On Skipping My 20-Year High School Reunion (Guest Post)

Welcome to guest blogger Erica Sininsky, who chose to skip her 20-year high school reunion. Why? Not because of a previous commitment, or because it would have been expensive or inconvenient to attend, but because she still shudders at the very thought of high school. Thank you, Erica, for this honest piece about finding refuge and refusing to be a victim. It makes me, for one, reflect on how becoming a parent has changed the way I reflect on memories of my youth. We all have stumbling blocks in our past that we hope our own children will avoid. What are yours?

On Skipping My 20-Year High School Reunion

I am a 38-year-old woman, mother of two, and I consider myself a no-nonsense type of gal, practical and with my priorities in order. Why oh WHY then do I still have nightmares in which I show up to school for first period 10th grade biology in a towel? The very thought of walking down those cavernous high school hallways makes me shudder. It's not that I think about high school often; but when the thoughts do arise, they are powerful, even frightening. There must be some part of me that continues to lament my high school experience. 

In addition to the towel dream, I sometimes imagine myself in a bathing suit, standing before the entire high school football team, teetering on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. Oh, wait a minute—that wasn’t a dream. That actually happened. 

My high school had a pool, and a graduation requirement of at least one semester of swimming instruction. Co-ed. For some, (hormonally raging 17 year old boys), a fantasy; for me, this was the stuff of nightmares. While the majority of the girls could have stepped out of a J. Crew ad, their lanky figures barely filling out their swimsuits (or so it seemed to me at the time), I represented more of the zaftig type—well endowed, curvaceous, and hippy. (I wore -- no kidding -- a size H bra, according to the Russian saleswoman in a Queens lingerie shop.) To top off the whole dripping wet package, I wore a Star of David around my neck. I soon heard the rumor going around: people were calling me the Jewish slut. Not because of anything I did, but simply because of the way I looked. 

For many, high school represents the epitome of youth, the formative years, the height of everything: socially, physically, and emotionally. Rich carefree days spent gallivanting and partying, sexual discovery, challenges presented and overcome. And I did experience much of that during those years -- just not in high school itself.

My high school was physically imposing and classic at the same time, with a vast, velvety-green expanse of lawn, towering columns, and red bricks. The campus was “open”, meaning students could come and go as they pleased. For me, being inside the building was like serving a prison sentence. But once I stepped outside those doors, I was free. No need to avoid the ‘commons’, where the jocks and cheerleaders lined the walls, nor the dark corners where the angry “goths” conspired and shot baleful looks; no cliques to wade through between classes; no swimming pool to agonize over. I knew that my ‘spot’ on the lawn would be waiting for me, along with my friends (two without whom high school would have been unbearable), and that for the next forty two minutes I could completely let down my guard.

As it happened, my family's synagogue was situated directly across the street from my high school. The synagogue was my refuge—between Hebrew school, youth group and weekend retreats, it was inside that brown brick, oddly designed structure that I spent the bulk of my teenage years. Having that balance was an essential part of what helped to shape me during those years, and more than made up for what high school lacked. Between local activities affiliated with USY (United Synagogue Youth), and summers spent traveling the country and abroad, I had a very fulfilling young adulthood. I was anything but a deprived or depressed teenager. I managed to escape the confines of adolescent 'hell' unscathed. In fact, I went to college with a rich sense of identity and profound confidence in myself. But as far as the “high school experience” is concerned, mine was definitely not run-of-the-mill.

So twenty years have passed. I’ve grown more outspoken, no doubt the result of life experiences, maturity, and motherhood. Back when I was agonized by swim class and my peers' awful rumors, my parents suggested I remove my Star of David. Even though I know they were trying to help, I can't imagine making the same suggestion to my daughter (age 9) now. In a sea of insecurity, that Star of David was what made me feel most secure; connected to my cultural and religious identity.

Twenty years later, I have no need for small talk with my past-tense peers. I would rather spend time with my two dear friends from the high school lawn, whom I still see anyway.

When it comes to my daughter's turn in high school, I plan to share my experiences with her so that she knows that high school is not the end-all-be-all of life, though sometimes it can feel like it.

I'm living proof that you can still have a fulfilling life without attending senior prom. Or your 20-year reunion.

Erica Sininsky is the mother of Sofia, 9 and Dylan, 6. She lives on Long Island and teaches English to children from all over the globe. In her free time (ha!), she enjoys writing short stories and creating beaded and metalwork jewelry.

This IS Vacation

So much on my mind this week...and it's the first time I've had a chance to sit down and say something. Maybe I should write something political, but my friends the columnists have done such a good job. So I'm not going to hold court here about the loss of the Voting Rights Act, the end of DOMA, the triumph of Wendy Davis, and the senate's bill giving hope at last for fair treatment of the undocumented.

