Melissa Anne Cohen

I’m not a computer girl.  My mind doesn’t really flow in that computer-jargon sort of way.  For example, I know that this computer that I’m typing on is black.  I couldn’t tell you what KIND of computer it is, or what operating system it uses.  But I do know that it was working for a long time, and then it died.  For reasons that I can’t explain..  And now suddenly it’s working.  One of Marc’s friends came by, and I mentioned in passing that it wasn’t working, he sat down at it, and typed a bunch of buttons, and BANG – it’s good once again, and I feel like a new woman. (Quick update – I started this post yesterday, and in the time between writing this opening paragraph and now, the computer has died again.  Am bitter)

So much exciting stuff is happening here – and I haven’t blogged about it years (it’s possible that I exaggerate for point of emphasis…)  Here’s a quick bullet list of things that have happened lately…

– Jessie kicked butt at her Model UN debate in school.  Being a wise child, she chose to debate on Israel’s behalf and totally owned the debate.  She knew more, and was more passionate, about the issue (they were debating the Palestine/Israel situation) than anyone else there, and came home immensely pleased with herself.

– Both Sam and Jessie need glasses.  Bifocals, and they’ve taken to them with varying degrees of enthusiasm.  Jessie LOVES hers, Sam less so.   There was a rotten second grader who called my little boy “four eyes.”   As you can imagine, this did nothing to improve his desire to wear them.  He came home on Friday (the day he got the glasses) and was so upset.  After a weekend of pep talks and I-don’t-care-what-he-says-you-still-have-to-go-to-school-and-yes-you-still-have-to-wear-your-glasses conversations, he went in on Monday morning, and when that little twerp started with him, my son calmly looked at him, and said “F you.”  This was NOT what we had talked about – but oddly enough, seems to have solved the problem completely.  He said they played together at recess, and were still good friends – and I learned again that I will never understand boys.

– Julie does not need glasses.  She probably will eventually, but she’s got perfect vision right now.  Which is actually not great, because kids her age are supposed to be a little bit far sighted, which means that in a few years, she might be near sighted.

We are moving ahead with busy, busy Passover plans.  And Easter plans, because that’s how we roll.  Passover comes first, and we’ve got seders going the night before Passover starts, and then seders the first and second night, then Easter Sunday, and then we’ll wrap up with one final seder on the last night (conveniently scheduled for the Shabbat of the following week).  I love the Passover holiday, but really don’t like the food.  I like matzoh brie, though, and expect that we’ll be eating a lot of that.  I don’t keep kosher for Passover, but Marc absolutely does, and Jessie usually does for the whole week too (except for Easter, she eats Grammy’s cupcakes).  Sam and Julie usually keep a little bit kosher for Passover, but not entirely.

Spring is coming and the snow is melting.  Slowly, slowly, but you can see the grass, and my massive snowbank that I bumped into every.single.night when I pulled into the driveway is almost gone.  We’ve still got out the winter boots, hats and mittens.  Julie is a hat/mittens girl, which I realized the other day when we accidentally left without them.  She had thought they were in the car, and when they weren’t, she totally fell apart.  She is very much Marc’s daughter, there are things that matter enormously to her, and she’s very quiet about them – unless something happens to prevent her from whatever she’s doing.  She’s also got a schedule on the refrigerator that she keeps religiously organized – drawing pictures of her moods, or people coming to visit or activities planned for that day.  And I had no idea, until I accidentally moved the pen that she had been using for the past several weeks.

While the snow piles might still be taller than I am in many places, and I still have to pause at every intersection to peer past the piles to see any on-coming traffic, I’m also in a pair of cut-offs and barefoot.  Because it’s spring, dammit, and I’m all about if you dress for it, it will come.  We’re supposed to hit the mid-fifties today, , and you can actually see grass on my lawn.  Sort of.

Sam is home sick today, and I’m coming down with it.  The dreaded cold, sore throat, sneezing and coughing.  Julie is still sniffly and clingy.  Jessie bounced out the door this morning, she’s been adamant that she can’t get sick because she doesn’t want to miss any school (and can we take a minute and just reflect on how AWESOME that is?).

