WHEN YOU'RE A JET

It took the better part of one entire year, but I finally prevailed.

After refusing to veer from his steady habit of anime and Cartoon Network, Little Babe grudgingly allowed me to cajole him into watching West Side Story.

The Sunday night screening was one of the most magical moments of my recent life.

Following a relentlessly social Shabbat at the Love Shack and a trip out to Long Island to visit MOBB and FOBB (mother of Bungalow Babe; father of Bungalow Babe) in Great Neck and friends in Long Beach, Little Babe and I returned to Monroe, New York just as the sun was setting on Sunday evening.

Driving west on Route 17, a mysterious fog settled around us like a great big benevolent quilt. What I really longed to do at that hour was to dive onto my bed to read Mary Gordon's stories but somehow, as if by magnetic force, I found myself drawn into the new Target in the pre-fab new shopping development known as Harriman Commons.

The impetus for this detour was to pick up a few packs of the popular undershirt known as a wife-beater for Big Babe who has developed a sudden dependency upon them. Those of you who frequent Target are probably well-acquainted with the syndrome of check-out shock, which is the phenomenon of being utterly astonished at the check-out counter by the sheer quantity of (non-essential) items you have just purchased.

However, tucked into the trademark red and white bag were three magnificent metziahs (steals) that made the excursion entirely worthwhile: the musicals Hair, Fame and West Side Story on DVD, each for $9.99.

Oh, snap!

Upon returning to the horrifically messy Love Shack -- abandoned hastily earlier that same day in a mad effort to get HOBB (husband of Bungalow Babe) to La Guardia on time for his flight to Boston -- Little Babe and I collapsed onto the master bed, eyes trained upon my computer screen, which was balanced on the makeshift table that forms my desk. Between us rested Alfie the Pomeranian, blissfully squashed between our sandy, beach-burnt bodies.

The DVD player whirred inside my computer. The window for the DVD player popped up. I pressed play. The computer screen went black. That famous West Side Story whistle sounded, hovering in the silent air, and then the thrilling overture began, a skycam panning New York City, causing Little Babe to cry out in recognition -- "Columbia University!" "The Empire State Building!" "The East River!!" -- until the lens honed in upon a playground on the West Side.

In the quiet of the country, Leonard Bernstein's energetic music sounded overly loud and I kept compulsively fiddling with the volume button, afraid of waking the entire bungalow colony. Lying on our stomachs, facing the computer, chins resting on fluffy pillows, a soft breeze wafting through our curtains and brushing our pajamas, I kept stealing glances at Little Babe, monitoring his reaction.

Some adults take their kids to Disney World to show them the time of their lives.

For me, Disney World is eclipsed many times over by the wondrous world that Bernstein, Robbins, Laurents and Wise created in this film: the urban battleground of the Sharks and the Jets, the Eden of Tony and Maria, the sisterhood of Anita and Maria, the safe haven of Doc's Candy Store, the frilly retreat of the bridal shop, the shadows in the schoolyards and playgrounds (haunted by Anybody's), the alleys and streets, nooks and crannies of New York's dirty, down-at-the-heels West Side in the very era I was born.

The epic relationships of West Side Story have been with me my entire life: Tony and Riff; Anita and Bernardo; Riff and Bernardo; Tony and Maria; Anita and Maria; Maria and Chino. And the characters are hard-wired into my memory: Officer Krupke; Doc; Ice; A-Rab; Baby John; Velma; Graziela; Consuela; Lieutenant Schrank; Action and mah gurl Anybody's, the ultimate celluloid tomboy.

After four decades of watching this film, the characters of West Side Story have become mishpocha. Their story, oft-told, is family lore, a primer for life, a template for every situation one is likely to encounter -- love, longing, hatred, disappointment, betrayal, exhiliration, adversity, loss.

And rumbles. Especially rumbles.

To see West Side Story is to take a crash course in life-preparedness.

The first time I saw West Side Story was in 1972, watching it from the high-rise bed next to my cousin Rena in the basement of her house in New Hyde Park. The film was on TV, a Sunday night special, perhaps Channel 9's Million Dollar Movie. From the very beginning of the film, I was breathless with the thrill of discovery; I felt like the Vasco da Gama of Queens. Here was entirely new territory! Never before had I seen a musical like this, filled with characters I instantly loved... and wanted to be.

Watching the film unfold, I recognized myself in Riff, in Action and in Anybody's. With each viewing -- sometimes even between each viewing -- I wrote myself into the script. Little did I know that ten years later, their West Side setting would become my own neighborhood.

As I got older, I even tried on the persona of Anita -- sexy, savvy, hot-blooded, Spanish like me, though it would be many years before I learned the truth about my own Sephardic origins.

How bold the film was, confronting the tribal animosities of urban life! Yes, we all knew it was a modern-day adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, but it wasn't until I actually saw Romeo and Juliet performed that I realized how faithful the adaptation was.

And it wasn't until I was older that I realized how daring the film was, allowing good-girl Maria a night of sex with Tony. The scene of Anita coming upon an obviously post-coital, half-clad Maria in the room with the rumpled bedsheets, Tony escaping through the alleys was an important milestone in my moral development.

Don't listen to your parents...people in love can and do have sex, it informed me... even if they are not married! Good girls like Maria and good boys like Tony. People like Judy and Bob, my birthparents, a college and a medical student, in love, unmarried, utterly unknown to me at that time in my life.

Thirty-five years ago, I watched, miffed, as the final, melodramatic scene unfolded and Maria cradled a dying Tony. Naturally, my girly-girl cousin wept and naturally, I laughed at the corniness of it all, tomboy that I was. I remember rolling my eyes at that excess of emotion while my cousin shouted at me through her tears that I was ruining the ending for her. But the ending had been ruined for me by the director.

Until that final scene, everything had been great and irreverent and suddenly, there were violins and ashen-faced gang members and everyone was acting serious and grown-up and like they didn't hate each other anymore. Eeeeuuuuwww!

Outraged though I was, I ultimately forgave the filmmakers, pragmatically deciding that they needed to turn the movie into a tearjerker...this was Hollywood, after all.

I have no idea how many times I've watched West Side Story, seeing it anew through the eyes of each of my children, finding it ever more brilliant with each viewing.

So, what novel observations did Sunday night's viewing bring?

Well, for one thing, the choreography nearly made me swoon. It is utterly sublime, sophisticated and greatly varied -- ballet to mambo to jazz to modern and back again. I saw Little Babe's mouth open during each dance number, suffused with wonder that "boys" could dance so well.

This Sunday's viewing also activated my gaydar. Maybe it is due to the dancing, but at this recent viewing, most of the Sharks and Jets struck me as gay. Especially the Sharks. Check out their tight little butts and high-waisted pants. (The lipsticked pouty mouths don't help matters.) Still, the gayest guy of West Side Story has got to be Tony. When he attempts to look love-besotted, he merely manages a constipated grimace. The way he holds Maria is distant and awkward. It is far more natural to imagine him, say, making out with Bernardo.

Gratuitous musings about the the actors' sexual orientation aside, what my latest encounter with West Side Story gave me was the sheer joy of sharing it with Little Babe --wondering how it looks to him now that he is the very age I was when it entered my life in a very different world, a world before the Intifada and 9/11 and videotaped decapitations and American students going on murderous rampages and flaming jeeps being driven into airports. I wonder how Little Babe's mind will preserve the memory of the first time he viewed the Jets and Sharks rumbling in urban playgrounds and alleyways, an Upper West Side child on the cusp of adolescence, camping out in the country in the summer before his Bar Mitzvah.

COFFEE AND TERRORISM. Part Deux.

God is taunting me. He/She obviously read my previous posting and thought to Him/Herself:

So, you like to racially profile perfect strangers? Two can play the game!!!

Evidently, the game has begun. This morning, when I popped into my local Dunkin Donuts, I nearly dropped my small cappuccino with an extra-shot when Verena, the Eastern European clerk from last summer, emerged from the back of the store wearing a Muslim headcovering and a long sleeve black leotard beneath her Dunkin Donuts shirt.

The veil was pinned beneath her chin and her face was utterly free of make-up. She kept her eyes downward, looking up only briefly to take orders. Last summer, she smiled at customers and wore her mousy-brown hair free and uncovered.

Now, of course, I am consumed with wondering whether Verena and the sleazeball from last week are related. Now, of course, my paranoia level has gone up to Level Red.

And it didn't help that five seconds later, I was trotting on the treadmill at Straub's Fitness three stores down, listening to Michael Chertoff talk about the hunch he has that a large-scale terrorist plot might be hatching for a city such as New York. Possibly this summer.

