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10 Adar I 5763 - February 12, 2003 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Home and Family


The Late Bloomer
a story by Sudy Rosengarten

Part I

Everyone knew that Naomi was a fiery "Zionist," but for her to actually pick up and move to Israel with nine children... for that you didn't have to be a "Zionist;" for that you had to be crazy!

"Poor Aharon!" was the way his seven sisters expressed disapproval of their only brother's wife. "You'd think that after so many children, she'd already have grown up..." So each sister solemnly shook her head, clucked her tongue and sadly bemoaned Aharon. He really had his hands full; so many children and a wife, who, instead of trying to help her husband attain some peace of mind... Nu, better not to talk.

That Aharon was never sure if he'd come home to the right house at night was already an old family joke, with the furniture seldom in the same place at night as it had been when he'd left in the morning. But those gusts of energy were the least of Aharon's troubles. It was when Naomi wasn't careening around at breakneck velocity that he knew to expect trouble. Because those were the times that Naomi stopped to think, and thinking was a dangerous activity for Naomi to engage in because it usually triggered the question for what purpose had she been created when all she ever did was wipe babies' noses and bottoms, attempt to crawl out from under a mountain of laundry, try not to drown in sinkfuls of dishes and restaurant size pots and act like a policeman, judge and henchman for a bunch of kids who never stood in one place long enough to catch and smack up good.

Not that she didn't love them all! G-d forbid! When there wasn't a new baby on the way, she'd send Aharon scurrying to rebbes for a blessing.

But children weren't enough, she claimed. She needed food for the mind, intellectual stimulation, a challenge to her creative spirit. Such declarations, coming more often as the family grew, and punctuated with passion, tears and hiccoughs, would leave Aharon in confusion. He would scratch his beard and ask bewildered, "But what could be more creative than having babies?"

Naomi would sniffle and shake her head. "No, it isn't enough." Aharon would look at his wife and resort to the only argument that made any sense to him, "My mother never talked that way." Nevertheless, he subsequently ended up scouting the neighborhood for a babysitter who was mature, kind, efficient, loving, caring and foolish enough to think that she could tackle the nine while Naomi, once more alive, full of pep, vigor and guilt ran off to find fulfillment.

Sometimes she attended lectures, sometimes she took courses, sometimes she just sat on a bench in Park Plaza for an hour or two, trying to absorb the beauty of columned Gothic structures all around, walking back home along Eastern Parkway in piles of crunching autumn leaves.

After that, Naomi decided to go back to teaching.

Between feeding and diapering babies, pinching tomatoes on Joe's Fruit Truck and talking on the phone every single day to every single one of Aharon's seven sisters, Naomi would disappear into the basement with a pile of seforim containing all the commentaries ever published on Yirmeyohu, to prepare her lessons for the Girls' High School classes that she taught.

For some reason related to the fact that heat rises, the thermostat in the basement could never be coaxed higher than 45 degrees. By the time Naomi came back upstairs, she'd have to sit on the kitchen radiator to thaw out, with the children administering hot water bottles to her frost-bitten toes, while Aharon, standing with sefer in hand, elaborated on the difficult passages of the commentaries that had stumped Naomi.

But in the meantime, letters were beginning to arrive from Aharon's parents in Israel where they'd settled in a Bnei Brak Retirement Home. They were lonely, they longed to have a child nearby. Naomi, still the fiery Zionist, was quick to capitalize on the report, and convinced Aharon that they should be that child.

Aharon often wondered how he had ever survived the seventeen years of marriage to Naomi. True, he held his breath most of the time but dared not pray that Naomi tire of her latest craze, lest the new one that replace it be even worse.

That was in the States.

Since living in Israel, though, Naomi had been so overwhelmed with the physical rigors of running a household and trying to make ends meet on a piggy-bank budget, she'd stopped making those periodic declarations of all the extraordinary things she was going to do.

And then, one day, on her thirty-ninth birthday, to be exact, Naomi informed Aharon that she had decided to become a writer.

Aharon looked at his wife and swallowed. Naomi knew exactly what he was thinking: something like, "Oh, no! Not another one of her brainstorms!" But all he did was smile and say, "How nice."

"But I really mean it," Naomi said emphatically, certain that her husband hadn't understood.

"Of course, you mean it. You always mean it," Aharon reassured her, still smiling. Maybe this was a good sign, his expression read. Maybe this meant that Naomi was snapping back to her old self.

"But this is for real. For keeps..."

"O.K. I believe you!" Aharon reassured her again, and to prove it, he called together all the children and using the special tone reserved for special occasions, announced, "In the name of the entire Shelner Family: Miriam, Laya, Sheindel, Suri, Fraydale, Roiza, Yossi, Estie and even the baby Mindy: it is both an honor and a pleasure for me to wish you blessings and success in your latest undertaking. Know that we have always been proud of your ever-fighting -- and now writing-spirit and will do everything in our power to help you reach your goal."

When Naomi told her neighbor Ruth what she intended to do, Ruth looked up, her face pinched together in a quizzical expresssion and asked:

"Nor dos hut dir oisgefeilt? Just this was missing to make your life complete?" Then, pursing her lips together and lifting one eyebrow, she said philosophically, to no one in particular, "Well... to each his own."

Naomi's mother was the only one who responded enthusiastically to her daughter's decision.

"Why, Naomi, that's absolutely wonderful! I always knew that you were a born writer. That will be the perfect thing for you to do when the children grow up and leave the nest."

Naomi suddenly realized that though her mother was a crackerjack bookkeeper, she wasn't too good in simple arithmetic or she'd have realized that by the time Naomi's nine chickadees flew the coop, she'd be an ancient relic, a creaking memory of a once surging spirit. So she told her very gently, "No, Mamma, it's either now or never." And though, even to Naomi it seemed more never than now, on the first day of her children's summer vacation, she gathered all her lovely chickadees round her to try to work out a schedule in which, if they ran a day camp in the corner park from nine to one every day, allowing her to write undisturbed during those hours, she would take them all afterwards to the beach.

It sounded like a fair bargain to the children, and fifteen- year-old Miriam was unanimously elected to be the Director of the Shelner Morning Daycamp.

On the first day, despite the alarm clock ringing an hour early, everyone woke in great spirits. After all: Mommy was going to a famous writer, and only because they were going to cooperate.

Breakfast passed without too many spills. Naomi was wise enough not to pursue who had squeezed out the brand new giant tube of tooth paste in giant size figure 8's all over the sink and bathtub. And though baby Mindy dumped her leben on Suri's head, Fraydele saved the day by giving her a quick shower, which was quick-thinking on her part, that is, until soap got into Suri's eyes and...

Yossi couldn't find his left shoe, but everyone convinced him that in day camp it was perfectly O.K. to wear slippers. Estie, whose job was to empty the garbage, brought it all back upstairs again because she was afraid of the cats in the garbage room, and Roize refused to make Suri's bed because you know what and she wasn't going to contaminate her dainty fingers with soiled linen. At which Suri became conspicuously quiet, and then shouted, "I did NOT wet my bed. It was very hot and I was shvitzing."

[Final part next week]

 

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