Friday afternoon to Saturday morning

I have mixed feelings regarding weekends.

 I 've had a hard time sleeping this Friday night,my brother wrote me on the computer as he does every Friday, still i could not go back to sleep ..too many thoughts kept me up  , it's good to know someone is there to share thoughts with.. 

When you work you look foreward to the weekends, you know the term "thank God it's friday!" , i remember the poster with the kitten hanging on a rope in one place i used work ..

Now that i am a stay at home mom i know that weekends are the hardest in a way..

It used to be also a difficult time for me when i was still living with my husband  as i knew that even though weekends ment family time ,that we get to go someplace and we have had our share of outings with the years as the children grew my husband became more difficult, consulted me less on what the options were and while i remember a great outing one Sunday to Appanzeller land , sitting in a family restaurant that allocated space for children so that the three could play in the play room or go outside on the swings and watch the sheep near by while my husband and i enjoyed our coffee , that was last autumn , there came many more times when it became clear who calls the shots, my husband got to decide where we were going and if i wanted to do something else he would just leave me to it and take off with the kids.

I was happy to have my time alone but gradually grew to resent that barrier and that the children grew to see "powerful papa "l and "melancholoy mama "who had little to say ..

My husband and i enjoyed watching movies but i began to realize that he got to choose..he got hooked on "six feet under" and while he got the series in the original English so i would not have to listen to the dubbed German version i began to resent the series..

At first i enjoyed the characters but then i began to consider my own views and feelings on the topic of death and felt that i did not appreciate seeing death presented in such a way ..

Watching t.v. or Dvd's were probobly the only times my husband and i did not fight or argue and the Sunday afternoon drives ..whose destination he decided.

Friday night was also my small oasis from the European world back to the holy land and its custom of keeping the sabbath which starts on Friday.

It used to be that in Israel everything closed down on Friday around noon time and remained closed till the ending of the sabbath day on Saturday night or sunday when people went back to work and though i had lived quite a few years in the states i still missed that Sabbath feeling when all the stores were closed and people took walks and we could do some great people watching, visit and just slow down and look around.

last time i was in Israel there were a few small shops open on the main street and lots of things to do on the Sabbath day including taking great trips in nature ,we had to drive to visit my brother who had moved to another city and have the Sabbath meal with him ..still it was a Sabbath meal, there was a father blessing on the wine and bread and a mother serving a 7 course meal at the end of which the children grow too wild and the adults try to talk anyway about this and that.

When my brother and i were teenagers and we lived in Israel  we used to go to my grandparents down the street and have a meal there with my grandmother talking about the holocaust and my grandfather about world politics. My grandparents kept the Sabbath which meant they did not turn on the television or radio so we would sit and talk  , all the attention was on the conversation and there were great talks and lots of learning , i miss that time..when you dropped by on a Saturday my grandfather was lying on the couch and resting with the weekend newspaper and always greeting us with  a warm and kind smile , that was a time for family and friends and talks ..even my grandmother who was always on the go slowed down her pace and sat in the balcony by the fig tree talking ..

I started to do a Sabbath meal at my home right around the time my daughter turned from a baby to a child..our first apartment in Switzerland was my husband's bachelor place next to a Jewish nursing home..there was a synagogue there and i could see the people going to and from the synagogue on the Sabbath day and felt a small emotional pinch.

Right around that time i started to lay some ground rules , told my husband he would have to eat his cardon Blu pork somewhere else and not store it in our fridge...i started to buy Kosher meat, at first only beef but then moved on to incluide chicken as well , the various diseases , crazy cow and chicken flu helped me decide to prefer Kosher meat since i knew that meat was strictly inspected for everything ..

My husband actually enjoyed the Friday night meals i made though he complained i made too much food ..and later that it took too long till we ate though i did only a short version of  the Friday night service.

My husband's  family did not fuss with food at all , even on Christmas they would serve simple cheese fondues and meat was a luxery item ...the variety was limited and desert was a store bought cookie with your coffee..i used to starve whenever we had gone there for Christmas and so that was actually the main reason why we stayed with the Jewish tradition , i just was not too tempted by the holiday spirit that did not include a good meal ..that was too strange for me having lived in New England and having experienced thanks giving and christmas with friends i knew the way to my heart went through my stomach ..