No specific information about a threat, just the hunch from the director of Homeland Security.

Of course, this could be a ploy from the Bushies to get everyone all paranoid and nervous and deflect from the fact that the troop surge in Iraq is a huge failure and the frikkin war in Iraq is a huge failure and the Iraq government is a huge failure and every frikkin thing that has happened over on Bush's watch has been a huge failure.

It's hard to figure out where to focus my paranoia.

COFFEE AND TERRORISM

Three Tuesdays ago, I gave up coffee. Not forever...that would only make me rebel against myself. For now. For a day, or a week or a month or however long it would take to get me away from the Give-me-coffee-or-give-me-death relationship I was having with my body.

I'll admit it. The prime reason I went off the stuff is so that my metabolism can kick in to maximum effect. I know that a number of the diet mavens have skirted the issue of caffeine, timidly suggesting that their adherents would be best served by keeping caffeine to a minumum because to boldly state that coffee is utterly off-limits to people already deprived of normal food would make them homicidal. But I know the truth and the truth is that when people stop guzzling coffee, they lose weight.

Anyway, I don't think it is coffee or tea per se, but simply the way Americans consume everything in excess. Several Venti-sized hits of java will absolutely mess up your body's chemistry. And by Americans I mean myself. If I could only be like a European in my coffee consumption, I'd be effortlessly thin.

So, three Tuesdays ago I gave up coffee and yes, have been drinking green tea like it has the secret of eternal youth, which it may well have. But I felt like a taste of coffee last Thursday. And I didn't want to get into an arm wrestle with my yetzer hara (evil inclination). So I drove to the Dunkin Donuts next to Master Sang's Tae Kwon Do place, where Little Babe takes classes.

First, however, I popped into Master Sang's to explain that Little Babe was absent this week because of the hairline fracture on his big toe, which he got from sprinting around the exercise room after class the previous week. Master Sang bowed in greeting and looked truly contrite to hear of Little Babe's injury. This brought out my most nurturing Bungalow Babe instincts. Of course, it didn't hurt that Master Sang is the hottest Asian man in the world. And that there is the word "Master" at the beginning of his name, which is kind of fun to say and even more fun to think about...

...but where was I???

Oh, yes, so after leaving Master Sang, I trotted into Dunkin Donuts and guiltily placed an order for a small cappuccino with an extra shot. If I was going to backslide, I was going to do it in style. Not extra-large, but extra strong.

Because they were cleaning the machine, it would be a bit of a wait, I was told. How long, I asked, suspiciously. Oh, about 3-4 minutes. I rolled my eyes discreetly and smiled my amenability.

The 3-4 minutes I waited at the side of the Dunkin Donuts counter gave me just enough time to hear the customer to my right giving a hard-sell to the clerk about some new enterprise that would net him "eighty thousand dollar" the first year, probably double or triple that the next. With his Walmart-issue clothes, close-cropped hair and unsavory complexion, the man was hardly the picture of financial success. Everything about him screamed sleazeball. His accent caught in my ear and perplexed me. It sounded at first Eastern European, then Hispanic, then Balkan...and finally I placed it as Arabic.

Which made me pay infinitely closer attention to the man...and conclude that he was Muslim.

There are loads of Satmar Hasidim and townies and mainstream goyish types and a proud showing of Conservative and Reform Jews but I had never seen an Arab/Muslim in Monroe before. Yes, he could have been Christian or Druze or escaped Bedouin, but in the script that was unfolding in my mind he was absolutely Muslim.

Whatever he was, the guy was a no-goodnik. This much was obvious. To his credit, the young Mexican dude at the counter yeah-yeahed him good-naturedly while his made his oily sales pitch. The coffee was brought. Change was given. And then he sauntered out of Dunkin Donuts, across the parking lot and towards a....JEEP CHEROKEE?????

My heart started hammering like mad. OMG!! Was this Jeep about to be plowed into the Dunkin Donuts??? Or driven north along 87 towards Stewart Airport? Or taken south along 87 to La Guardia??

I admit that I got close enough to the window to see the license plates of the Jeep and memorized them. I was too embarrassed to write them down. But I have them in my mind in case I can help a future police investigation.

Am I insane? Paranoid? Racist? Retarded?

And I'll admit something more. I intend to stalk the Dunkin Donuts next to Master Sang's, on the lookout for this guy...or others like him.

And keep my eyes peeled for Jeep Cherokees driving along Rt 17.

As for my resolve...let it be said that after three or four sips of the cappuccino, I tossed the entire thing away. However, I would be lying if I didn't admit that I drank a delicious Lavazza cappucinno at the rest stop along 87 while driving out to the Hamptons on Friday and had several gulps of Gevalia coffee at the 1880 house on Saturday morning and had a triple-shot cap at the Organic cafe on Sunday morning, right off of Main Street in Westhampton.

If we are under imminent terrorist threat, then it's kind of pointless to give up coffee, right?

FIRST DO NO HARM

What does it mean, the television anchor asked the expert, that the terrorist masterminds in the UK car bombing plot are doctors?

What does it mean, she persisted, horror mixed with incredulity, that these are educated people?

The expert paused and collected his thoughts. And then offered an answer that sounded more like a kid bulls%^&ing his way through a test he failed to study for: that people with a propensity towards science are more easily swayed by extremist ideology.

As Scotland Yard chases down clues and suspects with stunning speed, this rapidly-unfolding international drama has all the ingredients of a major blockbuster film.

Including the plot twist of seemingly harmless doctors revealed to be murderers.

Like the Nazi doctors.

But this century's Nazi ideology is not contained to one continent...or one people. It is hopscotching around the world.

And the film would be thrilling were it not the unfolding of our new reality, minute by terrifying minute.

LONDONISTAN

At one minute to six this morning, I was jolted awake by an urgent feeling; there was something I needed to do.

Stumbling over the boxes of my office -- still unpacked after four days in the bungalow -- I staggered to the bathroom, passing Little Babe asleep on the living room/kitchen couch/high-riser.

More boxes of my office stuff stood like a mini Manhattan in the middle of the living room/kitchen. Outside the bungalow, the sky was an inviting pale blue and birds were singing prettily, Snow White-style.

Once I arrived in our crazy day-glo bathroom (the tiles are accidentally retro...installed in the seventies or eighties, before they were cool, which they most certainly are now) it dawned on me that there was nothing more urgent for me to do than get to the gym before my work day began.

Blame it on carbs, hormones, age or my exercise-lite regimen of this past year, but my Bungalow Bod isn't looking quite summer-ready. Though HOBB and the Babes protest to the contrary, I feel like a huge container of cottage cheese when I put on my Isaac Mizrahi bikinis (Target, of course) from bungalow summers past.

To counteract the lumpy look, I have undertaken four draconian measures until I see some improvement:

1. No coffee (I was seriously, impossibly addicted, downing several cups a day of Zabar's, Starbucks and/or Oren's Beowulf blend, with generous amounts of half and half)
2. Daily visits to the gym
3. No to Cheetos and potato chips and other carby foodstuffs
4. Yes to the Fat Flush Plan, or at least a liberal version of it (visit www.annlouise.com)

So, within half an hour of waking up -- and two massive cups of green tea later -- I arrived at Straub's Fitness Center in Monroe. Claiming my fave treadmill -- the one with a good view of four television sets -- I plugged in my headphones, pressed Quick Start and was on my way to svelteness.

The danglings television sets had all been set to news stations and I had before me ABC, FoxNews, CNN and CBS. The story about the defused car bomb in London's theatre district dominated each network. For the 45 minutes I trod, I heard the story over and over again, listened to snippets of press conferences from London, saw diagrams of the location of the parked and smoking car, heard from the man whose car was parked next to the failed car bomb, listened to pundits and anchors and reporters alike, viewed the area -- Haymarket -- from a multitude of London security cams, got various updates on the situation, heard about the heroism of the bomb squad that disabled the device, packed, incidentally, with nails, learned of the potential catastrophe that had been narrowly, perhaps even accidentally, averted.

And learned a roster of new names in the news: Gordon Brown, the newly appointed PM whose name I kept forgetting; Peter Clarke, the chief of anti-terrorism for the British police; Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, a former head of MI5.

And tried to squelch my frustration hearing CNN's Christiane Amanpour skirt the issue of Islamic fundamentalism, reminding viewers that most Muslims in Great Britain are peaceful, linking the radicalism to the war in Iraq and the fact that Muslims do not enjoy the same standard of living in the UK (and France) as they do in America.

Just one teensy-weensy step further and terrorism becomes a sociologically and morally justified act.

Kind of like when it happens in Israel.

