One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

I've been remiss in posting, so you're getting a two-fer tonight! Maybe even a three-fer, depending on how desperate I become in my quest to procrastinate and avoid all the cleaning I need to do for this week. I have two additional people sleeping over tomorrow night, several playdates this week, a Discovery Toys party I'm hosting on Thursday - and the house is a total disaster. I don't think I even have clean towels for my houseguests. And yet here I am, blogging and catching up on my DVR-ed soaps, while eating ice cream and watching a fishless aquarium.

Oh yes, the topic I was getting to - how convenient!

Despite years (literally - Teresa started this around the time she turned 3) of protestations on my part, the kids have finally managed to talk me into getting them pets.

I love cats; Steve hates them - but Teresa is severely allergic anyway, so there went that option. I don't like dogs at all; Steve doesn't mind them, but doesn't really want one of our own at this point, so that idea was nixed as well. Ditto anything resembling a rat (of the non-Pixar variety - LOL) so no hamsters, mice, gerbils, etc. My brother and I had parakeets when we were kids, and I'm sorry to admit, the poor things would have lived in their own filth if my grandmother didn't come over and clean the bird droppings out on a regular basis. Hermit crabs - what's the point? If you have to remember to take care of a pet, it might as well actually do something interesting! And as for iguanas, lizards, and snakes - well, I saw an $800 green python at the pet shop, and put it this way: with apologies to any readers who might be animal-rights types, the only python I'd ever pay nearly a grand for would have a handle, a zipper, and the Gucci logo.

So what does that leave us with? Teresa and Maddy, discouraged at my reflexive "no" to each animal they suggested as they went down the list, noted my ever-so-brief hesitation after they said "Fish?" and immediately jumped on it like, well, a shark seizing bait.

"Fish! Fish! Mommy, you said OK! Fish - YAY!"
"Wait a second! Who said OK? I did not say OK!"
"Well - you didn't say no right away!"
"I was thinking."
"So that means yes!"

I admit, the "cons" of fish were not as readily apparent to me as those of the other pet contenders. I mean, fish are not outrageously expensive, they're not high-maintenance, they don't smell, you don't have to walk them or scoop up their poo, they don't need grooming or vet visits, and they're actually kind of pretty. So I was getting desperate.

"Well - you have to feed them. See, they're a pain. You have to remember to feed them twice a day. And, you still have to clean up after them. I mean, it's not as bad as a litter box, but they still poo!"

And then Teresa said it - one of those lines you write down in their baby books, that makes you laugh until you can't possibly say no. Maddy was just dancing around singing, "Fish fish fish, fish fish fish...." but Teresa looked right at me with all the righteous indignation a 4-year-old could muster, hands on her hips, and said,

"You know what, Mommy? You are NOT listening to me. I don't mind those things. I don't care about the feeding. I don't care about the cleaning. I don't even care about the pooping. I ONLY CARE ABOUT THE FISH-HAVING!"

So that's how I've ended up making 3 trips, in as many days, to Big Al's Aquarium Supercenter in East Norriton, PA, home of a ginormous 5,000-gallon shark tank which the kids can gawk at as you find 5,000 ways to spend way more than you need to on your new pets, which, in the span of 15 minutes of salesmanship from one of Big Al's finest, have somehow mysteriously morphed from a couple of goldfish in a bowl to a state-of-the-art tropical aquarium setup which, as I have discovered, A) costs you so much, you find yourself very, very relieved that your husband will be on another continent when you tell him how much the kids' new pets cost, and B) you need a marine science degree to set up when you get home.

And we still have no actual fish, so we're slated for trip #4 in the morning, this time hopefully to introduce some inhabitants to our lovely tank before, after all this, the kids lose interest.

Why does our aquarium have no fish in it yet? Because I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing, and I'm terrified of killing the kids' new-but-immediately-beloved pets. And of course Steve is gone - I should have done this when he was home, but the kids didn't want to wait anymore (this is a joint birthday present for all three of them, and I've been promising since before Maddy's birthday that we'd go get the fish "any day now.")

