Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Lessons of the Road

Since the summer I have been teaching my younger daughter to drive. She took her first baby-driver steps driving between rows of parking spots in a huge, empty lot. Then she drove around quiet residential neighborhoods until she could confidently turn on the turn signal and steer at the same time, and I wasn’t constantly slamming on my imaginary brakes. But when we went out into the streets of the real road world, I learned more about other people than I did about my daughter’s driving ability.

In the most public of places we act as if we are in the most private of places, revealing far too much of our personalities. We’re not just surreptitiously picking our noses in our cars—on the whole, we’re selfish and mean, with only the occasional glimmer of kindness.

At first, when the 35mph speed limit was beyond her capabilities, she was constantly honked at, tailgated, cut off, and given looks-to-kill. For goodness’ sake, the girl was trying to drive carefully and all she got for that was an endless line of virtual middle fingers. The worst offenders were, no surprise here—everyone. Who made us all the Grand Patrollers of the Road? Are we all emergency room doctors about to give birth?

But worse than arrogance and impatience is the fact that my daughter no longer thinks the people of the world are law-abiding citizens. How many people has she seen break the laws she studied so thoroughly to pass the “written” test. Folks, we’re going through red lights and stop lights as if they are road spam. We speed and cut each other off and race across double yellow lines because, well, because we want to. The impression that I conveyed to my daughter that the world was, on the whole, a fair and decent place has been trampled. She now doubts everything I ever taught her, except to definitely not pick her nose.

Last week, after she had been yielding for quite some time at a busy intersection to no avail, she asked me why people speed up when they see she is trying to get in? What does a mother say to that, except the absolute truth as I have come to see from the passenger seat: People are selfish, they just care about themselves and getting whatever advantage they can, however insignificant. I had thought that the driving lessons would focus on maintaining distance from the car in front of you, always checking your mirrors, and never glancing at the cellphone, but no, this was the reality that presented itself.

But the other day, thank goodness for that day, there was hope that the world I had explained to her might exist on some streets. She was in the middle lane, signaling to get into the right lane. Three cars sped up, because, well, they could, and passed her. And then, at the light, the woman in the car to our right asked if we want to turn into that lane and that it would be okay. I will add that she was a refined-looking, long-retired woman wearing beige suede gloves. Maybe the manners of days by gone aren’t all gone. And just perhaps, after my daughter has experienced what it’s like to be at the receiving end of both possibilities she will elect to drive and live with civility.

What do we get from our behavior? According to the US Census Bureau, in 2009 there were 10.8 million road accidents and 35,900 deaths. We lose property, we lose limbs, we lose livelihoods, we lose people, we lose a sense of community.

And what are we teaching our young? Sure, it’s a pain to wait at a light when no one’s coming. And it’s annoying that you need to drive at the speed limit when you’re such a good driver and you really really need to get where you’re going. Not to mention those tailgating speed demons who force you to move over, for what? Just so you can wait behind them at a light?

When does it stop? When do we decide that all of the rules apply to each of us, all of the time? It’s not just about breaking rules, it’s about breaking the threads that hold a society together—the threads that create a society.

Have we become islands in our little pods?

Teaching about the Holocaust

In the school where I teach, we read Night, Elie Wiesel’s first memoir of the Holocaust. For me, reading Night and having my students learn about the Holocaust amounts to a mission.  Other teachers, though, find it a pain, a bother. They don’t understand all of the terms, which, I guess, means that they don’t want to learn concepts that are alien to them. I’m pretty sure they won’t be excommunicated from any church which they don’t attend if they learn what Shabbos means or what Kabbalah refers to. It seems that they want to stick to analyzing characters in a neat way as opposed to this small plunk of vicious reality that cannot be analyzed for character development.

It is so utterly wrong that the one Jewish member on the team (or the one who identifies as Jewish) is the one who finds true purpose in this unit. After all, do I teach because children need to know how to identify a metaphor, or do I teach because children need the tools to think and express themselves? It is so very wrong that people think, apparently, that since it didn’t happen to their people then they don’t need to relate to it. Or, worse yet, perhaps because it’s too much for them—too depressing, too horrifying, too outside of any comfort zone—they rush through it to fulfill a requirement but no more.

Generally, there is a research component to this unit. I have found it difficult to oversee this project because most kids want to find a single website that will give them answers to the questions they need to consider, yet I, I can’t help it, I want them to take it  more seriously than the means to a grade. So this year I will try a different way to reach inside those teen walls of indifference. This year each student will be assigned an event or place, and then research it and—this is the change—read original source material from people who lived through “their” event. I’m hoping that these personal stories will bridge the gap between doing schoolwork and connecting to history.

At the same time, other teachers have decided that this year they are going to focus on German propaganda. They will focus on how the Nazis led the Germans to follow them, to believe them, to be captivated by their tales of how lovely it is to be us, Aryans, and how hateful it is to be them, the Jews, or anyone who does not look as we say they should or behave as we say they should or believe what we say they should. And that is good, but it feels wrong. Maybe they are right, since our focus is supposed to be on language and that, really, is what we teach. But really, doesn’t this make the students focus on the poor Germans who were manipulated by the evil Nazis. Where in this focus are the victims—the people who were defiled, tortured, shot, gassed by those who believed and those who were too cowardly to not believe? Where is space for the victims of the “mislead”? Will they learn that excuses are more powerful than actions?

I tell myself that any learning and thinking about what happened during the Holocaust is positive; that I should not think that there is anything wrong with their focus. And yet it makes me uncomfortable. Does it come down to these teachers not being Jewish and so not feeling, intrinsically, the honor/importance that they have been given to transmit this lesson to a generation of citizens of the world? Maybe I’m wrong. But it doesn’t feel that way.

How are we to ever get to “never again”—that violent acting out of group hatred or fear—if our teachers can’t put themselves in another person’s shoes, even if those shoes have been preserved in monstrous piles never to be forgotten?

 

Piles of shoes that belonged to prisoners killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland, wartime. — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum #0009 

How Personal of a Personal Day

I took a personal day today. I just couldn’t take one more day of the routine. I couldn’t take one more day of everyone before me. I couldn’t do it. I needed some time to not care about anything--everything.

It was, obviously, supposed to be a “me first” day. And it was, when I contemplated it. For the few days leading up to the decision to take this specific day and then for a few days after I set the date and arranged for a sub, it was my day. I thought about where I would go for lunch and what I would buy with the $100 Hanukkah gelt (money) from my mother: shoes or shirt, or even both. And I wondered where I would spend the time before and after those activities. And it was lovely, this leisurely way of thinking. I was anticipating my day off as much as a teacher looks forward to summer vacation.

But then I realized that I need to bring my car in for service and it would be better to do it today than on the weekend. And then I remembered my credit card bill; it was high, not from purchases now hanging in my closet or on me, but from living life and going on vacation during winter break to visit Kenny's mother and my daughter on the other coast. So I decided I could survive without any new things. And the refrigerator, well, I teach on Tuesday nights after a whole day of teaching, so the leftovers had already been finished. Someone would need to make dinner, and since I’m the only cook in the house, it would be me. Why not make something nice, make the delicious, multi-stepped, Maltese squash pie that Kenny’s mother makes? So there was the supermarket, the cooking, and the cleaning up. Oh, and since I had spent the whole weekend providing feedback on essays for seniors, I hadn’t had time to provide feedback on the essays the freshman had written, I needed to get those done—since I already have a backlog of essays to grade this weekend. So instead of reading, writing or staring into space while I waited for my car to get fixed, I worked.