My mother in law kept expressing her wonder as to why with all that i have to do, three young children and household i bothered to bake my own cookies..

Friday nights began to become stressful as the babies  grew to toddlers and needed more rules , my husband began to openly resent what he thougth of as fuss and expressed it openly and loudly..so that the day of peace became a battle ground..

In Russia , where my paternal family comes from, the sabbath day and Jewish holidays were a difficult time for jews as that was the time the "Pogroms", murdering, and destruction by the local thugs  provoked by the church and Czar took place( to distract the local population from the economy and politics by using the jews as scapegoats)                 it was in  1881 during one of the worst Porgrom attacks on jews in Ukraine called "the storm in the desert" the father of my great grandfather had decided to leave Ukraine , made a break of the unbroken chain of 42 rabbis in the family and concluded  jews must work their own  land ,and sought  a life as a farmer in the holy land  he endured the long trip to the land of Israel.

It was in September 2005 that i had endured one rage attacks too many , my husband had refused to attend the jewish new year meal i had prepared and invited a girlfriend and her nonjewish husband to  and instead went to a lecture on limits in education .. how ironic..he then proceeded to try and do everything in his power to sabotage the jewish  high holidays..

The jewish new year is a time to take inventory and think about the deeds done the whole year , it is a melancholy holiday time , the prayer is very serious and the atmosphere goes according to the seriousness of the circumstances, deeds are weighed and judgement is soon passed  on the people standing to face their verdict  "who by water, who by fire"..

I enjoy listening to the melodies of the  prayers at this time though there is always additional stress having to dress children in their best cloths and make sure they behave well enough not to disturb the people occupied in serious prayer, asking forgivenss and attempting to get written in the book of life.

Last year i reached my breaking point , i knew that i could no longer live in the atmosphere of violence and as soon as i could i went to the court and applied for a separation order.

It took till around Christmas for my husband to leave ..he still went with us to celebrate Chanuka with the Lubbavitzer chassidic jews that run holiday activities for the local jewish community..my husband always admired the religious jews who had reminded him of "Fiddler on the roof" ,he liked lighting the candles with the children and supervised the fire , we even sat down and had a coffee but we both knew this was the end of the road for us, this would be our last family coffee time together, the next coffee we would have would be in the court from one of those espresso automatic  machines .

The first time we had Friday night meal together just me and the chidren felt strange without my husband  even though he did not do the religious blessings which traditionally the father does but i did , playing both the man role (blessing ) and the woman's role  (baking challa bread and cooking the meal)

still my husband sat and we had a meal together ,more or less in peace..trouble always started the following morning when my husband wanted to do things and i wanted to stay home and keep the sabbath to some extend anyway and to rest..he resented that and would throw fits of rage that would last a good part of the morning and sometimes ended with violence, he would hit me or throw objects at me in a way i could not understand if it was not for my knowledge of Jewish history and how the local thugs in Russia used to take their rage out on the local Jewish population..i knew there would be a "pogrom " coming and it almost never failed to occur.

This Friday i think i made a small step towards progress..the children helped, my small son set the table , placing plates,and glasses for everyone , my daughter had walked the dog, my middle son cleaned the boys' room ..it felt good to sit at the table, the Challa bread came out of the oven warm and soft , the chicken and potatoes were delicious, the chocolate chip muffins i baked at the last minute were a success as well.

Slowly calm comes to our abode,slowly, there are still incidents, the boys tend to explode at times, but i can only hope they are learning to take responsiblity and to consider the consequence of their action on the other people living with them..

My husband has the children on Sundays and Saturdays are always tough, i have to keep the boys busy , i allow them to play and kick a ball, i am not religious in the way that would allow complete rest on the Sabbath day, i just want to sit around the table , sing a song inviting the angels to come in and enjoy a feeling of peace even though i know that as soon as the children wake up my work will begin and it will never end ,not stop  not even on a Saturday.