Yom Kippur ended tonight.  To me — more than any other holiday — you see the variety in traditions.  In Judaism, we have laws (halakha) which are the same year after year, regardless of where you go (pretty much), and then you have customs (minhag) which vary depending on the community.  For instance, I don’t wear leather on Yom Kippur.  At all.  Which means that I throw on a pair of chucks with my long black skirt for shul.  Though the woman next to me last night for Kol Nidre services was wearing a stylish pair of three inch pink leather heels.  She stared at my shoes and I stared at her shoes, because that is what happens when minhags clash.

Every year, I debate the leather thing with Josh because I feel self-conscious wearing sneakers into shul, especially if people don’t know why I’m doing it because it isn’t part of their minhag.  Josh and I came from a shul where people wearing leather shoes were in the minority, and then we moved to a shul where we were the ONLY ones wearing sneakers, and then we moved to a shul where it’s about a 10% leather-free/90% bring-on-the-high-heels population.  So we’re certainly not the only ones in sneakers, but most people are dressed in regular shul-going clothes.  And I have to tell you that while I find it difficult to wrap my mind around the idea of letting this tradition go and wearing leather on Yom Kippur, conversely, wearing sneakers makes me feel strange too and I wonder if the people around me think that I have no sense to wear proper clothing to shul.

Another custom is whether you stand until the end of the silent amidah, a long prayer (it goes on for many pages) that people recite to themselves.  I was taught that like waiting for everyone to be served at the table before eating, one doesn’t sit when they finish the amidah because it’s impolite.  If people sit down, it can make people feel self-conscious if they’re the only ones still standing because they’re a slow reader.  So I’ve always finished the prayer, and then closed my book, keeping my finger tucked between two pages as a bookmark while I waited for everyone else to finish.  This way, the rabbi knows when the majority of people are finished, and the people who are finishing up don’t feel awkward that they’re still reciting what everyone else finished reading five minutes ago.

But at this shul — and at many of the other ones I’ve been to — it’s tradition to sit once you finish saying the amidah.  And yet I continue standing because I think it’s impolite to sit down.  Which means that towards the end, I am the only person standing in the shul.  Which is ten kinds of embarrassing because everyone is staring at me, wondering why one woman is standing up in the middle of a random row, especially since she’s clearly not reading and is instead smiling awkwardly while she holds her finger between two pages of her book.  And yet I also can’t bring myself to sit down because I don’t want to embarrass that last person who just sat down who would have been the only one standing if not for the fact that I am standing too.

And there are twenty other small discrepancies that pop up during the holiday from the choice of niggun (the tunes that are used to sing the prayers) to whether you remain in the room during the yizkor service (a section of the service to remember the deceased).  And beyond that, Yom Kippur makes me miss our old shul where they trotted out a special tune for Adon Olam at the end of the service.  Our current shul does a traditional Adon Olam, but our old shul had this gorgeous melody that was only used this one time a year.  So you’d drag yourself to shul come hell or high water in order to hear it because you’d have to wait 365 days for a chance to hear it again.

While I am standing self-consciously in sneakers after the silent recitation of the amidah, I always wonder if other religions run into these same weird clashing of traditions.  Are you ever in your church or mosque or temple (or wherever you go for communal worship) and finding your traditions differ greatly from the people around you?

We went to the funeral for Great-Grandma over the weekend.  She was cremated, which necessitated a discussion about cremation with the twins Saturday morning because I didn’t want them asking at the cemetery how Great-Grandma could fit into such a small box when they interred her ashes.  I felt fairly cringe-y about having the conversation and opted to throw it out there the second they woke up, hoping they’d be bleary and sleep-confused so the information could pass over their tiny heads.  But, of course, they were wide-awake and inquisitive — the worst combination.  In the end, cremation, it turned out, made perfect sense to second graders once they got past the mental image of someone purposefully on fire.  They really liked the idea of scattering ashes in special places.

Every time I’m worried about a conversation, they absorb it without incident.  And every time I think something won’t be a big deal, they fall apart.  Either they were malformed at the child factory, or I was malformed at the parenting factory, but either way, things seem to always happen in the inverse.