Still, I managed to get in lunch at a Mexican restaurant, picked for the frozen margarita that could accompany the meal, and the proximity to the house.

And then I went home and napped for an hour and a half.

And I talked with my older daughter out in LA, and my mother in Florida, and I took Poops for a walk in the rain. And I just finished reading a book.

I guess it was as personal a day as I could have.

I’m already anticipating taking another one in March; it’s a month with no days off--too much routine. Personal day. If this is how personal it can be, I say it’s worth it: the combination of me and them, the inability to only tend to myself, or, perhaps, that is utterly what has come to be personal for me.

My Father

My father died on December 21st two years ago.

Since that time the unbelievable happened: we continued to live. It’s not hard to recall the intense pain and loss we experienced—experience. At the time it seemed inconceivable that life could continue when he was no longer with us. How is it that we are here and he is not? The power of that thought was overwhelming and guilt-inducing.

But, life does go on. Millennia of loss with life going on. That joining in with generations of mourners was what made me understand that I, too, can go on.  

I still have the seven-day Yahrzeit candle that was lit when we sat shiva for him. I still have a voice mail message from him—from two months before his death, days before he found out that he was dying of esophageal cancer. And I still have an intense feeling of missing an important component in my life. That’s what comes, I guess, from his having been such a kind, loving man—to his family and everyone he knew. A quiet redhead.

Maybe this sense of him that does not leave me nor can it leave me is the stuff of which ghosts are created. An image of the person—physical and internal—who passed, who was loved and whose loss is always present.

My mother said that he spoke to her in their bedroom after he died.

Death. A part of life. It would be nice if it weren’t so. Thank goodness for internal flashbacks and the recollection of images and words and gestures and even sense of person from days of fullness. Thank goodness, indeed, for my father having been my father.

Rape: The Scourge of Our Time

I was all fired up the other day to write about the heinous way women are treated in Afghanistan; the brutal absurdity of imprisoning women for being raped and of forcing them to marry the men who raped them; and how unhealthy it is for a society to give men absolute power over women. I was going to write about how conflicted I am about our leaving Afghanistan: Is it good to leave them to themselves, or is it bad since, obviously, the women aren’t much better off after our ten-year offensive. I even intended to bring in World War II and how we didn’t leave Europe, another scene of debilitatingly horrific acts of violence, until we had defeated Hitler and the evil of his regime.

Then my partner said that I should think about how many women in the military are raped. “Google ‘rape military.’” Then he mentioned a female soldier who accused a man (working for a contractor) of raping her, and how he got off with barely a slap on the wrist. And her, he said, she was jailed.

He’s right: All the wrongs committed against women cannot be dropped on the laps of Afghani men. We can’t just pooh-pooh the men of Afghanistan who conceal women behind burkas and walls, and who torch their schools, and rape them with bestial impunity, because the rest of the world doesn’t exactly present a shining example of gentlemanly behavior.

Women in the Congo, Bosnia, Kuwait, Sudan, Sri Lanka, and Rwanda have been raped as a course of war, as they have been during other conflicts, and throughout history. Reports of Libyan soldiers raping citizens have surfaced, as have sexual assaults by Egyptian police against demonstrators.

I googled “us military rape statistics,” and 2,230,000 results came up. That’s a lot of stories about men in the military who rape, and women (in the military and civilians) who have been raped by our representatives.

And here in the US, where we attempt to look down on their mistreatment of their women, well, we actually have a term for when a man doesn’t get that “no means no.” Date rape is not quite akin to opening a door for a woman. And the acceptance of the twisted logic of “she asked for it” by wearing a dress that was too tight or too revealing, or by being out too late, or by drinking too much is a psychic rape of all women. Women do not ask to be violated. No, Americans are not beacons in any one’s night.

People say that in Afghanistan it is an expression of their culture. Yeah, sure. Men take every right from a woman except the right to inhale and exhale and we let “culture” cover for that constant humiliation and exercise of power. Then what is it here? Can someone state as truth that rape is a reflection of our culture because we so degrade women by objectifying and sexualizing them? Have we let the deviants define us?

Is the genesis of these rapes by Afghani men, African rebels, European fighters, and American soldiers the same? Is the problem a universal acceptance of “boys will be boys”? Have we conceded the stage to the bullies?

Googling “rape” brings up 206,000,000 results. No, we cannot breathe a sigh of relief that at least we don’t live there—because we do. Women can be strong, but not as strong as a 200 lb. man with societal support (for what else is indifference?) on his side.

Is rape the scourge of our time? We have defeated illnesses, now we must defeat a sickness.

A person who rapes is sick in the crudest sense of the word. And it is unhealthy to ignore a sickness in our midst. Why is it that we arrest prostitutes and not Johns? Why are we always protecting the men? Why are we protecting those who need no protection?

Maybe we women are being forced back to being the weaker sex because society is unable or unwilling to protecting us. What does that say about American culture?

“I Like Your Necklace”

The other day the “compliment clothing instinct” peeked out its pretty head. In the morning, as I walked by her, I blurted out to a student that I liked her ring. I couldn’t help it—it was so big, so obvious, so worthy of compliment; teacher-student relationship be damned—the girl has taste. It was a three-inch silver disc with intricate designs on it: quite the finger shield. A ring to be noticed—and complimented.

Then later when I was walking around the supermarket, a woman who almost walked into me (or did I almost walk into her?) complimented me on my necklace. As I said “thank you,” I reached for my neck to feel which necklace I was wearing. It was the necklace that I bought after my year of wearing no jewelry after father passed away.

And the next day I complimented a colleague on how lovely she looked. And she did the thank you blush and took the back straight-chest out stance.

Even when I tell my daughter, who doesn’t much like my voice or the words that come out of my mouth, how pretty she looks, I get a shy thank you and a tinge of blush to her beautiful cheeks.

Oh, how lovely it is to give and receive. Forget the lists. Forget the stores. Forget the gift cards. Give the gift of a compliment.

Thinking about Sleeping

At night I  go to sleep. In the morning I wake up. Between those two, there are innumerable mini-wake-ups. I go to the bathroom. I come back to bed. Sleep doesn’t overtake me, or perhaps I don’t have the patience to just lay there waiting, as if for a gift. And so I turn on the radio. I listen to news and interview shows from the BBC, which is what the public radio station here plays from midnight to five am (which is a half-hour before my it-really-is-time-to-wake-up time). You would think that I would use my time constructively—clean, knit, read, eat—but I don’t. I lay listening, waiting, hoping for sleep to take me away from learning more about the drama that encompasses so many people’s lives.

There is no night’s sleep for me; it is a series of naps within the night. I wonder what impact this has on me? It’s exhausting thinking that there is always something I could be doing with my time and it’s exhausting always learning new things. And it’s exhausting not getting a stop-to-start sleep because I have always needed a full night’s sleep. I have always been envious of those “I just need a few hours of sleep” people.

