Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.

As Jews, we are fortunate to celebrate multiple new years, including Tu Bishvat, or the new year for the trees, and, of course, Rosh Hashanah. I love the cycle of birth, growth and rebirth built into the Jewish calendar. 

This Rosh Hashanah, things feel different. It is the first High Holiday season since Oct. 7. It is also the start of celebrating the Jewish New Year as a family of three, with our young son, Ari, having joined us this past year. And I want to make sure to share joy with him as we welcome 5785.

This year, I am also setting the goal of getting Ari involved in the kitchen, no matter how young he is, so that I can pass my love of cooking down to him. Ari’s favorite toys are a silicone pastry brush and mini spatula that he uses in lieu of a pacifier. So I know we’re heading in the right direction.

As a dietitian, I understand the value of getting children to help in the kitchen at an early age. It can reduce picky eating, hone fine motor skills, teach about problem solving and introduce valuable skills they will use for the rest of their lives. 

With that said, don’t expect any Rosh Hashanah miracles with little ones. The keys are letting go of your expectations, being ready to clean up a little more mess than you anticipate and using every misstep as a lesson — in case they accidentally dump salt instead of sugar into your cookies.

Still, food prep with little ones can feel like a hurdle if you don’t know where to start. So here’s a list of simple ways to get their hands messy. They can:

• Pour premeasured ingredients into bowls
• Hand ingredients to an adult
• Peel vegetables
• Beat eggs
• Mix ingredients
• Talk about the recipes as an adult makes them
• Set and clear the table
• Flip through cookbooks with an adult

I’m dreaming of family-friendly meals and snacks to celebrate Rosh Hashanah from morning to night. In my household, holidays are all about eating together and novel ways to eat symbolic foods like apples and honey. However, with a child under 1, this poses a significant risk. 

Infants under 12 months should not consume any honey products — whether raw, cooked or baked — due to the risk of botulism. So I am pulling from my Canadian background for a maple twist and topping foods with a cinnamon-apple mix and a healthy pour of tahini for added iron, calcium and healthy fats.

Happy New Year, from my family to yours!

Apple Pancakes with Cinnamon Apple Topping

Makes 10

• 1½ cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 Tbs. baking powder
• 1 Tbs. flax meal
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• ¼ tsp. ginger
• ¼ tsp. kosher salt
• 1 cup applesauce
• 2 large eggs
• ½ cup milk
• 2 tsp. maple syrup
• Unsalted butter, for cooking

Cinnamon Apple Topping

• 1 Tbs. unsalted butter
• 2 large apples, peeled and cut into ½ inch cubes
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• ¼ cup water
• 2 tsp. maple syrup (optional), plus extra for serving
• Tahini for serving (optional)

In large bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, flax meal, cinnamon, ginger and salt. Set aside. In medium bowl, whisk together applesauce, eggs, milk and syrup.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry, and mix until just combined.

Melt unsalted butter in nonstick pan over medium heat. Using a ¼ cup measuring cup, scoop 2 to 3 pancakes into pan. Let cook for 3 to 5 minutes, or until the tops start to lose their shine and they begin to bubble. Flip and cook for an additional 2 minutes. Repeat with remaining batter.

Cinnamon Apple Topping: While the pancakes are cooking, heat the unsalted butter in separate pan over medium heat. Add apples and cook for 3 to 4 minutes, until they begin to soften slightly. Add the cinnamon, water and optional syrup. Bring to a boil, and simmer for 5 to 6 minutes, until the apples are soft. Serve the pancakes with apples, additional syrup and optional tahini.

Shoshana Nambi is a rabbinic student at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York City. A native of Eastern Uganda, she grew up in the small but powerful Abayudaya Jewish community. She recently authored a children’s book, “The Very Best Sukkah,” about the Jewish holiday of Sukkot and the joyful way it is celebrated in her community. The story is based on Nambi’s own life, features a spirited young girl. Vibrant illustrations by Ethiopian Israeli artist Moran Yogev capture the look and feel of Ugandan Judaism.

Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder of the San Francisco-based think tank Be’chol Lashon sat down with Nambi to learn more about the author and the book.

Rabbi Ruth Abusch-Magder: What made you want to write this book?

Shoshana Nambi:When I get invited to speak to different communities around the world, I always tell stories of growing up in the Abayudaya Jewish community of Uganda. I talk about the love I had from my grandparents and the role that my community played in my upbringing.

One of my favorite childhood memories is of the big walk that I would take with my brothers, friends, and the entire community to view other people’s sukkot. Everyone tried, within their means, to decorate their sukkah to be the best for the community “walk.” We were all so so happy that we had visitors in our sukkah. There was a little bit of quiet informal discussion of whose sukkah won. But usually, there was no official winner, just the sukkah to which people came. So when Lili Rosenstreich from Kalaniot Books approached me to see if I could write a children’s storybook from the stories that I tell on my tours, this was the story that was on the top of my mind. Also, I love Sukkot.

Is there really a contest in your community for the most beautiful sukkah?

There was not an official contest. I added that to the story. But for many years, there used to be a “big walk” after services where we all went around to see other community members’ sukkot. Some were more brightly colored than others, some had foods like ground nuts we could sample, some sukkot were small, and some sukkot were big. There was a little bit of quiet informal discussion of whose sukkah was the best. But usually, there was no official winner. We eventually settle and had kiddush in one of the sukkot. The singing was always my favorite part. And, of course, I loved eating some of the hanging fruits that were used to decorate the sukkot.

Who is the audience for this book?

I wrote this book for two audiences. First, I wrote this book for Jewish children and families in the United States. I want people in America, Jews, and non-Jews, and around the world to learn about the history of the Abayudaya Jewish community, the foods, and the music of our community. I want them to see the ways in which our celebrations and Jewishness are similar to and different from theirs.

I also wrote this book for children in Uganda. I want them to see their foods, trees, and customs celebrated in a book. I wish I had read about my Jewish experience in a book when I was younger. I am glad to be able to be making that change happen.

You have been studying, first in Israel and now in New York, to become a rabbi. What do you miss about Uganda?

Everything! My family and friends, the food, the way we sing and pray, and how life is less structured than in the big city of New York, though Uganda has its own challenges of course. I am so grateful for all the opportunities I am having while far away from home, learning Torah, and studying with amazing Jewish leaders. But I miss home, and I can’t wait to bring all these experiences with me home at some point.

“Say thank you!”

This reminder rolls off my lips on an auto-loop as a parent, but never more so than at this time of year. The seasonal kickoff is during Halloween trick-or-treating, when the kids are buzzed and overstimulated, and we trail behind them from house to house, reminding them to be polite. And it picks up steam during the winter holidays, when treats and gifts are offered regularly by friends, teachers, neighbors and family members.

My kids are pretty polite, usually. At least, when they’re out in the world around other people, which is where it really matters. They’re sweet and considerate, and they like to do things for other people. A teacher once told me one of my children was “the most polite person I think I’ve ever met.” I kvelled.

But there’s a difference between a sweet and considerate nature and being able to perform on cue. And sometimes that’s what thank yous are: a performance, for the benefit of the adults, a line to be spoken at certain scripted moments.

This year for Hanukkah, we decided not to dole out presents over eight nights. I know it works well for some families, but we tried it last year, and it didn’t work for us. We were still observing a pretty strict Covid isolation, so our only celebrations were at home with the four members of our household.

Figuring out how to distribute the gifts (from grandparents, aunts, and my husband and me) to our kids equally so that all eight nights were covered was a logistical challenge that I am not well suited for. And we found that when our kids were primed to receive a gift every night, they seemed less excited and more entitled. Sometimes they weren’t sufficiently thrilled by the gift they received; they were just disappointed.

It was not the mood I was going for.

This year, we trimmed it down to just two nights of gifts at the end of Hanukkah. The kids were excited to light their own menorahs and play dreidel and eat gelt all the way through the week, and didn’t pester us about presents at all.

When the presents came, they were a cornucopia rather than a steady drip.

Thanks to vaccines (my kids, 5 and 9, have now had both doses!), we were able to gather in person with their grandparents to exchange gifts face-to-face. And when we did, the same pattern happened over and over. Someone would hand my kids a gift, they would open it and then examine it silently, paying no attention to anyone else in the room. To the adults, the lack of a reaction felt uncomfortable, verging on ungrateful. So we prompted them: “Say thank you!”