So here I am, lugging a 30-gallon tank in from the car (which, incidentally, my friends Naomi and Greg told me is way bigger than the "starter tank" I asked for at the store - boy, Al must have seen me coming) along with all the necessary equipment, chemicals, and tools, and then sitting in the kitchen at midnight, trying to nurse a baby while studying a scintillating copy of "Getting Started with Your Freshwater Aquarium."

I am quite proud of myself though - at this point, with only a minimal number of Internet searches and calls to Big Al, I believe I have correctly set up and filled the tank, treated and tested the water, installed the power filter and heater, and introduced a refrigerated packet of...um, live bacteria to start the process of....whatever the whole biological process that is supposed to start in there is. See how much I've learned?

My one remaining problem is that the water temperature is not getting quite high enough, despite setting the heater to the desired level. So I'm trying setting the heater higher and then seeing what it actually measures on the thermometer across the tank. Provided I get the water temperature up in time, I am also terrified of tomorrow's adventure: the whole procedure of getting the fish home and then slowly introducing them into the tank (acclimating them by slowly adding tank water into their bags at set intervals). Big Al's salesperson tells me this process is extremely stressful for the fish, and can make them susceptible to illness as a result, if done improperly or too quickly. I can just see it now: my kids' fish on a little subterranean therapist's couch saying, "It was that woman, their mother! It's all her fault! We had so much stress in our lives because she didn't get us off to a good start in that new tank, and then, well, our immune systems were just shot to hell after that...."

Daddy Went to Frog

According to Maddy, anyway.

Daddy actually went to Prague, as in the Czech Republic, but whatever, she insists despite repeated clarification that he went to "Frog" - and really, in terms of the effect on my life, it doesn't actually matter much where he went.

And that was going to be my excuse for failing as miserably at blogging regularly as I had been at emailing individually - until I realized that, uh, that would be fairly transparent, at least for those of you who live around here, as you know that he just left on Wednesday. In my defense, however, I will say that I honestly didn't think anyone was actually reading this! After I posted my father's eulogy, I figured a few of you would skim it and that would be that. But I've been completely surprised and flattered by the number of friends who have actually complained that there hasn't been anything new of my fascinating life here in a more than a week!

So here's what's new: I am a mere 2 days into nearly 2 weeks of single motherhood, and I'm going nuts already!

At least Steve's departure was less dramatic than last year at this time, when he left for the Prague conference (having already skipped the pre-conference and delayed his arrival more than was probably prudent, knowing his boss) aware that he was going to miss his son's birth (I was 40 weeks, 5 days pregnant - that's approaching a week overdue for my as-yet-childless-friends). And, this time, we have some fun planned: tomorrow, my mother and grandmother are coming out here to stay with the kids and me. Mom is staying one night and heading back on Sunday since she has some things to do back at her house; Grandma's staying until Monday, when I'll drive her back to NJ and then we'll meet up with Mom again and celebrate Andrew's 1st birthday (!!!) together.

Next weekend, we're heading to NJ to see Mom again and take her to the new Disney-Pixar movie Ratatouille, which I think is going to be FANTASTIC! After months of counting down to its premiere, I am sooooo psyched that it's finally here! Ever since I heard about this movie, I've been dying to see it. I can't wait - only one more week! I have to say though, how sad is it that the powers that be felt the need to phoneticize the pronunciation of the title as part of the title design itself? It's like, "OK, stupid Americans, we know that the vast majority of you will have no clue how to pronounce the name of this very common French dish, and since we also know that the vast majority of you are way too lazy to actually look it up and learn something, we'll just sound it out for you - and not even with proper phonetic symbols, either - really, we know that in this culture, anything that might tax your poor brains ever-so-slightly, like having to think back to your high-school French class, could cost us money at the box office!" Nice. The sad thing is, it was probably a smart move on their part. Anyway, I hope the movie is as good as it looks - and as good as the last few have been!