It’s not even that I have concerns and stresses and anxieties that are keeping me turning from side to side to side to back to side looking for the magic position in the night. Sure, I had plenty of drama a few years ago, and that may be what has permanently disabled my sleepscape, but I don’t now. Now I have a life that flows as a backyard stream, it’s touched and touching, and keeps on going, inevitably, around rocks and down little rapids, and even calms in the pools that develop behind fallen branches before the rush—onward, forward. 

So why can’t I sleep? Maybe I’m never tired enough? Maybe I should succumb to the quiet of my mind rather than seek company in the night. Am I getting too many words in my life? Since I teach, I’m talking all day long. And when I’m not talking, I’m reading and writing lessons, and grading. And when I’m not so involved, I’m listening to radio, listening to talk radio or music where my focus is always on the lyrics. And when I finally have enough, I watch TV, but my partner and I always discuss and debate the drama of the cooking or house hunting show we are watching. So there are always words percolating; there are always thoughts developing and responses formulating. Is the problem, not the lack of bladder control, but the lack of thought control? Does my mind really need to be still, or as still as I can make it, to find the atmosphere I need in order to sleep from ten to five-thirty? Maybe I should practice some form of meditation in bed—force my mind into the off position.

Yes, I think I will try that. I will give myself “me time” in bed. (And no, I don’t mean that kind of me time.) Is the problem that I don’t give myself time for me? Or is it that those words are always directed outward or are from beyond the self.  They come in invited, surely, but has it become too much of an invasion rather than an interaction, or maybe the notion of continual interaction is too much for me. Where am I, my core, if I am always focused on beyond the cells of self? Have I given myself up to constantly joining and creating a flow of ideas and thoughts rather than occasionally casting myself onto a smooth, sun-dried rock from where I can be still and meaningful because I simply am?

Bask, I need to bask in bed. Bask to the beauty of being, whatever that means intuitively because I will not seek to analyze those moments. In the still small moments of night, I will be as dark matter, there and not there.

Thanksgiving 2011

It’s Thanksgiving, but we’re having pizza and beer for dinner. Tomorrow we’ll celebrate Thanksgiving. Do I need to be surrounded by family to prove that I have what to be thankful for? And do I have to serve the requisite main course and sides and desserts (okay, the apple pie is ready for consumption tonight) and conversation-round-the-table about what we’re thankful for to make this a thankful day for me?

My boyfriend/partner is getting the pizzas. It will take him at least an hour at the frozen pizza section in the supermarket to pick out just the right pizzas. Luckily they close early today. On pizza and beer Fridays we always have two frozen pizzas: one veggie and one mucho cheese-o. But he will take his time thinking about which pizzas I would prefer tonight. The decision will be made by him making experienced-based assumptions about my taste buds today, not definites about himself.

It is the two of us, and Poops, everyone else is in absentia.

My older daughter is at college on the other coast. But the ticket cost is not the reason why she won’t be here. No, she’s there celebrating with her boyfriend and friends. And I am thankful and grateful that she has found a place where she is happy and people with whom she finds herself blossoming. I’ll never forget the mother stomach-lump that developed in an instant when her first grade teacher told me that she never smiles in class. And she has always been a solemn child. The curse of the bookworm, perhaps? Her happiness, from whatever distance, is to rejoice in.

And my younger daughter. Well, it’s her fault that we’re having Turkey Day tomorrow and not today. A friend invited her to celebrate Thanksgiving with her family. Maybe they feel sorry for her that we’re divorced and her father is not around and that it’s just Kenny and me here on this family celebration day, or maybe they are thankful that their daughter has such a wonderful friend. I decided that Thanksgiving should be more about her happiness and gratitude to two women and the homes they make and make her feel comfortable in rather than sticking to the calendar (besides, we don’t watch football and we don’t Black Friday shop), so she’s with her friend’s family today and us tomorrow.

And my mother down in retirementland is going to the movies and then for a non-turkey dinner with a couple that doesn’t make her feel like the lonely widow. The holidays really are the hardest for her; there doesn’t seem to be a before and after, just a before, with my father—and the way it should be, not this being alone business.

My brother. A bit of aggravation there just to make sure that the subterranean theme of how families can be dangerous to one’s health is maintained even if Thanksgiving is not; he did not invite us to his family’s Thanksgiving Day repast. Granted, they’re five hours away, but I used to do the drive, even when it took nine hours in only-stop traffic. That is until I decided one year that I’ll wait for my invitation rather than invite myself. So here I sit, at home and not in Thanksgiving Day traffic since the invite never came.

Thanksgiving. Yes, I’m thankful that the people in my life seem happy and well-adjusted and purposeful. And me, I’m happy that I’m not stressed about cooking, because what kind of pressure can I have doing it a day late?

And I’m also thankful that at 50 (or 49 twice in a row) I feel healthy, I feel wise, I feel pretty, and I feel.

Happiness and Thanks to You All!

Teaching to the Test

When I started teaching a few years ago I didn’t understand what the veteran teachers meant when they said that things had changed, that the joy of teaching had left when the focus on testing and data came in thanks to No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Now I know. And it’s not making me a happy teacher, parent or citizen.

For quite a while all was well, I was teaching the things that were required of me, and they made sense, there’s no question about that, and I developed creative lessons that I thought encouraged my students to think, and to understand the material and the world we live in. And all seemed well. I thought I was helping send young men and women out into the world who had respect for punctuation and the thesaurus, and who thought that books were not just for nerds and teachers.

Hoops were put in front of us, and we leaped (or is it leapt) through them. Time was spent filling out charts about test scores and types of assessments given rather than lesson planning or grading. But that was okay, it wasn’t too onerous.  Yet.

But now, now I fear that the times have a’ changed.

Now the value of my teaching (and my value itself since this will be linked to my job evaluation) will be measured in test results. It’s not just talk; it will be the reality, my reality. So you tell me, do I spend time talking about racism and have my students write about what it feels like to have experienced or observed prejudice, or do I do an extra handout to ensure that every student in my class knows all the rules of the comma so that their grades on assessments are high enough to indicate that I’m a highly effective teacher? Do I skip discussing suicide when we read Romeo and Juliet so that we can perfect our ability to spot a metaphor when we read one?

Somewhere someone said something about putting the ills or the failings of society on teachers. That wasn’t far off. How can you expect us to overcome indifference at home and personal—for whatever reason? And how do we overcome exhaustion and hunger and stress? Another handout on semi-colons won’t do it. And learning difficulties, they cannot be overcome with a seat in the front and a large-print handout. And language difficulties? How do you bridge the language gap in a child who has been in this country for only a few years? Is it fair to expect all students to know English like a native speaker ASAP so they can pass the test and you can show that you’re an effective teacher? And yet I am not even minimally instructed how to teach non-native speakers. And don’t tell the native speakers that we just might need to s  l  o  w   d  o  w  n  until we all understand at the same level.  

I’m not saying that effectively teaching my subject is not my job and my mission, but for goodness’ sake, why judge what I do through standards that don’t reach what needs to be done—and what is the true purpose of education, which is to educate and not just to instruct.

And, you know, not every kid will click with and learn from every teacher. And not every kid gets every subject. And that shouldn’t mean that I’m a bad teacher. It just means that you can’t test away personality. Yes, sure, there are all sorts of ways to differentiate learning and scaffold learning and teach it different ways with different tools, but, honestly, not everyone is good at everything. I remember reading somewhere about, I’m pretty sure it was Dr. Seuss, giving advice to parents. He said that he was glad when he got out of school because he no longer needed to spend time on things he wasn’t good at, and that he could finally focus on only those things he wanted to focus on—and that he was good at.