Naturally, the pundits and talking heads on TV hearkened back to the attacks of July 7, 2005 or 7/7, as we are almost at that ignoble second year anniversary.

It is a day that I will never forget because of the irony of where I was when the attacks unfolded.

On July 7th, 2005 I was hiking with my family in the lush Galilee, enjoying the second part of my Israeli nephew Alon's bar mitzvah. We were staying at a beautiful kibbutz right outside of Kiryat Shmona and had gotten up early to hike through Ein Tina, a river trail. The day was spectacular: sunny and clear with a sweet breeze. Camp groups gathered in the shade, applying sunscreen and checking their water supplies.

About three minutes into our hike, Little Babe slipped on rocks in the riverbed and fell, cutting his leg open in a gaping wound. A female medic nearby took one look at our sobbing son and proclaimed, "tefarim" -- stitches. Five minutes later we were on our way to a Magen David clinic in Kiryat Shmona.

After the doctor had stitched up a brave Little Babe who was now buoyed by the impending celebrity he would enjoy among his cousins on account of his five stitches, HOBB and I, who were limp with post-traumatic stress and the late-morning heat, decided on a trip to the Kiryat Shmona mall for some ice cream.

The mall in Kiryat Shmona is a dismal, two-story affair with a handful of cheap stores, a pharmacy, a post-office and a food court with a pizza place, a falafel joint, two ice cream establishments and a burger place. Like our retro dayglo bungalow bathroom, this mall hailed from the seventies, but there was nothing remotely chic about it.

Instead, it reflected the depressed local economy.

Yet the gelato was fresh and delicious and we opted for large servings to counteract the heat of the day and the memory of the morning.

It was as we were sitting down to enjoy our treats that we saw the horror of seven-seven unfold in real time on the television set suspended from the ceiling of the food-court. With the two-hour time difference between England and Israel, we caught the news as it was happening.

Eating ice cream in the very town that witnessed a massacre of eighteen of its civilians in 1974 (including nine children), it was surreal to say the least to watch London reel under the impact of a calculated terrorist attack on its underground and bus system.

Being in the world's most popular terrorist target, it seemed illogical that elsewhere on the planet -- England, in this case -- innocent civilians were also being killed in ideologically-driven murder plots.

For the next hour, we sat glued to the television screen, broadcasting BBC Worldnews, stunned to find ourselves safe in Israel while others were maimed and killed by terrorists in that most cultivated of European cities -- London, where we had spent a large part of the previous year.

So, when today's news from London dominated the airwaves, I felt myself transported back two summers, trading my treadmill-top location in Monroe, NY for the mall of Kiryat Shmona, Israel, recalling the cold shock that washed over me on that day as I watched the news.

Though I learned the truth on 9/11, the events of 7/7 reinforced the lesson: Nowhere in the world is safe anymore.

Terrorism lives, fueled by the conviction of those who wish to annihilate us.

By "us," I mean anyone who is not "them."

And passively aiding and abetting the terrorists are the Christiane Amanpours of the world, who fail to ask the proper questions, such as why moderate Muslim leaders repeatedly fail to speak out in force against acts of terrorism; and infer that opposition to the war in Iraq or an inferior social status satisfactorily explains why people of a certain religious and ethnic group are driven to kill innocents.

If the recent, Nazi-like boycott of Israeli academics in England didn't alert the world to a basic failure in British society, perhaps today's barely-averted disaster might serve as a wake-up call.

There is a murderous hatred in the heart of England, flowing through the veins of its citizens, poisoning the body of the nation.

WELCOME TO THE LOVE SHACK!

The Love Shack is the fulfillment of my fondest fantasies.

Modest and unassuming, it resides on the edge of a lush forest, one half of Unit 10 of Rosmarin's Cottages and Camp in the town of Monroe, NY.

The Love Shack is Bungalow 10B. After years of skipping through other units -- all charming in their own way -- we settled on this one, outfitted with a generous front lawn, set far apart enough from the 99 other units so that we enjoy something that bungalow colonies often have in short supply -- privacy.

Because of our location, I often (happily) refer to our bungalow as the Anti-Social Shack.

The Love Shack has an enclosed porch where we have moved our round breakfast (and lunch and dinner) table; a combination kitchen/living room, a small bathroom and two bedrooms. Our front lawn has a combination of resin Adirondack chairs, a wooden picnic table and assorted end tables.

By 8 in the morning, sunlight filters onto our front lawn, drenching it in golden light for most of the day. By 4, the sun begins to recede over the top of the trees and the lawn becomes a sheltered oasis, protected from the glare of the sometimes relentless sun.

Early in the day, deer, bunnies and turkey vultures often cavort on our grass.

In my bedroom, the entire contents of my office surround me. It took eight hours, from 8 pm to 4 am, starting on Sunday evening, to pack up my work life, organize it, and prepare it for transport to the Love Shack. Since I started my business in 2002, this has been a yearly ritual -- transplanting my professional life into the Catskills.

Now, I am truly Bungalow Babe.

Where I fail to clean properly for Passover, I meticulously scour through files, notebooks and materials at the end of school in late June, organizing projects and clients, preparing them to make the trip with me from Manhattan to Monroe.

Thus within Bungalow 10B, I am able to run my business for the summer, working out of my bedroom, taking phone calls while stretched out on a blanket in the sun, invariably decked out in bikinis, running clothes, or not very much at all.

When we first came up here, in 1995, Little Babe was three weeks old and his brother and sister (Big and Middle Babe) were about to turn 11 and 7, respectively. For those first few summer, I had all the Babes with me up at the Love Shack. During the day, they attended the excellent day camp and when it was over, we met at the pool to swim for hours, or visited the nearby Ananda Ashram or went to play in "Airplane Park" in downtown Monroe, or hiked down to Walton Lake or caught a double feature at the Drive-In in Fair Oaks, Middletown or Warwick, or simply hung out inside the bungalow.

After my first summer, when I was on maternity leave, I worked during the day, commuting to Manhattan before I left my job to open my business, employing nannies to cover for me when I was not here. For a few summers, we even had young women live with us in the Love Shack. It was miraculous how our bungalow was able to accommodate so many people without seeming cramped.

Since Big and Middle Babe hit their teens, however, the prospect of a Bungalow Summer paled next to European travel or Israel trips and their visits have primarily been restricted to weekends or days off from their programs. With the allure of Summer in the City, it has been harder to lure them up to the Love Shack, though this summer I have been heartened to see their renewed appreciation and longing for our family tradition.

And speaking of tradition, HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) stays mostly in The City, coming up with other husbands for the weekend in classic Catskills style.

Some of our most delicious memories are of being in the Love Shack together in the middle of the day, when no one else is around.

It is now 8:08 in the morning. The new folding table I picked up at Target last night is resting on the floor next to my bed. My printer is on the bed to my left, where I left it last night before I fell asleep reading this past Sunday's Times Magazine. Next to the printer, Alfie the Pomeranian is stretched out, snoozing blissfully. In our kitchen/living room, Little Babe is sleeping deeply. Though the entire back bedroom is his, filled with toys, books and momentos, he prefers to sleep in our common room, lulled by the hums of our fans and the refrigerator.

Shortly, I will have to wake Little Babe up and get him ready for camp. Shortly, I will have to begin my work day. Later, there is a Shortline bus I need to take to The City for a midday meeting. When I return, after Little Babe has had his fill of post-camp swimming and a snack at The Concession, I will drive him to Tae Kwon Do in Monroe, next to Straub's Fitness, where I work out. Later, I will host his friends for a summer dinner -- hamburgers and potato chips.

I am typing in my bungalow bedroom, wearing the tank top and shorts I slept in. My short black hair is standing up in spikes around my head. After one weekend in the country, my skin is already deeply tanned. I think with pleasure of the contrast between my brown thighs and the oatmeal linen walking shorts I will wear to my meeting today.

Bags from Target still litter my kitchen floor. My summer reading has still not been unpacked from the suitcase I hauled into Little Babe's bedroom but, as if with x-ray vision, I can see the books I plan to read: Don Quixote; The Stories of Mary Gordon; Londonistan; New Essays on Zionism; The Book of Disquiet.

And the Collected Works of Isaac Babel.

I have been shlepping Babel around since Passover, losing him once in SoHo, failing to finish his work but determined to keep trying.

The Love Shack is filled with the artifacts of my life -- my laptop, my work, camp photographs, knick-knacks from the local 99 cent stores, tag sales, roadside leftovers from garage sales.

There is just enough space inside Bungalow 10B to accommodate my summer life. The humble rooms harbor my memories and my dreams. Sweet sleep overtakes me at night; sweet summer air surrounds my slumber.