And they did, every time, enthusiastically. And everyone was happy and all was well.

The next night, alone at home, we gave the kids the rest of their gifts: from us and from family members far away who had sent to our home. We didn’t prompt them to say thank you. And something wonderful happened.

The kids opened the gifts and took their time to look them over and figure out what they were. And then, on their own, they got excited about them. We gave Nate, 9, who is a vegetarian and has just started cooking on his own, “The Forest Feast for Kids,” a brightly photographed vegetarian cookbook. He paged through it silently, then he looked up at us and excitedly said, “thank you!” and jumped into our arms. Harvey, 5, got “Hi, Jack!” and “Jack at Bat,” two early-reader books by Mac Barnett. “Thank you!” he shouted, and kissed my hands.

Sometimes, kids — or, really, people of all ages — just need a minute to take things in. Even though it’s socially expected, they might not be ready to parrot out their thank you instantly upon receiving something new. Even though they are as grateful as can be.

I’ve been sharing my adventures with my children in J. since my oldest was 2, but it’s time for me to put this column to bed for a while. Thanks so much for coming along for the ride.

“Do you remember when we couldn’t go to the playground because we thought Covid could be transmitted through surfaces, so we took you to the park first thing in the morning to play soccer every day, but we didn’t get near anyone?”

“Do you remember we couldn’t go inside Saba and Safta’s house, and then we could for a short time, and then we had to stop when we went back to school until they got vaccinated?”

“Do you remember how last year you had to wear masks outside at school, but now we know that outside is safe, so this year you don’t have to wear them at recess anymore?”

“Do you think I’ll be able to have a playdate inside again?”

“I don’t really remember what it was like before Covid.”

By the good graces of Pfizer, Walgreens and the CDC, my two kids will get their first Covid shots this week. When I told them I had made their appointments, they both cheered.

At ages 5 and 9, they — and frankly, most kids I know — have handled what has been asked of them over the past year and a half with more grace and goodwill than I could have ever anticipated. They instantly seemed to understand the stakes, and they never questioned the need to wear masks, avoid hugs or stay outside their friends’ homes.

Now they’re charting their course toward full immunity and have quizzed me about when, exactly, those antibodies will get cooking.

And they’ve started to ask questions: “Will we still have to wear masks in school?” “Will we be able to go over to friends’ houses?”

The truth is, they do and they don’t remember a life before Covid.

They don’t remember what it feels like not to have to think about transmitting a disease, to follow the rules for keeping safe. They do remember that the rules have changed over the course of 18 months, prompting great conversations about scientific research and how we adjust our behavior based on emerging facts.

They also remember things we used to do before Covid, such as going indoors to movies and restaurants, playing inside their friends’ houses and bedrooms, and traveling across the country to visit family.

They know that what have become our norms are not normal.

But when they ask me what will change in their lives after they are vaccinated, I can’t make them any promises. Masks in school? Probably, for a while longer. Playdates inside? Each family is going to make their own rules. Can we get on an airplane? Maybe. Will we have improved health and greater peace of mind? Definitely.

A year ago, when the vaccines were first being tested, I told my kids I would make them a cake when they got their Covid shots. It feels like a momentous step in the pandemic journey now that their age group can get vaccinated.

And yet, resigned as most of us are to Covid being around for the long haul, it doesn’t feel like as much of a turning point as I thought it would.

In June and July, as a vaccinated adult, I got a teaser for how life could return to normal: I didn’t have to wear a mask at the grocery store; I ate in restaurants for the first time in more than a year. And then the Delta variant shut all that down.

As we learn more, we change our behavior.

That’s what I tell my children.

So this big moment is more of an anticlimax. One step of progress on a long road. But this year, unlike last, we will drive out of state for Thanksgiving and gather with extended family. My kids will have had their first shot, and their antibodies will be cooking. And they’ll have cake to look forward to.

“This dinner isn’t good… it’s stupendous!” Harvey, 5, told me at the table this week.

“It’s not great… it’s amazing!” Nate, 9, chimed in.

What magical meal had I placed in front of them to cut through the oh-so-typical kid dinnertime complaints? No, it wasn’t macaroni and cheese, though that’s definitely in our rotation. That night I’d put out a bunch of things. From the refrigerator, I’d pulled out plain cooked farro and lentils that I’d prepared a few days before (pro tip: farro and lentils have the same cooking time; just throw them into a pot with water and boil). I also grabbed a tub of plain yogurt and a parsley-garlic-lime paste that I had improvised in the food processor earlier in the week so that the parsley wouldn’t go bad. Then I had cooked a week-old eggplant with a can of tomatoes and spices in an approximation of baingan bharta, and I’d simmered chicken in a jar of butter masala sauce from the grocery store. I also dumped a can of garbanzo beans onto a baking sheet, tossed them with olive oil and salt and roasted them until crunchy.

It was a hodge-podge meal that was mostly aimed at using up things in the refrigerator, and that I hadn’t expected to go over particularly well with the kids. That’s why I’d roasted the chickpeas, in fact; I knew they liked those.

It felt great to be appreciated as a cook, especially since the accolades were so unexpected. I do most of the family cooking, and I know too well how crummy it feels to work hard to get dinner on the table at the end of the day only to have the kids groan and complain the second it’s set down before them. In fact, when Harvey wanders into the kitchen when I’m cooking to ask what’s for dinner, I usually won’t tell him because I don’t want his feedback.

But when I thought about this “stupendous” dinner, which Harvey maintained was “better than pasta,” I realized the key to its success: There were a lot of choices.

I’ve started to notice that meals made up of lots of little things tend to go over pretty well in my household. Think taco night with a choice of toppings…. or rice bowls with a choice of toppings. Everyone can find something they like on the table, and they seem excited to select from so many options in front of them. For instance, on the night in question, Nate, who can usually be counted on to eat grain-and-bean combos, devoured two giant helpings of farro and lentils that he’d topped with scoops of yogurt and roasted chickpeas. He ignored the small serving of eggplant I’d put on his plate for decorative purposes. Harvey, meanwhile, ate a little bit of the farro and lentils and plenty of the chickpeas and chicken. Aaron ate everything except the chicken and parsley paste, and I ate everything except the chickpeas, which I was saving for everyone else.

I’ve come to think of a good family dinner as one that has “entry points” for every person, something that will appeal to them and that they can use as a base while exploring other foods. I subscribe to the “division of responsibility” approach to feeding kids, developed by nutritionist Ellyn Satter, which is a widely accepted method meant to develop good eaters while minimizing conflict around food. In a nutshell, the idea is that the parents are responsible for determining the timing and content of meals, and kids are responsible for choosing what and how much they eat at each meal. (The Instagram account “Kids Eat in Color” is a great guide to this philosophy.) So I don’t insist that my kids taste everything, and depending on the meal, I either let them serve themselves, or I serve them but put only bite-size portions on their plates of foods that I know they aren’t comfortable with. They can always ask for more. Sometimes they’ll reject something early in a meal but take a taste midway through.

Creating a kid-friendly entry point to a meal can be as simple as adding carrot sticks, apple slices, or crackers and hummus to whatever I’m already cooking. About once a week I cook fish or chicken, and for those meals I add a vegetarian protein like hard-boiled eggs or roasted chickpeas because the kids don’t eat fish and Nate and Aaron don’t eat chicken. (Everyone in my family has a different practice around meat-eating, ranging from Nate, full vegetarian, to Harvey, happy carnivore. It’s complicated.)

In many ways, this is not hard to do if you’re already cooking dinner. But it is a lot to think about, night after night after night. And brain space is at a premium for parents, especially moms, who are already drowning under a crushing mental load of jobs and shopping lists and doctor’s appointments and school schedules. But I know what to do on those nights when I just can’t figure out how to assemble a balanced meal that has something for everyone. I open up the pantry and take out a box of mac and cheese.

In the waning days of the 2020 presidential campaign, Ivanka Trump, who had previously avoided stating her position on abortion rights, made an announcement: She was pro-life.

“I am … a mother of three children, and parenthood affected me in a profound way in terms of how I think about these things,” she said in an interview published by RealClearPolitics on Oct. 29, 2020.