Tests. What about kids who are defiant? They know that how they do on most of these “big” tests does not reflect on them, but rather on their teacher and school. And what about kids who don’t test well? And what about—what about teaching with passion and learning with passion?

And what about parents? Aren’t they first and foremost responsible for their children and the nurturing of their children and encouraging their children and teaching them to value and respect themselves and their future by going to school and doing well? The other day in the New York Times Tom Friedman noted that, “There’s no question that a great teacher can make a huge difference in a student’s achievement, and we need to recruit, train and reward more such teachers. But here’s what some new studies are also showing: We need better parents. Parents more focused on their children’s education can also make a huge difference in a student’s achievement.” (The study he referred to is from the Program for International Student Assessment, PISA, conducted by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.) Seems amazing that this counts as news. Or is it more of the ole “buck doesn’t stop here” idea, where blame is always placed on someone else.

I send out information on students’ progress and grades to their parents on a regular basis. Except for the one mother whose daughter has an A and always thanks me for letting her know how her daughter is doing (which I appreciate so very much), I only hear from a couple of parents. And generally, it’s to find fault with me. Darling said that he handed in the assignment, but you didn’t mark it. Can Sweetheart hand in the work late? Honeybun said that you told him that he can’t hand in the work. Sweetness said that she didn’t do the work because the instructions weren’t clear. Unfortunately, all too rare is the, “Thanks for letting me know. I will talk to him about doing his work.” That really would help my work.

And maybe, just maybe, people at the top of the education chain need to realize that they are not the only ones who want the best for our students. After all, we spend our days with kids and we spend far too much out-of-class time thinking about our students and how to reach them. Is it fair to say that only a test can show what we bring to the desk?

What did I teach today?

Amongst the “things” that I taught, I hope that I also modeled what it is to be an effective speaker and listener, to be an expert in my subject, to be compassionate, to be firm, and to be analytical.

No child should be left behind, that’s for sure. But this reliance on the test effectively insults and demeans teachers and students, alike, by putting all learning down to a few circles on a piece of paper.

Pick the most appropriate response. Education is primarily the responsibility of: a. Administrators; b. Bureaucrats; c. Parents; d. Students; e. Teachers

Oh, and no, you cannot pick more than one response; and no, you cannot explain your answer. But you do have as much time as you need.

Why Do I Talk to My Mother?

Sometimes when I hear the Vaudevillesque ringtone I set for my mother’s calls I roll my eyes, press “Quiet,” and continue with my life. At other times, before the “answer phone call” instinct evolves into reflection and a pass on answering, I answer the call. And then, after the starter wave of information about her day, I wonder how I let myself be tricked again.

It’s not that I don’t get along with my mother or even that I dislike her, but I’m tired of the “world-revolves around your mother” conversations that we have. Sure, there’s the occasional “So how are you?” and “How are the girls?” but if I venture into an answer beyond “Fine,” I find her attention span diminished. She’s bored hearing my response or, and this is worse considering that her life and mine have never had anything in common, she’s done it/knows it/anticipated it, whatever “it” may be, from her place in sunny Florida.

I have learned that I need to accept that these calls are about her, they are not about me—that time has passed. I know that I’m not a young woman first stepping out on her own who needs all the concern and compassion she can get from her mother to shore herself up against the cruel, cruel world, but, seriously, isn’t my mother supposed to care more about me than the chicken she got at Costco that she’ll freeze in individual servings for when she’s in the mood for chicken?

Her loneliness is understandable. My father passed away almost two years ago. She went from having my father by her side to listen to her every critique for fifty-four years to having her distracted daughter via cellphone. One thing is clear: my father was more patient than I had ever imagined because, surely, she has not recently discovered the need to digest her day’s minutiae in talk. No, this must be a habit that she has transferred from my father to me. Before his passing, her calls had the endless detail of things of absolutely no importance, but the calls and the details weren’t endless, and, on occasion, there was a point. I had received the pearls that were gleaned after going through the mire with my father. Besides, she didn’t have as much time to chat since she needed to keep my father entertained with her non-stop talk show.

All that aside, there’s just so far compassion can take you when you hear the deliberations taken to go or not to go to tennis, and then to go or not to go out with “the girls” (who are all in their 70’s and 80’s) for breakfast after tennis. And to hear for the unknownth time that friend A doesn’t dress as nicely as she does, and that friend B thinks that restaurant A is good but she knows that it is not. Yes, I know, my life isn’t a fount of excitement, but at least I generally have a sense of audience and refrain from providing ad infinitum details ad infinitum times.

Unfortunately, I generally check out of our phone calls; I just can’t take the tone and substance of those conversations. Really? Does it matter? And that makes me feel bad. But I just can’t bring myself to focus on her monologue; it needs an accompaniment, like TV viewing needs food.

Maybe the point is that I had hoped that at some point from the time I became aware of her conversational limitations (at about fifteen) to now to have found more to my mother than she has revealed. But I have not. Is that why her calls are so hard on me? She is the sum of the details, and I need to accept that and stop expecting: voila, your philosopher-mother is on the line.

She is who she is—and she does a darn good job at being who she is. No, she is the best at it. No one does it better.

So here’s to you mom: You are who you are, fully. And I apologize for not having valued you before. Maybe at some point you’ll pause and I can tell you that. And if not, I will try, I will, to honor you for who you are—in all your glorious detailing. But maybe during shorter phone calls.

It's Cold

Is this the gloom of winter descending upon me?

It’s dark when I get up. It’s dark when I go to work. The chill air means that only my hands and face feel air unfiltered by layers of clothing, even it if it’s just the shared air of indoors. And it’s dark when I go to sleep, which is generally the case since I have always been an early-to-sleep-er, but of late it’s so early that a mere two months ago it would have been considered naptime.

And it’s been gray, so very gray. I didn’t realize how much the gloom could be gloomy; I used to think that it was lovely, but I see now that it seeps in with it a sense of isolation. Windows are closed. Doors are closed. But perspective is not closed.

I can’t let the cave take over since I am still of this world. This lousy, gray, gloomy world that I generally appreciate, or believe will get better—for us all. But not today. No. Today I’m letting the sadness descend. People are mean. People are cruel. People have egos. And I’m just tired of thinking about them. Curious, isn’t it, how people think they should be heeded when they heed not others. Who made your truth the only truth?

You want to keep your head in the sand, go ahead, just leave the rest of us alone so we can deal maturely with the horrible ways we have dealt poorly with the earth.

You don’t believe in abortion. Fine, don’t have one. Hey, guys, not sure if this applies to you anyway.

And do us all a favor, if you don’t like government, don’t become a politician, and don’t work for the government in any capacity, and don’t take money from the government. Is it necessary to always be a hypocrite just because you can?

And all of you terrorists—yes, if their purpose is to instill terror, then they are terrorists—why not let the rest of us use our words to try to solve the problems you have created and exacerbated instead of you continually lobbing your bombs and killing killing killing—just because you can. WooHoo! You killed another person. What did that get you? Do you really feel better? Do you really feel that the world is a better place now that you have forced death over life?

