Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for April, 2025

A Delicate Balance

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on April 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »

I’m slowly starting to drive again, to pick up my life from last November. I want to do it all _ Pilates, swimming, dancing, but i’m restraining myself. My ONE mission in life right now is Not To Fall...it’s not my golden years, it’s more like diamond years, building back bones as strong as diamonds. Living with osteoporosis is a Delicate Balance.

The Bride has been visiting her brother’s new family, bringing her big sister energy to Southern California. Since the twins received their first round of immunizations, they all ventured out to South Pasadena’s farmer’s market last week. I miss the huge avocados and baby bok choy, the non-stop music and synergy of craft/farm/artistisan vibes. But it’s almost strawberry season in TN, so there’s that!

One of the first things I had to tackle when we returned home was cleaning the bird bath. And I’m so glad I did; a cardinal has decided he needs to bathe every midday when the sun is out. First he perches on the edge, carefully watching the tiny solar fountain erupting intermittently, then he dives in and shakes himself silly. I love to witness this tiny red dancer and can’t wait to meet his mate.

And speaking of cardinals, on the day of the Pope’s funeral I watched the movie Conclave. If you’ve missed it, it’s streaming now on Prime. Growing up Catholic, it left me with mixed feelings. The pomp was still there, and I do love the pomp, but the cutthroat politics was new to me. Apparently if you want to become Pope, you have to pretend that you don’t. We had just celebrated Passover, traveling home on Easter Sunday when we heard the sad news.

I couldn’t help comparing Passover to Easter: one celebrates freedom from slavery, and one celebrates eternal life? Reality vs Myth.

Do you sometimes feel like you’re walking on a tightrope? I’ve been balancing my energy between my California family and my Tennessee family. The roses and lilacs are in bloom, but I was just strolling past lavender hedges as high as my eyes! The twins are starting to smile, and my Pumpkin is perfecting his magic tricks. We are all looking forward to the Love Bug’s Bat Mitzvah in the Fall!

My first granddaughter’s rite of passage is an ancient one, but it’s fairly new for women to step up to the bimah. In 1922, Rabbi Kaplan insisted his daughter should study the Torah and she was the first to be consecrated in this country. Today there are many women rabbis but in the Catholic Church women are still subservient to priests. But who knows, maybe the next Pope will be more progressive.

Meanwhile…

Read Full Post »

Out of Sync

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 22, 2025| 2 Comments »

Just in case you’re not caught up on my exploits, here’s a tiny synopsis:

Since the last election, when I broke my neck, I’ve been out of sync with my life. My hands were useless, and my head had to be constrained 24/7 in an Aspen Collar. When my neck was set free, three months later, my twin granddaughters were born prematurely. Bob and I have been living in California ever since. Now it’s time to return to Nashville, to return to normal, whatever that means.

A friend once told me I seem to have a lot of adventures! Well, I’m determined to lead a very boring life from now on; I will retreat to my snug and write, I will start swimming again, maybe I’ll venture into the kitchen and whip up a batch of muffins with the Love Bug. And my only big adventure will be to finish reading my very first fantasy novel – “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell,” by Susanna Clarke.

I’m not a Lord of the Rings type. Even Harry Potter eluded my sensibilities. I’m an occasional fan of dystopian science fiction, but more enamored of historical fiction. Still I figured, why not give this twenty year old fantasy a go?

It all started when I came upon an Insta story from Parnassus Books. Ann Patchett was raving about this book as an escape for our times, but she warned it’s rather long and it will take 200 pages of boring description before taking off. I figured I needed the distraction, so instantly I downloaded the novel to my Kindle and I was hooked immediately.

It’s about the return of English magic – practical magic as opposed to theoretical magic! It takes place during the Napoleonic wars, with ancient fairy kingdoms and talking gargoyles. It’s about love and jealousy. And then I found out that Aunt Kiki loves fantasy novels. My beautiful, kind daughter-in-love, my Irish dancer, knows all about elves and magic!

If you’d like to venture into some modern fantasy, the Atlantic reviewed a new book this month titled “The Last Unicorn.”

