By Abigail Pickus
Things have gotten a little wonky in my small family unit.
When I had my son 12 years ago through a donor in Israel, I was already “geriatric” according to Western medicine. I was 40, nearly 41, and even though I was much closer to becoming a card-carrying member of the AARP than I realized, I still felt young – and not just at heart.
After all, there was nary a gray hair on my head, I could spring up from the floor unassisted, I had no trouble reading the fine print, and I was many pounds thinner than I care to admit.
I also felt free of spirit. I had left America a few years earlier because I really had nothing holding me back, and even though I settled in Jerusalem without a job or a circle of friends, I ended up with both. The only thing I didn’t have was a man and, not letting that stop me, I still became a mother.
But now, over a decade later, and settled back in my hometown of Chicago, which has become the only home my son will ever remember, we’ve both hit turbulence: He, the ups and downs of puberty, and me, the downs and downs of perimenopause. Or as I like to tell him, he’s on his way up, while I’m on my way down.
Either way, we’re stuck in this hormonal firestorm, a kind of ‘Wrath of Rakshasa,’ – “the steepest and most inverted dive coaster in the world!” – that’s coming to Six Flags Amusement Park in 2025. “Fear the WRATH,” they tell us.
Fear the wrath, indeed.
The only problem in our two-person, one dog household, is that there is no one to throw cold water on the conflagration. And when we’re not stuck in some kind of terrible maelstrom, or power struggle, we’re having one-way conversations.
“How was your day?”
“Meh.”
“What did you do?”
“Things.”
“Who did you sit with at lunch?”
“People.”
But that’s better than when he finds me so irritating, or so embarrassing that every single thing I do is a punishment.
Of course, just when I think I can’t survive this, that I’ve forgotten what it’s like when there is shalom bayit, peace in the home, we’re having a “family meeting” on my bed – the dog, the kid, and the mama, chitter chattering away. Or he’s beating me at Splendor or we’re watching TV on the couch.
And then, a second later, it’s topsy-turvy all over again. But don’t take my word for it, just ask our neighbors!
While I’m barely making it through, social media is overflowing with mothers who seem to be parenting with ease and joy. I’m looking at you homesteader mother who, with a dewy glow and a hemp apron, tends to six children under the age of eight including an infant – while kneading sourdough and simmering homemade jam as the rain falls gently on the farmhouse’s tin roof. Or how about you, young suburban mother, who only seems to venture out in her huge SUV to go to Target and buy little baby outfits that she washes and stacks away neatly in an expensive bureau, before heading to Chipotle for lunch.
Who are these women? And more importantly how do they afford such luxury homes when no one seems to work? Unless that is their work, these Facebook reels that my niece informed me are actually TikTok videos, which means I’m on TikTok even if I think I’m not.
And why if I hate them so much, can I not stop watching?
In a funhouse mirror sort of way, these shorts of modern-day motherhood remind me of Eshet Chayil, the acrostic poem from Proverbs that a husband traditionally sings to his wife at the Shabbat dinner table Friday evening.
“A woman of valor, who can find? Her price is far above rubies.”
And it’s true, this Jewish wonder woman is really something!
She is tireless in her duties: rising before dawn, feeding, tending. But she’s also a keen business woman; she is entrepreneurial, she brings home the “facon.” And she does it all with zest and vigor, “her lamp never goes out at night.”
If that’s not enough, she’s also happy and optimistic about the future and wise. Most of all, she’s God-fearing.
When I was younger, I thought Eshet Chayil was demeaning to women, that it was somehow anti-feminist. But now, as a middle aged woman, while it’s exhausting reading about her accomplishments and sheer stamina – I mean, really, doesn’t she need to sleep? I admire her. She’s a woman who lives a meaningful life – which is more than I can say about these moms whose videos I can’t stop inhaling like so much cheap wine.
Though both images are purely fiction, at least the Jewish role model is about substance over surface, and about connecting instead of consuming. As my own mother might put it, the Eshet Chayil is part of a community.
Sometimes when my candle is burning especially hard at both ends, I wonder where I fit into all of this. After all, I’m neither an Eshet Chayil, nor a TikTok mom. I have no followers, no hidden cameras broadcasting the minutiae of my day, and no one singing my praises - at the dinner table or elsewhere. But what I do have, and what is not always so easy to remember when life knocks me down, is the gift that came from me and was given to me. Because what I have is this boy, an almost man, who will one day make his own way, but for now is mine to protect and love.
And if someone doesn’t mind throwing me a lifeline in the meantime, I’ll take that too…
ABIGAIL PICKUS has written for JUF News Chicago, the Jewish Agency for Israel, and The Jewish Week. She ran the Nextbook literary series at the Chicago Public Library.
