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Any parent-this is not something unique to single parents-will tell you there are times when you have to make a sacrifice. During our three-day ski trip, one of 11.5′s friends was at the same place with her family skiing, and our family made a couple of sacrifices to let the friends ski together and spend time off the slopes together too.
Now, the skiing together part was pretty easy. We met at the bottom of the hill and then skied a bunch. It took a little patience but it worked out well.
Then came dinner.
11.5′s friend’s family was with their family-so there were about 12 of them and apparently a visit to the Old Country Buffet is part of a Massachusetts get away. This is the parental sacrifice part.
Old Country Buffet is exactly what it sounds like. A buffet place where you keep piling mostly bland, over-salted, mediocre at best food onto your plate-and keep going back for more.
It’s safe to say without 11.5′s friend being there-we would have skipped the experience.
Both my kids call me a food snob, and truth be told I can be. When I go out to eat I expect good food. I’m willing to pay for it, but it has to be good. Old Country Buffet falls well short.
(Disclosure: the picture is 9.0′s desert plate of which she had one bite of everything and one cookie)
But it was important for 11.5 to see her friend and share the full on skiing experience with her-so as a family we made the sacrifice and made it work.
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Among the “life lessons” I struggle to impart on my children is that every now and then it’s OK to ask for help. Part of my struggle is that I don’t particularly ask for help very well. But that doesn’t make it impossible for me to try to show the girls the value of friends and family and it’s important to be there for your friends and family without expecting anything in return.
Saturday was a test case for this. One of my friends needed help consolidating belongings from his wife’s place in NJ into his place on Long Island. The physical aspect being a separate piece to the story, this would need a 90 minute or so ride out to Central Jersey. Where we would have to load up a truck and then do the 90 minute ride east to unload all the stuff.
Certainly I could have dragged the girls along for the day-but they would have been bored and would not be bashful to let me know. So, in the same way my friend asked me for help in moving, I had to ask friends for help in taking the girls for a very long day.
11.5 (and please read this as 11-point-5 at her request) spend the day with one of the train crew who has a daughter about the same age. 9.0 spend the day with her friend across the street. Both had a full day-and because I know my friends there well-being never crossed my mind.
So when I am asked to help a friend move, or take in some frozen food during a power outage when we have power and others don’t or having a sleepover on a school night because of a long day-I say yes. And the reason? That’s what friends do. I think the girls see this, we talk about it and I reference these moments.
Hopefully they learn this too-and adopt being there to help friends and family. It is rewarding.
Sitting here tonight-with the unveiling tomorrow morning I can’t help but think, I’ve done this before. The whole process of trying to keep it together and think two or three steps ahead to keep everything on track. Managing myself. Managing the girls. Managing the expectations. Managing the moments of anxiety.
And much like there was a year ago-when there was a night to kill, both girls spent time with friends-trying to keep it low-key and informal.
It’s probably not an inherited trait as much as it’s a learned behavior, but much like their dad, my girls are not great at patience and anticipation. Keeping them distracted helps. Keeping me distracted helps too…
All of this is going to unfold early tomorrow morning-and frankly that of and in itself has been an issue off and on over the last six weeks. And I understand why.
But I also know that delaying things will not help any of us have a better day on Sunday or Monday.
So, into what should be a cold Sunday morning we’ll go-similar to the cold Monday morning we went into a year ago. With a great respect for our friends and family we will do what we have to do and do it with respect and reverence…but we’ll do it on our terms.
Because yes, we’ve done this before and we know what works.
For me when it comes to family and family events I try to keep a delicate balance of commitment and example for my kids. Commitment to the broader family unit and example by being willing to make the sacrifice to be part of that larger group.
So, after a full week of work (out of the house at 7am and home somewhere between 9 and 930, instead of a down day today, it’s a two-and-a-half hour drive to somewhere in central New Jersey for a bat mitzvah. This one is the daughter of one of my wife’s cousins.
The commitment extends to the promise I made to keep Risa’s kids engaged with Risa’s family-sometimes that’s a bit of a one way commitment I admit, but it’s one I am willing to sustain so my kids have a sense of family.
But what is my expectation? Where can I draw the line? I guess the question I need to be able to answerer myself is, “Is it alright to say no?”
