Tonight on simchas torah, with two silver crowns upon ya,
You'll be the grandest torah in the torah parade.
I'll have my arms around you, and when their eyes have found you,
I'll be the proudest fellow in the torah parade.
In our temple, on the avenue, all the congregants will follow us,
And you and I will dance all night in the hora that surrounds us.
Oh, I could write a ballad, here in my silken tallis,
all about the scroll I'm carrying in the torah parade.
new lyrics by Nancy Illman c2011
written to the tune of Easter Parade by Irving Berlin
Friday, January 28, 2011
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Eldridge and Plum streets - a tale of two temples
In 1896, a community of Jews, recent immigrants to New York City from Eastern Europe, purchased three lots on Eldgridge Street on the lower East Side. They wanted to have their own congregation, separate from those of the German and Sephardic Jews who had arrived earlier. Eighteen months later, after a total expenditure of $19,000, they had built their own synagogue, using two local brothers, Christian gentlemen, as the architects.
The synagogue was a glorious space in which to spend time. Indeed, for most of its members, who generally lived in the tenement buildings of the surrounding neighborhood, Manhattan's Lower East Side, it was the most beautiful place they had access to on a regular basis, and better yet, it was all theirs. The upper balcony, separate and shielded as it was from the men below, must have been a wonderful haven for local wives and mothers to sit in splendor and comfort, relieved for a while from the stuffy, cramped environments of their apartments, happy for the chance to visit, rest and connect with other women in the community. Their early lives in New York were very hard. So difficult was it to makes ends meet that these new American Jews found it impossible to keep the Sabbath, in terms of refraining from work from sundown Friday until after sundown on Saturday, so the Shabbat service had to be held very early in the morning on Saturday before everyone headed out to work for the rest of the day.
Eventually, as members of the congregation established themselves, flourished and became successful, they moved out of the crowded tenement neighborhood know as Jew Town and into other areas, including the outer boroughs of the city, making it impossible to continue worshipping together. By 1950, the small group of more loyal or less successful congregants who were left could not afford to heat the entire building, so they locked up the main sanctuary and used just the smaller chapel to one side. A quarter century later, in 1975, a visiting professor unlocked the door to the main sanctuary and decided to restore it to its original splendor. The goal was to keep as many of the original elements of the synagogue as possible, which required a very painstaking process of careful and precise restoration. So began a long and laborious restoration project which cost over $18 million and was not complete until 2007.
My father and my husband had separately visited the Eldridge Street Synagogue in the early 1980's before the restoratiuon work began. It was full of rubble, then, the walls and ceilings had fallen in chunks of plaster to the ground, the pews all lay upended. Something worse than abandonment had occurred in the place, and it was then forbidden for anyone to enter for fear of their being injured. Still, both of these men were curious enough, as surely many others also were, to cross the barriers and peer inside this once grand, then crumbled bit of our collective past, as descendants of Jewish immigrants who had fled Eastern Europe and come to live in New York City.
Today, you may enter the street level chapel, which had remined in use through the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, and where you can now, every day but Saturday, pay a museum vistor's fee, learn the history of the congregation and visit the main sanctuary with a historian as your guide. The guide who escorted my father, sister and me a week ago Sunday had recently immigrated to New York from Romania. Just a little bit of personal conversation revealed that she currently lived on precisely the same block of Brooklyn, by Avenue M and Ocean Boulevard, where my grandparents lived when my mother and aunt were little girls.
The massive, round, stained-glass window created by artist Kiki Smith is the first thing to command our attention on this sunny winter afternoon as we enter the main sanctuary. It hangs above the ark, a huge, dynamic swirl of blue adorned with many golden stars. We are told that this work was the last piece of the restoration to be completed. It is entirely unlike the original window that was blown out by a hurricane, and also, completely different from the brightly colored gothic style window that is opposite it, at the Western side of the sanctuary. Our guide points out that although the synagogue architects were Christian, they were very sensitive to the purpose for which this space was being created. Accordingly, they designed the stained glass windows into twelve parts forming a circle, to represent symbolically the twelve tribes of Israel. The arches of modest glass block that had been used to let light into the original sanctuary have been moved to create a tribute wall honoring the many donors who made the restoration possible.
In Cincinnati, we have a temple that was built by German immigrants in 1865-66. Once called the Jewish church, the Plum Street Temple is an histoic landmark, and considered one of the crowning jewels of Cincinnati's historic architecture. It was one of the first places I was taken to visit in Cincinnati, even before I decided to move here. I realize that I am now, once again, standing in another rare example of a beautifully preserved Moorish Revival building from the 19th century. Both temples have been lovingly restored and both show evidence of the strong influence of Moorish design on temples of that era. Only in Florence (Firenze) Italy have I stood in synagogue similar to these two, and that one was restored, after destructive floods swept through it, by the largesse of the Ferragamo family.
I find it interesting that the two cities in which I have now spent the greatest chunks of my life each have one of these temples, one built by German Jews, and the other by immigrants from Eastern Europe. The greatest difference I notice between them is that the temple in Cincinnati marked the birth of the Reform movement, so that the pews hold men and women sitting together. There is consequently no balcony level in the Plum Street temple other than the one built in the rear to hold musicians, who according to traditional Jewish practice, were forbidden from playing during the holidays. Also, the front of the sanctuary in Plum Street temple widens so that some pews are sitauted facing the bimah from the right and the left sides, instead of all of them facing on one direction, facing east.
In addition, I notice that the interior of one temple is predominantly red and the other is mainly decorated in shades of blue, which is oddly reflective both of the colors associated with the cities' respective premiere professional baseball temas, the Reds and the Yankees, as well as the contrast in the political leanings of the two cities' residents, Republican versus Democrat. Perhaps I should end my personal observations here. If you want to see inside either historic synagogue, tours can be arranged of both, although significantly more planning is required to see Plum Street. The congregation which owns it, K.K. B'nai Yeshurun, currently uses the historic building only for Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and high holiday services. Its main meeting place nowadays is a mid-20th century building located closer to where the Jewish population has migrated over the years, several miles north of Plum Street which is in the heart of downtown.
As for the Jews of New York's Lower East Side, well, it seems that some of their descendants have migrated as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio.
The synagogue was a glorious space in which to spend time. Indeed, for most of its members, who generally lived in the tenement buildings of the surrounding neighborhood, Manhattan's Lower East Side, it was the most beautiful place they had access to on a regular basis, and better yet, it was all theirs. The upper balcony, separate and shielded as it was from the men below, must have been a wonderful haven for local wives and mothers to sit in splendor and comfort, relieved for a while from the stuffy, cramped environments of their apartments, happy for the chance to visit, rest and connect with other women in the community. Their early lives in New York were very hard. So difficult was it to makes ends meet that these new American Jews found it impossible to keep the Sabbath, in terms of refraining from work from sundown Friday until after sundown on Saturday, so the Shabbat service had to be held very early in the morning on Saturday before everyone headed out to work for the rest of the day.
Eventually, as members of the congregation established themselves, flourished and became successful, they moved out of the crowded tenement neighborhood know as Jew Town and into other areas, including the outer boroughs of the city, making it impossible to continue worshipping together. By 1950, the small group of more loyal or less successful congregants who were left could not afford to heat the entire building, so they locked up the main sanctuary and used just the smaller chapel to one side. A quarter century later, in 1975, a visiting professor unlocked the door to the main sanctuary and decided to restore it to its original splendor. The goal was to keep as many of the original elements of the synagogue as possible, which required a very painstaking process of careful and precise restoration. So began a long and laborious restoration project which cost over $18 million and was not complete until 2007.
My father and my husband had separately visited the Eldridge Street Synagogue in the early 1980's before the restoratiuon work began. It was full of rubble, then, the walls and ceilings had fallen in chunks of plaster to the ground, the pews all lay upended. Something worse than abandonment had occurred in the place, and it was then forbidden for anyone to enter for fear of their being injured. Still, both of these men were curious enough, as surely many others also were, to cross the barriers and peer inside this once grand, then crumbled bit of our collective past, as descendants of Jewish immigrants who had fled Eastern Europe and come to live in New York City.
Today, you may enter the street level chapel, which had remined in use through the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's, and where you can now, every day but Saturday, pay a museum vistor's fee, learn the history of the congregation and visit the main sanctuary with a historian as your guide. The guide who escorted my father, sister and me a week ago Sunday had recently immigrated to New York from Romania. Just a little bit of personal conversation revealed that she currently lived on precisely the same block of Brooklyn, by Avenue M and Ocean Boulevard, where my grandparents lived when my mother and aunt were little girls.
The massive, round, stained-glass window created by artist Kiki Smith is the first thing to command our attention on this sunny winter afternoon as we enter the main sanctuary. It hangs above the ark, a huge, dynamic swirl of blue adorned with many golden stars. We are told that this work was the last piece of the restoration to be completed. It is entirely unlike the original window that was blown out by a hurricane, and also, completely different from the brightly colored gothic style window that is opposite it, at the Western side of the sanctuary. Our guide points out that although the synagogue architects were Christian, they were very sensitive to the purpose for which this space was being created. Accordingly, they designed the stained glass windows into twelve parts forming a circle, to represent symbolically the twelve tribes of Israel. The arches of modest glass block that had been used to let light into the original sanctuary have been moved to create a tribute wall honoring the many donors who made the restoration possible.
In Cincinnati, we have a temple that was built by German immigrants in 1865-66. Once called the Jewish church, the Plum Street Temple is an histoic landmark, and considered one of the crowning jewels of Cincinnati's historic architecture. It was one of the first places I was taken to visit in Cincinnati, even before I decided to move here. I realize that I am now, once again, standing in another rare example of a beautifully preserved Moorish Revival building from the 19th century. Both temples have been lovingly restored and both show evidence of the strong influence of Moorish design on temples of that era. Only in Florence (Firenze) Italy have I stood in synagogue similar to these two, and that one was restored, after destructive floods swept through it, by the largesse of the Ferragamo family.
