Apparently, he’s been chewing over part of the contents of that e-mail for a long time. Here’s what I got from Earl last week (posted here with his permission):

“…I have one question about a statement you wrote:
Anyway – suburbia is no picnic either sometimes, ditto organized religion, and I am not a tremendous fan of either one. Why do you stay in Orthodox Judaism then? Do you not yearn to be free? To not be bound by laws and restrictions that at the end of the day you cannot wholly prove actually come from God, and more likely come from man? Don’t you want to just eat a cheeseburger with your hair down in public, a nice pair of hot, tight jeans and a cute, sexy shirt on and do what you want, when you want with no feelings of having to be doing things at a pre-ordained time because that’s that the rules say? Maybe feel the thrill of catching the eyes of other men who think, “Man, she’s hot”? etc., etc.
If you’re not a tremendous fan of either, why do you stay in them? You could still be a wife, a mom and a Jewish woman and not be bound by those things. I mean what would happen if you said to your husband: “This Friday night I want to get a babysitter and take you into Tel Aviv to go dancing and have a few drinks and then stay in hotel room and [suggested recreational activity removed]“? Would David say, “F— yeah. Let’s do it” or is there no way that would happen?
I am curious. I don’t want to imagine a life bound in that way. I am too much a free spirit as is [Joy]. It’s why we work so well together.
- ‘Earl’ “

Well. Earl. Where do I begin?

Thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability to look hot in tight jeans?

…And for volunteering to explain to our 15.5-year-old son why our potential drunken partying is so much more responsible and acceptable than the potential same activity of his peers?

Although: Why on earth do David and I need to go to a club and a hotel on Shabbat when we have a bedroom, a booze cabinet, a large music collection, and another 6 days of the week?

How about: I wouldn’t eat a cheeseburger if it was made by the OU and blessed by Rav Ovadia because my arteries are my friends… and there are those tight jeans to slide into…?

…However, I think all these things are somewhat beside the point.

As Rachel Menken once said to Don Draper: You didn’t think this through.

Earl, you (understandably) misunderstood: I sometimes dislike suburbia because it can be boring, conformist, and nosy, and Orthodoxy because (like most organized religion) I feel it has become stagnant and irresponsible, on the verge of losing the creative spirit that has kept it alive until now. (And going into detail here would involve a MUCH longer post, but I am happy to expand upon request.) But my lack of fandom is NOT because Orthodoxy / suburbia are both restrictive. Not because I don’t want to feel bound by anything or anyone.

My objections have to do with the contemporary wisdom of some of the rules in those structures and their method of adjudication, or their lack of compassion, but I have no doubt that some rules are in fact necessary for a functional, productive life. I have no doubt that requiring hard things of people is overall a good policy, because people tend to step up then, when they are being required of.

Surely, you have some rules for yourself, Earl, or you couldn’t have accomplished all that you have. I do not “yearn to be free”; I am, thankfully, in a relationship and in a community that allows me to be, within reason, free. I yearn to be lazy, sometimes, or asleep, or surprised by fabulousness, my own or that of others. But what’s missing for me isn’t freedom. When something is missing, that thing is novelty, or maybe, lightning-speed forward movement. But I digress.

Being part of a family and / or a community and / or a belief system (religious or otherwise) has its disadvantages, to be sure. You hit the main one: You are no longer simply your own agent. There are meetings, happenings, causes, responsibilities, loyalties, and rules. You need to bake for people at “pre-ordained times,” like after childbirth or during shiva. You need to be with people when all you want to do is be alone. You need to smile when you hate humanity; but you don’t really. Just today. Forget religion for a moment. What person anywhere wants to get out of their sweatpants on a Tuesday night and attend a fundraiser? (And Holy Crap, am I raising my hand to volunteer for the XYZ committee? Really? Again?)

Throwing God and / or His earthly agents into the mix adds an extra few levels of commitment and an extra unplugged day of the week (which, by the way, I couldn’t and wouldn’t live without – think: a no e-mail or phone Sabbatical! Divine.), but it is along the same continuum: There is Something Larger Than Yourself that you belong to and that you must answer to. That Something Larger in many cases is a tiny cross-section of the world’s people and cultures. There’s your paradox.

It seems that you view my lifestyle as a battle of the Him (God / Law) or the Them (Society / Rules) vs. the I (My Needs and Wants.) But I view it more as a choice of We (family, community, spirituality) over Me Me Me.

