Dear Will - Five Months Old

Dear Will,

You are five months old today. And what a month it has been. 

Last month around this time I was rocking you to sleep, my tears dropping on your head as I thought about leaving you at daycare when I went back to work. It seemed impossible that I could leave such a tiny baby with strangers while I went to the city for the day. That I would only see you for an hour in the morning when you woke up and an hour or two at night before you went to sleep and that would be it for the entire day. And while, admittedly, the first few days were pretty rough, like most things that have happened in the five months since you blazed into my life, we have done just fine.

It's still weird to me, walking into my office every day where everything is exactly the same as it always was, while my life - our lives - are so completely different. I think of you a lot during the day, and I structure my whole day so I can be sure to be home in time to feed you and put you to sleep. You are a piece of me now, and I suspect that this is the way it is supposed to feel. I didn't think about it much while I was on maternity leave and home with you every day, but now that I am away from you for big chunks of time I understand. We are bound together, you and me. Inextricably and always.

The funny thing is, it turns out I am happy to be back at work. I think it's made me a better person, and certainly a better mom to you. I was worried about this a lot. Whether I would be able to pick up where I left off, and whether I could be a lawyer again after spending so much time learning how to be a mom. But it turns out that I did, and I can, and I really can be both. I hope that you'll understand this one day. I think you will, becuase I hope I can raise you to do the things that feel good to you, to find your passion, and to understand that there can, and should, be different parts of you that exist together to make you into who you are. I'm still not sure if being a lawyer is my passion - I suspect somehow that I'm still searching for what is - but I know now that I can do my very best as your mom, and do other things too. I think this makes us all better people, for ourselves and to each other.

None of this would be as easy as it has been if you hadn't taken so well to daycare. You transitioned really easily, and you are having such a good time. Whenever I go there to pick you up your teachers always tell me how happy and smiley you are, and this just fills me right up. I am so happy that you are in a place during the day with good people who care about you, and who fill your days with fun. And I am happy to share you with them during the week, because they are as thrilled to watch you grow up as I am.

And grow up you are. You are really starting to play with your toys, and you can already sit up for a little bit if you balance with your hands. You love bouncing in your Exersaucer, and you get so excited when we put you in the Bumbo we just got for you, so you can sit up for real and see the world from a whole new vantage point. You get bigger and sturdier every single day, and sometimes I look at you and it seems like you are literally growing up right in front of me. 

Last week was Thanksgiving. I've always loved this holiday for the family and the fun, and for the second to stop and be thankful for the greatness in our lives. And my goodness, there is a lot of it. But this year, what I am most thankful for, is you. One day when you're older I'll tell you about your first Thanksgiving. How we went to your Sabba and Savta's house and you wore a big sticker that said "My First Thanksgiving." How you sat in a highchair pulled up close to the dining room table and played with toys while the rest of us ate dinner. How you banged on the tray and laughed and tried to grab everyone's forks and how we let you. How my gratitude that you are here and healthy and happy and safe was so huge that it stole my breath.

I still sometimes can't believe it, my sweet Will, but you are so very much mine. 

Always, ok?

With love as big as the sky,

Mom

Previous Letters:

One Month

Two Months

Three Months

Four Months

Giving Thanks

I remember the day before Thanksgiving last year, vividly. It was snowing; the very first snow of the year. I got up early to go get bagels before we got on the road to spend the holiday with my family in Pittsburgh. I was eight weeks pregnant and we hadn't told a single person. Not my parents, not my sisters, not my in-laws, not our friends. No one.

I drove through the quiet, snowy street of my neighborhood feeling a heady combination of emotions. Excited that we were going to have a baby. Worry that something would go wrong or had already gone wrong and maybe we weren't. Wonder at the surprise of it all.

It's terribly cliche of me to say, but I can hardly believe that it has been a year.

Having a baby - becoming a mom - has been nothing at all like I thought it was going to be. And yet, almost five months removed from those first turbulent, emotional, terror and tear-filled weeks, I think that maybe, just maybe, I am starting to feel steady and solid again.

At first I wanted to write that I am feeling like myself again, but that's not quite right. Because I am not the same person I used to be; I won't ever be that person again. Becoming a mom changed me in ways that I am just beginning to understand and appreciate. But I think that the most important parts of me are still in there, intertwined with the parts of me that are now charged with keeping another human being that I created happy and healthy and safe. And he is.

Life. It is complex and tricky and things don't always go the way we want them to or the way that we planned. I think that what I have learned most of all over the past five months is to be gentle with myself, and to embrace the not-knowing and just forge on ahead because motherhood is the steepest learning curve there is. I have made mistakes, both big and small, and I will undoubtedly make more.

