A Birth, A Death, a Glimpse of the Soul

Seventeen years ago this weekend, I got a call from my friend Judy at 10:30 at night. "I'm in labor," she told me. "Can you come now?"

It was the festival of Shemini Atzeret, a time that I would normally not even answer the phone. However, as we had arranged that I would not only attend but photograph the birth of Judy's child, I readied myself to leave for the night, tossing off a guilty goodbye to HOBB, who looked skeptical about the entire enterprise.

"Is this really necessary?" he asked, alluding not just to my departure but to the forbidden act of driving during the holiday.

I did not answer, wondering the same.

It was the early 1990's and Judy and I were revolutionaries in Westchester County, New York -- critics of the often-invasive style of obstetric care, avid consumers of midwifery, which most people believed to have been outlawed about a century earlier. My own daughter, Middle Babe, had been born in 1987 in a crowded municipal hospital in the Bronx because Westchester hadn't yet granted delivery privileges to midwives.

I gave birth to Middle Babe in a hallway, assisted by four women and HOBB, lying sideways on a purloined gurney with one foot pushing on my midwife's shoulder, moaning melodically through my contractions, bellowing like a female moose as I pushed my child out of her private ocean and into the brightly-lit world. The drumbeat of my ancestors echoed in my ears; I walked the path of my great-grandmothers, I transcended the here and now, reached above and beyond myself, became a she-wolf, a lioness, a galloping mare, sinewy and wild.

After the terrifying premature birth of Big Babe four years earlier, when I was only 23, my midwife-assisted second childbirth was spectacular, primal and deeply spiritual -- the ascent up Sinai, the face to face encounter with the Almighty. When I walked out of the chaotic hospital hours later against medical advice, tiny girl wrapped in my arms, I felt like I could run a marathon.

And now, with Middle Babe just three years old, the right for midwives to "catch" babies in Westchester County had been won. Judy queued up to be one of the first to take advantage of this miracle, booking her birth at a swanky, state-of-the-art birthing center in Yonkers which came equipped with Laura Ashley decor and a country cottage motif.

My friend had given a great deal of thought to her midwife-assisted birth and had an elaborate birthing plan. It included long walks down the peaceful birthing center corridor, sips of red raspberry leaf tea, dedicated breathing, visualization, journal writing, dips in the Jacuzzi, talking, resting, listening to music and a harmonious childbirth with her husband at her side.

A writer, she intended to sell her story and asked me along to capture the event on film.

Flattered and greatly moved, I said yes.

And now the drama was about to unfold.

When I arrived at the birthing center, a business-like midwife opened the door. "Diane," she said, by way of introduction, shaking my hand. A far cry from the soothing, hippie-chick midwives I had found up in Ossining, Diane set about to scrub the Jacuzzi in preparation for Judy's immersion. Judy's contractions are quickening, she tossed over her shoulder, disappearing into the bathroom. Remember, she doesn't have to suffer needlessly, she shouted from inside the bathroom. I have medication if she needs it.

I entered a spacious room where Judy was deep into labor -- serious and unsmiling -- leaning into a wall in a flannel nightgown, her dark curls sticking to the back of her neck. Her husband sat on the edge of the bed watching TV. The sound of running water filled the space between us. I put my hand on the small of her back, felt the heat of her labor.

"This is tough," she reported.

For a long while, the water ran. I went to make red raspberry tea with sugar, steaming hot. I brought it in for Judy, who could barely drink it. Her contractions were layered, two and three-tiered, peaking and waning, chasing her then disappearing...only to ambush her again a minute later. Her nightgown grew sweaty. Her eyes were wild and agitated.

"Let's take a walk," I suggested.

We walked and walked. We walked the entire night, it seemed. We stepped forward one or two or three steps, then paused to honor the contraction's will. We barely spoke. I held her hand or arm. I touched her back. I made her drink water. I argued when she said she couldn't do this thing -- give birth. I reminded her that labor ends and babies are born. I told her that she could have medication if she wished. I wondered where Diane was, realized I hadn't seen her for a while. I hope that I was right, that this labor would end...and soon.

The labor squeezed Judy's spine, producing that rare form of torture -- back labor. I had had it with my first child and thought I would not survive the pain. After back labor, regular old labor is a walk in the park.

Do you need anything? I asked uselessly.

"I need the Jacuzzi." she said. "I want to give birth there."

I found Diane sleeping in a small room and woke her up. She examined Judy and found her fully dilated. Together, we helped my friend into the tub, but the hoped-for relief she imagined would arrive cruelly eluded her. When the contractions came, she draped her arms over the sides of the tub and moaned. Diane poured warm water over her back, smoothed the damp hair from her forehead with a washcloth. A female scent hung in the air, thick and heavy. Suddenly, Judy let out a cry.

"I'm going to have a baby!" she cried, nearly collapsing as the relentless waves of labor overtook her. Diane crouched at Judy's head, administering a blood pressure test.

"Out of the tub!" Diane commanded, directing me to get my friend up. She turned off the jets of the Jacuzzi and opened the drain. "She's too weak. Her blood pressure isn't stable. This is too dangerous."

"No!" Judy cried. "I want to give birth in the water!"

"Out," Diane said, handing me a large towel. The water slipped down the drain with a gurgle and a hiss. Judy looked like a mother sea mammal, sleek, wet and magnificent. I threw the towel over her shoulders. Diane stepped into the tub and wriggled her hands underneath Judy's arms.

"Stand up," she said. "We've got to get you to the bed."

I don't remember the process of walking my laboring friend to the bed. I don't remember draping the nightgown over her. I do remember her crying. I don't remember seeing her husband. I do remember her kneeling into the bedpost, panting. And then, I recall hearing the sound of something cracking.

"Ohhhh!" she exhaled.

"The baby!" cried Diane, gloving her hands, bringing her birthing kit close.

A current went through my friend. Her face took on a beautiful agony. Her brow was knit in concentration. Her legs were quivering. My heart started galloping. Every cell in my body stood at attention. A white energy filled the room.

"The...camera!" she panted. "Pictures of the birth."

What camera?

My lungs filled with the purest air. I felt sheer elation. My breath caught in the back of my throat. Something was in our midst. Something had joined us. We were not alone.

"Ahhhhwwwwohhhhh!"

Slipping, sliding, slithering out from my friend's body came a tiny creature, face scrunched in earnest concentration -- the baby, her baby, Judy's baby. We let out a whoop, catching the being, escorting her from the ocean of her mother's womb into the new, waterless world. We told Judy it was a girl. Judy broke into happy tears. "A daughter!" she said. "I have a daughter," she repeated. Diane took the child and did her midwifely or doctorly things. Flushed, Judy lay back on the pillow, weak, relieved, smiling. The punishing labor was now just a dull reverberation in the ever-growing distance.

The baby born that magical, tortuous night is now a beautiful and poised 17-year-old. My friend looks more magnificent with each passing day; indeed mother and daughter share an uncommon resemblance. These intervening years have been dramatic and sometimes difficult for my friend, witnessing the break-up of her marriage, innumerable heartbreaks and staggering successes, personal transformation, stellar achievement, the stuff of life itself.

As for me, I would leave my beloved Tudor home in Westchester a couple of years later for a Manhattan apartment, leave the life I had built as a freelance writer for one which offered greater financial stability, have the remarkable chance to live in Israel and Europe, travel more than I ever had before, give birth to a third child -- also with the help of midwives -- undertake challenges both professionally and personally, endure my share of heartache and disappointment, find myself thrillingly in the middle of important conversations and pressing issues of the day, watch my older children grow to adulthood, have adventures of the mind, heart and soul, keep alive the dream of returning to my life as a full-time writer.

You know, I never did take pictures worth anything that night, I reminded my friend when she called me the other day. I was a good labor support but a lousy photographer.

I know, said my friend. I forgive you. You stayed with me throughout my labor. It was awful. I'll never forget that.

And I will never forget the presence that filled the birthing room at the instant of the birth of Judy's daughter. It was luminous and comforting; it stayed with me for a while afterwards. I have pondered it many times since, trying to recapture the wonder, shyly and secretly wondering -- was it the Shekhina? And if so, are all laboring women so visited?

Or was it the descent of a new human soul into this realm, separating itself from the great collective of souls that is God, that is eternity? Was it the contraction of the Great One, the mystical concept of tzimtzum that I witnessed, the physics of the soul which must be poured into each new person at the moment of birth?

Since that time, I have been visited only once more by the same overwhelming presence and it was in the exact opposite context -- standing graveside at the funeral of my mother-in-law in the spring of 1995... in the eighth month of my pregnancy with Little Babe. With greatly swollen belly I stood next to HOBB in the cemetery, watching the coffin of my vibrant, beautiful mother-in-law lower into the ground. I had feared this moment since she was diagnosed with incurable cancer, nurtured nightmares about the spectacle of her burial, nearly campaigned to stay home, away from death when I was bursting with new life.