The perks: You are never alone; there are people looking out for you; you are part of something; you are consistently loved and asked to keep yourself open, consistently giving love; you are responsible for enriching your community; you must be disciplined and hold yourself to real, firm standards because there are eyes and ears (Divine and otherwise) everywhere. The downside: Same.

We all know there is no having it all. Stability by nature demands putting some freedoms in check. It’s a tradeoff of the collective versus the individual, pro and con alike. So back to your question: Do I feel buried and repressed? Missing out on life? No. Bored and restless? Resentful? Sameness? Sometimes. Overwhelmed by the responsibilities I’ve chosen to carry? Often. Are tight jeans and a treif burger, a hot bar and a hotter dance party, the ability to do anything I want when I want, the answers I seek to what occasionally ails me about this life?

Not by a mile. You with your big connections Earl, I’ll tell you what to do if you want to help me with my Suburbadox Malaise: Get me a meeting with Matthew Weiner. Whatever they serve for lunch, whatever I wear there, whether the hot guard checks me out when I walk in the door or not…I’ll feel much, much better about everything if I get to work on a high quality, life-changing project with a deep, brilliant writer, to the benefit of millions of culture consumers. That would be a novelty and a huge leap forward all at once.

You and Joy can take the hotel in Tel Aviv. David and I left most of the mini-bar. Help yourselves.

Photo by: Avi Eisen

Sukkot in Israel is a hiker and camper’s festival. God wasn’t kidding when he asked people to walk to Jerusalem in Temple times on this holiday. I’m not sure if He cared about the ten young bulls, two rams, and 12 lambs (well-done). But I’m pretty sure He wanted people to walk the land in what constitutes autumn here, which is this: moderation (as opposed to colorful.)

He made a damn fine Holy Land, too, and I’m guessing He wanted people to enjoy it when the moon was full and hung low in the sky like a huge piece of fruit, when the nights were cool and the sands were walkable barefoot, when the sun was strong but pleasant, when the breeze was always blowing but never hot or cold.

The National Park Service and assorted field schools make it really easy this time of year to see every corner of the country. (Note to Park Services: You rock up north and down south. Can you send more of your fine people, and garbage bins, to the Center??) (And citizens: Can you possibly help them by USING the bins?)

Our family took full advantage of the outdoors this holiday (and we all have the redneck tan to prove it.) My husband and oldest went on a sunrise bike ride through Ein Karem. Our extended family met for a picnic / Frisbee game in a great undiscovered park somewhere near Bet Shemesh. *More on undiscovered places below.*

We hiked through the mountains of Judea (I wore flip flops because I thought it was going to be a brief stroll. Can someone explain why I thought I could wear flip flops on a hike in Gush Etzion?) and enjoyed the Science by the Sea festival put on by the Kfar Ruppin Marine Biology College on Hof Mikhmoret. The little kids watched chemistry experiments and saw sea turtles, the big kids and husband went kayaking, I got a neck and shoulder massage, and we all enjoyed a concert at sunset. What could be bad?

But our favorite part was sleeping on the beach. I will not tell you what beach, because it was perfect and clean (lots of garbage cans!) and empty and quiet and has good bathrooms, a nice kiosk, a playground, and lots of parking, and I want it to stay that way.

We loved sleeping to the sound of the waves (and the guitar-playing of my oldest.) We just put our big mat down and got into our sleeping bags and were out in minutes in the perfect cool dark. The best part was waking up and being where we wanted to be. 6 a.m. and the kids were on the playground, by 7 they were building sand castles, by 8 they were swimming and playing paddle ball (we also got coffee at aforementioned kiosk), by 10 the wind picked up enough to fly a kite, and we were loading the car at 11, before the real heat.

Two great discoveries: 1. Camp on the beach! Beats the woods if you can handle sand. No bugs or small animals, very accessible, no tent really necessary. 2. Go away from lots of people and it’s much easier to handle small kids outdoors, especially near water. Drive a bit farther and reap your rewards.

And now…a word from Mother Nature:

A major personal understanding: My era of hibernation at home with toddlers is over. The littles are now big enough to come out into society, which unties me from the hearth. So Yay!

