Land, Longing, and Home

This is not a typical picklesandpopsiclesticks post. It stems from some reflection prompted by my coursework on place, self, and the moving space between the two. Here it is for what it's worth. Back to my "momoir" sometime. soon. I hope.

Once I sat on the steps by agate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!"

I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them,

"You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."            --- Yehuda Amichai, “Tourists”

There’s a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen

My grandmother was the prototypical “Wandering Jew”. Her family wandered from Poland to Czechoslovakia to Germany… in her first four years of life. 

She was also the archetypal Zionist pioneer, singing Hebrew medleys, and dancing the Hora in bristly fields.

I was born in Israel: a place where history nudges modernity, where change springs from continuity, where taxi drivers discuss politics, poetry, and Spinoza, where the clerk at the corner store helping you pick a bottle of wine for the dinner party you’re headed to will tell you, rather rudely, that you don’t have to spring for wine AND chocolates (“what are you crazy?”), where your neighborhood bakery hands your kids rogalach (pastries) on Friday mornings,

where every two people hold – and voice – three opinions, where the collective and the individual are inextricably entwined. I was born in a place where community runs deep, emotions run high, and social criticism runs rampant.

Israel’s eminent authors, poets, and artists, are left of center. They engage and wrestle with their country’s policies and socio-cultural dynamics from a place of unrelenting commitment. They will sing to their country until she will open her eyes.  

I was born in Israel. But I have spent most of my life in North America.

In the late summer of 2010 I moved to Israel with my husband and two kids.

In the late summer of 2011 I was there, alone, closing loose ends and packing up our belongings before returning to my family and beginning a new chapter of our lives in Vancouver.

On a saturday night in August 2011, I stood in Tel Aviv, among throngs of Israelis, young and old, Ashkenazi and Sephardic, right and left, in an impassioned demonstration for social justice. Pop singer Karin El Al began singing Ein Li Eretz Acheret (“I have no other country”), and the brackish tears welled in my eyes. The pinch I felt in my heart was visceral. BUT I DO have another country, the thought encroached on me, as I was singing along with hundreds of thousands Israelis, on the eve of my impending departure… It was a realization that was mingled with sorrow and regret, if also with some measure of hope and possibility.

I move between a sense of place and a sense of wandering.

There is something in the experience of the wanderer, I believe, that allows one to reflect on the diverse, the historical, the particular, the “other”, while acknowledging the “self”, the shared, the universal, the human. It takes one outside of oneself, and brings one into oneself.

 I move between countries, between cultures, between disciplines, between modalities.

My hyphenated identity is not fixed, it is not contained, it is not whole. It does not lie behind a door but flutters, in fragments of light, through a crack in a window. I am not entirely Israeli. Nor am I entirely Canadian. I am less. And more.

Like Donne’s compass, my legs are rarely aligned; one is rooted while the other rotates. This allows me to keep moving, to discover new spaces, novel configurations.

Certainly, moving is good. It gets you places. But here’s another paradox: so does sitting still.

As a mother of two young ‘uns, I am frequently running, moving, doing. But the moments of stillness are those that are oftentimes the most far-reaching. Like Yehuda Amichai’s man who sits with his basket of fruit and vegetables by the historic arch from the Roman period, and reflects on his family, I turn to the moments that encompass space and time, the moments in which the mundane is elevated.

After leaving Israel in the summer of 2011, I came “home” to my family. At home, I speak Hebrew to my children. My husband speaks English.
I read Hebrew books. We sing Hebrew songs.

We read English books. We sing English songs.

I embrace my children in English and I kiss them in Hebrew.

They sing in my ears. 

And I open my eyes.

Time After Time

Oof! This is my expletive. My husband will remind me that there have been others in my repertoire that have elicited our alarm and amusement when subsequently pronounced by resident preschooler and kindergartner. But Oof will effectively express my exasperation. Most of the time.

Oof! to punctuate the seventeenth time I’ve told them to get their shoes on and wait by the door.

Oof!  when I’m carrying five grocery bags, two knapsacks, socks, sweatshirts, keys, and a stuffie, and one kid pronounces that s/he’s too tired to walk and needs to be carried; and the other chimes in.

I will venture that Murphy, famed creator of unassailable laws, was a mom. Volcano and play-dough (from scratch!) - making projects are creatively conjured on the singular days that I’ve set aside for organizing.

Oof! I shout as the water, flour, and food coloring mixture spills over. 

