I am assured that this is universal, and not only a Jewish thing; Halloween brings similar travesties (no, I did not mean to add an “ns” and a “t”….) of back hair under evening gowns to suburban enclaves everywhere. It’s a gag that’s as old as the hills. (Excuse my need to be immature.)

My unofficial Facebook poll suggests that the reasons for consistently pursuing this particular costume rank thus: 1. laziness (Easily available raw materials – when you can’t think of anything else…just grab your wife’s maternity dress…); 2. antisocial thrill (AKA: shock value); 3. long tradition of low humor (Dude, it’s funny, relax…Shakespeare did it, too); 4. sanctioned forbidden boundary crossing (Men who are usually Very Vanilla get to Vary their Vistas and “get in touch with their feminine side,” as one sex therapist friend put it. Another friend noticed that the truly more nurturing, homebound men rarely put on a dress. Hmm. In any event, whether this is an emotional or sexual Validation of the Veiled inner self is unclear, but notice how much I am liking the letter “V” for this item; 5. attention seeking (This may be the same as #2…not sure); 6.possible repressed tendencies / early female-dominated home experiences (”These guys are just a little bit gay,” one friend wrote.).

My objection to the practice is not moral, but mainly aesthetic. As such, women gluing on facial hair to play men similarly gets under my skin. (One friend noted that this is probably the only way for women to look distinctively male, since wearing a suit evokes Annie Hall more than anything else, and probably wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow nowadays. What would be the point, then?) Another friend observed, apropos the facial hair and fake bald heads being sported by some of our neighbors, “Why would I want to make myself look ugly on purpose?” I agree. That’s territory for starlets seeking an Oscar, but I’ll pass.

Which brings me to this: If men tend to go for shock value, convenience, and laughs, women have a fairly predictable habit as well: They go for slutty. Slutty cowgirls, slutty rock stars, actual hookers, slutty nurses and devils and witches and barmaids. The last 3 years, I’ve been a parochial school girl, Alice Cullen, and Jackie O. Not quite slutty, but definitely picked for the ability to put on a cute skirt and interesting footwear, instead of a beard. To me, this means that women are way into #’s 4 and 5 above, but not many of the other reasons resonate on a broad scale.(Get it? Get it? A Broad scale?)

There’s a surprise (cue the irony font): When we reach out of ourselves to be someone else – men go for easy, cheap laughs and women go for complicated, cheap attention. Both of us like to cross boundaries with gusto. (I am obviously generalizing, but then again, that is the job of bloggers.)

Readers: Do you gender-bend on dress-up occasions? What makes you do it? Please: Do *not* send pix. Really.

….Here’s an oldie I dug out from my files; Winter always makes me crave poetry.

Tide

Temporary sanity
filters through us all,
when the rosy-jelly-warmth of almosthappiness
settles for a time
behind our ribs and jaw.
…But there’s desire,
and imagination,
and broken promises,
that live inside our
belly
where they rise
and fall,
like tide…
Lapping up from time
to time
around our eyes – -

Where only lovers see them.
And only lovers
don’t.

- SKE, January 1998

Note, by the way, that I did not include Experience or Explore, obvious contenders for the fourth (and possibly fifth) E. Don’t people travel just to see the world? To swim where there are no lifeguards, to climb where there is no oxygen, to buy trinkets in foreign bazaars where they don’t take American Express? I skipped these because I feel fairly certain that while these are the What of travel memoirs, they don’t quite reach the Why, or the So What. Show me a travel book that doesn’t involve some type of revelation, metamorphosis, or eternal need to run, and I will show you Fodor’s guide to Wherever.

****

Lisa Fineberg Cook is a nice Jewish girl who has traveled. (And how!, as my grandma would say.) Though originally from Montreal, Los Angeles has been home for most of her life, which means that, like most urban / coastal, middle class, liberal Jews, Cook grew up with her needs met fairly quickly, and rarely feeling like an outsider. Hence she refers to herself as a J.A.P. in her very enjoyable ride of a memoir, Japan Took the J.A.P. Out of Me .

