I was a guest on Sarah and Meghan’s podcast last week and the most important topic I covered was that I lost 35 pounds. Check out that picture of the new, svelte me at parent’s weekend. (The semi-pained look on my face is becase I was promising I’ll separate my son’s PayPal from my bank account even though I have no plan for how.) Read more
I really want to call my friend Minami even though its the middle of the night. I want to wake her up to ask if this picture is a good one to post here. I want to ask her if the frame on the picture is too thick. I want to ask if the blue on the coat is too thin.
But I promised myself I’d post tonight and I’m not going to wake her up, so here’s my newest flipbook.
I’m trying to get better at finishing projects; I notice that often, when I’m very close to finishing something I get scared that it’s bad and I leave the last 3% unfinished so I never have to find out for sure.
I might have become a hoarder of unfinished projects. You know what those homes look like on the TV show Hoarders? That’s what the inside of my head looks like.
And you know how on Hoarders the person works all day to get one little bunch of stuff packaged to go? And they’re so proud? That’s me. Giving this package to you.
I coach a recovering alcoholic and she tells me about the power and confidence she felt when she was drinking and how much she misses that. I wonder about my own power and confidence. I thought it would come back when the kids left for school. Read more
I’ve been on Instagram posting my drawings and stories. But that lasted about a month before my kids asked me to remove posts they didn’t want their friends to see.
Then they reconsidered: “You know what? Just delete the whole account.”
So I guess anything goes if I’m posting on a blog, because my kids see blogging as irrelevant: like VHS but for writing. Instagram though, that’s the center of their universe.
So I deleted my Instagram account, and I turned my most recent Instagram story stuff into a flip book. Surely my kids will think flip books are as dumb as blogs, so I’ll be ok.
Here it is. I hope you like it.
I was at the World Trade Center when it fell. I write about it every year on 9/11.
When I’ve kept a gratitude journal I’ve always had in the back of my head: this is not good, I need to add all my not-gratitude. But I have been able to see that the exercise of being grateful in one area of my life makes me more grateful in other areas.
So I decided to thank people I’ve had in my mind for a long time but never really thanked. One of those people was A., the woman I was working with on 9/11. Read more
Two months before the last day of my last kid at home, I stopped being able to write. For me, nothing feels like it really happened unless I write it down. So I thought: this must be documented. It’s the biggest moment of our life. Or his life. Or something. At least draw a picture.
I don’t always think in pictures, but I’ve been tutoring this girl who always thinks in pictures. I’m giving the girl confidence to say, “I’m a visual learner,” and she’s giving me the confidence to say, “I’m a writer who is drawing right now.”
People always say that kids grow up so fast. I think it’s because we are more likely to remember the special events than the things we did day in and day out. I’ve heard time starts going even faster as we age. It’s hard to imagine, but in that case, if I want to get something done in my life I need to do it urgently.
I’m also starting to think about accomplishments. I’ve had three startups exit. Brazen.com was acquired by Radancy. I didn’t make money. I sold my stock early to buy Z a cello. Someday I’ll write the story about how before I sold the stock, I did what I thought was my only other option: I accidentally stole a cello.
I am not even sure what all my accomplishments add up to. I think they are the result of me trying lots of things that add up to nothing. I think what really feels like an accomplishment is when I try something new and actually put out something. Showing people what I tried.
Here is my journal of the last two months before I took Z to college. I don’t know what my empty-nest life will be, but I hope I am still brave enough to invest a lot of time into things that don’t work.
While lurking in a Duke University discussion group I read that freshmen who have the most trouble adjusting are those who are delusional about being pre-med and those who never learned to write. The homeschooler in me finds a second wind: I tell Z we’re writing a paper every day until I drop him off at Duke. Read more
I’ve developed a survey to give to people who slipped me into their not-friend category. Since I’m a person with no ability to cope with nuance, answers to all questions are yes/no.
1. Were you ever my real friend? I want to know if you needed me like I needed you, but I don’t want to ask in person because it’s pathetic to have an uneven relationship. So please write yes or no so I can tell if the whole thing was doomed from the start.
Faith Ringgold, Tar Beach, detail
I’m meditating now because it slows down time and I only have 14 more weeks until both my kids are at college. When Z is reading on the couch, and Nino is reading next to him, I pull up a chair and meditate with my eyes open because I don’t want to miss this moment. Read more
In the last 48 hours many of Y’s friends have been arrested for being part of an anti-war encampment at their college. I am shocked by the large number of college encampments across the US, but I knew this was coming because Y (who goes by they) has been discussing it for months.
We are Jewish, and like many Jewish families, our sense of activism is strong. But it wasn’t as easy for me to get my head around the pro-Palestinian rallies 0ver last six months.
My extended family has a wide range of views on the topic — there are Zionists on one end and Y on the other. I am somewhere in the middle, which is to say I think the Israel-Hamas conflict has become horrifying and I have no idea how to fix it. This disappoints Y because the ethical discussion is so clear to them.
Before Y was born, Nino and I opened our home to a Palestinian kid who was 16 years old in NYC with nowhere to go.
His name was Tariq. It was just after 9/11 and Nino was working full time to help illegally detained people from the Middle East. Tariq’s dad was detained and Tariq had no relatives in the US.
Tariq’s dad was in the US raising money for Palestinians. I wasn’t sure what I thought about that cause, but I knew it was wrong to have the dad imprisoned for 9/11, and I knew Tariq needed a place to live until he could get back home.
Tariq had no life skills. He had spent his entire life fighting for his homeland. He learned everything about the fight from his dad, but no one taught Tariq how to make himself breakfast. We thought maybe it was that our food was unfamiliar, but actually, he had never used a stove.
He was on high alert at all times. Totally traumatized. We tried our best to support him, but we really had no idea how to cope with the level of trauma he had. Finally, someone took him back to his family in Gaza.
Periodically Nino would try to figure out where Tariq and his dad were. How they were doing. But it’s not like you can stalk them on Facebook.
Now, 25 years later, I still see no grand solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I am sure there’s another generation of Palestinian kids never learning to cook or shop for food, because their childhood will be consumed by fighting and recovering from fighting and fearing the start of more fighting.
This is why I can support Y in their endeavors to stop the war in Gaza. Because we didn’t know if Tariq’s family was on the right or the wrong side but we knew he was a kid who needed help. And I see Y looking at the human destruction and I am not surprised by their reaction.
What did surprise me is that while Y protested their school’s financial support to Israel, Y’s Jewish identity grew.
Y’s school organizers have been careful all along to show that Jewish kids were organizing; that a person can love being Jewish and hate the war in Gaza. So when Passover came around, the kids had a seder in the encampment. Y had never gone to seder at school, so this is their first student-led seder. They said they’ve never been more proud to be Jewish. They were happy to know all the prayers and all the songs. They were happy that non-Jews participated as well. This is from the kid who announced God is not real during their bar mitzvah.
At the seder each kid had written the phone number of a lawyer on their arm in case they got arrested. But the intent was to be peaceful, so arrests were unlikely. That is, until a pro-Israel student shouted “kill the Jews” and then the state police arrested everyone because the protests had become anti-semetic. This speaks to tension on campus, for sure. But also it speaks to how savvy today’s kids are about protesting.
Anyway, the kids got out of jail fast enough to get back to campus the same day. They reorganized right away, including rotating shifts to study for finals. I love that what my kid is learning in college is how to protect free speech, how to stand up for what matters, and how to shape their own identity.
That night the group planned a Havdalah service at the encampment spot. I don’t know if Y has ever even done Havdalah. But now Y talks about it like it’s an essential part of the Jewish week: I’m kvelling.