Cleansing during insomnia

Okay so why is it I am my most insane in the middle of the night?  I am like one of those creepy weirdos who stay up at night with secret habits...I am my MOST vulnerable at night.  I notice my stretch marks, my thighs, my wrinkles, my bad habits, my obscene addition to caffeine and I start researching all kinds of things - on the menu today was a 21 day cleanse...yes, cleanse.  Two shakes a day, a million supplements and a brown rice powder soup...um, rice powder...not even rice itself. For the girl who bitched the ENTIRE day of Yom Kippur because I could not have coffee, I think THIS is a good idea?  Well yes, in theory.  Don't we all want to feel younger, stronger and thinner?  Don't we all want amazing skin (I mean c'mon, Gyneth Paltrow endorses it...how bad could it be?), don't we want unlimited energy, nine hours of sleep and a clean colon?  And for only $500 you too can have this...along with 21 days of hunger, headaches, fatigue and bad skin while you "detox".  Only I can think that's an interesting proposition.  I tried for ONE day to forgo cream for non fat milk in my coffee and made a face to anyone who watched me and yet 21 days of rice powder soup and colonics I find attractive?  I was even encouraged to take the healthy eating and clean lifestyle quiz to see if I have any unhealthy eating habits or addictions...for this I need a quiz?

So I think maybe I can try a pre cleanse cleanse...veggies, fruit, weaning off coffee...but no, not this girl - boring.  I like it all or nothing baby.  And then I consider my schedule.  Can I start AFTER Halloween?  Seriously...Joseph and I have had a yearly ritual since having kids.  We trick or treat, we put everyone to bed, we rifle through buckets.  I call it Mommy Tax.  They pay it and I don't care if they like it.  I would sell everyone of them for a frozen snickers.   So then I consider post Halloween - I could be "clean" in time for the Thanksgiving carb parade.  Hmmm...So how serious can I be?  Placing my cleansing diet around holidays whose sole purpose is gorging...??

I think for a busy mom of four it makes sense although admittedly I am attempting it figure out how I can cleanse and still have coffee.  I can't find that part of the diet yet but I'm looking.

I might even blog about it.  After a few days on a cleanse I should be a sobbing, shaking, miserable mess in need of love, sugar and caffeine.  Perfect.

If I Were a Rich Man...

Settling into the Jewish holidays for me means shopping, eating, entertaining and lots of whining from the kids about how many hours we are in synagogue and how much we can't eat on Yom Kippur.  I get it.  It's not easy being Jewish...let's face it, we do a lot of stuff - especially over the high holidays.  I can do most of the fasting without complaining but I would give $500 to the first person who can get me a diet coke.  Caffeine is the great nemesis.  So as I am shuffling about from one sermon to the next in very uncomfortable shoes and a dress I would rather turn into a set of cotton pajamas, I realize I can't place my head where it should be.  Am I grateful? Sure...I just faced a lot from a personal place...am I pissed?  Well hell yes...I don't deserve Cancer.  Am I overwhelmed?  Uh...yeah...see above but overall, I am supposed to be feeling something and I can't get there.  I'm trying - I tried all week but it's just not that magical place I see in my dreams.  In service today - yes, I am on the computer during Yom Kippur...I'll cover this next year...we move in like cattle, book in hand, caffeine headache, blisters from my new shoes we stop to wait for the Rabbi to finish so we can enter the sanctuary.  I see Maddie reach for a tallit and pause...closing her eyes, taking a deep breath, whispering the prayer as she places it lovingly over her shoulders and prepares to enter.  Then it hits me.  It's why I am here.  It's why I have always been here.  Tradition.  It's the gift we give to our children...the gift of a legacy, an identity, a place, a belonging...it's home.  It's nearly 6000 years of tradition - watered down a bit, not so factory new but as she placed the prayer shawl over her shoulders, she became one with millions of people, at that moment, who do the very same thing.  My relationship with Gd is fussy - we fight, we don't talk and it will be what it is but what the holidays mean to me is tradition.  It's the challah on Shabbat - it's never changing.  It's the family and the food and prayers and the candles...it's blessing my children over candle light on Friday night, it's bringing them to the Torah for the first time at their b'nai mitzvah, it's handing them over to their betrothed under the huppa, it's eating bagels on Sunday morning, it's making caramel apples over Rosh Hashana...it's what they expect, it's who they are, it's how we do it and it's our gift to them...tradition.  It's what Tevye sang about in Fiddler on the Roof and it's what I feel today.