I find it interesting that the two cities in which I have now spent the greatest chunks of my life each have one of these temples, one built by German Jews, and the other by immigrants from Eastern Europe. The greatest difference I notice between them is that the temple in Cincinnati marked the birth of the Reform movement, so that the pews hold men and women sitting together. There is consequently no balcony level in the Plum Street temple other than the one built in the rear to hold musicians, who according to traditional Jewish practice, were forbidden from playing during the holidays. Also, the front of the sanctuary in Plum Street temple widens so that some pews are sitauted facing the bimah from the right and the left sides, instead of all of them facing on one direction, facing east.
In addition, I notice that the interior of one temple is predominantly red and the other is mainly decorated in shades of blue, which is oddly reflective both of the colors associated with the cities' respective premiere professional baseball temas, the Reds and the Yankees, as well as the contrast in the political leanings of the two cities' residents, Republican versus Democrat. Perhaps I should end my personal observations here. If you want to see inside either historic synagogue, tours can be arranged of both, although significantly more planning is required to see Plum Street. The congregation which owns it, K.K. B'nai Yeshurun, currently uses the historic building only for Bar Mitzvahs, weddings and high holiday services. Its main meeting place nowadays is a mid-20th century building located closer to where the Jewish population has migrated over the years, several miles north of Plum Street which is in the heart of downtown.
As for the Jews of New York's Lower East Side, well, it seems that some of their descendants have migrated as far away as Cincinnati, Ohio.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Three generations later...
My son, Max, is currently acting in Neil Simon's somewhat autobiographical play, Brighton Beach Memoirs. In the voice of the main character, Simon's fictional counterpart, he announces that the play consists of the "true... memoirs of I, Eugene Morris Jerome in his fifteenth year...1937...in Brooklyn".
The playwright, born in New York City in 1927, devotes more than two hours to portraying a Jewish family living in Brooklyn, struggling to support a seven member household with a variety of jobs including: cutting fabric for ladies' raincoats, selling noisemakers, setting bowling pins, running back and forth in a hat factory, and mending and dressmaking at home. Not only is money tight, but their home is cramped: the two fatherless sisters must move into a bedroom already shared by their cousins Eugene and Stanley. At the end of the play, though, the family momentarily forgets their troubles and celebrates the news that their cousins have "gotten out" of Poland. They agree that the two girls will share a bed with their widowed mother, and that they'll get rid of the dining room set in order to create another bedroom..."it's so much easier to eat in the kitchen." They are simply jubilant that more of their family has escaped the terror that is plowing through Europe.
The play reminds me of my tour, exactly one week earlier, of the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. While actors in a Neil Simon play can bring a family vividly to life on the stage, it is also powerfully moving to stand in a family's actual home and hear the story, the known facts, of how they lived. If you really want to imagine it, there is no better way that I know. Accordingly, my father, sister and I visited the former Lower East Side apartment, last Sunday, of a young Jewish family who immigrated from Russia in 1897. This was the same year that construction of the Eldridge Street synagogue was completed (for a total cost of $19,000), and the same year the Yiddush Forverts, the daily newpaper, was founded. It was also the year just before Harry Illman, my first-born grandparent, began his life, in Russia.
When Jacob and Fanny arrived in New York, they were 22 and 14 year old newlyweds, respectively. At the time, lower Manhattan was the most densely populous place on Earth. There were more people living below 14th street then (1.8 million) than there are today on the entire island of Manhattan. The couple moved into a three room flat on the second floor of an 1850's building on Orchard Street. Their home measured a total of 325 square feet, and consisted of a small bedroom, central kitchen, and a small front room known euphemistically as the parlor. (You can do the math to figure out exactly how cramped each of these rooms was.)
Seven years later, at the age of 21, Fanny would deliver her third child, a son, named Max, in the apartment's single small bedroom. At which point in the story, standing in her kitchen, tears sprang into my eyes, imagining Fanny's difficult life. My sister, quite used to me by now, whispered in my ear, reassuringly, "Nan, Fanny loved her kids, and all her friends were doing the same thing. She had support in that." She also must have believed in G-d, I thought, and been very grateful not to have to fear for their lives every day, as she surely had in Russia.
Our museum guide explained that to make ends meet, Jacob ran a factory, manufacturing ladies' dresses, there in the apartment. So, in addition to caring for three children in this tight, nearly windowless apartment, carrying water up the stairs from the outhouse for cooking and washing and every other reason modern housewives blithely turn on the tap or flush water throughout the day, Fanny also had to accomodate the needs of the four employees sharing the space with the five members of her family.
Jacob and Fanny's apartment was one of the original sweatshops. Comfortable, twenty-first century tourists, students and descendants of immigrants, we stand now and look at the places where Jacob's four employees sat or stood, for six long days a week, to do their work. A young girl, known as a baster, sat on the stool by a parlor window, sewing layers of fabric together with tiny hand stitching. She passed these pieces to the man seated opposite her at the sewing machine in the other window. He ran them through the machine and then passed them in turn to the kitchen, where a man stood before an ironing board. This man, the presser, would sip from a glass of water, filling his mouth, then spray the water across the fabric before pressing it with a hot iron. Then, he passed the fabric back to the parlor where a young woman, called a finisher, used a mannekin to put the pieces together and adorn them with lace medallions, turning out 14 dresses a day to be sold to middle class ladies.
As I sit in the theatre, Sunday, hearing the audience gasp at the news that more cousins were possibly going to move in with the Eugene and six of his relatives, already rather strained in their small townhome, I think of how relatively vast and luxurious their home was, how easy their lives were, not only compared to Jacob and Fanny's on the Lower East Side, but also when compared to that of the playwright's.
I calculate that the play probably took place about three or four decades after Simon's grandparents, people not unlike like Fanny and Jacob, might have first arrived on American soil. Marvin Neil Simon grew up in Washington Heights with windows that opened to the dark crawl space behind the apartment building. Neil's father had only a grade school education and worked in the garment industry, often leaving his wife and two sons alone for long periods of time. His mother not only worked at Gimbel's department store in the daytime, but also ran poker games in their home in the evenings, taking a cut of every pot. His grandfather, whom Simon portrays in a later play, Broadway Bound, as a gruff, stubborn socialist, probably read the Yiddush Forverts daily newpaper, or listened to the news on WEVD, the Yiddush radio station. In real life, it had been Neil and his mother who boarded with kindly relatives at their hardest times, a situation Simon gently reverses in Brighton Beach Memoirs.
Three generations after most of his own great-grandparents were born in Poland, Latvia and Russia, my 16 year old son, Max, stands on the stage, acting out a story from our collective past. After taking his bows, Max returns home in his very own car, takes a hot shower and then, sleeps undisturbed in a queen sized bed in his own room, with its southern and western exposures onto a quiet, snow covered acre of his family's own property, on a beautiful, leafy street in this Midwestern suburb. How very far we have come; how much we have to be grateful for.
The playwright, born in New York City in 1927, devotes more than two hours to portraying a Jewish family living in Brooklyn, struggling to support a seven member household with a variety of jobs including: cutting fabric for ladies' raincoats, selling noisemakers, setting bowling pins, running back and forth in a hat factory, and mending and dressmaking at home. Not only is money tight, but their home is cramped: the two fatherless sisters must move into a bedroom already shared by their cousins Eugene and Stanley. At the end of the play, though, the family momentarily forgets their troubles and celebrates the news that their cousins have "gotten out" of Poland. They agree that the two girls will share a bed with their widowed mother, and that they'll get rid of the dining room set in order to create another bedroom..."it's so much easier to eat in the kitchen." They are simply jubilant that more of their family has escaped the terror that is plowing through Europe.
The play reminds me of my tour, exactly one week earlier, of the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. While actors in a Neil Simon play can bring a family vividly to life on the stage, it is also powerfully moving to stand in a family's actual home and hear the story, the known facts, of how they lived. If you really want to imagine it, there is no better way that I know. Accordingly, my father, sister and I visited the former Lower East Side apartment, last Sunday, of a young Jewish family who immigrated from Russia in 1897. This was the same year that construction of the Eldridge Street synagogue was completed (for a total cost of $19,000), and the same year the Yiddush Forverts, the daily newpaper, was founded. It was also the year just before Harry Illman, my first-born grandparent, began his life, in Russia.
When Jacob and Fanny arrived in New York, they were 22 and 14 year old newlyweds, respectively. At the time, lower Manhattan was the most densely populous place on Earth. There were more people living below 14th street then (1.8 million) than there are today on the entire island of Manhattan. The couple moved into a three room flat on the second floor of an 1850's building on Orchard Street. Their home measured a total of 325 square feet, and consisted of a small bedroom, central kitchen, and a small front room known euphemistically as the parlor. (You can do the math to figure out exactly how cramped each of these rooms was.)
Seven years later, at the age of 21, Fanny would deliver her third child, a son, named Max, in the apartment's single small bedroom. At which point in the story, standing in her kitchen, tears sprang into my eyes, imagining Fanny's difficult life. My sister, quite used to me by now, whispered in my ear, reassuringly, "Nan, Fanny loved her kids, and all her friends were doing the same thing. She had support in that." She also must have believed in G-d, I thought, and been very grateful not to have to fear for their lives every day, as she surely had in Russia.
Our museum guide explained that to make ends meet, Jacob ran a factory, manufacturing ladies' dresses, there in the apartment. So, in addition to caring for three children in this tight, nearly windowless apartment, carrying water up the stairs from the outhouse for cooking and washing and every other reason modern housewives blithely turn on the tap or flush water throughout the day, Fanny also had to accomodate the needs of the four employees sharing the space with the five members of her family.
