How To Survive My Meshugeh Family...With the help of a little Xanax

"Does this thing need a quarter to work?"...My meshugeh mom and the internet

2010-05-24T05:09:00.002-04:00

The computer to my mother is a mystery, the internet, a big black hole. She still wonders if you have to put a quarter into the computer to make it work, seriously! Since my mother will be loosing her part time job very soon, I offered (why I don't know!) to help train her on using the computer. For some reason she thought that most offices still use typewriters and carbon paper.

As I watched her get ready for her first lesson I couldn't help but realize that I was watching my very own episode of The Carol Burnett show, with Ms. Wiggins getting ready to learn how to use a computer! My mother is now a 14 year old trapped in a 64 year old's body. Popping her gum like a teenager, she tried to get comfortable in front of the computer. The chair went up, it went down, it went up, it went down..this could have gone on all day , finally it was just the right height. "They just don't make chairs the way they used to" She said. Hmm.."You mean the way our furniture was made when I was younger?" I thought. Like I said before, my mother was very crafty, ok she thought she was very crafty. She loved her staple gun. There was nothing like going to sit down on the sofa and being stuck by pins or staples. Yes, it was the year she decided to recover the sofa herself. Fond memories of that whole experience swarmed through my head. I can remember going to the fabric store to pick out the fabric. She was going to do this herself!

I remember coming home from school one day only to find our white sofa was now blue, with some strange white piping around the cushions. I threw my books down, and fell into the couch. "Ouch!" I screamed as I saw blood trickling down my leg! There were pins sticking out of the side of some of the cushions on the sofa. "Oh, I couldn't get all the slipcovers to fit so I altered them a bit" She told me. She altered them with pins and her trusty staple gun. So, from that day forward we knew what cushions to sit on and what cushions to leave for guests. It was finally a few years later that we had a blessing of getting a new sofa, of course, only to be covered by dog hair that consistently clung to most of the pillows, but I was not complaining, at least there were no pins poking out of the sides!
I swear, my life is being filmed for some insane reality show that I just have not found out about yet! Once she finally was situated in the chair, her dragon lady nails (with only bits of brownish nail polish left of course!) ready to type, and chewing gum working a mile a minute in her mouth. She whipped out her notebook to take notes, like I was teaching a world history class!
Wait! Hold up! When did this happen? When did my mother become the student and I am the teacher? Memories of me being a little girl , looking up at her to guide me swept through my mind. Oh , wait a minute , that actually never happened. As little girls my sister and I were never actually pushed to learn anything or do anything. The only thing my sister was ever pushed into was the closet! Yes, its sad but true, my sister was so quiet and shy that one day a visitor opened the bedroom door and she was accidentally pushed into the closet behind it. Now any normal person would have immediately screamed, or opened the door and let themselves out. My sister, was just not that way. She actually waited , and waited, and waited, until my mother came looking for her. "I didn't want anyone to get mad" She said. Wow! So much for teaching confidence huh? Not to worry, my sister has since changed..a lot. There is no way anyone can NOT hear my sister now. There are actually times when she talks so much, I want to push her back into that closet!
Ok, back to lesson number one. The gum is popping, the dragon lady nails are ready to go, but one problem. "Where do you start this thing? "She asked "Do you have to put some coins in it or something?" Please, tell me she is kidding?! Oy, This is going to be a very long afternoon!

Happy Mother's Day...Oy Vey!

2010-05-09T12:47:00.000-04:00

Mother's day, the day to appreciate and thank your mom for giving you life. You don't see many Mothers day cards saying thank you for giving me life and bringing me into such a Meshugeh family...I wonder why? I bet the greeting card business could make a lot more money being real instead of the fantasy that everyone's mom is like a princess in a fairy tale, giving life, love, and homemade cookies when you come home from school...that would be nice though!
I was greeted this morning with a great breakfast in bed from my son, it made me really think about when I was a kid..I remember one year giving my mom a used nail file from her make up drawer..that was an awesome gift! Believe me , she really needed it. I don't know why most Jewish women(ok maybe its just my mom)think they have to have these really long, dragon claw , nails! Yes, these wonders of beauty were all real , no fake nails here. She could have literally taken your eye out with one of these babies. They did come in handy when we would catch fireflies... she would dig out the lights and tell us to put them on our fingers like rings! OMG how horrible! There we would all be catching our lovely fireflies, and next thing you know the claw of death was digging the lights out so we could have shiny, pieces of bug flesh on our fingers..oh yeah rings! "It doesn't hurt them at all" She would say...ah yeah right!
My wonderful nail file present reminds me of the year one of my distant cousins on my father's side gave me underwear with garters for Christmas ..I was eight! They were a little different that's for sure, every year they had this strange Christmas party..they had all converted to Christian Scientists..Oy Vey ! It was that present that should have told my parents something like..um hey maybe this guy is a sexual predator that likes little Jewish girls to sit on his lap and give underwear with garters for presents! Hmm..just throwing that out there! My dad's side of the family was a little different but they were only cousins of his so what the heck...I do have fond memories of my Grandmother on my dad's side, now that could be because she died when I was still young ..but I'll go with it! She used to let me clean her windows to pass the time(ok, I was a strange kid!), make coffee for her and her bingo buddies from the senior apartments she lived in, and sometimes I even got to take the trash to the incinerator! Wow!!! I told you I was a weird kid..of course there was the one time I almost drown in the pool because I was left alone , not knowing how to swim in the pool. I was sinking to the bottom of an endless ocean of pool water as they drank their Sanka and smoked their parliament 100's! I'm sure her neighbors had some really good gossip to share with her that was more important than me, at the moment. Not to worry, nothing like some Shop n Bag brand cream of mushroom soup and a tuna sandwich to make it better!
So, as I sit here and think about the wonderful years of my past I hear my mother's voice "Can you pass the plate of bread..hmm..those are really nice salt and pepper shakers. I could get those to fit in my purse" Yes, I made the mistake of taking my little Jewish Mother to a wonderful restaurant in town. I should have called them ahead of time to say "lock down all salt and pepper shakers, and don't bring us any bread..because that too can fit in her purse
Happy Mother's Day! Oy Vey!