There was no question in our heads that the twins would go to the funeral.  They had already been to two other funerals — one when they were toddlers and obviously didn’t know what was happening, and one when they were five and did.  They’ve also been to three weddings.  We’re of the mindset that if they can behave in a way that doesn’t disrupt anyone around us (within reason), they should be there to experience life: the great moments and the not-so-great moments.  We want them to always feel included; they may be small but they know when they’re being shut out of something.

A case in point.  The ChickieNob came home from school on Friday and told me that her friend said that she was lucky that she got to go to the funeral.  The other child informed her that when her great-grandmother died, her parents left her at home.  The ChickieNob was trying to wrap her mind around the word “lucky,” but agreed that it would be terrible to be left at home and know other people in the family were doing something that you’re invited to do but not permitted to do.  In other words, they can understand when they’re not invited to a wedding or a cool meeting I’m having or a dinner party.  But if the possibility exists that they could go, they hate the idea of being left at home.

So we brought them to the cemetery so they could say their goodbyes too.

Right before the service began, the ChickieNob whispered suddenly that she didn’t want to hear it.  She wanted to stand back from the crowd and not listen, until I took her aside and explained that there was no magical realism to get her out of this moment.  Even if she didn’t listen, it would still happen.  Funerals are not like trees falling in forests that you can remain in ignorant bliss about provided you don’t look into the woods.  When she realized there was nothing she could do to stop this train, nothing she could put off to delay the event, she stepped back to the group and I held her through the service and speeches, her cheek pressed tightly against mine.  The Wolvog alternated between pressing his face into Josh’s body or mine, hanging onto his sister’s hair and then my hair; a filamentous security blanket.

She had a long cry, and then while walking back to the car, we saw a praying mantis, and she moved away from that pile of grief as if it were dirt that could be left behind in a cemetery, musing on what form her great-grandmother might want to return as if she were reincarnated as well as what would be the best animal for each of us to return as in our next life (for me, we settled on a squirrel).

And that is maybe why we take the twins to the cemetery with us; because while we lose the ability to get closure with death later in our lives, when our brain can comprehend loss on a deeper level and grief has a tendency to unspiral like an onion, the emotions lingering around indefinitely, children seem to be able to reach a modicum of peace by the time they drive through the cemetery gates.  Maybe as an adult I need to see that peace each time to remember that life has to go on, and maybe as a child, if she builds enough muscle memory in finding that peace, she’ll be able to find it again when she grows up.

At the same time, in the back of my brain is always this knowledge that a lot of parents don’t bring their children to a funeral.  I didn’t go to a funeral until I was 12, even though there were three funerals prior to that point that I could have attended.  I also didn’t go to a wedding until I was older — maybe 15? — though that comes down to invitations.

I know a lot of the decision rests with the individual child.  There are some who can shape their behaviour to fit expectations and some who cannot.  I feel like the twins fall into this category of people who both can shape their behaviour to fit expectations and work hard to do it so they aren’t left behind.  I would say that one of their life mottoes is “bring me.”  So we bring them: to art museums and restaurants and trips and dinners with authors and weddings.

And funerals.

I guess I am curious about what others do (or would do) and why.  I don’t know if we’d change what we’re doing (and we certainly can’t unring the bell on those three funerals since they’ve already experienced them), but the question is always in the back of my head about why or why not to include children in these adult moments.

Please vote.

Please make sure you’re registered to vote by going to Gottavote.com and clicking on your state.  The site is run by the Obama campaign, but you do not need to be a Democrat to use it.  In the spirit of fairness, if Romney’s campaign had a comparable website created to ensure that every person in America could vote, I would link to it too.  But they don’t.  So, Romney people, if you create one to make sure that all people are able to vote (and this offer goes to every other candidate for president), let me know and I’ll link to it*.

If you’re not registered to vote, please register to vote.  You can go to Gottaregister.com, which is an open voter registration site run by the Obama campaign (again, if there was anything like it out there for the other candidates, I’d link to theirs too).

Once you know you’re registered to vote, go to your state on Gottavote.com and see if you have early voting (which will ensure that you’re not scrambling to vote on Election Day).  Look and see what you need to bring with you to the polls.  Find out what time the polls open and close in your area.

Which brings us back to that simple request at the top of this post: please vote.

