Jewish Musings, Monday, 3/6/2017

[savtele]

What’s on your mind — how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Angelika
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

And for those of you that stop by to read this thread without posting - you are welcome to do that but you are also welcome to chime in!

[savtele]

Boker Tov All! Last week we talked quite a bit about some family dynamics/mishugas. I'd like to take this one step further today:

Where are you in your siblings birth order?

My youngest brother and I have joked that we are the "bookends" of our parents' parenting experiment. They tried to make me perfect (and failed) and by the time they had him (# 5) they were tired out & pretty much let him do what he pleased.

It's amazing to me - yes, I'm 1st in the birth order, my brother Ingo came next, just 3 years after me, and he & I ALWAYS fought for supremacy. Then 3 years later, my sisters Sylvia & Regina (14 months apart), and finally, bringing up the rear, when I was 16, my brother Frank. Frank was sort of all our living doll - we shlepped him on hikes with us, took him all kinds of places, stuffed him full of ice cream and cotton candy at the fair. Good times. And to this day - Sylvia & Gini call me for advice, Ingo does not, and Frank pretty much doesn't know what to make of all of us! (Frank lives in Colorado - the rest of us are here in OR, although Gini lives in LaGrande - far East corner of the state)

I'm noticing a changed dynamic in the family since Ingo's heart attack. He always took mom out for breakfast on the weekend - now he can't drive. And I seem to be the only one who is concerned about mom's well-being in this, having just lost her weekly breakfast-buddy. While I would love to see the kids & grands step up & take her out - it's not for me to make that call. (although I do intend to make suggestions)

How is birth-order affecting your relationships with your parents/siblings (or is it?) Have you thought of it in terms of birth order? Or is something else involved.

[hollygail]

There are two of us. My sister was born as WWII was breaking out; my parents apparently decided that, should my father be drafted and not come home, my mother would find it less difficult to raise one child alone than two. DF was drafted in 1944; I wasn't conceived until after his discharge from the Army (and not right away, may I add), so I'm squarely into the "baby boom" years. Sis and I had pretty much nothing in common growing up; it was almost like each of us was an only child. When we became adults, things changed and now we're very good friends, which just wasn't possible (or so it seemed to each of us) when we were children.

DS and DBIL moved from NYC to Los Angeles when I was still in school. Some years later, when lateDH and I moved to Los Angeles too, DM and DF followed. Then I left sunny southern CA for other places. After DF died, DS moved DM from the San Fernando Valley (north of the "city" part of L.A. and east from the ocean) to Santa Monica, closer to where DS and DBIL live. She became the main care-provider when a daughter was needed, since I lived in other parts of the world (and other parts of the US). At one point (actually, when DM was finally ready to move to Santa Monica), DS and DBIL had already made plans to be away (really, it WAS coincidental that the plans which had been made prior to the time DM was preparing to move). DS called me (I was living in Tucson, AZ) and I went to DM's to be the one who physically moved her out of her apartment (where she and DF had lived for what seemed like forever; do you know how to spell accumulated junk?) in the Valley...

DM lived in Santa Monica until her death not quite 10 years later.

DS had three children (I have one). I carried her first born at his bris (I was a teenager), making me his godmother. Then came my niece (and it's not at all unusual for DS to call me by her daughter's name and her daughter by mine), and finally the younger nephew who lives in Vancouver, BC. My godson died from an unusual form of cancer some years ago. My niece and I became close when she was a teenager, and then she went to college in Tucson, so we got to see each other more (we're still rather close; she still calls me Aunt Holly, although her older brother wanted to stop calling me "Aunt" by the time he was in his early 20s). DS's kids and my son are close to this day.

[gazelle18]

My DB is my only sibling and he is older by 2 years. He was the golden boy, at least as our family perceived what a golden boy should be. He was brilliant (not an exaggeration), studious, and serious minded. He ended up becoming an academic rabbi (professor) and was ALWAYS the apple of my parents' eyes.

My dad carved out a special place for me in his heart. My mother on the other hand loved to contrast the 2 kids. I was smart, but no one could be as smart as my DB. I was not sweet - I was known as a brat. I was into the real world, as opposed to the rabbinic, academic world. Etc. To this day, my mother seems to feel that DB is her favorite.

I have had therapy about this, which helped enormously. In fact, I have a very close relationship with DB, who agrees with my assessment of our parents. He and his lovely wife were here This weekend and we had a wonderful time with them.

[savtele]

Today it's snowing
Big wet puffy flakes
Covering daffodils, helleborous
My deck, the road & the cars

Fast and fat
The flakes look like raindrops
Raindrops on steroids
Heading for a fight

Down in the valley
It's probably just rain
Leaving puddles by the roadsides
And splashings of mud

But here, it's snowing
Big wet puffy flakes
Looking like raindrops
On steroids, heading for a fight

-angelika, March 2017

[hollygail]

Angelika, you may be able to help this person:
wwmessageboard.freeforums.net/thread/4485/freezer-filled-summers-yellow-squash
She has frozen bags of produce from last summer's garden and it's time to plant for next summer... She's looking for recipes, etc. (I don't know if you have to register to post on that board; you may be able to post as a "guest")

[happysavta]

I have just one sibling, a brother, 18 months older than me. He was held back in kindergarten for being inattentive. In those days we never heard the words, "learning disabled", "ADD" or "Asperger's Syndrome." In those days, you were just labelled "dumb". In Yiddish, they called him, "Narish" which means foolish. My brother had little success in school, his biggest deficit was in sequential thinking. ("If you put your hand on a hot stove, you will get burned.") and that got him into a great deal of trouble in life. On the other hand, I was a top student. My father thought that my brother wasn't working hard enough in school and tried to motivate him with his belt. My mother was protective of my brother; he was born a preemie, he barely survived and she intuitively knew he was not quite OK. So, as we grew up, my parents shifted the responsibility of watching over my brother and making sure he didn't do anything stupid to me. I became the older sibling in effect. But we lived in different countries and then in different states and I couldn't watch him. He got himself into a lot of trouble.