I have to think it is from time to time, now I just need to be willing to say it.
As the sun set on Rosh Hashanna this year I took the girls for some apple picking. For those who read who are not MOT or aware of the culture, part of the holiday is to dip an apple into some honey for a sweet year. It’s admittedly a little quaint, but it works. And we did that at temple-which spurred the conversation about apple picking.
One of the benefits of living as far from the city as we do is easy (or relatively easy) access to many of Long Island’s still operating farms. We generally pick strawberries, apples and pumpkins each year, and sometimes some other items. Also when we go east of our house, a stop at a farm stand on the way home is not uncommon.
Lesson one from the apple orchard was to get there ahead of the holiday next year. It was pretty slim pickings in the fields. We got about 10 apples-and I don’t have high hopes for any of them. Thinking apple pies are about to be backed.
Last year, being what it was, the only picking we managed to do was pumpkin picking. It was just too much with my wife in hospice and trying to get there on the weekend with the girls and still keep all the rest going.
This year, even with less than a plentiful bounty-the girls had a great time walking through the orchard and hunting down the few apples they could find. It’s not about the haul for them-but about the activity.
Last year was the first since we moved out here (almost 9 years now) that we did not do apple picking. I’m not sure 11.0 remembers when we went apple picking before we moved out here, but we did. There is a kind of relaxation and familiarity to it, and it’s a nice little family event.
Lesson two from the orchard is to make sure I remember to look at some of these events through the eyes of my children. To me, the trip was kind of a bust in that the apples were not great and I am not sure the apple pie (or apple sauce or apple cider) will be very good. But that’s only a small part of what comes out of the apple orchard.
Although folks who know me from reading here may be slightly behind the curve (I’m sorry about that BTW, trying to figure out a way to write more) everyone else from Twitter to the train knows my girls come home from camp tomorrow.
In the 8 weeks they’ve been gone, largely I managed to get most of what I wanted to get done complete. Some home renovations, new job started, took care of me a little and I think for the most part really was able to step back and slow down a little.
Today is dedicated to finishing off a few items before I meet the bus tomorrow afternoon and reunite with the girls. Based on their letters home, I think they are feeling ready to come home from camp. The plan once they are home is to just let them have some time to unwind and decompress before school starts. They went from school on Friday to camp on Saturday at the end of June. So now, in mid-August is their chance to just hang-and hopefully between the new flat screen TV, freshly painted rooms and other stuff and see friends they’ll be able to do that.
But somehow the beat goes on. And there is never a shortage of stuff to do. There was the call from my brother on Wednesday that tripped me up-mostly because I was having a tough day, but still a family matter to deal with.
Then there’s Sunday before I pick up the girls.
I was just going back in my blog, and realized I never really got into the passing of my uncle, which occurred between the passing of my aunt (which I wrote about here) and the passing of my wife which is well documented here. My uncle’s passing while not completely unexpected had many twists and turns-some of which remain open family matters today.
Back to Sunday, before picking up the girls, it’s the day of my uncle’s unveiling. It’s really not a religious event, but it is a family gathering, and I will be there before going to the girls-which adds some pressure to getting things done today. There will be mood swings a plenty for sure. And it will all come, before the reunion.
One measure I’ll use at some point to gauge how well I have done as a parent is when I can look back and see if I’ve instilled a sense of family into my kids. Now, to be clear, this does not mean weekend after weekend of family events, shuffling off to everything everywhere.
Rather I mean something more subtle. I want them to know they have family beyond the people in the house, and even if they don’t see these people every day or every year they are still out there and can be counted on.
To that end, last weekend (which explains the relative silence from me) we trekked our way to someplace between New Haven and Hartford Connecticut for the Bat Mitzvah of my wife’s cousin’s daughter.
This could easily be the kind of affair I would skip. Certainly not close, someone the girls met more than 8 years ago and have no recollection of. But in this case-it was a little easier to decide to go because I have a good relationship with my wife’s cousin and his brother (yes, I know cousins too).
And with the exception of a few hours at shiva after her funeral, I really have not seen any of them in a very long time. The girls got to connect with their cousins-there is a posse around their age and one (although I am not sure who) was described as the cool cousin.
For me, I was reassured that my sense of family is a right one, because although I have not seen a lot of the folks at this event for years, I know they are people I can call on when I need to, and they know they can call on me.
