The women in my life

The most special woman in my life, my daughter Katie,
shown here with my granddaughter puppy Zoe, a new female in the family.

You may not always recognize when a special person joins you for a period of time, takes a walk with you in life and helps you choose a better path. I can think back and recognize many of those moments, however brief.

I always reach out to the women in my family. Words from my mom still ring true 35 years since the day she left this earth, and words from my daughter continue to make a difference every single day. I will ask Katie for her opinion about something as insignificant as a painting, not because I am unsure of my ability to paint, but because her advice is offered in a gentle way, and she knows how sensitive I am about such matters. Is it just a female trait to be spot on and compassionate in approach, or is it just my daughter? I think I must know the answer. Katie has been my therapist daughter for many years now and she encourages me to be an artist, simply because she understands what makes me happy. If I think of a woman I respect above all, I think of my daughter. She has grown into a person I am proud of and defines the very strength and glory of a woman.

Even with the small stuff, I try not to sweat things and instead recall the words of my female friends, moments that stand out like a highlighter on my memory. At camp, my friend, Doris Hochheiser, once told me when she heard my complaints as a young mother with little time for my creative pursuits, to assign a night for me. Tuesday is what she said. I can remember little else from that bustling period of time, but I remember she said to make Tuesday my night to paint. My kids are now grown and I would still move a mountain for them if they ask, even on a Tuesday, but as I reinvent myself in retirement, I am trying to build a routine for success and Doris' glow in the dark comment reminds me to make that a priority, one day or one hour at a time. My new habit of writing in the morning is an ode to my friend, Doris. I owe much to the women I met at camp.

Sue and I painting our names on the Behind the Scenes panel at camp.
We won that award for making the scenes that make other people shine.

One of the many 8' murals Sue and I painted together

My friend Sue Smith had my back and held my hand through many years of camping together. How I adore my friend Sue. Our favorite summer moments were staying out all day painting the sets for the camp musicals. She taught me how to be organized in thought and in space, how to laugh at the insane, and how to kiss away such a gloriously fearful moment as creating a screen that has to last through 600 tie-dye T-shirts. She taught me how to appreciate the talents of another and how to be thankful for a wonderful day, just because she was in it. She gave me the confidence to say I am an artist and she taught me how to be a teacher.

Landscape painting by Ave Maria Walwark

At school, two women have become my creative muses beyond the classroom. Ave Maria Walwark is a printmaker and a landscape painter. I took printmaking in college and I understand the process. Understanding the process does not describe what my friend can do with a metal plate and some ink. Her prints are brilliantly composed layers of color, detail, and design. The printmaking language she is fluent in can be translated into her paintings through layers of complementary colors that vibrate under your eyes and build up into a crescendo of beauty. Ave and I both have a deep appreciation for art and for each other. I hope to reach new heights with every painting I work on and she is never far from any brush stroke I apply to my canvas. What would Ave think? I step back and look at my work with the sound of her voice in my head. Now that Ave has moved to Kentucky with a winter home in Florida, our voices are mostly heard through emails these days. I bubble over with excitement to see her name in my inbox.

Ave Maria, her husband Tom, Beverly and me in Ocean Grove

An amazing feat of sculptured wood by Beverly Sirianni

Ocean Grove is the beach we dip our toes in the sand and it is also the home of Beverly Sirianni, an artist with a talent as beautiful and as generous as the small exquisite town that allows us to spend our summer days. Beverly is a magician with wood. The shapes and finishes she brings to life out of a piece of wood come from a creative mind I can't begin to compare to. I enjoy flat work. I can draw and paint. So can Bev. But I cannot envision a form in a block of wood any more than I can understand the financial crisis of this country or visualize the statue of David in a hunk of marble. Her work is brilliant. Her hands are brilliant. Her sculptures are always the highlight of any exhibit she enters. Bev is an artist, unequaled in her craft, and so generous in her friendship, both as a fellow teacher and now as a fellow retiree. I will always look to her to enjoy my life to its fullest.

My degree in college was not in education despite the teaching career I just retired from. My degree was in how to apply paint to a canvas. If you ask me who I am, I will tell you I am a wife, a mother, a sister and a friend. I am Jewish, I am a woman. I am an artist. I have been honored to know a few special artists during my life. These women have touched my soul deeper than most.

The future women of my family, my nieces, Emma and Lillie.
May your creativity always shine. 

A Sick Day

My blintzes sweetened with homemade blueberry sauce.
There's nothing better for the holidays or for when you are sick!

Sam had a sick day today. He called his school last night and told them he needed one more day of rest. He had a real reason to miss classes this week.