Julie and I are writing together, she’s snuggled up next to me with her laptop.  Her writing is going better than mine is, honestly – she just keeps clicking away and never stares off into space or wastes time on facebook.   I’ve got a big long list of stuff I have to do today, and I’m not really doing any of it.  Lazy day, I think.  Maybe I’ll bake something brilliant or actually fold all the clean laundry.  This weekend is going to be a frantic rush of running from one event to another, and the next several weekends are already booked up as well.  There might be something slightly wrong about the way my life is structured, that my weekends are insanely hectic and a Wednesday is perceived as a day off.  Especially when one of the kids is home sick – Sammy missing school meant that we had an extra hour or so to chill this morning, and the afternoon pick up process is going to take ten minutes instead of an hour and a half (the fact that I don’t have to pick up Harrison factors into that).

I wonder if it’s nice enough to dig Sam’s bike out of the back shed.  Or if he’s feeling good enough to ride it.

She isn’t sick, not really.  And again, she’s not a baby either, with her fifth birthday looming next month.  But my Julianna has been suffering through a cold, and we’ve had a whole lot of snuggles on the couch and curled up in bed together.

She’s much better today, asking for food and actually drinking.  She hadn’t really eaten much at all for the past three or four days, and (much more concerning) wasn’t drinking anything either.  Long gone are the days when I never worried about what she was drinking because I knew she was nursing.  I was aware of what she wasn’t eating.  Every meal she skipped, every drink that sat beside her, and got warm.  She was sneezing and coughing, no fever, and no vomiting – not sick enough to be miserably ill, just sick enough to stay home all snuggled up.

In other news – nearly perfect weekend.  It was Purim, and I’ll admit it here – I wasn’t looking forward to it.   Purim is my least favorite Jewish holiday.  We read the Book of Esther, and the story of how the Jews survived a plot to exterminate all of the Jews.  Everyone dresses up in costume, there’s usually a lot of drinking, a lot of carvnivals and yelling.   I’m not a huge extrovert, so big parties tend to make me want to hide with a book, and Purim was always a challenge for my kids, Jessie was scared of the costumes when she was little, Sam didn’t like people in general, and screaming people with noisemakers were even less to his liking.  But this year – the party was kind of awesome, and I have to say that I like Purim a lot more after this year’s celebration.

This year, Julianna was starting to get sick, and fell asleep on my lap.  The party lasted until close to midnight, and we stayed until the bitter end.  Jules was out cold on my lap, and Sam was running around like a mad man with his little band of buddies.  All three girls were there, dancing their little hearts out.  They’re all so very cool.  Lilli is gorgeous and effortlessly cool – Sarah is so social and all over the place, and Jessie is just on the brink of being a teenager.  They danced, together, with Marc, separately.  They sang karoke, and the high point of the night was Marc’s rendition of Bye Bye Miss American Pie, with the girls as back up.

Shabbat isn’t always the easiest of days for me.  By the time Friday comes, I’m usually pretty worn out.  Marc gets up at five most mornings, and I’m up along with him.  The week is busy and chaotic – fun and filled with activities, but also messy and stressful and exhausting at times.  Some Fridays, I’m on the ball, so to speak, and manage to get challah made, chicken breaded and baked, and a lovely table set.  Some Fridays, I stagger to the finish line, and dinner is a haphazard mess.

Last night was one of those nights.  It had been a crazy kind of week.  I was babysitting a little guy all week long, he’s eighteen months old, and not at all enchanted with the idea of hanging with me instead of his parents or grandparents.  In fact, the only thing worse than being with me was being without me – he cried whenever I went more than two or three feet away from him.  He does love being in the car, which works well for me, because there are a couple of afternoons when I get in the car at two and don’t get home until five thirty or six. 

