Mitzvah Notes For Mommy

By Ariel Chesler for Kveller

My daughter’s preschool teacher has created a daily task in which we, the parents, write “mitzvah notes” for our children each day. These notes are meant to describe the ways in which our children are helpful, cooperative, or did good deeds. The notes are read in class with the children, who, I am told, are excited to hear and discuss the good things they have done.

I must admit that when I first learned about this task, I considered it a burden. How, I wondered, could we be expected to come up with a good deed that our 3-year-old did each day? Have you ever met a 3-year-old? I knew it would be far easier to rattle off “not so mitzvah notes,” like so:

She refused to brush her teeth.

She refused to get out of the bath.

She refused to get dressed.

She hit Mommy.

She pushed her sister.

She screamed in my face when I tried to comfort her because I was not Mommy.
She did not eat dinner.

She made leaving the house impossible.

She did not clean up her toys.

She threw herself on the floor because I gave her the pink cup instead of the purple cup.

She made me want to cry.

But then, as my wife and I committed ourselves to the daily task of writing these notes, we began to find the good in our 3-year-old, even though this used to feel like an impossible mission.
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How Moses Inspires Me to Ask For Help

By Alicia Jo Rabins for Raising Kvell

This post is part of our Torah commentary series through the perspective of a new mom. This is from Parashat Yitro.

Asking for help does not come naturally to me. I’ve always been independent to the point of stubbornness. And that worked for me…until I became a mom. Now, ohmygosh, I need help constantly. And little by little, I’m learning how to ask for it.

I know you’re dying to know how this connects to this week’s Torah portion, and I promise it will, but first a personal litany of top five motherly vulnerabilities:

1. Diapering technique. It all started when a hospital nurse showed me how to diaper my brand new baby. I watched her expertly fasten the tiny disposable diaper, thinking, how the hell did I get through 35 years without learning this? It seemed like the most basic skill in the world, but also entirely mysterious. Even after my hospital lesson, it took me two weeks to remember which side went in the back.

2. Post-partum help. For two weeks after Sylvie’s birth, my mom stayed in our tiny apartment to help us out, sleeping on our couch and sharing our one bathroom. (Yes, she is amazing.) For the first week, I couldn’t bend over because of my c-section incision, so my mom had to help me put on my underwear. That was humbling enough. By the end of week two, I was slowly healing, but when it was time for my mom to leave, I surprised myself by losing it. I still needed her help. I probably hadn’t cried and begged her not to leave since I was 4 years old. This was not exactly how I’d expected to start off my new life as a mother.

3. Professional help. A month later, we moved across the country with our little baby. Despite the warm welcome of my husband’s friends, I missed my old life terribly. That, plus the financial pressure of moving and looking for work, plus whatever hormonal stuff was going on, was simply too much for me to handle without outside help. It took me six months of googling “postpartum depression” to pick up the phone and call the local hotline and find help. I wish I’d done it earlier.

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Finally a Disney Movie That’s Not About Boy-Girl Love

By Tova Ross for Kveller

Fine, I admit it: trekking to the movie theater after a day of heavy snow against my husband’s generally sound advice was not my best plan. But I had promised our 4-year old that I would take him to the movie theater for the first time that Saturday night, to see Disney’s Frozen, and I loved the symmetry between the white-covered world outside and the premise of the movie featuring a snow queen (which is about as much as I knew about the plot).

Clad in boots, gloves, and puffy coats, we drove ploddingly to the mall, where I skidded terrifyingly a couple of times and vowed to always take my husband’s advice from then on. But we made it safely and, tickets and popcorn in hand, settled in to enjoy the show.

It was magical. And not just because I loved seeing my adorably inquisitive son’s eyes grow wide with wonder as he took in a new experience with “the biggest TV screen ever,” but because the story itself was a revelation.

Somewhere between re-watching generic princes fall instantly in love with the passive Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella and seeing Ariel giving up her family, mermaid body, and voice for a man she had only glimpsed from afar, I realized–amid the magic of talking forest friends and deliciously evil villains–that Disney films of “olde” have some serious flaws. Chief among them is the idea that love happens at first sight (lust, maybe, but real, lasting love?) and the repetitive obsession with storybook romance as the ubiquitously happy ending. This was driven home to me after watching Mulan, which concludes in the protagonist and her boyfriend sitting down to dinner. My son refused to go to bed. “It can’t be over,” he protested. “Nobody got married yet.”

