Urban Mama

Pixar's Marital Advice

One of the things I loved most about UP was its opening sequence chronicling the friendship, romance, and marriage of Carl and Ellie. In just a few minutes Pixar's latest animated film captured the essence, the intimacy, the dreams deferred but not forgotten, of a long and loving marriage. Most of the sequence is wordless, and I couldn't hold back the tears by the end of it.

My husband and I were also best friends first. He was not my Edward*, my obsession-at-first-sight. He was my Ron, my Harry, my close-and-then-best friend I went to cafes, movies, plays, restaurants with all.of.the.time. When our romantic relationship finally began my sophomore year in college, we already knew all the secret-handshake stuff about each other -- like the fact my husband recoils from the film adaptation of Cabaret, because creepy Joel Grey in full-on Weimar costume and make-up freaked him out as a kid. (That's about all I can share without being considered a turncoat). 

In UP, life (mostly bills and other mundanities) gets in the way of Carl and Ellie's lifelong dream to visit remote Paradise Falls together. In my marriage, our own bills multiplied by our three loved-but-unexpected children have made it difficult for us to fulfill some of our dreams, to go on certain adventures (say, traveling extensively), but in the meantime, like Carl eventually realizes, we have had so many other adventures together. And no matter how long it takes, we'll make it to Paradise Falls one day. I know we will.

*Yeah, I read the Twilight books

Coos for Abuela

My husband and I have been apart for 15 days. It's the longest we've ever been apart. The kids and I are in Florida while he holds up the homefront (and racks up the billable hours). We knew it would be difficult to be separated for so long, but it was necessary for me (and the kids) to spend this time with Mami and the rest of my family. Since none of us knows what the exact prognosis is for Mami's deteriorating health (and who ever does?), the husband and I chose not to do a week-long vacation anywhere and instead to drive down here, to my older sister's little exurban town outside of Tampa, so the kids could see their Abuela every day, even for just a short while.

Yesterday the baby turned five months old (he's seven weeks old in the photo). I reminded Mami, who couldn't believe it had been FIVE months since he was born. I remember, after her colostomy surgery in January, how panicked I was -- unable to sleep at night -- at the thought of losing her before the baby was born. I called my friend Jen and told her I didn't know how to give birth in a world where I didn't have a mother. But here we are five months after my third baby swam out into the world. He's here, growing and changing every day. And she's here too, thank God. So it was only appropriate that on this particular monthly birthday, he should save his best coos and brightest smiles for his Abuela. Maybe even he recognized how special the moment was.

Later today I am finally going to spend most of my time working on my video project with Mami. I haven't done much of that since we arrived, because it didn't feel right. Instead, we've stayed up late talking, watching the Olympics, gossiping about celebrities, and just sitting together. We don't get to do it for long stretches, because the kids or her painkillers or my work interrupt or interfere. But after all the kids go to sleep, we have our night-owl conversations.

I want to ask her to fill in the blanks. To answer questions and set records straight. To remember recipes and important dates. To say something the grandchildren should hear and take to heart. I know it will be difficult for both of us, but we need to be brave. I need to ask the questions, so she can provide the answers. We can't wait any longer. My husband arrives Friday, and we leave Saturday. I only have two days, but if I focus, if she's willing, we can create something beautiful for the day when this cooing baby grows up and asks about his Abuela.

A Year In the Life

We moved to the DC burbs one year ago last week. Here's a quick look at the past year in Urban Mama land:

• April  2007: We tearily bid farewell to our Brooklyn home, our New York lives, family and friends and move to downtown Silver Spring, Md. Our new apartment is 300 square-feet larger but 300 times more boring than our former place. The kids go to a cooperative preschool in DC; The husband starts working at his new lawfirm, and I deal with navigating life as a freelancer in DC.
• May 2007: I make my first return trip to NYC for the Tribeca Film Festival.The husband and kids join me, and we visit many friends in Brooklyn and my brother's family in Queens. I cry through the streets of Tribeca wondering why we moved.
• June  2007: We discover a family friend's niece is a realtor down here and start looking for a house. The husband and I celebrate our sixth anniversary. The kids and I enjoy going to the apartment building's pool most afternoons. We return to NYC a second time to house and dog-sit for an acquaintance in Brooklyn. We once again feel seriously homesick.
• July 2007: We find a house we really like but by the time we're ready to to bid, someone else has already put in a contract. The following week, I find a newly listed home, and my awesome realtor gets me a preview. After the husband visits during the Open House, we decide to put in a contract the following day. The contract is accepted, and the closing is set for August. We go to NYC a third time and live it up once again. The husband and I go on our one and only flight of the year -- at trip to New Mexico for our dear friend Elizabeth's wedding.
  