The Mystery Illnesses

Our family is one of the healthiest I know in terms of everyday illness. Andrew had exactly one cold/ear infection thing and one stomach bug in his first year of life, and that's it. Maddy had same one cold/ear thing and one stomach bug too. Teresa had the stomach bug but nothing else - not even a single cold - in all this past winter. I attribute this, of course, to extended breastfeeding and our family's borderline-obsessive-compulsive use of hand sanitizer.

The trade off, apparently, is that while we rarely get your everyday viruses and the like, we seem to be disproportionately afflicted with the more unusual stuff. Andrew was hospitalized for and survived not one, but two, life-threatening conditions in his first 9 months of life.

And now, Teresa and I are both suffering from mystery conditions that have our doctors seemingly stumped.

Teresa has had what our GI calls cyclical vomiting for nearly two years now, and it had been misdiagnosed and mistreated originally as reflux and/or slight asthma. She has random episodes of gagging and vomiting that have no apparent cause or correlation. She experiences a gagging/choking sensation, gets sick if she eats anything, and then after a period of a couple of hours, is completely fine, running around playing and eating anything she wants with no problem. She's had an upper GI series, an abdominal ultrasound, and is scheduled for additional testing to try to figure out what's going on with her.

I, for the past 3 months, have had increasingly severe joint/muscle pain. It moves around, different joints hurting for a day or so and then changing to others. I'm not exaggerating - it sometimes gets so bad I can barely function. Saturday night, I was almost in tears by the time we got home - my neck hurt so much, and was so stiff, I couldn't move my head at all. Yesterday, it was my ankle - I almost fell down the stairs while carrying Andrew because my ankle hurt so much and was so "locked up" that I couldn't bend it on the step. And this morning, I had to have Steve clasp my bra for me because I couldn't bend my wrist, which was killing me, at the angle I needed to reach behind my back. It's crazy. But I know I'm not imagining it - it hurts like hell. It's affected my head/neck, elbows, wrists, fingers, knees, ankles, and feet at various times. I've been living on Advil, which I'm really not thrilled about.

So far, my internal medicine doctor has tested me for everything logical that she can think of - Lyme disease to rheumatoid arthritis - and everything has been negative. So, the mystery continues.

Give Her Regards to Broadway

Saturday, Teresa performed in her second annual dance recital. Last year, her class did a ballet performance; this year, they did tap. She ROCKED. I am not just saying this because I gave birth to her - I mean it! There were only 5 girls, including Teresa, in this number, and she is the youngest. And she got out there on stage with a huge smile and a ton of confidence and hit it out of the park. Their routine was adorable.

The funniest thing was, during the dress rehearsal the week before, when we watched a group of the 3- to 4-year-olds (the class Teresa had been in last year) practice, and as they waddled out on stage in their tutus, looking around the stage nervously, Teresa chucked, looked at me with this sophisticated grin, and said, "Awww, mom, look how cute they are!" It's crazy - she has these moments where I'd swear she's 13.

She also has my perfectionism, unfortunately. When I went to get her from the green room after the performance, the backstage moms told me she'd been a little "difficult" when she first came offstage. They told the girls what a great job they'd done, and Teresa said, a bit rudely, "Not me. I messed up at the end. I was supposed to wave as we left the stage, and I forgot to." And she got a slight attitude with anyone who disagreed with her or told her it didn't matter.

She cheered up when we told her were going to On The Border - Teresa's and my favorite restaurant - to celebrate. Their margaritas are AMAZING. My mother and grandmother came to the recital, and out to dinner with us, and we had a great time, althought it felt so strange that Dad wasn't there. It felt like he was out parking the car, or in the men's room, and was going to come in and sit down at our table any minute.

Anyway, I have to say that I continue to be absolutely thrilled with her dance school. I decided not to take Teresa somewhere else even after we moved, since they are just fantastic. They are wonderful with the kids, and they stress having fun and being creative, but they are also very disciplined and professional. Their performances are truly outstanding - the choreography of the older kids' and teenagers' routines were quite impressive (and their company and performance troupes win awards all the time).

