I must sadly acknowledge that the title, "Occasonal Blog," barely even applies anymore. It should be called the "Rarely if Ever Blog." It should be called the "That Was A Fine Idea But I Never Find Time to Write It" blog. It should be, "Melissa Had A Really Great Idea for this Blog while Making Dinner last night but Now She's Forgotten so You'll never Hear it" blog.
I'm following the presidential election closely, even obsessively, clicking on interactive maps, rewinding news shows to catch the dropped words, asking everyone if he or she knows what a "hedge fund" is or knows anyone who does, and increasingly suspecting that "hedge fund" has absolutely nothing to do with landscaping. In late-night visits to journalism sites and political sites, I've discovered that real bloggers blog incessantly. I've discovered that, when reading real bloggers, when you finish the latest entry, you can click the "refresh" button on your computer and a new entry sometimes appears immediately. So I see that I'm doing my readers, all 12 of you (nine if I don't count my oldest three children) ( perhaps four if I don't count my oldest three children and several of their close friends) a disservice in posing as a blog-writer yet so often writing other things, like magazine articles, instead.
Hence, a blog entry:
This past summer was vastly improved over last summer in every way. Yosef and Daniel arrived in June 2007 and I see now how precarious our balance was last summer, how often this or that child, this or that mother, was breaking down, blowing up, storming away, and sulking. So many people in the family were boycotting so many other people on any given day that trying to seat everyone around the kitchen table for dinner took on the power-sharing implications of Yalta. Yosef tried to take his dinner plate into the dining room (who would ever eat dinner THERE? in the DINING ROOM?? Bizarre!) in order not to cross paths with or accidentally make eye contact with Helen, if that's the person he was avoiding, or Jesse, or me. Daniel tried to carry his dinner plate into the den. Bedtimes were complicated, as you didn't want to sleep near this or that brother. Didn't we make it through seven nights of Hanukah before I realized that half the children weren't speaking to the other half of the children? (I'm lucky that Jews have such long holidays. If we'd had only a one-day Christmas to work with, we'd have blown the entire holiday.)
Well, enough looking back. This past summer, these falll days, are a different story entirely. Everyone's talking to everyone else nearly all the time. Sol calls to Daniel and waits for him at the front door every morning, to make sure Daniel doesn't miss the school bus again (Daniel's our slowest child.) Jesse and Helen sat cackling over some nonsense at the dinner table last night. Most remarkably, this past week, was a mid-afternoon moment in the diningroom:
Daniel, now 13 or 14, growing half-an-inch a month, on target to be the tallest Samuel child (he helped me change a few ceiling light-bulbs the other day without standing on a stool) has been the most physically stand-offish--not used to hugs, to playful caresses, not used to GIRLS. Helen's giggling irritated him terribly; and if Helen, 12, and Lily, 16, laughed together, he thought he would go out of his mind. "Oh my God, Mom," he'd say, leaving the kitchen to sit alone in the den, head in hands, all that soprano light-heartedness unsettling. Lily and Helen often tried to hug him. "I need a hug!" one or the other would playfully say to him, trying to pen him in with her arms. He'd escape, running away, waving his hands, with a look of urgency or terror on his face.
(Seth is built along the same tall, thin, and angular lines as Daniel. One day we heard Helen protesting: "I can't hug you, Seth. You're too FLAT.")
So, a few days ago, I saw Daniel coming in from school, crossing through the diningroom as Helen was heading past him in the opposite direction. And Daniel Gizaw Samuel stopped and said to Helen Rose Samuel: "Need a hug?" Then he hugged her. She hugged back, laughing, her head barely reaching his chest, then she skipped along her way. Apparently she didn't even realize what a strange fierce solitary being she and Lily had finally tamed.
