When Someone You Love Becomes A Memory; Ami Unger Shilton

We stood for each other at our weddings, but really we stood for so much more during those years since we met as five year olds at a birthday party.

As best friends often do, I fell for you head over heels. We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun, as they say. All because I spilled grape juice on your white party dress, remember party dresses?

We inspired each other, too young to know it at the time. I owe you my first fall on the ice and the desire for many more ahead. You learned that a city girl could pee outdoors, carry a “trudie stick” and like it.

Life is fickle, sometimes cruel, surprising and some kind of wonderful. As we shared everything, giggling behind school books and later telephone lines, I never thought that I would find a time when we weren’t there for each other.

As adults we drifted in and out of our lives. Trying to find where we fit, if at all, in the chaos that comes with marriage, kids and careers.  We watched our families change as our parents did and then finally leave us, not knowing how quickly we might leave ours.

After almost three years, I’m finally ready to allow the tears roll down my face for you, Ami. Mostly, I am ready to embrace the memories that could only come from almost 50 years of who you are. I love you still and thank you for entering my world with your party dress and big heart.

A Woman of Valor; Yesterday Brings Today

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“She was a Survivor” I heard the Rabbi say.  It hung in the air as I sat there on the wooden pew with my family around me - my cousins to my right, their mother, Mania Feldman in the simple, yet beautiful casket, in front of us.

“A woman of valor” he went on, referencing a passage in the prayer book. As I sat there with his words surrounding me, I realized that he wasn’t just telling us about the yesterday of Mania Feldman, mother to Cyl, Renee and Nancy. He was speaking of my mother, the mothers of my other cousins in the room, all mothers to the children of holocaust survivors.

These women – “The Aunts” as I called them – these women sought each other out after concentration camp. Each one with their own story of horror, of survival, of valor. They found each other, bonded together and scratched out lives that only excepted today and tomorrow. They survived.

I heard stories of my Aunt Mania that told of her strength, her love, her unapologetic frankness, and of course her stubbornness. I thought of that stubbornness for a while.  As each one has passed (only my Aunt Toni is left) we’ve told stories that embraced their stubbornness. Never ashamed to admit that in the all too many eulogies, when most offer only glowing praises and kind memories, we speak of these women of valor and their stubborn streak with pride. Because that is who they were, and how they were.

When the Germans came to take them away, Mania did not run or turn away, she went. “Mania went off with them like she was going to a dance” I can still hear my aunt Toni say with a small laugh.  I can’t imagine it any other way.

There are just so many stories to tell, so many I heard on this day. Each one made me reflect on the mettle that these women were made of and how my Aunt Mania represented them. Her actions weren’t rude, they were honest, they spoke of love for us and for life – mostly they spoke of what she had been through and what she wanted for today.

The day after my oldest brother was born, my mother left him in the hospital and walked to the next town to be present at Mania and my Uncle Joe’s wedding.  Wide eyed I asked, “You walked?” thinking how I could barely stand at that same 24 hour interval after my first child.  “You walked”, I repeated. “Yes, in the snow. I was terrified”. Terrified that they left the first Jewish baby born at the end of the war in a German hospital. She was not terrified for herself, because she had been through much worse; she was frightened for the future that was born less than 24 hours prior.

I asked why she did it. Did my father force her to attend his sister’s ceremony? She looked at me with sadness and strength simultaneously and replied, “It wasn’t just your daddy’s sister. It was my sister.” Then her voice got a stubborn edge to it as she told me “We didn’t have anyone else but we had each other and we weren’t going to let that go”.

It was their stubbornness that took them from hell, carried them through life, until their day in heaven.  And Mania, was the leader of the pack, as if she was going off to a dance.

Of Puppy-dogs' Tails

Snips and Snails and Puppy-dog's Tails

They say that Man plans and G-d laughs. Oh, did she ever!


I planned and planned. I spent my whole life planning to be a Mom.

