J1 and J2 announced at dinner tonight they have decided to be best friends. But they're still going to fight.
###
Justin, while riding on my back yesterday: "Daddy, your hair has bald in it."
###
Me (singing): I've got the moves like Jagger, I've got the moves like Jagger, I've got the moo-ooo-ooves like Jagger...
Justice (not even looking up from the TV): You've got the moves like a horse.
Justin: And a duck.
###
Justin (at a restaurant): I'll have a Diet Coke.
Me: (to the server) No, he'll have lemonade.
Justin: (talking to me in Danny's little deep kid voice from "The Shining," using his finger to talk): Justin wants a Diet Coke, Mr. Reisman.
###
Upon receiving their first Susan B. Anthony dollars.
Justin: Who's this?
Adam: That's Susan B. Anthony.
Justin: When was she the president?
Adam: She wasn't. She was a leader for women's rights.
Justin: What's women's rights?
Adam: A hundred years ago, women couldn't vote like men. Susan B. Anthony wanted to be able to vote like a man. She wanted to be able to do anything like a man.
Justice (after a confused pause): Did she want to pee like a man?
###
Justin: Look, Daddy. I found a feather.
Me: Where did that come from?
Justin: (rolling his eyes) From a bird, Daddy.
###
Me: Who's your favorite football team?
Justin: Green Bay.
Me: Green Bay what?
Justin: Green Bay Packers.
Me: Excellent, who's your favorite baseball team?
Justin: Milwaukee.
Me: Milwaukee what?
(long pause)
Justin (unsure): Milwaukee talkies?
###
Me: Whenever you feel like fighting in the car, here's what you should do. Take a deep breath and hold it for ten seconds. Let's try it.
(They do).
Me: Once Daddy got so mad at me, he had to hold his breath and count to 55 million.
Justin: Really?
Adam: Mmm-hmm.
Me: In fact, he's still counting.
(Short silence)
Justice: What number is he on?
###
Justin demonstrates his math prowess again:
Me: What's 6+7?
Justin: 10
Me: No, try again.
Justin (yelling): It's 10!!
Me: No, it's 13.
Justin: Ohhhh, I thought you said 6+11!!
###
Justin: Can I get a new bat for my birthday? I won't hit Justice with it.
###
Justin: Daddy, do you have binoculars?
Me: Yes
Justin: Can I have them?
Me: You can borrow them, but you can't have them.
Justin: No, I mean when you die.
###
Thanks for the laughs, kids. We love you.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Yom Kippur with the Reismans
When I was young and not Jewish and working in radio, Yom Kippur rolled around on the calendar one year, and not knowing what it was, our morning man Andy and I started joking about it on-air.
When we took our first commercial break, there was a tap on the door from Vern Falk, our old station manager, who chastised us for making light of a solemn day and offending our Jewish listeners.
This was in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, mind you, where Andy and I didn't even know we had Jewish listeners.
Anyway, we went back on the air, apologized, and got back to the real business of the day, giving away summer fun coupons from McDonalds and reading the weather.
Such is life in AM radio.
Now I'm older and I'm Jewish and I've sat through a few of them. 17 to be exact. And here's what I can tell you.
First of all, they're not short.
You go to services the night before. Then you go to services in the morning. Then you go to a Torah study. Then you go to a kids' service. Then you go to an afternoon service. Then you go to a service for dead people. Then you go to an evening service. And that's just Yom Kippur. We bookshelf that baby between Rosh Hashanah on one end and Sukkot and Simchat Torah on the other. This is the time of year when all heaven breaks loose. As far as the schedule grid goes this time of year, the Jews leave no stone unturned.
On Yom Kippur, you don't eat.
You fast from sundown the night before until sundown the next day. And when it's over, you go to Adam's mom's and eat bagels and tuna salad, the likes of which you never tasted before. After 24 hours, that tuna salad is like manna in the desert.
And lastly, you atone for your sins like it's going out of style. Holy smokes, do you atone.