And you know what, I'm tired of the GOP candidates no longer bothering to attempt to impersonate an empathetic person, and I'm disgusted by people who think, heck, it's okay if you sexually harassed a woman--is it really anyone's business? YES IT IS. Stop protecting people who deserve no protection. What is with this society and its twisted desire to always protect those who have all the protection at the expense of everyone else--those they harassed and those they raped and those they demeaned. What kind of moral compass do we have? Where is it pointing? 

And ignoring the rape of boys to protect a game and a name? Unfathomable and unconscionable. And let me say, I am glad that Penn State lost on Saturday. I know, it's petty, but so be it--so be me. Don't these people care about anything but themselves and their careers? Hollow are they all. 

But my daughters are doing their homework. And my partner is studying. And my mother probably had chicken for dinner and will call to tell me about it. And my dog is waiting for just one more doggy treat for the night. And me. I feel tears. I’m tired. I haven’t even touched on the things that I have to deal with at work. The things that make me ache in empathy, and the things which cause me pain and tension and stress.

We’re such phonies, aren’t we? Pretending to care when all we hope to do is get home safely at the end of the day, without harming anyone or being harmed by anyone. (Did I mention my not getting home safely a few weeks ago when a man, who had obviously been abusing substances, side-swipped me?) Or are we the result of the hurts that we experience personally or from feeling the pain of others and by the time you reach 50 it’s just too much, too too much. We don’t become inured, we become inundated.

We can't help it, can we, to reach out--and to be reached for. But we are not an Atlas carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, for we are part of the world. With endurance, may we become an opening in the gloom.

Finally, A Benefit of Being Fifty

I tend to think of myself as a big mouth, but it’s more because I will interrupt people to make funny—to me and some of them—off-hand comments, and not so much because I spew my opinions to all, loudly and incessantly, as do some big-time big mouths.

So a few weeks ago, at the break-the-fast meal at a friend’s house, I touched on the power of being a fifty-year-old woman and how it related to my bigmouthedness. There was a man, Sergei, who stated that the high-tech pioneers in Israel in the 80’s were all Russians. I said, no, they weren’t. He restated his point. And I, I said that no, they were not Russian; rather, they were Israelis who had come out of the technology development departments in the military. He countered by saying they were Russians, since the Russians who immigrated to Israel had either been engineers or musicians, ha ha ha. I let it go, and from there other things came up and the discussion leapfrogged about.

And then another man, talking of the wonder of the US and how anyone can succeed if he/she tries (he even quoted, Lenin about picking up opportunity in the street, as a nod to Sergei), told of the success story of his parent’s non-English-speaking gardener who went on to become a successful non-English-speaking landscape company owner with a house probably bigger than his parent’s. And I said that I don’t think that that should be the only gauge of success in our country and that it’s not so easy to find other types of success—or even that kind. He, should I say, works for the government and while he has travelled the world has not tried to start a business or seek a pathless path for himself.

Not much by way of groundbreaking in the conversation department, but for me, these two mini-conversations were important. Generally, when the boys speak ‘round the table, their statements stand as if they know what they’re talking about, and generally, they state, I nod, and the conversation goes on. But I wasn’t in the mood to just let them slide through with pronouncements; I know or surmise a thing or two myself. Or maybe I realized that to speak up you don’t have to be bolstered by reams of data because no one at a dinner party has prepared as if for a press briefing. We know what we know.

And I know that the trapdoor under my seat will not open and send me into the blazing furnace in the basement if I say something that I feel or infer or think because that is enough support. Yes, my mind and feelings and connections are enough. Most people only back up their assertions with a single sentence of “evidence” anyway; and that evidence is often something someone read somewhere, and that’s generally an opinion anyway.

I like to think that my newfound bigmouthedness stems from the wisdom of age. And that wisdom is twofold. First, I feel that I know things, and in the scale of knowledge people have, I know more than some on some things, and less on others, but I have a range of knowledge and understanding of which I am proud. Second, I’m fifty and, it seems, my mouth has overridden my shy self-consciousness.

Is wisdom knowing that you don’t need to know it all to say something? Or is it knowing that it is better to speak than to remain silent? Or is it in knowing that thoughts have as much validity as facts? Or is it that experience, or living life, has taught me that experience, or living life, trumps any degree from any school, and any job, no matter how high-powered or high-paying? Is wisdom of age the true equalizer?

Back with Rebellious Thoughts

Let’s just put it out here: I am appalled by the world we live in. What makes this somewhat palatable is that I doubt there was any time in history when the world wasn’t appalling—if not in totality, at least in select corners. Not the world, no, I misspoke, the people who inhabit the world. We are a collection of murderers, rapists, thieves, racists, bigots, and generally unsavory people who you would not want to break bread with. The beauty of white beaches, swaying palm trees, ripe mangoes, and orange-purple sunsets cannot counterbalance any day’s headline from some place or another. Man’s inhumanity toward man has never taken a break. And while we can say that at least that (insert horror of the day) doesn’t happen here, forget it—it does.

Recorded time goes back 5,000 years. Which means we have before us 5,000 years of dirt on the human race. And it is unrelenting. Wars wars wars. Oppression oppression oppression. Suffering suffering suffering. What is wrong with us? Is it really so hard to fulfill our basic human needs without infringing on someone else’s desire to sit on a rocking chair at the end of the day with a cup of spiked iced tea? According to Maslow, there are five levels of human needs: physiological (stuff), security (here today… and tomorrow), social (let’s be friends), esteem (doin’ alright, if I do say so myself), and self-actualization (feelin’ good in here with myself). Seriously, why do we need to keep inventing armaments so that we can fulfill our needs before the guys on the other side of the river fulfill there’s? Can’t we, really, help each other? What’s wrong with hoisting each other up the ladder of needs, rather than stepping on each other as we try to ascend to the next level of fulfillment?

Is the problem that we are packs of wolves with haircuts and underwear?

It’s beyond frustrating. And beyond depressing. It is demoralizing (a word which assumes a level of morality, but it does indicate the degree to which my esteem has fallen, since I have a hard time finding the morality). Since I am Jewish, my sensitivity to the depravity that just keeps rolling along in human history is quite, unfortunately, well-practiced. But I think that holds true for anyone, anywhere in the world. Most of us, I am sure, can cite a time (assuming we know history past our own generation) when our ancestors had to leave the old village to escape persecution. And if we were “lucky,” we can claim some conquerors of our very own. But we must realize that that “good for our team” circumstance resulted in pain for those whose land/ homes/ farms/ lakes/ gold/ oil /were confiscated. And let’s not forget: women. How many of us can claim pillaged and raped women in our family trees? I bet it’s all of us.

Quite the legacy we have bequeathed ourselves.

Acknowledging the reality of our dismal history—and recognizing it for what it is—no golden age of anything (yeah, great, a golden goblet decorated with precious stones in the shape of a cupid, makes me feel so much better about the world we have come from) may be a place to start. Start what, though?

Who knows?

But it’s generally fun to start, or re-start something, so here I am, back with my rebellious thinking.