I went to synagogue this morning hungry and irritated about the parking but left with the gift of why we are here and why we have always been here.  It's for our children...L'dor v'ador.  From generation to generation.

Watching my girls read the prayers, smile, yawn and occasionally giggle out of boredom I am good.  I am good because they are home and when they are home, I am at peace.

43

43.  Fourty Three.  It's really something.  I can review my life in so many ways...I can place value on it based on money, status, kids but in the end, I really am just happy.  I've blogged before about arrival and it really is a place I enjoy.  Arrival means I no longer care about things that don't matter.  Vanity?  You mean for a girl with only one breast and no hair for most of last year?  You mean hips and stretch marks  - permanent trophies of childbirth?  A bit of failing vision?  Slightly deaf?  A creak here and there when I get up too fast?  But with all of that, I see clearer than I ever have, hear joy and block out toxic sound and getting up fast means I am chasing someone...likely my little boy, and I am fine with the creaks.

So while my body may not be that of a 20 year old, my mind and soul are that of a sage.  The girlfriends I have in my life are truer and more dear to me than I have ever had.  My home, when full of people is full of warmth and when I crawl into bed at night and insomnia gets me, I crawl into bed with my children because I know watching them sleep will be something I won't be able to do much longer...

Olivia said to me I am the best mommy in all the trees and Jack said I was his best girl...Maddie reminds me every day while I should be proud and Ava bases all of her decisions from a moral angle...at 23 my life was just starting and now, 20 years later, it's cooking at full heat.  While my body isn't factory new any longer, I wouldn't have it any other way.  Well to be honest, I would have it exactly the way it is but with folded laundry.

Happy birthday to me.

it's finally here...

Well it's finally here.  Five years ago when we were sitting on the floor with Olivia, barely a few months old, screaming with colic and wondering how it will EVER feel when we are away from her for a few hours and here it is.  Kindergarten.  We brought her in today for open house; new dress, new smile, new friends...to meet her teacher.  Saw her name on the wall, in a purple circle, sealing the deal.  It means from here forward, she belongs to someone else for the day.  Mr. Depalma.  I hope he's kind.  I hope he's loving.  I hope he adores her with the same passion we do.  I hope he sees the fire in her eyes and the light in her mind as he opens her world.  I hope when she comes home to us, she is full of ideas and dreams and opinions about her day.  I hope she finds within herself everything she can be.  Along with good manners and picking up her toys, I hope she sees her full potential...I hope she looks in the mirror and sees the wide eyed, freckle faced little girl I see with her hand on her brother's shoulder but her mind on dinner.  I hope she always likes rainbow sprinkles and Hello Kitty and her big sisters.  I hope her tinkerbell lunchbox makes her smile and her new shoes remind her of all the laughing we did at Stride Rite.  I hope she walks along side me to school with a sense of pride about herself and a dance to her step.  I hope she never stops creating her own music and her own way of looking at the world and I hope, more than ever, she never stops believing.  What we view often as sassy and assertive is our beloved Livvy - who never stops doing anything her way.

And as I put her to bed tonight, counting down the moments toward Kindergarten, I hope she knows how much we adore her...not just love her but like her.  Truly like her.  And as much as we adore her, like her and know her, it is with all the love in our hearts that we bid the best of luck to Mr. Depalma...because he's going to need it.  :)

Secrets to a happy marriage? Vision...