My son made the right decision staying home. He is not contagious or anything but with his weakened immune system recovering from an invasion in the operating room, he would likely catch any germ the kids would sneeze in his direction.

"I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead!" -author unknown

I also had a sick day today. If I am retired, can I still call it a sick day? I thought once I stopped working that I would not get sick. Isn't it just another gift teachers get by working with drippy noses and coughs? All these years I blamed my head colds on the communal bucket of crayons the little ones reached for in art. Today I woke up with cold, even without that excuse.

Q: Does an apple a day keep the doctor away?
A: Only if you aim it well enough.

If I was not retired, I would have set my iPhone for 5:15 am, much too early for a body that needs its rest. There was no fever keeping me home, just a feeling of wooziness, a deep voice, and a thick head that felt way larger than my frizzy bed hair made it appear. I would have gone to school anyway. Instead, I got to lounge on my pillow an extra few hours this morning, climbing back into bed after letting the dog out. Just like in the commercial, "Dads don't take sick days, they take Nyquil." Same goes for moms of a Shih Tzu.

I should have known something was up. I never last on a fast, even when Yom Kippur dictates that as a thing. I never even skip breakfast. Today I had no desire to eat much. At least my fridge was filled with yummy leftovers from the holidays, making it easy to grab a bite without much fuss. Yesterday I dreamed up a recipe for a cheese blintze that this vegan could eat. Mine were not as pretty as the rest of the traditional blintzes but they were amazing.

My "uncheese" blintzes, a modern twist on traditional medicine

My gluten-free and egg-free crepes were made from oats so the outside was a bit darker than the others. Still, I loved them. Instead of a potato filling as I made last year, I created a homemade cheese out of cashew nuts! That sounds weird, I know, but for someone who can't have dairy, it was heaven. My blintzes made me feel Jewish yesterday and they helped me to feel better today. So while chicken soup feeds the soul of the rest of the world, I have to say that a forkful of anything homemade is perfect for a sick day. Food is the best medicine. That, and a day of rest.

If anyone would like to know my recipe, just ask. I'll type it out when my head clears and I can remember what I did!

The Art of the Blintze

Norm rolling blintzes to a game of tennis

Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, one of the most famous Jewish athletes in American sports, made national headlines when he refused to pitch in the first game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. When Koufax’s replacement Don Drysdale was pulled from the game for poor performance, he told the Los Angeles Dodgers’ manager Walter Alston, "I bet you wish I was Jewish, too."    
-https://www.history.com/

Yom Kippur came early this year, weeks before the first pitch of the World Series. You might question what day any Jewish holiday falls on each year. A religious person would answer, "The same day as always." Holidays are always celebrated on the same day of the Jewish calendar, but Hebrew months follow the sequence of the moon with an additional month thrown in on leap years, so while holidays will typically fall in the same month or so of the Western calendar, the dates can vary quite a bit. 

We get a Jewish calendar delivered to our mailbox each year, kind of like getting a new Yellow Pages thrown on the curb. As a good Jew, I file the calendar away in the kitchen just in case I might need it, just as I might file away the phone book, but then we usually refer to the higher authority of Google on such matters. 

Google says we are now celebrating the start of the year 5779, and today is in fact Yom Kippur. Beginning with Rosh Hashanah, the High Holy Days is a time for observant Jews to reflect on past mistakes and try to make amends with others. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of this period and is traditionally observed with a full day of fasting, intensive prayers, and a good blintze after sundown.

"Have an easy fast."

While we might say thank you to anyone who greets us this way, we may not fast at all this year. Sam is recovering from surgery and has to keep his strength up. I think he will be forgiven for making his health a priority. After all, how can he do good deeds the rest of the year if he does not follow doctor's orders? The rest of us try to fast but none of us ever get anywhere close to sundown. My mom used to cook all day, probably tasting things along the way, and then sit us down to a dairy meal at some point in the afternoon so we would not get a headache. I can't argue with my mom's Jewish laws any more than I could begin to debate the many interpretations of the Torah. 

In our house, we celebrate the holiday by going to services when Sam is singing, taking a walk if the weather is nice, and "breaking the fast" with blintzes and lokshen, aka, egg noodles coated in butter, cottage cheese, and sour cream... as prepared by Shalom for Ronnie Klein. He must have thought every night was a holiday in the summertime. Such rich foods should really be savored on a special day. 

