Toss Away Stuff You Don't Need In The End

Yesterday I performed the task that many Jewish moms time immemorial have done once their daughters have gone off to camp:  cleaned out the room.

And I have conflicted feelings about it.
Because I should take the advice of my own mother and sit down with her to organize together.
But I just couldn't wait until August.
I had the time yesterday, so I started seizing the moment.

Let me clarify a few things.  I wrote to my daughter, Concealed Light, who is happily enjoying her 2nd year at camp for the month of July, to inform her that I would be tidying up in her room.   And that was just a reminder.  I told her before she left for camp that I would be cleaning up.   I haven't been able to get in there in recent months even simply to dust, as she insists on leaving her play-school set up with school supplies, dolls, and various other props on the floor, thereby preventing a thorough cleaning job.  I would just be moving things aside and putting like together with like to get rid of all the dust bunnies.

But one thing led to another.
Can I admit here that I was cleaning and organizing in there for 4 hours on Sunday morning?
I got so entrenched that I missed Will Shortz's puzzle on NPR.
Oy!
And I couldn't just tidy up.
I was putting so much like together with like.
I discovered things she couldn't find and could use at camp.
And then came all the scraps, a dead insect, tiny piles of dried up flowers, bits of yarn.
Time to purge some of it.
Time to scrape off the stuck-on glue stains, markers, mounting tape.
And there was so much stuff, my gut wants to convince myself that she won't notice.


Here are some things I found (and left a bunch behind):

• Full box of silly bandz (isn't that fad like 2 years too late?)
• Shredded tissue paper 
• American Girl self-help spiral notebooks and teeny tiny notes
• treasure boxes filled with beads, gems, stones, craftable items
• Pony beads.
• scraps of fabric.
• unopened birthday gifts from last summer
• Mini oragami fortune tellers.
• Baby clothing she took out of storage (for her dolls).

She will notice.
True to my word, though, I didn't touch the dollhouse.

And, there you have my conflict:  The desire to clean up, and the desire to respect her space and retain her trust.  Just when you start assuming that I violated my daughter's privacy, I must tell you that I didn't go through every drawer.   I replaced personal items after dusting the area underneath them.  I am not the nosy mom.  I am not the controlling mom.  I am not the I wanna-be-best-friends-with-my-daughter-cooler-than-my-own-mother-though-I-love-love-love-my-own-mother mom.

Again, the conflict:  I sortof have some of those qualities.

I hope to remind Concealed Light that she still has tons of stuff and I was only trying to help clear some space (why hold onto sealed-shut nail polish bottles?) and she'll continually get new stuff and there is still purging that needs to happen and let's do that together when you get back from camp.

I remind myself that Other Moms do this on a continuing basis.
Concealed Light is lucky that I don't typically ransack her room.
And remember, this wasn't a ransack.
This is a delicate once-over.
A once-over that generated 5 bags of garbage and 3 bags of paper recycling.

I discovered that Concealed Light is somewhat of a hoarder, but I realize that we have only gone through her stuff together once or twice, so I can't blame her for not learning the skills.  It is my job to do this type of thing with her together, and I feel bad that I haven't been able to find the time yet to do this.

Uh oh, The Wolfman's Brother came in to the room in the afternoon and said, "Mama, it looks like we are moving because there is nothing on the floor."

Yes, it is important to retain the important stuff, but to quote the song "Theme From the Bottom" which is the title of this blog post:

Toss away stuff you don't need in the end, but keep what's important and know who's your friend 

Here are some other things I found and/or accomplished:

• That laptop that she said wasn't working?  Cable was simply unplugged from side of laptop.
• 100% cotton nightgown purchased in a fancy boutique store stuck under her dresser drawer, covered in dust bunnies
• Shira Goodman's* school supply box, filled with useless pencil stubs about 2 inches long
• nail clipper she misplaced from last year at camp:  It was buried in her overstuffed LeSportsac cosmetic bag.
• Goo-goned a ton of marker stains of her vintage white formica furniture (translation:  my childhood handmedown) and mounting tape my husband thought would be helpful to use to mount her reading lamp
• shook out the Pottery Barn braided oval rug.  Discovered a lot of dirt stains.
• sharpened all of her colored pencils
• threw away old markers
• gathered all of her temporary tatoos and Indian "bindi" facial stickers, putting them in a care package to her at camp with instructions to share with her friends at camp.