Of all the calculated, craven statements that have come out of that person’s mouth, that one may take the cake. Notice the beatific way in which Trump positions herself: maternal, fertile, a person who receives “profound” insights. Notice the timing: five days before an election that her father (and employer) was expected to lose, at a time when she was positioning herself for her political future.

I’ve been wasting time thinking about Ivanka Trump’s pronouncement because just three days before she made it, the Senate voted 52-48 to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

And now we are seeing the product of Donald Trump’s rushed nomination and Mitch McConnell’s long quest to turn the court far to the right, with the new law in Texas that outlaws abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, and which the Supreme Court refused to block, in an unsigned ruling backed by a 5-4 margin, despite its clear violation of Roe v. Wade.

Pregnancy and parenthood don’t turn people anti-choice; that’s why, for a year, I’ve remembered Ivanka Trump’s words for their insincerity.

For those of us who were already pro-choice, the experience of giving over our bodies to our babies, and our lives to our children, strengthened our commitment to reproductive freedom and clarified the importance of those freedoms to our survival.

When you become visibly pregnant, people begin to treat you as if your body is not entirely your own. They might touch you without permission, make choices about what food or drink to serve you instead of asking you what you want, or ask you invasive questions. It’s jarring. I am pro-choice because I reject this social paternalism and loss of bodily autonomy.

When you become visibly pregnant, people begin to treat you as if your body is not entirely your own.

Pregnancy is complicated and often comes with health risks and tough decisions. Though I ultimately had two healthy babies, there were bumps along the way. I am pro-choice because my medical choices should be guided only by my personal values and what’s best for my health, and I want my doctor’s advice to be unclouded by fear of being sued.

I experienced both of my children’s births as incredible acts of creation. And, yet, both times, I mourned the loss of the life I had been living before motherhood. Bringing a child into the world is overwhelming and sometimes traumatic — mentally, emotionally and physically. I am pro-choice because I am the best judge of my own limits and what I can handle going forward.

My kids are now 5 and 9, and as a family, we’re focused on their health, welfare and education. I weigh my responsibility to my existing children far above my duty to any future theoretical children. I am pro-choice because my children come first.

I am pro-choice because I am a parent. Most people who have abortions are parents, too: 59 percent of people who had abortions in 2014 had already given birth at least once, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

My first pregnancy was planned, and I was monitoring myself closely at the time. I called my doctor’s office as soon as I got a positive pregnancy test, and the nurse asked me some questions. I would have thought I was about one or two weeks pregnant, but she informed me that I was already five weeks along. That’s because pregnancy is counted from the beginning of your last period, so it’s impossible to be one or two weeks pregnant because you haven’t even conceived then. If your menstrual cycles are irregular, this math is even less predictable.

If my pregnancy hadn’t been planned, I probably wouldn’t have taken a test as early as I did. If I had, and hadn’t wanted to continue the pregnancy, I would have had one week to make a decision, find a provider, schedule and complete an abortion under the current Texas six-week ban that is now being challenged by the Biden administration.

That’s not a humane policy, and it doesn’t put families first.

I am pro-choice because I am a mother and because parenthood has affected me in a profound way.

On a recent afternoon, the 6-year-old boy from across the street wandered over to my driveway looking for something to do. I was sitting on the front porch and told him that my kids were busy inside at the moment and couldn’t come out to play.

“OK,” he said, and ran into our backyard to play by himself.

We regularly find the neighbor kids’ bikes and scooters laying across our driveway, or the neighbor children inside our garage perusing our racks of abandoned toys.

When I’m looking for my own kids, I know they’re across the street with the neighbor boys or playing on the swing set that our other neighbors keep in their yard for their grandchildren. If they’re not there, they’re spying on a neighborhood cat or picking raspberries from someone’s back bushes. Or else they’ve made themselves at home on a neighbor’s porch and are happily chatting away with the grownups.

My mom grew up in an apartment around the corner from where we now live in a small town in Maine. From a young age, she said, she would disappear with her friends to play for the day and her mother would have no idea where she was.

I used to think my kids wouldn’t get that opportunity, that changing social mores and exaggerated fears about stranger danger have kept children cocooned in the home.

Now that my 5- and 9-year-old boys  are old enough to play out of the house, I’ve come to find out that that isn’t true, but I’ve also come to believe that it takes a special confluence of circumstances that make communities or just neighborhood blocks where children have some degree of freedom to explore and play unsupervised.
First of all, it takes human resources: neighbors who are friendly and who bear your child’s shouts with a grin; other kids around to play with; a shared feeling of safety and trust in the community.

And secondly, and most importantly, it takes geography. It takes a street where the traffic doesn’t drive too fast, that has sidewalks or quiet shoulders that are welcoming to foot traffic. It takes a block where there is somewhere outside to play, whether that place is a wide sidewalk, a front or backyard that’s welcoming to neighborhood kids, or a close-by public park or playground.

This type of play-friendly environment is assumed, often mistakenly, to be available only in suburbs and small towns, but in our previous home in Brooklyn, New York, there were blocks around us with wide sidewalks on which children freely rode back and forth on their kick scooters and bicycles, and neighbors with connecting backyards where kids would pass back and forth to play.

What’s more, by fourth or fifth grade, those kids are walking home from school by themselves, and by sixth, they’re taking city buses and subways to middle school in the morning.

If you happen to live on a block that’s child-scaled, you’re lucky, because even here in Rockland, Maine (population 7,200), there are plenty of blocks where the traffic moves fast, where it’s not safe for kids to wander, where this kind of free play doesn’t happen.

It shouldn’t be a matter of luck: Safe streets and trust between neighbors is good for people of all ages.

My elementary school–aged children don’t have the freedom to disappear for the day like my mom did — in that sense, social mores have definitely changed. But as long as they’re within a reasonable shouting distance, I’m comfortable.
One of the positive developments of this past year and half of social distancing is that outdoor play has become the norm year-round as scheduled indoor playdates have gone the way of the dodo.

A friend of my mom’s visited my house recently and said that the way the kids played in the neighborhood reminded her of the 1950s. But what’s happening on my block isn’t a throwback to another time. It’s very much a phenomenon of today.

My grandparents’ basement is a magical place. Always cool in summer, it’s filled with piles of old movie posters from our family-owned movie theater, worn-out furniture, old games and photographs, a bust of Theodor Herzl and shelves full of books.

There are stray books from my mom and aunt’s college courses alongside some YA paperbacks from my teen years. But the crowning jewels of the collection are vintage 1950s hardcover editions of popular children’s series such as the Bobbsey Twins, the Dana Girls and Nancy Drew.

There’s something special about summer reading.

I spent hours of July and August in that basement, reading on the cool couch while snacking on handfuls of peanut M&Ms I brought from the candy dish upstairs. I savored each and every one of my mom’s childhood books, which seemed to transport me back to an old-fashioned time where girls wore interesting clothes and where life seemed ordered and pleasant even if mysteries did keep popping up everywhere.

When friends came over, we would head down into the basement with loads of Baby-Sitters Club books and trade them back and forth as we finished them.

There were certain books I reread summer after summer: a novel about a girl who travels back in time to Victorian New York City; an entertaining memoir by one of the actors in “The Brady Bunch.”

Publishers have built an entire industry around summer books and beach reads, but I think that whatever genre you lose yourself in, it’s common for our summer reading lives to be driven by nostalgia, escape and the memory of childhood pleasure.

My kids seem to take big leaps in their reading lives every summer. Last year, my then-8-year-old got into his first series of chapter books (Hilo graphic novels), and this summer is the first time he’s independently reading a chapter book that isn’t illustrated.

I’m delighted to say that the novel that has captured Nate’s attention is “Sideways Stories From Wayside School,” an odd, funny and entertaining Louis Sachar classic that is timeless and, without a doubt, a top-notch summer pick. (Note to fellow millennials: A fourth book in the Wayside School series came out last year.)

My 5-year-old, Harvey, is taking huge leaps in his reading life by virtue of the fact that he is reading.

When Nate was the same age, I firmly believed that he should not be pressured to start reading too young, and it would take another year and a bit of prodding before he was reading on his own. Once he got started, he couldn’t be stopped, and I’m glad we let him go at his own pace.