“Gozal!”: the kids’ joint response darts back at me. And stuns me, surprises me, delights me. [Oof (אוף!) in Hebrew, spelled differently, is also the imperative form of the verb ‘to fly’. There is a song; a wonderful, simple, evocative Israeli song called Oof Gozal (עוף גוזל) – “Fly Little Suckling” -- about the choked up experience of letting go as one’s young ones leave the nest.] 

With a play on semantics, with a dose of humor, a measure of the unexpected, my perspective has shifted. I am smiling.

Suddenly the exhausting phase, it seems, has been exhausted, and a dazzling moment sets in. 

With the shift in perspective, time’s ephemeral nature sinks in, and a flitting inkling congeals.

Later at night: “Come here, give me some five year old hugs, soon you’ll be six already!” I say to my first-grader, as he lies restively in bed. “I only want to grow until my Bar Mitzvah”, he counters, sullenly.

Right. I’ve heard it before. The reasoning is clear. Sebastian doesn’t want to grow up because then he’ll die. So what if he’s got many good years to live, he doesn’t want to die at age 100 either. He doesn’t want to not be able to breathe.

I start to utter a few words about peacefulness and a long life while internally beckoning the spirit of motherhood wherever she may be, to instruct me with the “right answers”.  “But what about after 2 weeks of being dead I’ll want to come back to life?” Sebastian pitches. Um. I gulp and furrow my brows. I take in a long inhalation to mask the tangled and hesitant feelings scrambling inside. And then I start: well, your spirit will always be with us because people will remember you and talk about you like we talk about – HERZL! -- he pipes in (Theodor Herzl: father of modern political Zionism and visionary of the Jewish state, a figure S knows well from a Hebrew children’s musical DVD narrating the history of the State). Why yes, Herzl. Safta (my grandmother) was what I was going to say; the spirit we evoke when we eat ice cream for dinner. But just as well. 

[Certainly, there’s a link between the political Zionist figure of the late 19^th century and the vivacious pioneering woman who lived and breathed Zionism in the early 20^th century.]

However, the direction I was forging was upended and Sebastian simply declared: “Well when I die I want you to sing to me the song that Collins sings to Angel.” OOOOOHHH LOVER I’LL COVER YOU!! That was that: end of discussion. I could exhale. As I leaned over my child and started softly singing “five hundred twenty five thousand six hundred minutes”, he corrected me: “not minutes, kisses.” And I ached to cover him with them. 525,600 of them. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9vaiIkFA5I

Liliana inhabits another plane; she wants to reach the ripe age of 97 like her imaginary “big sister”. 

“When is it gonna be my birthday?” “I want to go to Mexico!” In another three months. We will. My dismissive replies beget the typical moan: “but it takes a long time.” And she’s right. It does take a -- long -- time. Especially since we have no plans, funds, or vacation time to go to Mexico.

I feel like I teeter between halting time and hustling it along. Mexico would be so nice.

But while the anticipation (for birthdays and Mexico) is grand, playing “school” in her bedroom or eating watermelon will yield a “best day ever!” exclamation. That’s the thing about this three and a half year old. “Everything” goes. When asked what she wants or likes, it’s “everything”; when poised with a choice, it’s “all of them.” There’s a sense of expansiveness there that’s freeing, that encompasses the what might be (the ubiquitous “I want you to buy me this for my birthday”) and the what is (watermelon juice trickling down the chin).

Just the other day, while dropping Liliana off at daycare and settling into the sofa by the window for our morning story-time parting routine, I instructed her to go choose a book. She returned with Robert Munsch’s Love You Forever and sidled up next to me. 

I began reading… and sobbing. When my girl turned to me with a puzzled chortle asking why I was crying I answered because it’s beautiful. She instructed me that if it’s beautiful I need to smile. Like this. 

And I did.

Time does its own thing. We want it to soar, to float, and to stand still, at turns. But it just marches. Onwards.

It often feels like the moments flit and the phases linger. But I think it’s the other way around. The phases flit and the moments linger. It is the moments that we revisit. 

Like a story time snuggle; a glance at a sleeping child; a shout (oof!) that collapses into a laugh.  Like the lyrics to a good song, or the words in a good book; that elicit the tears, time and time, again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byCVxiVsH34

Freaking Nights

Single mom here. Lance in Cincinnati completing his DMA. Me, with two little kids, having moments. Lots of them. While they appear copious, said moments are better qualified than quantified. As in I want to strangle you kids and throw you out the window moments; my throat hurts from yelling moments; aw that’s so sweet and considerate of you moments; and I love you so much you are so darn precious moments.