Once a month, my synagogue does a family service at five thirty on Fridays.  On those Fridays, I never manage to pull off Shabbat dinner.  Marc goes to the gym three days a week, and goes early on Friday so that he’s home for Shabbat dinner.  We normally get Lilli and Sarah for the night, sometimes the in-laws come over.  Last night, we had Lilli here and our friend Mike – and dinner was… okay.  But the night itself was kind of lovely.  Sammy was in his room, wrapped up in minecraft videos and dismantling his furniture (he likes to take the mattress off the boxspring, and then set up a little bed under the mattress).  Which is odd, but keeps him happy.  The girls and I were in the living room.  All curled up, draped over the couches and snuggled up under blankets.  Julie was bouncing on Lilli, Lilli was relating this long involved movie plotline to me, Jessie was snuggled up next to me reading.  Marc and Mike were in the kitchen, deep frying French fries and making chicken and veggies. 

This morning, Sammy was up at five.  He tried to be quiet, but I heard him getting breakfast.  So I got up after him, did a load of dishes, tossed in some laundry.  Made the coffee, kissed the boy and did some work on an article I’m trying to write about why my kids don’t go to religious school.  Then it occured to me that it was barely seven o’clock, and why not go out for breakfast with the Boy?  Of course, in the process of getting ready and whispering to Marc that we were going out, I woke up Julie and had to bring her along.   We brought back breakfast for Jessie and spent the morning all cuddled up in the living room, talking and reading and debating.  We’re going to go to services this morning, but neither kid wanted to go to religious school..  Again.  And it’s Shabbat.  So I’m not going to fight them on it, we’re going to go to the synagogue together, and spend the rest of the afternoon together, and then we’ll hit the Purim party tonight. 

Because Shabbat might not always look the way it’s “supposed to,” but the spirit of it is one that I try to accomplish.  We might not always get the table set, with candles burning and covered challah, but we do get family together and connect.  We might not get to religious school, but we talk about God and we spend time with our religious community.  And there may be a whole lot of squabbling and bickering, but there’s some honest to goodness fun and love and family connection there too – and that’s really what I’m going for anyway.

I snuggle my kids to sleep.  I’ve never been particularly “good” at putting the kids to bed.   For Jessie, I created this elaborate bedtime routine, involving many stories, a variety of songs and then I’d rub her back until she drifted off to sleep (she’s still the toughest one to get down to sleep – she fights it like you wouldn’t believe).  For Sam, he was always, always my easiest kid, in terms of sleep.  He nursed well into toddlerhood, and the one just before bed was the last nursing session that he droppped.  He’d sleep anywhere and everywhere.   He napped on the couch, with kids running around all over the place. 

The bedtime routine has changed over the years.  More recently, I’m adjusting to Marc being here at bedtime (which is a pretty significant change).  I’m able to put them all to bed the way I always wanted to – but was rarely able to because either I was picking Marc up and had to bundle them into the car in their pajamas or was the only adult home and had to balance which one needed me the most at any one point.

Last night, I was putting Sam to bed, and really took the time to luxuriate in the whole process.  His little-boyness -this gorgeous stage that he’s at now.  He’s SO big – all long legs and big boy shoulders.  But he’s still so little.   He wraps his little arms around my arm, and snuggles into my embrace like it’s exactly where he wanted to be.   I don’t have this stage with Jessie anymore.  I say that not to contrast the two, but to point out that I know now that this doesn’t last forever.  He won’t always want me there to snuggle into when he falls asleep.  Soon he’ll be big.  Too big.  I’ll get the kiss before he goes to bed by himself – and that will be sweet, and lovely.  But it won’t be this.  It won’t be him and I, talking and whispering before he drifts off.  He tells me about minecraft, or how mean his substitute teacher was, or why he’s pretty sure that zombies are real.  He lets me brush his hair back from his forehead and kiss his little cheek. 

He’s growing up on me.  These little moments, when it’s just us – they won’t always be there.  I think I thought that they would be.  I knew they’d grow up – logically.  But in my head, in my heart, I kind of always thought that they’d be MINE.  And they are, on some level – but they also start to belong to themselves more and more.  They don’t need or expect bedtime snuggles all the time, they grow up and blow kisses at you from the doorway. 