But it’s delightful to watch Harvey more or less teach himself to read, and it’s also a big relief to know that I won’t have to push him to a certain level at school, because he’s already there.

Recently, my kids picked out a book at my grandparents’ house: a 1950s book of riddles that has such chestnuts as, “Why is a dirty child like flannel? Because he shrinks from washing” and “What is the difference between a busy typist and 16 ounces of flour? One pounds away; the other weighs a pound.” Nate and Harvey can’t make heads or tails of it, which I’m glad of, because much of the “humor” in this book drips with sexism.

The old Nancy Drew books also contain outdated depictions of race and gender that I don’t want to pass onto my own kids. It’s OK, though, to leave Nancy behind, because Nancy was never great literature.

The point of reading the books was to imagine yourself as Nancy, with her car and her boyfriend, to race to the end of each book to find out whodunnit, and to crave the next one and the next one and the next.

My mom loved Nancy Drew so much she named me after her.

And to this day she’s a voracious reader.

She handed me Nancy Drew books when I was young, but when I got older, she was handing me Brontë. I’m excited for my kids to read books, to love them, and also to discard them as they move on to bigger and better things.

The microscopic Covid-19 pathogen is often anthropomorphically illustrated as a fiendish ball with a destructive look on its face, studded all over with its characteristic protein spikes.

Vaccines may have that devilish molecule on the run, but it’s just one of several tiny terrors putting me on high alert this summer.

For a mom in this year of 2021 on the East Coast of the United States, my nightmares are populated by creatures smaller than the size of my thumb.

Topping the list is ticks.

My husband and I have already pulled at least half a dozen of the miniscule insects off of our children’s bodies, and it’s only June.

Scientists have predicted a banner year for ticks; the Weather Channel has dubbed it a “tick time bomb.” That’s largely due to warmer, wetter winters caused by climate change that facilitate tick development and are hospitable to the ticks’ hosts, like deer and mice.

The problem with ticks is that they can transmit disease, especially the blacklegged tick, which carries Lyme. Lyme is primarily a concern in the Northeast and Midwest, but Lyme-carrying ticks were recently found in the grasses around beaches in Northern California.

In Maine, where I reside, if you are experiencing any sort of lull in a conversation, it’s always a safe bet to start talking about ticks. These teeny, pernicious critters constitute an almost invisible health threat, and pretty much every human around here needs little coaxing to share Lyme horror stories and trade tips on their personal tick prevention measures.

In my home, our policies are regimented and practiced. My children wear special socks every day that have been treated with a chemical that deters ticks. Every six weeks, I spray everyone’s shoes with that chemical, permethrin, so that ticks lurking in tall grasses will not make the trip up our bodies.

Bare skin gets sprayed with bug repellent that contains DEET, and we always shower after hikes. And every night, we check everyone’s bodies and hair for those oh-so-hard-to-spot ticks, which is how we’ve caught the ones who’ve broken through the other defenses and hidden out in my kids’ hair and behind their ears.

Those we remove with tweezers and flush down the toilet.

It takes at least 24 hours for an attached tick to transmit Lyme disease, so in theory, catching ticks nightly should be effective.

If living through Covid taught me the importance of implementing layers of protection (masks, social distancing, hand-washing), I’ve brought that strategy to a new level of complexity when battling ticks.

Ticks are hard to spot, but the next critter on my hit list is easy to see. Browntail moth caterpillars look harmless and even kind of cute when you see them inching across fences and trees with two distinctive orange dots displayed on their backs.

But they are evil. This invasive species has exploded in population throughout Maine in the last few years, and they devour and destroy the trees in which they build their webs.

They’re a hazard for humans, too: their hairs are toxic and get distributed through the environment in dry leaves and grasses, where they can live for years. Contact with the hairs causes a bad rash and, sometimes, respiratory problems.

Fun.

In some parts of the state, witch hazel, Benadryl and calamine lotion have disappeared from store shelves. At my son’s preschool, there were so many caterpillars in the trees that shade the yard this spring that they roped off part of the playground as a biohazard. Whenever they found a caterpillar, the teachers would put it in a large jar of soapy water to kill it; the jar quickly filled up. Perhaps a “guess the number of caterpillars in the jar” contest could have been a fundraiser.

I have no layers of defense strategy for the browntail moths, besides not touching them when I see them, because how can you ward off microscopic hairs that travel through the air? In discussing these environmental hazards with a friend recently, I opined that at least we didn’t have to worry about tornados. Now those would be scary.

Shortly after that conversation, I went to a river to go swimming with my husband and kids. They were already submerged and I was standing on the riverbank when someone pointed out to me the leeches clearly visible in the water.

Leeches. I have no words. All I can see is that I’m very proud of what I did next. After stopping to collect myself and think it over for a few minutes, I got in the water and went for a swim. And I added “leech check” to our regimen of health and safety protocols for summer.

When it comes to medical choices about my kids, I couldn’t be more conventional.

Mine got all their childhood vaccines right on schedule; the more, the better.

I said yes to both breastfeeding and formula-feeding; science says they’re both nutritious options for infants.

I fed my kids peanut butter as babies because my pediatrician said there was no reason to worry.

I followed the rules to the letter about putting babies to sleep on their backs, but I didn’t buy any high-tech SIDS prevention devices because the American Academy of Pediatrics doesn’t advise them.

During our Covid year, I’ve trusted conventional, mainstream sources to help me make decisions for my family, even as that advice has naturally shifted as we learn more about the disease.

That meant we stayed away from playgrounds for months, then joyfully returned to them when it became clear that they were safe.

It meant that I supported the school closures in the spring of 2020, but when the AAP said kids could and should return to school safely, I felt confident enrolling my children for in-person class for the fall. They have become pros at wearing masks, grabbing them before they leave the house, keeping them on all day at school, and generally being much more consistent and uncomplaining than most adults.

So when the CDC recently announced that it was safe for vaccinated people to stop wearing masks in most settings, I was caught off guard. Perhaps without intending to, they have put parents in a difficult and precarious position.

To be clear: I believe the CDC when it says that, in a given Walmart, for instance, it’s safe for fully vaccinated people to not wear masks while everyone else keeps them on. What I don’t believe is that there is much overlap between the populations of adults who refuse to get the vaccine vs. those who will conscientiously continue to wear masks on the honor system for public safety.

And that leaves families with children under 12 in a situation where they must tighten their Covid precautions at a time when everyone else is loosening theirs.

Because until the vaccine has been approved for young children, I can’t take my 5-year-old and 8-year-old into a grocery store or ice cream shop where there will likely be unvaccinated and unmasked people walking around. (Walmart, one of their favorite destinations, has dropped its universal mask requirement and now asks unvaccinated customers to wear a mask on the honor system.)

I’ve heard people argue that we shouldn’t worry too much about this, that kids are at such low risk for serious complications from Covid that the new policy will not put them in danger.

And maybe I would assess the situation differently if I didn’t know that the vaccine would be available to children within a matter of months. If the status quo were going to persist for years into the future, I might decide that we need to accept the ongoing risk and chance a few trips into the grocery store.

But given the reality that we’re so close to shots for kids, I can’t in good faith risk my children contracting Covid after being careful for so long. We don’t know the long-term effects of Covid, nor fully understand how the new variants affect children.

What I wish the CDC had done was acknowledge that, yes, fully vaccinated people are safe to take off their masks in many more situations, and they should feel free to do so in any outdoor setting. And that, as vaccination rates rise and case levels go down, we could move away from the indoor mask mandate.

As it stands, we can no longer rely on peer pressure in most places to keep masks on the faces of those who should wear them.

And maybe I don’t need to be as militant about my family’s rules if Covid rates get low enough. But how low is safe enough? I wish the CDC would tell me.

When my oldest son started kindergarten four years ago, it was the first year that New York City implemented free universal lunch and breakfast for all students. That meant that for every meal served during the school day, all the kids at his Brooklyn school could get in the cafeteria line and help themselves. No lunch money, no special accounts for low-income children. Free food for all.

It was an important step to improve health and nutrition for students, it reduced the stigma attached to getting free and reduced-priced meals, and it made my daily life so much easier.