The view outside my enclosed porch is of a lush and deep woods.

It is this view that calms me when I have fears that I may cease to be.

This scenario is the epitome of my desires.

READ ALL ABOUT IT!! THE NEW YORK TIMES DECLARES ISRAEL TO BLAME FOR HAMASTAN!!!

It was only a matter of time, in fact, I’m a bit surprised the refrain did not sound sooner.

The real, underlying cause of the civil war in Gaza this past week is (drum roll, please)…Israel!!!

Oh, and America.

But really, Israel.

Like Arnold Horshack, the famously stupid yet overeager student from Welcome Back Kotter, the New York Times has the distinction of raising its hand first, Horschack-style -- “Oooh!! Oooh!! Mr. Kotter! Mr. Kotter!!! I know!! I know!!! -- to (reflexively) identify the root cause of the reason why Gaza has turned into Hamastan, in a matter of days, with over 70 Palestinians dead.

But the Times was queasy about naming names. The reason behind the recent nightmarish warfare in Gaza rests in the failed policies, it says, of “Washington” and “Jerusalem.”

But readers, abandon your shock and above all, do not despair. There is yet hope. Though Israel (...whooops, Jerusalem) screwed the whole thing up, now is the time that it -- together with America (...whooops, Washington) can set everything right by “exert[ing] constructive influence in this dangerous situation.”

(Okay, I’m listening, even if I am wondering why only Washington and Jerusalem are being addressed when there is an entire international community watching Gaza implode.)

Hmmm. So, which “constructive” means does the Times have in mind?

*Impose a “total freeze on settlement building and expansion"
*Promptly ease the “onerous, humiliating and economically-strangulating blockades on Palestinian movements within the West Bank and
*Swiftly release “all tax revenues rightfully belonging to the Palestinians” to Mr. Abbas’s office

In other words, if only Israel had done this earlier, Hamastan would not have happened. And dismal as the situation is, taking the advice of the optimistic Times editorial staff constitutes a “new and wiser approach to Palestinian politics.”

Before I even dive into the heart of the specific recommendations of the newspaper of record, let me deconstruct the above statement. While I am all for some deus ex machina solution to the tragic drama of Gaza, I am against the subversion of language. To call what has unfolded over the past few days “politics” is preposterous. Politics has nothing to do with this, unless politics simply means power-struggle.

Politics dignifies the primitive, bloodthirsty violence that has taken place as an ineffective, internally corrupt Fatah has been overtaken by the sword-swinging Hamas fundamentalists bent on creating an “Islamic State,” whatever that means, ridding their conquered land of “heretics” and utterly ignoring a social agenda so that it might devote itself to rid the entire world of these so-called heretics, and, as the icing on the cake, eradicate Israel in the process.

And now to shoot down the Times’s three points, quickly and painlessly:

*Israel’s “settlement building and expansion” has about as much to do with igniting the Crips and Bloods-like warfare in Gaza as my mother’s new kitchen renovation. If the Times wants to be utterly irrelevant, it might as well toss in the O word at this point (occupation).

*Regarding the “onerous, humiliating and economically-strangulating blockades on Palestinian movements within the West Bank,” the Times is confusing cause and effect. These checkpoints are utterly essential in order to prevent the murder of Israeli civilians at the hands of new and eager recruits, such as the two Palestinian moms caught en route to blowing up Netanya and Tel Aviv last month.

If only Israel didn't have to worry about building blockades.

*Hey, instead of releasing the “monies” to Mr. Abbas, I’ve got a better idea! Let’s just hand them directly to Hamas! This way, we can at least save a few members of Fatah from being gunned down in front of their wives and children or thrown off the top of a high-rise building or shot in the back of their knees!

I admit it. Reading the Times this morning utterly ruined my day. Its lead editorial is more akin to something I’d expect to read in a college newspaper of a campus famous for its left-wing politics, and ill-informed student leaders.

But the Times editorial is depressing for another reason. To state that the ball for stabilizing the situation in Gaza rests fundamentally in the courts of “Washington” and “Jerusalem,” is to admit (without admitting it, of course) that the Palestinians are such animals/ incompetents/lunatics that the world can have no expectations of them. That they are so morally-challenged that the concept of accountability does not apply in their case.

So many analogies come to mind reading today's lead editorial in the New York Times.

Reading today's Times is like watching an episode of Law and Order that was produced after Hamas militants stormed the set. After shooting the interim DA Nora Lewin in the head, kidnapping Jack McCoy and throwing producer Dick Wolf off the top of the NBC building, the newly-cast judge, played by Mel Gibson, would render a decision that found Israel culpable for the crime at the heart of this episode -- an infectious virus that spread to humans because an animal activist stormed a laboratory where infected monkeys were being experimented upon – as well as every crime on every episode of Law and Order, including Law and Order: SVU and Law and Order: CI and other spin-offs I'm not aware of.

Because Law and Order is no longer watchable, I cruise the channels, only to discover reruns of Welcome Back Kotter, but it seems like Hamas stormed the set of that show as well, turning Horschak into a newly-converted Wahabist Muslim who honor-kills Hotsy-Totzie because she was seen talking to Epstein and recruits Barbarino and Boom Boom Washington as suicide bombers.

Mr. Kotter is killed, of course, because he is Jewish, and replaced by a new teacher – Mr. A. Dolph -- played by Mel Gibson. Horschack changes his name to Hamid and renames the Sweathogs the Palestinian National Struggle Against Zionist Imperialism.

Hamastan has taken over the American media, seeping into our homes and our minds.

FRATRICIDE IN GAZA

When I was a little Babe I shared a room with SOBB, my little sister, two years younger.

My chief occupations as a young girl/boy were reading books that were at least a decade too old for me and often sexually frank, if not pornographic (ie -- The Godfather, Candy, Blue Movie, Tropic of Cancer, Dr. Spock's Baby and Child Care) writing adventure stories and suicidal poetry, practicing my spying skills and fantasizing about running away from home.

My sister's chief occupations were playing school, playing mother, singing and talking to her dolls.

Aside from the basic fact that as my younger sister she barely deserved to live, SOBB -- who is my best friend today -- was absolutely the world's most annoying person. I, on the other hand, was a budding sophisticate. As a result, most of our discourse was nasty. Yelling, shouting, insulting and name-calling were our main modes of communication and there was plenty of hand-to-hand combat as well.

When things reached a certain pitch we approached our mother to mediate. Instead of offering cool diplomatic conflict resolution, her reaction invariably was something along the line of "Go ahead and kill each other for all I care!" delivered between bared and gritted teeth.

Which invariably shocked us into declaring an immediate ceasefire.

I am reminded of my mother's reaction as I read the headlines out of Gaza, which get more and more horrific by the minute. Instead of building an infrastructure for their oppressed people, the Palestinians have decided to turn on each other -- Fatah vs Hamas, brother against brother -- each vying for leadership of their fragile nation, executing each other in the street, tossing handcuffed prisoners off highrise buildings, killing UN workers, lobbying grenades, missiles and mortars at key installations in a nihilistic bid for supremacy.

Also, conducting a form of torture -- according to today's front page New York Times article -- known as "kneecapping," which I had to look up on-line. So, what is kneecapping? Shooting someone through the back of the knees.

Nice.

Watching from the West, I cannot help but recall the words of the great Abba Eban who famously quipped that the late, corrupt PLO chairman Yasser Arafar "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

After conducting a fairly successful decade-long public relations campaign where they managed to explain their lack of social infrastructure by portraying themselves as victims of Israeli aggression and occupation and even raise support for an obscene lie -- that the suicide bombers they were producing were but a symptom of an oppressed, desperate people, hence, morally defensible and ultimately Israel's own fault -- the Palestinians have fallen down on the job, severely wounding their own image as victim of imperialistic outsiders.

Turns out that they are their own worst enemy.

I just tuned into Haaretz.com to see the latest in this explosive situation, which has not yet been called a civil war by observers, but is surely that, if not the Palestinian version of Armageddon. What I learned, in addition to the escalation in fighting and the threat by Hamas to invade Abbas's compound, is that Israeli security forces revealed that in late May it caught two Palestinian women on a suicide bombing mission to Tel Aviv and Netanya.

Both are mothers. One is pregnant, with eight other children. The other fabricated a medical reason for her travel to Ramallah to be fitted with an explosives belt. Both hail from Gaza.

Nice.

