It has been a full and beautiful week here at our school. We welcomed literally hundreds of special visitors on Tuesday and Wednesday into our classrooms and also hosted the annual JCC Benefit here in our building on Tuesday night – a great celebration of the JCC’s 10 year anniversary since we first opened our doors on 76th street. I was especially proud to have so many visitors enjoy the amazing work of our children in the gallery space over the course of these past few days. It has been a month of celebration indeed, and soon we will begin to have our end of year celebrations – which is hard to believe! Among the many celebrations of this season was Mothers Day, and I hope that all you moms out there enjoyed the day. For me, it was not so simple…
“You can still celebrate your mom, even if she is dead,” my seven year-old Daniel reminded me last Sunday morning. I woke up on Mother’s Day feeling melancholic. The day is always somewhat fraught for me. “What do you mean?” I asked Daniel. “Doesn’t Mothers Day make you feel sad?” “It does,” I explained, “I miss my mother who died 14 years ago, but it is also a day that makes me happy,” I added. I so love being a mother and I am to have a day designated for celebrating being a mother. But I do miss my mother, I confessed. Daniel responded: “That’s why I am saying you can still celebrate her and remember her because she was your mother.” It was a new way of thinking about the day. Could I use the day to celebrate rather than just feel the longing and missing of all that was lost with the death of my mother?
As I sat at the kitchen table last Sunday morning we began to talk about my mother. Daniel wanted to know whether she was like me, how we were different, and whether she was nice. As I worked to find words to communicate who she was to me, and what she might have been for Daniel and my two daughters, my eyes welled up with tears. Daniel suggested, “I think we should light a candle for her.” I understood that he meant the yahrzeit candle, the memorial candle that is traditionally lit on the Hebrew anniversary of a person’s death and on Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot. When I tried to clarify when we usually light this candle, he understood but suggested nonetheless we could light one today too. I acknowledged the idea, but we moved on.
We muddled through Mothers Day. Parts of the day were joyful and easy. Other moments were harder. As I watched mothers and grandmothers walking through Central Park and waiting on lines for brunch, I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy, as my mind wandered to imagining a brunch with my mother and my children together. We never had that opportunity as she died when I was pregnant with my eldest daughter. Instead on Mothers Day, my patience is in short supply and I am more easily upset by small aggravations. I am also more judgmental of my own shortcomings. Who doesn’t want to be a model mother for one’s children on Mothers Day?
Sunday evening at dinner my family took out some beautiful cards and gifts for the occasion. Along with beautiful earrings made by one daughter, and some heartfelt cards, Daniel presented me with his gift. “This one was my idea” he proudly shared. I unwrapped a beautiful candle from the Metropolitan Museum’s gift shop. He had convinced my husband to rush to purchase a candle while I was in a yoga class. Daniel chose this candle for its fragrant smell and green floral pattern on the glass container. It is truly a beautiful candle. That evening we came home and he helped me light the candle before he was tucked into bed. All evening I kept this candle by my side, and have continued to light it through the week. I’ve tried to use this candle as a reminder to celebrate my mother – and also the beautiful family that I have now. My mother taught through her example about loving and appreciating the magnificent people in one’s life. Whether you have lost a mother or simply mourn the mother that you never had, if we can turn our mourning into celebrating what we do have, we will no doubt have a day filled with more light and gladness.
Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom,
Ilana
PS Last weeks came upon this piece about motherhood and I thought you might enjoy…
Am I Mom Enough? A Motherhood Wish List
Posted by Kara Baskin
It’s so tempting to get riled up by the Mommy Wars, isn’t it? The Time magazine cover story about extreme parenting, Are You Mom Enough?, featuring a beautiful mother in skinny jeans nursing her preschool-aged son, is infamous by now. It made me, along with the rest of the Internet, explode with righteous indignation. Mom enough? How dare they! This isn’t a contest! But, wait … what if it is? And I don’t even own skinny jeans!
The story also made me think about what I wanted to teach Andrew—I mean really teach him. I’m not talking about the trendy must-dos that crop up each year about feeding and sleeping and discipline, insecurity porn concocted just in time to fill a fresh generation of parents with self-doubt. No, I’m talking about the things that I want to impart in average, totally inextreme moments, when my breasts are covered and my skinny jeans are in the wash.
Here’s my wish list.
I hope I raise a child who says “thank you” to the bus driver when he gets off the bus, “please” to the waiter taking his order at the restaurant, and holds the elevator doors when someone’s rushing to get in.
I hope I raise a child who loses graciously and wins without bragging. I hope he learns that disappointments are fleeting and so are triumphs, and if he comes home at night to people who love him, neither one matter. Nobody is keeping score, except sometimes on Facebook.
I hope I raise a child who is kind to old people.
I hope I raise a child who realizes that life is unfair: Some people are born rich or gorgeous. Some people really are handed things that they don’t deserve. Some people luck into jobs or wealth that they don’t earn. Tough.
I hope I raise a child who gets what he wants just often enough to keep him optimistic but not enough to make him spoiled.
I hope I raise a child who knows that he’s loved and special but that he’s not the center of the universe and never, ever will be.
I hope I raise a child who will stick up for a kid who’s being bullied on the playground. I also hope I raise a child who, if he’s the one being bullied, fights back. Hard. Oh, and if he’s the bully? I hope he realizes that his mother, who once wore brown plastic glasses and read the phonebook on the school bus, will cause him more pain than a bully ever could.
I hope I raise a child who relishes life’s tiny pleasures—whether it’s a piece of music, or the color of a gorgeous flower, or Chinese takeout on a rainy Sunday night.
I hope I raise a child who is open-minded and curious about the world without being reckless.
I hope I raise a child who doesn’t need to affirm his self-worth through bigotry, snobbery, materialism, or violence.
I hope I raise a child who likes to read.
I hope I raise a child who is courageous when sick and grateful when healthy.
I hope I raise a child who begins and ends all relationships straightforwardly and honorably.
I hope I raise a child who can spot superficiality and artifice from a mile away and spends his time with people and things that feel authentic to him.
I hope I raise a child who makes quality friends and keeps them.
I hope I raise a child who realizes that his parents are flawed but loves them anyway.
And I hope that if my child turns out to be a colossal screw-up, I take it in stride. I hope I remember that he’s his own person, and there’s only so much I can do. He is not an appendage to be dangled from my breasts on the cover of a magazine, his success is not my ego’s accessory, and I am not Super Mom.
I hope for all of these things, but I know this: None of these wishes has a thing to do with how I feed him or sleep-train him or god-knows-what-else him. Which is how I know that these fabricated “wars” are phony every step of the way. I do not need the expensive stroller. I do not need to go into mourning if my “sleep-training method” is actually a “prayer ritual” that involves tiptoeing around the house in the dark. This is not a test. It’s a game called Extreme Parenting, and you can’t lose if you don’t play. And, really, why would you play? You have children to raise.
Ilana received her B.A. from Harvard College and a Master's Degree in Education from Bank Street College. She was born and raised on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and now lives there with her husband and three children.
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