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A Case of the Human Condition: My Imperfect Children

November 27, 2009 By Barbara 4 Comments

The Oakland Tribune, Sunday, April 16, 1989

Christina went off to kindergarten, got chicken pox and broke her arm. c 1989 B.F. Newhall

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I was on the phone with my mentor. “Tell me it gets easier,” I sighed.’

“Well, actually it gets harder,” said Nancy.

Nancy has a daughter three years older than Peter. She keeps me briefed on the parenting realities ahead.

The kids were still pre-schoolers then, and it had been another night of sleep deprivation for me. The dream monster had been nibbling on Christina’s finger again. And, once again, I had been up at 2 a.m. sharp to escort Peter and his developing bladder to the bathroom.

“Kindergarten,” I promised myself as I felt my way back to bed in the dark. “Kindergarten,” I sighed as I bumped into Jon’s side of the bed again. “Rrngh,” grumbled Jon – again. Jon was looking forward to kindergarten, too. If we could just survive preschool, things would get better.

Mothering school-age kids would be a piece of cake after this. Having two of those dear, middle-aged children with the bony knees and the freckled noses would be fun.

No more nightmares. No more Play Dough on the kitchen floor. No more jam in the hair.

Once they reached kindergarten, Peter and Christina would be old enough to talk, but not old enough to talk back. They would be post-Oedipal, but pre-pubescent.

We could go camping together. We could travel. Our children would hang on our words as Jon and I introduced them to baseball, politics, art, books – all the things we loved.

Right Nancy?

But my mentor is not one to pull punches.

“No. It gets harder,” she insisted. “It’s a different set of worries, and it’s harder. They have problems at school or with their friends. They’re too fat. They’re too thin. They’re not chosen for the school play. They don’t want to do the things you want them to do.”

“But I will be sleeping through the night, won’t I?” If I could just get enough sleep, I reasoned, things would at least seem better.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “And you don’t have to watch them every minute. But you do worry more.”

And so it is.

Our children are ages 5 and 8 now. They’re grownup kids. They can take themselves to the potty. They know the difference between the knife and the fork, though they still prefer the finger and the thumb. When they squirt the mustard these days, most of it lands on the hot dog.

When reminded, they do their homework, feed the cats and empty the garbage. Without reminding, they collect their allowance and find the way to the kitchen at the sound of popcorn popping.

She can button her own shirt, if the buttons are in front. When they are not, she problem solves. She wears the shirt backward.

He can tie his own shoelaces. On special occasions, he does.

He knows where his laundry hamper is located. And now that he is 8, he can place things in it from across the room with grace and accuracy – the soccer ball, the homework pencil, the wet bathing suit.

Now that she is 5, she can put her Cinderella tape into the VCR. She can turn on the TV, though she still can’t turn it off.

As Nancy forewarned, Peter now has opinions. The six plaid, flannel lumberjack shirts bought on sale last fall are not cool. The King Tut T-shirt with the stain and the rip is.

Peter the middle-aged kid: Not quite an angel. c 1989 B.F. Newhall.

Peter does not want to go to the art day camp, the one with the beautiful, woodsy setting and the hours so convenient to mom’s work schedule. He is looking for a football camp that takes 8-year-olds.

Unlike his parents and grandparents before him, Peter is not drawn to a career in journalism. He does not look forward to the examined life, a life in service to humanity. He wants to go to law school and make money.

As infants and toddlers, Christina and Peter were angels. They were God’s carefully wrought gifts to Jon, Barbara and human history. They glowed with newness and perfection. Their eyes were wide with infinite potential.

But now the teeth are coming in crooked. The skin is marred by chicken pox scars. She bumps into things when she runs. He is still afraid to draw. We worry that he is too gregarious, that she is too shy.

My darlings are not perfection after all. They are not angels. It grieves me to have to report that my children apparently will be bumbling through life as mere humans, just like mom and dad.

But I can take it. I’m tough. I got a good night’s sleep last night.