I’ll adjust, I will.  And I’ll even find that I love that stage with him – I do with Jessie.  She’s so bright and blossoming and beautiful (check out that alliteration….) – and this stage is so much fun with her.  It will be with Sam too.  And I’ve still got a ways to go with my Julianna.  But every one of those bedtime minutes with Sammy now feel precious and finite.  They don’t last forever – and I already feel like I’m missing this little eight year old boy.

It’s one of those days, when I’ve got myself booked for every single minute of the day, and there are still things on my list that aren’t going to get done.  But even though life is busy, there are still so many moments I want to remember, to capture, to think about a little bit more than I have time to right now.

Sam went outside and salted my icy sidewalk this morning.  It doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it really, really was.  It’s the first time I can remember him actually performing a task that was seriously helpful – and that sounds awful.  He’s shoveled in the past, but always as part of a team.  He was the junior member of The Cohen Men Shoveling Troupe.  Or the junior member of the Mama/Sam out there chugging away because Daddy was working.  So while he’s followed directions and moved snow from place to place, he wasn’t really doing much at all.  He’s washed the car for me a few times, but really – that was more about keeping him occupied and busy and happy than it was about getting the car clean (especially because it generally ended up all streaky and weird after he and his friends finished sloshing water and sponges everywhere).  But this morning, he got ready early, took his little salt bucket thing and got the job done.   Now if I could just get him to start taking out the trash…

Jessie is still clicking along.   She’s grown up so much in the past year, and it still isn’t something that I’m used to.  She reads, a lot.  She went to the bookstore the other day to get a new book and walked out with a law textbook.  Because that’s how she rolls.  She lugs around three or four books in her bag, because you just never know what she’ll be in the mood for at any point in the day.  She’s not grown up all the way, not yet.  But she’s getting there, faster and faster.  We’re experimenting with our relationship, if that makes sense.  She understands more, and is testing limits and challenging assumptions.  I’m learning what to let slide, and what I can’t.  She’s learning how to control her emotions (and that’s no easy feat for my drama prone girl), but she’s becoming more and more aware of how her reactions impact the rest of the family.   She’s watching John Oliver at night, paying attention to the news in the morning and loves talking about politics.

Julianna is still my baby.  She just is.  She’s ready for kindergarten, I know she’s not going to allow me to get away with calling her the baby for much longer, but she’s still mine.  She still falls asleep snuggled up in my arms, and makes me stop what I’m doing every.single.time a song comes on that she wants to dance to – because the dance isn’t enough unless it’s done for an audience.  Her hair is down past her little butt when she’s in the tub, and her favorite way to wear it is long.  I can usually coax her into a braid before bed, which helps with the knots.  She’s got a headband collection – and literally always has one on.  For a while there, she was rocking a sleep mask at night which she wore pushed back on her forehead – a nighttime headband.  She’s newly obsessed

Marc is still loving his new job – although I think what he loves most is the normalacy of it.  Coming home every night before the kids are asleep, being there all weekend long.  Shabbat dinner every Friday, and synagogue every Saturday.  Life is suddenly predictable – I can make plans, knowing that our weekends are going to have both of us available.

Winter driving isn’t my thing.  To be perfectly honest, driving in general isn’t my thing.  I can drive, and I’m not BAD at it exactly.  But I don’t enjoy it on a good day, and would always rather be in the passenger seat, a to-go cup of coffee in my hand and no responsibilities other than conversation and possibly manning the radio. 

But that’s not my life, and that’s okay.  My life involves a lot of driving around Worcester, dropping off and picking up kids at various locations, and in the past few weeks, it’s been challenging.  Excepting the accidents (I got stuck in the snow at least once and had to be dug out, and there was one horrible experience of a flat bed sliding all the way down my street, with my car attached, dragging the poor driver and me trapped in the car along with it before we crashed into a snowbank), driving in general is crappy these days.  The roads are ridiculously narrow, and the game of chicken at the intersections scares the bejeezus out of me.  When you hope and pray that nobody is coming, and just ease out – only to slam on the brakes at the last minute before you hit the car that you couldn’t see, and he couldn’t see you – it’s not something I can get used to doing.