• Aug. 2007: I quickly realize the "flu" I think I have feels eerily like first-trimester symptoms. But surely that's not it, since I have an IUD. The husband remembers we have an old, unopened pregnancy test I can take. There's a faint, faint, barely-there line. After four more tests and a trip to the hospital, we come to terms with the fact that I am, in fact, pregnant. We close on our house, and I nearly vomit at the proceedings. The Schmoop starts kindergarten.
  
• Sept. 2007: We move into our new house, and I realize that there is no way I can unpack while still having the actue pukeyness of first trimester life. I decide to have a homebirth and meet my amazing midwife for the first time. We rack up a lot of new-homeowner expenses. My mom comes to visit for the first time since we moved. I turn 31.
  
• Oct. 2007: No more morning, noon & night sickness. I start getting to know my neighbors and realize this suburbs thing isn't as bad as it first seemed. We celebrate our first Halloween (as parents) outside of Brooklyn. Despite missing the crowded streets of NYC, we're delighted not to have to deal with mobs of kids outside of every stoop.
• Nov. 2007: We go back to New York for the Marathon, where we stay directly on the marathon's path at our friends' brownstone.The Schmoopette turns three! We host our first holiday -- Thanksgiving with 2/3rds of my siblings and their families. The cousins have a ball running around the house. I cry when my last sibling leaves town and wish we all lived in the same city.
• Dec. 2007: We host our second holiday -- Christmas with my mom, my in-laws and one of the husband's aunts and her family of three. For New Year's, my oldest brother comes down with his brood and we thank God for my mom making it another year with cancer.
• Jan. 2008: My mom has to have surgery that leaves her with a colostomy. My siblings and I are on the phone with each other several times a day. She pulls through and stays at my sister's in Central Florida. I feel helpless being 30+ weeks pregnant and unable to go down and help.
• Feb. 2008: The Schmoop, our Superbowl Sunday 2001 baby, turns six on Superbowl Sunday. The husband turns 33 three days later. We have an un-Valentine's Day "Lost" celebration, but our plans for a last-hurrah weekend away go to pot when the husband's case schedule interferes. I have early contractions and am advised to stay on modified bedrest for a few days. No baby, though.
• March 2008: We (well, OK, *I*) have our third child in a birthtub in our basement rec-room. It's my most fulfilling, empowering birth experience. Life with a newborn begins again after a three year and four month break. We all fall in love with our new itty bitty boy. Our family feels complete, but I still yearn for another birth and a baby sister for the Schmoopette. The husband feels quite differently and schedules a vasectomy.
• April 2008: Here we are one year later, and although we still (and maybe will always) miss living in New York, we have grown to love our little butter-yellow home with the white picket fence. We have many blessings to count down here -- our neighbors, our old friends, our new friends. And our family is larger by one tiny person we all adore.

10 Things I've Learned From Abigail Adams

OK, so not Abigail Adams so much as Laura Linney's portrayal of the second First Lady on HBO's entertaining AND educational mini-series "John Adams"... I encourage all of you to watch it