Unfortunately, dance camp, which Teresa loved last year, was canceled this summer because of staffing problems. She can't wait to go back in September - and Maddy is starting then too, at long last! She is so happy that, as she said, "I don't have to sit with the babies and wait! It's my turn too now - I've been waiting for 48 days!" She's actually been asking to dance for a lot longer than that, but right now, "48 days" is Teresa's and Maddy's idea of the longest time one could imagine. Would that it were....

Anyway, I have some lovely photos from the recital, and the past couple of months, but alas, they are trapped in my digital camera. Somehow, the cable that connects my camera to my PC has gone MIA. Steve and I have searched everywhere, and it has apparently disappeared into thin air when we disconnected the computer equipment to empty the basement for the carpet installation last month. So as soon as it turns up, you'll have your fill of adorable Klugewicz kid photos - hang in there.

Red Tape

Friday, the kids and I spent literally the *entire* day dealing with the pediatric gastroenterologist's office and with our health insurance company. Now, don't get me wrong, I am very happy with this doctor - he is one of the best around - and I'm also very happy with our insurance (I thank God that we have such great coverage for such a low premium through Steve's work) but sometimes, I just wish something in life could be simple!

Basically, the GI ordered some further testing to try to finally get to the bottom of the problems Teresa has been experiencing (I'll get to that in a later post in case anyone else has any ideas) and I wanted to have some of them (the abdominal ultrasound and the blood draw) done there at CHOP. The receptionist was telling me that with my insurance, I couldn't - I'd have to have all those tests done at the sites where we're capitated for radiology and lab work. That made no sense, since Teresa just had an upper GI series last month at CHOP, and there was no problem. And, I'm sorry, but I don't want her going to a non-pediatric facility - I really think there's a definite difference, when you're talking about a radiology staff that deals with kids and kids' anatomy day-in and day-out versus one that deals with adults 99% of the time. And when it comes to a stick for labs - I'm sure that a phlebotomist who is used to kids can make it a better experience (uh - relatively!) than it would be otherwise.

So Teresa was seen by the doctor (and by the way, why is it that nowadays, at all the decent medical facilities around here, patients get only a 15-minute grace period to be late and not have to reschedule their appointments, including a patient who happened to have been sitting in horrendous traffic for nearly two hours, with 3 small children, alone, and then had to circle the block for 25 minutes looking for a parking spot that could accommodate her minivan since the hospital parking lot has a "SORRY, FULL EXCEPT FOR MONTHLY" sign up by like 7:30 am; but yet the doctor can keep said person waiting, with said 3 small children, for an hour and a half, and not even say, "Sorry to keep you waiting, ma'am," anymore?) But he was very thorough, had a halfway decent bedside manner, convinced me really knew his stuff, and made a long-ish list of things to try to start ruling out.

So I took the kids to go get some lunch while I called the insurance company to sort out the regulations. They told me I'd need a pre-cert to take Teresa to CHOP for the ultrasound. So I get transferred to the pre-cert department and launch into my story of how I'm not taking her to an adult facility because blah, blah - and then the woman tells me that capitation rules only apply to kids 5 and over - from birth through age 4 they can go anywhere I want, in-network and with a referral, of course. So we finish lunch, walk back to the office, and head back up to GI to have her labs drawn and schedule her u/s.

At which point the receptionist tells me that my insurance company must be wrong, because she's never heard of any capitation rules depending on age. And she refuses to send us to the lab, saying that she's protecting me, since it will cost me like $900 if the insurance company refuses to pay. So I get BACK on the phone with the insurance company, proceed to speak to *THREE* different people, and get *THREE* different interpretations of the cap rules. AAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! By now it's like 3 pm, and we've been there since around 10 am. I wait - and wait - and wait - on hold. Insurance guy is getting his supervisor on the phone. GI receptionist is getting Patient Services Coordinator paged to come up and deal with me. Other patients' parents are looking at me like, "OH, there's one of those problem moms arguing with the staff. What's wrong with those people?"