Now the federal government has announced that it will extend its pandemic school meal provisions and provide all schoolchildren with free meals during the 2021-22 school year. I’m here to tell you that regardless of your family income and whether or not you have packed lunches for your children in years past, you should have them eat school meals.

It’s good for them. It’s good for society. And all you have to do is nothing. Just sleep in a little longer and don’t make them a lunch in the morning. Here’s why:

It’s nutritious. School lunches have to meet USDA nutrition standards that limit the amount of fat and saturated fat. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, passed in 2010 and implemented in 2012, required that schools serve more fruits, vegetables and whole grains and limit high-fat and high-starch food. Studies have found that kids who eat lunch at school are eating more nutritious meals as a result of the law. And for some kids, those meals are the most important nutrition they get all day.

Is the school food perfect? Of course not. School districts operate on limited budgets. Before the pandemic, the federal government reimbursed schools $3.60 per lunch for students who qualified based on their household income. (That’s now been increased to $4.25 per lunch for all students, at least for the coming school year.) My son’s favorite school lunch food was “beef patty,” and every Friday was pizza day.

And I’ll be honest: When Nate started kindergarten, I didn’t let him eat school lunch because I held negative stereotypes about the food. I packed him lunch every day until he stopped eating it and begged me to let him eat from the cafeteria. Once I did, he ate a square meal every day and even served himself carrots and cucumbers from the cafeteria salad bar. And my husband and I were still in charge of his breakfast, dinner and snacks. I was a little more conscious about the nutritional content of those meals to make up for any weaknesses in the school meals. But I felt good about opting in. And that’s because:

The more that families participate in the school lunch program, the better it will be. When more students eat lunch, more money is coming into the system. In previous years, students who didn’t qualify for free and reduced meals supported the lunch program by paying for their lunches. This year, the USDA will reimburse school districts for all lunches, but only for meals that are served. That means that every time your child eats a school meal, your local lunch program will get more money from the federal government. More money means more resources to improve quality.

When public programs have wide participation, they are held in greater respect. Think about Medicare. Or the federal vaccination program. They both have wide public support, and people feel good about participating in them. Imagine if the National School Lunch Program garnered that type of esteem. It might actually get the support and funding it deserves.

What’s more, the stigma against getting free and reduced-price lunches would disappear. That stigma is real; so is lunch debt. I’d prefer a world where school-day nutrition is a public entitlement.

You deserve it! This summer, I took my kids to a playground; unbeknownst to me, it was the site of a summer lunch program where meals were given away free of charge to anyone who wanted one.

When a program staffer offered my kids a meal, I started to decline. We didn’t come for lunch, and we didn’t need one. But my kids were excited about the free food, and the staffer didn’t want to take no for an answer.

So they took the sack lunches, and the playground filled up with other children who came for lunch, too. My kids excitedly dug into their sandwiches and bananas and milk and chatted happily with the other kids as they all ate together. They had been deprived of this simple experience of sharing a meal with other children for so long, and they needed this.

And so do you. After more than a year living through a pandemic, being locked down with your children, enduring remote schooling, telecommuting and all the stresses and sacrifices of this year, take this one thing off your plate. Don’t pack lunch in the morning.

It’s a hopeful, confusing time to be a parent during a pandemic.

On one hand, the vaccine rollout is picking up pace and public health experts have given us every reason to believe that this summer will be a wonderful release from our Covid-19 strictures.

That doesn’t mean Covid will be gone or that losses won’t continue, but it means that in some of the key ways that matter most to us as human beings, life can start to get back to normal. Vaccinated grandparents can hug their unvaccinated grandchildren; small groups of vaccinated adults can have (indoor! unmasked!) gatherings. 

On the other hand, our kids will remain unvaccinated this summer, and school-age children may need to wait until 2022 to get their shots, as vaccine trials for children are still ongoing.

So what are parents who expect to be vaccinated themselves and desperately want to open up their lives a little bit to do?

When I imagine this summer, I think about taking a deep sigh. Life won’t change drastically, but we’ll spread out a little bit; we’ll relax. For my family, that will mean taking full advantage of parks and beaches, going on a Fourth of July camping trip and inviting (vaccinated) loved ones into our home. The elements of the Covid-19 restrictions that felt most unnatural — the stark separation from our families, friends and communities — can begin to ease. 

At the same time, with children unvaccinated, my family and so many others will have mixed-vaccination status for the foreseeable future. And I’ve been trying to understand what that will mean for us. 

Economist Emily Oster wrote a much-discussed piece in the Atlantic in March in which she argued that unvaccinated kids can be thought of as having the same risk as vaccinated seniors for the purposes of planning vacations, camps and playdates this summer. Meaning, go forth and take a vacation and don’t worry too much about it.

Her argument was widely criticized by public health professionals who felt she was drawing a false equivalence and omitting the risks posed by Covid variants, high-risk kids and adult populations that won’t be vaccinated yet — and she backtracked on some of her claims.

The bottom line is that we need our kids to be vaccinated, and until the deed is done we shouldn’t pretend that it doesn’t matter.

In my family, we’ll follow the CDC guidelines, which continue to maintain that unvaccinated people from different households shouldn’t socialize indoors. That means no indoor playdates for my children, and no indoor dining at restaurants. (I haven’t eaten at a restaurant, indoors or outdoors, for a year. Outdoor dining is something I’m definitely looking forward to once I’m vaccinated.)

My kids have been in school this entire school year, with masking and distancing precautions in place, and the evidence has shown this to be safe; the CDC even reduced its distancing requirement in classrooms from 6 feet to 3 feet recently.

So the plan is for them to go to camp this summer; camps that can keep activities outdoors are even safer than schools. Last year, many camps were canceled, and the ones that did open struggled to find campers. This year, a lot of camps are opening up again, but there’s an even larger resurgence of interest from families; camp waiting lists may end up being quite long.

When it feels like the end is in sight, we become impatient. Even though we’ve come so far — a year of distancing, working and learning from home, wearing masks — it becomes harder to maintain our precautions when the finish line is in sight.

Of course, the finish line is a mirage. Covid isn’t going to disappear. It’s just going to be better controlled. If my kids playing with their friends outside rather than inside or going to the park rather than a bowling alley will help that effort, then I can hang in for a while longer.

My youngest son is turning 5 next month, and he’s never had a birthday party.

For a long time, this was sort of a running joke about neglected second kids. My oldest son, 8, has a July birthday and we’ve thrown him parties in the park with cake and friends almost every year of his life.

But shortly after Harvey was born, we moved to a cold climate, and we couldn’t exactly gather in the park in March for his 1st birthday. When he turned 2 and 3, we had small family celebrations at home. Harvey wasn’t in school yet, so there was no pressure to invite his toddler friends.

We love him dearly, but we didn’t feel a sense of urgency to plan a big public event for his early birthdays the way we did when our oldest, Nate, was the same age. What can we say? He’s our second kid.

When Harvey was turning 4, though, we decided to make up for birthdays past. He’s a social butterfly, and he talks constantly about his best friends from preschool. We invited his school friends to our apartment with plans to entertain them and feed them sugar for a couple of hours; Harvey would have a blast. Harvey’s birthday is on St. Patrick’s Day, and the party was scheduled for the weekend of March 21, 2020. You can see where this was heading: We canceled the party due to Covid, and Harvey didn’t get to have his birthday party.

As we approach the first anniversary of Covid lockdown, everyone I’ve talked to has headed into March with a sense of dread. It’s ominous and dispiriting to realize we’ve been at this for a year — keeping distant from our friends and families, having no break at all from our partners and children — even for families like mine that have been blessed with good health during the pandemic.

We all have, I think, some sort of marker in our lives that represents either the last moment of normalcy or the first time everything felt different.

Just a week before we were going to have Harvey’s party, we planned to head to a bar with friends to celebrate my husband Aaron’s birthday, which is also in March. The Covid news was getting more and more ominous by the day, especially in New York City, where we lived. Aaron had already started working from home, but we weren’t sure whether we should cancel the night out; restaurants and bars were still open. In the end, we did cancel, though we thought we might be overreacting. It was only later that it became fully clear that we had made the right choice.

It’s depressing to enter a second year of Covid birthdays, a year in which Harvey, again, will have no party.

