Music is an interesting catalyst – and while some days I struggle to connect with my teenager, we can always have fun singing Beatles songs together or discovering new bands that we all love, like the Flobots. If there is one piece of advice that I could give about having a teenager, it is to get to know and love their music – stay current with it, because there is still nothing that says I love you like a music mix made just for you – and when they make one for you that’s them saying “I love you” and when you play it back that’s you saying “I love you too”. Turn up the volume and turn down the noise.

So, when my family joined the many of people who have found at least one household member out of work and another barely making enough money, we needed to help. We got help from places we expected to find it – family. Never did I expect that our landlords would be people that would also provide help. If it wern’t for their generosity, patience and willingness to work with us and come up with an agreement on paying our rent, we would surely find ourselves without a home of our own. Not every landlord is slum and I hope that we’re not alone.

Now I am married to a Catholic man from Poland.  We have three girls (none of whom are tomboys, oddly), and we have a wonderful bunch of traditions we keep for Christmas every year.  We try (my husband and I) as hard as we can to delay the decorating of our home and the putting up of our tree so that Christmas itself is not anti-climactic when it finally arrives, as many of our neighbors have already done these things even before Halloween.  The kids are always pulling us to do them as early as possible.  We bake cookies, make little presents in our “craft room”, and deliver them to neighbors and sometimes people in the neighborhood we don’t know but who we think could use a little something to let them know they’ve been thought of fondly (for instance, a man who helped us take care of a stray and very large puppy we encountered on a walk.  This man had trouble walking and had a bloody nose, which scared the kids.  He was so helpful, though it was obviously a laborious, if not painful, thing for him to do, and he told me finally that he was in the end stages of a bout with leukemia.  I was hoping madly that a silly thing like a surprise from us on his doorstep would somehow turn his fate around.)  This year I became obsessed with making little votive candle holders out of what were originally milk cartons.  We painted them and paper-mached them with tissue papers, decorated them for Autumn with little windows of vellum paper and flower-pressed Fall foliage,  or for Christmas or Hannukah with other details, and I gave them to anyone I thought might like one.  I kept a few to have on our dining table every evening.  A little candle glowing from the inside just makes my heart swell with warmth. 

We have a Polish Christmas Eve dinner with fish at the table, no other sources of animal protein, and there are certain dishes traditionally served, like borsht with pirogi, and/or mushroom soup.  We make a chocolate mousse (among other desserts) and I put an almond in just one of them.  Whoever is served the cup with the almond will have special good luck in the coming year.  We sometimes have extended family with us, and we invite those who we know have no plans for this evening.  Before our meal we all take pieces of a special paper-thin wafer and break pieces of it off to eat from others’ as we make wishes for each other for the coming year.

Of course the next morning involves presents, though I try hard not to overdo it.  This year I told everyone not to buy me anything, as there is nothing I want or need more than a holiday of loving family and friends with good food and company to share.  I asked the kids to please make things for the adults, not buy them, which they happily did with glorious results.  On Christmas there were a few presents for me, and they were wonderful.  I know the unparalled feeling of giving to others, and I guess it may not be fair to insist on denying others that joy towards me.  Christmas morning always involves going to church.  Though I did not convert to Catholicism, we are bringing the kids up in this way.  I try to find the very best messages and lessons to learn from it, and I try to tactfully bring to our family the Jewish trait of healthy questioning of what we are told (which was either inadvertently passed on to me by my father, or which I have acquired in the form of a rebellious nature!).

Our Christmases now are what I always wished to have had as a child, but I am more than satisfied since it is my opinion that one can never have too many childhoods, and I, myself, am currently enjoying my third!