While other little girls played house, I mapped out my family. There would be 4 children; the first 2 would be two to three years apart (only one in diapers at a time, thank you very much!). Later, when the perfect ones had started school and my house was a little calmer during the day, I would birth the next set, also 2 - 3 years apart. I never even noticed the chuckle from above as I drew our perfect family in 2nd grade art class.

Being a child of the sixties meant that change was all around me. Stay-at-home-moms weren't de rigueur any more.  Women were expected to do it all. You know, bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan and never let you forget you're a man (with apologies to Peggy Lee and Enjoi). I also saw that amongst the working Moms were the divorced Moms - all of which were expected to be all things to all people. This is when I decided I would be Boss Mom. I didn't know what I would do, but I would have my own business, make my own schedule and be able to juggle it all with ease. I'm sure the day's thunder was to drown out the laughter from over head.

Time passed, I got married, I had my first child, I started my own business. All in all, I was pretty happy in life. The girls were 3 and a half years apart and the plan was in place. Of course girls have their own ups and downs, they can be like kittens clawing at each other one minute then the very next curled up together and inseparable the next.

As more time passed, the plan started to fray at the edges a bit. The kids were all in school and the marriage ... well, you know... things change. 9 years and one husband after the last birth, little Bamm-bamm came into our lives.  And the laughter turned into a roar.

Episode 1: How to Lose a Sleeping Baby

Our little bundle of boy could not crawl yet, but it is amazing how far they can get without crawling.  You put them down at one end of the crib and when you come back, they have squirmed their way to the opposite end, waking up with a gentle cooing and giggling at their happy toes.   At least that was the plan. 

I entered the brightly painted nursery, fully expecting to find my little baby boy in his crib on the mattress, under the watchful eye of the musical mobile's farm animals.

Instead, I found an empty crib. No big yawn and blinking eyes greeted me while I stood there dumb founded, wondering if I had left him in the playpen downstairs. Am I that forgetful? Yes, I concurred and ran downstairs. Still no baby!

Could I have left him at the school with the other children? After all, sleep deprivation is a nasty animal. No, not possible - I wasn't even at the school this morning. The once perfect children had boarded the school bus hours earlier (I hoped).

Dashing back to the room, I saw the mattress move, ever so slightly, but it moved - I was sure of it. Lifting the mattress up for the first of many times I found Bamm-bamm. He had unbelievably lifted the mattress and crawled under it creating his own fortress of nap. My tears of relief and joy were met by his gassy expulsion and laughter, also the first of many times.

This was not the plan. Did I hear someone laughing?

Cys Bronner's resume holds the various and extremely impressive titles of  Wife, Mother, Grandmother, Author, Speaker,  Entrepreneur, Social Network/Community Builder, and lover of all things cycling. When she is not trying to save her sanity by thinking 3 steps ahead of her kids or the rest of the family, you'll find her with her 2 dogs and a cup of coffee. Come to think of it, you'll always find her with a cup of coffee.

Beating the Heat and The Budget

It's been a while since I've had 8 or 9 people living in my house at once, in fact we are down to just 3 at this moment (it could change), but one thing has stayed constant; Summer is hot and the budget is tight.

I've managed to keep a good grip on the budget tiger by becoming a big fan of our market's Manager Specials. This also means that my freezer is kept full of items from the specials and my meals can be just a little more odd... no, make that more creative than your standard Betty Crocker family dinning fare.

Yesterday I visited the freezer to give my daughter the benefits of my latest Manager Special harvest, mozzarella and other various cheeses (I don't do the cow). While there I noticed my stock pile of Naan and brought some in.

Today's summer temperature just begged for a zero cooking tolerance. Alas, the family begged to be fed. Then it hit me..

Ladies and Gentleman, I present to you :: drumroll :: Hot Day Pizza!

In just minutes, I had sliced the last two Roma tomatoes in the fridge and lay them on the Jalapeno Goat Cheese topped Naan. The added bonus to this all was that "the Boys" were as impressed with the shared meal as I was with the ease.