As the coffin slipped ever lower into the ground, one of the planks on the top shifted suddenly. The assembled mourners took a collective intake of breath. One of the party -- I cannot remember whom -- knelt to right it. And at that moment, I was visited by that same overwhelming presence, filling me with a feeling of wonder and happiness. It enveloped and comforted me, powerful, maternal and eternal. My eyes filled with tears as a message made its way into my heart. I am saying my farewell. Don't worry about me anymore. I am released.

There are things that I have doubted, there are people who have left me feeling bereft, uncertain, unloved, there are questions that I carry. There is sorrow that I carry in my soul. There are mysteries that surround me.

But one certainty of my earthly life has been the existence of a universal being, He or She whom we call God or any variety of names. And the other certainty has been the existence of our eternal souls, compressed and poured into human form to accomodate our time on earth, property of God, patient and indwelling, longing to be free.

The Buzz of Englewood

It is now 12:41 on Tuesday morning. I just got in from seeing A Serious Man with HOBB and Big Babe at Lincoln Plaza Cinema-- a seriously surreal, unpredictable, hilarious, quirky, deeply Jewish and original film that only the Coen brothers could have made.

More than 12 hours earlier, I opened up this template to write a spiritual travelogue of our recent holiday and Shabbat excursion to the beautiful community of Englewood, NJ for Succot but got immediately sidetracked by the pressing demands of work and life.

With the rapid-fire volley of urgent emails on hold, I have returned to my task of earlier today, eager to capture the experience of the weekend before it evaporates from the forefront of my memory.

Our exodus to Englewood is actually a tradition of sorts, now closing in on its first decade. Since the first Succot following 9/11, it has been our tradition to flee Manhattan for the refuge of suburban New Jersey, staying with friends and taking our meals with the loving, generous and culinarily-gifted COBBs (Cousins of Bungalow Babe) -- who come equipped with two teenage boys (a taste of Nirvana for Little Babe) and a wonderland of friends.

Celebrating Succot in Manhattan has always seemed especially pathetic. Fitting oneself into a cramped, crowded Succah in the alleyways of apartment buildings, on a busy urban sidewalk or, gloriously, on the rare and windy roof, is always something of an ordeal. Even when the Succah occupies a beautiful space -- such as the quad of the Jewish Theological Seminary, just blocks from my home -- the logistics of arranging meals is an exhausting manner.

The ultimate destination for Succot (as for all the Jewish holidays) is Israel, but short of buying plane tickets, the drive over the George Washington Bridge transports us to a Succot Xanadu. Whether hand-built wooden shack or prefab cloth structure held up with scaffolding, beautiful Succot adorn porches, backyards, frontyards, driveways and decks as far as the eye can see.

In the final hours of our visits, HOBB and I always stroll solemnly through the streets, gazing hungrily at the FOR SALE signs adorning the charming homes of the neighborhood, asking ourselves, could we, should we consider this pleasant community if only for the sake of Little Babe, born and raised in the city?

Anyway, it was my intention this morning to capture not only the warmth of time with family and friends around the colorful holiday table, the myriad meals, late night wine-sipping, Succah hopping, leisurely strolls and power walks to burn off the gajillion calories we ingested...but also to gleefully report that I had the personally satisfying experience of being greeted as the Jewish equivalent of de Toucqueville during my visit, praised at every turn for an article I had written this summer about the non-sustainability of Jewish day school due to the exorbitant tuition.

The impact of the article derived from my ability to write candidly about the dramatic effect that this financial overhead has had on my own life over the past two decades, I was told. My willingness to admit that the cost proved ruinous to my personal life in a variety of ways -- shattering the myth that if something is important enough, you simply "stretch" to make it happen -- opened the door for others to do the same.

Even in this enclave of gracious homes and stylish families -- where affluence seems both ubiquitous and effortless -- the high cost of being Jewish had suddenly become a real problem, I learned. But appearances deceive; people have lost their jobs and their savings. The prospect of new employment is elusive. With tuitions soaring over $20K per child at most local Jewish schools (with Manhattan schools topping $30K), the amenity they had counted on is suddenly a luxury item.

So I stopped and listened to people's stories, heard painful details of what it is like to live through an economic cataclysm, took in shamed confessions about applying for financial aid, heard doubt expressed about the soundness of the educational system we had built, gained behind-the-scenes glimpses at the stresses visited on families in their effort to earn enough money to pay for Jewish day school.

Though I had lived it myself, there is power and poignancy in hearing these stories from other people. I was touched by the father of three who cannot afford summer camp (because of day school tuition), the doctor's wife who is astonished to find that her husband doesn't earn enough to support their lifestyle (because of day school tuition), the day school educated twenty-something with the three preschoolers who is adamant upon sending his kids to public school...because of the looming prospect of crushing tuition.

This matter is indeed one of the most pressing issues plaguing the Jewish community and my contribution to the discussion is to keep it on the radar screen. I wish that my expertise was in finding a solution (a communal fund for Jewish day school??) but my role is to identify and explore the dimensions of the problem and stoke outrage that so many of us have suffered in silence. As in the period immediately following the publication of my article, I encountered excitement and relief in Englewood that this matter is finally being aired and change might be on the horizon... as witnessed by the group of local parents who are seeking an alternative within the public school system.

Still, to paraphrase the doctor's wife whom I met on this visit, there is an equal amount of fear that once the economy adjusts itself, the issue will evaporate with the wealthy resuming their ability to pay tuition with nary a thought while the rest of the community is left with their private, shameful struggles.

Which is why it is impossible to ignore the irony of the recent renovation of Ahavath Torah in Englewood. Standing in the lobby on Shabbat morning, the prevailing conversation appeared to be about the new shul building itself, beautiful yet also cringe-inducing in the current economy. Overhead in the bathroom, from two college girls home for the holidays – “I hate coming here; it’s all about your clothes and shoes and how rich you are.”

These are not my words.

Yet it did make me wonder if anyone had proposed that even a portion of the renovation fund might have gone to level the economic playing field and guarantee day school tuition for the Jewish kids in Englewood, which would have set a fine and bold example for the American Jewish community.

Which brings me full circle to A Serious Man.

The most intimately Jewish movie I believe I have ever seen, filled with mystical ideas and insider references, A Serious Man is not for everyone. Some Jewish viewers may have a difficult time with its exaggerated and often unflattering Jewish characters and concepts. Stereotypes prevail; there is often a lampoonish, nearly grotesque aspect to practically every scene. I was fascinated and uncomfortable at the same time.

Yet I cannot recall another movie where Hashem -- called by the name Hashem -- exists in dialogue and concept, where the characters suffer and weep for the lack of their ability to figure out His/Her plan. As the sun comes up on this Tuesday morning, I confront the startling realization that my visit to Ahavath Torah entailed more than grousing about clueless affluence.

Indeed, as a parade of people with movie-star good lucks and outfits passed through the cavernous lobby, I stood in a tight circle with Big Babe and my friend Scott discussing the problem of prayer, the nature of God, Buber's concept of the I and Thou and our respective relationships with Hashem, both inside and outside of the synagogue. We formed a pow-wow in the midst of the kinetic space, our theological musings constituting our shared reality. The synagogue fulfilled its mission after all, housing our Hashem-directed thoughts and conversation.

My article on day school tuition is here, if you wish to read it: http://http/www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c56_a16519/Editorial__Opinion/The_Last_Word.html

Chag Sameach!

The World After Yom Kippur

After Yom Kippur, the world is a different place.

Sequestered in synagogue for the better part of 25 hours, the fellowship known as the Jewish People bond in prayer and humility forged by physical deprivation and the acknowledgement of the day's sanctified purpose: standing before God on The Day of Judgment...Yom Ha-Din.

It takes something quite beyond cynicism to deny the power of the day, the spiritual and emotional power of gathering together with hundreds or thousands of those who are focused on the same, the knowledge that around the world, millions more are likewise occupied in their respective time-zones with their unique traditions.

The power of the day is assisted by a belief in God but not dependant upon it. Yom Kippur exists on its own merit -- a freestanding Tent of Meeting between humans and their souls...and perhaps God.

Even for those like me who have davening ADD and find it difficult to remain focused on prayer after, say, 60 minutes, Yom Kippur is a deeply transformative day.

As I sit typing these words, three hours after the conclusion of the fast, I am a different person than the one who entered the holiday filled with dread, casting a fearful eye toward the endless hours in shul, the inevitable caffeine-withdrawal headache, the hunger pangs, the nagging thirst, the sorrow that inevitably bubbles up in the back of my throat at the contemplation of all that is tragic in human existence.

And of course, dread of the intimate encounter with God, the prospect of baring my soul in front of Him/Her, working up the spiritual stamina to confront the task of the day, resolve to allow the powerful prayers to sweep through me, igniting uncomfortable thought, painful memory, regret, insight, resolution, acceptance, cleansing, change.