But every night when I put my thriving, happy baby to sleep and sit on the couch with my man and a glass of wine, enveloped in the quiet of my house after a day filled with noise, I realize that I am doing as good a job as I know how to do, and really, that's the most that any of us can ask of ourselves. And I understand now more than ever that I have a life that's good. A life that is happy and rich and layered with beauty. And all of this? It's kind of miraculous.

So on this Thanksgiving-eve, as the sun starts to set over my little slice of the world and as I get ready to head for home, I am feeling a heaping dose of gratitude for the path I find myself on, for the people who walk it with me, and for this life. Exactly the way it is supposed to be.

And I am thankful.

For a growing family.

And my own little one.

For this smiley little boy. The one who was meant to be mine.

For sisters.

And for the kiddos who come from them.

For best friends.

For home.

For this life. Mine.

Happy Thanksgiving.

2. Branches Without Leaves

 What used to look like this:

Now looks like this:

Friday Fall Color

Finally, some color on a street that has been far too 

green so far this seasons for my fall-loving tastes

Throwback Thursday: Football Is Back

In honor of football being back, our first Steeler game together

February 2009

Fall Weekends, Merel Style

Deck. Sweatshirts. Sweatpants. Fireplace.

We're staying outside until the first flakes fall.

On The Passing Of Time

I took this picture on Monday afternoon. 

I had just gotten off the train and instead of turning left to go to my parking lot, I turned right to go pick up my car from the dealership conveniently located right next to the train station where my car was waiting for me after an oil change.

This is a picture I quite like, so I have looked at it a lot since Monday. I guess it must have been cloudy for most of the day in White Plains, but just as the sun started to set the clouds started to burn away and for a few minutes the sky looked like this. It was breathtaking, and the picture doesn't nearly do it justice.

But this post isn't about a beautiful sunset dotted with storm clouds. Not really, anyway. 

It's about time.

Because the first thing I thought after taking the picture was that for the first time since we turned the clocks forward in March, the sun was starting to set before my regular train pulled into the station. For the first time in six months, I needed my headlights to drive home. For the first time since spring, the air is chilly when I leave my house in the morning and on my way home, and a few enterprising leaves have already started their turn towards the wild colors that mark the changing of the season.

School buses are driving the streets of my neighborhood again and pumpkin donuts are back. I just got a coupon in the mail for 99 cent apple cider and the candy aisle of my grocery store has taken on a distinctive orange and yellow hue. And probably most glaringly, two weeks from tonight I will be sitting around the dinner table with my family in Pittsburgh to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.

And despite all that, it kind of still feels like summer just started. Like two minutes ago we were driving with the top down, headed to Washington for our Memorial Day celebrations.

Time is a funny thing.

Because way back in April, time seemed to stop. The days felt like years - every moment an eternity -  and I thought that maybe I was destined to live in April for the rest of my life. But I wasn't, of course. Because time moves on, and time heals, and April became May and as the world came back alive after a frigid winter and a spring too cold for all of winter's ice to melt, so did I.

And summer started with its sweaty days and balmy nights and I felt better than I had in months, and I had summer to thank for that. And even though summer seemed to fly, I tried to be present in my moments and in my days. To make memories of the season that brought me back to life; that made me laugh and smile and appreciate the place where I was, where I live my life and the people I have chosen to live it with. And I was. And I did. 

But time marches on.

So here we are. Moving into the season where the world turns golden brown, the air is spicy, football is back, and jackets are necessary, even though it feels like summer just started yesterday. But today, I feel ok about that. Because for the first time in a long time, I am happy and healthy and focused on what is happening right now; not what I want to happen or wish would happen or what might happen at some point in the future, but right now.

Like a picture of storm-clouds on sunset.

So the sun can set as early as it wants and I'll even open my coat closet for the first time in months. I'll wear a sweatshirt when I sit outside, and switch my Saturday morning coffee from iced to hot. I'll pull out my long-sleeved running shirts and watch as my gardener switches from lawn mower to rake.

And these things are ok. These things are good.

Because this is where I am right now. And these are the moments that matter.

Lazy Sunday

Rainy day.

Couch. Sweatshirt. Coffee. Blanket. TV.

Perfect.

Loving The Colder Half of the Year

The grass crunched under my feet as I walked across the front yard to my car this morning.

I keep meaning to start using our back door, since it's both closer to the coffee maker that I use before I leave the house and closer to my car, but I used the front door for the first few months we lived in our house while our kitchen was still under construction and the back door inaccessible, and old habits die hard.

I stopped under our big tree with the golden leaves, and stood in the brilliant sunshine and breathed in the clear, cold air that was left behind in the wake of our first real frost of the season.