Yes, there were plenty of very awkward moments of condolences, and too often I felt like I had to convince people the girls and I were really doing OK-but that’s what Scotch is for, right?
The girls and I had a good time, they connected with a different set of cousins, and they know that their lives are not in a vacuum. Mission accomplished, right?
Just a word of warning to regular readers-this post will likely get more than a little sappy, and I can not guarantee the readability.
Since the beginning of last summer, I’ve been trying to instill a sense of extended family in my girls. To let them know that while we see each other all the time, grandma often, the Albany based uncle sometimes, the Hoboken based aunt occasionally their family extends beyond that. The genesis of this undertaking was the death of my aunt (mom’s sister) nearly a year ago.
Never super close, I always knew when needed I could call and she would do what she had to do. When my younger brother died, I knew I would need help until my older brother made his way south from Albany and although it was not who my mother would have made her first choice to be to around I made the call-and she was on a plane. As I thought about that moment, and a few others from the far reaches of my youth, I realized it was my uncle (mom’s brother) who really embodied that spirit and fueled by my mother.
In the days surrounding my aunt’s death, I realized how weakened my uncle was. In that time frame I was dealing with my own set of issues relating to Risa’s failing health and getting the girls through that, so in a lot of ways I was out of the loop-intentionally by me and by my family trying to protect me.
What many don’t know is about a month after my aunt passed, and a month before my uncle’s death he and I had a conversation. While he would not let me go to his house to visit, I was able to share with him some thoughts on family and to thank him for at least giving me an example.
When my father died (I was just over 5 when that occurred) I can remember my uncle being omnipresent, and his family being present as well. I saw my cousins if not often, enough to know them well, and have shared memories about growing up with them. And I also know if I ever need anything from a family member they are a call away-no questions asked. I hope they know that about me as well, but that is for their blogs I guess.
As all of this was going on, I realized my girls really did not have that sense of extended family and while there were a ton reasons and explanations for this, I could also actively do something to change it. Slowly and where it made sense I’ve been able to.
It’s an investment of time that is worth making. So when I had to give up a night and a day to make sure my girls spent time with their cousin in Hoboken, I volunteered for baby-sitting duty. When my cousin’s oldest had his Bar Mitzvah (this weekend), I made the trip to Brooklyn twice to make sure my kids spent quality time with more than six of their cousins. When Risa’s cousin invited us to his daughter’s Bat Mitzvah, I made arrangements to give up two days to make sure my girls were there. With my niece coming into town in June, I will try to swing things so the girls can spend as much time as they can with her. When I can, I will keep inviting my brother and his family over for events and holidays, so the sense of family can be natural
Sure I could be doing a bunch of other things, knocking things off the list-but I think this is time well invested. Call it the super-sized family plan.
Family time at the old barn in Uniondale
On a late winter Saturday afternoon my girls indulged me some, and didn’t complain too much as I took them to an Islanders game at the old barn in Uniondale. I have a lot of great memories of going to Islanders’ games when I was their age, and later in life. I am one of the rare breed of hockey fan in New York, and the even rarer breed of long time and stall worth Islanders’ fan.
Generally, they like going to games-and they know I love going to games so it is a chance for us to do something together, which is really the point. And while I am at the game with the girls, I am less inclined to be on Twitter, less inclined to share videos on Facebook and not really looking for more conversation than what the girls want.
Ultimately, I don’t think it matters what the element is, as long as we are doing stuff together. Skiing last week, Islanders this week and some extended family stuff next week. It important for the girls to know there is stability in their lives and things will settle down.
I guess the win is that with Skiing its something we all can enjoy. With the Islanders, while watching a game at home with them is a little tough, they love going to the live game and the excitement of being in the Coliseum. They even had a chance to meet a few people along the way yesterday.
And making sure they have the opportunity to try things-both with and without me is so important to me. I am comfortable being a dumb guy, I really am. I know something about hockey, something about baseball and little bit about a bunch of other stuff–but I don’t know much about shopping, spas and the “girlie stuff.” Its why change days are as important as my trying to work it out and being there with the girls.
So, thanks to my friends at the New York Islanders and the friends I saw at the game yesterday, and into another week we go.
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