Sibling Rivalry

When my brother and I were little we had our own rooms. This worked well for Aaron who liked being alone with his books and his toys. But I required constant attention and companionship. So one day I packed up my teddy bear and favorite pillow and moved into his room. Just like that. Another successful colonization project in North America…

We were required to make our beds in the morning, and to avoid this injustice my brother decided to sleep on top of his covers. This was infuriating and unfair as I ran cold and needed my blankets to fall asleep. But this meant that in the morning while I slaved over my bed, Aaron was free to run downstairs and choose the bigger bagel for breakfast…

When my mom would take us grocery shopping she would give us each a bagel to keep us occupied while she shopped. Aaron would suck on his, making it soft and soggy so that the bagel would last longer than mine…

There was no thrill as exciting as beating my brother to push the elevator button first. This was an epic and long-lasting Cold War – always on the brink of actual violence. I still feel a small rush when I imagine pulling ahead in the race down the hall, and a sense of relief when the button lights up and I have secured the satisfaction of this treat. Unfortunately for me my kids seem to find the same exhilaration in the elevator-button-game…

For several glorious years my brother enjoyed serving my every demand. He fetched and cleaned for me. All he wanted in life was my approval. But one day – one of the darkest of my life – Aaron decided he was no longer interested in being my personal servant. We were in the basement decorating my dollhouse. I told him to run upstairs and fetch me a pair of scissors. He stood up, as if to jump to it, but instead of moving, he looked me in the eyes and calmly said “no.”

Confessions

I have never read The Giver. It’s one of those books people assume you have read. I’ve spent the last 30 years pretending that I have. I’m not sure why I don’t just suck it up and read this YA novel – it would probably take an hour or so. But pretending has become a secret part of my literary identity…

One year for Hanukkah my mom got my brother and me an electrical “massager” from Sharper Image. I think I was 13. This was a very strange gift, and one can only surmise what my mother needed a “massager” for…I discovered a secret about this “massager” one day by accident in my mother’s bed and spent the next year sneaking this bulky contraption out of the medicine cabinet and into my mother’s bed where the plug was. I’m really, really hoping my mom was not doing the same thing with it…

I still sometimes just let the faucet run after I pee so that it sounds like I’m washing my hands, but I don’t actually have to get them wet…

When I was probably 7 or 8 years old, Sarah and I practiced kissing through a plaid napkin in my play kitchen in the basement. I have never told anyone about this.

An Ode to Postpartum Objects

Thank God for those glorious mesh panties they give you in the hospital after you have a baby. And the ice packs that they pretend are pads. Thank God for that satisfying “pop” when you bend the ice pack to activate. And thank God for its wonderous cooling…

All hail this miracle spray which I used like I was breathing air. My bathroom still smells of it all these years later…

Thank you to the postpartum nurses who kindly show you how to use your squirt bottle…

And thank God for the three holes that distribute the water with the perfect cleansing streams.

Beauty Routines

My grandma has the most beautiful skin of anyone I know. The only product she has ever used on her body or face is Nivea. My grandpa, who escaped Nazi Germany, introduced her to this product…

When we visited Auschwitz in 2008, we saw an old tin of Nivea that belonged to one of the slaughtered Jews…

My brother and I were so overwhelmed by the piles of discarded objects, we couldn’t stop laughing. It was very inappropriate…

My grandma, who has never in her 88 years had a manicure – she is afraid of the picking at her skin – has the most elegant hands you’ve ever seen. Her nails are perfectly smooth and long and strong. Always shaped into even ovals, with a very subtle point at the end. She wears her engagement ring – which was my grandpa’s bar mitzvah ring and which changes color with her mood – on her pinky finger. I love stroking her soft, puffy veins when we hold hands. Maybe it’s the Nivea…

She has only ever used Max Factor pancake foundation. I love the smell of the tanned sponge…

Her lipstick always makes this very specific round shape – try as I might to apply like she does, my lipstick never looks like this.

Bodies

I wish I lived back in the time when plump bodies were the ideal of beauty. Not only would I have been beautiful, but my large post-baby breasts would be back up where they are supposed to be because of the lovely corsets I would undoubtedly be wearing…

Shoes are the very best accessory because they always fit and usually look good, no matter the size of your body. If my husband understood this he would stop asking why I need so many shoes…

My mom came home from Italy with a pair or red gingham pumps that will forever be the epitome of fashion to me…

Sometimes when I’m not feeling confident in my body, all I have to do is look at a Botero to feel my form is worthy of celebration…

Once when I was young there was a Botero sculpture exhibit in Chicago, and my brother and I got to climb gigantic bottoms and thick thighs…

If I lived in the 18th c, my Oreo cookie habit would appear on my body as a symbol of my wealth and success…

My mom never wore a bathing suit. She made it very clear that her body was not acceptable enough to enjoy the water. I make a point of ALWAYS putting on my bathing suit in front of my kids, even when I’m enormously pregnant and the only thing that fits is a giant polka dot swim-dress.