In the end, insurance supervisor tells me she is not sure of the correct information (Really?? Has nobody EVER asked this question??) and will need to research it and call me back. And it doesn't matter anyway, since the issue has now become moot - it's 4 pm and the lab techs are going home, not waiting for the crazy mom who has been standing in the waiting room on her cell phone for an hour, insisting that they draw her kids' blood - and, oh, did I mention, losing one of her other kids in the process?

Oh yeah, that was great - Andrew, I seem to keep forgetting, is bipedal these days. He's been walking for like, all of 4 minutes, but he walks fast, and without fear. One minute he is sitting on the floor of the waiting room playing with his sisters, and the next, he apparently decided to walk off down the hallway and wander into an exam room, where he was discovered, fortunately, only a millisecond after I looked behind me at the toys he'd been playing with the last time I checked and yelled, "OHMIGOD - where is...." Before I had even finished my sentence, a nurse appeared around the corner, hunched over walking hand-in-hand with Andrew (who had a huge grin on his face), saying, "Is someone missing a little man in a yellow t-shirt?" It was great - then all the other parentes glared at me thinking, "Aaaaaahhhhhaaaaaa.....so she argues with the staff AND she can't keep track of her own children!"

Fortunately, I finally got my answer. Believe it or not, the receptionist was correct and the first person I spoke to at the insurance company was wrong, about her own policy (go figure!) In our plan, capitation does not apply at all for radiology, but it does apply, to everyone regardless of age, for labs. The confusion apparently stems from the fact that even though we live in, and our doctors practice in, PA, our policy is through a DE employer, so DE laws apply - and in DE they are not allowed to enforce capitation for radiology. Mystery solved.

Of course, by that point I was en route here for some much-needed retail therapy. Sorry, Steve - it's on the way home from the city - and really, don't you think I deserved it?

The Empty Seat: A Eulogy for my Daddy

This coming Saturday, at my daughter’s dance recital, there will be an empty seat in the audience.

I know that my father’s life and memory will teach me many lessons as the years unfold, but already his loss has taught me this one: never take a single moment or a single person for granted, because only God knows the number of our days. I purchased a recital ticket for my father just a couple of months ago. In the spring, it never entered my mind that by the summer, my Dad could be gone.

But really, he is not ‘gone’ – is he? I already miss him more than I ever imagined I would when he died, but he is not gone. There are some of us here of the Jewish faith and some of us of the Catholic faith, and that is one of the many things that our two great religious traditions teach in common – that in the afterlife, a good man is rewarded for all he did in this world. And my Daddy was a good man.

He wasn’t always an easy-to-get-along-with man, he wasn’t always a nice man, he wasn’t always a patient man. But he was a very, very good man. In fact, he was one of the best people I have ever known, and whether he knew it or not, he was my hero.

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted so much to be exactly like him, and even as a teenager and young woman, when we frequently clashed, I never stopped admiring him. You know, I hope I’m even half the mother that my mother has always been, and I have never had anything but the utmost love and respect for her, but truth be told, it was always my Daddy that I emulated. Looking around now, these past couple of days, I see how many things I do because that’s the way my father did them. I drink my coffee black because that’s what my father did. I eat my steak rare because that’s what my father did. I even drive my spouse crazy because that’s what my father did.

But seriously, there were times when I thought someone saying, “You know, you’re just like your father!” was a bad thing, and now, it’s something I am so proud to hear. That’s because my father and I didn’t always get along so well. In fact, there was a time that he and I could barely be in the same room together without sparks flying. And yet somehow, in what we now know were the last years and months of his life, I am so fortunate to say that we had become very close.

In the months before he died, Dad and I talked on the phone virtually every single morning, sometimes more than once a day. We would find ourselves, around 9:30 am, in the car – he, driving to his store for work, and I, on my way to the kids’ activities or running my errands. We would talk, sometimes about important things and sometimes, really, about nothing. I never realized how much our little morning chat had come to mean to me until he got sick, and suddenly there was quite a void in my daily routine.

