He kissed me, not a soft kiss, but a forced, hurried one, right between Period 4 and Period 5, we stood there in a secret rushed moment of youth, I, at the ripened age of eleven and him, a much wiser and older twelve, he kissed me.

And it was disgusting.

Utterly disgusting.

Not what little girls tucked comfortably away in their pink canopy beds dream about or are read to in tales of princes and peas where the kiss is The Event of Grandeur, ever so tender and complete and enveloping. The girl loses senses. Knees buckle. Long perfect blonde hair cascades between them. A tiny sigh is heard. And life as we know it is renewed.

This is what I had expected, what I’d been promised, in countless years of fairy tale …Read on

The first time I saw my rabbi dressed up as Buzz Lightyear I knew I was in the right place.  Most adults stared uneasily, not sure what to make of this grown man bounding happily in a bright green and white suit, but I felt right at home.  My children were with me at the time and quite naturally declared:  ”Look, there is rabbi Andrew!” just as they would if they’d seen him at Publix, the park, or up on the Bima.  There was no mention of the outfit, I assume because he wore it quite well, quite naturally.  I’d step out on a limb and confess he even seemed more comfortable in it than the stiff grown-up jackets he’d have to, on many occasions, wear.  This was, after all, Purim, the Jewish holiday that, not only allows, but expects …Read on

This week I almost offered my ten-year old daughter a buck to eat her fruit. And by fruit I mean, two teeny tiny strawberries sliced in cubes a toddler could gulp down and not notice. It was a moment, like many, of weakness and sheer desperation where I delved down deep into my heart of capitalism and nearly paid her for the service of leaving me alone and putting something healthy in her body instead. But something held me back. Maybe it was the image of my son, sitting right next to his sister, wolfing down whatever fruit possible at the speed of sound. Maybe it was the memory of having grown up in a tropical country where fruit played a critical role in my household; very different from the way my daughter sees it today. There were …Read on

This is the day that your headache won’t go away, regardless the amounts of Advil you’ve wolfed down with a Tums chaser so you won’t get an ulcer with the water so you’re not left with chalk jammed in your teeth. This is the day you’ll be stuck behind Grandma driving 37 miles per hour on the freeway and you will honk and curse and huff and puff like an idiot in a rush to go nowhere just because it’s that kind of day.

You can’t see her well, Grandma. She’s shriveled down to a solid 4’8” and that’s including the lavender hair but you could swear when the sun hits at an angle just so and you squint and look at her rearview mirror, well, you could swear that that little old lady is smiling at you. …Read on

If someone presents you midway through your meal with a sweet cream flavored ice cream enveloped with wild flowers, cilantro and other herbs, you’d take pause.  You’d reach down to the pit of your basic ice cream knowledge (well formed for us Americans) and take pause.  Because you know chocolate well.  Many a passionate night you’ve spent together.  And vanilla goes without saying; it brings on a whole new meaning to nuts and sauces, sprinkles and maraschino cherries; basically anything with horrifying numerical dyes that linger in our system for seven years. There are even others ice cream flavors on the standard list: coffee (for die-hard, strong personalities like my seven-year old son), strawberry (for a touch of delicate whimsy), and rum raisin, (for drunken decadence and in my case, nostalgia as it was my mother’s favorite flavor).  But this? …Read on