It’s something we get jaded about, that we sometimes think of as a burden, that we think doesn’t matter, that feels like a waste of time, that we take for granted.  Do it anyway.  It is a tool you have right now to get your voice heard; don’t throw it away.  And no, I’m not going to guilt you by pointing out all the places in the world where people are fighting for the right to vote — a right you have.  Instead, I am simply going to implore you, in my big girl voice, in the most serious tone one can muster when they are writing this at the kitchen table in lime green sweatpants and a mismatched greyish blue March of Dimes sweatshirt.

Please vote.

Tomorrow is National Voter Registration Day in the United States (apologies to all outside the US).  You’re going to hear this message a lot in the next 24 hours (the “please vote” part; not the apology to all outside the US).  Please don’t tune it out.  Regardless of your political affiliation, please take the time to educate yourself and make the commitment to vote.

I’ll see you at the polls**.

Okay, I know that I said I wouldn’t guilt you, but as you go through late October when early voting begins until we hit the time the polls close on November 6th, I want you to imagine me hovering behind you as you go about your day, breathing on your neck as you try to read the nutritional information on a label in the food store, staring at you while you try to type a blog post, lying in bed between you and your partner, turning my head from side to side so I can give both of you my guilt-inducing look.  All the while, a single request on my lips that will haunt you until the election is over.

Please vote.

* But in my very biased opinion, the fact that you don’t have something comparable out there speaks volumes.

** I probably won’t see you at the polls unless you live in my neighbourhood.  And even then, I’ll only see you if we go at the same time.  And even then, once we disappear into those tiny polling booths, we won’t really be able to see each other.  But I’ll figuratively see you at the polls.

This is how I feel when I lose something or misplace something.

The world suddenly shifts, and instead of orbiting the sun, my mind begins rotating around that object.  It starts casting light on everything else in my path, pretty much blinding me until my sole focus is the missing object.  Even when the missing object is something as inconsequential as a button.

Okay, maybe not a button.

Actually, yes, I’ve probably reacted this way to a button.  But only after I convinced myself that this button was extra special and irreplaceable.

This happened last Monday morning.  We were completely on-time to get to shul, and I went to grab my black dress purse.  I own two tiny fabric purses — one black and one white — that I purchased at least 12 years ago.  They’ve had a good run.  My sister got me two new purses a few years ago that I love (red casual dressy and black so fancy) so I’ve been using these dress purses less and less, but I needed the black one Monday morning because I needed a simple, cloth, dressy purse to serve as a tampon holder.

I store fancy purses and hats in an armoire in the ChickieNob’s room.  I opened the door and there was the white purse, the red purse, and the fancy black purse… but no tiny black fabric purse.  Which was odd.  I started shifting things around, expecting it to pop up from under a sweater, and it wasn’t there.  So I started to take things out of the armoire, place them on the ChickieNob’s bed, comb through the contents of the armoire — even shelves where I would have never in a trillion years placed a dress purse — and I couldn’t find this purse.  I turned out the lights in the room and repeated the search with a flashlight, believing that sometimes you see things differently when you change the light source (stop snickering… this has worked on other occasions).

At this point, we were now late, but I was immobilized in choosing a plan B because I couldn’t stop focusing on the fact that I didn’t know where the tiny black fabric purse was.  Was it even in the house?  When did I last use it?

I was supposed to be shifting my focus to coming up with a plan B so we could leave the house, but I couldn’t untangle myself from the tiny black fabric purse’s pull.  I couldn’t use the white purse because I was wearing black shoes (I think the last time I used black tiny was at a rehearsal dinner for a wedding this summer), and I couldn’t use the fancy black purse because it was too fancy for day time (No, I used a different purse because I remember needing a tampon there and checking a side pouch for one, and black tiny doesn’t have zippered side pouches), and I couldn’t use a ziplock bag because that would just be odd (Was it at our friend’s kid’s Bat Mitzvah?  Was that last year?  It had to be last year.  Have I not used this purse in a full year?), so I had no plan B.

In which Josh told the kids to get their shoes on and told me to get a plan B, reminding me that we’re talking about a purse.

The rational side of my brain told me that (1) it was just a purse and I could use my regular, every day purse and the earth would still turn, (2) I tend to be somewhat invisible, so it was unlikely that anyone would even notice my purse much less me, (3) I could look for it later, (4) the purse probably cost about $15 and it had a good run, so if I never saw it again, life would go on.  The irrational side of my brain screamed over the quieter rational side of my brain that MY PURSE WAS MISSING!

