I’d imagine most mothers celebrate the moment their preteen daughters set off for camp. It can be viewed as a time for growth, self-awareness, peace, and calm.

I bought myself a meat grinder instead.

You see, I know I am supposed to feel happy. I know it is good for her. Good for me. Good for everyone. But still, that mother identity has steadily coated its glaze on me over the years of driving the child to karate class, driving the child to piano lessons, driving the child to physical therapy, driving the child to play dates and on and on and on is suddenly hitting me dead on. She’s gone, now what the hell do I do? Who the hell am I? And that’s when I am not done. I still have a seven-year old son left …Read on

This past Tuesday was Election Day, and while I was particularly excited to live through such a history-making election, I was also glad the kids did not have school and I would not have to get up at the crack of dawn to tackle lunches, snacks, breakfast, shoe searches, hair untangling etc. etc. etc.
Little did I count on my wake-up call from my six-year old son, Jonathan.
TAP TAP TAP, a determined finger knocked through my comforter solidly on my forehead.
“Mom…” he insisted, mid-whine, as if we’d been engrossed in this conversation a good half hour or so.
“MOM!!!” more forcefully now (he’d definitely found me and wasn’t going away).
I peeked one bloodshot eye out into the dark world and was met by an inquisitive stare framed by ridiculously long, thick eyelashes.
Standing by my bedside in his favorite tin soldier pajamas was …Read on

“I feel spent and like running away to some foreign, exotic country…by myself”, where not the reassuring words my husband, (calling from the disconnected distance of Mexico) expected to hear from his wife, but it was the answer he got nevertheless.
Not even the award-winning Merlot he had secured from a tiny, dusty vineyard he visited in Argentina last week seemed to dull the strains of being the sole caregiver of two young children 24/7.
Glass two was empty and the options had narrowed themselves to Turkey or Greece for my escape.
Husband was smart enough to sense that whatever reply he offered would invariably get him in trouble, so, he spoke extra slowly, as if such verbal speed bumps would guarantee him some sort of half victory in the conversation.
“…Escape …to…a foreign…country? “There was a second or two where he honestly questioned …Read on

To eat or not to eat red meat: that is the question. It seems to be a pivotal stance of identity in the culinary world. You are what you eat, they say, and many folks embark on boycotting meat for one of numerous valid and compelling reasons during their lifetime. I’m simply not one of them.I missed the vegan rite of passage, clinging to my meat-eating ways several times, including a tiring and endless stint during college where I was surrounded by macrobiotic fanatics and friends that gathered around my kitchen for my famous soy-blueberry granola pancakes. And this was the 80’s, people. In Israel.But my most memorable pass on vegetarianism was my first true exposure to it. I was ten years old and my sister was eleven. It was an uneventful …Read on

I want to think of my grandmother as a short, stout woman people could not help but gravitate to. She’d be a constant bustle of energy, always with a smile, her glasses unable to keep up with her pace, they’d slip, slip, slip down the bridge of her nose, only to be impatiently shoved back up to their appointed place. She’d wear a thin paisley blue dress, which would sit proudly on her, unashamed of rolls or bulges that refused to be tamed. There’d be a thin gold chain with a quiet pendant hanging from her neck, nothing flashy, but rather a quiet amulet of her past: a place of comfort I never dare ask about but feel safe and secure to see there. “Come here, Pushka” (she’d call me pushka, which was Yiddish for “Little …Read on