The Lilith Blog

A close friend of mine has a box in a chest in her house. It is filled with her grandmother’s Christmas Tree ornaments – delicate, hand-picked, beloved pieces. Golden orbs and shining stars, heavy ceramics and light, painted glass. The ornaments have been passed down through her maternal line for generations. She has no idea what to do with them. Her father is Jewish, and she was raised in an interfaith home, going to Hebrew school, and celebrating Christmas with her grandparents. When she married her husband, a Jewish man, she decided to convert; though she considered herself Jewish, she wanted to be accepted as a Jew throughout the Jewish community. She no longer celebrates Christmas, but remains very close to her mother and her grandparents. Recently, she and her husband adopted a beautiful little girl from China, and they are raising her in a Jewish home. She already has my friend’s twinkle in her eye, and her adopted father’s laugh. My friend and her husband also create opportunities for her to connect to her birth country and culture. But they have no idea what to do with that box of ornaments.

What is the legacy that we pass on to our children? How much do we get to decide? And, despite our intentions, how much of that legacy will bring them fulfillment and joy? How much will they have to work hard to reject, to find their own space in the world?

Another friend of mine was telling me about his Vision Quest – a multi-day journey in the wilderness, during which, after many years, he finally shed himself of the fear of failure that his father passed on to him from his father, and from his father before. He is now beginning a new career path, and shared that finally, after many years, no longer has terrible anxiety.

When we raise our own children, is it possible to do so with a heightened awareness of the undercurrents of the patterns and values and traditions that were passed on to us, and which have shaped our own lives? Is it possible to change what we felt was harmful, and accentuate that which brought us joy? Or do the patterns, like the genes we pass on, shining ornaments we wish we could lovingly pick, inadvertently fall from our own trees to delicately hang on the branches of our children? And will those ornaments, some which we so treasure, shine eternally, or, after an ephemeral glow, be stored in a box, opened each year, tears glistening, to remember that which will be left in the wilderness?

–Maya Bernstein

I was struck by the first sentence of Peggy Orenstein’s article, Kindergarten Cram, in this past week’s New York Times magazine. She claims, and I believe her, to have “made the circuit” of kindergartens in her town. And Berkeley’s no small town, mind you. I had to immediately put down the article to dodge the guilt wave that arose and threatened to soak me, Sunday bagel and all. For, you see, I have never made such a circuit. In my defense, my daughter’s not yet in kindergarten. She’ll be in pre-K next year. And I’ve visited, ahem, one pre-school, aside from the one she currently attends because, cough cough, that’s where my cousin sent his girls, it’s close to home, it’s the cheapest option we could find, and, of course it aligns with our philosophy of pedagogy and life. And, obviously, we’re NOT going to choose a kindergarten based on cost or location or convenience. Obviously we’re going to make the circuit and choose the absolute best school for our child, a school where they compost and play and don’t give homework and don’t confuse the shape of the Hebrew letter “samech” with an octagon.

Marion Milner, in her book On Not Being Able to Paint, cited in Avivah Gottleib Zornberg’s The Particulars of Rapture, describes the process of doodling, and how difficult it is, while doodling, to prevent oneself from creating a recognizable object. She writes:

It seemed almost as if at these moments one could not bear the chaos and uncertainty about what was emerging long enough, as if one had to turn the scribble into some recognizable whole when in fact the thought or mood seeking expression had not yet reached that stage. And the result was a sense of false certainty, a compulsive and deceptive sanity, a tyrannical victory of the common-sense view which always sees objects as objects, but at the cost of something else which was seeking recognition, something that was more to do with imaginative than with common-sense reality.

This is what Orenstein fears is at risk in our children’s schools – those rich moments of chaos, of uncertainty about what is emerging – moments of imagination and potential. Homework is part of the world in which sees objects as objects, but at the cost of something else.

Is it possible, though, that we too are caught in the clutches of homework’s tyrannical victory of the common-sense view? When we as parents research ad-infinitum the best possible schools and programs for our children, diligently doing our homework, aren’t we attempting to turn the scribble of parenting into some recognizable whole? Aren’t we prey to the compulsive and deceptive illusion that if we make the circuits, and at least spare them from homework until fourth grade, we will spare our children the chaos and uncertainty that we so fear?

–Maya Bernstein

The baby has another new trick. She’s taken to screeching. I’m not sure if, unbeknownst to me, and against my explicit will, she has joined the 15 month-olds Trying to Pass as Screeching Monkey Competition (very prestigious, really!), and is in the final weeks of rigorous practice. If that is the case, I have no choice but to be proud of her, feigning impatience but privately delighted – my daughter, the best screeching monkey of them all. I have a nagging fear, though, that this is not the case, and that I have on my hands, simply, a screeching baby, awash in a new awareness of the world around her, passionately desirous of it, and hysterically frustrated that she cannot articulate her needs, and, even worse, that they are often denied. Couple that with the fact that her big sister is so annoyingly verbal, using words like “actually,” and “lather,” it’s no wonder she’s screaming, using all of her weapons, very well, I might add, in the war for her parent’s ears.

I was answering emails at work last week when an icon popped up at the bottom of my screen, distracting me. It said: Adobe Acrobat needs your attention. I couldn’t believe it. It was as difficult to ignore as one of the baby’s cries. You want a banana? I almost asked Adobe. A strawberry? It just looked back at me, silently screeching, needing me, begging me to click on it, to put down the phone or the dishes or the book, and give it both of my eyes, and a smile. Then I realized that it was an icon on my computer screen, and not my daughter, and, with slightly too much delight and a crescendoing evil laugh (which, yes, frightened my colleagues), I closed the box.

So much needs my attention. It has become like a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. I respond to the screeches in order of shrillness. I am especially baffled that our society’s response to this ill has been to create a culture of screeching monkeys. Facebook Status!!! Tweet Tweet Tweet! And, of course, the phenomenon of the Blogging Mom. Why are so many mothers, their time so delicate, their attention fraying and threadbare, giving their eyes and ears so completely to strangers? Are we all just screeching toddlers, desperately searching for the elusive word to express a need we cannot comprehend but which consumes us, the eternal need to be recognized, seen, heard, understood, and, finally, lifted up, and embraced?

–Maya Bernstein