This Yom Kippur felt momentous in many ways...HOBB (husband of Bungalow Babe) just turned 60, our oldest recently celebrated his 25th birthday, our middle one turned 21 and our youngest entered High School. But it wasn't just the chronological milestones that lent the day a different dimension. Over the course of the day, HOBB and I felt moved to take stock of the joint monument we had built over the past quarter century...this family, our shared passions, our travels, adventures, achievements, heartaches, losses, joyous moments, arguments, political differences, religious clashes, epiphanies, disappointments, little and large moments, memories of Yom Kippurs past, hopes for our shared future.

We talked about our childhood memories of the day -- HOBB with his beloved aunts Minnie and Paulie at the very same synagogue we attend today -- Ramath Orah; me, as a rabbi's child, overawed by the somber decorum of the day, sitting in a new holiday dress on a pew with my mother and siblings, face tilted upwards as my father preached to hundreds of rapt congregants, looking like John F. Kennedy in a flowing white robe and white satin yarmulke. We recalled our first Yom Kippur -- as honeymooners in Jerusalem 26 years ago; a Harvard Hillel service with our firstborn infant; a homegrown service in our Tudor home in Westchester; many years spent with my parents in Forest Hills with two young children; the Yom Kippur of ten years ago, just before my father-in-law died.

Walking Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians in the brilliant sunshine of Morningside Drive, we plotted future adventures. We felt awed by the very survival of our marriage in a time that is tempestuous, filled with self-driven agenda, deceit and ulterior motive.

I praised HOBB's steadfast nature. I voiced my desire that our children find mates who have this trait, a rarity in the couch-surfing, instant hook-up culture they inhabit. Sounding like Jewish mothers throughout history, I prayed out loud that they find such mates, sooner than later. We regretted the uncoupled lives of people we loved, their thwarted efforts to find worthy mates. We issued prayers for them to find loving companionship as well.

At Ramath Orah, a sea of white prayer shawls and garments sanctified the sanctuary. The air was heavy with prayer. The pews were filled with regular worshippers and holiday visitors alike, many students and faculty from Columbia University. Announcements were made regarding congregants who were sick, in need of prayer or hospital visits. The cantor chanted like a marathon runner, glib and guttural, sure-footed, never tripping, pausing only when the congregants needed to join in song or response. At several points, worshippers abandoned their pews and prostrated themselves on the floor, a practice reserved only for Yom Kippur, thrilling for Jews-who-do-not-genuflect. Downstairs, parents of young children sat around tables, talking, their charges running and occasionally yelling. A group of young teens gathered inside a reading room, giggling and complaining about hunger.

In the mid-afternoon hours, while HOBB slept and Little Babe talked with friends in his room, I lay on our black leather couch, reading Why This World, the new biography of Clarice Lispector, the Ukranian-born Brazilian writer. In the final stretch of the book, Lispector's life takes on shades of mental illness and hardship, owing to the schizophrenia of her oldest son, her insomnia and injuries sustained in an apartment fire. Reading her biography is akin to being burned. So painful did I find the events in the life of this sacred monster that I had to put the book down several times to contemplate the sweep of her life and legacy.

While doing so, I saw my own life through the portal of nearly fifty Yom Kippurs, thought that such a view provided a thoroughly unique way to write the biography of a Jew. By focusing on this one day per year, for every year of one’s life, the microcosm of an individual human life is revealed.

But of course, the activity of Yom Kippur is all inward, hidden from view, accessible only to us and to the author of the Book of Life.

Still, the thought stays with me, hours past the breaking of the fast, that the measure of our lives might be noted by collecting the miscellaneous scribblings of our soul, the utterances of our hearts, the memories and tears, the noble aspirations of our minds in this 25-hour world known as Yom Kippur.

My Son, the Stand-Up Borscht Belt Comic in Berlin

Big Babe, my 25-year-old freelance writer son, has cultivated two new talents in his adopted city of Berlin: trumpet playing and stand-up comedy.

Borscht Belt-style.

As the most overtly Jewish New Yorker in Berlin, Big Babe was tapped to deliver the inimitable zingers immortalized by Henny Youngman, Rodney Dangerfield, Woody Allen, Larry David, Jerry Seinfeld...and the rest of the gang. And he mixes it up with post-Shoah, edgy, expatriate American wry observations that are his and his alone.

As he felt moved to send a clip of a recent performance, I am posting it here. Check it out: yiddishe naches, 21st century-style:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=244702815033

Night and the City

At 3:40 in the morning the traffic on Amsterdam Avenue is light; hushed, like a thick broom sweeping briskly across a rough wooden floor.

I am awake because I am beset by a midnight-of-the-soul mission -- turning a matter over in my mind while begging my body to cease its strong surge of adrenalin, fueling my brain and my wakeful state.

I'm not thrilled to be up -- restless yet in need of rest -- still, I tend to be philosophical and pragmatic about such situations.

At the risk of sounding Pollyannish, I seek the silver lining of sleeplessness -- more time to do stuff that I cannot accomplish during the day.

Better yet, the possibility of insight.

Shortly after midnight, I set up my bed on our black couch, taking two pillows and a sheet. At the foot of the couch, Alfie the Pomeranian slumbers happily. Nala, his sister, is curled up nearby on the floor.

In the midst of distress there are moments of grace, even comfort.

The landscape of this night is vastly changed from last night, which I spent in the bungalow with Little Babe. We stayed up until 1:30 am watching old music videos on my computer, which I set up on the porch, singing along with Elton John, Don Mclean, David Bowie, Duran Duran, the Beatles and Weird Al.

We found footage of fascinatingly horrible auditions for American Idol.

And then I remembered The Gong Show.

Searching through Youtube, I located several episodes and watched this wacky seventies television fare with my 14-year-old son, shrieking with laughter at the insane antics of the performers, judges and stoned-out-of-his-mind host, Chuck Barris.

Eventually we found http://www.animalnews.com/, where we were introduced to stories about elephants who got trapped in manholes, puppies born with five legs, a newly-discovered miniature deer, turtles who blocked a runway at Kennedy International Airport and other amazing dispatches from the animal world.

Observing the late hour, I closed down my laptop, ordered Little Babe to brush his teeth and go to sleep. I fell into bed giddy, sprinkled with magic, happily exhausted.

The sweet Catskill mountain air blew my curtains outward in billows. The refrigerator in the kitchen just outside my bedroom hummed reassuringly. I heard the scuttle and rustle of nighttime animals across the lawn outside my window. Before I knew it, morning had dawned, sweet and sunshiny.

Little Babe and I drove into the city today during the lunch hour. Setting foot outside our car was a punishment. Manhattan was abominable today, a classic August day -- sticky, hot, heavy with moisture and bad smells; conducive to crankiness.

Even walking across the campus of Columbia University this afternoon -- an oasis of civility and beauty -- I nevertheless longed for the carpet of lawn stretching from my front porch to the woods, the staggered Adirondack chairs, our neighbor's Big Wheel, the sight of Alfie and Nala scampering freely.

Sitting at my dining room table working on my laptop, I felt robbed of my regular summer work space. The cocktail party I later attended at a swanky Upper East Side location -- surrounded by important works of art -- seemed the epitome of everything shallow and meaningless in New York; peopled by the gorgeous glitterati, gauche and gaudy in an era of belt-tightening.

But the yearning for my rural retreat really took root this evening as I lay wrapped in a sheet on a leather couch, hearing the whoosh of traffic below, seeking comfort from the indifferent night of the chrome and concrete city, tasting disappointment, closing my eyes in search of a dream lover, friend of my soul.

A Hasid Walks Into a Laundromat

I learned something new about my people tonight.

During the Nine Days leading up to Tisha B'Av, Satmar Hasidim do not launder their clothes, sheets, towels or anything.

This piece of information was imparted to me by the elderly, stoop-shouldered, limp-haired, snaggle-toothed laundromat lady in the stretch lavendar pants whom I overhead talking to the Spanish guy who was mopping the floor.

It was 9:50 p.m. and the joint was closing in ten minutes.

I was the only non-employee of the Monroe Laundromat at that hour, hastily tossing hot clothes from the dryer back into the hamper in order to make a quick getaway to the bungalow where I had left Little Babe, two hours ago, to watch anime on his i-Pod Touch. What I overhead, in fact, was the laundromat lady explaining that "the Jewish guy" had come in earlier to request that the laundromat stay open on Thursday night until 1 am to allow the women of Kiryas Joel, the nearby Satmar village, to catch up on their dirty laundry of the past nine days. Though the laundromat had accomodated this request in years past, it was now under new ownership and the lavender-trousered lady had to check with her boss.

"They've got this thing called the Nine Days where they don't do normal stuff," she explained, with a measure of authority. "It leads up to a fast day."

The Spanish guy nodded respectfully, mopping his way around my sneakered feet. The sweat from my recent workout was drying on my skin and I suddenly felt class-conscious, wondering if I appeared as a spoiled, highly-educated or wealthy summer resident of this Catskills town, given to the luxury of going to the gym while the laundromat workers toiled late into the night; a cavalier housekeeper given to doing her laundry hastily and without care for wrinkles.