Jacob and Fanny's apartment was one of the original sweatshops. Comfortable, twenty-first century tourists, students and descendants of immigrants, we stand now and look at the places where Jacob's four employees sat or stood, for six long days a week, to do their work. A young girl, known as a baster, sat on the stool by a parlor window, sewing layers of fabric together with tiny hand stitching. She passed these pieces to the man seated opposite her at the sewing machine in the other window. He ran them through the machine and then passed them in turn to the kitchen, where a man stood before an ironing board. This man, the presser, would sip from a glass of water, filling his mouth, then spray the water across the fabric before pressing it with a hot iron. Then, he passed the fabric back to the parlor where a young woman, called a finisher, used a mannekin to put the pieces together and adorn them with lace medallions, turning out 14 dresses a day to be sold to middle class ladies.
As I sit in the theatre, Sunday, hearing the audience gasp at the news that more cousins were possibly going to move in with the Eugene and six of his relatives, already rather strained in their small townhome, I think of how relatively vast and luxurious their home was, how easy their lives were, not only compared to Jacob and Fanny's on the Lower East Side, but also when compared to that of the playwright's.
I calculate that the play probably took place about three or four decades after Simon's grandparents, people not unlike like Fanny and Jacob, might have first arrived on American soil. Marvin Neil Simon grew up in Washington Heights with windows that opened to the dark crawl space behind the apartment building. Neil's father had only a grade school education and worked in the garment industry, often leaving his wife and two sons alone for long periods of time. His mother not only worked at Gimbel's department store in the daytime, but also ran poker games in their home in the evenings, taking a cut of every pot. His grandfather, whom Simon portrays in a later play, Broadway Bound, as a gruff, stubborn socialist, probably read the Yiddush Forverts daily newpaper, or listened to the news on WEVD, the Yiddush radio station. In real life, it had been Neil and his mother who boarded with kindly relatives at their hardest times, a situation Simon gently reverses in Brighton Beach Memoirs.
Three generations after most of his own great-grandparents were born in Poland, Latvia and Russia, my 16 year old son, Max, stands on the stage, acting out a story from our collective past. After taking his bows, Max returns home in his very own car, takes a hot shower and then, sleeps undisturbed in a queen sized bed in his own room, with its southern and western exposures onto a quiet, snow covered acre of his family's own property, on a beautiful, leafy street in this Midwestern suburb. How very far we have come; how much we have to be grateful for.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Follow Up to Club Med
During our most recent winter break from school, the five of us drove down to Florida in the minivan and stayed at Club Med's all inclusive resort for 4 nights, at a cost of approximately $3000. I'm not counting the motels and the gas in either direction, just what we paid to the resort during the months leading up to our visit.
The vacation, compared to the expectations we had of it, was rather disappointing. If you didn't already read my earlier, whining blogpost about it, the "village" (Club Med speak for "resort") had been closed for 9 months of renovations and was NOT ready to reopen, yet the company was unwilling to miss out on all the Christmas holiday guests who had made reservations, bought vacations, planned to be there. So, they let us come, and then, pretty much pretending that nothing was wrong until we checked out, when they invited each guest to fill out a "declaration" (that's Club Med for a complaint form).
So, I complained, made a few phone calls, blogged, forwarded my blog to the corporate offices, left a message or two...
Two weeks after returning home, we received an apology letter and a voucher for $910which I briefly, happily imagined we might apply toward the cost of our next winter vacation in the same spot. I called and told Paul the good news and he congratulated me, calculating that I had earned about $200 for each hour of my trouble.
When Paul got home, however, he flipped the voucher over and read the fine print:
"...subject to availability, not for use during peak travel season, 7 night stay minimum, not to be blah blah blah..."
O.K., so, we can't use it next December, then. I suddenly felt quite let down.
In June, for the first time, all of our kids will be away at summer camp. For twelve days, for the first time since we met, we will, ever so briefly, be empty nesters. Partially because we don't live anywhere near extended family, we have always taken turns leaving home, never leaving the children without at least one parent for more than two nights, and then only very rarely. Twice, I think. After Isaac, our youngest, was born, we imagined that when this "someday" eventually came, and the children all cleared out for camp, leaving us behind, we would take a second honeymoon, perhaps go back to Europe, discover a new place, its food, its people, its language. I had not thought back then to calculate the future cost of sending three children to camp all at once, nor to consider that we might have difficulty coming up with money for groceries once we had done so, much less two plane fare across the ocean, and the price of the most modest hotel room, or even beds in a hostel.
As the time finally approaches, we have lately been planning a staycation for that childless week and a half - almost two weeks - in June. But the voucher, especially its fine print demanding seven nights, makes Paul think we should use it then, when the children disappear. He acknowledges that yes, it might be too hot in South Florida in June to play tennis outside, but not too hot for flying trapeze lessons, or for sailing, swimming, reading in a cabana, or playing beach volleyball in bathing suits still damp from the pool. And it's never too hot to enjoy good food in an air conditioned dining room, assuming that the air conditioning works.
If we stay at home in Cincinnati, but spend a leisurely week without doing the dishes, just dining out and buying tickets to concerts, exhibits and shows, or, as Paul has more recently imagined, drive down to Louisville to spend part of the time at our favorite hotel there, we might easily spend more than $150 on lodging, meals and entertainment each day. With the Club Med voucher, we can pass a week at that rate being fed, exercised and entertained. I know Paul hates the thought of my having made such efforts without receiving any real compensation. I love that he is willing to spend his hard earned money to give us the satisfaction of "getting" something as compensation for our disappointment in December, and for all my trouble after returning home. But when we had envisioned our future vacation or staycation, over the past eight years or so, it was never at a familiar resort. It was meant to be an adventure, in my mind, anyway, whether here or abroad.
We are going to have think hard about this. I'll let you know.
The vacation, compared to the expectations we had of it, was rather disappointing. If you didn't already read my earlier, whining blogpost about it, the "village" (Club Med speak for "resort") had been closed for 9 months of renovations and was NOT ready to reopen, yet the company was unwilling to miss out on all the Christmas holiday guests who had made reservations, bought vacations, planned to be there. So, they let us come, and then, pretty much pretending that nothing was wrong until we checked out, when they invited each guest to fill out a "declaration" (that's Club Med for a complaint form).
So, I complained, made a few phone calls, blogged, forwarded my blog to the corporate offices, left a message or two...
Two weeks after returning home, we received an apology letter and a voucher for $910which I briefly, happily imagined we might apply toward the cost of our next winter vacation in the same spot. I called and told Paul the good news and he congratulated me, calculating that I had earned about $200 for each hour of my trouble.
When Paul got home, however, he flipped the voucher over and read the fine print:
"...subject to availability, not for use during peak travel season, 7 night stay minimum, not to be blah blah blah..."
O.K., so, we can't use it next December, then. I suddenly felt quite let down.
In June, for the first time, all of our kids will be away at summer camp. For twelve days, for the first time since we met, we will, ever so briefly, be empty nesters. Partially because we don't live anywhere near extended family, we have always taken turns leaving home, never leaving the children without at least one parent for more than two nights, and then only very rarely. Twice, I think. After Isaac, our youngest, was born, we imagined that when this "someday" eventually came, and the children all cleared out for camp, leaving us behind, we would take a second honeymoon, perhaps go back to Europe, discover a new place, its food, its people, its language. I had not thought back then to calculate the future cost of sending three children to camp all at once, nor to consider that we might have difficulty coming up with money for groceries once we had done so, much less two plane fare across the ocean, and the price of the most modest hotel room, or even beds in a hostel.
As the time finally approaches, we have lately been planning a staycation for that childless week and a half - almost two weeks - in June. But the voucher, especially its fine print demanding seven nights, makes Paul think we should use it then, when the children disappear. He acknowledges that yes, it might be too hot in South Florida in June to play tennis outside, but not too hot for flying trapeze lessons, or for sailing, swimming, reading in a cabana, or playing beach volleyball in bathing suits still damp from the pool. And it's never too hot to enjoy good food in an air conditioned dining room, assuming that the air conditioning works.
If we stay at home in Cincinnati, but spend a leisurely week without doing the dishes, just dining out and buying tickets to concerts, exhibits and shows, or, as Paul has more recently imagined, drive down to Louisville to spend part of the time at our favorite hotel there, we might easily spend more than $150 on lodging, meals and entertainment each day. With the Club Med voucher, we can pass a week at that rate being fed, exercised and entertained. I know Paul hates the thought of my having made such efforts without receiving any real compensation. I love that he is willing to spend his hard earned money to give us the satisfaction of "getting" something as compensation for our disappointment in December, and for all my trouble after returning home. But when we had envisioned our future vacation or staycation, over the past eight years or so, it was never at a familiar resort. It was meant to be an adventure, in my mind, anyway, whether here or abroad.
We are going to have think hard about this. I'll let you know.
Kvelling, Shepping and almost Plotzing
Oy. I am kvelling today and also shepping nachas. At the same time, I'm so verklempt that I could just plotz.
Allow me to explain.
Yiddush, like all languages, really, is a hybrid tongue. It was born a thousand years ago out of Middle High German, eventually incorporating words from Hebrew and the various languages of the countries in which it was spoken. It was the language of the ghetto, the primary tongue of Central and Eastern European Jews who lived in homogeneous communities inside walls built for them by their gentile "hosts". Before WWII, Yiddush was spoken by 11 million people. It followed the Jews who fled Europe to Israel, the Americas and elsewhere, but thanks to assimilation, use of the language has been decimated. No more than about a million people speak Yiddush today.
