Back-to-School Bliss

There is no calm like that which follows the end of a two-week school vacation. I actually had two out of three in school last Thursday, which didn't make much of a dent in the chaos since the one who was still home was the almost-three-year-old (she is, suddenly "almost three"--not sure how it happened but there was a shift and she's hardly two at all, anymore. She's on a M/W/F preschool schedule, which, in this new stage, does not feel like nearly enough).

And then, on Friday, it snowed a few inches in New York and de Blasio, the show-off, cancelled school. The snow day did have some plusses:

First, I went sledding with my children, for the first time. Ever. We used to live in the plains of downtown, where the biggest hills were the snowdrifts blocking the crosswalks around Union Square. We built some snow-people in our downtown days, padding around Stuyvesant Square in full-body snow gear. But sledding required planning, and a subway ride (!). But no more. We are now just blocks away from a Riverside park sledding hill so desirable that the local CBS news station was there filming when we arrived! (And this is why no one watches the local news). It was a brisk 14 degrees out when we got there, and sled we did, hopping up and down in between runs to keep the circulation going in the toes. It was a classic New York family moment. Newsworthy, even.

Second, Josh made soup.

That's it for the plusses. School is good for the kids, good for the parents. Especially those of us writers/ artists who need a room of our own (or at least a quiet table) to work. Sometimes it feels like school vacations are black holes on the calendar--projects in progress will be suspended until the children leave again. I mean, I'm not saying these black holes aren't enjoyable. It's nice to have a relaxed relationship with time and schedules, and to loll with family and friends. But when it comes to personal productivity, I can't even open a file without a kid reading over my shoulder. Without privacy and the promise of prolonged quiet, it's not even worth trying.

For those of you hunkering down with your kids beneath the talons of the Polar Vortex, all I can say is I feel for you. My parents love to tell stories of their Omaha days, where you couldn't open the door for all the feet snow, and the minus minus minus wind chills (and 100's+ in the summer!), and forget sledding--it really is the plains!--and all I can say is, all the power to you middle-of-Americans. Enjoy the football and let me know when they clear the ice off the runways so you can come visit us in our mild-weather paradise.

Here's to 2014, and many happy days of school ahead.

What we all want to do after two weeks of vacation.

Looking Back, Looking Forward: Remembering 9/11, The Day That Changed Everything

For me, today is a day of remembering, and of beginning. Of looking back, and looking forward. While remembering the events of September 11, 2001, I said goodbye to my youngest child as she started preschool. In my mind, this is all related.

This morning I sat outside Louisa's classroom. (Louisa has a classroom!) As I waited, I chatted with a mom who has three girls under age four. I told her that I also have three girls, but that my big ones are 10 and almost 9. And this lovely, lovely woman, sure-to-be-my-new-best-friend said to me, "But you look like a kid! How could you possibly have a ten-year-old?"

"You just made my day," I said, and then explained that the reason we started our family when we did had everything to do with 9/11.

Today, we are all remembering. We remember the people we lost. We remember the disbelief. We remember where we were, down to the minute. We remember the phone calls, the ones that went through, and the many that didn't. We remember the feeling that our city was changed, forever. We remember making eye contact with strangers in Union Square, and seeing tears. We remember walking to Chelsea Piers to give blood, and being turned away. We remember the photographs of the lost, on every light post, on every bus stop, and the desperate loved ones diligently posting them, hoping.

The soot and dirt and smoke seeped in through our windows, entering our lungs and our blood. I had to leave. A downtown Manhattan refugee at my parents' house for the chagim, I fell into a silent cloud. Always a verbal person, I had no patience for words, then. What was there to say? Instead, I immersed myself in images. For the first time in my life, I made Rosh Hashanah cards, each one painstakingly cut and pasted from colored construction paper, a child's project.

I had no children, then. Nor was I a child. I was a young-ish adult, living what was, in retrospect, a relatively carefree existence. It didn't feel carefree, though. After leaving grad school, I was struggling to gain a foothold in my career. I was working full-time as an editor, but without title or benefits. I felt mistreated, undervalued, and underpaid. On that fateful day in 2001, I had a meeting about a new and exciting job opportunity. But, like everything else that day, the meeting was cancelled. And never rescheduled. Things like that happened, then. Everything changed, in the matter of an hour.

When I awoke from the stupor (was it weeks later, or was it months?), I had a strange, new compulsion. I wanted to have a child. I still didn't have a proper job, and Josh was still in grad school. We were in no way financially secure; we were just starting out. But none of that mattered. My plan on this earth was to share my life with children.  It was a seize-the-day, the worst-could-always-happen mentality; after all, what if there is no tomorrow?

In the spring of 2002, I became pregnant with Sunshine, as we called our in-utero peanut. I was 26 years old, which made me the youngest in my childbirth education class by roughly ten years.

Someone observed to me recently that growing children can act as markers of passing time. Their ages at different points and places remind you where you once were. That's true of when you first started dreaming about them, too.

This morning, for an hour and a half, my baby played and socialized and simply existed without me there to take stock in her experience. I've never had trouble letting go before; how unexpected to find myself tearing up last night at orientation, when the teacher talked about separation. "They're not babies, anymore," she told the room full of parents, and for many of us, this was news.

Our children will always be our babies, even when they go off to school on their own, even when they leave home. We'll always remember how they came to be.

Time passes, but the memories don't fade. We remember, as we always will, the day(s) that changed everything.

The Longest Sunday

Forgive me. It's been almost a month since my last confession. Oh sorry, I meant, post.

Where has the time gone? Not coincidentally, my last post was on August 13th, and Bella came home from camp on the 14th. So, it's been a month filled with beach days, endless car rides, sisterly screaming matches, lost flip-flops, sunburns, ice-cream, potty training, barbecues, family gatherings, arguments over summer assignments, backpack and shoe shopping, boredom, and a high holy day thrown in for good measure. You know it. You just lived it, too.

My friend Debs, who lives in the UK, texted me to say she misses my blog posts (bless you, dear). When I told her today was the first day of school, she replied, "Wow, your holidays are long!"

Yes, they certainly are. My kids had eleven weeks vacation this summer (I had to count it twice to be sure, because it seems crazy), while Debs' kids had only six. Think about the difference. That's a lot of time to entertain the offspring, and it costs a lot of money. For many working parents, it's a major financial hardship. Also, studies have shown that for many children all that time out of the classroom means more catch-up academically at the beginning of each new school year.

I'm not sure that I'm ready to argue for a true year-round school schedule, mainly because I love (and my kids love) summer camp. But I do think that the school year could be adjusted and lengthened a tad . . . maybe a few more days off in the winter, and a few days more of school at the end of summer.

True, this year felt especially long because of the awkward occurrence of Rosh Hashanah just after Labor Day. The past week has felt like one long Sunday, in which we're all supposed to be happy and free from obligation, but we're all-too-aware that the return to school, i.e. real life, is coming. Anxiety has been simmering in my girls like a pot of water taking forever to boil. Even Louisa, who starts pre-school on Wednesday, knows that school is coming, and with little awareness of time, she doesn't understand why we don't march to her new classroom right now.

Which is all to say that this morning was a blessing, indeed. "I feel like a new woman," I texted back to Debs, imagining the reclaimed space in my brain now that my kids will spend a few hours each day having theirs stroked by someone other than me.

Happy family on the first day of school