Mazel Tov, btw, to Human Rights Watch, who woke up to brand the activities of Fatah and Hamas over the past few days as crimes against humanity and war crimes. It was the gun battles that were being waged near hospitals, the tossing of shackled people off of rooftops, the misappropriation of press markings on a vehicle to be used in an attack against the IDF, the habit of killing civilians and other such activities which led HRW to speak out.

The long-ago battles I used to wage with my little sister are the stuff of stories we both tell our our children, much to their amusement. The stories are funny now because it is obvious that we have grown out of that primal rivalry/hatred into soul-sisterhood. The stories are also funny because of our mother's un-PC reaction to our warring...and our own penchant for offering intervention services to our own children.

What is not funny in the least is what is happening in Gaza. Brother versus brother, a fight to the death. A twist in the Palestinian narrative that somehow reveals an uncomfortable truth that lies beneath the other narrative that has been neatly presented to the West, a narrative in which the chief offender has been Israel, a narrative in which it all might have turned out differently if only....

Within the bedroom of Gaza, Palestinian brothers have marked each other for destruction. Within the house of Gaza, young mothers leave their children to strap on belts of death and devastation This is not a story with a happy, heartwarming ending. No one is going to laugh when they look back at this scene.

Watching from the West, I hear the long-ago message of my mother, delivered through gritted, bared teeth telling the warring siblings to go ahead and kill each other for all she cares.

WOMAN PLANS; GOD LAUGHS

Any woman who has attempted the feat of derring-do known as working while raising children has likely developed a theory about the Almighty that allows for one of the following:

• God is a sadist


• God is a misogynist


• God has one hell of a sense of humor

Being fond of God (check earlier posts where I have declared that Hashem is my homeboy), I am going to go with the concept of God as a cosmic writer for the Colbert Report.

And the comic situation most beloved by God is the one in which the needs of one's children come into direct conflict with work deadlines and commitments, causing maximum stress and embarrassment to the mother who is struggling to appear as competent and professional as possible.

With Big Babe approaching his 23rd birthday and Little Babe just newly turned 12 (and Middle Babe about to celebrate her 19th B-Day...not to leave out my only daughter) I have over two decades-worth of that initimitable experience known as "feeling like crap" because I have fallen down on the job as a mom or as a professional...or both.

There is a log somewhere (in heaven most probably...just next to the Book of Life and a bit to the left of the Book of Deeds) that has recorded every birthday I was absent for, every school event I missed, every trip permission form I failed to fill out, every late payment to camp or school, every lame-ass gift I have bought and every unfair allegation I have lobbed against my blameless children.

Next to these entries is the work-related reason for the maternal slip-up. The conference in Washington on Little Babe's birthday, the interview that took me away from Middle Babe's kindergarten play, the deadline that kept me up late at night so I didn't wake up in time to sign the trip permission slip before the school bus left in the morning, the birthday shopping spree at the local 99 cent store because we were flat broke because a client was late in paying, the sharp words because a child exceeded a budget and we were flat broke because a client was late in paying...etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

And next to this particular book is a book written by my clients filled with testimony of missed deadlines, broken promises, failed campaigns, bad press releases, cancelled meetings, interrupted meetings, meetings I attended with unwashed hair and clothes, meetings in which I was barely awake and/or coherent that is, in turn, accompanied by the child-related reason for each transgression -- the child sick with flu/bronchitis/pneumonia/croup/stomach virus/mono/PMS/diarhea/chicken pox; the child inconsolable following the break-up of a relationship; the child with nightmares; the child who had to endure an anti-Semitic tirade at their school in England; the child marooned in a foreign city/airport/beach; the child bullied at school or camp; the child who is scared/sad/depressed/filled with existential angst; the child who is graduating; the child who has a test/homework/term paper/project; the child who has a prom; the child who has a birthday... etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

One day -- after one hundred and twenty years, God Willing!!! -- an accounting will be made of both logs to see if the screw-ups on both fronts cancel each other out.

With such grown-up children underfoot, one might conclude that my life has become easier, that I can pour myself into my work with a clarity of focus. In fact, just yesterday, as I trod on the treadmill during lunchtime, a friend who has four children younger than 5 waxed poetic about the magical, manageable lot that must be mine.

Well... yes and no.

Yes, when the Babes are out of the house and Hell No!!! when they are around.

In fact, with Big Babe home from college and Middle Babe returned from her gap year in Israel, the house is suddenly alive with the sound of children. Not to mention their music, their friends, their phone conversations, their complaints and their demands...er, requests that I spend quality time with them (i.e. -- talk to them) in the middle of the work day.

Making it really challenging to keep my home-based business afloat or to even finish one e-mail in peace.

Making me pull all-nighters that are still interrupted when Big Babe arrives home at 2 am and proceeds to blast the soundtrack from The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover or launch into a spontaneous discussion of what to do for the rest of his life now that he's graduated from college.

Making me lose my concentration when -- in the middle of a conference call -- I hear the biggest scandal that happened on Middle Babe's Israel program and I know the parents of the child involved.

Making me unable to rewrite the lead on a simple Media Advisory because I realize I never filled out the school registration forms for Little Babe that were due two months ago.

Somewhere in Heaven, God and His/Her pals are having the laugh of their (eternal) lives tuning into the sitcom that is my life:

Bungalow Babe in the Big City Tries to Have a (Professional) Life

While Not Totally F$%^&ing Up as a Mom.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD

11:30 pm on Sunday of the Memorial Day weekend and I'm sitting in the dining room of the Urban Bungalow with Big Babe who is playing the Che Gelida Manina aria from La Boheme on his Mac, comparing different versions. It takes some doing to concentrate on writing with soaring tenor notes all around me -- not to mention the swelling violins -- but Big Babe is intent upon providing me with some music education while I attempt a humble task...catching up on the mountains of work that have dogged me throughout the holiday weekend.

Big Babe's presence in the Urban Bungalow on a Sunday night is a result of his having graduated (with distinction!) from Columbia University two weeks ago, with a degree in Literature and Philosophy. My presence here is a result of having bolted from the Summer Bungalow today at 8 pm, boarding the Shortline bus for New York City, running up 42nd Street from Port Authority to avoid the urine-soaked tunnels and taking the uptown 1 train to our stop at 116th Street so that I might conclude the remainder of the holiday weekend in a workaholic frenzy.

As I dashed from our beloved country abode, I left behind Little Babe and HOBB (Husband of Bungalow Babe) to the campfire they were building. When Little Babe called an hour ago to ask me to say Sh'ma with him, I learned that the campfire was accompanied by a Beatles sing-along with our friends Lenore, Joe, Morrie and Izzy.

Sure sounded better than being crushed inside the NYC subway with perverts, skanks, teenage mothers, tired old people whom everyone pretends not to see, pickpockets and backpacking European kids.

Now I am home in our air-conditioned Urban Bungalow in order to devote myself to project catch-up. It's been a week of worklessness, which I would LOVE if I didn't actually have work to do. This is the sucky part of having one's own business. Projects are due come Hell or Jewish holidays.

Somehow, throughout the Shavuot holiday, which we spent at Camp Morasha with half of HOBB's maternal cousins, I was able to utterly forget the work that was looming, though I spent the entire car ride to the Poconos talking and texting on my Blackberry and pissing off my family in the process.

My work amnesia blissfully held throughout Friday as we opened the Summer Bungalow for the first time and later that evening as we celebrated our first Shabbat in the Summer Bungalow, a sweet breeze wafting over our dinner table. But with the first dawning of consciousness on Saturday morning, an all-too-- familiar panic set in and held me hostage even as I went through my Shabbat activities: a Pirke Avot discussion with our friends, lunch, a Scrabble game by Walton Lake, the drive back to New York City after Shabbat to drop Little Babe at a Bat Mitzvah.

A compromise was struck: I would spend one more day in the country, biking on the Heritage Trail with Little Babe and HOBB...then hightail it back to the city to work. HOBB was annoyed yet understanding. Little Babe was sad. Big Babe was delighted.

Now we're listening to Madame Butterfly. Big Babe has provided insightful commentary while switching tracks on his iTunes. We've had a Puccini fest tonight. Rain is falling softly outside of our Amsterdam Avenue apartment and I wonder if it is also raining up in the country.

I haven't really started my work tonight, nor did I blog about my recent week-long convention in Boston or my trip to Israel to visit Middle Babe. I didn't write about my frustration at being unable to penetrate Isaac Babel's prose or my heroic commitment to finishing Dara Horn's uber-impressive (yet unenjoyable) novel, The World to Come.

I didn't deconstruct the Shavuot experience, being the only non-Orthodox Jew at Camp Morasha, which recalled my childhood as the daughter of a Conservative rabbi who was somehow educated at Orthodox schools and summer camps.