The mopping man wore a brace around his middle such as those worn by movers or weight-lifters. He was muscular and compact, likely my age. I was startled to find him gazing intently at me while I watched him work. His eyes communicated something I did not expect; it seemed to be a recognition of kinship. It was a friendly, familiar glance.

Busted in the act of staring, I blurted out to no one in particular, "I observe the Nine Days as well but not in same way as the Satmar. Obviously...because I'm washing my clothes. But I'm also Jewish."

The laundromat lady nodded sagely. The man bowed slightly. I smiled in a goofy, self-conscious manner, lifting my laundry bin to carry it out. The man held the door for me, held me in his gaze. I felt like the princess of the laundromat.

As I was walking to the car, I caught my reflection in the laundromat window and noted that I looked like anything but a princess. Sinewy arms set off by my black tank top, black tights beneath my black shorts lengthening my legs, hair pulled back into a messy ponytail, skin darkened by the summer sun, I looked as foreign and exotic in Monroe as a Satmar Hasid, neither overtly American or Jewish, vaguely Mediterranean, extremely Manhattan; streamlined and restless, a woman of indeterminate age driven to do her laundry late at night.

Baby Doll, 2 a.m., Bungalow Night

At 2 in the morning, it is scary as all hell to walk out of the bungalow by oneself, leaving a sheltered place of warmth, walls and other humans for the yawning black velvet of the woodsy night.

I'm probably the last person to walk alone at night along the perimeter of a dense forest known to harbor bears but my Poms started barking softly, in unison, and in a spurt of energy borne of altruism and work-related panic, I jumped out of bed, slipped my feet into my Born clogs, leashed the dogs and stepped into the impenetrable darkness.

In my black polka dot baby doll nightie.

Fully believing that there was an axe murder hiding in the woods to my right, a serial rapist crouching behind the garbage cans, a family of hungry bears under my bungalow and a rabid raccoon up a tree, I tip-toed onto the grass, exhorting my dogs to pee and get it over with.

Before Cropsie could dart from the parking lot to kill me.

But Alfie and Nala were thrilled at this rare nighttime outing and took their time to sniff every blade of grass and scout out the most opportune spots to pee.

And so, I endured ten minutes of terror, shivering in my thin baby doll, darting my head from side to side in a fit of hyper-vigilance: was that a cracking branch to my left? A growl in the near distance? The unmistakable sound of breathing coming from the trees???

Before returning to the comfort of my cabin, unleashing the dogs to dive underneath my bed in search of their sleeping lair, setting up my laptop on the porch and putting up a pot of coffee to begin my work day at half past two in the morning, a Gap hoodie now thrown atop my baby doll for warmth and protection against the probing eyes of the sinister, surrounding woods.

Mortification at the Movies

Hello??

Did it occur to anyone in Hollywood that fans of Sacha Baron Cohen's edgy/outrageous humor might be coming to his latest flick with family members in tow?

Specifically... one's sweet and especially innocent 14-year-old son?

Well, innocent no more, thanks to the proliferation of penises, deluge of dildos, scenes of actual sex, heart-stopping Hitler references, gaudy gay overlay, Mideast mangling, black-baiting, tongue-burning language torture and generally perverted prank that is Bruno.

Make no mistake: I live for this stuff. The jokes and sight gags were coming fast and furious, the audience around me was nearly frenzied with hysterical laughter and I had tears streaming down my face from repeated convulsions of mirth.

The problem was balancing my enjoyment of the movie's breathtaking chutzpah with sheer mortification, for sitting to my left, my young teen was watching simulated gay oral sex, a naked dominatrix with overstuffed boobs weilding a whip and other such visual delights.

More than once, a reflexive maternal hand flew up over his eyes to block his vision...shaking, because I was shaking with hysterics.

Whether or not Bruno is a good film is up for debate. It is certainly a shockfest, one which I would see again and again. It also showcases its star's ingenuity, fearlessness and intelligence, not to mention lithe, waxed and often unclothed body.

The issue is that Bruno, and several other films like it, need a special warning to go with them, something that prepares filmgoers for the terrific squirming that will overtake them if they are seeing the movie in the company of, say, their children or -- horrors! -- their parents.

When we left the theatre on Saturday night, I noted that my shirt was sticking to my body. I had literally broken out into a sweat with worry about how this film would effect my son and equally, what he would think of the mother who sanctioned his consumption of this lurid entertainment.

It reminded me of the nearly-equally icky time I watched The Heartbreak Kid with my parents at their home. Except then, I wasn't worried that I was poisoning someone's developing mind.

But perhaps I needn't have fretted. Seated afterwards at Fine and Shapiro, the kosher deli on West 72nd Street, I asked Little Babe for his assessment.

"Funny," he declared, biting into a hamburger. "But really, really weird."

Shabbat Shalom from the Love Shack

Friday morning at the bungalow.

Little Babe rode off to camp on his bicycle.

Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians frolicked in the grass, pulling on their extra-long leashes.

Big Babe dropped an email from Thessaloniki, where he is spending Shabbat.

Middle Babe called to say she was taking the day off from work and catching a 3 pm bus to Boston.

HOBB texted a Shabbat Shalom from Maine, where he is stuck for the weekend at a cello camp...with a small group of retired, overly-serious amateur musicians in a remote locale near the Canadian border.

And I set up my laptop on the porch of the Love Shack to tackle a full day's work, with the lush forest looming before me and the promise of Shabbat whispering in my ear.

Shabbat Shalom!

Midsummer Midlife Hair Crisis

That's me on the porch of our bungalow earlier today.

It's probably not too visible between the oversized shades and American flag but those are PIGTAILS sprouting out of my head, placed there to contain the voluminous and anarchic nature of my hair, which I am seeking to grow this summer.

Call it my midsummer midlife crisis: a stab at long hair.

Since childhood, I've always been a shorthaired girl, with brief forays into Joan Jett-like shaggy overgrown do's and a few grade-school years of long straight hair and bangs, which invariably ended up being cut too short by my mother.

A layered bob has been my classic look but for some reason I was inspired to grow out my locks this spring and have therefore added several inches to my hair...both horizontally as well as vertically.

You see, my hair tends to grow sideways and even upwards.

Hence the pigtails.

So far, the hair has gotten rave reviews but I'd be lying if I didn't admit that getting it to look good takes waaaay more time than I am used to expending on grooming matters. I'm a squeeze of the eyelash curler, swab of the eyeliner, swat of the lipgloss kind of chick. I have never had my hair styled and frankly scoff at women my age who have such low regard for their time as to spend it inside a beauty parlor.

(For the record, I have no problem with regular mani-pedis and consider them essential to mental health. But hairstyling?????)

So, there it is -- my midlife crisis: my hair.

No fancy red sportscars, no dalliances with younger men, no running off to "discover" myself.

I already have a black Honda Accord, two fabulous younger men in my life and discovered myself a long time ago -- around the age of nine, to be exact -- when my mother broke the shocking news to me that I would never turn into a boy.

Though I was stuck being a girl, I vowed to become a spy and traveler, writing my adventures down.

And that is what I do, snug as a bug in a rug in my bungalow, late into the night.

Eden Invaded

Little Babe called at 9:30 to let me know that the camp bus arrived back from bowling and that he was going to sleep over at his friend Colin's house. Could I meet him right away in the parking lot with a change of clothes, some Axe deoderant, toothbrush and his i-Touch charger?

Having just arrived back in the bungalow after a day spent sprinting to and from appointments in Manhattan, I let the duffle bag fall from my shoulder and stood still for approximately 5 seconds before assembling the requested items and tossing them into a backpack. Though the last thing I wanted to do was go back out into the chilly rain, the sleepover at Colin's house also entailed Little Babe's good friend Morry and was irresistable. Three-way sleepover. YEAAAH!

In the kitchen, Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians reacclimated themselves to the bungalow from which they had been banished for several days after their friendly barking became the cause of neighborhly complaints. Stepping over them, HOBB began unpacking some of our bags and settling in for the July 4th weekend, reacclimating himself to the cabin he hadn't seen since Monday morning.

While the rain beat a tattoo on the ceiling and I readied myself to run to the car, I found myself possessed of a peculiar, territorial feeling; what was he doing in my house?

Once outside, the soggy ground spongy beneath my sneakered feet, I sought to understand the resentful sentiment that had taken root in my heart. The inner sanctum where I had spent the previous three nights in splendid, spouse-free isolation had just been invaded, my solitary Eden colonized.

I allowed myself to dwell in the moment of outrage, my bungalow heart feeling caged, obstinately resisting the necessary transition from me to we.

A Memory of Michael Jackson, Long Ago

My mother had her purse stolen out of a shopping cart at the Pathmark in Queens sometime in the fall of 1972. A friend suggested that she place an ad for it in the local Pennysaver, promising a reward. Within a day, she got a call from a teenage boy in New Hyde Park who said that he found her purse in a garbage can somewhere near his home. There was no money in it, but it seemed that all her cards were there.

My mom thanked him profusely and made arrangements to retrieve it at his home.