I suppose the term requires some redefinition for me, since I always associated the stereotype with a kind of vapid, selfish, material-centric existence which I can’t, somehow, connect to the very personable and earthy author, who I spoke to on the phone last week. I knew I was talking to the real deal – a natural high-end-Gen-X-chic-lit writer, talented and clever and insightful and empathic. Someone I definitely would want to hang out with, and think I could learn a lot from in the ‘follow your dreams’ category. But I couldn’t quite get myself to feel the J.A.P.

Maybe my definition is wrong. Or maybe because I didn’t know Cook “Before,” a decade ago, when her new husband, Peter, an educator’s educator, took a two-year job teaching English in Japan. Not in Gotham-esque, international Tokyo, mind you, but in a place – and no, she didn’t make this up – called Nagoya. (It’s where you’d probably live if your employer was the currently beleaguered Toyota.) It would be, in tribal terms, like making Aliyah to developing Dimona or Afula instead of to bustling, global Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, where you can easily manage almost everything in English.

Cook was literally thrown into cold foreign waters, where she, a tallish, manicured blonde with no knowledge of Japanese, was about as inconspicuous as George Clooney would be at a nail salon in Teaneck. And yes, the locals noticed, but there was no Bree Van de Kamp basket of muffins forthcoming.

It turns out, however, that Cook, a pro swimmer who owns and operates a swim school in LA (in addition to her steadily rising writing career), managed not only to stay afloat on the other side of the Pacific, but to do so with great style. Her approach to laundering, cooking, and bus-riding her way through Japan is much more Bryson than it is Gilbert. Rather than a pensive, searching tone, Cook opts for light and witty, like providing readers with her translation of the Japanese “Aaahhhmaaaaybeee,” which can mean “yes, no, not on your life, fuck off, or just plain maybe.”

The author notes that she was hesitant to write from a place of real depth in commenting on another society, since she’d never assume that what she had to say about another culture was that important. And so, instead of exploring Japanese mores or her own enlightenment, Lisa plays it direct and writes about the day to day of getting by. True humor, of course, especially the kind where you laugh at yourself in various contexts, is not only universal, but also doesn’t have a great shot at being politically correct.

“It was a risk to play it that way as writer,” she says, “either people love it, can relate, think it was funny, had a similar experience OR they are offended – Americans abroad can’t be at all judgmental, they’re supposed to write how they fell in love with the place. I chose to write about my first year [Cook was there for two years], as a real outsider.” How refreshing.

****

I, for one, am in the first category. Moving to Israel a week after my wedding in the days before the North American Aliyah Renaissance, I was the loneliest newlywed that there ever was, and there were days that I, like Lisa, could do nothing while my new husband was out all day in law school but seek out American food. And eat it. (And how!) Let’s just say that I knew I was adjusted to life here when I lost those 40 imported pounds.

The other challenges of early marriage – including, notably, what to do with your close female friendships once there’s a man in the mix – are dealt with in Cook’s memoir very astutely. I am not fooled by Lisa’s funny streak. The lady is profound.

Because despite her casual, comical attitude, there was expansion. Most of this enlightenment takes shape as a new appreciation and empathy for immigrants in the US, but also of the larger issue put forth in the book’s title: losing that sense of cultural entitlement that the world loves so much about Americans. (Cue the irony font.) It is indeed possible that there is another way to do things – or several – and that the Western world might need to look at its protocols and cultural quirks as a path, but not the path, to living one’s best life.

I’ve said before that I find it fascinating how journey books tend to take people from a narrower to a wider place – Cook went from slightly spoiled Cosmo-sipping American single to thoughtful married woman of the world. But rarely (actually, never, in my experience) do they go the other way. Have we ever read about someone worldly and experienced who decides to settle down into a religious life? Isn’t that, potentially, also enlightenment? This, too, is very American. To celebrate the broadest possible outlook while maintaining the narrow definition of broadening.

Now, I love America as much as the next ex-pat, but as one who has lived overseas for nearly 17 years (yikes!!!), I can say that every American should have to live somewhere else for at least a year, if for no other reason than to learn another language besides English. Incidentally, Cook says that she is thrilled that her 8-year-old (the Cooks also have a new baby) is learning Hebrew in school.