Beginning in 1897, there was a legendary Yiddush daily newspaper published on Manhattan's Lower East Side called the Forverts. By the 1930's they also had a Yiddush radio station, WEVD, that was listened to by thousands. In 1990, it converted to publishing a weekly, English paper known as the Forward, which covers stories of interest to the International Jewish community. I recently visited the Lower East Side, which was still an entirely Jewish neighborhood when I was a small child and used to get most of my clothes there. I happened to take a photograph the Forverts building. The paper's Yiddush name is still carved into the stone facade, but on the side, in bright red paint, it says only "FORWARD". The Yiddush signs that once hung all over the streets of the neighborhood are mostly gone, or covered with graffiti. The few that were preserved can be seen inside the once grand and recently renovated Eldridge Street synagogue, also built in 1897.
Today, Europe has many fewer Jews than it did 100 years ago; many of the old ghettos are now ghostly museums of a lost culture. All (North and South) American Jews speak English, and so do almost all Israelis, for that matter. With a few notable exceptions, most Jews no longer live in tightly knit insular communities, able to use their own community language. And yet, the Yiddush language is still alive, and is even enjoying a resurgence, and not only among Jews.
I was listening to a book on tape yesterday, written by Sue Miller and read by the WASPy actress Blair Brown, and I noticed that she pronounced "spiel" as an English word, without sounding the "sh"(the sound of the letter "shin") in the first syllable. I wondered if Blair thought she was saying an English word, whether she had heard "shpiel" uttered in Hollywood, and thought it was a different word, or perhaps a mispronunciation, possibly related to the presence, in the mouth of the person speaking, of a still remaining bit of bagel, with a schmear.
I often hear non-Jews in the Midwest, where I live, use the words "shmata", "maven", "chutzpah" and "shlep". While in Florida, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York, I am more likely to hear the additional use of "nosh" "gonif" or "megillah". Many of these Jewish words appear in English dictionaries. However, I think few non-Jewish people fully appreciate the wide array of meanings that can be communicated merely through inflection, whereas Jews use this inflection in their English-language conversation all the time.
My friend Sandey (who am I kidding, Sandey is not just a friend, but the bubby who arranged our shiddach!) recently read of my kvelling on facebook and responded by writing a post that I should "keep shepping". So, then, I found myself trying to explain the subtle difference between kvelling and shepping nachas to my darling husband, Paul. I was having a bit of trouble, so I tapped my finger on my favorite helper icon on my iphone, the blue one with the white lower case "g".
There on my iPhone, with the help of google, I discovered there are some mensches in the blogosphere devoting themselves to helping non Yiddush speakers understand, appreciate and navigate the Yiddush language; I was immediately drawn in. Eventually, Paul sighed, and wandered off to take a shower, and I drifted toward my computer to share with you.
There is a simply wonderful chart on www.bubbygram.com parsing the many ways the same sentence can mean so many things, depending on where the speaker places the emphasis. I was simultaneously mortified and relieved, after reading her example, and also, grateful to the Fine Arts Fund and the other contributors who make it possible for my orchestra to give free concerts. Here, you will see what I mean:
I should buy two tickets for her concert? meaning "after what she did to me?"
I SHOULD buy two tickets for her concert? meaning "what, you're giving me a lesson in ethics?"
I should BUY two tickets for her concert? meaning "I wouldn't go even if she were giving out free passes!"
I should buy TWO tickets for her concert? meaning "I'm having enouch trouble deciding whether it's worth one!"
I should buy two TICKETS for her concert? meaning "She should be giving out free passes, or the hall will be empty!"
I should buy two tickets to HER concert? meaning "Did she buy tickets to our daughter's recital?"
I should buy two tickets for her CONCERT? you mean, they call what she does a "concert"?
So, being a Jew, I immediately react to all of this by worrying "oy gevalt!? which of my so-called friends have been thinking, or G-d forbid, saying these things to each other when I ask them to my concert? or when I tell them Max is in a show with $20 tickets? oy vey is mir, do they think I'm a shnorrer? or that I have a lot of chutzpah? or do they, G-d willing, understand that we performers are just wasting our time if we don't have an audience?
This is beyond language, vocabulary or inflection. This is the Yiddush soul.
Allow me to explain.
Yiddush, like all languages, really, is a hybrid tongue. It was born a thousand years ago out of Middle High German, eventually incorporating words from Hebrew and the various languages of the countries in which it was spoken. It was the language of the ghetto, the primary tongue of Central and Eastern European Jews who lived in homogeneous communities inside walls built for them by their gentile "hosts". Before WWII, Yiddush was spoken by 11 million people. It followed the Jews who fled Europe to Israel, the Americas and elsewhere, but thanks to assimilation, use of the language has been decimated. No more than about a million people speak Yiddush today.
Beginning in 1897, there was a legendary Yiddush daily newspaper published on Manhattan's Lower East Side called the Forverts. By the 1930's they also had a Yiddush radio station, WEVD, that was listened to by thousands. In 1990, it converted to publishing a weekly, English paper known as the Forward, which covers stories of interest to the International Jewish community. I recently visited the Lower East Side, which was still an entirely Jewish neighborhood when I was a small child and used to get most of my clothes there. I happened to take a photograph the Forverts building. The paper's Yiddush name is still carved into the stone facade, but on the side, in bright red paint, it says only "FORWARD". The Yiddush signs that once hung all over the streets of the neighborhood are mostly gone, or covered with graffiti. The few that were preserved can be seen inside the once grand and recently renovated Eldridge Street synagogue, also built in 1897.
Today, Europe has many fewer Jews than it did 100 years ago; many of the old ghettos are now ghostly museums of a lost culture. All (North and South) American Jews speak English, and so do almost all Israelis, for that matter. With a few notable exceptions, most Jews no longer live in tightly knit insular communities, able to use their own community language. And yet, the Yiddush language is still alive, and is even enjoying a resurgence, and not only among Jews.
I was listening to a book on tape yesterday, written by Sue Miller and read by the WASPy actress Blair Brown, and I noticed that she pronounced "spiel" as an English word, without sounding the "sh"(the sound of the letter "shin") in the first syllable. I wondered if Blair thought she was saying an English word, whether she had heard "shpiel" uttered in Hollywood, and thought it was a different word, or perhaps a mispronunciation, possibly related to the presence, in the mouth of the person speaking, of a still remaining bit of bagel, with a schmear.
I often hear non-Jews in the Midwest, where I live, use the words "shmata", "maven", "chutzpah" and "shlep". While in Florida, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York, I am more likely to hear the additional use of "nosh" "gonif" or "megillah". Many of these Jewish words appear in English dictionaries. However, I think few non-Jewish people fully appreciate the wide array of meanings that can be communicated merely through inflection, whereas Jews use this inflection in their English-language conversation all the time.
My friend Sandey (who am I kidding, Sandey is not just a friend, but the bubby who arranged our shiddach!) recently read of my kvelling on facebook and responded by writing a post that I should "keep shepping". So, then, I found myself trying to explain the subtle difference between kvelling and shepping nachas to my darling husband, Paul. I was having a bit of trouble, so I tapped my finger on my favorite helper icon on my iphone, the blue one with the white lower case "g".
There on my iPhone, with the help of google, I discovered there are some mensches in the blogosphere devoting themselves to helping non Yiddush speakers understand, appreciate and navigate the Yiddush language; I was immediately drawn in. Eventually, Paul sighed, and wandered off to take a shower, and I drifted toward my computer to share with you.
There is a simply wonderful chart on www.bubbygram.com parsing the many ways the same sentence can mean so many things, depending on where the speaker places the emphasis. I was simultaneously mortified and relieved, after reading her example, and also, grateful to the Fine Arts Fund and the other contributors who make it possible for my orchestra to give free concerts. Here, you will see what I mean:
I should buy two tickets for her concert? meaning "after what she did to me?"
I SHOULD buy two tickets for her concert? meaning "what, you're giving me a lesson in ethics?"
I should BUY two tickets for her concert? meaning "I wouldn't go even if she were giving out free passes!"
I should buy TWO tickets for her concert? meaning "I'm having enouch trouble deciding whether it's worth one!"
I should buy two TICKETS for her concert? meaning "She should be giving out free passes, or the hall will be empty!"
I should buy two tickets to HER concert? meaning "Did she buy tickets to our daughter's recital?"
I should buy two tickets for her CONCERT? you mean, they call what she does a "concert"?
So, being a Jew, I immediately react to all of this by worrying "oy gevalt!? which of my so-called friends have been thinking, or G-d forbid, saying these things to each other when I ask them to my concert? or when I tell them Max is in a show with $20 tickets? oy vey is mir, do they think I'm a shnorrer? or that I have a lot of chutzpah? or do they, G-d willing, understand that we performers are just wasting our time if we don't have an audience?
This is beyond language, vocabulary or inflection. This is the Yiddush soul.
Friday, January 21, 2011
top ten why I can't blog today
1. I just got back from new york, so I'm behind
2. Yesterday was a snow day, so I'm behind
3. I'm currently hosting a double play date
4. Max's show opens tonight
5. someone's gotta walk the dog
6. laundry hasn't been put away yet
7. 90 minute school delay this morning, so I'm behind
8. I haven't made it to yoga class in a while
9. I don't yet know what I'm making for dinner
10. I need to search online for plane tickets...
2. Yesterday was a snow day, so I'm behind
3. I'm currently hosting a double play date
4. Max's show opens tonight
5. someone's gotta walk the dog
6. laundry hasn't been put away yet
7. 90 minute school delay this morning, so I'm behind
8. I haven't made it to yoga class in a while
9. I don't yet know what I'm making for dinner
10. I need to search online for plane tickets...
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
the Good Luck Twins
My sister and I are not twins. We are about 20 months apart in age, at least 3 sizes apart in clothing and 2 1/2 inches apart in height. I was born in Arkansas; she, in New York. I'm older, taller, bigger and louder; my brown eyes look nothing like her green ones. And yet, people have recently mistaken me for Susan when spotting me bringing her son to school, or buying my niece a pastry in Penn Station.