I like to imagine that we can each be that butterfly who, by virtue of its existence flutters its wings, causing things to happen somewhere. I’m hoping, though, for good things and not just the storms that keep besetting us.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2011 5771

I’ve been reading The Jews of Russia and Poland: A Bird’s-eye View of their History and Culture by Dr. Israel Friedlander, which was published in 1920, for the past few days. I took it out of my temple library because I’m interested in tormenting myself by reading about how the Jews have been maligned throughout history. The why of that: well, it puzzles me and depresses me--and captivates me. It’s the need to keep probing a wound or debility or sickness that the world has, and which it has continually imposed upon the Jews, and which, even though I am an American Jew and all is seemingly well, I cannot ignore. The other books I took out were about the Spanish Inquisition; the Holocaust; and, for a change, some uplifting Jewish-reading about the Jewish Khazars, a people in the Caucasus region who converted to Judaism in the mid-eighth century. I also took that slim, light blue-cloth-covered book because we are Friedlanders on the maternal side of my family.

I didn’t realize that yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, but it does seem fitting to read this book that traces and explains the anti-Semitism of the region—from the pre-Holocaust perspective—at this time. My reading, up to page 110 (another 100 pages of sadness to go before the even more devastating sadness that follows the writing of this book; oh, what would Mr. Friedlander have said, if he hadn’t had been murdered in 1920 when he went to distribute funds to starving Jews in Poland and the Ukraine as a result of World War I) showcases that there is absolutely no SURPRISE! that the Holocaust happened—not the immense devastation, not the vast number of participants and “innocent” bystanders, not the inhumanity of the supposed humane, and certainly not the belief bred from century upon century of church teachings and noble decrees and violent pogroms and debilitating laws, and the “this, too, will pass” survival stance of the Jews. It’s been a reading that traces a terrible trail of hatred, denigration and oppression. And why I take it to bed at night with me is a wonder.

The key to far too much that really is incomprehensible, because what is religion or even culture, after all, except a way or a system that is supposed to help people and not result in the deformity of their personalities in a cult of adherence, is found in this decree “the reason for the existence of the Jews is that they might remind us of the tortures of the Saviour, and by their abject and miserable condition might serve as an example of the just chastisement of God inflicted upon the infidels” (Friedlander 57). I know, not much new, but still, startling to read the bluntness of then—at least a spade was called a spade. But why am I here, in Virginia, thinking and writing about this? Why not say, “Thank goodness that that’s the past”? Because, it seems, “history repeats itself” is truer than “we need to learn about the past in order to prevent it from repeating itself” because the cycle seems to be on auto-pilot.

What is the purpose of a life? Is it to embody an ideal or embrace an idea? Why are we so weak that we can’t find our hearts within our minds? Is there really something that separates people? Are the pains that those closest to us impose upon us so hard to bear and acknowledge that we seek the “other” for a safe distance to express our own pain? Is there such a thing as a peaceful society? Have weapons ever only been used to search for food?

There is so much that is incomprehensible. Unfortunately, those things that cannot be comprehended can be felt.

I have sat here for hours trying to come up with some point that raises my thoughts to a place above or beyond where my thinking began. But I am still here; still listening to the same music (Ofra Haza) and still sitting at my dining room table because moving to the more comfortable couch seems wrong. I have reached no point. I am where Dr. Friedlander left me when I closed his book last night after reading that Catherine the Great “laid the foundations of Jewish rightlessness. Succeeding emperors have built upon these foundations” (Friedlander 112).

The sky is gray. I am on my third snow day because of Wednesday’s snowstorm. A few hours ago my younger daughter went to her father’s house. And Kenny went to work this morning. I am home alone for the first time in a while. It would have been wise to go out and get my haircut or get a sexy nightgown (I’m still on my old flannel pajamas).

Maybe I should still go out; there is time before he comes home for me to move my mood and mind from boundless and inscrutable sorrow. Nothing will be solved this afternoon. I will not uncover how to transform the cruelty in people’s hearts. I will not uncover the formula for “never again.” I will simply continue being the person I am: a person whose heart aches within its own walls, wishing it could find a way for us to live in peace and comprehension.

Abuse In My Past, Not In My Present

Lately I haven’t had many visitors to my site, which makes sense since I am not posting very often. And many of them who do come are looking to read my post on chin hairs. It seems that many many many women the world over are suffering from midlife beards. Oy. But yesterday someone came to the site who was reading post after post on abuse. Which lead me to go to a blog on spousal abuse—something that I haven’t done for a very long time. The post I read there was about how this woman had finally left her husband after he had repeatedly been dismissive of her. I read the “straw breaking the back” post. And that brought me to a deep sense of thankfulness and almost forgetfulness that that was my life in the not-too-distant past, which, thankfully, has no relation to my life in the present.

People say that women have children after their first child only because they forget how painful childbirth is. Regarding relationships after emotional and verbal abuse: you can only have a relationship if you remember the pain—but don’t keep the pain itself alive.

So here I am, 19 months in my rented apartment, 19 months after the house was finally sold, and 19 months since I lived in the same house as the man who tormented me. It is also six months since a friend from the past kindled a spark that lead to love that lead to almost three months of our living together. Three months of creating a relationship that is based on love, respect, concern, admiration, and, alright, quite a tinge of mutual attraction. Not only didn’t I think that I could be in a normal relationship after my marriage, but from the pit of despair I would hear of fairy tale endings and proclaim: “How lovely, but I know that will never be me.”

As I read the woman’s post, I found myself unable to empathize with her—it was a sad story and I was glad to read that she had overcome so much pressure (internal and external) to be her own life-saver. But letting myself sink into the details, and read past posts, and imagine what her life must have been like—and what it was at that moment—no, I didn’t go there. I couldn’t.

Perhaps I have some version of PTSD, where to relive, in any way, past horrors brings to the fore the accompanying anguish and sense of self-loss.

I didn’t feel good that I couldn’t send vibes of compassion out to this woman, that I could merely observe where she was and cheer it, but it felt safe to look from the distance—from my fortress. 

What can I say? I was abused, but it is over—it is a part of my past. Since then I have created layers of life and self that do not depend on that reality: that are independent of it. Since then I have other things, such as chin hairs, to worry about. And now I have a man by my side for whom I pluck those hairs, even if he would never comment on them in anything but an endearing way.

My my life, indeed, can be wondrous, even if once it was so very arduous.

To that blogger: May your life and all those who you wish in it sustain you and keep you fulfilled.

A Year of Mourning

For the past year I have been in mourning following the death of my father on December 21, 2009. (According to the Hebrew calendar Friday the tenth marked one year since he passed away on 4 Tevet 5770.) For this year I didn’t wear jewelry; traditionally, someone in mourning wears black, but I knew that there was no way I would be like a little Italian or Greek widow for a year (it had taken me long enough to stop wearing plain black or white as part of regaining enthusiasm for life after I exited from my marriage), but I did want to outwardly recognize my status of daughter-in-mourning. It felt good, if good can be used in this way; perhaps, appropriate as in: for me it was the appropriate thing to do to honor and commemorate my father.

One day I put on earrings in the house, just to make sure that the holes hadn’t closed up.  It felt so weird—and wrong. Once I committed to a course of action, any deviation felt wrong. I noted that the holes were open, and then immediately took the earrings out.

Yesterday my younger daughter asked me if I would start wearing jewelry now; I said that I would start again after Tuesday. I didn’t realize that she had even heard me when I told her how I would be mourning her grandfather.

