Seventeen
My daughter won’t be TOO disappointed we did not buy her a car for her 17th birthday today. But she may not recover from the shock of receiving a mushy card.
Read MoreFriending the Rabbi
I friended my rabbi on Facebook. Should I be afraid of what he will think of me if he actually sees what’s in my timeline?
Read MoreThe “Shtupper-ware Party”
Now, I’ve always heard that the San Fernando Valley is the pornography capital of the world, and I’ve been vaguely aware that people I meet through school and kids’ activities might be a part of that. I didn’t expect it at my friend’s sales party.
Read MoreWhat happens in the Olive Garden Stays in the Olive Garden
This is one of a series of old blog posts I’m re-publishing in honor of my 9/10′s of a decade writing SoCal Mom. This was first published in December 2005.
Each December, our PTA holds its last meeting of the year in conjunction with a holiday dinner. Sometimes it’s held at a member’s home – but last night, it was a no-host affair at the Northridge Olive Garden.
I imagine that the restaurant employee who booked our reservation for an elementary school PTA, pictured a nice, sedate gathering of teachers and mothers enjoying a nice holiday meal together.
That picture would be wrong. At least this year.
Read MoreAfter Newtown: Holding Them Close
Friday was a minimum day at my daughter’s school, as she wrapped a week of finals before the annual holiday break. I usually bitch and moan about having to quit work at 12:00 to drive to school and get her, but not this time. By then, I knew what had happened in Newtown, and I could not wait to see my kid and hold her close — which has been my inclination whenever the nation has been touched by tragedy.
It is what I did after Columbine, when she was just a toddler, and what I did in 1999, when white supremacist Buford Furrow shot women and children at the Jewish Community Center a couple of miles from our home (after we got the hell out of the neighborhood while the police were conducting a manhunt). It was how I handled my shock and disbelief after the fall of the World Trade Center her second week of kindergarten. I hugged my daughter after each and every report I heard of a child who was abducted… or harmed… or killed. I held her close and I wondered if there was any way to ensure that she would always be safe.
Read MoreChristmas Time for the Jews
Each December, we meet our friends Debbie and Tim for dinner at Rosti, followed by a trip to Tapia Brothers to get our Christmas trees. We’ve got 10 years of photos of our girls frolicking around the big prop tractor and real live farm animals. It is a holiday tradition for our mixed-religion nuclear family living in a city without anyone else to rely on.
I used to try to delay the Christmas decorations until Chanukah had come and gone, except during those years when the two December holidays overlap, in which case, it is impossible — or those years when we spend Christmas with my husband’s family in Wales, in which case I lobby not to put up decorations at all, because we’re not home to enjoy them. (I usually lose that fight, but I try.)
Read MoreConnections