But Frozen’s central love story is not one between a man and a woman. It’s between two sisters: the elder one, a princess named Elsa enabled with the initially-uncontrollable power to create snow and ice with the flick of a wrist and the younger one, Anna, who adores Elsa and cannot understand how they went from being childhood best friends to strangers in their adolescence and young adulthood. When Anna eventually discovers her sister’s secret power, along with the entire kingdom, Elsa banishes herself and inspires Anna to undertake a mission to retrieve her sister and renew their close bond.

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Tu Bishvat Bird Feeder

What's good for the bird is good for the tree

By Joanna Brichetto for Kveller

Birds need trees for food and shelter, but trees actually need birds, too. Biological sciences have proven what my gut tells me: when my kid hangs a pinecone feeder in the Sugar Maple, the Sugar Maple likes it. And if the Sugar Maple likes it, well, then it's a perfect activity for Tu Bishvat, the birthday of the trees.

If a seed-laden nut-butter pinecone attracts more birds to a tree, chances are good some of those birds will hang around and chow down on bugs. We can keep the birds around with regularly maintained feeding stations that make our yards attractive to nest-building newlyweds in the spring, again augmenting the presence of birds, decimating the bugs, and thus benefiting our favorite trees.

The Jewish Reason

But there are other reasons we feed the birds at Tu Bishvat--super Jewy, traditional reasons. The Shabbat right before Tu Bishvat is Shabbat Shira, or Shabbat of the Song. A custom for Shabbat Shira is to feed the birds because, well, birds sing.
Plus, making these bird feeders any time of the year bags the kid-friendly mitzvah of tzaar baalei hayim, the commandment to take care of living creatures.

Re-Gifting is Good

Really, we're re-gifting. The tree already gave us the pinecone. We take that gift from the tree, add to it a creamy spread made from tree fruit (almond butter, cashew butter, hazelnut butter), roll it in birdseed (likewise gleaned from the bounty of nature), and voila: a creatively repurposed gift aimed right back at the giver.

We have so much more to be grateful for to trees than just cones and fruit, of course. They also give us medicine, shade, wood, wildlife habitat, food, beauty, oxygen, carbon sequestration, rainfall interception, and a bazillion products we use every day.

If you are new to the classic pinecone feeder, here's a quick How-To.

My Son’s Concussion, My Mommy Fail

by Randi Olin for Raising Kvell

I didn’t learn about my son’s concussion until a day after it had happened, when I saw the middle school phone number on my caller ID. “Daniel’s here,” Nurse Nancy said. “He apparently hit his head yesterday. He’s not feeling well.”

“My head hurts,” Daniel said in a soft whisper. “And this morning it was blurry when I read for too long.” My “mama bear” instincts went into overdrive even after he followed up with, “but I got some Tylenol and it’s starting to feel better.”

“When did you hit your head?” I asked. “Do you want to come home?” I couldn’t help but pepper him with questions, probably enough to reverse any effect the pain medication had already had. He wanted to stay in school, he said, go back to class and go on with his day. I stared out the front window, watching the leaves fall from the massive elm trees, making their way down to the ground in a dance of rust and oranges twirls.

How could I have missed this? I thought I had mastered being “in tune” with my 12- and 15-year-old children’s needs, keeping sufficient distance when necessary, yet always maintaining a watchful and empathetic eye. Especially since my maternal mishap from seven years before, when Daniel was 5. When he tripped over his light-up, multi-siren shiny red fire truck and broke his fall with his right hand. He cried. We iced it. And then we put him to bed, assuring him it would be all better in the morning. He woke up hours later, screaming in pain. A call into our pediatrician led to a late night run to the emergency room. Four x-rays and several consults later, Daniel left with a splint on his arm, and a cherry lollipop in his mouth. The next day, when he chose a fluorescent hue of blue for the color of his cast, the nagging feeling of maternal failure lingered in my mind.