1. A good wife knows how to be critical without being condescending or hurtful:"You do not need to  quote great men to show you are one."
2. A good mother knows that sometimes you have to let a child have life-changing experiences, even when those experiences are far away from you. (She makes John take John Quincy to Europe with him, so he won't grow up a "narrow-minded New England man.")
3. Women have dealt with workaholic husbands for centuries. It's not a "modern" situation for a woman to feel like a single mother while her husband is off at work -- in John's case helping to create the foundation of an independent nation.
4. Mothers must never shy away from making difficult decisions when it comes to their children's health and safety. (She requests the live smallpox vaccine even though there is a risk she or her four children may contract the disease from the vaccine.).
5. It's OK to cry when you miss your traveling husband, but there's no need to whine about it.
6. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Eleanor Roosevelt are not the only First Ladies to be considered their husbands' "closest adviser"
7. Just because you choose to dress-down for the daily practicalities of domestic life doesn't mean you can't clean-up and dress-up under the right circumstances.
8. Sometimes it's OK for your children to see you upset (like when Nabby sees Abigail furiously scrubbing the windows, because she hasn't heard from John).
9. When you have multiple children, it's important to encourage them to take care of each other (like when Nabby temporarily contracts smallpox or how Charles watches over the baby).
10. A good marriage requires meaningful communication (Abigail and John's letters to each other are long and detailed), patience, humor and passion.

The Importance of Being Still

With my two New York City babies, I was out and about within 48 hours of their births. I would bundle them up, grab my favorite sling, and walk a half-block to the bodega, or around the corner to our beloved coffee shop, the Pillow Cafe. I walked to the playground, the supermarket, and in the case of itty bitty Delia, my second-born, to her older brother Elias' preschool, a brisk 15-minute stroll away.

I remember having to trek into Manhattan when Elias was eight days old to visit my then-midwives. My husband and I ate an early-bird dinner at an Upper West Side diner with E in the Baby Bjorn. All the Bubbes came over to ooh and aah over such a small bundle. Nearly three years later, I co-chaired a day-long fund-raiser at Elias' cooperative preschool when Delia was 10 days old. Again, a few people commented at how tiny she was, but no one scolded me for being out of the house. It just seemed the norm -- to me, at least -- that postpartum city mamas return to city living incredibly fast.

Now that I've had my third -- and almost certainly, last -- child (he was born March 13), I want things to go slower. This is my DC burbs babe, Jonah. He was born at home, in a completely relaxed and loving atmosphere. And for the first time in my postpartum experience, I have no desire to run out and do anything.

Sure, maybe it's because there aren't coffee shops and green grocers  -- or anything except for neighbors' homes -- within a block or two of my house to tempt me away. That's definitely part of it. But it's also because I have a real desire to nest in with this baby. Since my husband is off work this week and taking care of me, all the household chores plus the older kids, I'm content to just relax. This may, after all, be the only week I get a chance to do nothing but focus on a newborn ever again. That wasn't something I thought about with my first two, but now I look at my five-day-old's tiny face and think: "Be still. Enjoy this moment. Don't rush back into the daily blur of domestic life one instant sooner than you have to."

So feel free to call me lazy. I don't care. I am taking it nice and easy this time. I have no merit badges to earn for "fastest postpartum mother to X, Y, Z." I'm going to savor the stillness of this final babymoon, however short it must be due to my husband's schedule and no close family nearby. There will be no Starbucks runs or trips to Target. There will be no premature outings to the local family restaurants. There will be just our little family, hanging out at home, loving our little Maryland arrival.

Originally posted at DC Metro Moms Blog

Opting Out ... of Valentine's Day

Our very first Valentine's Day together as a couple, back in 1997, the husband and I had been "going steady" -- as it used to be called -- for 11 months. I was a junior and he was a senior at Columbia. I expected him to wow me with a reservation at a mid-level Manhattan restaurant, perhaps a bouquet of roses, a Tiffany's necklace. It's what I had witnessed the previous two years among our dating peers, so I figured it was what being in a relationship for V-Day meant. That evening, I waited in his dorm room all dressed up -- I didn't have a key, but his roommate John and I were close friends, so he let me in and chatted until it was time for him to start his festivities. Finally, the husband made it back to his dorm. He looked flustered -- he had just returned from Newark, where he had an interview at The Star Ledger. With his out-stretched hands he gave me a bouquet of carnations -- the one flower I have always equated with grandmothers and funeral sprays. Then he said: "Where should we eat?" Cue the sound of Valentine's Day expectations crashing.

