Success Without the tsuris

When my mother- and father-in-law brought up the subject of taking a family vacation over the winter school break, my husband Michael and I weren’t surprised. We have come to expect that we will be invited to join my in-laws someplace warm and tropical, where the only rule is that if you want a strawberry daiquiri, you have to swim up to the swim-up bar to get it yourself so that you get a little exercise.

It was my first day of my second semester teaching Presentation Skills and Business Writing at the Beijing International MBA Program at Peking University, the top business school program in China.

My 10 year old twins, Jacob and Sophie, were in the back seat of our minivan, and bickering once again. I mean, I love it when people fight over me, but this was getting ridiculous.

“I’m the one who made mom a mom!” Jacob announced, holding his one-minute head start in life over his twin sister’s head.

“Yeah, but I’m the one who made her a mother of twins. That’s even more special!” Sophie reminded him.

On September 11, 2001, after my Manhattan offices at the Jewish Federations of North America were evacuated, I walked across the street to pick up my friend Wendy from her office, and the two of us headed uptown to get my husband Michael from his. We planned to camp out at Wendy’s Upper West Side apartment until the Long Island Rail Road began running again. We made one stop along the way at the supermarket, to pick up the necessities we thought we would require if we couldn’t leave for a few days.