But I did learn a thing or two from Big Babe about the operas of Puccini and I know this will help me tomorrow when I dive into my work as early as possible.

INCIDENT IN MARSEILLE

From today’s on-line edition of the Jerusalem Post:

A 22-year-old Jewish woman suffered a vicious anti-Semitic attack by two men of Middle Eastern appearance in a train station in Marseille, France on Thursday night.

The attackers tore the Star of David chain from around the young woman's neck, lifted up her shirt, painted a swastika on her stomach and then fled the scene.

Local police opened an investigation into the attack but had not yet found the assailants.
Head of the Jewish Agency delegation in France, David Roche, said the incident was the most severe anti-Semitic attack in France since the murder of the young Jewish male Ilan Halimi by a gang of Muslim youths in February 2006.

In response to the attack, Jewish Agency Chairman Ze'ev Bielski released a statement saying that specifically during the course of the largest display of democracy France has known in many years "this barbaric act" is carried out.

"We are doing our utmost so that the issue of the fight against anti-Semitism will top the agenda of the candidates for the presidency and of the candidate who is elected," continued the statement.

That is where the dispatch ends and yet this is where the story only begins. To understand what is so horrific about this news story -- which is shocking but certainly not the most egregious anti-Semitic attack in Europe as of late -- read the comments of Jew-haters which appear interspersed in the comments section below the story. (visit www.jpost.com)

From my point of view, it is the ordinary, passive anti-Semitism of the international public that poses as big a threat to us as the vicious acts of Jew-hating hoodlums the world over.

Evil does not have a supernatural component. It happens because of mankind's sins of omission.

SMASH MY FAT!!!!

I walked into Barnes and Noble yesterday to pick up a book for Little Babe and walked out with Dr. Ian Smith's Extreme Fat Smash Diet, tucked inside my handbag so no one could see my purchase.

With red print across the top screaming, When You Need to Lose it Fast, and the endorsement on the bottom: As Seen on VH1's Celebrity Fit Club, this book was simply irresistible.

Especially as I put on a few pounds this winter and want to Lose it Fast.

Especially as the non-stop pace of my workdays (which typically begin at 6 am and conclude past midnight with brief breaks to awaken and prepare Little Babe for school, speak to Middle and Big Babe by phone, attend meetings, prepare and have dinner with HOBB and Little Babe and then put Little Babe to sleep) result in NEVER leaving my computer for more than quick sprints to the bathroom...often undertaken with cellphone and office phone in hand...which obviously means that it is a rare thing for me to get to the gym these days.

This work-without-end routine is nuts, I know, and not at all healthy. You would not believe the amount of conference calls I've conducted while in the bathroom.

Yesterday, I interrupted a shower to answer my Crackberry and stood shivering, with conditioner in my wet hair, peppermint body wash drying to a frosting-like veneer on my naked skin, while I talked about an inane project for 10 minutes, trying to control the chattering of my teeth.

And speaking of teeth... I've even talked on the phone while brushing my teeth, making the other person wonder if I am on drugs, no doubt.

Things are utterly out of balance for all of us, I know, but for some, worse than others. During the past three days of abundant sunshine, I never made it outdoors for even a brief recess on the steps of Low Library, on the Columbia campus or anything more than a dash across campus towards the subway. Looking through my 4th floor windows, which overlook the university, I saw throngs of happy college students and families with young children cavorting happily in the sun. Alas, not I.

Regarding the winter weight...I haven't put it on from scarfing down vast quantities of food. That's not my style. I'm a grazer, not a vacuum cleaner.

The additional poundage comes from a sudden and new desire to eat only foods in the Chocolate food group (cookies, cake, ice cream, scones, and dark with salted almonds) or the Salty Snack group (cheddar cheese and beer potato chips, Roberts Pirate Booty or anything crunchy with a cheddar cheese flavor). It comes from stress and being sedentary and maybe not even eating enough (with such busy days, who can find the time to eat??), which lowers metabolism, leading to weight gain.

If you saw me holding this book you might think that something is cuckoo in my head because I hardly look like smashing fat should be my number one concern. If you saw me at the gym when I do manage to escape my work, you'd think I was trying to conquer the treadmill with my determined stride and penchant for working out until my shirt is soaked and my hair is wet. If you saw me walking across 59th Street yesterday, reading and answering e-mails on my Crackberry for the entire 20-minutes it took me to get from Park Avenue to Broadway, barely glancing at cars as I crossed streets, barely managing to avoid bumping into people with my heavy backpack which included my laptop, papers and workout clothes (not that I even put them on yesterday), you might think I was involved in work that involved state secrets.

This new diet book...well on its way to mega-bestsellerdom...and its henchbooks are not really being purchased by people who want to lose weight. They are being purchased by those who are desperate to change their lives.

AM YISRAEL CHAI

In the waning moments of Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel Independence Day, I wanted to pause from the relentless pace of being Bungalow Babe and send out a CHAG SAMEACH -- Happy Holiday -- to my peeps around the world.

And to Israel, that marvelous and messy miracle in the Middle East:

Happy 59th Birthday!

Though my feet are in the West...specifically, the Upper West (Side)...my heart and soul are rooted firmly in the East.

Forever one with you,

Bungalow Babe

Photo taken on April 23, 2007 at the Dor Chadash Kick-Ass Yom Ha'atzmaut Party at Capitale, NYC. Credit: Jason Gardner

AL QAEDA COMES TO VIRGINIA

Make no mistake about it.

With the emergence of the sickening video that Cho Seung-Hui sent to NBC in an unbelievably calculated move, mailing it between his first murder and the second rampage, it is clear that he deserves to be remembers not as a pathetic loner but as a terrorist, driven by ideology to inflict maximum suffering upon the "guilty."

And the guilty in Cho's world were kids he perceived as rich or spoiled. Kids he saw as filled with debauchery.

His hatred is breathtaking, almost as breathtaking as his actions.

For those who have seen the snippets of Cho's videotaped manifesto, now filling the airwaves, there is a striking similarity to so-called "martyr" tapes made by Palestinian murderers or members of Al Qaeda. There is the same warped sense of religious purpose, the serving of a deity who desires the murder of innocents.

There is the aggrieved sense of some sin committed by the victims, the delusion that the impending act of suicide/murder will have a cleansing effect, restore some cosmic balance.

Was Cho victimized? Picked on as a kid? Subjected to racist comments? Abused even by the stepfather he eludes to?

The answer is who the hell cares.

With information slowly emerging about the victims of his hatred, one thing we know is that his own suffering or hardship as a young boy could not compare with that one of his victims: Professor Liviu Librescu, the Romanian Holocaust survivor.

Professor Librescu's suffering did not turn him into a suicide killer, even against the Nazis who imprisoned his family. His suffering inspired him to rise above adversity. His final act was a heroic act, sacrificing himself to allow his beloved students to escape.

He stands now, I am convinced, in the center of the great quadrangle of heaven, comforting the spirits of the students who were not so fortunate to have him as their protector.

As Cho's video makes its way through the internet and airwaves, let us not fall into the trap of viewing him as a victim driven to a desperate act. When all else is taken from us, we still have free will.

Cho freely chose the path of death and destruction, plotting his spectacular act of terrorism in a manner that has earned him a permanent place in Hell.

EL MALEH RACHAMIM

We know this truth to be self-evident: life is not fair.

Some of us waltz through, relatively or exceedingly blessed.

Others get zapped by illness, by violence, by misfortune. Sometimes once, sometimes repeatedly.

Moreover, we know that lightening does strike twice.

The Holocaust survivor who gets murdered in a bloodbath in Virginia several decades later...on Yom Hashoah.

The college dean who loses her son and husband to unrelated causes within a six-month period.

The couple who endure the ordeal of a severely premature birth only to have a second child die in infancy.

The events of the past week have left me saddened, perched on my observation post, watching a maelstrom of misfortune rage past me.

The nightmares are local, national, international and personal.

A student at the school where HOBB teaches is raped, brutalized and left to die in a fire, tied to her bed. The attacker then goes on to use her bank card to empty her account at a nearby bodega.

A disturbed loner with animosity towards his peers goes on a massacre at Virginia Tech, scaring and scarring the nation, leaving hundreds grieving, striking fear in the heart of every parent in America.

A courageous 21-year-old in our community, born with a multitude of disabilities, succumbs to his illness, leaving behind a shattered family.

Innocents in Iraq are murdered every day by suicide bombers, going to the market, to school, to vote, to work.

I don't know which nightmares are easier to bear: the ones caused by mankind or the ones brought about by "acts of God," -- illness, natural disaster, freak accidents.