Being 20 and relatively new at love, I did the most immature thing ever -- I cried. Real tears. Over not having the Valentine's Day that Hallmark and DeBeer's commercials had promised me. In the 11 years since, we have had traditionally romantic Valentine's Day full of calla lilies and little Tiffany's boxes. We've also had momentous Valentine's Days, like last year, when it was the day we decided to move to DC after 13 and 14 happy years in New York City. In 2006, the day was a complete bust. I'll quote from my private LiveJournal:

I was supposed to eat lunch with a coworker, but as it turned out, her boyfriend of many years had surprised her with lunch. It was a sweet gesture, and I was blown away by its thoughtfulness. Another coworker got flowers, and she didn't make a big deal about it, but I could tell she was pleased. As for me, I knew we were going to dinner, but I girlishly daydreamed about the possibilities of my gift: a book from my wishlist... a much-need facial or manicure... We aren't big spenders, especially for Valentine's Day, so I knew not to expect a robin's-egg-blue box or anything too extravagant, but surely something.

Instead, my husband came home with... flowers. Flowers he bought on his way to the subway... Flowers. No card, no gift, just flowers. Then, on the way to the car, he tells me it was his secretary's birthday. He tells me how he had to go to L'Occitane and get her a gift. Then, all of a sudden, I immediately felt angry. He was at L'Occitane? He couldn't get me a present there? I tell him this after he seriously, completely guilelessly acts what's wrong, and he says: "You really wanted smelly soaps?" How could a husband be so clueless? Yes, smelly French soaps, to me, are a much better gift than flowers, which he obviously spent 0 minutes picking out. I told him about the men, the men of all ages and sizes and economic backgrounds I saw today with their bundles and packages. He asks me if I honestly think those men love their wives and girlfriends more than he loves me. I say no, but they obviously thought of them more.

So this year, I emailed my husband on Monday and offered him a way to opt out:

why don't we use one of our 10% off coupons and order zingerman's? we can have a nosh-fest/LOST-fest in the basement after the kids go to bed on thursday. we could also buy a little something from amazon. just trying to make this easy, since i know you don't care but also don't want to disappoint me.

to which he responded:

you know me so well.  we're a good pair.

So you see, it's not that my husband doesn't care about ME, he doesn't care about red hearts and Victoria's Secret and boxes of chocolate. He always tries, and yet sometimes comes up short of my little-girl expectations -- even after more than a decade of knowing my husband would much prefer to recognize my birthday and our anniversary than some arbitrary day in the middle of February. So I've finally grown up. I've finally seen the light. The kids can have their Valentine's Day cards and parties. As for us, we'll make ordering a box of gourmet goodies (we heart Zingerman's) and noshing down in our rec room a tradition. I am loved, truly, madly, deeply. I don't need a stuffed bear or a lacy red nightgown or even a three-course-meal to feel that way.

 

A Mighty Heart

I saw an early screening for "A Mighty Heart" tonight and despite sometimes seeing Angelina Jolie more than her character Mariane Pearl, I thought it was a respectful, well-made docudrama about the horrifying weeks between Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and the confirmation of his death via a grisly video.

Like with "Titanic," "The Perfect Storm," (if I can make such crude comparisons) or to a certain extent most war movies, we know the cruel ending before the opening credits begin. But the narrative doesn't fail to be compelling, heartbreaking. Of course 9/11 left thousands of women (pregnant ones too) widows, but something about Mariane's circumstances, just a few months after the Twin Towers, are especially gut-wrenching.

I kept seeing the dates on the screen and realizing that I too was pregnant in January 2002. And I just can't imagine the pain of having my son not know his father, of having my husband die a bloody, senseless death, of replaying the last moment I casually said goodbye to my husband over and over again. Needless to say the film was incredibly intense. Angelina did a fine job -- with the accent, the on-screen pregnancy and the emotional depth the portrayal required. In the scene when reporters are hounding Mariane, the line between actress and role got very fuzzy. She didn't need to "act" to feel overwhelmed by the press.

The movie, by the way, is dedicated not to Danny (who is played by Dan Futterman) but to he and Mariane's son Adam, a name we're told he chose before he was abducted.