Susan and I always wished we could have shared a bedroom, but we grew up each with a big bedroom of our own, adjacent to but completely separate from our sister. It was one of many ways our parents managed to keep us very much apart.
I'm thinking about this because I got the following text from my New York City sister while I was drinking my morning coffee, back home in Cincinnati:
"I know where our luck came from this weekend. Abraham Lincoln said "A house divided against itself cannot stand." This is what the adults in our family have tried to perpetuate. Our being friends and openly, honestly communicating about our family dynamic strengthens us and weakens their strategy and the hold they've had on us."
Indeed.
Susan and I just had an extraordinary weekend together. I have never felt so close to her, or felt so much joy in our unique bond. Because it belonged only to the two of us, from Friday evening until Monday morning, the weekend was unprecedented. No work, no school, no appointments, no boyfriends, no husbands, and none of our five children - literally, nothing and nobody to interrupt or distract us from doing just what we pleased.
What we observed from the start was that we were enjoying exceptionally good luck. As she observed Saturday morning, in temple, when we were discussing the torah portion, in which the hungry Israelites are confronted with the appearance of manna, we don't know how long the miracle it will last, which makes it that much more precious. We began noticing our good luck by nabbing two last minute tickets to an amazing show at Lincoln Center that was sold out for its entire run. It was so full of familiar family dynamics that it almost seemed to have been written just for us.
We had the same luck the following night, getting rush tickets, discounted this time, to see Daniel Kitson's sold out show at St Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. This was a bit less of a coup, only in that we were not nearly as well entertained, but we would never had known that had we not scored last minute seats in the front row. Before the show, even though the maitre d' at Superfine was clearly offended that we dared walk into his establishment without a reservation, we got the one and only unreserved table for dinner, without any wait. And afterwards, our friend, Philip found an unbelievably sweet parking spot in the heart of Soho, right near Rice to Riches, where we went for dessert. Two guys in the bar window next to us, noticing our good timing, both gave us the thumbs up.
We decided to push our luck by asking our father to spend the day with us on Sunday. I calculated that it had been over 35 years since he had taken us both out, without our mother or anyone else around. Before we were big enough to become busy with music lessons, tennis matches or homework, Daddy had taken us on a short series of double dinner dates at local Massapequa eateries: Arthur Treacher's, where we discovered tartar sauce, and Jade Garden, where we had our first paper umbrella embellished soft drinks.
I had ceased spending time with my parents several years ago, finding it more than sufficient to see them only at bar mitzvahs and funerals. This weekend, my mother and aunt were occupied with sorting their late mother's personal property in preparation to clear it out of her apartment, which seems poised to go to contract, 9months after her death. My father could have spent the day hovering over them, but we made him a better offer, inviting him to take a tour with us at the Tenement Musuem on the lower east side, and learn in detail about a Jewish family who immigrated from Russia to live, work, raise their kids in a 325 square foot second floor apartment.
After that tour, Daddy led us to the Eldridge Street Synagogue, which he remembered visiting 30 years earlier, when it was in severe disrepair. We walked in just in time to join an hour-long tour, where we saw the fruits of an 18 million dollar restoration project and learned the history of the place and its congregation from a Romanian historian who lives on the very same block in Brooklyn where our mother lived as a child. Susan is planning to take her kids back to Eldgridge Street next weekend for a Tu B'shevat party.
As we strolled to Katz's deli for lunch, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to inquire as to the new location of il laboratorio di gelato, which used to be right next to the tenemnet musuem. I quickly facebook messaged my friend Michael, who messaged me back, without delay, that it was now right across the street from Katz's. How perfect! Lunch was not only historic but delicious; when my father repeatedly shushed me and scolded me, I found it almost effortless not to respond. The waitress recognized Daddy from many visit without us and took a marvelous photo of the three of us sitting together at our table.
We continued to notice our good luck as we repeatedly made immediate connections on the subway, whether we were switching from crosstown to downtown trains, or from express to local ones, despite it being the weekend, and despite the extensive construction supposedly disrupting the service so terribly.
Just as we walked outside Monday morning, we spotted the M60 bus, which runs every 15minutes to LaGuardia airport, two blocks away and coming toward us. I hopped on, waving good-bye to my sister, only to find that my luck was continuing in spades: arriving early at the aiport, I was switched to an earlier flight, boarded immediately, to maximize my chances of getting out of O'Hare which was currently closed due to a snowstorm. In my rush to get through security, I realized as I boarded, I had left behind a hand painted one-of-a-kind silk scarf, which my friend, Meg, had just given to me for my birthday. Why they had me remove it I will never understand, but I told the flight attendant what had happened as I stepped aboard. The co-pilot sprang up from his seat, asked which security station I had passed though, and raced out to retrieve it for me as the plane continued to board. How often, I ask, does this happen to you?
The flight attendant who returned my scarf to me, in my extra legroom seat behind the galley, became my newest best friend, brainstorming with me during the flight how I might reach the celebrity market with fancynancypants, thus enabling me to charge enough per pair to make it into a viable business. She gave me her card as I deplaned and we have already exchanged emails.
Despite my premonition last week that one of my flights would be cancelled, possibly leaving me stranded somewhere along my return journey - despite hearing, as I crossed through O'Hare, many thwarted travellers scrambling to rent cars, I beat the odds, arriving home only 25 minutes after I was originally scheduled to do.
There was no snow on my car when I found it in the economy lot. It started up as easily if had just been parked in a warm garage. I drove home without incident to be warmly welcomed by pets and family members, in time to make dinner and hear Sam have a great piano lesson. The laundry had been done in my absence and was folded into lovely neat piles on the living room couches. The kids bathed themselves and went to bed on time. Max surprised me by coming home from his father's (I wasn't expecting to see him until after school today) and visiting with us very pleasantly before turning in for the night.
I wonder: what else I shall attempt while my good luck holds up?
Susan and I always wished we could have shared a bedroom, but we grew up each with a big bedroom of our own, adjacent to but completely separate from our sister. It was one of many ways our parents managed to keep us very much apart.
I'm thinking about this because I got the following text from my New York City sister while I was drinking my morning coffee, back home in Cincinnati:
"I know where our luck came from this weekend. Abraham Lincoln said "A house divided against itself cannot stand." This is what the adults in our family have tried to perpetuate. Our being friends and openly, honestly communicating about our family dynamic strengthens us and weakens their strategy and the hold they've had on us."
Indeed.
Susan and I just had an extraordinary weekend together. I have never felt so close to her, or felt so much joy in our unique bond. Because it belonged only to the two of us, from Friday evening until Monday morning, the weekend was unprecedented. No work, no school, no appointments, no boyfriends, no husbands, and none of our five children - literally, nothing and nobody to interrupt or distract us from doing just what we pleased.
What we observed from the start was that we were enjoying exceptionally good luck. As she observed Saturday morning, in temple, when we were discussing the torah portion, in which the hungry Israelites are confronted with the appearance of manna, we don't know how long the miracle it will last, which makes it that much more precious. We began noticing our good luck by nabbing two last minute tickets to an amazing show at Lincoln Center that was sold out for its entire run. It was so full of familiar family dynamics that it almost seemed to have been written just for us.
We had the same luck the following night, getting rush tickets, discounted this time, to see Daniel Kitson's sold out show at St Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. This was a bit less of a coup, only in that we were not nearly as well entertained, but we would never had known that had we not scored last minute seats in the front row. Before the show, even though the maitre d' at Superfine was clearly offended that we dared walk into his establishment without a reservation, we got the one and only unreserved table for dinner, without any wait. And afterwards, our friend, Philip found an unbelievably sweet parking spot in the heart of Soho, right near Rice to Riches, where we went for dessert. Two guys in the bar window next to us, noticing our good timing, both gave us the thumbs up.
We decided to push our luck by asking our father to spend the day with us on Sunday. I calculated that it had been over 35 years since he had taken us both out, without our mother or anyone else around. Before we were big enough to become busy with music lessons, tennis matches or homework, Daddy had taken us on a short series of double dinner dates at local Massapequa eateries: Arthur Treacher's, where we discovered tartar sauce, and Jade Garden, where we had our first paper umbrella embellished soft drinks.
I had ceased spending time with my parents several years ago, finding it more than sufficient to see them only at bar mitzvahs and funerals. This weekend, my mother and aunt were occupied with sorting their late mother's personal property in preparation to clear it out of her apartment, which seems poised to go to contract, 9months after her death. My father could have spent the day hovering over them, but we made him a better offer, inviting him to take a tour with us at the Tenement Musuem on the lower east side, and learn in detail about a Jewish family who immigrated from Russia to live, work, raise their kids in a 325 square foot second floor apartment.
After that tour, Daddy led us to the Eldridge Street Synagogue, which he remembered visiting 30 years earlier, when it was in severe disrepair. We walked in just in time to join an hour-long tour, where we saw the fruits of an 18 million dollar restoration project and learned the history of the place and its congregation from a Romanian historian who lives on the very same block in Brooklyn where our mother lived as a child. Susan is planning to take her kids back to Eldgridge Street next weekend for a Tu B'shevat party.
As we strolled to Katz's deli for lunch, I suddenly realized that I had forgotten to inquire as to the new location of il laboratorio di gelato, which used to be right next to the tenemnet musuem. I quickly facebook messaged my friend Michael, who messaged me back, without delay, that it was now right across the street from Katz's. How perfect! Lunch was not only historic but delicious; when my father repeatedly shushed me and scolded me, I found it almost effortless not to respond. The waitress recognized Daddy from many visit without us and took a marvelous photo of the three of us sitting together at our table.
We continued to notice our good luck as we repeatedly made immediate connections on the subway, whether we were switching from crosstown to downtown trains, or from express to local ones, despite it being the weekend, and despite the extensive construction supposedly disrupting the service so terribly.