You ask forgiveness for your sins from the past year. You delcare them null and void. You pound yourself on the chest as you read off a litany of sins and transgressions from soup to nuts. Not kidding. Really. You physically make a chest-hitting gesture with your fist as you rattle off dozens of sins. Sins of yours. Sins of your community's. Sins and sins, and when you're done with those? More sins.
Now, the Reform Jews -- and I am one of them -- aren't crazy about the terms "sin" and "sinner." They strike us as too Christian. They strike us as too Orthodox and strict and old-fashioned. You'll more likely hear Reform Rabbis desribe Yom Kippur with more than a whiff of gentility and therapist-couch correctness, "a time for self-relection, a time for self-examination and awareness. A time for coming together as a people and discovering who we are and who we have the possibility of becoming."
Horse hockey. You're atoning for sins. Call it what you want while you're applying your Revlon bright red #254 to Wilbur, but strip away the pretty talk and what's left over? A bunch of mildly hungry Jews sitting in a room for ten hours repeating and repenting for how sucky they've been for the past twelve months.
I'm not automatically fond of Yom Kippur. Bucking myself up and greeting it with good cheer every year is not my default setting. That is no big secret to Adam or to our Jewish friends and family.
I grew up in a Christian church -- the First Assembly of God -- a fundamentalist, evangelical batch of bible-thumpers if ever any were thumped. This is the group that speaks in tongues in most congregations and lets poisonous snakes bite them in a few down south. I try not to make judgment calls on other people's religions unless I've carried the membership papers myself, so in this case, I judge openly. FAOG (and believe me, they are damn careful about adding the "O" to that acronym), did me more harm than good, and distanced me further from a belief in God as a healthy, welcoming presence than anyone's church has ever done before.
It may be a good match for some folks, but for me personally, I can only describe my childhood growing up in that church's long shadow as a dark and irrevocable time, an unquestionable failure and a massive mismatch. It took a long time for me to surgically extract the venom they injected and find my place in organized religion again. But c'est la vie, don't we all whistle snatches of that old tune, in one form or another.
One of those First Assembly poisons was their almost maniacal focus on sin. Over and over, from the youngest of ages, we heard a constant reminder and an accusition that had no end. "You are a sinner, you have sinned." "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Put it on a bumper sticker. Paint it on your forehead. Start giving that shaming message to children at 3, 4-years-old and don't let up until they are sad, frightened, religiously-vacant adults.
So, no. When I came to Judaism, it was no great nostalgic heart-tugger to draw the ten hour sin card right off the bat with Yom Kippur. Once a year, Adam and I would go to Chabad (Orthodox and outreachy) because they were free and we were too poor to go anywhere else. God bless them for the free entry when you've got nowhere else to go, but they still include good old Leviticus 18:22 in their list of sins. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination."
Abominably speaking, that's never been one of my favorites.
But to Adam, who was born Jewish, The High Holy Days, the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur are as ingrained in him as Christmas and Easter to any Christian. They're the Big Kahuna, the Numero Uno, the cat's pajamas of Judaism. And if you're going to raise Jewish kids -- and we sure as hell are -- all-day temple on Yom Kippur is where we need to be.
Our Yom Kippur didn't get off to a particularly whiz-bang start this year. First, nobody mailed us tickets and we got snapped at when we tried to tell them at the door. Next, the ushers from our men's club were more than a little rude and argumentative when we tried to save four extra seats so our extended family could sit together. Not very happy about the seat saving, those men's club deputies. Not exactly a warm welcome for the Reisman/Nelson clan this year.
Then about an hour into the first evening service, a woman stood up and walked out in anger when she saw Justin playing quietly on my iPhone in the row ahead of her. "That's disrespectful," she hissed at Adam. "I can't even sit here and watch this. I have to go sit somewhere else."
As people around us rushed to our defense, it took all the self-control I could muster not to respond with a great big holiday F.U.
If you had a clue, lady. If you only walked -- not a mile in my shoes -- but just a block in my shoes -- you would have realized twelve months ago, I couldn't get that kid to sit still in a chair for more than two minutes at a time. Two minutes.