*name changed to protect privacy

I realize a difference between me and Concealed Light is that she is way more creative than I ever was, and certainly more intelligent than me.  My sister, Reba, also expressed a creative streak from a young age, and her room, too, was often in disarray.  My own childhood room was relatively tidy and I regularly went through my stuff.  I also didn't have as much stuff as C.L.  There were not Dollar Stores,  Five Below or Claire's where we could get fun stuff for cheap.  I treasured my Hello Kitty items, but there was no purchasing knock-offs in Chinatown, so I only had a few very prized Sanrio products.  Concealed Light, however, has access to so much more stuff.  She has a small library compared to her friends, but way more books than I ever owned:  My mom was a staunch library patron.  My sister was always making projects, as is Concealed Light, but I wasn't as much of the creative type.  I treasured my rug hook set that I worked on for years, leaving it always safely at the top of my closet in its plastic Woolworth shoebox.  I had only one or two sketch pads, and prized my smelly markers and Marvy markers that I received from my Manhattan cousins who lived in Lincoln Towers for years.  Concealed Light is constantly making her own books, writing stories, creating doll clothes:  a real independent, original, creative spirit.   

I hope one day if she ever reads this blog post she will say, "Mama, I could have expressed those same thoughts in a very concise manner where your blog readers didn't actually tune out after the 2nd paragraph."  Let this entry serve as a reminder that we can all learn so much from our children.  I know she will be a great writer one day.  She already is great at expressing herself through the written word at the young age of 8.  Her stories are funny, witty, and to the point.  Me?  I always said that I liked doing the research and could improve upon my writing skills.  I am more of the ideas person.  I have a lot of ideas.

With that I leave you the title of this blog entry. 

Click through to 2:45 for the quotation.

And if you are so inclined to view the video in its 7 minute entirety, fully check out this incredible light show.  I was at the Atlantic City show the day after (this was a 3 day Phish festival in June).  Chris Kuroda, the band's 5th honorary member and talented light engineer, as they say in Phish parlance, "killed it."

Shake Sugaree and how nice it is to be with your brothers and sisters, including Matisyahu

Not to be confused with (fellow MOT) Danny Meyer's Shake Shack (no doubt:  treif and not kosher, but you can learn how to make their Shack Burger at home), tonight, in memory of Jerry Garcia (he died 15 years ago, August 9, 1995) we were listening to the Dead's Shake Sugaree.




 I got to thinking how the Dead sang about themes such as American love, loss, and heartbreak, and how this song is connected deep deep within our roots.

Elizabeth Cotten wrote the original Shake Sugaree. This woman knew how to sing and write the blues.  She was a real southern church-goin' mama. 

Here is a nice blog about Elizabeth Cotten.
She must've been connected in some way to the generations of African American women who followed the drinking gourd and had wisdom from their mamas and just by being connected to the earth.

Speaking of being connected to the earth, The Topsy Turvy Bus,

we have heard, plans to be in the lots for the 8/17/10 Phish show at Jones Beach theater.  This will be a great time to learn what the Jewish Climate Change Campaign Tour was all about.  Or maybe what Teva Learning Center is all about (shh...this visit to enlighten Jews and the world about caring for the earth is officially off the books and not really a Teva event...I mean, where is the bus even to be found on the home page?  That's another story...)  We could always chat with the folks about Eden Village Camp.  Maybe we could give each other a hug.  Or be nice.  Or just Speak Nicely. 


Here's a little history of the bus, with an interivew with Ben Cohen from Ben & Jerry's, at the end.



Or maybe, before the show, we can hang out in front of the bus and sing a good old fashioned hinay matov, arm in arm, camp-style.



Now if we could only beat-box like Matisyahu, we'd be golden..

Yosef Yerushalmi, of blessed memory

"By common consent, Kafka is not only the strongest modern Jewish writer, but the Jewish writer.  His only rival increasingly seems to be Freud, who, together with Kafka, may yet redefine Jewish culture for us, and so change our sense of Jewish memory."

This is what Harold Bloom wrote in his forward of the late Yosef Yerushalmi's monumental work Zakhor. which explores how modern Jews relate to their histories and memories.