And for a minute I wished that you could take a picture of a feeling.

While the entire tri-state area is busy bemoaning this first, quick brush with the winter season that is just over the horizon, I love everything about it.

I love that the cold air is coming in while the brightly-hued fall leaves are still on the trees.

I love the way that a few snowflakes look as they settle on my favorite coat. The one I only get to wear during those brief fall days where it is too cold for a trench coat but not quite cold enough to go full down.

I love waking up in the morning to the hiss of my furnace as it heats our bedroom to a perfect 65 degrees.

I love the first shock of cold when I walk outside to run, and seeing my breath puff out as the chilly wind hits my face and my muscles warm.

And I love the temperature clock on 6th avenue, telling me that the time for gloves, scarves and cozy sweaters is here.

In a few months when the temperature is in the single digits, I might find myself dreaming of the balmy days of summer, but for today, I love this cooler half of the year; fall and these few brushes of cold, reminding me that winter is on its way.

This Is Fall

I live here.

I love fall.

Happy Friday.

Happy Friday. Happy Weekend.

This week has been insane.

Between three straight days of client meetings and all the work that went along with them, when my alarm went off this morning, I seriously considered just staying in bed and tuning it all out.

But like a good soldier, I got up and got ready for my day.

I was in slow motion as I left my house, the exhaustion lingering.

But.

It's hard to stay tired when you walk out in the morning to this.

Happy Friday. Happy Weekend.

And The Seasons They Go Round and Round

Ever since this morning, Joni Mitchell's The Circle Game has been playing in my head on repeat. It has been one of my favorite songs since I first heard it my very first summer at sleep-away camp when I was seven years old. 

It stuck with me, this song, even as I grew up. I always thought its message was hopeful. That time may pass, but there will always be new dreams.

This morning, I was a little early for my train. So for a few minutes before the train came rumbling into the station, I stood on the platform and looked out at the familiar view. The trees, the traffic on the Bronx River Parkway, the White Plains entrance to the Bronx River Pathway.

My view. My home.

The one year anniversary of our move is coming up in a couple of weeks. And as I took in the trees just starting to turn, it occurred to me that I have now been standing on that train platform for four seasons. Looking back, it seems utterly unfathomable that an entire year has passed, but I guess the proof is in the pictures. 

There is something about the view from the train platform that pulls at me, and several times over the past twelve months I have found myself pulling out my camera as I waited for the train. And as I was looking through the pictures this morning, I realized that I have a picture from each of the four seasons - our first four seasons in our brand new home.

I wasn't much of a photographer before we moved, but since we left the city, I am obsessed with documenting all the moments of our new life. So on the eve of the first anniversary of our move to the suburbs, here is my view from the train platform, as one season blends into the next, and our roots begin to grow.

Winter 2013

Spring 2013

Summer 2013

Fall 2013

Did We Skip A Month And I Didn't Notice?

Labor Day was less than five weeks ago, we have barely had any real fall days yet, and Halloween isn't for another three weeks. Yet, if you've been walking the streets of New York City these past few days, you might think that it was the middle of November, rather than the end of October.

Case in point:

Last Thursday I walked from Grand Central to work, minding my own business, absorbed in the last chapter of Amor Towles' The Rule of Civility. Now I don't generally read as I walk, but my law firm book club was meeting at lunch, and I really needed to finish the book before I started my day. So there I was, crossing 51st street, when I very nearly tripped over a mound of wires lying on the sidewalk.

I looked up to find that the mound was actually a giant pile of Christmas lights, and there were similar mounds in front of every tree on the street. Apparently NYC decided to hang Christmas lights early this year.

I went about my day and forgot about the morning's early holiday brush, but now, every time I walk up 51st Street, I have to remind myself that Christmas is, in fact, quite a ways away, and not exactly just around the corner.

And today it got more complicated. This afternoon, I stopped by Papyrus at lunchtime because my best friend turns 30 on Saturday, and I was looking for an appropriately fabulous card to accompany the present I will be giving her Saturday night at her birthday dinner. The habitually crowded store was even more so today, and it took my brain a second to register the reason why.

When the crowd parted, and I was finally able to make it all the way into the store, I was faced with two tables of this:

It seems someone decided that it's holiday card season already.

So faced with this overwhelming evidence I have to ask: Did we skip a month of the calendar that I didn't notice? I mean, I've been pretty busy lately what with all the Jewish holidays and the family and travel that accompany those manic weeks, so it's not out of the question that some newsworthy events would fail to ping my radar screen. But I think I would realize if we suddenly went from September to November, right?