Blintze making is an important tradition in our home and a culinary art. To make them, first cover your counter with kitchen towels. Mix some eggs and sugar into a huge loaf of farmer's cheese and start rolling those crepes. I also have adapted them with a gluten-free crepe recipe and as a vegan recipe using a potato filling. It is important to stay current with the times.

Filling:
3 lbs. Farmer's Cheese (You can buy a big log of this at the deli counter)
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs

Crepes:
1 1/4 cups of water
1 cup of all purpose flour
6 eggs
Pinch of salt

Cover a large counter space or your kitchen table with dish towels. Mix all the ingredients for the filling in one bowl and whisk together all the ingredients for the crepes in another bowl. In a non-stick 10" skillet heated with a tiny drop of oil, add a ladleful of crepe batter. Swirl it around in the pan to coat the bottom. Do not flip the crepe. As soon as it is set, pop it out on the counter and repeat with more batter. My daughter, Katie, eats any crepe that is not perfectly round or has extra drips hanging off the side. My husband will roll a spoonful of filling inside each round crepe. To make it really heart healthy, fry the blintzes in butter.

L'Shana Tova to my friends and family! May you all have a happy and healthy year.

Ditching the Diners Drive-Ins and Dives

Today, I am glad to be home instead of in a classroom. Parents, just like teachers, are sometimes plunged into situations for which they are not prepared, but they make the most of it by doing what they are not trained or prepared to do. Today, I get to be a nurse, something else I am not trained for. I know I can drum up my compassionate nature. I got to practice that in my classroom many times. Nurses don't have to try to find their compassion; it is part of a job they model so brilliantly every day. As Sam's mom, I know I can dose out a painkiller or feel the degree of warmth at the top of a keppy with uncanny accuracy. Today, I bow my keppy to the nurses who do this every day and with a smile. They are amazing people in an amazing profession of choice, the real unsung heroes of caring parents.

Dinner on Saturday night was the calm before our hurricane. Over plates of fajitas and beans following a mad game of pickleball against the queen of the courts, we listened to Donna's story about how her daughter is still a part of her life, even now as Shari lives on her own as a thirty-something. If someone thinks to question the strength of a parent-child bond, according to Donna and Josh, they must not have ever been a parent.

Norman and I not only agreed, but we got to flex our own parenting muscle with a call from our son. Older parents who are finally able to enjoy a night out without worrying about a babysitter still worry about their older children. We are parents. Just to get to Sam, I would have pushed away from the table if the call came any earlier, but as life can sometimes fall into perfectly scheduled events, we were finishing the last tortilla chip. Donna just owes Norman a Linzer tart from the best bakery in Monroe and we will take her up on her offer of dessert when all of our family members are up to the sweet pleasure of a cookie and some wonderful company.

Sam has often complained about a fullness or a soreness in his stomach, but as a devotee of Diners Drive-Ins and Dives, his ironclad system must have finally screamed out for a break. This time the pain sent him to an Urgent Care in Red Bank and a drive to the ER. Can I just say, nurses top the chart on delivering excellent care in the face of whatever fear walks into a room? The emergency room folks gave my son an entire battery of tests, including a full cardiac workup with a matter of fact attitude meant to put us all at ease. He was being taken care of. Can I also say, nurses top the chart in delivering parents the kind and supportive words we need because even as our son is a thirty-year-old man, he is still our son? I felt as if I was part of a perfectly choreographed scene of beautiful dancers gliding across his room with well-trained smiles and an occasional joke to ease our worries. The tests they issued did the job and the ultrasound found a large stone in his gallbladder, a bed in a hospital room, and a slot in the OR schedule for Sunday.

Even if there is a grand scheme to life, you are never prepared to spend a weekend on or off the pickleball courts in a hospital. Our son handled the abrupt change of his plans with the grace of a musician. Sam willingly faced the surgeon's knife and came out of anesthesia singing to the folks in scrubs. It seems he entertained them all with a drowsy rendition of "Hey Jude." To all the nurses of Centrastate and everywhere else, even if your name is not Jude, I thank you and I hope you are all entertained enough through your career to stick with it. As a parent, I am grateful for your caring nature. You are the real angels of this world to any parent of any child. Next time, perhaps my son can sing to you in an outdoor arena under a crisp fall sky. He'd like to thank you all in the best way he can.

To the hundred or more friends who sent good thoughts to my son's FB feed, he is doing surprisingly well today, just a bit sore and wishing he could take a shower. The human body is a miracle and can even heal from the dietetic abuse of Diners Drive-Ins and Dives. He is patiently waiting to be strong enough to burst out another Beatles song or even just lean forward and finish his latest puzzle. For now, how about some nice roasted veggies, Sam?