Did you notice the mason jar glass of green goodness? More Manager Special ingredients; 1 marked down bag of salad greens, 2 red apples, 6 ice cubes in a blender. The slight splurge was also from a previous Manager's Special purchase. I added a splash of Zeta Olive Oil with Lemon.

All in all, a happy mom. One who has more time to jump on the bike, I might add ;)

You can take the girl out of Berekely...

In my 20s I put myself through college and started my family doing any number of things that any Art-Major-slash-Designer would to stay afloat including catering.

The nuances and talents of Alice Waters was lost on 20 year old me when my date tried to impress me with a dinner at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, but her story and philosophies that brought that diner to the table were not.

As a resident of highly populated apartment dwellers in San Francisco the idea of creating a meal with only the freshest ingredients from your garden and market place seemed exotic and foreign to me. As a broke college student it seemed completely out of the scope of reality.

But I was inspired (and determined) I started with herbs on my kitchen window sill, then container growing on the balcony of my LA apartment. Ripped out the front lawn of the most adorable rental home in Tujunga for fresh flowers and veggies - followed by amazing edible floral salads. By the time I moved to my first house of my very own in Lake View Terrace I was well past turning out gourmet meals ala' Alice Waters but on a mission of sustainability that seemed closer to survival. After all, I had a mortgage, a baby and a husband who was "finding himself" professionally.

As the family enlarged I wanted them to embrace my garden to table love. Thinking I was creating memories I would take the kids out to the garden and its small orchard to select items for feasting upon. A year ago, when I proudly told them how pleased I was to be able to do that for them and their personal memory books there was a silence. Finally, Sara spoke up and said "Yah, we hated that".

Now, three kids later, a grandchild and an upgrade (read: larger mortgage) to Century City our garden became the Ralph's at the end of the street and eschewing Alice Water's teaching for my mother's post holocaust frugal methods. No wait, not eschewing -- combining and transitioning into my own.

 

 Ralph's has an awesome deli counter with items like the Roasted Corn Salad pictured above. At $4.99 a pound it really isn't in my budget. I could afford it if it was just my immediate family but I don't have that kind of life. Pre-4th of July the dinner and over night drop ins started to arrive, we had 8 for dinner, 10 for breakfast, with a smaller group of 6 for dinner.  This is no different then my weekends as family and friends come and go. Amazingly, that is just the way I like it.

I might like it, but it does take marketing and preparation into a whole new arena. Everything is planned around what is available. I've gone from what is in the garden to what is on sale. You know what? That is just the way I like it.

Our Ralph's has a manager that I adore - they way they continually mark down quality items allows me to stroll the vegetables and yes, even meats to create yummies on a whim.

Finding 3 packages of baby spinach on sale I knew I had to come up with something that highlighted the tender leaves.  But what? I knew I didn't want to cook, the kitchen was just too hot and grilling was out since the fridge was packed with leftovers.

Wait! Did I just say leftovers? Behold; the leftover chicken transformed into a fa-bu lunch for 8.

How did I do it? 99 cents a lb chicken (picnic pack - breasts, thighs, legs etc) from last night's grill. $1.97 Ralph's fresh packed baby spinach, I threw in some of the roasted corn salad which was bought just to stretch other recipes and topped it off with Ralph's 70 calorie light ranch dressing, another mark down find at 98 cents!

I love my husband, but he has different methods then I do. He'll ask "What do you want from the market?" and of course, I'll answer that I don't know - what's on sale? Once I had the manager's special spinach and roasted corn salad I knew that I had to pull it together with something that could make it a side dish or an entree for our mixed use/semi vegetarian/meatarian family - on to the pasta aisle. Once again, Ralph's did not disappoint. An affordable family sized pack of 4 cheese tortellini brought the ingredients to just what I wanted for my group.

  I might not be the green gardener I once was but with local stores, our farmer's markets and a little creativity in the kitchen I still adhere to a pick-n-eat and enjoy as many drop-ins as wish to join the table.