Cookies and half-nelsons

It’s been an eventful few months at our home. One child got married and moved out, and another graduated high school and started yeshiva, so he has also vacated the premises, more or less.

The house is quiet. The kids who still live here are teenagers — busy with school, friends, and sports. They come out of their rooms to forage for food and show me funny YouTube videos about celebrities who I have vaguely heard of, and pretend unconvincingly to know all about. 

Parenting is tricky. Little kids are exhausting because they are so endlessly needy. You have to feed them and bathe them and put them to sleep at a reasonable hour. You have to zip up their coats and find their shoes. 

But big kids are differently exhausting because their needs are shape-shifting. Sometimes they need guidance and other times they just want to vent. Sometimes they want a ride, and other times offering a ride is the kind of smothering and over-stepping behavior that you’ve been warned about in the past! Also you have to find their shoes. Not those ones… uch, no. The brown ones. The ones I wore yesterday. Why don’t you ever listen??    

With all the changes and the moves and the growing up, I have to admit that I’m finding it challenging to stay relevant in my children’s lives. They don’t need me like they used to — which is great, it’s the natural order of things. They’re on top of their schoolwork and their schedules and their social calendars. They decide what to eat and when to sleep. And since they are largely making good choices, my role has been relegated to keeping the fridge stocked, making orthodontist appointments, and trying not to look too desperate for their attention. (What? You want to tell me about some drama you’re having with a friend? Of course I have time!  What do you mean why I am so excited? No, I’m not making this weird! Please don’t go… I’ll be cool, I promise. Wait! You forgot your shoes…)

To make matters worse, my husband does not seem to be experiencing the same difficulty in this new era. His role has somehow expanded. My married son calls him with questions about bureaucracy and to ask where exactly to hang a mezuzah in his new home. My second son calls him with questions about his yeshiva learning. My third son loves to wrestle with him. And my daughter needs his help with her math homework. For good reason, Daddy, with his advanced rabbinic and education degrees, and his ability to apply a headlock, is the preferred parent when it comes to practical matters and half-nelsons. Mezuzahs and math are just not where I shine. 

In an attempt to boost my ego, I feigned neighborliness and offered to help my friend put her son to bed on a night where she had her hands full. The 5-year-old snuggled up to me as I read to him. His rapt attention was glorious, and I reveled in the fact that he was too young to even wonder if I was making this weird. As I tucked him in, he held my hand and soberly asked, “Can I give you a kiss?” I played it cool with a simple “Sure!” while inside I was doing cartwheels, and also half-nelsons.

I got home feeling a bit better. As I sat on the couch congratulating myself on my relevance, my daughter came into the room with a concerned look on her face. 

“What’s up?” I asked casually, deftly masking the excitement that this was finally happening!! She is going to open up about her life and her dreams! She will soak up my wisdom and sage advice and she will thank me for always knowing where the shoes are!

“When is Iran going to attack?”

It wasn’t the dream-sharing that I had hoped for, but it was an opportunity for connection nonetheless.

“Well, we don’t know. First they were threatening to attack before the American election, and now it seems like it will be after. Or maybe it won’t happen at all. But here’s the thing, you know what to do when there are sirens. You know what to do if you hear sirens at home, or at school, or even on the bus. You will follow the rules, we will all check on each other, and hopefully we will all be safe.”

She listened patiently to my eloquent and reassuring speech, but it soon became clear that she was trying not to laugh. “I just wanted to remind you to buy more cookies for the safe room. Remember those cookies we ate during the last attack? They were really good. I think we finished them. Can you buy more before they attack again?”

As she walked back upstairs, my phone buzzed with a notification that a text had come in from my oldest son. Humbled by the misplaced excitement I had felt when my daughter came to talk to me, I was cautiously hopeful that he was texting just to say hi and check in. And maybe also to tell me that he loves me very much and his new life has not changed the deep and meaningful bond that we share as mother and son. 

The text read: “Hey — I started to defrost raw chicken for dinner, but then I decided I’m not in the mood for chicken. Can I put it back in the freezer?”

Again, not the conversation I had hoped for. But opportunities for connecting and avoiding salmonella should never be taken for granted.

I advised him about the chicken. And then I slipped in an oh-so-nonchalant, “How was your day?” And he told me! A little about his job, and his plans for the weekend, and his new dinner idea. It wasn’t deep, but it was delightful. I told him I would always be here for any poultry-related quandaries, and I went to bed feeling like things might be okay. Because man-children can not live on mezuzot and math alone. The most significant and existential issues of the day are obviously cookies and chicken. And that, my friends, is where I shine.  

The kids can leave the nest. They can grow and explore and meet people named Nelson. And I can let them go confidently and with grace, because I know that they will keep coming back. Maybe not to stay, but to visit, to raid the fridge, and to glean from my unending fields of wisdom. If I play it cool, they will come back again and again, because I remembered to buy the good cookies. And also because I hid their shoes.