First Step - Realize and Accept this is not the typical Jewish Family...then get a script for xanax....

2010-05-06T21:41:00.000-04:00

My family...definitely not the typical Jewish family...yes I am finally ready to admit it....I have a Meshugeh family! Yes, its true... I've been thinking recently about my childhood and the signs that I perhaps overlooked...hmm, let's see I'm remembering the house where I grew up..at least for most of my life. The more I relive some events , the more I realize that what you think is normal as a child , you see as seriously messed up when you are older! I can see each room of that house in my mind, memories of my family came flooding back. Ok, so it was dysfunctional but who cares I can pretend we were normal. Well we were normal at one time. A time that seemed like one hundred years ago ...

Thinking about the kitchen I could still smell the old coffee(thats been warmed up 3 or 4 times in the past day or two!) and cigarette aroma that lingered in the house, not to mention the dog hair that still clung to every sofa cushion in the house....The living room I have to laugh I can still see the window blinds,half drawn up and one side still clinging to life fixed in the way only my mother could fix things..with a toothpick and tape. Yes, my mother was crafty. Give her a roll of tape and she could fix just about anything, or better yet hand her her staple gun and she was in business. My dad liked the drill. Everything could be fixed by drilling a hole , the “easy to hang” paper towel holder definitely needed to be drilled in the kitchen wall. Doesn't everybody drill holes for paper towel holders? Things that seemed funny then were only clues of just how abnormal my family was, but did I care? Not then. Who would have known that years later the true craziness of my family would creep out.

Ah..the dining room...thoughts of all the dinners my mother made only for us to make fun of cast a shadow ... The funny thing is, when I was a little girl I thought she was the best cook in the world. As I got older, I realized that macaroni and cheese baked with ketchup really wasn't all that special..and meatballs..I believe they are suppose to be cooked completely. It wasn't all bad, I remember some of the good dinners we had as a family, a real family at least I thought. The chairs had been redone in some retro faux studded leather that was hip in the early 1980's. My mother had this great idea when she was in one of her crafty modes. “I'm going to mirror the wall in the dining room” she said to us one night. “It will make the room look larger!” My mother believed for some reason that she had to mirror rooms to make them look larger. We all trekked down to the local home improvement(ok maybe it was Kmart) store one weekend where she found just what she was looking for. “Ah, yes that's it!” She exclaimed.

She bought about 75 small square glass mirrors to put up on just one wall of the dining room, easy enough we all thought. Now no shopping trip would be complete without either changing the price sticker or arguing with the salesmen about why an item was on the wrong shelf and she should have it for the price on the shelf, whether it is wrong or not!

That was my mom, the quintessential South Philly Jewish woman, always looking for a bargain or how she could get a bargin by pulling one over on the salesperson. Don't get me wrong my mom wasn't a thief , “Stealing the extra rolls on the table at a restaurant or taking the extra sugar packets was not stealing!” she would tell me. Besides she learned from the best, her mother. (I'm not even going to start with my grandmother yet that deserves a few pages!)She just believed that she should get what was fair and deserving to her, and as she said “these prices are all made up!”

We all piled into the red Thunderbird that my dad gave my mom the last Christmas, yes Christmas. Although we were a “nice Jewish family” it seems we liked to celebrate Christmas a whole lot more than Channukah. Once we got home my mom couldn't wait to tear into those boxes of mirrors and start putting them up ...with super glue. Super glue was also my moms best friend, but she was soon to find out that she would have to use something made specially for this type of wall hanging.

It was at dinner one night that we all discovered why superglue was not the best choice for hanging the mirrors. While passing the rolls(yes they were from the restaurant that we ate at the night before) my mom turned to the wall she was sitting next to only to have a finger sliced open by a falling mirror. Two of the mirrors clung to life on the wall , dangling by the shear strength of the superglue as one fell on my mom's hand.....Ah its only going to get better from here!