Lately the walls have closed in on us even more. A couple of weeks ago, Nate broke his leg skiing on the local mountain that’s close to where we live now, in Maine. Outdoor winter sports are supposed to be safe activities during the pandemic. I can’t say that I recommend skiing for this reason. Nate’s right leg is encased in a big, blue cast that extends from his toes to his thigh. When he’s home, he ignores his crutches and hops on one foot around the house.

And home is pretty much where we stay all the time now. There’s ice on the ground outside, and the nature walks and beach visits that were our only recreation are impractical on crutches.

So I was pleased when Harvey requested a birthday celebration that is perfectly Covid-safe and lines up precisely with our home-bound lives: He wants a family pajama party where “we all stay in our PJs all day and build a giant fort with every blanket in the house.” That I can provide.

But it makes me sad, too. Because the truth is that my kids have gotten used to being home all the time, to being isolated, to being distanced. They have turned inward, and that’s what they’re starting to prefer.

I’m looking forward to the months ahead — when Nate’s cast comes off, when more and more people get the Covid vaccine. I’m eager to re-enter the world, and I hope it won’t be too much of a shock when I bring my children with me.

In this column, I usually write about my kids and my experiences as a parent, but this month I decided to interview my own father, David Himmelstein.

He’s a screenwriter, and his latest film, “My Name Is Sara,” is the first one he’s written on a Jewish theme. It tells the true story of a 13-year-old girl who survives the Holocaust by hiding under a secret identity in the Ukrainian countryside for two years, utterly alone in a stark, isolated place.

Sara never spoke about her experiences to her children, but late in her life she gave two interviews to the USC Shoah Foundation; these formed the basis of her story as seen on screen.

I talked to my dad about how he brought Sara’s story to life and how he blends the drama of moviemaking with historical events. “My Name Is Sara” was screened virtually by the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and as part of the Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival.

Holocaust stories continue to be told and retold, decade after decade. Why does the world need another Holocaust movie, and what does this story bring that is new?

What attracted me to this project as a writer was that it immediately struck me that this is the polar opposite of the Anne Frank story. A constant theme of Anne’s diary was her complaints about not having any privacy. You have her family and another family, a total of eight people, who are crammed into a few hundred square feet, whereas Sara, who was almost Anne’s exact age, was on her own. Her family had been murdered, she was the only survivor. She was walking, this young girl, walking by herself, with literally just the dress she had on, down a country road.

Beyond that, she was compelled to make incredibly difficult moral decisions that all stemmed from her promise to her mother on the night before she and her older brother escaped from the ghetto just before it was going to be liquidated. Her parents made the decision they would stay with their two younger sons, who were 3 and 5, and the best chance for the family was for Sara and her older brother to escape through the fence. Her mother says to her, “Your survival will be our revenge. Promise me you’ll do whatever it takes to survive.” Everything you see in the movie stems from that. A 13-year-old is supposed to decide, what does whatever it takes really mean? It’s almost overwhelming. 

You were born shortly after World War II to parents who were both born in the U.S. How central was the Holocaust to your understanding of Jewish identity growing up?

My parents didn’t talk a lot about it. One vivid memory stands out. My father’s sisters lived in Brookline, Mass., on Beals Street, in a Jewish neighborhood. My memory is that we would go to this bakery around the corner to get cookies or challah. It was the spring or summer — it was warm outside — and the woman who was behind the counter was very friendly to me. She just exuded warmth. She had an accent. She reached over the counter to hand me the cookies, and I saw numbers tattooed on the inside of her arm. I instantly knew what that was. I just remembered a jolt seeing that. Looking at this smiling, warm, engaging woman and knowing what she must have experienced so far from Brookline, Massachusetts. What had always been an abstraction was so real and vivid. 

You’re the parent of two girls, but this is the first of your films to focus on a young, female protagonist. How did you humanize Sara as a teenage girl amid the upheaval of her circumstances?

The movie had to imagine all the things that weren’t discussed about her as a girl. She left when she was 12 or 13. She ended up under a false identity staying with a farm family, taking care of two young boys who were ironically about the same age as her younger brothers. In the movie, the boys’ mother, who was only in her 20s, is particularly suspicious of Sara’s identity and her story, and also of her husband’s interest in her. There was a tension between them. And I created this scene where, in the farmhouse, she has her first period, and there’s a moment of warming the ice: a mother to daughter, or older woman to young girl, that we hadn’t seen up until then. She was relating to her not as an object of suspicion but empathy for the first time in the movie. And their relationship warms after that. 

You’ve written two films about baseball. One of them, “Soul of the Game,” focuses on the events leading to the integration of the major leagues. How do you approach writing about historical characters and events?

You try to get the historic milestones in place and correct. You try to accurately portray the feel and the tensions and the real-life stakes of ordinary people at that time. But also, as a writer, your first obligation is to aim for a compelling universal human story. You hope that above all, that you can deliver the emotional truths of what it was like to have lived that time under those circumstances.

Sometimes you have to bend the facts in service of the human drama. When I was writing “Soul of the Game.” I portrayed Josh Gibson, Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson as being a lot friendlier than they actually were to each other when they were playing in the Negro Leagues right after World War II. People who were experts immediately pointed that out. But your primary duty is to the story, using it as a springboard to illuminate greater truths. And that same dynamic and push-pull is there whether you’re talking about Jackie Robinson or Sara Goralnik. That’s always the writer’s dilemma.

We’ve been watching a lot of family movies over our extended winter break, and my children have questions.

Regarding “Home Alone”: Do the robbers really get their hair scorched off? Do they really step on a nail? Do they really get shot with a BB gun? And “Star Wars”: Are the rebels really flying ships? Do the Jedi really lift things with their minds?

You see the theme: Our kids, ages 8 and 4, are still wrapping their minds around the idea of fiction. They’re OK when it comes to animation in imaginary worlds (a majority of their viewing), but when it comes to live action, they have trouble navigating drama vs. reality.

No, we tell them over and over (and over) during the movie: No one actually got hurt while they were making “Home Alone.” The kids who play Kevin’s brothers and sisters are not his siblings in real life. The people who play his parents are not his real parents. And no, they are not actually on a plane, nor is it actually taking them to France.

“I think I know what happened,” says Nate, 8. “When they made the movie, probably one adult stayed with Kevin so that he wasn’t really all alone.”

So we talk about what an actor is, what a set is, and props and stage makeup. And stunt doubles, who are crucial to a film built on the premise that it’s hilarious to watch adults get beaten up by a kid. (It is!)

Getting ready for bed, my youngest son, Harvey, 4, pops his head in my room. “Are monsters real?” he asks. “No,” I say. “Yay,” he replies, and leaves.

A few seconds later, he pops back in. “Ghosts?” “No.” “Thanks.” He walks out, only to return. “Bats?”

“Yes, bats are real,” I tell him. “Oh, man!” he says. His luck has run out.

When my kids first started asking if things like dragons and unicorns and magic are real, I said no without thinking about it. Later I wondered if I had made a mistake, if I was supposed to be nurturing a childhood belief in magical beings. I have no regrets telling them that monsters and ghosts aren’t real — no sane parent wants to give their kids nightmares. But should I be encouraging them to believe in fairies? What is a fairy, anyway?

There’s a wooded area in a nearby state park that has become a children’s fairy village. Over the years, children have constructed charming little houses out of rocks and sticks and moss that are meant to be fairies’ homes. Some of them are incredibly intricate, with small staircases and rooms and tables and chairs. Building homes for fairies is a childhood pursuit that’s very on trend, one of the innocent, imaginative and outdoorsy kinds of activities promoted in certain educational circles influenced by Waldorf and forest schools. At the fairy village, my kids want to build their own fairy houses; they happily collect acorns and pieces of bark and handfuls of grass and start in.

But when they ask me, “What are fairies?” I don’t know what to say. Have I skipped over an important stage of childhood development that involves believing in magic? “A magical creature that people believe lives in the trees” is the best definition I can come up with.

Another parent told me that in her home, she talks about all kinds of fairies, like clean-up fairies and food fairies. We don’t have those, but my children do believe in one fairy: the tooth fairy. And despite all I have done, intentionally or not, to quash their interest in fantasy, they fully believe in her. Nate says the tooth fairy is the one magic thing that’s true. They ask me how she knows when children have lost their teeth and how she travels all around the world to give them money. I shrug my shoulders, and they make up stories to explain the gaps.