And now he'll sit quietly and still for two and a half hours. And if that victory is still electronically enhanced sometimes, even on the holiest of Jewish days, I'm still going to take it at face value and be overjoyed, and I won't be ashamed of my shitty parenting for your sake. Go sit your nagging, pious ass somewhere else.
So, yeah. That's where my Yom Kippur started this year. Not a good hello.
But as I do every year when Yom Kippur rolls around, I start out grumpy, then I make my peace with it. More than that, I find my peace in it. I find my place in it.
This year, it happened when I watched the Rabbi put on his tallit. (The tallit is our prayer shawl, non-Jewish friends).
I remembered Rabbi Malcolm saying once, before he drapes his tallit over his shoulders, he covers his whole head with it, and in those short moments where he blocks out the world, he imagines the faces of all four of his grandparents. Thinks of their strength. Thinks of their goodness. Thinks of the traditions they gave him.
And traditions matter.
And that's why, for Justice and Justin, I continue to put on my happy face, even when I'm not happy about it, because I want them to grow up believing I believe in Yom Kippur, even when sometimes, I don't. All my dysfunctions notwithstanding, they need to know that this holiday matters to their parents, and it should matter to them. It is important for them to be there. In whatever shape or form. It is vital.
So, I wrap my prayer shawl over my head and I picture my grandparents.
There's Harry Senior, who died before I was born. From him I understand discipline. Duty. Respect.
There's Leona, my dad's mom. From her I understand a grandparent's pride. She bragged about me in front of people. She let me overhear it. From her, I learned there is value in public praise.
There's Ken, my mom's dad. From him I learned inquisitiveness. Courage to roam. Learning, investigating, finding out how things worked. Taking the road less traveled.
And there's Hannah. From her I got all the rest. Unconditional love. Open arms that were always there. A childhood of safety and joy and security. As Dorothy said on her way back home, I'll miss you, Scarecrow, the most of all.
So, this year, with my grandparents in my heart and my intent to keep doing better, Yom Kippur lent some magic after all...not just for me...but in spite of me.
For hours, I drew myself together in my tallit. I wrapped it around me. I wrapped it around Adam. I wrapped it around my children. And it made me feel good.
I want Justice and Justin to know what it feels like, that goodness. I want them to be comforted by our holidays shared. Maybe we can all let go of our past pains long enough to learn to wrap ourselves in under a single blue blanket and love these days together.
Yehuda Amichai:
Whoever wrapped in a tallit in one's youth will never forget:
taking it out of the soft sack, opening the folded tallit,
spreading it, kissing the border along its length (sometimes embroidered
and sometimes embossed). Afterwards, a great sweep over the head
like the heavens, like a chuppah, like a parachute. Afterwards, folding it
around one's head as if playing hide and seek, and then wrapping
the body in it, tight tight, letting it fold you like a cocoon
and then opening it like wings for flying.
And why are there stripes and not black-white squares
like a chessboard? Because squares are finite without hope
and stripes come from infinity and go on to infinity
like the runways at the airport
so that angels may land and take off.
When you wrap yourself in a tallit you cannot forget
coming out of a swimming pool or the sea
and being wrapped in a great towel and casting it
over one's head and wrapping in it, tight tight
and shivering a little and laughing and -- blessing.
When we took our first commercial break, there was a tap on the door from Vern Falk, our old station manager, who chastised us for making light of a solemn day and offending our Jewish listeners.
This was in Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, mind you, where Andy and I didn't even know we had Jewish listeners.
Anyway, we went back on the air, apologized, and got back to the real business of the day, giving away summer fun coupons from McDonalds and reading the weather.
Such is life in AM radio.
Now I'm older and I'm Jewish and I've sat through a few of them. 17 to be exact. And here's what I can tell you.
First of all, they're not short.