It's not that I don't like the holiday season, I really do. But there are some important things still on the horizon before we get there. Like our anniversary. And our first suburban Halloween. And the one-year anniversary of our move. And my best friend's wedding. And the once in a lifetime "Thanksgivukah" in Pittsburgh.

I know that holiday excitement gets earlier and earlier every year, but if it's all the same to you, I'll just enjoy the here and now for a little while longer.

Circling For a Landing

As my plane flew over Queens yesterday, drifting in for a landing at LaGuardia Airport, I had only one thought on my mind.

It's been a whirlwind.

I've been on a sprint since the fall Jewish Holidays began, just a few days after Labor Day. With four holidays over four weeks celebrated in three different places, I'm sufficiently exhausted. September was a delightful month, filled with family, fun, food and travel, but I'm ready for a little downtime, and I'm ready to be back here on this blog, writing away.

One of the best things about this past month was that, for the duration of each holiday, I was forced to disconnect. To turn off my phone, shut down my computer, and to be present.

But there is one thing about being disconnected for three straight days. While I was off the grid, the rest of the world certainly wasn't, and each week I turned on my phone on Saturday night - having turned it off on Wednesday evening - to find that one can miss quite a lot in 72 hours.

No week was that more true than in this past one.

I turned on my phone this past Saturday night, logged in to all my various accounts, and let the e-mails and updates come rolling in. When I clicked over to Facebook and Twitter I noticed that I had approximately 40 missed notifications, way more than the one or two I was expecting.

Because while I was unplugged, the Top 13 for Blogger Idol was announced, AND ONE OF THEM IS ME!!!!

Since the Top 13 was announced on Thursday, and I couldn't respond until Saturday night, the messages trying to find me got more frantic as the days went on. I read through them all and frantically responded to all the Facebook posts and Twitter messages that no, I was not lost, and to the e-mails with some variation of "I'm here please don't disqualify me."

With my very first Blogger Idol post halfway done, and the schedule copied to my calendar, I am a tiny bit nervous, but also unbelievably excited and incredibly honored to be a part of this competition.

September is over, the holidays are in the past, but it seems that the fun is just beginning.

So stay tuned. It's time to rock and roll (and write).

Happy New Year, 5774

A weird thing happened over Labor Day weekend. The three days normally reserved for barbecues, swimming pools, and final beach trips were instead, for many people of my acquaintance, filled with apple picking. 

Yes, apple picking.

The beloved annual outing normally reserved for a crisp late-September day took place for many this year as summer poured out the last of its steamy heat. Not because they relished the idea of sweating their way through an apple orchard, but rather because apples are an integral part of the Jewish new year, otherwise known as Rosh Hashanah, which, this year, falls strangely early on the Jewish calendar.

Essentially just an extension of the Labor Day long weekend this year, Rosh Hashanah begins tonight, approximately two weeks earlier than the norm. Along with the first night of Chanukah and Thanksgiving falling out on the same day, the freakishly early Jewish holidays have something to do with the way that the Jewish calendar is slowly moving out of sync with the solar calendar.

It is so unusual, in fact, that last time Rosh Hashanah fell out this early in September was in 1899, and the next time will be 2089. So it has never happened in our lifetime, and unless I live to be 107, it will never again happen in mine. 

And the Chanukah situation is even more fascinating. Try and get your head around this. Thanksgiving is the fourth Thursday in November, which means that the latest it could ever be is November 28th. November 28th is also the absolute earliest that Chanukah could ever be. Because of the aforementioned syncing of the lunar and solar calendars, the last time this could have happened would have been 1861, which was two years before Thanksgiving was formally established in the United States, so it has never, ever happened before. And apparently, if the Jewish calendar is never modified in any way, the next time that Chanukah will fall on Thursday, November 28th will be the year 79,811. So, basically, never.

These, folks, are historic times.

These are also family times, times of reflection, and times of celebration.

Tonight, as the sun begins to set, I will light candles and welcome in this most important month of the Jewish calendar. For four successive weeks, we will celebrate four different holidays, and come out the other side of this month ready to start again, to begin as we mean to go on.

Because of the holidays, my time here on this blog will be limited over these next weeks. I'll look forward to being back full force in October. But until then, for those of you who are celebrating, I wish you a sweet and peaceful new year filled with health, happiness and success. Or, as we say in Hebrew, Shana Tova. 

The Teasing Edge of Fall

You have to love a week that goes from this:

To this:

In less than 24 hours.

Today I walked out of my house, and I could feel fall's teasing edge in the air, reminding me of what is just around the corner.

And while I am looking forward to a few more weeks of summer heat, barbecues, and my trip to the shore, I can't help but get a little excited for the crisp, cool days and spicy scents of my most favorite season.