What’s next for Lisa? A sequel, chronicling her and Peter’s stint teaching at a skiers’ boarding school in Maine. Working Title? Lumber J.A.P. (lol.) Also, hopefully, more teaching travels, this time with two kids. (…and I wish her much luck with that.)

Lisa, I hope you get over this way on one of your world tours. I’ll take you out in Tel Aviv for a beer. Or, its JAPpy cousin, the Breezer.

If you are on anyone’s mass e-mail list, by now you’ve probably heard of Harold B. Estes. For those of you who delete anything not work-related before reading, Estes is a very sharp-witted, conservative WWII vet in his mid-90’s who wrote a strong letter of criticism to President Obama, virally distributed by e-mail in November.

His opening shot: “…I am amazed, angry, and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish. I can’t figure out what country you are the president of. You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies…”

The full text of the letter is here.

When I read it, the letter reminded me very much of my Grandmother. She, too, is in her 90’s. She, too, is a WWII “vet” – having survived Auschwitz in her 20’s. (See more on my amazing Grandma here.)

And she, too, is an avid news junkie who can still debate the issues with the best of them… and is generally bound to tell you exactly what she thinks. Why waste time with political correctness when you’re 91? (Or 36. But that’s for another post.)

Grandma Esther is also not a great Obama fan. She feels sold out, as a rather conservative American and as a Zionist, and recently told me that she feels the world’s atmosphere towards outwardly proud Jews has returned to something akin to what it was in the early 30’s: “I had to live through it once, OK. But to live through it again? I can’t believe it.” What she does believe is that Obama’s apologetic attitude towards nations classically hostile to both America and Israel has made matters far worse, and not better, for the democratic, free world.

She is of course far from alone in this opinion. Harold B. Estes, for one, strongly agrees with her. And the fact that they are both rare living witnesses who were both THERE – that one fought for America’s freedom while the other waited for Allied forced to liberate her from the evil many across the world denied existed – gives them something so strong in common… that I got the crazy idea that they should meet.

So…I contacted Fore n’ Aft magazine, a Honolulu-based Navy vet publication, and the source quoted as verifying the Estes story as real, rather than one of those widely circulated urban legends. Within a day, I heard back from the magazine’s editor, a very open and kind person of the sort you don’t find too many of anymore, who was thrilled to help me arrange a call between Harold and Grandma Esther. (Also instrumental in making the call possible was Harold’s lawyer and confidant, a very friendly member of the tribe who was only too happy to help.)

And so…one Tuesday afternoon about a month ago, Harold and his buddies called my grandma in New York. They talked a bit about Harold’s letter to Obama (my grandma voiced her approval) and about the weather (she wished she were the one in Hawaii) and then about her experiences in the War. I think it was amazing for her to be validated by a contemporary, and I hope Harold had the same feeling.

All in all, perhaps only because of their advanced years, they did not manage to solve the world’s problems, or even just America’s. But I think these two heroes and survivors and opinion-makers got to briefly say: I was there, too, and I can’t believe what I’m seeing now, either…and I get it. I get you.

That’s the kind of empathy I wish for everyone to receive at least once in a lifetime, and for every world leader to possess and express – to his own nation – so that his or her people never feel unheard, invisible, disenfranchised, or unsafe.

It is perhaps a misplacement of empathy, spent on those who would never return it, that is Obama’s problem in the first place.

Here’s to a new decade of understanding and humanity… born of wisdom and courage and endless good energy, things we should not have to apologize for. Harold and Esther would be the first ones to tell you that it would be about time.