A couple of ladies were discussing happy marriages in the elevator (we women can talk anywhere) and I overheard one say it's about communication.  The other objected and said its "totally about commitment".  My old rabbi used to say it's about attraction.  Can't communicate or commit to someone you aren't attracted to.  Well I can't speak for others and with one divorce under my belt can hardly take to the lecture circuit but I can say what has worked for me and Joseph and it's vision.  It's the curious way I look the other way when he's ten minutes late...everytime.  I have become an expert on the diverted glance away from the clock.  Okay so a few times I might tap my foot or sigh heavily but really, I am just releasing.  Kinda like an over inflated tire. 

When I wear his socks (okay I do but I can't help it...I just like them) and he brings it up, every freakin' time, almost as if he's irritated but not entirely...vision.  I remember when I was really sick, he put those very socks on my feet while I was sleeping.  I never told him I knew he did that but I recall it often.  He calls me a blanket hog and shares stories of him riding the edge of the mattress at night  as I take to the center of our king size bed as though I'm commandeering the SS Smith and yet, I know when the nights are cold, I can feel him covering me up.  I see that through the jokes...Vision.

The night I had my mastectomy surgery I woke to find him curled up in a chair, in the PAC U post surgical unit, asleep, after telling the nurse he wasn't leaving me regardless of hospital rules about post op.  I see that moment in my mind when he's scooting me over at night complaining about having no room.

So for me...it's vision.  It's being able to see those moments admist all the chaos that is our life.  It's never being crazy at the same time.  It's learning that hindsight isn't always 20/20 and wearing corrective marital lenses are as important as wedding bands...commitment is lovely, communcation is necessary and attraction is critical but in the end, if I can walk around in his socks and he can be ten minutes late and we may find that irritating beyond belief (and I do), I can close my eyes and see the guy who never lets me get cold and realize I am more at home than I have ever been and then I look the other way.


 

The art of death and dying...

At a shiva this week it was very hard to not let a friend's grief become a springboard for me to look at my own.  I mean, c'mon...how self absorbed could I be?  My friend Sue, while mourning the loss of her mom and offering such beautiful memories to share, had me wondering the very thing we likely all wonder...can they hear us?  I'd like to think they can.  I'd like to think the times I stop to recall those who are no longer here, "know" I am pausing in their honor...or do they just really prefer I move on down the road, letting them be?  It's nice to be thought of but how much is too much? 

I lost three babies...one at six weeks and two at 22 and 23 weeks.  Being a card carrying member of the miscarriage club isn't something I share often but it is a badge of courage for having survived it.  Once you have delivered a baby you aren't bringing home, the fabric of who you are permanently changes.  That baby takes a part of you with her and maybe at that moment, both of you agree to never speak of this again.  It took me a very long time to embrace those losses...to wonder...to demand an explanation...to go toe to toe with Gd and frankly, I never could.  I think he knows I'm still not speaking to him but on some level, I'm sure I will make my peace with it.  I may never.  I deserve to know why I was forced to give birth to two babies who were taken from me.  I just deserve to know.  But at the shiva, I couldn't help but wonder...

I lost a boy and a girl - the first baby was too early to tell.  I later delivered a boy and a girl.  Buddhist ideology would say they came back to me...I like that, it brings me some relief.  It doesn't replace the pain - hardly - it just makes a nice, neat bow with which to wrap up the two most traumatizing events in our lives.  If they aren't here with us and are somehow up, somewhere...maybe they will hear me when I say, I don't think of you because the pain is so immense I can't do it without losing my footing.  Maybe that's selfish.  Isn't that kind of what a shiva is?  For the one left behind?  Using my friend's grief as a way to reach out to my own losses felt wrong but as I go back over it in my mind, perhaps it gives me a way to reach my friend on a level playing field while also offering a backdoor window with which to peer in longingly at the souls who passed through my body and my life but left entirely too soon.

We aren't supposed to bury our children.  It's wrong.  Widows/ers are people who have lost their spouses, orphans are children who lost their parents...there are no words for parents who have lost their babies.  It's so unnatural, words have yet to define it. 

Perhaps I am touching upon the healing...perhaps I am still really angry...perhaps both.  In grief, if you do it right, comes awareness.  And through that awareness you embrace a newer model of you.