As soon as Daniel came home from school I was waiting for him, with a container of pineapple chunks and homemade banana bread. “You O.K.?” I asked, putting my hand on his shoulder. He nodded. He told me it had happened during the Yom Kippur services the day prior, when he and his two friends left their seats for an extended trip to the bathroom. I remember it now. The three boys had been sitting a couple of rows behind my husband, Doug, my daughter, Emily, and me. When Daniel walked down the aisle, he glanced over and gestured his head towards the door, mouthing “bathroom.” But, at the time, how could I have anticipated that what he really meant was a walk to one of his friend’s cars to grab a football? That after having a catch, one of the boys put the football back into his car and inadvertently slammed the trunk on Daniel’s head? My son cried as he walked back to service, walking a couple of paces in front of the other boys so as to hide his tears.

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How I Relaxed & Learned to Love a Snow Day

By Jordana Horn for Raising Kvell

The true mark of adulthood is not age: it’s whether you react to a snow day with despair or delight.

“Thank you, God!” my 4th grader yelled, as he hopped from foot to foot in a spontaneous variant on the hora with his 3rd grade brother (I had thought the school superintendent was responsible for making the decision on calling off school on account of inclement weather, but never mind). My 2-year-old, upon learning she would not be going to school, promptly burst into tears.

I totally know how the 2-year-old felt. With less than two weeks until the interminable winter break–I mean, that joyous time with no school, when babysitters all have better things to do than hang out with your kids–all work for the work-from-home parent needs to be taken care of today, if not yesterday. Having three kids at school was essential in order for me to accomplish anything, whether that “anything” was work, newborn baby gift thank you notes, or simply sitting down.

I’m also the kind of parent who sees snow as something best viewed through a window or in an Ansel Adams photo. I see snow and I start thinking of snow scrapers, rock salt ruining my shoes, and moving to California.

Plus of course, there are the attendant stresses of the snow day for the parent, like the games of Where The F*ck Did I Put Their Gloves?, Let’s See Whose Snowpants Still Fit!, Can The Toddler Hang Onto My Legs For 24 Hours? and Sibling Rivalry: The Over-Amplified Musical.

But then, I started getting gifts: unexpected gifts that fell from the sky like the snow, making everything look different and even kind of beautiful.

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Christmas is Why We Send Our Son to Jewish Day School

By Lauren Apfel for Raising Kvell

I am not a practicing Jew, but I don’t celebrate Christmas either. My husband is a lapsed Christian and a loather of all things Yule. Late December has always been an uncomfortable time in our house. Until, that is, we decided four years ago to send our kids to a Jewish school.

It was a surprisingly easy decision, made for a host of sound reasons, exactly the ones you would expect to figure into a choice about the expanse of your children’s education. But it also solved the problem of Christmas for us and this has turned out to be one of its most wonderful virtues.

I spent the holiday season as a girl in small Jewish niche towns–Great Neck and Boca Raton–where the passing of Christmas was marked in its own ritualistic way, with Chinese food and a trip to the movies. So many happy memories. When I moved to the United Kingdom 14 years ago, however, Christmas became a dark and almost unbearable period, something to escape, not to indulge in. It triggered in me a strong desire to flee homeward and back to a place where there is still a life to be lived on the 25th of December that doesn’t involve a decorated pine tree.

In the UK, it is near impossible to opt out of Christmas in a way that is comprehensible to the neighbors. We are a country with an established religion and this makes us both culturally and constitutionally different from the United States. In America, diversity of religion is built into the national edifice, which has the effect of increasing awareness, even if imperfectly, that not everybody celebrates Christmas. Hanukkiyahs appear in shopping malls amidst the wreathes of holly; greeting cards can be purchased with vague well-wishes that don’t include the C-word. Not so on this side of the Atlantic.

Here, people rarely–and I mean rarely–acknowledge an alternative to welcoming Santa through the chimney with open arms, even those who are self-proclaimed atheists. From the beginning of November, Christmas rears its green and red head, boldly, ubiquitously, and without the faintest pretension that Britain is a multicultural society. The idea is that Christmas is a secular holiday, a festival simply for family and feasting and fun. It is all of those things, true enough, but it is also a marker of the birth of Christ and for some of us who live in these borders there is no way around this point of origin.

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