Fun With Play-Dough

Six-year-old Isabella attends Parsha class once a week, so she’s prepared for whatever the weekly Torah portion will be on Saturday.  This is not an easy thing, considering that most adults have a difficult time studying Torah (me, for instance). However, she likes it, and she’s enthusiastic about it; if it really were too hard for her, she’d rebel immediately; she’s good at that.

When the teacher tries to explain Yom Kippur and the meaning of saying you’re sorry, she tells the kids: “Sometimes, people do bad things.”  All kids immediately pay attention; “bad things”, they know all about that. They start yelling examples of very, very bad things; then, my daughter’s hand shoots up: she knows a bad thing too and is eager to share.

 “Yes, Isabella?” the teacher says.

“Like believing in Jesus!”

Oops.

We’ve taught our daughter not to make fun of other kids; they may look different, talk different, have funny last names or a really ugly backpack, and on certain days they may smell a little weird. But making fun of others is perhaps the meanest thing of all, and it’s just not allowed.

Apparently, the lesson didn’t include religious tolerance, but who worries about that when you have a six-year-old? We’re focused on teaching her her own religion and that’s a big enough job; and how does she even know this Jesus? Now what?

I take the coward’s way out and let it slide; frankly, I don’t even know where to begin. Am I remiss when I think she’s too young for this topic?

It’s not as if the concepts of “good” and “bad” are easily explained to begin with; I think they’re right up there with the discussion about where babies come from, and exactly why it is not a good idea to talk to strangers.  On the surface, it seems so easy; when you listen to your parents, that’s good; when you throw your food on the ground because you despise spinach, that’s bad. But the deeper meaning of these terms? Forget it.

What my daughter retains from the day’s lesson becomes clear when she leaves me a letter that night. Apparently, she has been thinking about this bad behavior business on a more personal level after all, because this is what she writes:

Dear Mom, I hate getting in trubal with you. I bet you do to. Love, Isa.

Which almost sounds like an apology. And she didn’t even get in trouble with me today.

With the FLDS legal circus under way, I have to ask: what is with that hair?

If I were the judge, I would be so distracted by those fluffy piles; I wouldn’t be able to make up my mind. How do they get it to stay up that high? Are they trying to draw attention away from their muumuus? I wonder if anybody else has noticed the Pope is sort of wearing the same thing, except more expensive, and he has a matching hat.

Robot-woman, who has apparently been appointed “spokesperson”, told journalists they make all their own clothes. Honey, that statement is usually reserved for people who actually wear clothes. These things aren’t clothes; they’re two sheets stuck together with a collar and a few buttons.

It is pretty obvious that these women are brainwashed, so maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. They’re just following orders.

I’d say give them all a DVD player and the complete set of Sex and the City; they’ll snap out of it in no time.

My husband, on average, drinks two beers a week. Our recycle people don’t pick up glass (don’t ask…) so we save it; twice a year he drives to the collection site and drops off the empty beer bottles, wine bottles, pickle jars, and light bulbs.  Saving your glass that long means that right now, I feel like a lush; even at the pathetic rate at which we drink, the evidence grows to mythological proportions.

However, I can’t have empty beer bottles during Passover, so this morning I collected four large bags and two boxes worth of glass, which my husband is now driving to the recycle place. I also (yes, yes) sorted through all my children’s toys, and I am happy to say that so far all I found was a handful of stale popcorn that my son was apparently saving for later.

While we save bottles, he saves Chametz: unless you see him eating it, you can never be sure whether the cookie you gave him ended up in his stomach, or is hiding somewhere in a drawer. I guess he wants to make sure I really pay attention while I clean.

Before I start cleaning the fridge, I’ll have to check my list. Every year, there are things I need to be reminded of; usually, when I’m in doubt, the answer is no. Every once in a while, I’m pleasantly surprised. I get to keep my mustard in the fridge, because it’s Kitnyot: you can’t eat it during Passover, because it looks too much like Chametz, so you could get confused; however, you can still have it in your possession. That’s good, because the cabinets where I’m locking things up are getting too full. All the Chametz that’s left needs to be eaten or given away. Luckily, there’s not much.

I leave the dining room for last, so the kids have at least one spot in the house where they can eat without me watching them like I’m the Passover police.

That, of course, is the big danger during these last hectic days, and I have to ask myself: am I making this punitive by whining so much about all the cleaning? Am I making too many jokes about wanting to get out of Egypt? What message am I sending my children; that Passover is a pain in the neck and we are crazy for following all these rules? How can I make this more rewarding for myself, and more fun for my children?  Maybe my lesson this year is that I need to watch my tongue, because my kids are young enough that every word out of my mouth has an impact. So, before they get home from school today, I’m going to pump myself up and pretend that I’m having the time of my life getting this house into shape. Yay.

Even though I don’t think I’ll really feel the joy of Passover until, Saturday night, I’ll be reclining at the Seder, safe in the knowledge everything is done. Still, my children don’t need to know everything.

While I initially looked at the Pope’s visit as mildly amusing, nothing to get my panties in a twist over, now I am irritated.

The Pope claiming his trip is not politically motivated is nonsense. It’s not Rome’s intentions that make this trip politically charged; it is the fall out. And fall out there will be, of that we can be sure. I don’t leave my house in the morning intending to kill a dog, but if I hit one, that puppy is still dead. Our actions have consequences, why is that so hard to admit?

There are 70 million Catholics in America today. While they certainly don’t vote as one block, many of them are still influenced by the Pope’s visit. Plus, has it escaped the oh-so holy pontiff and his cronies that this is an election year? Well then. This means that, besides the usual song and dance the press does when someone important visits, every word that comes out of his mouth will be chewed over indefinitely. Both Republicans and Democrats will claim he’s on their side; all three candidates have special Catholic committees for that.

So don’t tell me it’s not politically motivated. Everything the Pope does is politically motivated. It’s in his blood; how else did he get to be the head of the church?