I’m pleased with what I did. For a moment I wondered about not wearing jewelry again, but then I realized that that would, in some way, negate what I had done and lessen what it meant for me. So next week, when Kenny and I go to San Francisco for a few days, I plan to look for a necklace (and perhaps matching earrings) to mark the end of this official mourning period (in Judaism, the child of someone who dies is supposed to be in mourning for one year) as well as to be a different kind of reminder of my father, and my life—and how life continues even when it seems so full of tears [teers] and tears [tairs].

A year ago I was in tears curled up on my bed, unable to sleep and now, now I tear up, but that is all. It is so upsetting and unsettling how we move on with our lives. Last year I couldn’t fathom how the life around me goes on as it had before—untouched—as if nothing significant had happened, and now, now I am part of that movement of life. Granted, there is a missing part of my circle, but still I am within the flow part of the ebb and flow. Even my mother seems to be moving; while I am not sure if it is forward, because what is forward, really, when talking about living your life without the love and life of your life by your side, but she has not turned into a caricature of a widow sitting for hours on end with a cold cup of tea unable to do things for herself. After all, she did give the “looks could kill” look of a true New Yorker to a neighbor who told her to get out of the street when my mother was waiting for the Super Shuttle van to pick her up—it came an hour late—at the end of her visit here last week.

But I do feel guilty in some way because my life has progressed in such a lovely way, yet my father is not here to be a part of it. I guess that is the hardest thing about losing someone—that they aren’t a part of your life any more. Yes, I know, when you think about that person it is keeping him alive, but, really, it’s you keeping them alive, it is not them being alive. And so there is a frozenness to my memories, to my life—before my father died and after.

How do you envelope mourning into your life after the intense ache of surprise and loss is over? And is it mourning or is it something else? Is it sorrow? Is there a word that covers this here and not here quality that one experiences when a loved one dies? I don’t want to check the thesaurus because this is not a word hunt—it is a feeling hunt.

Surprisingly, there is also a fullness to how I feel since there is a sense that I am living or experiencing my life for myself as well as for him—acknowledging what he might have thought or said or reacted or hoped for. There is also, though, a sense of guilt that my life has moved on, that it has changed. I know it is wrong to feel that way, but that pricking is still there, calling my attention to my here and now, as well as my then, when he was still here as a shoulder and a counsel.

It is such a complicated business this respect for self and this respect for those we mourn. 

During my year of mourning a friend’s father passed away, an acquaintance’s mother-in-law passed away, and my father’s older sister was operated on for having the same kind of cancer that he had (esophageal). And my father’s younger sister was in a car accident. And my older daughter no longer speaks to her father since he insulted her and hurt her in ways I thought were only reserved for me. And a kind and loving man has entered my life so that he sits round the dining room table with me every night, and wakes up with me every morning. And I have lost weight and am finally pleased or settled with how I look and where my life is. And I have had students respect and not respect me. And my younger daughter has been sweet and bitter towards me. And I no longer talk to my brother because I got tired of always calling him and I got hurt beyond the desire to invite more hurts that he didn’t find it in himself to see me as a part of his life.

So my life is big and little, as it was before.

And the world is still on its axis, spinning and rotating and circling.

My father died last year on December 21st; it is now December 18th. The week before he died he and my mother called to say that “it’s not good,” so my younger daughter and I flew down to Florida to be with him. We were with him for three days, leaving the day before he died.

We cried in the chapel during the funeral service; and we cried in the cemetery as we shoveled and threw in fistfuls of dirt over him within his pine box coffin; and we cried during the Shiva service; and we cried in private.

You mourn the passing of a loved one by doing the rituals and by creating rituals and by receiving his presence within the forward path of your life. 

You mourn someone by still loving him within the newness that comes from living.

Sharing Minutes

Opposite me sits a man who has fallen asleep. He sits on the floor, leaning against the couch. His head is back, his mouth is open, he is gently snoring. And when he wakes up a few minutes later he will say, “Laura, is there anything I can get for you?”

“No,” I will say because there isn’t anything I want and because I know that if I say something he will get up from the floor immediately.

That scene is the scene of my life since Kenny moved here in mid-October. The asking what he can do for me, and the fulfilling of those responses. And beyond that: the attempt to figure out what my responses would be before I formulate them. My life has changed since he has come into my life not only because I share my bed and my table and the minutes of my life with a wonderful man, but because my expectations for my life and how I will be treated and responded to have changed.

He tells me that I put everyone before myself. I ask, “Is that true?” because it doesn’t feel that way; I feel that I put myself before everyone else. But his contention, from observing me and hearing the stories of my days, presents angles of myself which I have never seen. And I appreciate those angles which come from his intense honesty and deep respect. “Refreshing” is too pale a word to sustain the thought that I am finally being reflected off a person who sees me in sunny tones because he, too, is a sunbeam. To be able to finally and fully discard the horror shop image of a woman that was presented to me for years is refreshing and life affirming. Surely it should have been done before, but until I had loving words to override the spite-filled ones there was always space in my mind for echoes.

Is there a way to thank a man beyond loving him?

“Aye,” as he would say.  There is coming up with answers to his question. There is the independent woman who can manage on her own, and there is the independent woman who can manage on her own who learns that strength can be found when two lean against each other. So, “Aye, Kenny, you could read this post.” 

Romantic Weekend in Belfast

“Give us a hug.”

And with that tentative embrace, right after I stepped into the lobby of Belfast City Airport after almost 18-hours of traveling and waiting, and after being identified and identifying successfully, and with my red pocketbook slung over his back because I didn’t have a moment to put it down, we went back 28 years and we went forward 28 years. We went right back to the deep friendship we had already revived in our three months of daily hours-long email and phone conversations, but we also stepped into a romantic sphere that we had, because of our self-confidence-lacking 21-year-old’s and 22-year-old’s minds’, never broached. And so, a path not taken or a spark set ever so gently or a light at the end of a tunnel was brought into being.

And then there were the delicate kisses, or should I say the tentative checking to see if lips fit, if the mind interaction would be joined by its best bud: the body interaction. Indeed.

And with that four days of non-stop talking and walking and laughing and eating and lovemaking began. Yes, it was a wonderful weekend. Not wonderful because, as so many people have told me “I deserve to be happy,” but wonderful because it was in and of itself wondrous, not in comparison to what had come before, but in and of itself. What could be said about a man who not only looks right into my eyes when he tells me he loves me, but makes me feel that way when he makes me laugh, or sits down to eat a leisurely meal in a restaurant he had walked by for years but never went into because he didn’t have with whom he wanted to eat there. And what could be said of a man who doesn’t try to one-up a couple we met at the bed and breakfast where we stayed when they told us that theirs is a true love story because they got together again after breaking up three years ago.

Was it too easy? Should there have been an awkward phase to get over? Or was it that I was never with a man as a lover who was also the person who I felt the closest to, the person to whom I would reveal my secrets and my silliness? Had I never been in love with a friend, a best friend? Was that the secret? Not to want to run to tell anyone about what he said and did and how you felt because the person you want to talk to is there, across the table or across the pillow.