A deeply personal understanding, because the beach never fails to knock me down, drag me out, and wash me back up, cleaner: The big kids don’t know the real me at all. I’m not sure if that’s because I (or mothers in general) am not totally myself with them, or if kids will never really try to get to know their mothers as pre/teens (or if just mine won’t.) The “uptight” mother things I feel I must do and say to keep people safe (You are out too deep! No rafts in the ocean! Etc.) and moderately responsible / productive (Do have any homework over this vacation? Can you please help me with this since you have time? Etc…) take a huge toll on my ability to be (or be perceived as) rolling with things, creative, nice, cool, etc.

And maybe having kids makes you be less of those things in the first place. Demeter – Mother Nature in Greek mythology – is the prototype for organic beauty turned uptight by progeny. When her daughter went missing (kidnapped by her uncle, the God of the underworld…really, a long story…) she became enraged and insane, wandering the earth like a bag lady to find her; the seasons were thought to be a result of a joint custody arrangement Demeter ultimately worked out with Hades.

I think this fear of ultimate loss takes away a piece of yourself, even if it the loss never actually comes to pass. I am not sure if fathers experience this in quite the same way, but I’d like to hear from any of you who feel it, as well.

In any event, I think the greatest sacrifice mothers make is not the years they spend putting family before career or self. It is the years they spend not being seen, not being fully real, for what they feel to be the greater good.

Is it really the greater good? The answer is blowing in the cool evening wind.

photo by: Stillframe

Motherhood, like all good dwellings, comes with a basement, by which I mean a place to store the boxes of things which make us sad (or scared) to look at, or which simply crowd the main floor. We don’t unpack them, for the most part. Instead we appear generally preoccupied, until we remember not to, like when our son says, “Look! I drew you smiling!” as if this were a terrific artistic leap on his part.

What’s in my boxes? If Jon Stewart were ever to interview me on the topic, I would have to come out with the truth up front, or else risk looking like a total idiot when he dug up secret footage of me crying silently like a lunatic as I cleaned up spilled chocolate pudding from the wall and floor for the third time in one afternoon. So I might as well tell everyone now:

What’s in my boxes is resentment. Which I turn, very quickly and very quietly and without much ado, into fear and anxiety and anger, because resentment is not cool in a mom.

An old psychology professor once told our class about a mother whose OCD made her repeatedly go back to the house and check that the stove was off – - about six times before every departure from home. She was terrified that the house would burn down, irrationally obsessed with this disastrous eventuality. This, until therapy uncovered that she had quit dance school to raise her family and somewhere, somewhere deep, wanted them all, well…up in smoke, like her own dreams. The mind is great with metaphor, it appears. Even when it’s twisted like that. Think about your dreams…

This variation on the theme of Freudian displacement theory might help explain why every time one of my kids is exceptionally sweet or wonderful in the morning, I am convinced, somehow, in my anxious mind, that this is the last time I will see him. That I am receiving, in that perfect smile, a gift of goodbye. Why every unexpected and heartfelt ‘I love you,’ for no reason, every spontaneous hug on the way out the door, fills me with dread: Your angel is not coming back, take a mental picture.

Of course, I have a history. I also live in a country where mothers say final goodbyes to children more often than they should. Treasure every moment, we are told in our crazy world. And yet that still doesn’t explain this bizarre refusal to just be happy, serene, aglow in my motherhood.

I’ve hung around enough shrinks to guess it’s really about the boxes: I’m actually terrified of the fact that I’m so very glad to have the house to myself after they leave for the day. So relieved to be alone with my thoughts and my work and the patient sunlight on the double glass doors…

My house is transformed when it is empty, and this notion that some part of me would rather be alone – tinged with resentment as that thought is – fills me with guilt and remorse.

Which – TADA! – my nimble brain immediately converts into fear, anxiety, dread. ‘I’m afraid I’ll lose him’ so much more acceptable for a mom than ‘I feel so free when he’s gone.’

Put that in your cigars and smoke it, girls: We can have it all – family, work and independence – but there is something at our core which will punish us for it.

Am I happy – relieved, thrilled – when I pick them up at 3:30, and they are all intact, although full of sand, paint, ink, and so many, many words? You bet. Am I ready for bedtime at 8:00ish? You bet.

Do I remember to make the most of those evening hours, being with my kids and truly focusing on the real beauty in them, having heeded the kernel of truth – time is fleeting – in my morning anxiety routine?

Sometimes.
Sometimes.
When the scratching at the basement door is drowned out by laughter and light.
When I get drawn into their dreamy, intelligent eyes before I hear the inevitable whining.
Then.
Yes.