1. (…Dammit, I missed the Thanksgiving post. What a bum. Time is not my friend….) Which brings me to this:
2. Do I want to grow old if I will not be sound of mind / functioning with dignity? After some difficult family stuff this month (and occasional mundane confrontations with my own apparent mortality…may not be a vampire after all…damn…), I’m not sure how I feel about letting only God say when I go, even though I hope I have at least half a century before I really have to think about this. (But by then, I may not be able to think…) How wrong is it to write: “If I revert to toddlerhood, please take me back even further” in your will? I know it’s not the religious thing to do. I’m just wondering about what the options are. (Way in advance, as usual.) Which brings me to two very old people who are the very opposite of helpless….
3. Shameless plug #1: Stay tuned to this space for my post on a conversation between this man and my grandma, two nonagenarians with a lot on their minds. When I read Estes’s letter to Obama, (forwarded in an email chain to me and a million other people), it struck me as something my grandmother would have written, and I got an idea… After a few minutes of Google snooping and an e-mail, I found the guys to whom Estes dictated the letter (he’s too old to write with his own hand) and asked them to set up a call with my grandmother. These are two WWII heroes (from the opposite ends of that dreadful war) who are devastated by an America they feel has let them down. I thought they should “meet” to commiserate…and they did…Which brings me to this:
4. This Time Magazine article about the Decade from Hell really got me in the mood for New Years, and toasting to better beginnings. I think back to where I was when we rang in the new millennium – where we all were – and I can’t believe it’s only been ten years. The world looks insanely different. Which brings me to Web 2.0.
5. Seriously, to rephrase the old Twitter question: What are we doing? Some days I am on the computer for 8 long hours, working…I think. Writing, consulting on the right turn of phrase, Facebooking for fun and profit, *networking*, developing new leads, blablablah. …And finally quit way after dark, wondering what exactly I did all day and why. (Sometimes I get paid.) Are we just busy fools in our cyberofficespace? Or are we going somewhere with this? Sometimes I really want to be a farmer planting 140 stalks of corn instead. Which brings me to Dorothy Gale.
6. I just finished reading a great and entertaining memoir by Lisa Fineberg Cook, a self-aware, spoiled, very smart and funny Jewish girl from LA who marries a world-traveling educator / adventurer and spends two years in Japan, completely out of her element. The better to introspect, my dear. The new bride ends up shedding many of her J.A.P.py notions, and learning a thing or two about how being a citizen of the world (and a wife) requires one to step into another’s shoes, regularly. (And that borrowing your best friend’s Manolos doesn’t count in this regard.) I will be writing an entire column on the book, and doing a Q+A with the author, sometime in the next month (Shameless plug #2), but what I want to say now is this: I once had the privilege to edit an excellent partial manuscript for someone whose journey took him in somewhat of the opposite direction…From a Zen, secular life in the US, to a bike tour through Europe and to Lebanon, to meet his wife’s Christian Arab family, and, ultimately, to Israel, where he ended up adopting religious Judaism. (As did she.) The writing was superb and the adventure completely unique, but he could not find a publisher anywhere. I ask anyone who will answer me: Will the Manhattan book establishment not even entertain the possibility that growth can also take one from the assimilated to the culturally particular? Is it a given that to be a “journey” it not only has to end in self-awareness and spiritual expansion, but in adopting something foreign? What if there’s no place like home? Would Dorothy Gale get published in 2009, having seen the other side of the rainbow, and choosing churchy Kansas because that’s where her heart was? Which brings me to Hanukah:
7. Would I have been a Maccabee or a Hellenist? I ask this quite sincerely since I’m pretty sure Mattathias Cohen and Sons were more Judean Hilltop and less Tel Aviv Café…not even suburban Modern Orthodox. While we live (and my kids learn) in an Orthodox environment, Jewish-centered and centric, I can not claim to have taken secular culture out of our house – pretty much the opposite is true. Is it only living in Israel that allows us the luxury of consuming Hollywood and being broadly cultural, and not worrying for a minute about our identity or continuity? I’m thinking probably…yes… in the US I might have been a bit more of a protective / defensive Frumom. (Reason #687 for Aliyah!) I’m also thinking that the Hasmonean Dynasty in the Second Commonwealth didn’t do so well at the end of the day, once they grew cozier with Rome…but that I’m not canceling cable. Which brings me to:
8. Happy Hanukah… (That is the holiday message between programming on my cable channels. Just saying. )

Apparently, he’s been chewing over part of the contents of that e-mail for a long time. Here’s what I got from Earl last week (posted here with his permission):