“And perhaps all of this is why The Last Unicorn is a fantasy for these times. The novel doesn’t take place in a believable alternate world with clear rules and boundaries, but in a messy one more akin to ours. It’s not epic fantasy, but applied fantasy—which is to say, readers aren’t supposed to get lost in its invented world. We are supposed to import its lessons to our own world. In this uncertain age, when truth and falsehood are just rapidly converging talking points on the same blurry continuum, and wishful thinking is hopelessly mixed up with reality, The Last Unicorn urges audiences to do the things that need doing anyway, muddling through as best we can.” From the Atlantic – “One of the Best Fantasy Novels Ever…” https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/11/last-unicorn-peter-beagle-50th-anniversary-reality-magic/575641/

When Lord Wellington asked Mr Norrell to conjure up some unicorns to ride into battle against the French, he replied there were none left. They’d become extinct. It’s good to know there’s one left!

Oh how I wish I didn’t have to return to reality. My cuddling babies and dog walking duties are done, my tiny twin granddaughters are well on the road to post-preemiehood and getting stronger every day. They’ve just about doubled their birth weight, and they immediately focus and listen when their Daddy plays the guitar. Do you remember those days of young motherhood?

I do. I remember them like they were yesterday.

Hello Spring. The roses and lilacs have bloomed outside my snug’s window.

Read Full Post »

City of Angels

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Have you heard of the band Weezer? Not a particularly great band name, makes me think of somebody struggling to breathe. They were big in the 90s and early 2000s. I was wondering because the bass player, Scott Shriner’s wife Jillian Lauren was involved in a police shooting last week here in LA.

Then Shriner performed at Coachella over the weekend.

It’s been a busy weekend. For one thing, Bernie and AOC held a rally on Erev Passover to fight the oligarchy. It was one of their largest turnouts yet, over 35,000 people attended! The Rocker thought we would go, but I had better things to do – like make chicken soup with matzoh balls and finagle a brisket into a slow cooker. Our small Seder was simple but lovely, the twins’ first holiday.

Bob told the girls about the Exodus and Moses. We didn’t get into all the plagues, or make them answer any questions, like “Why is this night different from all other nights?” I mean, they were already reclining in their twinsie pillow. Leo the Protector dog watched over them on the deck as the sun set over the canyon.

This morning I made matzoh brie (scrambled eggs with milk-soaked broken matzoh) with maple syrup.

And then I saw that the NYTimes had picked up our local Weezer story. It happened like this in the neighborhood of Eagle Rock: Jillian Lauren heard something suspicious in the middle of the night and so she picked up her legal gun and went outside to investigate. I’m assuming she was alone in the house with her four dogs since Shriner was out in the desert with the band.

Whereupon she was shot by the LAPD and then arrested.

Just a few weeks ago I’d met my sister-in-law Jorja and two of my LA nieces with children in Eagle Rock for dinner. Granted you hear lots of sirens and helicopters in the City of Angels, but this shooting just seemed so bizarre and close to home. My initial thought was the city will see quite a law suit in the future; Lauren survived her injuries and posted bond for 1 Million.

This has all the makings of an LA Law and Order style episode. Did she point her gun at the police? Did she fire? Did they identify themselves? And just to make it all more interesting, Lauren is an author! She wrote a book about her time spent in a harem – “Some Girls; My Life in a Harem.”

I didn’t feel the magnitude 5.2 earthquake this morning, which doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. There were several aftershocks but the only thing that happened was Bob’s phone alert started shrieking, my phone was on silent. “Drop, cover and protect yourself.” Similar to finding your safe place during a tornado watch?

But is any place really safe anymore when you can get shot by the police in your own backyard?

Read Full Post »

Canary on a College Campus

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on April 8, 2025| 1 Comment »

The news is seeping into my dreamy grandmotherly days.

Yes, I’m washing baby bottles, cuddling babies, and pitching in with household chores because twins… and every now and then I catch a glimpse of the rest of the world. I know there was a Hands Off protest in almost every major city around the world this past weekend. And I’m glad to see so many groups coalesce around the fight against totalitarianism.

