My Passover Parenting Fail

This piece originally ran at Kveller.com.

On the way home from Sunday school, my tiny children asked so many uncomfortable questions. They asked about God, and death, and bad guys, and then something even worse. That Egyptian child from the tenth plague was just temporarily frozen, I told them. Once Pharaoh realized his mistake all the children were fine. Then I desperately tried to change the subject, but it kept coming back.

My children watched Prince of Egypt in Sunday school this weekend. They didn’t watch a short excerpt either. They watched a pretty big chunk of the movie and it was nowhere near age appropriate. I was there and in hindsight I wish I had followed my gut and pulled my children out of the room. Sometimes I wonder if I am being oversensitive, all of the other parents were chatting in the other room. I was the only one in the room wringing my hands.

If I had previewed the movie, I wouldn’t have let my children watch it. When I asked the other mother who is a volunteer teacher about it she said it was very gentle. Before the scene on the plagues, I asked her how the movie handles the tenth plague.  She said, “Oh, it is very tasteful. It will go over their heads. It is just like a wind storm that comes through.” I don’t blame the teacher, other parent volunteers had canceled at the last minute and she was doing her best to fill in.

So I left my little ones seated, my tiny new 3-year-old and my sensitive nearly 6-year-old.  But when the scene came, it made my stomach wrench. It focused on the Pharoah’s adorable innocent son being hit by this creepy wind storm from God, and well, you can imagine. Next the small boy is covered by a white sheet and the Pharoah says to Moses, “Ok, you can go now” or something.  The crossing of the sea was rough too, but nothing compared to the boy with the sheet.

On the car ride home my 3-year-old said, “Why did God dead that boy.” These are moments I question everything, why do we even pass on scary stories generation after generation. Clearly, I do not believe it should be done through a video. I could have just reached for the remote, hit pause and suggested a story or game, but when I am in a community I don’t want to always be the trouble maker. It would have been better for all the children. I could have, but I didn’t.

It is so frustrating because Sunday school is a big effort. We rushed breakfast and drove 30 minutes away. And I have a feeling I will be digging out of this hole for a long time.  I wound up fabricating this lie that God was just trying to teach Pharoah a lesson. And all of the Egyptian children were happy in the end too.  My 3-year-old wanted to believe it, she kept repeating, “so God was doing a joke that wasn’t silly. The child did not really get dead-ed.”

My 5-year-old sort of believed me, but not fully.  And I don’t know if I should have been lying or not, but I do think we shouldn’t have even been having that conversation. And since we were all in the car together, I could not have a slightly older kid conversation with my son.  I did the best I could with my scrappy answers while trying to keep my eyes on the road. Parenting is hard, and messy, and this morning I am pretty sure I missed the mark.

 

Shabbat and Farming Piece

Those of us in in the mid-Atlantic are hopeful that tonight will bring our first real snowstorm of the winter.  We need the moisture and I am ready for a nice mid-week snow day. Maybe it will give me a chance for a real post tomorrow if we don’t lose power.

In the meantime, I want to share an article I have up on Huffington Post Religion today about the challenges of trying to do better at observing Shabbat beyond Friday night during the farm season.  Please jump over there to read it and feel free to leave a comment there if you like.  This article was a long time coming, and wound up having lots of different incarnations (too many in fact).  I am happy to see if finally out in the world.

Thanks for reading and your support!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check out Food Politic – A Newborn Journal

Since I seem to be becoming a regular on Twitter (follow me @thelettuceedge)  I am finding out about millions of great things that are happening in the world.  I think that is where I learned about a new online journal called “Food Politic”.  They are up and running and the site looks really great.  So, check them out in general, support them if you like and read my new article about why the farm bill was such a disappointment which was posted there today.  You might recognize the photo.

And, I am so pleased that the Huffington Post decided to run the article yesterday.  I hope to continue writing for them, what an amazingly engaged community of readers they have.  It is a little overwhelming.

Chickweed and my Jewish Farming Retreat

Last weekend my family attended this amazing retreat in Baltimore, the Beit Midrash at the Pearlstone Center.  You can read my article about the retreat in the Jewish Daily Forward here.

I have to say  absolutely love pluralistic Jewish events, especially when we get to talk about farming.  I have been thinking a lot more about the idea of shmitta, the once in every 7 year sabbatical from farming and I am sure I will be writing more about that soon.

One very compelling piece of shmitta is the idea that if you had to feed your family without any farming, you would be more aware of all of the wild plants available to you. And it would also seem required to teach this plant literacy to your children.   I heard that there are some people trying to include a wild edible plant dish in every Shabbat meal as sort of a practice or way of envisioning shmitta.  I love that idea of that practice.

Here is some wonderful nutritious chickweed already greening up on our farm in February.  It steams down to very little, but it is delicious in salad or soups.

 

 

 

Hoop Dreams

So, we seem to always be building or rebuilding a new hoophouse around here.  And with each one, we pin our new hopes for an amazing farm year.   I remember talking to one of the Mennonite farmers we work with one winter day when he was finishing a new hoophouse.  He said, “I had a dream that the house was filled with cucumbers strung all the way up to the roof, and I just walked through with the children picking and eating them.”  Sweet dream.

One of our other houses has the plastic removed because it is time to replace it.  A neighbor came by this week to ask if we were planning to use it, he was hoping to buy it and move it to his new garden around the corner.  But we still have plans for that hoophouse too (it is where we start seedlings).  I told him how to build a smaller, affordable garden version and he left with some hoop dreams of his own.   He talked about all the plants his wife would raise this summer.

On the last of the freezing cold days, it is nice to imagine our filling hoophouses and garden beds.  This year, I am hoping to make a dedicated children’s garden, finally get around to naming our hoophouses with whimsical signs, and growing lots of great food.  I am also dreaming up some classroom space in our newest hoophouse so we can offer some garden workshops this year.

I will add some photos of our newest house under construction, but in the meantime here is one of our older houses covered in snow.