Worrying at the last minute that the call might be a trap, she asked me to come along. I was 12, tall and skinny, owing to my newly-discovered talent for starving myself. We drove the short distance from our home in Douglaston, arriving at the designated address, which turned out to be a few blocks away from my cousins Rena and Mordy.

The difference between the two homes was dramatic. While my cousin's modest ranch had mowed lawns in front and back and a well-maintained facade, this home - a sad wooden cottage -- looked practically abandoned. The grass grew knee-high in the front lawn. Shingles were missing from the sloping roof. A chain-fence was orange with rust. Windows were half-covered with torn or crooked shades.

My mother gripped my hand and we rang the doorbell. Within minutes, a scraggly, underfed boy greeted us. We stepped tentatively through a darkened, littered hallway and followed him down a flight of stairs. The air was musty and smelled like a cat's litterbox.

The family appeared to live in the basement, but there was no adult to be found. A tinny radio was playing. Seated around an oblong folding table sat a group of unwashed kids with my mother's purse at the front end. The most senior member -- a boy in his late teens -- presided over the gathering.

"I found this in the garbage near the playground," the boy said. It came out like "I foun this inna gahbahj neah the playgrown." He didn't smile.

The kids around the table stared hungrily at us. I felt acutely uncomfortable, like a princess visiting from a nearby kingdom, encountering commoners for the first time.

I was aware of my mother's shock. She nodded, affirming that the purse was hers.

"Thank you very much," she said.

The boy arose and walked towards us. I felt my mother stiffen. The eyes of the seated children continued to stare avidly. The boy stood before us. He handed her the purse.

"Here," he said. It came out "heah."

"Thank you," she said again, reaching into her pocket and taking out an envelope.

The boy reached out a knobby hand.

"Thanks," he said.

"Well, goodbye," my mother said. "Thank you very much. It would have been a big pain to replace my driver's license and all the cards."

The kids stared mutely.

Within a minute, we were back out on the street, practically running towards our car.

Looking back on that episode, two details stand out in vivid relief:

That my mother had been wracked with remorse afterwards, having given the kids only a $5 bill.

And that the song on the radio was a new and ubiquitous hit single -- ABC -- by the Jackson 5, whose lead singer was a tiny dynamo named Michael.

And So It Begins...

The Rosmarin's Summer of 2009 officially began today with the opening of Rosmarin's Day Camp. Though many of us have been trudging up to our bungalows for the weekend since Memorial Day -- and a devoted handful actually moved in over the past two weeks -- the start of summer camp signals the real beginning of the season for local folks and urban refugees alike.

This is our 15th summer as seasonal residents of this Catskills paradise, a miniature lifetime in which our family went from four to five people, a deft sleight of hand in which the 11-year-old camper became a writer in Berlin, his 7-year-old sister a rising junior at Goucher College in Baltimore and the newborn baby a counselor-in-training, working in the cooking shack.

Today dawned cold and uncertain. This June has been an excursion into surreality, an unsettling season out of sequence that nevertheless is struggling to end on a positive note. After the brilliant sunshine of the past day, there was the heart-sinking possibility that the weather would revert back.

Yet, valiant Monday conquered the weather gremlin, allowing counselors, campers and their parents to experience a classic hot and sun-drenched First Day of Camp.

By all accounts, it was perfect.

"How was camp?" I shouted up to the little Russian girls who were having dinner with their babysitter when I returned home from Manhattan.

"Great!" they sang in a chorus.

"How was camp?" I texted Little Babe at 4:45, minutes after the campers went home.

"Awesome!" he wrote back.

Walking from parked car to bungalow, hauling heavy bags filled with clothes and food from THE CITY, fifteen years' worth of perfect First Days of Camp merged into a collage of sunburnt cheeks, the jumble of running limbs, damp hair, wide smiles, friends, frozen confections, wet towels, water-sloshed shoes, tie-dyed t-shirts, eager plans, art projects, missing teeth, bathing suits slung over railings, scraped knees and elbows, permission slips that needed my signature.

When I first discovered this place, the young chef was a tadpole in my swollen belly.

When I first found this place, September 11th was just a date after the start of the school year, Bernie was a name associated with nice guys, high school boys weren't plotting to massacre their classmates, videos of killings and decapitations didn't flood the Internet, the Internet was in its infancy and the 21st century was an exotic destination that everyone was about to visit.

On the night of the First Day of Camp, I am sitting alone, thinking and writing; soothed by a rare peace borne of an ever rarer circumstance -- solitude.

In the back room, Little Babe slumbers, utterly exhausted by his full day of work, 90-minute swim and evening visit from his good friend, Morry. In the city, HOBB and Middle Babe share the urban bungalow with Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians, whom we dispatched to the city for a few days to reduce the level of (new, sudden and disturbing) hostility we're getting from a few of our neighbors.

Big Babe is out of the country, traveling in Turkey this week. Called to Manhattan for a compact day of meetings beginning at 9 this morning, I returned home in the evening, bearing steaks from Fairway and bags filled with the summer clothes Little Babe forgot to bring when he drove up this past Friday with HOBB.

The solitude that surrounds me is blissful. I sit on the edge of my bed with my computer on the folding table, unshowered after a late-night trip to the local gym. I ponder a return trip to the gym in the morning, still unshowered. The thought appeals to me. Why not? Don't Americans wash themselves far too often for the health of their skin and hair? And isn't it silly to wash now when I will sweat again early in the morning?

The quiet outside my cabin has a sound, like a white noise machine. I note, as I always do during the summer, how time expands when quiet prevails.

At this moment, I believe everything possible -- the books and articles I wish to write, the places I want to see, the adventures I yearn to have, the soul companionship I seek, the beautiful and balanced life I long to lead.

In one hour, the First Day of Camp will draw to an end. This moment is bittersweet, like the final hour of Shabbat or a birthday or Yom Kippur.

I want to live forever in the land of First Days of Camp, that precious, precarious moment when summer stretches before you, gleaming, endless and illusory, like the Yellow Brick Road.

Monday Night Howl

There are women who have perfected the art of creating a sanctuary for themselves, carving out a sacred, inviolable realm out of time or space.

They are pitbulls when it comes to guarding their personal schedules, baring their fangs, if gently, when a challenge to upholding their agenda arrives. Possessed of a spontaneous nature -- hard-wired to respond to external need -- I have a sudden and urgent need to learn how these women manage to have on-going Me Time.

Do they cajole, threaten, persuade, blackmail, seduce, wheedle, trick, negotiate, deceive or simply take what they believe to be rightfully theirs?

What is their MO? Their no-fail, tried-and-true tricks of the trade? And is this indeed a feminist issue or an equal opportunity occupational hazard, a symptom of our overscheduled lives???

It's not like I have no extra-curricular life, indeed my schedule is full to bursting both inside and outside the parameters of work. The issue right now is that I am finding it a freaking HERCULEAN UNDERTAKING to get to the gym on a regular basis...and practically feel like I should be awarded a Nobel Prize every time I manage to even enter the locker room of my local JCC. (Honestly, just the act of opening my combination lock improves my cardiovascular health...that's how eager, nay desperate, I am to achieve fitness.)

Tonight, after several day's worth of thwarted attempts at gym-going, which have left me misanthropic -- okay, homicidal -- I'd love a little self-centered horribleness to rub off on me.

This night, this minute, I want to learn the art of burrowing through work and family commitments in order to reach the open field of my own basic needs -- fully entitled and unapologetic, calmly stepping over protests and guilt trips, breezing out the front door with a see ya later on my lips and a song in my heart.

Of course, it is not just about going to the gym and of course carving out time for important pursuits is an age-old female quest. Indeed, I feel myself accompanied by the ghosts of grandmothers and great-aunts past-- hardworking women who also longed in vain for something that men claimed as naturally as breathing air: time for themselves.

But nearly ten years into the 21st Century, it irks me that attaining something so basic still entails a campaign of sorts, the bravery of the solitary soldier, a revolution of one.

And that is why I howl, late on a Monday night in the month of June, in the year 2009. A she-wolf is on the prowl. Thwarters beware.

Lost and Found

It has been a dislocating season, short on sunlight, stalked by rain.

Overwhelmed by wind. Unreasonably cold.

Spring has acted like a mean-spirited host who does snarky things to compel her guests to leave early: skimp on breakfast, cut off the hot water supply, play music loud late into the night.

The only saving grace has been the sense of en masse misery about the weather.

"Ya sure ya wanna go outside?" we asked winkingly in the lobbies of buildings throughout New York as umbrellas were unfurled and raincoats buttoned up. Next came "Lovely weather we've been having," with a sardonic roll of the eyes. That, in turn, morphed into wearily sarcastic pronouncements such as "Really original. Rain again," and now, weeks later, into a cri de coeur -- "Omigod!!! How long is this supposed to last??"

Despite the absolute certainty of rain, HOBB, Little Babe and I drove up to our summer refuge -- Rosmarin's -- on Friday afternoon with bags of food from Fairway, challah from Zayde's, a slab of fresh potato kugel, a pan of broiled chicken, a Rubbermaid container filled with teriyaki salmon and another with sauteed beef, ala Little Babe's secret Asian recipe, a chocolate babka, wine and grape juice and two-days' worth of clothes, books, newspapers, magazines and Alfie and Nala the Pomeranians.