You go to services the night before. Then you go to services in the morning. Then you go to a Torah study. Then you go to a kids' service. Then you go to an afternoon service. Then you go to a service for dead people. Then you go to an evening service. And that's just Yom Kippur. We bookshelf that baby between Rosh Hashanah on one end and Sukkot and Simchat Torah on the other. This is the time of year when all heaven breaks loose. As far as the schedule grid goes this time of year, the Jews leave no stone unturned.
On Yom Kippur, you don't eat.
You fast from sundown the night before until sundown the next day. And when it's over, you go to Adam's mom's and eat bagels and tuna salad, the likes of which you never tasted before. After 24 hours, that tuna salad is like manna in the desert.
And lastly, you atone for your sins like it's going out of style. Holy smokes, do you atone.
You ask forgiveness for your sins from the past year. You delcare them null and void. You pound yourself on the chest as you read off a litany of sins and transgressions from soup to nuts. Not kidding. Really. You physically make a chest-hitting gesture with your fist as you rattle off dozens of sins. Sins of yours. Sins of your community's. Sins and sins, and when you're done with those? More sins.
Now, the Reform Jews -- and I am one of them -- aren't crazy about the terms "sin" and "sinner." They strike us as too Christian. They strike us as too Orthodox and strict and old-fashioned. You'll more likely hear Reform Rabbis desribe Yom Kippur with more than a whiff of gentility and therapist-couch correctness, "a time for self-relection, a time for self-examination and awareness. A time for coming together as a people and discovering who we are and who we have the possibility of becoming."
Horse hockey. You're atoning for sins. Call it what you want while you're applying your Revlon bright red #254 to Wilbur, but strip away the pretty talk and what's left over? A bunch of mildly hungry Jews sitting in a room for ten hours repeating and repenting for how sucky they've been for the past twelve months.
I'm not automatically fond of Yom Kippur. Bucking myself up and greeting it with good cheer every year is not my default setting. That is no big secret to Adam or to our Jewish friends and family.
I grew up in a Christian church -- the First Assembly of God -- a fundamentalist, evangelical batch of bible-thumpers if ever any were thumped. This is the group that speaks in tongues in most congregations and lets poisonous snakes bite them in a few down south. I try not to make judgment calls on other people's religions unless I've carried the membership papers myself, so in this case, I judge openly. FAOG (and believe me, they are damn careful about adding the "O" to that acronym), did me more harm than good, and distanced me further from a belief in God as a healthy, welcoming presence than anyone's church has ever done before.
It may be a good match for some folks, but for me personally, I can only describe my childhood growing up in that church's long shadow as a dark and irrevocable time, an unquestionable failure and a massive mismatch. It took a long time for me to surgically extract the venom they injected and find my place in organized religion again. But c'est la vie, don't we all whistle snatches of that old tune, in one form or another.
One of those First Assembly poisons was their almost maniacal focus on sin. Over and over, from the youngest of ages, we heard a constant reminder and an accusition that had no end. "You are a sinner, you have sinned." "For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God." Put it on a bumper sticker. Paint it on your forehead. Start giving that shaming message to children at 3, 4-years-old and don't let up until they are sad, frightened, religiously-vacant adults.
So, no. When I came to Judaism, it was no great nostalgic heart-tugger to draw the ten hour sin card right off the bat with Yom Kippur. Once a year, Adam and I would go to Chabad (Orthodox and outreachy) because they were free and we were too poor to go anywhere else. God bless them for the free entry when you've got nowhere else to go, but they still include good old Leviticus 18:22 in their list of sins. "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is an abomination."
Abominably speaking, that's never been one of my favorites.
But to Adam, who was born Jewish, The High Holy Days, the Days of Awe, Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur are as ingrained in him as Christmas and Easter to any Christian. They're the Big Kahuna, the Numero Uno, the cat's pajamas of Judaism. And if you're going to raise Jewish kids -- and we sure as hell are -- all-day temple on Yom Kippur is where we need to be.
Our Yom Kippur didn't get off to a particularly whiz-bang start this year. First, nobody mailed us tickets and we got snapped at when we tried to tell them at the door. Next, the ushers from our men's club were more than a little rude and argumentative when we tried to save four extra seats so our extended family could sit together. Not very happy about the seat saving, those men's club deputies. Not exactly a warm welcome for the Reisman/Nelson clan this year.