Not that I believe that God has anything to do with orchestrating human suffering.

Yet I have caught myself wondering about relative suffering, asking myself if it is "better" or "worse" to be the parents of the young woman attacked in her Hamilton Heights apartment or the parents of the sickly young man, whether it is "better" for the friends and relatives of those who died at Virginia Tech because of the magnitude of the tragedy, the possibility of drawing comfort from others who are enduring the same nightmare.

Of course these are ridiculous wonderings.

Suffering is suffering is suffering.

Pain is pain is pain.

Hearts have been shattered and some may never heal.

Leaving the rest of us to look on with compassion, as God does on high, God full of mercy, el maleh rachamim.

"HORSE-FACED" JEWISH WOMEN ARE THE NEW "NAPPY-HEADED HO'S"

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My Daughter, My Self

My beautiful daughter, Middle Babe, leaves for Israel this evening, returning for the final two-month stretch of her academic year program in the Holy Land.

Thinking of her imminent departure, I am sad, even though I know that she is nearing the end of her adventure and we will have her in our midst for the entire summer before she goes off to her college in Baltimore.

And I know that she, too, is sad to be leaving us again, but not sad to be returning to Israel.

When you are a child, the most unbearable separation is from your parents.

When you have a child, their departures are the most searing episodes in your life, the leave-taking, the saying good-bye, the adjustment to the sound and sight of your home without them.

In those first moments that you note their absence, a feeling akin to tragedy descends. I have talked myself out of panic, at times, making the transition from child-here to child-not here, whether for a month or a summer or, this time, a year-long course of study in Israel.

It is something you never get used to.

And it puts me in mind of parents faced, God Forbid, with actual tragedy. I am still haunted by the testimony of the mother of an only child whose daughter was killed in the crash of Pan Am Flight 103...or perhaps it was TWA Flight 800. Her future was taken from her, said the grieving mother, in the course of hearings held after the tragedy. Without her child, she had no horizons.

But banishing all morose thoughts...Middle Babe (who returned from the movies while I wrote these lines) is now tearing apart her room searching for her wallet. She emerged only to note, rightly, that it would be easier to move through her room without Little Babe's clothes and a treadmill in the midst of her floor.

True, I agreed, promising to move these offending items out to prepare her room for her arrival this summer, squelching a smile for losing objects is a habit that Middle Babe has had since, well, forever.

There is so much to say about the deliciousness of having a daughter. A daughter is nature's improvement upon your own design. A daughter is a hint of yourself, sometimes magnified flatteringly...or to frightening effect.

There is so much to say about the deliciousness of my particular daughter. She is so fully herself, so free, so relaxed in her personality and quirks. I marvel at her great insight and wit and delight in her friendships, especially her friendship with Reeb, who is Middle Babe's virtual twin, my other daughter, and BOMB, her boyfriend of over a year.

As she sprawled on my bed this morning, inches away from that slapdash space I call my office, I asked her if she felt nineteen...her impending age.

"Are you kidding?" she asked, ruefully. "I still feel like I'm twelve."

"Good," I replied. "Because I still think of you as twelve."

And I do. Not in a bad way, at all. Just in a "my little girl" way. Forever.

This subject is a bittersweet one for me because of my struggles with my own mother and the often-alienated existence I had as a teen, living at home. One of the quests of my adult life is to try to figure out to what extent my own adoption played in these feelings or whether such dissonance also occurs often in homes of biological mothers and daughters.

And there is still a sadness I have at the not-really-myself role I occupy in relationship with my mother. I have longed, my entire life, to be utterly myself, without apology, without preamble, without preconditions.

It is only with my children that I am utterly at home with myself.

Middle Babe has just gone into her room, stopping by my computer (perched atop a stool in the dining room) to kiss me goodnight and tell me to go to sleep. It is insanely late. I am insanely tired. But I am also kept awake, motivated by sadness and a myriad of other thoughts arising from this moment of transition in my life.

There is music drifting out of her room, reminding me that she is still a teen. I'm fairly certain that she still hasn't found that missing wallet.

My daughter, despite feeling twelve, is about to turn nineteen in the next few months. Despite being in my middle forties, I still feel nineteen, waiting for my adult life to begin.

So, we're a good match, my daughter and I, forever young, sisters of a kind.

WORST NIGHT OUT...EVER

Tonight, in an honest attempt to tap into the rich cultural smorgasbord Manhattan has to offer, HOBB treated the family -- okay, Little Babe and me -- to tix to the Dance Theatre Workshop's program by John Jasperse Company entitled Becky, Jodi and John (Check it out at http://www.dtw.org/dy_eventDetails.cfm?ID=174.) dedicated to a long-standing friendship between the three dancers.

Having read an intriguing write-up in the New Yorker, the performance seemed like a reasonable choice for a New York family seeking cult-cha off the beaten track. Why go to a Broadway show (so obvious) or Lincoln Center (so elderly) or even Carnegie Hall (so five minutes ago) when the mysteries of Modern Dance beckoned...and only a subway ride down 7th Avenue?

Leaving aside the fact that we arrived 15 minutes late (by cab and not by train) and the usher-Nazi made us stand in the back the entire performace so we would not disturb the patrons seated in the "intimate" space....leaving aside the fact that the set was a naked stage with the cleverest device being a little remote-control toy truck that delivered a laptop to the dancers, which they would then read some inane passage from....leaving aside the fact that we had to endure the sight of John's uncut shlong and Becky's droopy boobs as she traipsed around in green tights....this boring-ass performance sucked so bad that I never want to leave the Urban Bungalow again, except to go to the gym and Fairway and the new Loehmann's which opened on Broadway and 74th. (It rocks!!! I had my maiden trip with Middle Babe yesterday.)

Yet if Carnegie Hall is five minutes ago, Dance Theatre Workshop is thirty years ago. I swear I was having a flashback to the flashdance era when Modern Dance consisted of people wearing monochromatic loose attire, refusing make-up, letting their invariably unlovely bodies take on spastic and jerky movements on stage to atonal music with no narrative, no scenery and no technical skill or even talent.

The difference is that thirty years ago the tickets cost $5 and I didn't have kids, hence, no free time to spend on stupid culture. And besides, all this nonsense actually looked cool back then.

Even Little Babe thought the performance sucked. He was so bored that the potentially shocking nudity didn't catch his attention. He was so disgusted that the only part that held his interest was when smoke began mysteriously appearing out of John's body. Leaning next to me in the back of the theatre, he looked like an 11-year-old on Death Row. Right after the show, Little Babe's review could be summed up as follows: "My favorite part was when it ended."

Out of the mouth of babes.

We have all experienced the perverse joy of laughing one's head off at a totally unfunny performance bec it is simply so bad. I have disgraced myself at concerts in Budapest, Hungary and Greenwich, CT alike, laughing inappropriately during serious yet bad programs.

Tonight, however, I could not laugh, mostly because I was so dismayed. Alarmingly, many of the audience members seemed to find the show enchanting and gave that throaty New York laugh of wry recognition at especially unfunny lines spoken by the cast. I hate that laugh. It means "I'm-in-the-know;" it is validation that the person making this annoying chortle is the exact audience member that this elevated art has been created for.

I did bond, however, with a cranky 70-something lady who irritably told her 50-something pedantic daughter (who was hilariously attempting to deconstruct the bulls&^t as we were walking out of the "intimate" theatre) that the performance was just not her cup of tea.

Amen to that, sistah!!!! It was more like a cup of arsenic tea. I was positive that had I stayed one more minute I would have keeled over dead from an overdose of pointlessness masquerading as profundity...or art.

Sitting on the uptown #1 train across from two beefy German guys who looked like they had questionable pasts if not futures, I sank into an evil mood. It pissed me off that we had:

• Hauled our collective Bungalow Butt down to Chelsea in an (expensive) cab
• Screwed ourselves out of the opportunity for real culture
• Spent money on tickets for this retarded performance
• And had to stand like rejects in the back of the "intimate" theatre for such a piece of doo-doo dance performance

And so, when the train reached 72nd Street, I did the only logical thing. I jumped off and ran into Fairway to erase the memories of bad New York culture and touch honest produce, sincere dry goods and real meat from (formerly) living creatures who did not imagine that their aimless amblings made them members of an elite known as Artists.

Isaac Babel in SoHo, Passover 2007

I lost my new copy of the Collected Works of Isaac Babel on Erev Pesach, this past Monday, the eve of Passover…one of the most ludicrous days I have had in recent memory.

At an hour when every sane Jew is grating horseradish for their first seder, I was rushing through the streets of SoHo, from the subway station at Houston Street down Spring Street to Broadway for my months-overdue annual gynecological appointment.