So, when I am tempted to be angry with God for taking Dad from us so much sooner than we expected, I have to stop myself and be grateful to God for the blessing of the time that we did have. Because if I’d had to give this eulogy 15, or 10, or even 5 years ago, I don’t think I could have. It was really only recently, as my relationship with my father evolved, that I started to see him for the man he really was, that I started to understand and appreciate him. Seeing my father through adult eyes changed things – but most of all, seeing him through the eyes of my children changed everything. He was a wonderful grandpa. My children adored him. I am so sad that he will be missing from the rest of their lives. I am so sad that he will never get to take Teresa down the crocodile slide in his lap at his timeshare in Mexico again, as he had promised her. I am so sad that he’ll never get to take the girls to the American Girl Doll flagship in Manhattan at Christmastime, as he’d promised them.

So, I said that I had, over the past few years, come to realize what a good man my father was, and I want to share with you some reflections on my Dad and some of my favorite memories of him, that will illuminate what made him so special. And now I can just hear him saying, “Oh, Kerri, give it a rest already! Just say what you have to say and get on with it, why do you always have to make such a production of everything?”

He was, first and foremost, a family man. My favorite parenting book says, “The single most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother.” And one certainty that I always had, one thing I never doubted for a second, was how much my father absolutely loved my mother. He adored her, and it was evident just from the way he looked at her. Throughout 35 years of marriage, through all of life’s ups and downs, anyone could look at my father and instantly see just how much he loved my mother with his whole heart – and by extension, how much he loved Jeff and me.

He wasn’t the sentimental, affectionate type, and yet he was so thoughtful, so caring, so romantic in his own way. He wasn’t the stereotypical man who forgot important dates – he always remembered birthdays and anniversaries and Mother’s Day and the like. In fact, one of the happiest days I remember was Valentine’s Day, a year or two before I met my husband. I wasn’t dating anyone that year, and come February, I didn’t think I’d be getting anything from anyone. But there at the door of my apartment was a florist with a dozen red roses for me, from my Dad.

Dad was one of the hardest-working people I know. He always told me that he wanted my brother and me to have more than he had, and he worked so hard to provide us with life’s comforts and opportunities. He had nothing handed to him – he achieved his success the old-fashioned way, by working hard and persevering. And yet, he was always there for us, he always had time for us. He managed to achieve that balance that eludes so many husbands and fathers – he worked very hard at his job, and yet he made sure that he was present for his family. My Dad got dressed up and took my mother out on dates. He never missed a school play or an award ceremony or a hockey game or a parents’ meeting or a baton-twirling recital. I knew he worked hard, but I knew we came first – I never doubted that if I needed him, he would drop everything and be there.

But my Dad wasn’t all work - my Dad was FUN! And he was funny. He had a great sense of humor. He was outgoing and gregarious; he could tell a story and have everyone captivated, he could tell a joke and have the whole room in stitches, he could tease you mercilessly, but you knew it was out of love. Now, he did sometimes overuse his jokes – occasionally Mom or Jeff or I would have to remind him that it may have been funny the first 5 times, but it was starting to get old!

But Dad was the life of the party – he knew how to have a good time. My friends all loved him. He took off his suit jacket and threw it over his shoulder and got down and boogied to hip-hop music on the dance floor at my Sweet 16 party! He would chase Jeff and me into the pool and sneak up behind us humming the “Jaws” music and then grab us and pull us under. He took us to Disney World and stayed until the park closed to see the fireworks, and then carried us, asleep, over his shoulders. He snuck me on the rides that little kids weren’t supposed to go on – even the one where I passed out in fear and he had to carry me off! He took us to Seaside and wasted dollar bill after dollar bill playing the hit-the-frog-on-to-the-lilypad game until he’d won us each a prize. He took us to sports games and let us get hot dogs and French fries and pretzels and ice cream and cotton candy until we burst! He took me parasailing over the ocean in Hawaii.