Just as we walked outside Monday morning, we spotted the M60 bus, which runs every 15minutes to LaGuardia airport, two blocks away and coming toward us. I hopped on, waving good-bye to my sister, only to find that my luck was continuing in spades: arriving early at the aiport, I was switched to an earlier flight, boarded immediately, to maximize my chances of getting out of O'Hare which was currently closed due to a snowstorm. In my rush to get through security, I realized as I boarded, I had left behind a hand painted one-of-a-kind silk scarf, which my friend, Meg, had just given to me for my birthday. Why they had me remove it I will never understand, but I told the flight attendant what had happened as I stepped aboard. The co-pilot sprang up from his seat, asked which security station I had passed though, and raced out to retrieve it for me as the plane continued to board. How often, I ask, does this happen to you?
The flight attendant who returned my scarf to me, in my extra legroom seat behind the galley, became my newest best friend, brainstorming with me during the flight how I might reach the celebrity market with fancynancypants, thus enabling me to charge enough per pair to make it into a viable business. She gave me her card as I deplaned and we have already exchanged emails.
Despite my premonition last week that one of my flights would be cancelled, possibly leaving me stranded somewhere along my return journey - despite hearing, as I crossed through O'Hare, many thwarted travellers scrambling to rent cars, I beat the odds, arriving home only 25 minutes after I was originally scheduled to do.
There was no snow on my car when I found it in the economy lot. It started up as easily if had just been parked in a warm garage. I drove home without incident to be warmly welcomed by pets and family members, in time to make dinner and hear Sam have a great piano lesson. The laundry had been done in my absence and was folded into lovely neat piles on the living room couches. The kids bathed themselves and went to bed on time. Max surprised me by coming home from his father's (I wasn't expecting to see him until after school today) and visiting with us very pleasantly before turning in for the night.
I wonder: what else I shall attempt while my good luck holds up?
Friday, January 7, 2011
Song for the Torah
It's the Most Wonderful Tome for all year
They're the books that define us
instruct us and guide us; we hold it so dear...
Its the most fer-fertile scroll of them all
there are lots of folks lying,
begetting and dying
and angels on call
it's the great-greatest roll call of them all
there are laws about eating
(marshmallows are cheating -
look for u's k's and o's)
adventures and lessons
the source of all blessings
stuff from ages ago
It's the most wonderful tome for all year
we roll back to Bereshit
when moses expires
and G-d sheds a tear
it's the most wonderful tome for all year
it's chock full of G-d's glories
and harrowing stories
laws and knowledge to go
more precious than money
our kids learn it with honey
so that they should know
its the sweet-sweetest tome of the year
there'll be cookies and candy
wrapping, dressing and dancing
with this great scroll so dear
it's the most wonderful tome for all year
They're the books that define us
instruct us and guide us; we hold it so dear...
Its the most fer-fertile scroll of them all
there are lots of folks lying,
begetting and dying
and angels on call
it's the great-greatest roll call of them all
there are laws about eating
(marshmallows are cheating -
look for u's k's and o's)
adventures and lessons
the source of all blessings
stuff from ages ago
It's the most wonderful tome for all year
we roll back to Bereshit
when moses expires
and G-d sheds a tear
it's the most wonderful tome for all year
it's chock full of G-d's glories
and harrowing stories
laws and knowledge to go
more precious than money
our kids learn it with honey
so that they should know
its the sweet-sweetest tome of the year
there'll be cookies and candy
wrapping, dressing and dancing
with this great scroll so dear
it's the most wonderful tome for all year
unburied kvetching
I just couldn't see myself going to yoga class today. This is sad and disappointing in and of itself, because I love it and need it and get so much out of it, but also because of this blog.
Because I have replaced psychotherapy with yoga, coffee dates, meditation, blogging, and the practice of gratitude, I was counting on this, my favorite Friday morning anusara class, to lead me to a place from which I could produce a positive blog post. It so often does.
I felt a pang of guilt today when, glancing at my most recent posts, I realized that I have essentially been blog-kvetching in a space called Unburied Treasure, where I have promised to share what is good. I am examining that emotion here today, since blogging requires less physical exertion than a yoga mat. Feel free to follow along.
This morning, I remembered my wise and loving friend, the late Todd Mucaro, who observed of a much younger me that I was a faux-extrovert, chatty, friendly, and entertaining, helping and sharing so much that you don't notice that I am keeping my true self completely private, hidden. Like many of Todd's insights, this comment startled and astonished me with its accuracy. I have done a lot of work since then, or rather, since dating my husband, Paul, to share more of what is genuinely going on within me.
It was Paul's turn to share a startling observation about me back in 1998, when he felt it was incumbent on him to admit that he had not yet fallen in love with me, and to ruminate aloud about why that was. I first considered whether or not it was masochistic for me to indulge him, but eventually agreed to listen.
Paul said he hadn't been able to fall in love with me because I wasn't vulnerable. I gave and gave, and yet I could not ask for help or admit that I needed any. He could not believe that a single mother and business owner, with no local family, could be as independent as I seemed, and he deduced that I was holding part of myself back. He also didn't feel needed, and in that sense, not all of his needs were being met.
This comment combined with the year old track still looping in my head - of my therapist telling me that I would be more likeable after my divorce because other people would no longer think my life was perfect. But whereas before I was able to blame other people for their failure to see me for who I truly was, here was someone with whom I considered myself intimately acquainted who still didn't know me. I had to struggle towards the realization that I must be putting on a facade for which I had failed to take responsibility.
I noticed that I was able to be quite vulnerable with those friends I didn't feel a need to impress, with whom I felt safe. That meant those people with whom there was no potential for a romantic liaison or commercial contract. When a person entered my life through the doors marked potential boyfriend, business associate and client, I thought I need to impress them, to BE more impressive than I really felt. Which is, at the end of the day, dishonest. And the person you want to be with at the end of the day is not one with whom you want to be dishonest. Which is why, even though I was and still am very good at impressing people when I choose to, a lot of my days were ending with me on the phone dishing to a good friend and a dish, or rather, container of ice cream in my lap.
So, by this reflection, I seem to have worked through the guilt about my kvetch-blogging. This is where I am today. I've got a case of New Years' blues. Lots to be happy about, but somehow I'm preocuupied with what can and "should" be better or different, and focused on what might go wrong. It's understandable, with both my sister and dear friend embroiled in the ugliness of divorce, involving real estate, children, unbelievable stress and heartache. It's understandable, with so many of us still unemployed, unable to purchase goods or services from one another, with dead trees all around us and news of dead birds faling mysteriously from the sky.
Even though I may want to practice gratitude and preach positivity, even though I momentarily delight in the good news that brims from my husband and children, and even though Isaac's joy while practicing Suzuki cello with me is indeed infectious, at least while they are at school, I am going to allow myself one more day of the blues. With no apologies.
Because I have replaced psychotherapy with yoga, coffee dates, meditation, blogging, and the practice of gratitude, I was counting on this, my favorite Friday morning anusara class, to lead me to a place from which I could produce a positive blog post. It so often does.
I felt a pang of guilt today when, glancing at my most recent posts, I realized that I have essentially been blog-kvetching in a space called Unburied Treasure, where I have promised to share what is good. I am examining that emotion here today, since blogging requires less physical exertion than a yoga mat. Feel free to follow along.
This morning, I remembered my wise and loving friend, the late Todd Mucaro, who observed of a much younger me that I was a faux-extrovert, chatty, friendly, and entertaining, helping and sharing so much that you don't notice that I am keeping my true self completely private, hidden. Like many of Todd's insights, this comment startled and astonished me with its accuracy. I have done a lot of work since then, or rather, since dating my husband, Paul, to share more of what is genuinely going on within me.
It was Paul's turn to share a startling observation about me back in 1998, when he felt it was incumbent on him to admit that he had not yet fallen in love with me, and to ruminate aloud about why that was. I first considered whether or not it was masochistic for me to indulge him, but eventually agreed to listen.
Paul said he hadn't been able to fall in love with me because I wasn't vulnerable. I gave and gave, and yet I could not ask for help or admit that I needed any. He could not believe that a single mother and business owner, with no local family, could be as independent as I seemed, and he deduced that I was holding part of myself back. He also didn't feel needed, and in that sense, not all of his needs were being met.
This comment combined with the year old track still looping in my head - of my therapist telling me that I would be more likeable after my divorce because other people would no longer think my life was perfect. But whereas before I was able to blame other people for their failure to see me for who I truly was, here was someone with whom I considered myself intimately acquainted who still didn't know me. I had to struggle towards the realization that I must be putting on a facade for which I had failed to take responsibility.
I noticed that I was able to be quite vulnerable with those friends I didn't feel a need to impress, with whom I felt safe. That meant those people with whom there was no potential for a romantic liaison or commercial contract. When a person entered my life through the doors marked potential boyfriend, business associate and client, I thought I need to impress them, to BE more impressive than I really felt. Which is, at the end of the day, dishonest. And the person you want to be with at the end of the day is not one with whom you want to be dishonest. Which is why, even though I was and still am very good at impressing people when I choose to, a lot of my days were ending with me on the phone dishing to a good friend and a dish, or rather, container of ice cream in my lap.
So, by this reflection, I seem to have worked through the guilt about my kvetch-blogging. This is where I am today. I've got a case of New Years' blues. Lots to be happy about, but somehow I'm preocuupied with what can and "should" be better or different, and focused on what might go wrong. It's understandable, with both my sister and dear friend embroiled in the ugliness of divorce, involving real estate, children, unbelievable stress and heartache. It's understandable, with so many of us still unemployed, unable to purchase goods or services from one another, with dead trees all around us and news of dead birds faling mysteriously from the sky.