More about life’s ambiguities at “Time to Crack Open That Hope Chest and Live a Little.”

Filed Under: A Case of the Human Condition Tagged With: broken arm, chicken pox, kindergarten, mother, mothers, preschoolers, school-age kids, sleep deprivation, the oakland tribune

A Case of the Human Condition: I’ve Got One — And So Does My Mom

September 20, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

A sunflower growing in New Mexico -- at St. John's College. c 2009 B.F. Newhall

My mother has been in the hospital. Nothing too serious. But a lot of driving back and forth between the hospital and home for me.

From now on, until my mom is better, my regular posts will appear just once a week – probably on a Saturday. As usual, there will be additional posts in between.

I’ll be reporting soon on Harvey Cox’s latest book, The Future of Faith. Also, some thoughts from a funny/profound guy from Croatia, Samir Selmanovic, who’s written a book called It’s Really All About God.

Filed Under: A Case of the Human Condition, Book Openers Tagged With: hospital, mother

A Case of the Human Condition: A Mother Who Prevailed at Auschwitz

March 23, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

Ernie Hollander and his family arrived at Auschwitz in 1944. He was seventeen years old and on his coat he wore a large yellow Star of David. His mother had sewn it there for him. Ernie and his family had traveled three days by train without food in a crowded cattle car from Iloshvo, a town in the Carpathian Mountains in what was then Hungary.

The entrance to Auschwitz Birkenau, photo c 2008 Brice Gilot

Ernie’s father had been head of the local rabbinical council and a respected member of the community until the Nazis came and everything changed. From then on, Ernie’s family and the other Jewish townspeople were required to wear the yellow Star of David. The family business was confiscated. Ernie couldn’t go to school, and the children who had once been his schoolmates pushed him into the street as they passed him by.

For three days – the entire train trip – the cattle car doors had been kept sealed. Several people had died, and there had been no way to remove their bodies. But, now, at last, the doors opened and a ramp was placed at the door. Ernie watched his mother walk down the ramp ahead of him. She held Ernie’s two youngest sisters in her arms, the five-year-old and the seven-year-old. A third sister, nine years old, walked alongside her mother.

At the bottom of the ramp, an official motioned Ernie’s three sisters to the left and their mother to the right.

“My mother could have saved herself,” said Ernie. “She was still young. She was in her thirties. She could work.” Ernie’s father and brothers could also work. But the three small girls were too young to be of much use to the Third Reich. The guard told them to go to the left.

Ernie’s mother refused to be separated. “I don’t want to give up my children,” she protested. And she went to the left with her daughters.

“She didn’t know what means left,” Ernie told me. “But I know in my heart that if my mother would know what’s happening on the left, she would still not give up the children. Which mother would give up children? And she went with the children to the left. Five minutes later they were dead.

“At that time we didn’t know,” Ernie said. “But the people who were working in the crematoriums and the gas chambers were Jewish people. After a few days we asked, ‘Do you know what happened to these people who went to the left?’

“They said, ‘You see that chimney over there where the smoke comes out? They were dead a half an hour after they arrived. That’s where they killed all the people who went to the left.’ And only then you found out that there were gas chambers.”

After the war, Ernie migrated to Oakland, California, where he was active in his synagogue, Congregation Beth Jacob. He died in 2002 at the age of seventy-seven.

This is a story from my book in progress, Finding Holy: True Stories of Religion and Spirituality in America.

Filed Under: A Case of the Human Condition Tagged With: Auschwitz, Congregation Beth Jacob, Ernie Hollander, Jew, mother, Shoah

A Case of the Human Condition: My Mother’s Magical Babushka

March 9, 2009 By Barbara Leave a Comment

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

When I was three or four years old, my mother took me shopping in a big department store in downtown Detroit. The ceilings were high, and the dark, worn wooden floors creaked under my feet. Shoppers crowded the aisles. Their coats smelled of wool dampened by melted snow. Brown and black boots and purses pressed at me from every direction. In time, my mother and I got separated and I found myself alone. [Read more...]