Then about an hour into the first evening service, a woman stood up and walked out in anger when she saw Justin playing quietly on my iPhone in the row ahead of her. "That's disrespectful," she hissed at Adam. "I can't even sit here and watch this. I have to go sit somewhere else."
As people around us rushed to our defense, it took all the self-control I could muster not to respond with a great big holiday F.U.
If you had a clue, lady. If you only walked -- not a mile in my shoes -- but just a block in my shoes -- you would have realized twelve months ago, I couldn't get that kid to sit still in a chair for more than two minutes at a time. Two minutes.
And now he'll sit quietly and still for two and a half hours. And if that victory is still electronically enhanced sometimes, even on the holiest of Jewish days, I'm still going to take it at face value and be overjoyed, and I won't be ashamed of my shitty parenting for your sake. Go sit your nagging, pious ass somewhere else.
So, yeah. That's where my Yom Kippur started this year. Not a good hello.
But as I do every year when Yom Kippur rolls around, I start out grumpy, then I make my peace with it. More than that, I find my peace in it. I find my place in it.
This year, it happened when I watched the Rabbi put on his tallit. (The tallit is our prayer shawl, non-Jewish friends).
I remembered Rabbi Malcolm saying once, before he drapes his tallit over his shoulders, he covers his whole head with it, and in those short moments where he blocks out the world, he imagines the faces of all four of his grandparents. Thinks of their strength. Thinks of their goodness. Thinks of the traditions they gave him.
And traditions matter.
And that's why, for Justice and Justin, I continue to put on my happy face, even when I'm not happy about it, because I want them to grow up believing I believe in Yom Kippur, even when sometimes, I don't. All my dysfunctions notwithstanding, they need to know that this holiday matters to their parents, and it should matter to them. It is important for them to be there. In whatever shape or form. It is vital.
So, I wrap my prayer shawl over my head and I picture my grandparents.
There's Harry Senior, who died before I was born. From him I understand discipline. Duty. Respect.
There's Leona, my dad's mom. From her I understand a grandparent's pride. She bragged about me in front of people. She let me overhear it. From her, I learned there is value in public praise.
There's Ken, my mom's dad. From him I learned inquisitiveness. Courage to roam. Learning, investigating, finding out how things worked. Taking the road less traveled.
And there's Hannah. From her I got all the rest. Unconditional love. Open arms that were always there. A childhood of safety and joy and security. As Dorothy said on her way back home, I'll miss you, Scarecrow, the most of all.
So, this year, with my grandparents in my heart and my intent to keep doing better, Yom Kippur lent some magic after all...not just for me...but in spite of me.
For hours, I drew myself together in my tallit. I wrapped it around me. I wrapped it around Adam. I wrapped it around my children. And it made me feel good.
I want Justice and Justin to know what it feels like, that goodness. I want them to be comforted by our holidays shared. Maybe we can all let go of our past pains long enough to learn to wrap ourselves in under a single blue blanket and love these days together.
Yehuda Amichai:
Whoever wrapped in a tallit in one's youth will never forget:
taking it out of the soft sack, opening the folded tallit,
spreading it, kissing the border along its length (sometimes embroidered
and sometimes embossed). Afterwards, a great sweep over the head
like the heavens, like a chuppah, like a parachute. Afterwards, folding it
around one's head as if playing hide and seek, and then wrapping
the body in it, tight tight, letting it fold you like a cocoon
and then opening it like wings for flying.
And why are there stripes and not black-white squares
like a chessboard? Because squares are finite without hope
and stripes come from infinity and go on to infinity
like the runways at the airport
so that angels may land and take off.
When you wrap yourself in a tallit you cannot forget
coming out of a swimming pool or the sea
and being wrapped in a great towel and casting it
over one's head and wrapping in it, tight tight
and shivering a little and laughing and -- blessing.
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