Even though I may want to practice gratitude and preach positivity, even though I momentarily delight in the good news that brims from my husband and children, and even though Isaac's joy while practicing Suzuki cello with me is indeed infectious, at least while they are at school, I am going to allow myself one more day of the blues. With no apologies.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
getting sick was inevitable
I am a very high energy person.
So much so that when I don't "sparkle", people worry.
A friend saw me yesterday on the sidewalk outside the elementary school, where we congregate in the afternoon to pick up our kids. I'm sick but I don't have the sniffles, so I thought nobody could tell. But last night this friend told me she was worried because I didn't seem myself. I think she was relieved when I told her that I just don't feel well.
I'm sick because I skipped a night's sleep a few days ago - ok, it was a week ago. Drat. Every single time I miss a night's sleep, I get a sore throat and this one is a doozy - swollen glands, achy, low energy, ugh, I'll spare you the details. This has been true for my entire life: whether it's the last night of sleep away camp or interntaional travel, if I don't fit in more than 4 hours of sleep, I am doomed. Back in 1990, a psychic told me that my lifelong physical weakness is my throat and she was absolutely correct. It's too bad I didn't listen to her and postpone my wedding and give myself time to examine all the issues she acurately raised that evening. But I digress.
People say it was heroic of me, even saintly, I've heard, to drive my sister and her kids to Chicago (4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night) to catch a 7am flight when theirs was cancelled. They say this to console me, I suppose, as I suffer through this illness. But I don't think it was heroic, merely inconvenient. It was the only way to get them home. Besides, I did less than I had offered to do in the recent past, which was to drive to NYC and bring them home with me for a visit and then, drive them back again.
Two round trips to NYC, one alone, and one with two kids, is about 50 hours of driving, but I would have been willing to do it to get them to spend some time with us in our home. Chillaxin. Which we do here by sledding, ice skating and driving into Indiana for snow tubing, then returning home, making a fire, cooking quesadillas, putting mud masks on our faces, making artwork and inventing new smoothie recipes. All of which we did together for a few days last month, but miraculously, they were flying to see us - I merely had to drive to Dayton and back and then, as it turned out, to Chicago and back, to make it possible. It had been two whole years since the last time my kids' cousins were here, and so yes, I was THAT desperate to make it happen again.
It was really just the timing of the trip that was hard for me, and the ancillary fact that I was terrified that I might not survive the return trip, not having slept for about 24 hours. I don't like to drive at night under any conditions. I get scared. Alone in the dark, staring at the road, looking for lights, squinting at signs, worrying about avoiding concrete and metal barriers and speeding trucks, I am afraid of absolutely everything that could go wrong. I can't seem to maintain my speed. It's not fun. But with my sister sitting by my side, while her kids slept sweetly in the back seat, I was somehow distracted from my usual fears, perhaps buoyed by listening to her make calls to various attorneys and family members bragging of my generosity in rescuing her from being late delivering the kids to their father in the middle of divorce litigation. Yes, I knew I was saving the day, and what big sister can feel scared in the midst of that?
But the next morning, when it was time to rouse the kids and get them onto the hotel shuttle to O'Hare, when I'd just spent 4 hours lying in the dark, listening to them breathe, my mind racing, going over so many unhelpful things while preparing to drive back...that was awful. I cannot sleep under pressure, much less in a room full of people, all sharing a bed. But I left the hotel part of the equation to my sister so I could say goodbye to my family and get organized for the trip and she had booked the four of us into a single room with a king sized bed for the five hours between arriving in Chicago and driving to the airport. The room was equipped with a loud heater that every couple of minutes would blast an excess of hot air into the room and no longer had a dial to allow one to adjust the thermostat. The room was also located directly under the flight path of about 25 airplanes scheduled to take off between 1 am and 5 am that morning. Nightmare. By 4 am I realized that my sore throat had arrived. And I would have to drive back home to my kids, without having slept, and without my sister to navigate, distract, inspire or otherwise support me.
When I finally collapsed into my own bed at 11 that morning, I realized the sore throat was here to stay a while. We rented movies, I begged out of taking my boys for another round of skating or snow tubing, and a few days later, we all stayed in for New Years' Eve and watched Groundhog's Day on video. The next afternoon, I forced myself to change out of pajamas and drag out with my family to a wonderful "hair of the dog" party in Kentucky, then went back home and collapsed again. My dog seems to think I don't love her anymore. She's actually the first one to notice when my sparkle is missing. Now, it's eleven in the morning and I'm stuck in pajamas, blogging to avoid getting in the shower and forcing myself to enter the world. I'll be back on the sidewalk by the elementary school at three. When I start sparkling again, I'll let you know.
So much so that when I don't "sparkle", people worry.
A friend saw me yesterday on the sidewalk outside the elementary school, where we congregate in the afternoon to pick up our kids. I'm sick but I don't have the sniffles, so I thought nobody could tell. But last night this friend told me she was worried because I didn't seem myself. I think she was relieved when I told her that I just don't feel well.
I'm sick because I skipped a night's sleep a few days ago - ok, it was a week ago. Drat. Every single time I miss a night's sleep, I get a sore throat and this one is a doozy - swollen glands, achy, low energy, ugh, I'll spare you the details. This has been true for my entire life: whether it's the last night of sleep away camp or interntaional travel, if I don't fit in more than 4 hours of sleep, I am doomed. Back in 1990, a psychic told me that my lifelong physical weakness is my throat and she was absolutely correct. It's too bad I didn't listen to her and postpone my wedding and give myself time to examine all the issues she acurately raised that evening. But I digress.
People say it was heroic of me, even saintly, I've heard, to drive my sister and her kids to Chicago (4 1/2 hours in the middle of the night) to catch a 7am flight when theirs was cancelled. They say this to console me, I suppose, as I suffer through this illness. But I don't think it was heroic, merely inconvenient. It was the only way to get them home. Besides, I did less than I had offered to do in the recent past, which was to drive to NYC and bring them home with me for a visit and then, drive them back again.
Two round trips to NYC, one alone, and one with two kids, is about 50 hours of driving, but I would have been willing to do it to get them to spend some time with us in our home. Chillaxin. Which we do here by sledding, ice skating and driving into Indiana for snow tubing, then returning home, making a fire, cooking quesadillas, putting mud masks on our faces, making artwork and inventing new smoothie recipes. All of which we did together for a few days last month, but miraculously, they were flying to see us - I merely had to drive to Dayton and back and then, as it turned out, to Chicago and back, to make it possible. It had been two whole years since the last time my kids' cousins were here, and so yes, I was THAT desperate to make it happen again.
It was really just the timing of the trip that was hard for me, and the ancillary fact that I was terrified that I might not survive the return trip, not having slept for about 24 hours. I don't like to drive at night under any conditions. I get scared. Alone in the dark, staring at the road, looking for lights, squinting at signs, worrying about avoiding concrete and metal barriers and speeding trucks, I am afraid of absolutely everything that could go wrong. I can't seem to maintain my speed. It's not fun. But with my sister sitting by my side, while her kids slept sweetly in the back seat, I was somehow distracted from my usual fears, perhaps buoyed by listening to her make calls to various attorneys and family members bragging of my generosity in rescuing her from being late delivering the kids to their father in the middle of divorce litigation. Yes, I knew I was saving the day, and what big sister can feel scared in the midst of that?
But the next morning, when it was time to rouse the kids and get them onto the hotel shuttle to O'Hare, when I'd just spent 4 hours lying in the dark, listening to them breathe, my mind racing, going over so many unhelpful things while preparing to drive back...that was awful. I cannot sleep under pressure, much less in a room full of people, all sharing a bed. But I left the hotel part of the equation to my sister so I could say goodbye to my family and get organized for the trip and she had booked the four of us into a single room with a king sized bed for the five hours between arriving in Chicago and driving to the airport. The room was equipped with a loud heater that every couple of minutes would blast an excess of hot air into the room and no longer had a dial to allow one to adjust the thermostat. The room was also located directly under the flight path of about 25 airplanes scheduled to take off between 1 am and 5 am that morning. Nightmare. By 4 am I realized that my sore throat had arrived. And I would have to drive back home to my kids, without having slept, and without my sister to navigate, distract, inspire or otherwise support me.
When I finally collapsed into my own bed at 11 that morning, I realized the sore throat was here to stay a while. We rented movies, I begged out of taking my boys for another round of skating or snow tubing, and a few days later, we all stayed in for New Years' Eve and watched Groundhog's Day on video. The next afternoon, I forced myself to change out of pajamas and drag out with my family to a wonderful "hair of the dog" party in Kentucky, then went back home and collapsed again. My dog seems to think I don't love her anymore. She's actually the first one to notice when my sparkle is missing. Now, it's eleven in the morning and I'm stuck in pajamas, blogging to avoid getting in the shower and forcing myself to enter the world. I'll be back on the sidewalk by the elementary school at three. When I start sparkling again, I'll let you know.
Monday, January 3, 2011
why this was a rather long "break"
Even if you spend it in paradise, I think two weeks is a very long break to take from reality. Ideally, I would spend a two week vacation with a private jet and babysitter in tow, traveling almost effortlessly from one country to the next, joyfully balancing family time with couple time, exploring remote corners of the world so different from the one we call home. I'd just love to able to share the discovery of foreign peoples and environments with my children by day and then mix it up with the locals every evening with my husband. I'd bring along my violin, a favorite travel accessory, to help me connect with folks from other cultures through the universal language of music. We'd chat with strangers, dine and perhaps even dance under the stars, and sit side by side gazing at a vast body of water from a new vantage point.