But what really got to me was seeing Jewish and Palestinian students at Columbia University chain themselves to a fence in opposition to the school’s funding of Israel.

Don’t let the T administration fool you – they are twisting a biblical feud into a supposed fight against antisemitism. But by arresting, deporting and basically disappearing hundreds of valid college students studying here, in this country, legally btw, Mr T has shown his true colors. What has been happening on college campuses lately is truly Orwellian.

What were their crimes? Speaking freely about their opposition to bombing women and children in Gaza? Signing a petition equating the Israeli government with an apartheid system?

It may be hard to believe, for some MAGA Americans to believe, but Jewish Americans can love the state of Israel and still disagree with Netanyahu and his government’s policies. Just like we can love our country and wish with all our hearts that Harris was elected. Mr T is not doing us Jews any favors!

And this morning I read about a covert group, Canary Mission, that has been tracking activists in university settings all around the country for years:

“The group, which says its mission is to single out those who promote “hatred of the U.S.A., Israel and Jews on North American college campuses,” listed the names of seven students and academics, including three current and former professors at Columbia University.” https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/us/israel-gaza-student-protests-canary-mission.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

And a play about the McCarthy commission and Walter Winchell just opened on Broadway starring George Clooney, along with my neighbor Ann’s son, Mac Brandt. Ann escaped the Altadena fire and attended the opening night in NYC. I wonder, can we learn from our history?

Seventy years go, in Hollywood many Jewish artists made McCarthy’s black list. Today, our government is making another list in the guise of antisemitism. The canary is not only singing, it’s screaming.

Dinner on the deck with the twins in their Moses baskets.

Read Full Post »

Plus ca Change

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 1, 2025| 2 Comments »

The more things change, the less I like it.

But I am not like my Nana, who refused to give up her “ice box” for a newfangled refrigerator. When the ice man stopped delivering, she reluctantly accepted the new contraption with a round condenser sitting like a pill box hat on top. It’s ironic that it was my sister Kay who had the Frigidaire delivered to our Nana, but later refused a microwave from me!

Today it’s more complicated. It’s not as if I’d like to return to the days when a milkman came to our little house in Victory Gardens… or my Daddy Jim had to climb up on the roof to adjust the TV antenna. But milk IS the driving force of our lives now that the twins are home! The Rocker had to install a small freezer in the garage for the overflow of breast milk Aunt Kiki is delivering. It’s actually Amazonian.

The Flapper told me very little about our lives before that Year of Living Dangerously. But I did know that her doctor took her aside one day and told her she didn’t have to sanitize my baby bottles – which meant in 1948 she didn’t need to boil them. The doctor knew my Father was dying of a brain tumor in the dining room of our home, and he figured she had enough to worry about, what with three other children in the house.

And so when the Bride was born, the Flapper helped me in many ways but she knew next to nothing about breastfeeding. Ditto for Grandma Ada. Their generation was expected to bottle feed, only poor women who couldn’t afford formula would nurse. And yet, the culture changed so dramatically by the 70s – we women read “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” we had consciousness raising groups, we had Gloria Steinem!

And the La Leche League of course. It was considered a badge of honor to nurse your baby anywhere and everywhere. And like most things, we went too far. I suffered through the flu and a mastitis and kept on going, determined to make a success of it. When in fact, training your baby to take a bottle along with nursing makes sense for your family’s sanity.

Especially with TWINS!

My son and his wife had a crash course on caring for preemies in the NICU. They had a lactation specialist and an occupational therapist! Best of all were the nurses, who each shared the tricks of their trade; including the last night nurse who hugged me and said I looked like a mystery writer!

So now I am my Mother, knowing very little about bottles. The baby girls are excellent nursers, but the bottles at first were not getting the job done in the NICU. And Kiki came up with the idea to change the bottles from one brand to another, and voila! They started meeting their “shift minimums.” So yesterday, we brought the girls home to meet Leo the Protector and his two resident cats.

Bob and I will stick around to help in any way we can. Ive learned how to defrost breastmilk and use the new bottles and their special cleaning appliance. The rest is like riding a bike, right? I hope they got some sleep last night.

Read Full Post »