An attempt to chart out the moments yields occasional surprises. And unyielding guarantees: A morning shower or an important phone call will invariably activate the sibling squabbles. “Then I’m not gonna be your friend,” and “then I’m not gonna give you any stickers” are fierce threats from the mouths of babes. Bedtime, on the other hand, will usher in instant camaraderie, and infinite play.

I sit in the living room in the dark taking it all in: the talk about soon visiting Aba in Cincinnati, the patter of little feet scampering to collect toys and stuffies to shove into the Elmo and Dora knapsacks, Sebastian declaring the flight safety rules and assuring his sister that she can’t fall out of the plane, only off the moon, but that he’ll catch her, and not to worry about an astronaut suit that’s something else altogether.

“Liliana say crescent moon.” “But Sebastin, I don’t wanna be an ascronaut because why you didn’t listen to my words?”

And I teeter: between Omigod that is so freaking SWEET, and these kids freaking need to get to sleep NOW. Lots of freakings you’ll have noticed. But that’s not how I pronounce it when the sentiment erupts from within me.

Yup, nowadays, meltdowns are MY territory. Don’t even try going there you three year old terror, I’m gonna beat you to it! Sure you have an ear-splitting cry but I can curse and bang my hand on the table. And I’m bigger. Top that. I’m also really good, I’ve noticed, at making stupid threats that I’ll never be able to fulfill: If you don’t behave you’re not going to Cincinnati; That’s it, I’ve had it with you, I’m never taking you to visit your Aba again. They do now and again yield results these paroxysms, but they make me feel like crap.

Sebastian comes out of his room an hour after I’d said good-night to ask me for a piece of paper and some crayons and I nearly lose it. I grab a piece of paper, tell him to tell me what he wants to write and I’ll write it (quickly!) and get straight to bed. Four categories, OK: Water. Oxygen pack. Food. And… C’mon, yalla, hurry, I press. Um… friendship. Sigh.

He has a way of stringing me, this kid, when I’m at the end of my rope, with a little tender wisp, that makes me crumple, and smile. Like when someone delivers a kind word while you’re crying, and your tears gush even more fervently. The smile through the tears breaks through the breakdown.

[The other one has her “way”, simply, with an impish smile and a full-bodied laugh.]

When Sebastian showed me the sticker chart he’d written out a few days earlier, I had read the categories rather – well – categorically: cleanup, helping, set the table… put a DVD on in Saturday. I reread the fourth item silently and my heart skipped a beat. (So that Ima can sleep in, is the unwritten clause.) One moment, I beamed and swelled at this token of thoughtfulness. The next moment, I guiltily pondered the priorities I am instilling in my sweet children.

The other night the kids wanted to watch a TV show. And I let them. “The inmates are running the asylum”, I could hear my dad saying. But the guilt swiftly evaporated; the warden was able to take a breather (and fold laundry!). I “let it go” and avoided a marathon of escalating nerves. Letting them fall asleep in front of the TV is an underrated bedtime routine. (Sure, it would have been better if the freaking Cat in the Hat’s raucous thingamajigger adventures settled into some mind-numbing Baby Einstein, but hey, “you get what you get, and you don’t get upset”, as the mantra from Liliana’s daycare goes.) 

OK, I know: this is far from a formula for a regular healthy bedtime routine. But it served me well for a night. It allowed me to inhabit a peaceable rhythm. Perhaps the formula worth exploring is that of figuring out when to step in, and when to step back. I’m still trying to figure out the middle ground.

In the mornings, things are generally less cloudy. Shafts of sunlight seep through the windows and a smile spreads over as I stretch under the covers to the sounds of genuine amity: "Good job Liliana, you did an 'L'", and "Sebastin that's a really beautiful house... which Barbie do you wanna keep?"

Moments later, little sister pronounces “Sebastin: ‘cuddly’” and the two of them storm into my bedroom to demonstrate so that I can snap a photo.

My darling angels. Until the shower!

In the moments vs. the moments, the bad ones linger and the good ones dwell. What lingers I eventually shake off: with a deep breath, a pillow over my head, or a Bellini. What dwells I let into my heart.

I walk into the kids’ room after a night of moon-diving astronaut activity and notice the accursed paper now replete with illustrations.  In the “friendship” category there is a figure with a curly mop among the stick friends! I’m still coming out on top.