 2 pencils until an Idea flitted by, while our regular English teacher, Mr. D -- a George Cloony doppelganger with a "hidden" tattoo snaking up his left bicep -- would grade papers and look bored.  I loved poetry with Mr. A because metaphor was another disguise I could hide behind -- a way of saying "sometimes I wish I were dead," without actually saying it and having my parents called in for a conference with the school psychologist.

One hot Monday afternoon, when my pores were thick with Covergirl and LA smog, The Girl with the vintage Vans raised her hand in English class.  “I have a poem I want to read.”  We all turned to stare.   No one ever volunteered to read during poetry class.  And she had one of those gravely voices – a cadence to her speech that reeked of confidence – and everyone listened to her.  Mr. A was positively beamish, and even Mr. D put down his red pen when she stood up to speak.

I still cringe when I remember the two and a half minutes that followed.  The Girl with the vintage Vans read a piece called “Reflections on a Face,” and even though it was soaked in hallucogenic imagery, this did about as much to disguise that my skin was the subject as my makeup spackle did to disguise my teenage nightmare.  And everyone knew it.  By the end of her performance, I could feel the stares of the other kids boring into me.  Only Mr. A – so thrilled that someone was taking his poetry class seriously – missed the metaphor. 

And the whole class  applauded.

Like Lord of the Flies. But In Red Stilettos

Even before the separation, I was a free-wielding mama. I used to let M and Little Homie color on the walls of her room with a crayon. I let my kids stand on chairs next to me and slice bread with a butter knife on the kitchen counter. Crumbs on the floor can be swept up. Stains on their clothes means that they had a good time. Bedtime is a fluid concept in our house, and if we’re all having a hard day I’ve been known to break out the Ben and Jerry’s. I (still) don’t censor myself, even though I know it means that one day the preschool director will probably call me because one of my kids said “shove it.” But, I love loyally and loudly. Mess with my kids, and I’ll cut you.

Yes, you.

I am Mother Lion, hear me roar.

(Meow)

But still, now that I see my kids only three days a week instead of seven, I don’t want to fall into the trap of being just the “fun” parent. Ok, fine, I’ll be real: I dowant to be the fun parent–but I know that it’s a precarious balance between being “fun” and maintaining the structure that children crave.

(And I stumble frequently.)

Yesterday, for example, was an epic parental failure: Winter in Israel on a kibbutz without a car is a triple whammy nightmare for any parent. Let alonethis parent. By 2:07 p.m.–an hour overdue for naptime–M straight up told me, “No Mama, I don’t want to see Cinderella. (Again.) I only want to watch Sex and the City.” So, Carrie, Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte joined us for a rainy afternoon visit* while Little Homie found my red hooker heels, and I found the chocolate cake my mother-in-law had baked for B. By 2:30, our house had devolved into Lord of the Flies. Only with red stilettos and chocolate crumbs all over the rug.

By 3:23, the kids were asleep, curled up together on the couch in clear violation of the “we only sleep in our beds” rule that I never fully signed on to.

Kids: 2. Mama: 0.

And then, just a few hours later, I’m gone–on a slow train back to Tel Aviv until Tuesday rolls around and I come back.

And I wonder how this easy-come-easy-go parenting style will affect my kids, especially as it smacks right up against their father’s more, um, orderly methods. Will the contradiction be too much for M and Little Homie to bear? Am I pillaging the boundaries and borders my kids need to feel safe?

We know that kids will rebel against their parents in one way or another. After all, we were all teenagers at one point (and I still have the pierced nose to prove it. Hi Dad.)  While most of us eventually circle back to some basic level of functionality, some of us don’t. And this begs the question: If M or Little Homie join a cult–or worse–become investment bankers, will it be my fault?

*I will say (protesting too much, methinks) that the episode in question was all city and no sex.  

Loving Your Kids and Loving Motherhood Are Not The Same Thing...

Right after my daughter was born, someone told me that what’s best for the mama is what’s best for the baby.

(But at the time I was too wrapped up in the dangerous idea that dark under-eye circles,  scraggly hair, and spit and shit stained sweats made me a Good Mother. Sleep deprivation meant I was tending to my child’s every need. The two tell-tale wet spots on my shirt meant I was too busy breastfeeding to care about personal hygiene. Matted hair? Awesome. Pit stains? Bring it on. Oh, and do me a favor, bring over a large pot from the kitchen because I’m too busy shushing and swaying my colicky child to use the bathroom. Thanks.)

“Go out with a friend for coffee!” my mother-in-law said.

“When can we see you?” my friends asked. “We miss you!”

I missed me, too.

But I thought that women who waltzed off for a night out with a friend or–God forbid–their husbands, were selfish bitches.

Really.

And in between obsessing about germs and aspiration pneumonia, in between counting M’s poops with religious fervor, in between pouring boiling water on one of the organic wooden toys made by magical elves in Scandanavia, I realized this: Would I die for my child?  You bet. Would I kill for her? Touch her before washing your hands with antibacterial soap, and you’d find out.

But, I hated being a mother.

When I found out I was pregnant again when my daughter was 8-months-old (um, you guys? Breastfeeding is not birth control, just saying) I started writing as a means of survival. I couldn’t live the way I had been living any longer and bring another baby into the world, so I took a (very) deep breath and started writing. And wearing a push-up bra.

Maybe it was also a hormonal thing. Maybe growing a teeny tiny penis in my uterus gave me the balls to take myself less seriously. Or more seriously.

Regardless, I started to enjoy my kid. And the idea of having another kid.

But it still wasn’t enough.

And when we moved to Israel–when I left the community I loved in Los Angeles for a place that confused me, while we dealt with a barrage of illnesses strange and new, while the idea of sleep seeped down the drain and I tumbled headfirst after it into a world of manic exhaustion, I lost it.

Take a break, take a break, take a break my friends back home told me on Facebook and g-chat. But I couldn’t when it felt like there was no where to go.

This isn’t why my marriage imploded. This isn’t why I’m living 30 minutes away from my children in an apartment in Tel Aviv. But my fragile sense of myself–of what I liked and what made me happy–certainly contributed to the collapse of the family I worked so hard to protect.

So please, mamas who think they can “do it all,” take me as a cautionary tale. Take me as an example of what NOT to do.  And go take a fucking break.

This post originally appeared here on Kveller.com.

Kveller.com offers a Jewish twist on parenting, everything a Jewish family could need for raising Jewish children--including crafts, recipes, activities, Hebrew and Jewish names for babies...and advice from Mayim Bialik.