Dad was smart – not necessarily book-smart, but real-world smart: he could read people, he could influence people, he could charm people. He seemed to know what to do in every conceivable situation, how to handle any problem that arose. I called my Dad when the car broke down, I called him when the tax forms were wrong, I called him when the kids were sick, when the vacuum broke, when the alarm was going off, when the house flooded – whatever the situation was, I could call Dad and he’d know exactly what to do. He was wise.

Dad was generous. Everything he had, he shared with others. He always had little (or big!) surprises for the kids. He took great joy in doing things for those he cared about, and nothing made him happier than making us happy.

Dad, above all, was trustworthy and truthful. He was honest about his feelings and opinions, sometimes so honest that you wished he weren’t. My father believed in telling it like it is, being open and up-front, and not mincing words. Sometimes he could be curt or gruff, but you knew that if my father gave you his word, you could take it to the bank. I was thinking about it over the last couple of days, and I realized that my father never, not once, broke a promise to me. In 30 years as his daughter, I cannot recall even one single time that my father did not keep his word.

Perhaps that’s why I always believed that my father could do anything. There was no mess I could make from which he couldn’t rescue me, and believe me, I tried! Everything would be OK, as long as Dad was there. Early on the morning of my wedding, Dad picked me up at my apartment to take me to the hair salon to get ready. The sky looked ominous – it was grey and cloudy and there was so much moisture in the air. A substantial part of our wedding plans were to take place outside, and I was so scared that everything would be ruined by a rainstorm. My father looked right at me and said, “It is not going to rain on your wedding day.” And with the trust of a little girl who believed that her father was omnipotent, I said, “OK.” And when I came out of the salon, ready to leave for the church, I beheld the most gloriously beautiful, perfectly sunny and dry autumn day I could imagine. I realized that I trusted him implicitly, that I would believe anything he said, and, even though it may sound childish, in that moment I believed that my Daddy could control the weather.

The last memory I’ll share with you of my father being there for me was one of the moments I truly realized what a great man he was. When I was overdue with my third child, my husband had to go overseas for a work commitment that might have cost him his job if he hadn’t. So my parents came to stay with me – Dad made a fuss about Steve leaving and him having to put his life on hold to come out to PA – but I knew he’d be there. And sure enough, when I went into labor, Dad drove me into Philadelphia to the hospital, and as I screamed in pain, doubled over next to him, he said, “Now listen to me, if you have this baby in my car, I am sending Steve a bill for the cleaning!”

I was in labor, my husband was in Europe, and I was scared, but I knew that my Dad would not let anything happen to me or to his grandchild. We got to the hospital, and my father, who could be so grouchy and brusque sometimes, was so gentle and calming – he opened the car door for me, and he carried my bags up to the maternity floor. Over the next few hours, as I labored, I worried about him, being diabetic, sitting in the waiting room all night without any food. I sent a nurse to check on him, and she said, “I tried to tell him to go find the cafeteria, or even to go home since you’re here safely, but he said, 'no, I am not leaving until I see that my daughter and her baby are OK'.” And so he waited, and waited, and then he called Steve to tell him that he had a son.

And my Dad, as you see in the picture on your memorial program, was the first person to hold my little boy. I chose that picture for two reasons. First, simply because I like the look on my Dad’s face; to me he looks happy, content, natural, peaceful. But more poignantly, we didn’t know it at the time the photo was taken, of course, but it’s turned out to be a picture of one man at the very beginning of his life, and one man at the very end of his life, sharing a moment that seems to bridge this world and the next. And to me, that’s a reminder of the goodness of God, the promise of eternity, and the unbreakable bond of family.

My world felt fundamentally changed the moment my mother told me that Dad had died. He was the foundation, the firm and solid rock that I knew I could count on no matter what. As long as he was alive, I believed that I would be safe from anything the world could throw at me. Dad was there; Dad could make anything right. And now, my world feels just a little bit shaky, a little bit unsure. I miss his laugh, I miss his wit, I miss his wisdom, I miss the sense of security that he gave me, I just miss his presence.