He got into marital trouble; his wife was a horrible, horrible person. He got into financial trouble. He got into legal trouble. Long story short, he left his wife after 23 years, got divorced and settled in California, living with my mother for about 12 years. He never moved out on his own. My mother took care of him, not the other way around. He worked 7 days a week. All he wanted was to make money. He didn't want to spend money, mind you. He just wanted to accumulate money. He thought that if he left money to his children, they would finally stop being angry and would would admire and love him when he died. Money and success and respect were all one word to him.

When my mother died, I was the sole trustee of her estate. My brother was suspicious, secretive, conniving, and did a number of things that were obstructive and dishonest. So I settled the estate with a $25K bonus on his side of the ledger and thought that he would be satisfied with being the winner. He has not spoken to me in 3 years, not since I handed him the final check. I sent him a congratulatory email on the birth of his grandsons last June and on his 70th birthday this January. He did not reply or acknowledge my emails. I have no clue why and he doesn't want to explain himself. I've bumped into him on the street twice in 3 years and have tried to probe a little, but he won't talk.

So, I had a sibling when I was growing up, but now I don't. And you know what, I've accepted that. In some inner space, I realize that we never had a caring brother-sister relationship. He cannot attached to other people emotionally. I know I am disappointing my parents that we no longer have a family tie, but I can't be responsible for him. He neglects himself; he neglects his health, and he is very isolated and alone. But that's his choice.

[louise]

My brother is 3 years older and is my only sibling. When we were kids he sometimes had to take me along. I think we were close as kids, not so much as adults, but the relationship is okay. I think he is brilliant and is also a wonderful photographer. I'm pretty smart, but I don't hold a candle to him.

[lee058]

Hi everybody. Hope you are all well. It was another busy day, but I also managed to take an afternoon nap which helped a lot.

Re birth order: My sister was eleven and a half years older than me, so in some ways I was definitely the second in line, and in others, it was almost like being another first-born. Sometimes my sister and I were very close, and other times it felt like we were so different that we couldn't connect. It was a difficult relationship. Even at times when we were close, she wouldn't let my ideas take precedence to hers. She was older, she was in charge, and she was always right (in her opinion). I loved her very much anyway, and miss her a lot.

Have a peaceful night, Lee

[happysavta]

So, today, chaverot, I went to my psychologist. Haven't been there for quite a while. I asked him to have regular, every other week appointments with me for at least a 6 month period of more. I've started back on a food plan and am beginning to lose some weight. I've done that numerous times. But I never get to goal, never even maintain the weight losses I do achieve (20, 30, 40 lbs). I think food plans and exercise are just one part of the puzzle.

Today, we went over history and he asked a series of questions:
When did I start being overweight? (age 5)
What did I do about it? (Started series of diets from age 12.)
Who was I close to in my family that I could talk to and get support from (No-one. My father was super-critical, my mother was emotionally shut down from her experiences in WWII.)
Did I have friends in school? (Yes, but we were study buddies, academic achievers who were not popular with the boys.)
Where did I meet my husband? (In college at a student dance.)
What did I like about him? (He was attentive. He asked for every dance that night; he walked me to my dorm, he wanted to see me the next day.)
Why did I choose to marry him? (He was very optimistic and always joking, he was very confident, he was decisive, he was persistent, he was compassionate, he knew what he wanted.)

Then I said to the psychologist, "He is all the things that I am not. I'm a quitter." And that's when the session got serious. When I said that, he replied that I was too hard on myself, too quick to stick negative labels on my forehead, and too sure that these labels were permanent and indelible. He said that the very fact that I was trying once again to lose weight was proof that I wasn't a quitter. That was the take away message of Session #1. I know it's hard to remove tattoos from your body; I guess it's even harder when they are etched into your mind. I will see him again in 2 weeks.

[peachymom1]

My parents met in the Army and were married the year they both turned 20. Bad idea. Mom was pregnant with my oldest sister, they were stationed overseas, and my second sister was born less than a year after the first. Number 3 came along three years later, and I'm the youngest, born 16 months after #3. So they had four daughters in five and a half years.

Both parents loved #1 and #2 with all their hearts, but when #3 was born, Dad was overseas, so Mom's favor shifted to her and stayed there, to this day. So when Dad got home, he turned his attention more to the older two, who adored him and continued to adore him for many years after he stopped deserving it. My sisters tell me that our parents loved me when I was very young, and they must have to some degree, or I'd be a sociopath, but I have no memories of either of them loving me. They divorced when I was four, #1 and #2 were Dad's clear favorites, #2 was Mom's, and I was pretty much left to my own devices.

But the story has a happy ending, because the advantage of being alone is that you learn to be independent and strong, and I was also blessed to meet DH at a young age, and we have been happy together for almost 40 years (32 of them married). Together we chose to be and learned to be people of good character, we created and nurtured a strong Jewish identity together, and we've made some good friends along the way too. Of my sisters and me, three of us have been in counseling, and we've all had difficulties to deal with in regard to our parents, but I'm content with my life. In fact, I'd say that all my sisters have had a lot harder time dealing with adulthood than I have. My sisters and I have worked through a lot together and become much closer and more loving over the years. As for the parents, I actually feel sorry for them, because I know now what it's like to be head-over-heels nuts in love your children, and they missed the boat. I tell people I had no idea how wonderful children were until I had some!