A few days ago, my husband started talking to the kids about magic, and we ended up watching videos of the late card magician Ricky Jay doing tricks. We were all slack-jawed as he turned one card into another, popped a specific card out of the deck and dealt himself winning blackjack hands over and over. Ricky Jay doesn’t pretend that he’s doing “magic” — in fact, he talks throughout about how he uses his memory and hand control to do his tricks. But what he does is so astounding that it seems like magic all the same.

Of course, Nate and Harvey started working on card tricks that afternoon. Their technique was a little transparent. But given a little time, maybe they’ll be the ones creating an illusion for everyone else.

Our youngest, now in his senior year of high school, recently turned 18.

He’s spending his year thinking about his next chapter, and, in many ways, I am, too.

My parenting column for J. began when he was 13, and it seems only fitting that I wrap it up when he’s 18. I figured it’s good to start with a bar mitzvah and end on a chai.

Though I’ll still be parenting — and even writing about it occasionally — this will be my last regular column. It’s time for my role to recede a bit as the kids (our daughter finishes her sophomore year in college this spring) make their way in the world, separate from me. It’s time for me, too, to separate from them, and also make room for other writing projects beyond the scope of day-to-day mothering.

Meanwhile, I’m reflecting on what I’ve learned about parenting since I began writing this column, and I’d like to share some of these things with you.

I’ve learned to trust my own instincts and not compare myself to other mothers. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to raising kids. No two families are alike, no two kids, no two mothers or fathers. I always come out ahead when I parent from the inside (“Parenting from the Inside” was this column’s original moniker) rather than looking outward.

Wendy Mogel’s “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee” is the only parenting book I needed when the kids were younger, and it still is. I’ve learned that most other parenting books just made me feel lousy because they seemed to point out everything I was doing wrong.

So I stopped buying them.

Mogel’s no-nonsense approach to child-rearing makes sense to me. I relate to her Jewish values that serve as the backdrop to her views on raising children. Like Wendy, I also think it’s OK for my kids to have skinned knees.

I’ve learned that nothing beats good girlfriends. This was true when our kids were younger and has become even more true as our kids have grown. We walk, we talk about our kids, we worry, we problem-solve. Most important, we make each other feel better.

I’ve learned to ignore the negative mother labels such as the helicopter, tiger and snowplow, but “Jewish mother” is a label I’ll proudly embrace. Why wouldn’t I want to be associated with a group of women who, according to Marjorie Ingall, are “responsible for the outsized success of the Jewish people”? All my female ancestors, the formidable Jewish mothers who came before me, are a part of me. We are collectively a powerful group of women.

It was important for us to tell our kids about their family history when they were younger. I’ve learned that, by doing so, it has given them a more profound understanding of who they are. They know their place in the world stretches beyond their bubble in the Bay Area, back to Ukraine and back further still.  My grandfather’s story of courage and resilience is our kids’ story, too. When they encounter setbacks in their life, maybe they won’t feel so alone. They’ll know we come from hardy stock.

When it comes to older kids and parenting, the most difficult lesson I’ve learned over the years is that there is no easy fix (though a bowl of homemade chicken soup goes a long way, whether your kids are 2 or 20). Patience, I’ve discovered, is the key to everything.

And sometimes, just when I think I have this parenting thing figured out, our kids grow and change, and I’m back at square one. Parenting is hard. It’s messy work. But there’s beauty in the mess, too, if you just know where to look.

I’ve watched our kids take their first steps. I’ve seen them fall and I’ve seen them soar, and I can hardly believe they’ve blossomed into such lovely, kind, smart and capable young adults.

Thank you for joining me on this crazy, wonderful, parenting journey for the past five years. It’s been such a privilege to have had the opportunity to experience it all with you.

At our local library, they have stowed away all the toys in the children’s section and ended in-person story time. But they still let you in for half an hour to pick out books, so that’s what I do every week with my 8-year-old son on one of the days when he does school from home.

Nate’s taste in reading runs from the sophisticated (recently he asked if he could read the New Yorker) to the juvenile, and on this day he pulled all the Berenstain Bears books off the shelf and was ready to check out a dozen of them. I sorted through them to help him narrow down his choices; many of the titles were familiar to me from my childhood: “The Berenstain Bears’ Report Card Trouble,” “The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Junk Food,” “The Berenstain Bears and the Week at Grandma’s.”

But I also was on guard for new titles in the series that I didn’t want him to check out, and sure enough, I pulled one out of the pile: “The Berenstain Bears: God Bless Our Country.” It has a verse from the Book of Matthew on the inside cover and is part of the Berenstain Bears “Living Lights” series, whose books are labeled as “faith” stories.

It’s jarring to many that the Berenstain Bears have become evangelical Christians, especially since a lot of people assumed that Stan and Jan Berenstain, the original authors, were Jewish. In fact, Stan Berenstain was Jewish, and his wife, Jan, was from an Episcopalian family. They started their series about Mama, Papa, Brother and Sister Bear living together in a treehouse “on a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country” in 1962, and for decades the Bears were firmly secular. That changed in the mid-2000s, when Stan and Jan’s son Mike, a practicing Christian, took a greater role in the series and started a parallel version of the books under the Living Lights imprint for religious readers.

Because I knew this background, I was able to sneak away the book I didn’t want Nate to check out. But I wondered whether other patrons would unknowingly check out the evangelical Berenstain Bears book or whether the library staff even realized it was part of the collection.

So as we were leaving, I mentioned it to the children’s librarian. “I’m not telling you what to do about it, or even complaining,” I said. “I just know that, personally, I don’t want my child to be proselytized to at the library.” She asked me to leave the book on her desk so she could look at it. And that was that.

Except that a few days later, I happened to be speaking on the phone to Deborah Caldwell-Stone, deputy director of the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. I was researching how schools and youth librarians diversify their collections, and we were talking about the fact that books highlighting racial diversity and with LBGTQ themes are challenged at a higher rate than other books. Parents often cite sexual content and language when challenging books, and I could never imagine myself as one of those parents who would challenge a library book because I thought it was inappropriate. If anything, when it’s time for my children to be corrupted, I’d prefer that they be corrupted by books.

But I had just told a youth librarian that a book wasn’t appropriate for the children’s section. So I asked Caldwell-Stone about it.

She didn’t side with me.

“That’s the same kind of objection you would get to LGBTQ books,” she said.

She meant that some parents don’t want LGBTQ books in a library collection because they don’t think it’s right for their child to be looking at other “appropriate” books and then pick up one that promotes lifestyles they don’t agree with. Just like I don’t want my kids to be innocently browsing the Berenstain Bears oeuvre and then pick up the one title that quotes from the New Testament.

Caldwell-Stone said that books should be organized appropriately within the collection, and that every patron has a right to ask for a book to be reviewed to make sure it falls within the collection criteria of the library. But she also said that public libraries have a mandate to be inclusive and responsive to their communities, and that just as this wouldn’t exclude LGBTQ books, it shouldn’t necessarily exclude the Berenstain Bears Living Lights books.

And, most importantly, she advised that the best way to screen books is to have honest conversations with your child about the standards that you have for your family. A conversation that, honestly, I was trying to avoid when I sneaked “God Bless Our Country” out of Nate’s sight.

Intellectual honesty, huh? I guess I can agree to that.

I was never a fan of giving the kids timeouts when they were little. I didn’t think putting them in a room by themselves taught them anything about their bad behavior. Instead, I reserved the timeouts for myself.

And I still do.

I remember the days when I’d spend a fair amount of time cooking dinner, only for one child to drop their entire plate of food on the floor (by accident perhaps, but who knows). As soon as I’d clean up that mess, the other child would have a tantrum over something inconsequential.

There’d be times when one kid would torment the other relentlessly for what felt like hours. Then there’d be those afternoons when they’d gang up together, pull all the sheets and covers off their beds, dump all their toys on the floor, and take all their books off the bookshelves. This made them laugh uncontrollably and made me absolutely crazy.

Most of the time, though, they were lovely, but they had their moments.

And in these moments, I was exasperated and annoyed.