And so, this Saturday at the recital, and at all the recitals, and the sporting events, and the school plays, and the graduation ceremonies, and the holiday dinners to come, there will be one very empty seat that cannot be filled by anyone else, because there is not, and never will be, anyone quite like my Dad. And while many of us might have said that Dad could be difficult to live with, I think we are all going to find that he is even more difficult to live without.

Beginnings and Endings

In general, I hope this blog will be a place to share happy news and the joyful adventures and ponderings of a growing family, but as we all know, sadness is part of life, too. I lost my father this past weekend, and that was also part of what prompted me to start blogging - as I've been relaying stories about him to friends of mine, I was thinking of how nice it would be if I could share his memory with the whole world, and let everyone know who he was and how I felt about him. So, I will.

Dad's Newspaper Obituary

Tribute from the Hockey Club Board

I learned so much about my Dad's heritage from observing the profound traditions and customs of mourning in the Jewish faith. I am wearing, for the next month, a keriah ribbon, and we lit a yahrzeit candle next to his picture. To a Catholic like myself who is used to tossing a rose into a grave as a final farewell gesture, it seemed strange to me, after doing that, to pick up a shovel and also lift some dirt from a pile onto my father's coffin. But the Rabbi who officiated at the burial explained to us that this is, in fact, considered the greatest mitzvah (good deed, act of love) that one person can do for another, because the person whom you are returning to God cannot thank you for it. He also said that performing the mitzvah of delivering the eulogy is a very important one in Jewish tradition, and I was so honored to be able to do that as a final gift to my Dad.

So, the next post will be the text of the eulogy I wrote for my Dad and delivered at his funeral on Tuesday; for those who knew him, I hope it makes you remember him with fondness, and for those who never met him, I hope it makes you feel as if you had.

Please, please continue to pray for him.

My Inaugural Post

Welcome!

So, after months (years?) of family and friends suggesting it, I am finally jumping on the bandwagon and starting a blog.

Why did I wait so long? Mostly because "ordinary people" blogs had always struck me as....well, slightly vain. A place to discuss the goings-on of my daily life as a wife and at-home mom? Now, I absolutely love my life and I'm thrilled to talk about it, but to post about it on a regular basis in a formal "location" for all the world to see, comment on, and link to, just seemed to me a bit self-important.

Plus, call me a Luddite, but there was the vague fear that by everyone I know, "regular moms" included, publishing blogs lately, we'd slowly start relying on them to communicate, and never again actually type an individual email or pick up a phone or (imagine this!) even take a pen to a piece of stationery!

Then, the realization - I do none of those things nearly as often as I should anyway.

I am hopelessly behind on my emails - I have, at the present moment, 2,509 emails in my Inbox, 1,827 of which remain unread. Approximately once every other year, I am reminded by the birth of another child to send out an "everyone" email filling folks in on our lives and including some photos of children who, by then, don't look anything like my kids anymore.

Each time I pick up the phone to call a friend lately, one of two scenarios occurs: either we engage in what can only loosely be termed a 'conversation' but more closely resembles a contest in which, as we attempt to speak, her children and mine vie to see who can scream louder, inflict more pain on his or her siblings, destroy a more expensive piece of furniture, or ingest a more dangerous substance we shouldn't have left within reach; or else, we embark on a Guiness-world-record-setting game of phone tag that ends when one of us finally concedes defeat, saying, "Oh well, I haven't been able to catch you, so I guess I'll just see you at the next playgroup/LLL meeting/co-op/dance class/etc."

And, as for the last time I put actual ink on actual paper, well, I mailed it from the box right outside my dorm.

So, perhaps blogging is a good idea. I can keep you all updated on our family and share my thoughts and ideas, and even if my blog isn't the most earth-shatteringly exciting one you read all day, at least we'll be keeping in touch! So please visit frequently, comment if you wish, link to me and I'll link to you - and uh, unless the kids figure it out and start trying to outdo each other in the things-we-could-use-to-jam-up-computer-keys department, this might actually work.

P.S. - Do you all "get" the title of my blog? A little double entendre for you...and, remember that I'm still under construction here & gradually finding cool content to add, so be patient and check back!