Yerushalmi, the world's leading scholar of Jewish history in our time, has passed away at the age of 77.  Check out the New York Times and Forward  for informative obituaries.

His loss is a great one to the Jewish world today, but his contributions are vast and have affected our community in ways of which the average American Jew might be completely unaware.

The Whole Phamily is interested in the name Yerushalmi.  Before learning about his background and upbringing, we posited that he was a native Jerusalemite, as the Hebrew "Yerushalmi" literally translates as "of Jerusalem" and is a surname used for families who have lived for generations in that city.

Yet, we learned that Yerushalmi has a similar heritage to many of our own Eastern European-born ancestors who immigrated here at the turn of the century.  His father, Yehuda Yerushalmi as noted on Zakhor's dedication page, emigrated to British-ruled Palestine when, we are guessing, he Hebraicized his name.  He then later settled in the Bronx, where the younger Yerushalmi was born and raised.

The concept of changing one's given last name (like Weiss, Perlman, or Ginsberg) at the turn of the century and into a Hebrew equivalent (such as Halivni, Ben-Yehuda, or Ha'am) is still practiced today.  At Ellis Island (likely in Galveston as well), Jews Americanized their names, but in Israel many Jews have Hebraicized.

Last week some of us at the Whole Phamily had the incredible honor and privilege to bear witness to the kiddushin and nissuin (Jewish marriage) of our dear friend D.  At the wedding tisch (where the bride, kallah, rocked the house!) prior to the ceremony,  D touched on the topic of memory, and we could not help but think that he was referring to Yerushalmi, who passed away only weeks before the next chapter of D's journey. We believe that all things happen for a reason:  Yerushalmi's own memory wafted through the honored air of perhaps one of the most bashert couples we have ever had the mazal of knowing.

Is this too much?  It's way over our heads here at the Whole Phamily.  So,we think it's time to kick back and reflect on these Heavy Things.

Meanwhile, if you find an affordable paperback of Zakhor, let us know, since we are returning the copy that has rested on our bookshelf for many years.

Why is that the case?  For your Jewish geography-desiring ears:

Our copy belonged to an old camp friend's college friend who he has known since 8th grade, but that we met on our own during our post-college years through another friend we worked with at a different camp (but of the same Jewish camping movement).  The book is inscribed by his college girlfriend prior to his own post-college visit to Minsk.

And, isn't Minsk (which is now-Belarus) where my great-great grandfather Yisroel Bear was from?  (see the Whole Phamily's 2nd blog post).

Maybe we should get back onto JewishGen...

The connections are endless...

Jewish Geography and Kevin Bacon

If you haven't yet heard about the famous game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, where you link an actor to Kevin Bacon through no more than six connections, then, as in the words of Martin Short as the flamboyant wedding coordinator in the remake of "Father of the Bride, "Welcome to the 90's, Mr. Bank."  The game is a take on the idea of six degress of separation, but when you're Jewish, that number seems sometimes to dwindle down to three or even two.

You might know it better as Jewish Geography.

C'mon, we all know you've engaged in a fun game of it in your lifetime.  Maybe you shy away from it now.  But, even if you're from Bozeman, Montana, you most likely have played.  Whether you're from Boca, Skokie, or Roslyn, whether you went to camp anywhere near Honesdale or Lake Winnipesaukee (Adam Sandler is from nearby), you've done youth groups like  Young Judaea, USY, BBYO, B'nai Akiva, or NCSY, we know you've done it.  Whether you were in a Jewish fraternity or sorority anywhere, but particularly at Wisconsin (Madison only, puh-lease!), Michigan (Ann Arbor, of course), or Indiana (are there even any other campuses where out of state Jews would seek out?), you've played.  What about any affiliation with Penn, the SUNYs (particularly Binghamton or Albany), Maryland, Brandeis or B.U.?

Still no?

If you've been part of any of the teen tour circuit, including American Trails West, Rein, or West Coast Connection, you know the game.

Jewish geography is like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon amplified and on steroids, because you can be visiting your cousins in LA and run into a friend's aunt or uncle that you met a few years ago at his sister's bat mitzvah in the valley while strolling along Third Street Promenade.

The Whole Phamily is constantly learning about connections to friends of cousins of sisters of husbands' next door neighbors at their parents place in Bal Harbor.  The network can seem endless.

Wanna play?