Our bungalow -- 10B, in the lower section of the bungalow colony known as The Flats -- is on the edge of a lush woods that fringe Walton Lake. A grassy field stretches out from the front of our cabin to the main road of the Flats. Only two double units occupy our side of the road, providing much-appreciated privacy in a cozy summer community with hundreds of inhabitants.

Which is to say that when we arrived in Monroe just half an hour before Shabbat, we found our isolation compounded. Only one other car sat in the parking lot. No lights shone in any of the other bungalow windows. Near the edge of the forest, young bucks stood grazing calmly. The air was sweet with the scent of fresh rain.

Trudging through the squishy, saturated earth on our walk from the car to the bungalow while aggressive raindrops pelted our heads. we laughed nervously at our originality...or stupidity.

We unpacked hurriedly, gripped by hunger and the sudden fear that more extreme weather might cause us to move in from our screened-in porch. I lit the Shabbat candles. We sang Shalom Aleichem. HOBB made the kiddush.

We drank wine and grape juice. We washed and I said the ha-motzi, throwing challah to my husband and son, as per the Sephardic custom that I adopted several years earlier. We began our Sabbath meal.

The drops of rain hitting our bungalow's roof formed a friendly percussion to our conversation. We added sweatshirts and socks as the evening wore on. The dogs came to beg, tableside, and we lured them to the back room, where they barked and barked, indignant that the humans get the broiled chicken, the broiled beef.

The dinner concluded, uninterrupted. HOBB went to read in the bedroom and Little Babe and I played a summer-camp game, forming our own teams, competing to find lyrics that contained, first, colors and then boys' names:

"Don't it make my brown eyes blue"
"I see a red door and I want to paint it black"
"Three cheers for the red, white and blue."
"Sky of blue, and sea of green in our yellow submarine."
"Daniel's traveling tonight on a plane."
"Oh Mickey, you're so fine, you're so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey!"
"Seein' me and Julio down by the schoolyard."

Soon, I noticed that HOBB had fallen asleep and Little Babe was yawning. I sent him for toothbrushing, we said the Sh'ma together, I kissed him goodnight and then sat in the Adirondack kitchen chair, reading Richard Yates deep into the night.

It is now two nights later. One hour ago, Sunday yielded to Monday. In my urban bungalow, to which we returned several hours ago, I'm still the only one awake...thinking, writing deep into the night.

My husband and youngest son and daughter are long sleeping. Our pooches crawled into my closet, collapsing atop the comfortable pile of discarded items of clothes that they fashioned into their nest. They were exhausted from our Father's Day excursion to Beacon, NY, hour-long visit to the boardwalk at Rye Playland and dinner at the home of FOBB and MOBB (father and mother of Bungalow Babe), where we were joined by Middle Babe, our daughter.

At this hour, my apartment is quiet but my mind is not. I am thinking of so many things -- of the lovely rain-saturated Shabbat we spent in the country, of the Scrabble game played Saturday afternoon atop our bed, of our bungalow friends from The Hill -- up on top -- who likewise journeyed up to their bungalow, despite the forecast; of Richard Yates's bleak world view, of the demands of the work week ahead of me, of the books I want to read and those I wish to write, of the often maddening modern artwork at Dia in Beacon, of the waning month of June, of Middle Babe's approaching 21st birthday, of the free-floating and diffuse sense of loss that I feel on this night.

I am thinking of the myriad unresolved hurts between people who love each other. I am thinking of the missed opportunity to love. I am thinking of the special lovability of those who are different. I am thinking of the challenge of loving those who are difficult.

I am thinking of how time is swept away, never to return. I am wondering if Big Babe, my oldest son, living in Berlin, is right to despair of discovering sincerity dwelling in the human heart.

I am thinking about the violence in Iran and the countless cases of missing children in this country, the sad fact that most are discovered to have been murdered. I am thinking about escaping to Paris. I am thinking of visiting my sister in the Holy Land. I think, happily, of the easy love between us.

As this Father's Day wanes, I contemplate a puzzle worthy of the Sphinx -- when is a father not a father? When is a daughter not a daughter?

I think of how I recently explained the essence of being adopted thusly:

Imagine a plant uprooted from its native soil, replanted in a beautiful grove. The new soil is hospitable to growth, but the plant is nevertheless the product of another grove, transplanted into foreign soil.

I am thinking that my adoption is a fascinating part of me but hardly the totality of who I am. For instance, I am so much more defined by my thirst for knowledge and adventure.

I am thinking about what hasn't yet happened and I what I would like to say.

I am thinking about making a point. I am thinking about breaking through.

I am thinking of nothing and everything.

And suddenly, what I have lost turns into what I have not yet found.

The Adventures of the Would-Be Jihadists in Riverdale, New York

Riverdale, New York is about the least cool neighborhood in Gotham City.

Straddling the Henry Hudson Parkway just north of Manhattan, it is a mess of mismatched apartment buildings, pre-fab townhouses, senior facilities, private schools, depressing stores and shopping centers where, incongruously, gorgeous and often palatial private homes adorn the bank of the Hudson River or slouch self-consciously a couple of blocks over, to the east of the Parkway.

There are no groovy hangouts, no hip nightclubs, no restaurants that could properly be called destinations. But Riverdale has Jews, and lots of 'em. There are at least at least three thriving Orthodox synagogues, a bustling Conservative one and even a Reform Temple. Though badly in need of renovation, there is also a Jewish Community Center. There are at least two Jewish day schools and a new Jewish high school. I've heard rumors that there is a Reconstructionist congregation.

The largest senior facility has the word Hebrew in its name, there are kosher pizza places and Chinese restaurants and delis and butchers and bakers and even a Dunkin' Donuts shop under rabbinical supervision.

It's a bit of Jerusalem on the Hudson, Riverdale is; the kind of place where Saturday afternoons bring the local yidden out on the streets in Shabbat garb -- gaggles of formally-dressed kids running in tandem, families strolling in their finery, elderly couples in dignified shuffle.

Still, unlike Brooklyn, Riverdale is not on any subway line, not the kind of neighborhood one is likely to stumble onto by accident. It is a drive-thru community, a passageway from Manhattan to Westchester or Connecticut, a place that doesn't have a quaint and cozy center.

So it is therefore extremely puzzling to learn that of all the New York communities renowned for being Jewish, Riverdale was being targeted by a gang of would-be terrorists from Newburgh, NY.

As the news of the foiled plot hit the airwaves, complete with the details of a bomb set to detonate outside of the Riverdale Temple and the Riverdale Jewish Center, where HOBB and I proudly sat in the sanctuary, just three weeks ago, to hear Little Babe play cello in his school's Yom Hazikaron presentation, it struck me as exceedingly odd.

If one was going to strike a blow to the heart of the New York Jewish community, Riverdale would hardly be the place. My own nabe -- the Upper West Side -- or Boro Park, Brooklyn or the Upper East Side or Forest Hills, Queens or any number of Long Island and Westchester communities have higher Jewish visibility.

While it is a vibrant, important and Jewishly-dense area, Riverdale is more akin to the right arm, not the vital center of the community.

And unlike the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, which is located along the Henry Hudson Parkway, the intended targets of this particular plot are located within the grid of inner streets, hardly the kind of place a Jew-hating terrorist might stumble upon accidentally.

Begging the question -- how did they know?

Yet, this was not the first time that Riverdale was under terrorist threat in recent years.

And by the light of day, puzzlement morphed into another emotion -- uneasiness -- as new emails filled my Inbox. Several contained links to news stories about the foiled attack. One was from the principal of Little Babe's school in Riverdale. It offered a recap of the story and news from the police briefing that took place last night.

The FBI acted in an exemplary way, infiltrating the terrorist cell, the situation is now entirely under control, the email explained. There is no heightened threat to the children or the community.

The words were intended to reassure the parents of the nearly 1000 Jewish kids who are scheduled to leave the safety of their homes this morning, like any regular school day. And news articles now carry an "all's clear" message from Mayor Bloomberg.

Yet suddenly, Monday's email from the school nurse's office about swine flu, seems quaint, nearly cartoonish.

Unlike terrorists, swine flu doesn't target Jews, though the first New York City fatality of the virus did turn out to be Jewish.

In a free-associative, crazy-person kind of way, this seems like a premonition of sorts as I prepare to wake up Little Babe and get him ready for school.

Sunday Night in May with 'Mockingbird' and a Calligraphy Brush

Here is a slice of the life of Bungalow Babe in the Big City:

Last night, at 10 pm, tired of reading To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Babe handed me his tattered paperback copy.

"Could you read me the last chapter of Part One?" he yawned/asked.

Being that I had just returned from the gym five minutes earlier, which capped off a 12-hour marathon of activity, which began with an early morning breakfast on Long Island, included a three hour cleaning frenzy at our actual upstate bungalow and had just concluded with a 45-minute session on the elliptical trainer with the music of the Go-Go's blasting in my ears, I must admit that reading out loud to my youngest child was not what I had in mind.

