the pieces of my life

We had a very busy couple of weeks. The weekend before the last was of course Hanukkah, filled with all the joy that is Hanukkah as well as all the smelly-house latke-old-oil fun, too-many-pieces-of-Hanukkah-gelt and it’s-time-for-the-kids-to-go-to-bed fun, spending-way-too-much-on-gifts-fun, and oy-what-a-mess fun. In the course of one weekend, I hosted a lunch for my in-laws for Adam’s birthday, attended two Hanukkah parties, and threw a Hanukkah open house. The next night was Adam’s work event. Two nights later was the aforementioned night of kindergarten information, a day which started with a 5:30 a.m. boot camp class and ended with me running from the kindergarten information night to my b’nai mitzvah class, meaning I fell into bed about eleven. Of course there are holiday cards to mail and school events to help organize (remind me again why I signed on as room parent?), and general mishegas to deal with. Adam has been working a bunch, and he’s been just as exhausted as I am.

Enter last Thursday. I’m beat. Adam’s beat. We’re ready for a bit of relaxation. But Thursday was predicted a storm–a biggie–and I was determined to be ready. This was already our second snow storm of the season–the kids have already had one snow day already–so Pie and I ran a zillion errands in the morning (including one where I asked Adam, “What’s that L.L. Bean bag sitting in your car?” and he replied, “Oh, that? Remember about a year ago I bought that sweater I wasn’t sure I liked? It’s been sitting there so I can return it. Here, wait, take a look at it. Do you think I’d ever wear it?” That sweater was returned). We got gas for the car. We rented DVDs for grown-ups and kids. We bought food for both nourishment and for festivity. We picked up things that we were low on at the drug store. “Bring it on!” I said. “We are prepared!”

I got Doodles home after preschool and sure enough, shortly after, the snow began to fall. And fall. And fall. Adam left his office at 1:42 p.m. for the 20-minute commute home… and he arrived at 4:50 p.m. Late in the day, I plopped the kids in front of a video, donned my snow gear, and began to shovel. I shoveled a nice path for Adam to get his car into, cleared the front walk. I’m feeling macho, as I toss that snow away. I shovel until Adam comes home at which point, Adam joins me for a bit of shoveling. All told, I shoveled for about an hour and a half, and by the time I fed the kids and put them to bed, the walks needed shoveling again.

Adam and I had a generally relaxing night. Finished watching The Sopranos. Had a nice dinner. I worked on holiday cards while Adam fell asleep in the chair. We stumbled into bed, both of us pretty exhausted.

In the middle of the night, Doodles, as he is wont to do, stumbled his way into our bed. The next morning, I could feel him stirring, and I looked up and saw it was 6:30. I looked out the window and could see lots and lots of white. Doodles hopped out of bed. Adam stirred for a moment, said, “I’ll be up in a sec,” and then passed out. Doodles and I got dressed as quickly and quietly as we could and we headed out into the snow. Shovels in hand, we began to dig. And dig. And dig. Doodles quickly bored of the task (remember the song from Free to Be You and Me, “Helping” by Tom Smothers? “Some kind of help is the kind of help, that helping’s all about! And some kind of help is the kind of help, we all can do without. Want to guess what Doodles’s shoveling was like? “No, Doodles, please! Don’t put snow on the area I just took snow away from!”), so he played in the snow and then went inside.

I cleared so much damn snow. At one point, I stuck my head inside and asked Doodles to read me the numbers off the clock. He said, “Um, seven. Four. Three.” The night before, on his mega-commute home, Adam’s Check Engine light went on. So I told Doodles, “Go wake Daddy and tell him if he needs to bring his car in, he should get up now.”

Doodles wakes Adam up and everyone quickly gets ready for school and work. Adam gets out the door by about 8:20. But he’s in a mood! He’s harrumphing and snipping. Nothing’s going his way. Finally, I say to him, “Why the hell are you so grumpy?”

And what do you think my Dartmouth- and Harvard-educated brilliant husband answered? What did he dare to say to me? He replied, “I got too much sleep last night.”

I don’t think there’s a jury in this country that would convict me for murdering him.

As some of you may know–I’m pretty sure I’ve blogged about it before–my parents traumatized me at a young age with laundry. Suffice it to say, I don’t do laundry. I just don’t. In New York, I dropped it off to be done at the Laundromat. In Seattle, I simply bought new underwear. In Boston, I leave Adam to do it. Oh sure, he complains every now and then, and I tell him, if he actually left it long enough I would get around to doing it. But he doesn’t seem to want to wait and see just how long “enough” is.