The Best Gift Ever

Last night my husband took me to Chanterelle for dinner. It may sound like just another of Manhattan's many fancy restaurants, but it's actually so much more. More than 10 years ago, when my husband and I first started dating, we made a little promise to work our way through all the bold-faced Zagat restaurants (those designated as the city's best/most popular). After eating at the first of those restaurants, we spent more than $100 (a HUGE sum to a college couple) and realized it would be incredibly costly for us to do that on any sort of regular basis. After we both graduated and had steady jobs, we kept working our way through, but got caught up in trying out new, trendy or ethnic restaurants and sorta forgot about the "list." Every once in a while, I would say: "But when are you taking me to Chanterelle?" It became an inside joke. Once we married, I got pregnant, and the husband started law school, we stuck to cheap eats. Again, every now and then, when he asked where we should go to dinner, I would respond tongue-in-cheek: "How about Chanterelle?"

So after a decade of trying to eat there, we finally went. It was amazing. Since it was a Monday night, the place wasn't crowded at all. The service, the food, the wine, everything was perfect. I had salmon blintz with caviar creme, lamb loin with a mini moussaka, and a lavender, verbena and raspberry Napoleon with vanilla ice cream. The husband had crab mini ravioli, lobster fricassee, and a pear & fig tart with fig ice cream. The chef also sent a gratis appetizer of gazpacho in sake cups, and bacon-wrapped oysters. To top that all off, we had coffee and petit fours, which we got to take home in a tiny Chanterelle bag. It was such a lovely dinner, and it was exactly what I wanted.

I know you're all probably disappointed I don't have a new piece of jewelry, an expensive techie device or a designer accessory to show off, but I'm telling you that none of that would've compared with the joy of finally going to this restaurant. It wasn't the restaurant itself so much as the memory of talking about the restaurant, wishing we could afford and have time to go to Chanterelle one day. It may have taken a decade, but it eating there with my husband was a promise fulfilled.

Right as dessert was served, my husband gave me a card he made himself. It had that Mother's Day photo of the kids and me both on the cover and inside:

He said some beautiful things, and it made me weepy. It was an unforgettable way to celebrate my 30th birthday. Thanks for the many good wishes.

Five Years Ago Today ...

I married my boyfriend of five years in his hometown church. My mother and my eldest brother walked me down the aisle, because I've always found the Jewish tradition of entering with BOTH parents preferable to the Christian tradition of being "given away" by a father. Of course, this is partially because I didn't have a father TO walk me down the aisle. The organist and one of my oldest friends, a violist, played the "Simple Gifts" portion of Copland's "Appalachian Spring" as the processional.

My other older brother co-officiated with the church's minister, and right before we said our vows, he looked at Hans and said: "This is my baby sister." Only Hans and I could hear, but it was just such a special moment. My sister and best friend was my matron of honor, and all four of my nieces and nephews were my ring bearers and flower girls. It was a beautiful, albeit rainy day. Just as we arrived at our reception, a rainbow appeared in the sky. My mother said it was my father's wedding gift. And what a wedding gift it was.

Widowhood

I'm morbidly obsessed with widowhood, especially this week. First I saw the movie 'Water,' about the old Indian custom of forcing widows to live impoverished lives of self denial. Well, it was that or burning with the dead husband (or in rare cases, remarrying, but only if the husband's younger brother was available). Then I saw 'United 93' and re-read all the obituaries of the passengers and crew. The film (which is a sensitive and powerful portrayal of that final doomed flight) reminded me of all the widows left behind. Yesterday morning, as I was commuting to work, I had a horrific thought that my husband had died. I thought about what kind of life I would live. I thought about my mother who was widowed with four children at 36.

I suddenly felt my eyes filling with tears and shook myself back to reality. What would I do? I can't imagine myself with any other person. I met my husband my freshman year in college. Would I dedicate myself completely to my children and to causes that are important to me? Would I try to find love again? Would I too choose, like a neighborhood friend, a life of celibacy and self sacrifice? These thoughts loom large for me, not because I expect my healthy husband to die any time soon, but because I am keenly aware of my mother's life, which is divided in two: everything before my father died and everything afterward.