It'll be a New Year

I had one of those innocuous conversations today. With someone I really like, someone I was happy to be talking to, someone I had not seen in awhile.

She asked how I am, how the family is, in a way that indicated she cared and wanted to hear. So I said it's been a hard time, the past 6 months since Lucas died, that we saw his family, that it was hard.

And she said, "it'll be a New Year". Meaning well, it's a nice thing to say.

I didn't say a lot of what's on my mind - how I don't want to go to Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur services, how in the New Year Lucas will still be dead, how the world will still be a place where a 4 year old boy can suddenly leave, where a family can be left with grief.

Yesterday, September 11, I did not think much about Lucas. I thought about all the people who died that day 10 years ago.

But today, September 12, I'm back to where I was. Not looking forward to a New Year, not knowing what it means to make a fresh start when a piece is, and will always be, missing.

And knowing that this is what people my age, which is not that old, and some younger, do all the time. That figuring out how to live with loss is basically figuring out how to live. I don't have it figured out yet.

Many years ago someone told me a year is important because after a year, you've gone through all the seasons. I have no doubt next high holidays will be easier. For now I'm dreading the thought of trying to be present as we read, "who shall live and who shall die". Alen's been listening to a Leonard Cohen version of it in the car - I don't know how. I changed the disc when it came on.

Painful Driving Questions

Tomorrow is six months since Lucas died. Last night, I looked at 192 photos of him that his aunt Lisa has on her facebook. The whole time feeling how I still can't comprehend this.

On the way home from work today, Sasha was with me thanks to strep throat. A coworker and friend was in the car with us. Sasha started talking about places he wants to go for his birthday and mentioned that Alen said we could go to Trinidad. I wonder if she did.

So I asked him why he wants to go to Trinidad and he said he wants to see Lucas's toys, and that he wants to see Lucas. So I said you know if we go there, we won't see Lucas, he's dead. Then Sasha started asking about if he was buried. Then he asked if he was in one of those things Dracula goes in (because we have a book with a picture of a vampire in a coffin, and it's the only picture of a coffin Sasha has ever seen). So I tried to explain what cremation is, in Hebrew, and that when someone is cremated there are ashes, but Sasha didn't really know what ashes are. Then Sasha said it was too bad because he wanted to see Lucas, and I explained that we can't see people who are dead and that Lucas's body isn't here anymore and we can't see his spirit.

My friend didn't say anything.

Later in the ride I told Sasha I wanted to tell him something about my friend's father (that he produces musicals) and Sasha said, "what, is he dead?"

Then we talked about being grandparents, and people dying when they are grandparents or great grandparents.

The way it is supposed to be.

And I have a whole new pile of students, wonderful students, who don't know, who didn't hear, and still friends who for one reason or another we have not told, and time goes on. And I still feel that I have no idea what I believe anymore, that the G-d I believed in before this happened was more like Santa Claus, that I have no idea who the G-d is that I believe in anymore, and that the abyss remains very close. That am dreading the long prayers of the high holidays and the unetaneh tokef. And that my heart is with our family in Trinidad.

The 17th of Tammuz - Repairing the Breach

I've made some progress looking for Uncle Jack. It's not very pretty and somewhat chilling.

I was never able to learn Uncle Jack's real story. Grandma said he "fell in with a bad lot." I think my father told me Jack's father wanted nothing to do with him but that Aunt Lil kept in touch with him in the 1930s.

Uncle Jack was arrested in Boston when he was young. Drove a car in a robbery, which he claimed he was not connected with.

In 1930, he was living with a wife and stepson in NY.

I found the stepson who died in 2005. His widow spoke to someone who is helping me, and said that he grew up in an orphanage and then on the streets before he joined the Navy.

This stepson had a son, who is not mentioned in his obituary.

That's three generations - father estranged from son, stepfather estranged from stepson, father estranged from son.

In a letter to the stepson's widow I wrote:
I think that, if my great-grandfather Mandel had everything to live over, he would have tried to find a way to reconcile with his son, and that in some way I am carrying the desire to make some healing of this breach.

Today, the 17th of Tammuz commemorates the day the Romans breached the walls of Jerusalem. Only today I realized that when we gave Sasha the middle name Yakov, we were also naming him after Uncle Jack (Jacob) Pezrow/Pesarevsky.

Jackson Browne - the best!

I got up this morning and was thinking of this Jackson Browne song. Thank G-d for Google - otherwise I would have had to remember the words myself!

It's a little maudlin, but if you know the music, you might like it. And this youtube is awesome!