“…I have one question about a statement you wrote:
Anyway – suburbia is no picnic either sometimes, ditto organized religion, and I am not a tremendous fan of either one. Why do you stay in Orthodox Judaism then? Do you not yearn to be free? To not be bound by laws and restrictions that at the end of the day you cannot wholly prove actually come from God, and more likely come from man? Don’t you want to just eat a cheeseburger with your hair down in public, a nice pair of hot, tight jeans and a cute, sexy shirt on and do what you want, when you want with no feelings of having to be doing things at a pre-ordained time because that’s that the rules say? Maybe feel the thrill of catching the eyes of other men who think, “Man, she’s hot”? etc., etc.
If you’re not a tremendous fan of either, why do you stay in them? You could still be a wife, a mom and a Jewish woman and not be bound by those things. I mean what would happen if you said to your husband: “This Friday night I want to get a babysitter and take you into Tel Aviv to go dancing and have a few drinks and then stay in hotel room and [suggested recreational activity removed]“? Would David say, “F— yeah. Let’s do it” or is there no way that would happen?
I am curious. I don’t want to imagine a life bound in that way. I am too much a free spirit as is [Joy]. It’s why we work so well together.
- ‘Earl’ “

Well. Earl. Where do I begin?

Thank you for your vote of confidence in my ability to look hot in tight jeans?

…And for volunteering to explain to our 15.5-year-old son why our potential drunken partying is so much more responsible and acceptable than the potential same activity of his peers?

Although: Why on earth do David and I need to go to a club and a hotel on Shabbat when we have a bedroom, a booze cabinet, a large music collection, and another 6 days of the week?

How about: I wouldn’t eat a cheeseburger if it was made by the OU and blessed by Rav Ovadia because my arteries are my friends… and there are those tight jeans to slide into…?

…However, I think all these things are somewhat beside the point.

As Rachel Menken once said to Don Draper: You didn’t think this through.

Earl, you (understandably) misunderstood: I sometimes dislike suburbia because it can be boring, conformist, and nosy, and Orthodoxy because (like most organized religion) I feel it has become stagnant and irresponsible, on the verge of losing the creative spirit that has kept it alive until now. (And going into detail here would involve a MUCH longer post, but I am happy to expand upon request.) But my lack of fandom is NOT because Orthodoxy / suburbia are both restrictive. Not because I don’t want to feel bound by anything or anyone.

My objections have to do with the contemporary wisdom of some of the rules in those structures and their method of adjudication, or their lack of compassion, but I have no doubt that some rules are in fact necessary for a functional, productive life. I have no doubt that requiring hard things of people is overall a good policy, because people tend to step up then, when they are being required of.

Surely, you have some rules for yourself, Earl, or you couldn’t have accomplished all that you have. I do not “yearn to be free”; I am, thankfully, in a relationship and in a community that allows me to be, within reason, free. I yearn to be lazy, sometimes, or asleep, or surprised by fabulousness, my own or that of others. But what’s missing for me isn’t freedom. When something is missing, that thing is novelty, or maybe, lightning-speed forward movement. But I digress.

Being part of a family and / or a community and / or a belief system (religious or otherwise) has its disadvantages, to be sure. You hit the main one: You are no longer simply your own agent. There are meetings, happenings, causes, responsibilities, loyalties, and rules. You need to bake for people at “pre-ordained times,” like after childbirth or during shiva. You need to be with people when all you want to do is be alone. You need to smile when you hate humanity; but you don’t really. Just today. Forget religion for a moment. What person anywhere wants to get out of their sweatpants on a Tuesday night and attend a fundraiser? (And Holy Crap, am I raising my hand to volunteer for the XYZ committee? Really? Again?)

Throwing God and / or His earthly agents into the mix adds an extra few levels of commitment and an extra unplugged day of the week (which, by the way, I couldn’t and wouldn’t live without – think: a no e-mail or phone Sabbatical! Divine.), but it is along the same continuum: There is Something Larger Than Yourself that you belong to and that you must answer to. That Something Larger in many cases is a tiny cross-section of the world’s people and cultures. There’s your paradox.

It seems that you view my lifestyle as a battle of the Him (God / Law) or the Them (Society / Rules) vs. the I (My Needs and Wants.) But I view it more as a choice of We (family, community, spirituality) over Me Me Me.

