My Daughter’s Rocky 1st Day at Camp (3-Minute Mommy Peptalk)
Keeping the faith under challenging circumstances. My teenage daughter started a new summer program today. I had heard from a friend that it is an incredible camp and her daughter loved it. It cost a lot of money. But if it’s that incredible, I thought, I’d sign her up. And then, this morning, at 8:30 […]
Read MoreMy Great-Grandma Jenny’s 1934 Trip to Palestine and Stalinist USSR
As I already told you, my parents have been decluttering their home this year and have been discovering all sorts of historic treasures. The most dramatic discovery, IMHO, was of a travel diary written by my great-grandmother and namesake, Jenny (Celia) Bernstein. I’ve heard some stories about this great-grandma from recorded interviews with my grandmother […]
Read MoreThe Shiva After a Child’s Tragic Death
Yesterday I got tragic news, the 19-year-old son of our former neighbors, after only 3 months in the IDF, committed su icide last week. So yesterday, a friend and I went to the shiva. I knew the father quite well from shopping at the store he owns. The mother and their late son, less so. […]
Read More“How to Travel with Parents” by My Father, Age 11
This year, my parents have been decluttering their home, which has included going through the many boxes they received from my grandmother’s home after she passed away. In those boxes, my parents discovered historic treasures–a silver engraving of the invitation from my grandmother’s wedding, my great-grandmother’s travel diary from her 1934 trip to Palestine and […]
Read MoreMourning Fanconi’s Anemia Warrior Ruthie Saunders A”H (4-Minute Mommy Peptalk)
37 years ago, Sharon Saunders and her now ex-husband, Jonathan, had no children of their own. And they decided to adopt a baby girl. Not a regular, healthy baby girl. But rather a beautiful, adorable, and also very sick baby girl with a terrible genetic disease called Fanconi’s Anemia. When Sharon and Jonathan adopted her, […]
Read MoreWhat Happened to My Big Plans?
I had big plans for today. But on the way home from Yaakov’s appointment at the speech therapist this morning, I was feeling weak, queasy, feverish. So instead of all my important and lofty plans, I crawled into bed instead. And as I fell asleep I thought of something I once heard: The most important […]
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