Evidently, my feelings were written all over my face. But Little Babe knew how to sweeten the deal.

"I'll do Japanese calligraphy on your back while you read to me," he offered.

Deal.

So, for the next 20 minutes or so, while I retold Harper Lee's timeless tale, Little Babe dipped his calligraphy brush into ink and drew on the canvas of my back. The tickling touch of the brush was totally relaxing, the perfect end to a hectic day.

Sensing an opportunity, Alfie the Pomeranian curled into my side while his sister, our year-old pup Nala, watched respectfully from the floor.

Time superimposed itself onto place resulting in this moment: a fortysomething American Jewish woman in 21st Century Manhattan reading a novel based in the American South of the mid-20th Century while her young teen son draws Japanese pictographs on her back.

Nearing the end of Chapter 11, the insult hurled at Atticus Finch -- "Nigger-lover!" -- tasted foreign and uncomfortable in my mouth, a dusty vestige, long ago but not too far away.

Not so far away indeed that when Scout landed a punch on Francis's foul mouth, the blood on her fist felt warm on my own hand and the beating that she got from her uncle was as tangible as the breeze from the open window of my apartment drying the ink on my naked back.

Bitch on Wheels

Looking at the mug shot of Madlyn Primoff at 2 in the morning provides a jolt of adrenaline. This image seems borrowed from a seventies horror film; it is reminiscent of the psycho vagrant hanging around the parking lot or an extra from Night of the Living Dead.

It's not nice to make fun of the way someone looks (even when they are being booked on charges of child endangerment) but it is the vacant-eyed, strung-out Sunday evening expression that Mad Madlyn wears that I wish to address.

Working people everywhere (but probably less so in France or Italy) know the bittersweet quality of Sunday evening, that last refuge of blissful non-work before the relentless pace of the work week resumes.

A certain melancholy always sweeps over me at sunset as I bid farewell to unstructured time with my family and friends, to trysts with the New York Times spread out on the couch, to the memory of red wine, to the joyous cessation of demands, deadlines and deliverables, to the freedom to just be... without the pressure to constantly produce.

Of course, to working parents of young children, the weekend is often just as stressful (if not more so) that the work week...with the exception that you have no lunch hour, no arena in which to feel smart and competant, little or no time away from your kids and very little control over just about anything.

Though I have always preferred weekends to the workweek throughout my nearly 25 years of motherhood, I have often heard people with young kids say that they cannot wait to get back to work following a weekend and that their true work is at home, being a mom or a dad.

Maybe that sense of utter overload is what Madlyn Primoff was experiencing last Sunday evening when she dumped out her young daughters, who had previously been bickering in the backseat of her car, in downtown White Plains and drove away, leaving the girls miles from home.

According to news reports, the older ran after the car and was admitted back. The little one did not and was left alone by her mother and sister. A short while later, the crying kiddie was found by a concerned couple, fed ice cream and handed over to a passing cop.

The police took the agitated 10 year old to the station and waited for the parents to call. When Mommy Madlyn finally did, it was to report a "lost child." She then went on to tell the cops that she had let her daughter wander around downtown and couldn't locate her, blah blah blah, neglecting the troublesome part about throwing her out of the car.

White Plains' Finest reassured the mom that her daughter was safe and instructed her to come down to the precint to retrieve her. When she arrived, she was arrested and thrown into the clink for the night.

I provided this recap to save you from googling "Madlyn Primoff" on the off-chance that you hadn't heard of this story. Perhaps you have been working day and night on your doctoral dissertation or are engaged in hand-to-hand combat with Swine Flu or have just been in a remote village without internet access.

In other words, chances are that if you are breathing, you've heard about this infamous woman: Scarsdale wife, mother of two young girls and white shoe lawyer at a fancy pants Manhattan firm.

Not to mention bitch on wheels.

Over the past week, I've clocked untold hours reading civilian reactions on the myriad blogs and websites dedicated to Maddy's misdeed and have been fascinated to find that there is a hearty debate in this country (and even in such places like France and Italy) about the degree of heinousness of Madlyn Primoff's actions with some parents calling her insane and irresponsible while others give her a You Go, Girl! (and even 'fess up to having done the same to their bratty offspring) and still others admit to having had the urge but stop short of condoning Primoff's penchant for putting her kids out, curbside.

As my POV on L'affair Primoff is pretty evident, (yep, I find the notion of actually throwing your young kids out of the car hostile, crazed and nearly unforgivable) I don't wish to belabor it.

Instead, I want to draw a lesson from this story, one with practical ramifications.

And the lesson can be drawn from meditating upon the scary face of Madlyn Primoff.

We can learn from the face of Madlyn Primoff a truth that we have long suppressed: that it is too steep a transition to go from Sunday night to Monday morning when you are a working parent of small children.

Too jarring is the passage from a weekend at home where it can often feel like your kids are your boss to the office where your boss is your boss.

Honestly, how do we expect people to behave in a sane, responsible manner if they go straight from two days of chauffering their kids to various sports activities and birthday parties, overseeing homework and school projects, buying shoes and eating at fast food restaurants - not to mention playing referee between on-going squabbles in the backseat of a moving car -- to the world of stream-lined professionalism?

Working parents of small kids need a little buffer zone...where no one is their boss.

So, in the spirit of preventing more kids from being thrown out of cars (or worse) or to avoid the melancholy meltdowns of people like me who are guilty of loving weekends too damn much, I suggest the following modest proposal, which I will call Mad Monday Morning, in homage to Madlyn herself:

A mandated work week that resumes at NOON on Mondays, thereby creating a half-day recess for the working parents of young children -- or hell, just about anyone! -- who has trouble making the transition from Sunday night to Monday morning.

The time can be spent communing with nature, watching television, taking a long bath, saving the world, having a mani-pedi or enjoying intimacy with your spouse now that the kids are finally out of the house.

Working parents of America! Let us re-envision Monday morning, thinking of it not as a destination but as a portal between the realms of work and leisure.

Let us honor the need for a journey from one to the next.

And maybe, if we can build this bridge of sacred time, there will be less road rage along the way.

Close Encounters of the Unexpected Kind

On Shabbat afternoon, I left HOBB (husband of Bungalow Babe) and thirteen-year-old Little Babe after the communal pre-Passover shul luncheon known as The Last Challah, and walked down to the JCC to meet a friend.

It was a notably blustery day. Though I typically look forward to this two-mile Shabbat hike -- a personal ritual -- I felt more than a bit daunted by the prospect of traversing 40 windy blocks. In addition, the sky was gunmetal grey with a moist sting in the air. Having decided against a hat, I had a vision of myself arriving at the facility drenched, shivering and miserable.

Forty minutes later, having stopped in at least half a dozen shops to warm up along the way, I arrived. Despite my fears, it hadn't rained, though my fingers were nearly numb with cold and my hair looked like it had been blow-dried by a hairstylist on crack.

As planned, my friend arrived at 3:30 and we quickly commandeered a couch in the lobby in the minutes prior to the performance of the Acapella group -- a standard feature of the JCC's Shabbat R&R program. While she guarded our seats, I went to fetch cups of hot tea and cookies -- all free, courtesy of the observance-friendly community program.

Though we had thought to meet for a couple of hours (before she went off to her Torah class and me to my regular afternoon workout at the JCC), the sun was setting by the time we parted company.

As we spoke in the lobby, and then in the vacant reception area of the nursery school, four hours had passed. And when I arrived home at 9:30 pm, HOBB was completed baffled as to how I had managed to spend six hours "at the gym."

But I wasn't "in the gym" for six hours, I attempted to explain. I was with my friend and then I went to the gym only for the last hour...after which I fell into a locker room conversation with some women about the limitations of talk therapy and philosophy of Viktor Frankl.

While HOBB looked at me skeptically, I asked, don't you ever get into long discussions with your friends or meet really interesting people in unexpected places? Don't guys have these kinds of talks in locker rooms?

But even as the words were leaving my lips, I knew that the kind of locker room talk men were renowned for was hardly about matters such as logotherapy.

No, he stated, continuing to stare at me as if I had just announced my conversion to Wicca. I have never had any kind of extended conversation in the locker room nor do I have four-hour long discussions with my friends in the lobbies of buildings. That's not the kind of thing that happens to men.

I uttered a silent prayer of thanks to the Lord for not making me a man. And happily pondered my penchant for unexpected connections, for interpersonal adventure, for encounters with friends and strangers...the good, the bad and the unbelievably weird.

This, you see, is a recurring theme in my life. I leave Point A bound for Point B. Most often I arrive at my appointed destination...but not until visiting Points Z, Q, G and V along the way.

Or my pre-supposed destination becomes a launching pad for another kind of adventure.

Most of the time, the journey feels magical, marvelous and tinged with bashert, a sense of the pre-ordained.

Mainly, these adventures occur when I am on my own. I have also come to see that there is a special category of Shabbat afternoon close encounters of the bashert kind.