Instead, I'm going to talk about the personal. Because I find myself in a strange predicament this week. I'm without two of my three kids, who are off at sleep-away camp. Like my two-year-old, I keep looking for them everywhere, and they're nowhere to be found. (Except, on occasion, on the camp website, where I may have the luck to find one or both of them deep in a selection of hundreds of photos. One mom noted on Facebook that she can recognize her kid by the corner of a shoe. It's an addiction. As soon as they're spotted, you want more. Refresh. Refresh. Refresh.)

This is not the first time that they've both been away, or that I've been away from them. Last summer, Bella went to camp for one session, and Ruby overlapped with her for a week. But this year, Bella's away for 7 weeks, and Ruby for 4. That's a long time.

I was so harried moving, helping the kids finish school, and getting organized and packing for camp, that I didn't have much time to consider what it would be like with the kids gone. It was the day after they left that Josh said to me, "Why'd we have to send them away for so long?" [Some Israeli friends, who can't wrap their brains around the American institution of summer camp, jokingly chided that it's child abuse.]

Why, indeed? For one thing, they wanted to go. When I was a kid, camp was a given, not a choice. But I always said I wouldn't send my kids unless they wanted to go. My girls were SO EXCITED for camp. They woke up at 5 am the day they were leaving, like people do when they have to catch a plane for a long-anticipated trip. Looking at the photos, camp looks like one long vacation for those lucky kids. Like Club Med, without the parents at night.

I went to camp for seven summers as a camper, and three on staff, and there's no question that the experience shaped me. I made some of my deepest friends, and each summer had more memories by far than the school years in between. By the time I was in college I couldn't think of coming home for a summer. How would I cope just hanging out with my parents?

I think that now, more than ever, freedom for children is scarce. What a gift for a child to be sent off on her own for a few weeks, knowing that she's not really on her own at all. She has friends and counselors there to help her, coupled with increased incentive to figure things for herself, without Mom and Dad in the background. It's hard not knowing all the details of my kids' lives, but at the same time, it's a gift for them to learn self-reliance, and to find out all the ways in which they don't need me.

So what is a parent to do, with their kids gone? In all my summers at camp, I never thought for a moment about what it was like for my parents back at home. I guess I assumed it was one glorious kid-free vacation for them. Alas, my (pre-children) daydreams of summering in Tuscany while the kids are at camp was squashed by the reality of paying camp tuition. This really IS our vacation. For them, it's the time of their lives. For us, it's a few weeks to focus on the little one, and to be able to float by with less structure. We will all blink our eyes and find ourselves packing school backpacks, come September.

Don't Stress About the Challah

Recently, a friend invited our family for Shabbat dinner. But then she became worried that she didn't have the right ritual objects, or that the menu would be somehow inappropriate because she is a vegetarian. Here's what I said to her:

You don't need a kiddush cup--any cup will do. And same with the food. All you need for Shabbat is wine (or grape juice), challah, and good cheer. You can order chinese--we'd all be very happy!

Before Josh and I had kids, when we were in our early and mid-twenties, our Shabbat dinners were an important part of our week. The meal was always home-made (though not always made well), with friends, several of whom were regulars (you know who you are), and challah and wine, and relaxed, we've-got-no-place-to-go good cheer. We weren't shul-goers then, so we had little institutional connection that tied us to religion-at-large. But we had those dinners, which became our own kind of ritual, steeped in tradition but shaped to our own needs (which sometimes included going out late to hear jazz, leaving plates piled all over the kitchen). We had a rotating cast of singles, and even some temporary unions (alas, no lasting shiduchs; it was never our forte). It was like an episode of "Friends," with [slightly less attractive?] Jews, and traditional braided egg bread.

I'm thinking about those dinners today because we still have them. The regulars have changed: now it's our daughters who have their customary seats at the table. We still love having guests: the more the merrier. I've never been intimidated by extra seats at the table. If there's not enough food (has that ever happened?), there's always more rice or more pasta or a salad that can be fixed quickly. We clear the detritus of the week off the table, shut off devices, and say the brachot over the candles, the wine, and the challah. Then, over the meal, we catch up with each other about the week. (As Ruby likes to say, "Ok, Dad, now tell your story about work.") The cooking has certainly improved with time, and the menu has evolved. Although there are old standards that circle back often ("Shabbos chicken," a crowd pleaser, and roasted veggies). When we were in London I taught myself how to bake challah. Now I know the real way to please a crowd.

My first ever challah, 9/2009. A little funny-looking. They look better, now. 

But today, for instance, I don't have time for challah baking. Not all weeks are equal in terms of time to prepare, to even think about cooking or shopping [peeps working on the SSSM auction, I know you're feeling me here]. But even on a day like today, no matter how busy any of us may be, we will gather and we will share and we will eat. The challah doesn't matter, the menu doesn't matter. Just the company and the quiet and the ritual of gathering together, at the same time, matters. And that's how easy it is to make Shabbat.

Our challah tonight, freshly smushed from Bella's backpack