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The e-mail came late the other night — I need u to send me a photo of the family. Thanks!!
"Family" meaning him, his brother, his dad and me. Whose idea that was — his or the teacher's, I have no idea. Teachers and schools don't really get divorced families, the need for two sets of paperwork to go to two separate house, etc. And that "family" isn't always Mom, Dad and kids.
There always seems to be one teacher who needs pictures of his or her students’ family; I understood it in elementary school when most young kids are still trying to figure out who’s connected to whom and why — especially since most parents throw them curve balls by calling longtime friends “Aunt” or “Uncle. But in high school?
And there never was a problem back in elementary school, because I was a SAHM and married and I was keeper of photographs, as most mothers are.
But now, I am a full-time working divorced mother, and “family photo” has a different meaning. Our family looks different now. Which family is the teacher talking about?
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When I heard about the death of Maria del Carmen Brousada, the 69-year-old single mother who made the news three years ago by becoming the oldest woman in the world to give birth, I was transported back to the summer I turned 8.
My family had gone to visit relatives in Israel. For whatever reason, my parents thought I was too young to join them and my sister, then 11, to Eliat, the southernmost tip, so they left me for a long weekend with those relatives.
The day they left, my relatives — who barely spoke English — did what most relatives would do to entertain a child they couldn’t say much to: we went to the movies. I can’t remember the name of the movie anymore, but I remember the opening scene. There was a house fire that kills a young boy’s parents, and he is left an orphan. That night, I had a nightmare that my parents died. I woke up screaming, and my great-grandmother, in her 90s, came in to soothe me. “Vas ist los, kind?”
Needless to say, she didn’t help much. I wanted my parents!
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The singles event at the spacious Piazza Market in San Francisco was about to start when a pretty middle-aged woman walked in, sat down at my table and surveyed the scene. I knew just what she was observing.
“Why are there always more women who come to these things?” I asked, seeking a conversation entry point.
“Men don’t want to improve themselves,” she said. “They’re lazy.”
Well, this is shaping up to be a typical singles event, I thought, although in all honesty this was my first singles event, and not one even one solely to meet members of the opposite sex, so how the heck would I know, anyway?
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