But this was not at all what we did with the past two weeks of school vacation. I know your time is limited so I will only write about the first week, what we have been referring to, since we bought it in June, as "our family vacation". Paul could only afford to be away from work for a few days, and with my business lately having become all but extinct, and the future of Paul's job lately hanging in limbo, we were on a very limited budget. We decided to drive south, spend 4 nights at a beloved resort and drive home again. Before climbing into the driver's seat of our family minivan on December 18, Paul had worked almost 7 weeks straight, without enjoying more than a single day off at a time, even for Thanksgiving. He drove all day until 10 at night, listening with me to a book on tape while the kids negotiated the backseat dvd player, then stopped to sleep in a Hampton Inn in Georgia, and continued southbound on I75 early the next morning until we reached the Florida Turnpike, and eventually, Port St Lucie.
Our long journey ended with all 5 of us in high spirits as we pulled into the parking circle at our "happy place", Club Med Sandpiper. We had just 4 days to enjoy there, but we were ready to make every moment count. The weather was sunny and mild and the forecast for the next few days looked promising. The person checking us in paid me a high compliment - I was the nicest person who had checked in so far (this was the third day since the reopening) and the coolest mom. I was flattered, but thought it was so very easy to be nice and cool - like my three kids, I was just so happy to be out of the car and eager to be on vacation. We'd gotten a good deal on our package because the resort was reopeningafter 9 months of renovation. We had booked two unrenovated rooms ("ready for you in just a few hours!") hoping to avoid the chaos and surprise that seems to accompany all renovations, but unfortunately that was just what was in store for us anyway.
Today, Paul has been back at work for over a week, my sister and her kids have come and gone, but it's the kids first day back at school. No sooner did I return from dropping them off and walking the dog, but I am on the phone to the Club Med U.S. headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. The guest relations professional on the phone informs me that this week is dedicated to answering Sandpiper guest complaints with various offers of compensation.
"Very well," I said, "I will wait to hear from you later this week. I just wanted to make sure you got the letter I left when I checked out."
After resolving several times each day to maintain a positive attitude, soak up the sunshine, do yoga daily and focus on having fun, I surprised myself at the end of our stay by writing a letter containing 19 (multi part) items of complaint. I began the letter at 1 am on our last night at Club Med, after our room was assigned to another guest, who walked in with his luggage while we were putting our kids to bed. We worked through the mix-up, contacted the front desk and, after taking extra time tucking our boys in for the night, headed through "the village" to the nightclub for a cocktail and a bit of dancing (our nightly ritual both for blowing off steam and burning off the extra calories invariably absorbed from buffet-style dining). I was still planning to laugh off the entire series of unfortunate events that dotted our short vacation until we returned to our rooms at midnight only to discover that we were locked out - our key cards had been deactivated when the rooms were reassigned earlier in the evening!
For me, that was the last straw, the push I needed to start pen moving across page after page of paper. In the end, one hour each morning was not nearly enough yoga to shrug off all the incompetence and lack of consideration shown to us during the past four days. Instead of continuing to look on the bright side, or merely being thankful that our room was not flooded with sewage during our stay, or infested with roaches, as was the case for other guests, I snapped. This was a rare and hard earned vacation and it had now been all but ruined in a number of ways that I was finally prepared to sit down and count up.
Without torturing you nice, patient readers with excessive detail, the items of complaint included:
* a cleaning staff that evidently smoked in our rooms
* camp counselors who led kids to a soccer field, held roll call on the soccer field and then cancelled soccer, and led the kids back to an empty room for the next hour instead
* offering coloring book pages and crayons to 8 and 10 year olds as "today's art project"
* a front desk staff that refuses to change dollar coins for quarters to operate the unmarked but decidedly broken laundry machines (so that I lost an entire sunny morning to one load of laundry)
* a bar without any basic liquors (kahlua, amaretto, frangelico, bailey's, grand marnier) or the knowlege to operate the new pina colada machine
* a missing (favorite) archery range (oh well)
* construction folks wherever you look, including those working on a tantalizing pool and hot tub that would not be open until after our departure
* little bulldozers tamping down pieces of dead sod next to you while you "recreate"
* trucks that follow behind them, spraying the brown sod a bright shade of green
* painters slapping stinky black paint on a new fence beside your pool chaise
* opening the newly painted gate that evening and finding you hand covered with black paint
* being sent out as a family on a catamaran without being assessed as to our collective weight, so that we needed to be towed back in from the bay
This is just half the list, but you get the picture...and to think, I just wrote a song about dreaming of this vacation right before we went on it (see White Chanukah, below)!
I explained in my letter that Club Med Sandpiper has been our family's happy place for several years now - since our youngest kids were both in diapers - and we had been counting on it to continue to be that for many years. I asked Club Med that they induce us to return by comping us our next vacation, explaining that we would otherwise have to start searching for an alternative place to enjoy our few days of winter vacation together, if we are lucky enough to have one next year. I dearly hope that Paul is still employed next winter and that we can again get away for a little break from reality, but what marriage can afford a two day road trip with only chaos waiting at the end of the road? I don't want to push our luck.
But this was not at all what we did with the past two weeks of school vacation. I know your time is limited so I will only write about the first week, what we have been referring to, since we bought it in June, as "our family vacation". Paul could only afford to be away from work for a few days, and with my business lately having become all but extinct, and the future of Paul's job lately hanging in limbo, we were on a very limited budget. We decided to drive south, spend 4 nights at a beloved resort and drive home again. Before climbing into the driver's seat of our family minivan on December 18, Paul had worked almost 7 weeks straight, without enjoying more than a single day off at a time, even for Thanksgiving. He drove all day until 10 at night, listening with me to a book on tape while the kids negotiated the backseat dvd player, then stopped to sleep in a Hampton Inn in Georgia, and continued southbound on I75 early the next morning until we reached the Florida Turnpike, and eventually, Port St Lucie.
Our long journey ended with all 5 of us in high spirits as we pulled into the parking circle at our "happy place", Club Med Sandpiper. We had just 4 days to enjoy there, but we were ready to make every moment count. The weather was sunny and mild and the forecast for the next few days looked promising. The person checking us in paid me a high compliment - I was the nicest person who had checked in so far (this was the third day since the reopening) and the coolest mom. I was flattered, but thought it was so very easy to be nice and cool - like my three kids, I was just so happy to be out of the car and eager to be on vacation. We'd gotten a good deal on our package because the resort was reopeningafter 9 months of renovation. We had booked two unrenovated rooms ("ready for you in just a few hours!") hoping to avoid the chaos and surprise that seems to accompany all renovations, but unfortunately that was just what was in store for us anyway.
Today, Paul has been back at work for over a week, my sister and her kids have come and gone, but it's the kids first day back at school. No sooner did I return from dropping them off and walking the dog, but I am on the phone to the Club Med U.S. headquarters in Scottsdale, Arizona. The guest relations professional on the phone informs me that this week is dedicated to answering Sandpiper guest complaints with various offers of compensation.
"Very well," I said, "I will wait to hear from you later this week. I just wanted to make sure you got the letter I left when I checked out."
After resolving several times each day to maintain a positive attitude, soak up the sunshine, do yoga daily and focus on having fun, I surprised myself at the end of our stay by writing a letter containing 19 (multi part) items of complaint. I began the letter at 1 am on our last night at Club Med, after our room was assigned to another guest, who walked in with his luggage while we were putting our kids to bed. We worked through the mix-up, contacted the front desk and, after taking extra time tucking our boys in for the night, headed through "the village" to the nightclub for a cocktail and a bit of dancing (our nightly ritual both for blowing off steam and burning off the extra calories invariably absorbed from buffet-style dining). I was still planning to laugh off the entire series of unfortunate events that dotted our short vacation until we returned to our rooms at midnight only to discover that we were locked out - our key cards had been deactivated when the rooms were reassigned earlier in the evening!
For me, that was the last straw, the push I needed to start pen moving across page after page of paper. In the end, one hour each morning was not nearly enough yoga to shrug off all the incompetence and lack of consideration shown to us during the past four days. Instead of continuing to look on the bright side, or merely being thankful that our room was not flooded with sewage during our stay, or infested with roaches, as was the case for other guests, I snapped. This was a rare and hard earned vacation and it had now been all but ruined in a number of ways that I was finally prepared to sit down and count up.
Without torturing you nice, patient readers with excessive detail, the items of complaint included:
* a cleaning staff that evidently smoked in our rooms
* camp counselors who led kids to a soccer field, held roll call on the soccer field and then cancelled soccer, and led the kids back to an empty room for the next hour instead
* offering coloring book pages and crayons to 8 and 10 year olds as "today's art project"
* a front desk staff that refuses to change dollar coins for quarters to operate the unmarked but decidedly broken laundry machines (so that I lost an entire sunny morning to one load of laundry)
* a bar without any basic liquors (kahlua, amaretto, frangelico, bailey's, grand marnier) or the knowlege to operate the new pina colada machine
* a missing (favorite) archery range (oh well)
* construction folks wherever you look, including those working on a tantalizing pool and hot tub that would not be open until after our departure
* little bulldozers tamping down pieces of dead sod next to you while you "recreate"
* trucks that follow behind them, spraying the brown sod a bright shade of green
* painters slapping stinky black paint on a new fence beside your pool chaise
* opening the newly painted gate that evening and finding you hand covered with black paint
* being sent out as a family on a catamaran without being assessed as to our collective weight, so that we needed to be towed back in from the bay
This is just half the list, but you get the picture...and to think, I just wrote a song about dreaming of this vacation right before we went on it (see White Chanukah, below)!
I explained in my letter that Club Med Sandpiper has been our family's happy place for several years now - since our youngest kids were both in diapers - and we had been counting on it to continue to be that for many years. I asked Club Med that they induce us to return by comping us our next vacation, explaining that we would otherwise have to start searching for an alternative place to enjoy our few days of winter vacation together, if we are lucky enough to have one next year. I dearly hope that Paul is still employed next winter and that we can again get away for a little break from reality, but what marriage can afford a two day road trip with only chaos waiting at the end of the road? I don't want to push our luck.
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