And every now and then, my very openness leads me into an awkward or questionable or unsavory situation.

Such an encounter took place earlier this week, far from the protection of Shabbat. In the course of a prospective business meeting with the kind of client I invariably avoid, my openness exposed me to a sense of personal trespass.

But life adventurers don't easily wear the mantle of victimhood, expect for obviously extreme situations. Creepy though this particular connection proved to be, I proudly toss it into the valise of personal experience, looking back at it with a kind of horrified fascination.

The sun has just come up on the start of a new work week. Twenty minutes ago, my daily alarm went off and I silenced it quickly, so as not to wake Little Babe or HOBB. Sitting at the dining room table in my quiet apartment, I pause to consider that three nights from now this very space will be filled with the clutter of conversation as Middle Babe and Big Babe will, GW, join their little brother, grandparents and guests at our first Seder.

Though I am now rooted in secular time, Pesach will shortly pour its magic over my household. Within the pre-ordained structure of the Seder, unexpected adventure, interpersonal revelation and connection with our collective past and future will occur. As we sit together, recounting the story of our people's journey from slavery to freedom, spontaneous, sometimes startling discussion becomes interwoven with the timeless text of the Hagaddah.

It is for this, I believe, that we were liberated from Egypt. The Children of Israel were the first chance adventurers, refusing to go directly from Point A to Point B.

Indeed, forty years elapsed between their departure and appointed arrival, an epoch that has erroneously been called Wandering.

But as the descendent of this nation of early adventurers, driven to seek an alternative to the straits of servitude to Pharoah, I toast the first recorded road trip in Jewish history, knowing that, though the going was often rough, it was an excellent adventure.

Haagen Dazs at 5 A.M.... and Other Cool Things About Being a Grown-Up

At five in the morning, having been awake and working for one entire hour, I padded into the kitchen, removed the pint of Vanilla Haagen Dazs I had bought for Shabbat…and had breakfast.

The ability to eat Haagen Dazs whenever the heck you want is definitely one of the coolest aspects of being an adult. In my mind, it just about cancels out other, less cool factors, such as stress, the prospect of one's impending death and belly fat that refuses to go away even after millions of ab crunches. (Of course, ice cream might have something to do with that. A bitter irony.)

My pre-dawn ice cream party catapulted me back to a dear and precious memory -- the first time I tasted Haagen Dazs ice cream.

The year was 1977 and my family had just moved to Forest Hills from Douglaston, NY, where my father had been the rabbi of a busy Conservative synagogue. Having recently earned his PhD in clinical psychology, he made a bold career change at the age of 47, leaving behind the highly public pulpit position he had held for 21 years in favor of a private psychotherapy practice in Manhattan and Queens.

The move away from Douglaston was actually a move up on the socioeconomic and sophistication ladder. Our new home was a solid, impressive brick home that cost more than three times the cost of the Douglaston home: a staggering $80,000.

Though we had lived in a woodframe nineteen fifies colonial house owned by the synagogue, most of the members of the Douglaston community lived in modest walk-up garden apartments in the Jewish section of town. (Old Douglaston was as grand as Great Neck. Alas, few Jews had been allowed in.)

Down the block from our house, on 61st Avenue, was an EJ Korvettes -- an emporium of downscale dreck, with the exception of their fine record department.

The other local department stores were Mays and Alexanders. Between these fine shops, the Danskin "irregulars" outlet on Union Turnpike and the occasional trip out to Williamburg to the ever-crowded and dusty Natan Borlam's, we built our uncool wardrobes. The Bloomingdale's branch that opened up in Fresh Meadows a few years earlier was some kind of fluke and I wondered where the store's customers actually lived.

Going out to eat entailed driving to Main Street in Kew Garden Hills for kosher pizza 'n falafel at Shimon's (the first such establishment) or Levi's (the competition, just a couple of blocks away).

Occasionally, we would troop into a diner, such as the Scobee Grill on Northern Boulevard or the Georgia Diner on Queens Boulevard where we ate tuna salad sandwiches festooned with frilly toothpicks, which came accessorized with a generous handful of potato chips, sour pickles and a scoop of cole slaw.

For special occasions, we headed down to the Lower East Side for Ratner's (milchiks) or "Schmulke" Bernstein's (fleishiks). Weirdly, there was one year that we made frequent visits to Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips, which my mother, the rebbetzin, somehow deemed kosher.

Though Waldbaum's was our local supermarket, my mother preferred to drive the few extra miles to Pathmark, which became our family's mecca, an alternate spiritual retreat, the consumer counterpart to our synagogue -- The Marathon Jewish Community Center.

I therefore grew up on Pathmark brand everything, including notebooks, shampoo and ice cream. Especially their ice cream, which my mom claimed was actually Breyer's in Pathmark packaging -- a sad delusion... or outright lie. Glorious exceptions to this included actual Breyer's ice cream, when it was on sale; the creamy perfection of Carvel at the local Douglaston outpost; and -- the pinnacle of every kid's dream -- Baskin and Robbin's, with their free tastes, pink spoons and 31 amazing flavors.

Despite my fondness for getting tastes of such creative ice cream incarnations as Bubblegum and Blueberry Cheese Cake, I always chose Pralines 'n Cream. And because there was a Baskin and Robbin's on Main Street in Kew Garden Hills, our pizza and falafel forays often included ice cream.

So, I was hardly deprived of ice cream pleasure in my youth.

However, when, at the age of 17, I discovered the heaven that is Haagen Dazs, my life changed.

I was babysitting for a glamorous young couple with two little girls. The wife was blond and beautiful, with a Lauren Hutton-like gap between her two front teeth. The husband was geeky, with a frizzy halo of hair. Still, they dressed to kill and were the uncontested king and queen of sophistication within the Orthodox community, which my family had awkwardly joined, now that my dad was no longer a practicing Conservative rabbi.

Thirtyish and the very quintessence of Yuppie-ness, though the word hadn't yet been invented, they lived in a massive and gorgeous corner property with landscaped lawns and chic interior decor.

The kitchen of their home was stocked with babysitter-friendly snacks, which the wife graciously pointed out to me. It was during my second visit to their home that I discovered the Haagen Dazs, indeed, a stash of the frozen stuff in a dizzying array of flavors -- Chocolate, Vanilla, Honey and Carob.

I tasted them all.

And depleted more than a few pints by myself.

The parents never noticed or complained.

It was a dream babysitting assignment -- a beautiful home stocked with multiple flavors of Haagen Dazs and two adorable little girls who were invariably asleep when I arrived. It was an excursion into fantasyland for me, a guest pass to a magnificent life on a scale of grandeur I had not experienced before.

And though I was hardly the kind of teen who fantasized about marriage or playing house or even being a mother (running away from home to live in Paris, or at least California was a more common daydream) this was a fascinating experience for me. Settling into their ultra-comfy leather armchair for an evening of prime television viewing, my fave thing was to save the Haagen Dazs blitz for the beginning of the Carol Burnett Show.

To this day, I have a Pavlovian reaction when I sample Haagen Dazs after a long period of abstinence. As the ice cream melts over my tastebuds, a song runs through my head: "I'm so glad we had this time togeeeether; Just to have a laugh or sing a song. Seems we just get started and before you know iiiiit; Comes the time we have to say, so long. So long, everyone!"

In the home of my babysitting clients, I glimpsed a world of tastes and textures well beyond what was available to me in Douglaston. The fine clothes of the wife, the fashionable hats she wore for Shabbat and holidays at the Orthodox synagogue, the heavy furniture that bespoke taste and discernment, the well-behaved little girls with their dream bedrooms...all this was new to me.

And the readily-available Haagen Dazs was the cherry on the sundae of this new experience -- a taste of the World to Come.

Within a decade of my babysitting assignment, this beautiful couple divorced in a blaze of scandal involving matching his and hers affairs. Close-knit communities are always rocked by these things; even more so, Orthodox communities who sometimes consider themselves innoculated from the common temptations and downfalls of humankind.

Over the past thiry years, I've seen the two of them with their respective second spouses. They seem happy; however, I cannot help having a twinge of nostalgia when I recall my wide-eyed introduction to their home, their perfect-seeming family and their endless supply of Haagen Dazs ice cream.

The sun has now come up. Three hours have passed since my unorthodox breakfast and I took a break from blogging to get Little Babe ready for school, the dogs ready for their morning walk.

Naturally, I hid the evidence of my Haagen Dazs-fest from my son and husband. For Little Babe, this is obviously the worst kind of nutritional behavior to model and for HOBB, well, he just wouldn't understand.

Though I expected a blood sugar crash, none has come. Instead, I feel happy and calm, ready to face the Friday madness.

Perhaps I will institutionalize this little ritual every Erev Shabbat, a kind of spa for the soul and treat for the senses. As I grin at my secret indulgence, the words of the Carol Burnett theme song revisit me:

I'm so glad we had this time together
Just to have a laugh or sing a song
Seems we just get started and before you know it
Comes the time we have to say, so long.