I’d be on the edge of losing it, so I’d give myself a timeout instead of the kids. I’d head to the bedroom, shut the door and cool down for a few minutes. The sheets and covers, toys and books might still be all over the floor after I returned from my mini-break, but (usually) the squabbling was over, and the tantrum ended. I was calmer, and that helped me be a better mother.

Fast forward to parenting teenagers in a pandemic, and I’m finding I need these timeouts again — more than ever. The kids are not fighting, nor are they throwing their dinner plates on the floor. They are not having tantrums. It’s nothing like that.

I know the pandemic has affected all of us, but there are times when I think it’s hardest for our older kids who, on the brink of adulthood, aren’t yet wired at their age to be so isolated and confined.

Our son is spending most of his senior year of high school at home. Our daughter is at college but living with considerable restrictions. I’m trying to do my best to support my family emotionally, but I have my good days and so-so days just like everyone else.

Bringing back those timeouts of long ago helps rejuvenate me, especially when I’m feeling anxious and worried. Sometimes it’s just a room in our house where I turn off my phone for 15 minutes and do nothing. It’s not so much a prescribed meditative practice as it is a much-needed spontaneous chill-out when I’m feeling overwhelmed.

There’s also a lovely park a few blocks from where we live. I try to walk there every day, at the end of my day. I have a favorite bench where I like to sit. Seeing the little kids smiling and playing, and the toddlers ambling along, restores me. Sometimes there’s a group of elementary school kids sitting in a wide circle, socially distanced, chatting and laughing with their masks on their chins. They must be happy, I think, to be outside together.

Virtual Shabbat has also become a sacred space for me to take a breath. On Fridays, after another week of rising Covid cases, another week of parenting in a pandemic, and I’m fried. I log on to services, and as soon as I hear the rabbi and the cantor, my spirits are lifted. It helps me to connect with my community and know I’m not alone.

It’s an old cliché, but it’s true: We moms have to put our oxygen mask on first before putting it on our kids.

While there’s nothing I can do about the pandemic, remembering to take time out for myself each day — even if it’s for 15 minutes — helps me reset and gives me what I need to take care of the people in my life that I love the most.

There will be four people at my Thanksgiving table: my husband, my two children and me. They’re the same people I sit down to dinner with every night. And I’d like to give you a virtual high-five if your Thanksgiving meal will look the same.

When the lockdown started in March, wise people immediately piped up to say that it was important to check on each other emotionally, that long periods of isolation would be hard on everyone. That seemed like good advice, but I had no idea what a long slog it would be. In mid-March, when talk turned to preparing for virtual seders, I was surprised; were we sure, really, that social distancing would be necessary for that long? By the time virtual High Holidays rolled around, after pandemic month had unfolded after pandemic month, it all seemed like a grim, unfunny joke.

In eight months of pandemic, we’ve learned a lot. We know now that we don’t need to disinfect our groceries, that briefly passing by someone on the sidewalk is probably not going to get us sick, that (with basic precautions) we can relax when we’re outside and enjoy the outdoors. Summer was a welcome reprieve for my family after months of being shut in; we went to the beach and swam in lakes, we gathered with friends and extended family members for picnics.

But as much as we’ve learned where we can feel safe, we’ve also learned a lot about where we need to heighten our guard.

The bad news about high-risk Covid activities is they’re things that naturally feel very safe to humans. Inviting a class friend or family member who is not a part of your household over for an indoor meal is high-risk; so is having a grandparent babysit for a few hours. We know that outdoor events are safer than indoor events; what’s less intuitive is that larger, public gatherings with clear guidelines (such as protests where everyone is masked or even in-person school with safety protocols in place) are safer than smaller, informal gatherings where lines easily get blurred and people don’t necessarily mask or social distance. Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine CDC, has identified small indoor gatherings as the primary driver of the state’s alarming spike in Covid cases.

It makes me uneasy when I hear people make justifications for bending these rules. I understand; living this way is grueling, and I’ve bent some rules myself. But, anecdotally, I know of many who now freely visit members of their extended family, even as those family members visit and gather with others in different social orbits. I hear of “pandemic pods” where the definition of a pod seems to become looser and looser, including multiple households and exponentially increasing the number of social contacts and risk for disease transmission. I know of people who rely on quick Covid tests to justify their plans, not factoring in the five to seven days it would take for the virus to reach detectable levels in their bodies after transmission.

I’m sure there are ways to plan a safe visit with family members. And I think part of the problem is that public health officials spend so much time telling us what we shouldn’t do that they don’t tell us what we should. I would welcome a public health-informed guide to planning an indoor family gathering; for instance, maybe it would be safe if two households each quarantine for a week, then get negative Covid tests and travel by car only a certain distance to reach each other. I don’t know; I’m not a doctor. But given the fact that these visits are happening with or without the blessing of public health officials, it would be useful to have specific procedures focused on harm reduction.

That said, Thanksgiving is not the time for these experiments.

Two weeks after Canadian Thanksgiving on Oct. 12, that country experienced a spike in infections. This year’s holiday is going to be a very dangerous one, just at a time when there is a surge of infections nationwide. The best way to reduce the public harm is to keep your indoor celebration within your household.

Though I won’t be eating with my mom, she has promised to bring me a pie on Thanksgiving Day. And pie exchanges are an observance that I can unreservedly recommend for this year. Share your meal through foil-covered dishes you leave on your neighbors’ doorsteps. Just don’t go inside.

When our kids were younger, there were a lot of things that I used to worry about.

I called the pediatrician in a panic many times — would our daughter give up her bottle? At 12 months, she still wasn’t sleeping through the night; would she ever? Was our son, who was an early talker, ever going to walk? Was he still going to be in Pull-Ups in college?

I worried our daughter would be saying “cwazy” instead of “crazy” well into adulthood because she had trouble with her r’s. I worried she wouldn’t be able to master complicated math because addition and subtraction were initially challenging for her. I worried when our son didn’t read as early as our daughter. I worried he didn’t like salad.

I didn’t take time away for myself too often when the kids were little, but when I did, I worried my hubby would feed them hot dogs with nitrates and sugary cereals, and I worried about how this would affect their growing brains.

There was the year I worried that one kid didn’t have enough friends, and the other one had too many.

When we let our daughter have an Instagram account and bought our son a Nintendo DS, I worried that they wouldn’t read books for pleasure anymore.

I worried they’d want to drop out of Sunday school after their b’nai mitzvahs. I worried the kids didn’t eat enough protein. I thought our son would wear Velcro shoes forever.

When our son was in seventh grade, we promised to get him his first (flip) phone. I took him to the Sprint store, but the salesperson was unable to access our account and told us we couldn’t purchase the phone that day. I was frustrated and angry and had a mild tantrum, embarrassing my son and myself. Later I worried my lousy behavior would impact him in some way.

As the kids got older, I worried I gave them bad advice, or too much advice, or not enough. I feared there were things I forgot to teach them that surely other mothers knew, but somehow I missed. There were times I said I was listening, promised actually, but completely tuned them out, and they knew it. I wondered whether they thought I was an inattentive mother. There was also that morning when one of our kids didn’t feel well, might have even had a low temperature, but I sent them to school anyway because I had a busy day.

But I’m happy to report that our daughter drinks from cups now and sleeps through the night. One of my favorite activities to do with our son is walk — he loves to walk all over San Francisco, and when I’m with him, I often have to pick up my pace to keep up. He’s been out of Pull-Ups for about 15 years, enjoys salad and hasn’t worn Velcro sneakers since second grade.

The fun the kids had with their dad while I was away far outweighed any adverse side effects of sugar and nitrates. I know now that a little junk food once in a while isn’t such a big deal. Besides, I’ve learned a lot about moderation since then, and when it comes to kids, you get more from them when you give in a little.

Our daughter’s favorite subject is math. Both kids are avid readers. And they’re both really proud to be Jewish. I think my son has forgiven me for my tantrum in the Sprint store; he eventually got his phone. I’m pretty sure they’ve gotten over any crappy advice I’ve given them. They have lovely friends.

Life in a global pandemic is not easy, and it’s been especially hard on kids. But I hope after many years, when this is all over, I’ll look back and feel the same way as I do now when reflecting on their childhood: That I worried too much — when, in fact, the kids were all right.