On one of our walks around Belfast, we walked around Titanic Quarter, where the Titanic was built. (A tee-shirt for sale in Belfast reads: The Titanic. Built by an Irishman. Sunk by an Englishman.) I remember when I saw the movie Titanic I thought how improbable the love story was. How, I thought, could a woman go from being with such a nasty, vile man as her fiancé to the loving and tender Jack? Here was my answer: in the man who was sharing with me a bag of chocolate-covered raisins as we sat next to the River Lagan and watched the current pick up and talked in the shadow of the cranes that held up the Titanic as it had been built. Sometimes we women learn from our mistakes. Yes, we do. We learn the difference between when a man says he loves you because of who you are—the good, the bad and the ugly (he did see me in the morning), and when a man says he loves you because he wants something from you.

Where do we go from here? Ah, the deliciously improbable is where. In nine days he will be moving here. This is not a trivial thing, especially for him. Twenty-eight years ago, when I left New York to move to Israel, he also left the states—only to return twice for two very brief visits more than 26 years ago. Without me here, this meltingly romantic man told me, he lost all desire to be in the states. And so, now, he is returning to a person he has loved for all those years and to a place he never expected to return to. And me, who has spoken of despair and lived through my personal hell; me, who was a pessimistic optimist, afraid to think I would ever be happy but afraid, too, to think I wouldn’t be; well, I am in love. In love with a man who is, according to the note his boss wrote for me, “a good guy.”

And after all those posts moaning about men who only want women who are thin or in shape or "care about their looks" or work out seven times a week, I have by my side a man who loves a curvy body--my curvy body.

So here I am. No longer alone. No longer wanting to be alone. I am looking forward to sharing my life with a man, my Kenny, who says to me, “Every day with you is the best day of my life.”

Yes, to be continued.

Life and love after a bitter divorce.

The Fuzzy and Infinite Bead of Plenty

I ended my previous post, a month ago with this paragraph: “How could I not reach out my hand to touch this preposterous bead? It feels as if the ineffable quality that oversees the wonders and ways of the world is presenting me with the most precious bead of plenty—a bead that grows to encompass all manner of well-being, fuzzy and infinite.”

The bead that I was referring to is a man with whom, 28 years ago, I would walk along the daytime and nighttime streets of Manhattan (and one bridge to Brooklyn in a blizzard) being the most open I had ever been with anyone. This man suddenly appeared in my in-box from where he has since snuggled his way into that space I didn’t know existed: a heart untrammeled.

When I started this blog in April 2008, I needed an outlet from all the pain I was experiencing from another man I met 28 years ago: my ex-husband. (Speak about making the wrong choice!) When I began the divorce proceedings four years before that, it was not to clear my decks for another man or even—utterly preposterous—the idea of love; rather, it was to come up for air. For too long I had been stifled: stifled by him and stifled by myself in reaction to him. And the blog, well, I needed to figure out how to breathe again.

First I just poured out in pain. I was seeking to find solace in the opening up, in the discovery of shared pain, in the offering of words of wisdom from survivors, in the providing of comfort to those who only had pain. And then, once I began to find my breathe and my voice, I found that I didn’t just reside in pain. I found that I could write—and think—about things that did not revolve around my life and its downs and occasional ups. I would write about all manner of thing. I liked to think of myself as a columnist (note: I would love to be a columnist) sharing my point-of-view and insights. But always, always there was some new anguish from my ex-husband that I needed to screech out. And now, well it still happens because he has not changed, but I don’t want to dwell on it, I want to acknowledge it and return to the path that my life has taken.

I am, for a moment, without words. Not just that I never thought I would be so fulfilled from a man’s attentions, but that I honestly did not expect more than a freedom of self when I began the divorce journey and the blog journey. Who knows what is beyond, yonder on the horizon, but I know what is not there. What is not there is the pain that has been transcribed here.

In a telling reflection that life is never flawless, this man lives abroad. I will be visiting him for a few days in six weeks—the countdown is on. But when you have two writers unfolding their hearts to and for the other, it is a thing of transcendent beauty. My inbox surely runneth over.

My words, and my thoughts, and my creativity, I have begun to channel to this man as well as to the new book that I have started writing. And so, I guess, I am saying goodbye. Or maybe, because goodbye seems so final and hard, I am saying that when and if I return it will not be as a woman discovering a recipe for lemonade to use the lemons her life dropped into her basket, but it will be as a woman who has recipes for cakes and soups, the sustenance of life. Or maybe I won’t have any recipes to share, just stories that show it is possible to go from the depths of the tunnel where no light can penetrate, to a place that feels darn close to Everest.

Plenty Beads

I used to finger the enough beads that my life was stringing for me. Enough bead after enough bead after enough bead of words and happenings that kept pushing me down, teasing me into thinking that they would end—that there would be a real enough point—but they just kept coming.

And then last June, when the house was sold and I could move out of the oppressive atmosphere, the stringing ceremonies stopped. And now new stringing ceremonies need to be instated. Now I am happily adding plenty beads to charm my days.

---It is pouring outside. What a joy. Once you live in Israel (or any place with a dry season), you can’t but appreciate a summer rain. It is beyond refreshing, it is life-affirming. Rain in the midst of unending heat. Even though I grew up in New York City, city of steamy summer rain storms, that seventeen-year break means that I do not take the soothing rains for granted. It is a blessing to be received.

---In a few days I will be going on vacation—I am taking my daughters to the Pacific Northwest for a week’s vacation. While my older daughter has shed her teenage skin and my younger daughter has grown it, they both wanted to go—or agreed to go—with me on vacation. Either way, it is still such a plenty bead on my formerly bare mother-joy necklace. And while I am not happy that my older daughter has not talked to her father for a while—as a result of his words and actions toward her—I can’t say that I’m not sorry that she has finally seen him for who he is.

---I have sent off query letters to agents for the book I began writing last summer. What a sense of satisfaction. And after the experience of writing this blog and receiving such supportive feedback, I believe that I have developed the type of skin necessary to not give up. Although, of course, I am sending out positive thoughts that this first round will elicit an invitation to send the manuscript and not just form rejection letters.

---And I have begun writing another book. And that also is wonderful. Of course it’s slow going, but I am pleased with the concept (which came to me about two weeks ago) and pleased that I am finding purpose in thinking about it and writing it.

---For three years I used to listen, night after night, to a call-in radio show, Delilah. People would call to say how wonderful their husband or wife is, asking for a song to be dedicated in his or her honor, or they would call, asking for a song that would temporarily soothe their broken hearts. Up until last June I would lay there on my love seat-bed, with the door of my room locked, and cry as I listened to people talking about how lucky they were, and I would cry as I listened to people cry out their pain, seeking a moment’s solace in a song.

I would cry because I could never imagine getting out of the misery that I felt encompassed me. Love and happiness seemed so foreign. How does one go from experiencing the harshness of a relationship that transformed itself into an endless battle to longing to think about someone? And even when people would say that that is precisely what had happened to them, I would be happy for them and envy them, but say, good for them, but that will not happen to me.

And now, now I am finding an opening in my heart for a man who searched for me to tell me that he has loved me since we were friends 28 years ago. How could I not reach out my hand to touch this preposterous bead? It feels as if the ineffable quality that oversees the wonders and ways of the world is presenting me with the most precious bead of plenty—a bead that grows to encompass all manner of well-being, fuzzy and infinite.