So my kids are fully aware that laundry is a “daddy job.” Mommies don’t do laundry. It’s just how life works. Pie, for Hanukkah, got the book Knufflebunny. It was a favorite at her day care and we’d checked it out many times from the library, so she was very excited to own a copy. Doodles got Knufflebunny Too. Our house is full of “Aggle Flaggle Klabbles” and “Snurps” these days (and often at very random times0. But I pointed something out in the book tonight as I was reading it to the kids:

Me: Hey, who does laundry in this book?
Doodles: The daddy.
Me: Who does laundry in our house?
Doodles: Daddy.
Me: How come?
Doodles: Because laundry is a daddy job.
Me: That’s right. So you better learn how to do laundry so when you grow up, you can do laundry for your family when you’re a daddy.
Pie: I want to do laundry!
Me: I’m sorry, sweetie. Mommies don’t do laundry.
Pie: But I want to do laundry, too!
Me: Oh, okay. You can do laundry, too.
Doodles: No!
Me: You don’t want to do laundry?
Doodles: I don’t want to be a daddy! But I do want to do laundry!

Even if Doodles doesn’t become a daddy, some day, some lucky person in Doodles’s life owes me a great big thanks.

As a family, we’re very active in our local synagogue. The kids go to a Jewish preschool, I co-chair a regular kids’ activity there, I’m studying myself for my b’nai mitzvah (better known to you goyim as my bat mitzvah–most kids have their bat or bar mitzvah when they’re thirteen, but I never had one, so I’ll be doing it when I’m forty. Of course, for all you Jews out there who want to be technical, yes, I was a bat mitzvah whether or not I read from the Torah at thirteen, but you know what I’m talking about).

But one of the things I’ve made no secret of is that I struggle with the concept of God. I partake and enjoy Judaism from an historical, intellectual, and cultural basis, but have a difficult time with the actual religious aspects. Doodles and Pie get a healthy dose of God at school, and I try to temper it with my own beliefs. At their school, they never say, “God did this.” They say, “The Torah says that God did this.” It’s a subtle distinction but one I’m comfortable with, as it gives me a basis for discussion with Doodles (and eventually Pie). But yet, we still have these conversations like this:

Doodles: Why did God create sharks?
Me: Well, I know the Torah says God created sharks, but that’s not what I believe. I believe in evolution. Remember we talked about evolution? I don’t think God actually made sharks.
Doodles: Yes, he did. But why?

Then I had a conversation with another preschool mom the other day, during which she said to me, “So J. [her son] came home and said, ‘God is a man.’ My husband and I explained to him that God isn’t really a man or a woman, but more of a spirit, in everything, blah blah, but J. said, ‘No. God is a man. I know because Doodles told me he was.'”

So my budding theologist had me cornered in the car this week (all conversations seem to happen in the car where I have to tell him to yell so I can hear him clearly–damn big minivan!), and he hit me with this conversation:

Doodles: Is God made up?
Me: Well, different people believe different things. Some people think God is made up. And some people don’t. Rabbi L. and S. [the preschool director] believe God is real. Peter [my father] doesn’t. Peter thinks God is made up.
Doodles: So is he made up?
Me: Let me ask you, do you feel God in your heart?
Doodles: Yes.
Me: Then he’s not made up. He’s in your heart so he’s real.
Doodles: Does Pie feel God in her heart?
Me: I don’t know. Pie is a little young to express that kind of stuff. When she gets older, we can ask her. I know Daddy feels God in his heart.
Doodles: How do you know that?
Me: Daddy and I have talked about it before.
Doodles: Do you feel God in your heart?
Me: I feel something. Perhaps it’s God. [hedging] I can sometimes feel God in my heart.
Doodles: So Rabbi L. and S. feel God in their hearts?
Me: Yes.
Doodles: But Peter doesn’t feel God in his heart?
Me: Correct.
Doodles: So does Peter feel God in his neck?

For the record, Peter doesn’t feel him in his neck, his armpits, or the back of his knees. I didn’t ask what is in his pinky toe. Some things I just don’t need to know.

My son wants, more than anything else these days, to help me clean. “Mommy, can I clean? Can we clean something?” It’s a sweet thought. Only I have no idea where it comes from because I have never, ever cleaned anything.

Seriously.

We had a bunch of people from the synagogue over for brunch on Sunday. I don’t know them all very well so I thought it was time to maybe attempt a little cleaning. So I pulled out the vacuum cleaner.

Pie looked at it and asked, “What’s that?”

I explained, “It’s a vacuum cleaner. You can use it to clean the floor.”

Doodles asked, “Can I help?” Doodles comes up and holds onto the handle. I put one hand over his.

Then I turned it on. Wails from the little one. “No like! No like!” Pie doesn’t know what to do. She wants to hold my hand, but maintain as much distance between herself and the vacuum cleaner as she can.

So I’m trying to vacuum–something I don’t know really how to do well anyway–with one child in each hand.

I finish. I take a look. There are still crumbs everywhere. So, if I may quote my daughter, “All done vacuuming! All done!” Housecleaning. Isn’t that why God created men? Because God knows, I’m not going anywhere near it again.