All of the schools are a disaster.  Parking is an exercise in patience and guts – because you need both, to cram your car into the snowbank and pray that you’ll be able to get back out. The drop off lanes are so compromised by the huge snowbanks, and there are a lot of little kids and big SUV’s fighting for space. 

All of this complaining is leading up to my wonderful, incredible discovery this morning.  I drop off at an elementary school across town for my son, and then off at Sullivan for my sixth grader.  She’s a student at the Goddard Scholars Academy – and that parking lot has been a mess for weeks and weeks.  Unlike the elementary school, there’s no need for me to park and get out to get her, she comes out on her own.  But also unlike the elementary school – there’s a LOT of cars, all crammed into one parking lot, with buses and hoards of kids all over the place.  I’d get stuck there more often than not, trapped in a line of cars waiting for the chance to get thru the narrow lanes.  But today – oh, today – THE SNOW WAS GONE.  The lanes were wide, enough for two cars without any fear of side swiping any of them.  You could get out of the parking lot without being afraid of accidentally sliding into another parent or a bus.  It was glorious.

It’s not something I ever appreciated, prior to the past month or so.  But finding a school parking lot where it was safe to drive, safe to drop off and easy to pick up – it was the best part of my morning.  God bless the snow removers.  And remind me again – spring is coming, right?

Ah – February vacatioh.  It’s my least favorite of the vacations – the winter one is lovely.  It comes at the end of a busy holiday season, everyone’s got fun, new stuff to do, read and play with after Christmas and Hanukkah.  The April vacation comes just as spring is starting, the snow is melting and we can get outside and run around.  But the one in February is just silly.  It’s especially silly this year, because Massachusetts is having the snowiest month.  Ever.  Zillions of snow days, and the kids have missed a bunch of extra days because we live on the hill from hell.  At this point, I no longer remember what it’s like to have them in school five days a week.

But February vacation it is – and it’s been chaotic, loud, and messy.  We weren’t able to get Glennys until Wednesday because of yet another blizzard (and it’s still unclear if we’ll be able to get her home because we’ve got another weekend storm coming).  So the beginning of the week was quiet and calm.  Recovering from the last storm for Monday and Tuesday, we were still stuck in the house, but it was relaxing and fun.  Then Wednesday, we picked up Glennys, Sarah came over that night and hasn’t left.  It’s been a non-stop slumber party at my house for the past several nights, and I’m so tired, I could fall asleep right now.

It’s interesting to me how much things have changed.  I’ve had these six kids here for vacations since before Jessie started school, and there are some things that are as true now as it was seven years ago.  The house will always be a mess.  I’ll never be caught up on dishes or laundry.  Dollhouses, army guys, and barbies will be everywhere.  But now they mix in making their own board games, and working on the Pikenesian society they made up a few years ago.  They drink coffee sometimes, but also keep using Julie’s sippie cups.  They stay up a LOT later – it’s close to midnight most nights before I can coax them into laying down. 

My favorite part is that what they seem to enjoy the most is just telling stories.  Remembering back to when they were little, and they all talk over one another and laugh and yell.  Because even when it seemed like all we were doing was just hanging on and hoping to survive their respective childhoods, what we were really doing was building memories.  Building a family.  These people really, really like each other.  Not all the time, and sometimes they do try and kill each other, but mostly – they’re all really good friends as well as brothers and sisters, and I love that. 

In other news – we’re still settling into Marc’s new job, having two cars, and living life like normal people.  Marc gets up at five every morning and is out of the house by five thirty.  I’m still adjusting to the fact that he’s going to bed so much earlier, he’s conking out around the same time the kids are.  But he’s got two glorious days off on the weekends, and I’m still not used to it.  Being able to make plans, and know that he’ll be here for them – it’s fabulous.

