Story of teh Day 8/ 17/ 2009

Everyone needs a Jewish mother.
I said that already, yesterday.
Well, maybe a few hundred times previously, also.
I even told Shawn it on Facebook, yesterday, when she told me about her leaving her baby at Purdue……And how soon she is planning to be back there visiting and feeding him.

Now, the Jewish mother doesn’t’ necessarily have to be your own mother. And it doesn’t’ necessarily have to come dressed like a mother. Fathers can make good Jewish mothers , too.
All of the nasty Jewish mother jokes aside, it is important to understand the real history of the Jewish mother.
It is in the Torah. You see, we are commanded to be good Jewish mothers.
We are commanded to teach our children to swim.

Literally and figuratively.

Why? Literally, because they might drown.
And the figuratively is that there are other dangers out there, and we are required to prepare our children to meet them.

In this modern world, with modern dangers, that means a lot of additional things we need to do.
Car seats, seat belts, bike helmets.
Gardasil immunizations.
Condoms.

Like all of my friends , who are also Jewish mothers, I have to make sure my son is safe at college. SO, I bought him a large box of condoms at Costco. Okay, they only have one size at Costco. A package of 40.

When Esther was going off to college, she knew I was planning to buy a box for her. Yes, girls too need to be protected.
This isn’t’ about birth control, it isn’t’ about morality. You can say, “Wait” as many times as you want , but you send off a teenager whose hormones levels are high and they are in a place with thousands of other teenagers with remarkably similar high hormone levels, and if you don’t’ make sure they have something to protect them from STDs, the scariest of which is the HIV virus, then you haven’t done your duty to protect them.
When Gardasil shots first became available for our daughters, I remember discussing getting them , at synagogue, at the Kiddush following services with a table of other Jewish mothers. No one was going to NOT get them for their daughters- it was only a question of which pediatricians were ready to do it , yet.
There was NEVER an issue with any of us about the shot being a sign to our daughters that it was okay to have sex. It was simply an issue of possibly protecting them from a type of cancer.
I was actually shocked when a non-Jewish friend admitted her reluctance to have her 16 year old daughter get the shots, since her daughter might take that as an okay to have sex. I said, “But what if she is ever raped? What if she is a virgin until she gets married, but her husband wasn’t- and he exposes her to it?”
The only part of this you can really control is getting immunized.

Back to condoms.

If they get pregnant, or their girlfriend does, it isn’t necessarily the end of the world. If they get Aids, it sort of is.
Anyhow, Esther came back from her college visit to Binghamton and informed me that I didn’t’ need to buy her any condoms. They have boxes at the ends of the halls in the dorms with free condoms.
Okay, so one less college expense.
So, when I bought the box for Aaron, he was upset. He said, “But, Mom, they have free condoms at the Health Center at college.”
I responded, “Yes, and the Health Center is open Monday through Friday from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. What happens if you need that condom at 10 PM on a Saturday night?”
So, he took the box I offered him.

One Shabbat, when he was over at his friends’ home, Aaron , somewhere in the middle of a Shabbat conversation, brought up the fact that I had bought him the box of 40. He said he would bring home his unused ones, at the end of the year, for his friends.
This is when he got advice from two other Jewish mothers.
First, from his friends’ Jewish mother, who alerted him to the fact that the box would not last him the school year.”
And ,second, from the father who told him that it would probably not last him until Thanksgiving vacation.
It is always good to get advice from Jewish mothers.

But the best advice he got was from his friend, who also decided to play the role, even though he is just 18- you see, it really is a genetic trait.
His advice was , “No party hat, no party.”