Hypochondriacal foundations

When I was in 4th grade my class read a very upsetting book called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. This book pretty much ruined my life. The little girl in the story is dying of leukemia from radiation from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. And ever since I learned of Sadako’s plight, I’ve been convinced I, too, was drying from something unimaginable…

Like heart disease. When my family visited Israel – I was maybe 7 or 8 – the only movie we had in English was E.T. I remember nothing of the movie (and I have refused to watch it since) besides E.T.‘s heart attack. I spent the entirety of our visit to the holy land suffering from my own heart attack, though no one believed me…

I went away to sleep over camp when I was 9. During cabin clean-up the girls would sing along to Rent. Just your typical adolescent girls pretending to be a strung out sex worker dying of AIDS. To this day I can’t kill a mosquito without worrying about contracting HIV…

My paternal grandmother had alopecia universalis. She was bald, bald, bald. She kept her wigs displayed next to the fake rubber breast which sat, like jello, on her bathroom counter, the result of a mastectomy when I was very young. For some reason this breast insert bothered me far less than those perfectly groomed wigs. When I was a tween my aunt causally mentioned – I think as a joke – that baldness skips a generation. I have spent the remainder of my life counting the hairs in my hair brush and drain in the shower.

Thoughts on the 2020 election

I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about what John King’s body looks like under his suit. Is that bulk muscle? Is it pudge? Whatever it is it’s very regal…

I never thought I would feel so intimately connected to news anchors. But I guess that’s what happens when an election keeps going and going, and when the TV never turns off…

Confession: I know Stacey Abrams, grass roots organizer and African American voters are the real heroes of this election. But John King has to be a superhero of some kind. I mean – has he sat down in two weeks, let along slept?

Quotidian Antisemitisms

When people say CHallah bread…

At my WASPY elementary school, I accidentally bumped into my academic nemesis as we lined up at the door. He turned around, looked me in the eyes and said ‘Jews have the knack of getting on my nerves.’ We were in 3rd grade. I wonder how he learned a phrase like that…This Chanukah House decorating kit which my friend saw at the grocery store, 3 weeks before Thanksgiving, amongst the undiscerning ‘holiday’ kitsch…

The giant White House menorah pretending it can compete with the glorious National Christmas Tree…

In college, people would ask my roommate and me if we were sisters. All the time. We look nothing alike. But we do look Jewish. Our noses, by the way, are big in entirely different ways…

When I was little we lived next door to a lovely elderly Filipino couple. One day while we were out for a walk, the old lady said to my mother ‘Oh, you Jew because you have big nose.

Mask up!

I’ve seen these very fancy masks sold by an expensive brand, adorned in pearls. They even have pearls strung on the ear elastics. Maybe I have extremely sensitive ear-backs, but large, hard beads are the last thing I need around this appendage…

When my kids wear masks they always end up with a giant spit-soaked target in a matter of minutes. I can’t help wonder what is healthier for those around them, for those particles to fly free in the air, or for them to accumulate in this wet, disgusting way…

As hard as those MAGAs fight against wearing a mask is as hard as my 2-year-old daughter fights to wear them. For her birthday she finally got a set of Frozen masks, all her own. I think she was more excited about this gift than her adorable playhouse her father spent 3 hours assembling…

Air travel was already a Xanax-popping activity for me. Honestly, the world has just now caught up to my germ-cleaning practices. I’ve always wiped down my tray table and seats with Lysol-years before this product became liquid gold. The one good thing to come out of this pandemic is that I’ll now be able to wear a mask on airplanes-like all the Asian travelers I’ve always been jealous of-without feeling like everyone is judging me.

Aunt Flow

I was 14 when I got my first period. I was expecting it since most of my friends had already gotten theirs. There was a little Italian restaurant that we passed by every morning on the way to school. For some reason my mom and I had decided that when I became a woman we would dine here to celebrate. I ordered spaghetti marinara. And when the server placed it in front of me, I burst into tears and couldn’t eat it. The sauce was too reminiscent of the tragedy of menstruation that had befallen me…

At summer camp when my friend Rachel got her period (she was young maybe 10 or 11), she couldn’t figure out how to insert a tampon. Or was it remove it? Regardless, Rachel solicited my help. I can still imagine the exact bed she was sitting on as I kneeled between her legs. The shame of helping a girlfriend in this way was so great that I have never told anyone about this experience…

When I was young and still using sanitary pads, my aunt told me I absolutely had to try tampons – that I’d never go back. Recently I tried a Diva Cup for the first time. While I was a bit offended that I qualified for the larger size (determined by age and number of children you’ve had), I can safely say that I will never go back! I want to shout the message from my rooftop – the Diva Cup is really THAT revolutionary…

I am very grateful I never had to figure out how to wear one of these contraptions, though I do grieve the days when it was acceptable to sit out of P.E. class when Aunt Flow was in town.