There are still a lot of things that we need to figure out – I don’t know what I’m going to do in the fall (and there’s a Pampers commercial that features a little baby in a bathtub – every time it comes on, I swear to God my uterus ACHES).  We need to start looking for a new place to live this spring/summer.  I need figure out what kind of activities we’re going to be doing this summer, I’m leaning away from structured summer camp, and maybe looking at a class or two for each of them instead.  I’m looking forward to Marc’s next step at his new job, when he’ll be based out of Worcester and not forty five minutes away in Westford.   And both of our computers are broken – which is why I’m not blogging as much.  I had borrow Jessie’s laptop to get this post done.

Because it wouldn’t be a weekend without my obligatory “I hate the snow” post – here you go.

On the upside, it’s the start of February vacation (because the nine or ten snow days the kids have had so far apparently isn’t enough), so I don’t have to worry about driving them anywhere.  And we’re getting used to being snowed in now.   The snowstorms really started the last week in January, and Marc started his new job on February 1.  So we got clobbered that last weekend he was working, and ever since then, Marc’s had the flexibility to work from home when the weather gets really sketchy.

We sleep in late, and wake up gradually.  Always, my first step is to check the heat to make sure that it’s still working, then I click on the coffee and wait for the rest of the house to wake up.   We bop around the house, all five of us, mixing and intermingling and then separating out for alone time.  We read many, many books, play too many video games (I’m looking at you Sam) and lose hours watching sitcoms from the last century on Netflix (hello, Jessie).

Marc and Sam were outside for a while (I couldn’t convince either girl to go out with them).  Marc shoveled and pushed the cars around, Sam discovered that our poor dead camry (the car he drove into the garage) makes a perfect base for his sledding hill.   Now everyone’s back inside, cocoa-ed and dressed in dry clothes.  Sam and Julie are parked in front of the window, alternately playing games on my phone and keeping an eye on the guy across the street who’s shoveling off his roof.  I told them to call me if he falls.  Jessie has taken over my dining room table (which I had painstakingly cleaned in a misguided plan to fold ALL the laundry) with barbie dolls and dollhouses and Marc is hiding out in our bedroom, watching sports talk radio (which doesn’t make sense, but apparently, they videotape two guys doing their radio show and then broadcast it).

The blizzard is over.  And there’s another snowstorm on tap for Tuesday and then again on Saturday.  I may never leave the house again.

I never planned on getting married.  I didn’t think it was real – the idea of  lasting love between two adults.  I didn’t think you could build a life with someone, not really.  In the end, we were all alone, and the important thing was to be able to take care of yourself, emotionally, financially.  Children, yes – I wanted children.  But I really did believe that marriage was something that other people did.

I was raised by a single mother, in every sense of the word.  It’s not just that my parents weren’t married anymore, my dad wasn’t around at all.  There was no child support, no weekends at Daddy’s house.  There was just my mom, doing her best and struggling her way through raising four kids alone.  That was my model, my plan.  I didn’t know it could be different.

Then I met Marc, and everything changed.  Not all at once, but really, looking back now – it certainly seemed that way.  I went from being single to being a partner.  He saw what we could be together before I did, and I’ll always be grateful for that.  He trusted this future, when it was entirely unrealistic to me.

It’s been thirteen years today, and I still don’t quite believe how lucky I am.  I’ve got this guy – this amazingly brilliant, gorgeous man who loves me more than anything.  I’ve got these beautiful stepdaughters that I love, this daughter who stuns me with her grace and sweetness, this son who has taught me more than anyone, and this baby girl who will always, always – no matter how many times I tell myself that she’s not a baby – she’ll always be mine.

I’ve got this incredible life, filled with everything I never thought I’d be lucky enough to call my own.  And it’s not perfect, and I yell too much, and the kids fight, and sometimes Marc makes me crazy.  The house is a disaster more often than not, the kids stay up too late and don’t eat enough vegetables.  Marc and I are so busy we don’t always remember to stop and really look at each other and check in.  But I love him, and he loves me, and there’s nothing, nothing, in this world that I depend on more than my relationship with him.  He’s my partner, my other half, my best friend and the love of my life.  And today, and all days, I’m grateful, so grateful for him and for the life we’ve built together.