I ended up taking a purse with a broken handle, held together with a safety pin.  Why did I opt for this one?  I have no idea.  It should have gone in the rubbish bin years ago, and yet here I was, taking it out to be the first purse of the new year.

As we drove to Rosh Hashanah services, I continued to obsess.  I wore a red necklace to the wedding.  Had that gotten back home or was that missing too?  I own one tube of lipstick — Rum Raisin by Bobbi Brown — and it usually gets carried to occasions when I’d use said black purse.  Was that in the house, or had I left it behind at an event along with black tiny?

The second I got home, I returned to searching for the purse, looking in absolutely ridiculous places (under the bathroom sink) and not-so-ridiculous places (under the ChickieNob’s bed).  I asked the ChickieNob if she and her friends had borrowed it for a game.  I looked in my desk, my sock drawer, inside other purses.  Black tiny was still missing.

I wished I could mentally move on.

I knew that after enough time passed, and something else got lost, my brain would release black tiny and start orbiting around the new missing object.  The new lost item that would occupy by brain didn’t even have to be one of my things.  It could be one of Josh’s things, or the twins’ things (the ChickieNob long lost interest in looking for her missing doll whereas I took apart the whole house until we found it), or any of my family member’s things.  Tell me that you’ve misplaced your keys, and I will started looking at plane fares so I can come there and help you look.  I hate the idea of not knowing where something is.

I wished I could find the attitude of “easy come, easy go,” especially when it came to objects with no sentimental or monetary value.  I had the means to get a new purse, and while I liked the one I had, there was nothing special about it.  The white one was the one I took to my wedding.  The black one had just gone to a bunch of random parties.  It wasn’t an expensive purse; losing the object didn’t translate into losing a lot of money.

And yet, I couldn’t help but think that my obsessive nature surrounding lost objects tied in somehow to missing not-yet children, ghostly remnants to lost life plans.  Perhaps when it always feels as if someone is missing from the room, it intensifies the reaction to something missing, no matter how small, like new skin rubbed raw by even gentle contact.

*******

On the day before Great-Grandma died, the twins and I went to the mall to pick up winter pants, and while we were there, we swung through the handbag section at a department store.  The Wolvog, ever helpful, was pointing out various black purses, but none were like black tiny (especially not the one that inexplicably had a huge bronze fox head sticking out of the front of it like a hunting prize).  “It can’t have any leather on it,” I explained, because I use the purse on Yom Kippur, and on that holiday, you cannot wear or carry leather.  Black tiny, in all of its cheapness, was made entirely of fabric.  I gave up after about three minutes, my heart not really into the idea of purse shopping.

The next morning, we got the call that Great-Grandma was gone, and after everyone left the house, I went upstairs with my coffee and took apart the armoire again.  I took out these tiny figurines my mother gave to me after the twins were born, a little tangible reminder of a wish I made during my first injectibles cycle.  I took out the piggy banks my grandmother painted for the twins in one of the art workshops at her nursing home.  I took out our painting outfits — the clothes the four of us wear when we go do messy community service projects that involve house painting, — a velvet top, a half-finished scarf I’ve been making for the Wolvog for years, my maternity clothes.  It’s an armoire I rarely enter unless it’s to grab the sheets on the lowest shelf.  It contains everything I don’t want to look at on a regular basis.

And there, somehow tucked in the middle of a pile of clothes, with no explanation of how it got wedge between items that haven’t been moved in years, was black tiny.  There was no fanfare, no huge sigh, no angels singing hallelujah as I finally got closure with the find.  I just held it for a moment and thought the words “of course,” and then repacked the wardrobe, leaving out black tiny for the funeral.

Josh’s grandmother died yesterday.  She never referred to me as Josh’s wife, instead calling me one of her grandchildren when she introduced me to someone else, and I simply called her Grandma back, so I feel funny calling her Josh’s grandmother as I try to explain the relationship to you, and instead I will call her Great-Grandma, borrowing the twins’ perspective.

She was the last of our grandparents and losing her feels like a final thread has been cut, something that was anchoring us.  She is not the last of that generation — we still have great aunts and great uncles, and with this family tree project, I keep finding new people in that generation that are still alive to connect with.  But those people all line up diagonally from us; she was the last one who was directly above us.