And now, I was officially four months and 15 minutes late for this important medical visit.

Basically, I had forgotten to change trains at Times Square because I was chattering incessantly about the evils of consumerist culture with someone I knew only nominally and who was nodding at everything I said either because they wanted to validate my brilliant observations or pacify my lunatic tendencies.

And I was chattering incessantly to burn off the nervous energy that came from the aggravating and utterly ridiculous stress I had been sustaining for several hours – a level of stress familiar to every professional woman who is also an observant Jew and who therefore spends the eves of every Jewish holiday (and Shabbat) in a state of multitasking madness – which was augmented by stresses unique to my own work and personal life.

For instance, rushing out of the Urban Bungalow en route to my appointment, I realized I had likely rendered the ratatouille I had cooked while on a conference call totally treif by inadvertently adding an ingredient that only Sephardic Jews would consume on Passover.

When I discovered the offending item in the ratatouille -- contained in a curry sauce from France -- I almost died. This dish and homemade brownies, which I just baked, were part of our contribution to the seder, scheduled to take place within a few hours at our friends’ house.

Passover observance is a serious matter. How could I bring a dish that had a questionable ingredient, yet how was I to make my gynecological appointment if I had to create another ratatouille from scratch…and with no eggplant, to boot???

Locking the apartment door, I placed a frantic call to my husband imploring him to fess up to our host, a rabbi, and ask if the dish – suitable for Sephardic Jews -- could be served at his Ashkenazic seder.

With the ratatouille fiasco being merely the latest in a series of logistical potholes wrecking my day, I lost my legendary sense of direction in the joy of ranting to a virtual stranger on the #1 train. When I realized my mistake at 28th Street, my heart sank and I assumed I had blown the appointment. Then, as the train passed 18th Street, I realized I could alight at Houston Street and grab a cab and just make it in time.

I bolted out of the train on Houston Street, fled up the steps and optimistically scanned the horizon for available cabs. Weirdly, there were no cabs to be had. Or, to be accurate…there were cabs, but I seemed to have morphed into the Invisible Woman and no fewer than three available yellow cabs totally passed me by, picking up passengers standing mere feet beyond me.

I am not kidding. This really did happen. And at that point, I knew that I was under some weird spell or something.

So I had to hoof it over several avenue blocks to the east. By my estimation, the shlep was nearly three-quarters of a mile. Midway along my frantic journey, I stopped to retrieve my Crackberry from my monstrously oversized Target designer mock-croc bag in order to call Downtown Women Ob-Gyn and make sure that my exertions would not be in vain and I would, indeed, be able to keep my appointment with Nancy the Midwife, my trusted well-woman health care provider for more than ten years.

I felt my day utterly change when the honeyed voice of the receptionist assured me that Nancy would be able to see me if I arrived within the next ten minutes or so. Yes! I agreed with renewed vigor. Yes! I will be there within ten minutes, I said, tucking my Crackberry into my coat pocket before sprinting down Spring Street.

The problem was, in order to retrieve my phone device from my bag, I had placed my (not slender) volume of Isaac Babel (of which about five sentences were read on the subway between Penn Station and Houston Street) on the edge of one of those fancy-shmancy trash can containers.

At least that is what I think I did, because when I arrived at the gyno’s office ten minutes later, the book was missing and I had not stopped anywhere else en route from the subway to the office.

And after I had checked every inch of the gyno’s office suite and even ran down the three flights of stairs to make sure I hadn’t left the book at the hostile security guard’s desk in the lobby (okay, isn’t it time to question the efficacy of having people sign in and out of buildings under no terrorist threat whatsoever??) I had to burst out laughing at the somehow fitting coda to this day of mishaps and bureaucratic nightmares.

The friendly receptionist at Downtown Women offered me a piece of peppermint gum. Shortly, I was given a cup to pee into and a gown to change into and I sat on the examination table happily, waiting for Nancy, reading Us Weekly.

The actual physical exam took less than 10 minutes. But the torrent of words that rushed out of me -- a rant about my day, my life, my stress, my angst – dominated my visit.

Nancy suggested many things. One of them was changing my life. Dramatically. Immediately. I had to agree that she was onto something.

When I sashayed out of Downtown Women Ob-Gyn, I was a changed woman. The spell I was under seemed to have lifted. I ran through the turnstiles at the Prince Street station and directly onto a waiting uptown R train. At Times Square, an uptown #2 train was lingering on the platform when I ran down the stairs. And when I dashed up the stairs at 96th Street, a cab had not only magically materialized before my eyes, but the cabbie gave me a friendly smile when I plopped down in the backseat.

Oh, snap! The spell had broken.

And in case you’re wondering, I made it home in time to change for the seder at my friend’s house, and our host had called to say that I hadn’t rendered the ratatouille unkosher after all, and to please bring it along.

So, HOBB packed up the ratatouille and took it to go…together with my walnut-rich brownies, which turned out pretty damn good despite having been invented out of thin air... and the hostess gift I had selected at the JCC giftshop earlier in the day -- a hand-painted Miriam’s tambourine and gummy frogs that lit up when clunked on the head.

HOBB was less psychotic than I thought he would be in the face of my gynecologist’s appointment on the eve of Passover and my culinary near-disaster. We arrived at our host’s home nearly on time – certainly not egregiously late – and were met by Big Babe who had cut out of one of his Columbia classes early in order to make the seder.

The seder was fabulous, filled with great people and delicious food and exotic wine and traditional and wacky elements alike. As we moved to take our places around the beautifully adorned seder table, I felt a gulf open as wide as the Red Sea between me and my insane day.

It was magical to sit around the seder table and feel myself a descendent of those Hebrew slaves who had the audacity to envision an alternative to Egypt. And though I always find great meaning in the interactive theatre of the Passover seder, this particular night was truly different from all other nights.

And somewhere in SoHo, perched on the top of that fancy-shmancy garbage can, Isaac Babel is busily taking notes, composing a tale about a Jewish woman far from his native Odessa, enslaved by invisible forces, in search of her own liberation.

HORMONAL HONESTY

I'm puzzling over a particular question which brings my feminist self into conflict with my candid observer self.

The question is as follows:

Is it okay to talk about the fact that (many/most/all) women get utterly deranged just before their periods?

Anyone who is a woman or who has ever known a woman can report that significant changes in mood and behavior (if not skin quality and weight) often occur in menstruating women in that period of time just before the arrival of their, er, periods.

These "significant changes" often include incessant crying, heightened hatred of one's husband, increased argumentative behavior, reduced threshold for frustration, increased memory of all horrible and hurtful experiences, reduced memory of anything positive that happened in one's life, feelings of deep depression, feels of utter disatisfaction with one's life, increased fantasies of one's husband suddenly dying, etc...

The existence of a Pre-Menstrual Syndrome is such a self-evident truth that I cannot believe it took scientists until the last decades of the 20th Century to figure this out. Still I send out a hearty Yasher Koach* to them for identifying this.....thing.

I remember exhaling in great relief when the syndrome was so named. Finally, I thought, validation from science for the misery that has consumed about a quarter of my life from the age of 12!

Finally, I had an ready-to-wear defense prepared for me in case I killed my boyfriend, say, during that time of month that my jeans won't close and my face looks like a pizza.

And as I move closer to the big Five-O, each cycle brings me closer to becoming Norman Bates. In my freelance interviews with other women of my age, most report a dramatically heightened state of sheer lunacy...sometimes lasting for as long as three weeks at a time.

Especially when one's monthly visitor decides to be MIA or shows up three weeks late, bringing on its own unique derangment, not to mention loss as funds as it becomes necessary to purchase do-it-yourself pregnancy tests, which always turn out negative, causing great relief because you were truly convinced you were pregnant due to the fact that you suddenly put on ten pounds and felt exhausted all the time.

And I'm not mentioning any names, but having been acquainted with teenage girls, I would liken the approach of their periods to a Jekyll and Hyde experience wherein sweet and obedient young women suddenly turn into Elsa Koch.

Who among us would deny that pre-menstrual women are completely nuts?

Yeah, it sounds unfeminist and it's bad for Hillary's campaign but isn't it the God's honest truth?

In this post-post-feminist era, when womyn are doing all kinds of weird stuff like pole dancing, engaging in wild promiscuity and blogging about it, and having orgasms online (www.beautifulagony.com), I think it is time to reclaim a truth about womanhood:

We spend a quarter of our lives in a hormonally-induced form of insanity. It is nothing to be ashamed of.

It's empowering, even.

Moreover, it's the bloody truth.

_____________

*Hebrew for Way to Go!