Your Bright Baby Blues by Jackson Browne

I'm sittin' down by the highway
Down by that highway side
Everybody's goin' somewhere
Ridin' just as fast as they could ride

I guess they got a lot to do
Before they can rest assured
Their lives are justified
Pray to God for me, babe, he can let me slide

Well, I've been up and down this highway
Far as my eyes can see
No matter how fast I run
I can never seem to get away from me

No matter where I am
I can't help thinkin', I'm just a day away
Where I wanna be
Now I'm runnin' home, baby
Like a river to the sea

Baby, if you could see me
Out across this wilderness
There's just one thing
I was hopin' you might guess

Baby, you can free me
All in the power of your sweet tenderness
Yeah, yeah

I can see it in your eyes
You've got those bright baby blues
You don't see what you've got to gain
But you don't like to lose

You watch yourself from the sidelines
Like your life is a game
You don't mind playin', to keep yourself amused
I don't mean to be cruel, babe
But you're lookin', confused

Baby if you can hear me
Turn down your radio
There's just one thing
I want you to know

When you've been near me
I've felt the love
Stirrin' in my soul, yeah, yeah, yes I have

It's so hard to come by
That feeling of peace
This friend of mine said
"Close your eyes
And try a few of these"

I thought I flyin' like a bird
So far above my sorrow
But when I looked down
I was standin' on my knees

Now I need
Someone to help me
Someone to help me, please

Baby, if you need me
Like I know I need you
There's just one thing
I'll ask you to do

Take my hand and lead me
To the hole in your garden wall
And pull me through, pull me through

Fruit upside down cake

So I think the thing to do with too soft or too sour fruit like plums these days is to make an upside down cake. I've been experimenting with this.

I've been using a glass pie dish, which is probably a mistake. I think it covers too much area, so the cake is not deep enough. OTOH, it's a nice shape. Maybe an 8" round cake pan would be better.

Cover the bottom with whatever fruit you want. If the fruit is sour, sprinkle it with sugar and also cinnamon if you want.

Make the cake - today I used
1 and 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
sift together

mix separately
2 eggs
1/2 cup melted butter or oil
1/2 cup milk (use juice if you want)

Add wet to dry and mix. Spread on the fruit. Cook at 400 for 25 minutes until cake is done.

Alen said this was not as good as last time, when I made it with butter. This week I used oil. But I think last week I used a different cake batter like this:

3 eggs
1/2 cup melted butter or oil
no milk

2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

And baked at 350 for more time - about 40-45 minutes.

If you try either way, let me know how it turns out.

Brains and all that

So Gabi has been accepted to a gifted program that will take her out of school once a week - supposedly they chose the top 2% of students, which includes 3 kids from her 2nd grade class and we saw 2 others there from other 2nd grades. She proudly wore a "geek chick" T-shirt she had received as a birthday present to the introductory event.

To say I have mixed feelings about this is an understatement. Gabi is about 6 months older than I was when I was put ahead from 2nd grade into 3rd grade, also presumably because people thought I was smart. Already a late birthday December child, that placed me 18 months behind many of my classmates in age and maturity. Smart, however, they define it, does not mean socially able or able to cope with such a gap.

It also seems to me that many people I know who have not been defined as gifted have much cleaner houses than I do. In my imagination, they do not wake up in the morning thinking "how will I possibly cope with this day", nor do they scream at their children. In short, whatever intelligence I have has not necessarily served me so well. As my sister's best friend's mother said when she was in high school, "Judy may be book smart, but she lacks common sense." (Sorry Judy - she said it about you but I'm quoting it here about me.)

At some point, after I graduated college, my mother told me something that rocked my world. She said something like this, "It really doesn't matter how smart you are, it's how hard you work and apply yourself that makes a difference in life." You're kidding???? Why didn't anyone tell me this when I was a kid?

My friend Doug in college liked to say, "We are the uniquely gifted of our generation." Maybe he didn't like to say it, but he wrote it to me once. Another piece of information that even if true has not done me much good - it seems to me many people of my generation have done much more than I have - of course spending my college years and much of my 20s wasted probably didn't help my lifetime productivity.

So I'm not going to deny Gabi the opportunity to participate in this program, but if anything I feel like it is sealing her doom - she will be doomed to a cluttered home filled with books, where instead of putting away laundry, washing dishes and making kids lunches, she'll spend her time like me writing blog posts and wondering what being gifted means anyway. And then wondering why her house isn't cleaner. Duh.

Totally worthwhile dessert

My friends are going to say this has way too much sugar - adjust as you wish.

We have a big plum tree in our yard with these tiny plums. This is the first year I made something with them - it's called Plum Pudding Cake from the Betty Crocker cookbook.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F/170 C

1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar (she said 3/4 cup)
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
Mix these
Add
3 tablespoons oil
1/2 cup milk or water
Mix
Put in a square pan - she says ungreased but I'm thinking greased might have worked better
On the top put
2 cups sliced plums

Mix one packed cup brown sugar (I only had demerara but brown would be better)
with one teaspoon cinamon
spread this over the plums
Now pour 1 cup boiling water on top

Bake for 60-70 minutes until the cake part is done.

Sounds weird, but it's delicious. I'll let you see yourself how it turns out.