A few weeks ago, we went up for a visit so I could show her the work I did on the family tree.  As she started talking, I took out the iPad and recorded an hour of her telling stories about various people on the tree, her parents’ store, streets where she once lived.  She couldn’t remember what she had for breakfast, but she could still recall all of her favourite trips she took with her husband.  We went outside, and I took photos of her with Josh and the twins.  I would have never done these things if not for the ChickieNob suggesting this project.  Life is so strange; these chance decisions leading you sometimes to obtaining the most precious things.  I am so thankful that we have those stories.  And it also drives home the point that all of us serve a purpose.  The ChickieNob’s role in our family is to always suggest these ideas, to push us to make time for things that are important.

I rarely have flying dreams; I can literally only think of three times that I’ve had one.  But in the hours after she died but before we knew, I was dreaming that I could fly, kick off from the ground and soar above everyone else.  I told Josh about the dream when I woke up, how amazing it felt to fly like that all through the night.  And then we got the call, and it made me wonder if that was some sort of goodbye.  If my unconscious mind somehow knew that she was now gone, and it was releasing her, the archetype of flying.

I wrote about her years ago when she gave me her cake plate.  This was that day that I was worried about back then.  And now it’s here.  And I am so grateful that I got to be part of her life.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Forgiveness” (Not All Dreams are Free)
• “The Big Announcement” (Altered Type)
• “Enough with the Double Standard Already” (Still Standing Magazine)
• “My Brain is a Nice Place to Visit…” (Mama Said Knock You Out)
• “Infertility Makes Me dot dot dot” (The Adventures of an Infertile Myrtle)
• “When Romney Said ‘Your Adopted Daughter’” (Stirrup Queens) — thank you, Stupid Stork!
• “If You Fool with the Snark…” (Nuts in May)
• “Everything’s Changed, Yet Nothing’s Changed” (Snips, Snails, and Puppy Dog Tails)
• “Reliving It” (Life from Here)
• “Post-Adoption Blues” (All Grown Up)
• “Let’s Play Diagnose that ‘Mom’ Neurosis” (Silent Sorority)
• “Cycle 19, CD 13” (Submerged)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Twice it happened this week that I had a post on my list of possibilities and then someone placed it in the comment section.  So.  The first is Altered Type who created a ritual marking the start of living childfree after infertility, much in the same way that someone would send a pregnancy or birth announcement.  This was the first time I read something like this, and I thought it was BRILLIANT.  She explained why they chose an announcement: “Discussing it over the phone was never an option for us; not only would we struggle to explain ourselves without resorting to people-pleasing words, but they would have difficulty listening. It’s a taboo subject: childlessness. People everywhere have trouble merely acknowledging there is such a thing as a real life without children.  Any wonder we were having trouble accepting it ourselves.”  I love this.  I am a person who needs rituals, who needs to mark things in order to feel closure or to feel the energy of a new start.  This feels like the most perfect idea in the world.  I actually added a link permanently to Operation Heads Up on the left sidebar.

The second one was All Grown Up’s post on post-adoption blues.  It is a deeply honest look at open adoption, the thoughts that probably never cross the mind of the people who suggest you “just adopt.”  Because loss is wrapped up in the definition of adoption.  She writes, “As I stand back and watch them interact, I question what my whole place is in this picture.  It is SO SO SO SO very strange and hard and not normal.  But it is my normal.”  It is clear reading this post how much love is flowing to this child from everyone in the triad.  This raw post is a must-read.

My Preconceived Notion has a post about single motherhood.  Again, I loved it for its honesty; for its insight into another person’s world.  You take common ideas — pain or stress — and see them through a very different lens.  She invites you in to take a look, to understand, to pause for a moment in someone else’s shoes.

Lastly, Hapa Hopes talks about her FET.  She begins, “Everyone says that FETs are a piece of cake.  ‘Everyone’ is stupid.”  Just because the cycle doesn’t contain as many injections or the retrieval doesn’t make it emotionally easy.  On the contrary, with fewer distractions, there is more time to think, which can make things harder.  I love this other side of the story.

The roundup to the Roundup: Our last grandparent is gone.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 14th and September 21st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.