The perks: You are never alone; there are people looking out for you; you are part of something; you are consistently loved and asked to keep yourself open, consistently giving love; you are responsible for enriching your community; you must be disciplined and hold yourself to real, firm standards because there are eyes and ears (Divine and otherwise) everywhere. The downside: Same.

We all know there is no having it all. Stability by nature demands putting some freedoms in check. It’s a tradeoff of the collective versus the individual, pro and con alike. So back to your question: Do I feel buried and repressed? Missing out on life? No. Bored and restless? Resentful? Sameness? Sometimes. Overwhelmed by the responsibilities I’ve chosen to carry? Often. Are tight jeans and a treif burger, a hot bar and a hotter dance party, the ability to do anything I want when I want, the answers I seek to what occasionally ails me about this life?

Not by a mile. You with your big connections Earl, I’ll tell you what to do if you want to help me with my Suburbadox Malaise: Get me a meeting with Matthew Weiner. Whatever they serve for lunch, whatever I wear there, whether the hot guard checks me out when I walk in the door or not…I’ll feel much, much better about everything if I get to work on a high quality, life-changing project with a deep, brilliant writer, to the benefit of millions of culture consumers. That would be a novelty and a huge leap forward all at once.

You and Joy can take the hotel in Tel Aviv. David and I left most of the mini-bar. Help yourselves.

Photo by: Avi Eisen

Sukkot in Israel is a hiker and camper’s festival. God wasn’t kidding when he asked people to walk to Jerusalem in Temple times on this holiday. I’m not sure if He cared about the ten young bulls, two rams, and 12 lambs (well-done). But I’m pretty sure He wanted people to walk the land in what constitutes autumn here, which is this: moderation (as opposed to colorful.)

He made a damn fine Holy Land, too, and I’m guessing He wanted people to enjoy it when the moon was full and hung low in the sky like a huge piece of fruit, when the nights were cool and the sands were walkable barefoot, when the sun was strong but pleasant, when the breeze was always blowing but never hot or cold.

The National Park Service and assorted field schools make it really easy this time of year to see every corner of the country. (Note to Park Services: You rock up north and down south. Can you send more of your fine people, and garbage bins, to the Center??) (And citizens: Can you possibly help them by USING the bins?)

Our family took full advantage of the outdoors this holiday (and we all have the redneck tan to prove it.) My husband and oldest went on a sunrise bike ride through Ein Karem. Our extended family met for a picnic / Frisbee game in a great undiscovered park somewhere near Bet Shemesh. *More on undiscovered places below.*

We hiked through the mountains of Judea (I wore flip flops because I thought it was going to be a brief stroll. Can someone explain why I thought I could wear flip flops on a hike in Gush Etzion?) and enjoyed the Science by the Sea festival put on by the Kfar Ruppin Marine Biology College on Hof Mikhmoret. The little kids watched chemistry experiments and saw sea turtles, the big kids and husband went kayaking, I got a neck and shoulder massage, and we all enjoyed a concert at sunset. What could be bad?

But our favorite part was sleeping on the beach. I will not tell you what beach, because it was perfect and clean (lots of garbage cans!) and empty and quiet and has good bathrooms, a nice kiosk, a playground, and lots of parking, and I want it to stay that way.

We loved sleeping to the sound of the waves (and the guitar-playing of my oldest.) We just put our big mat down and got into our sleeping bags and were out in minutes in the perfect cool dark. The best part was waking up and being where we wanted to be. 6 a.m. and the kids were on the playground, by 7 they were building sand castles, by 8 they were swimming and playing paddle ball (we also got coffee at aforementioned kiosk), by 10 the wind picked up enough to fly a kite, and we were loading the car at 11, before the real heat.

Two great discoveries: 1. Camp on the beach! Beats the woods if you can handle sand. No bugs or small animals, very accessible, no tent really necessary. 2. Go away from lots of people and it’s much easier to handle small kids outdoors, especially near water. Drive a bit farther and reap your rewards.

And now…a word from Mother Nature:

A major personal understanding: My era of hibernation at home with toddlers is over. The littles are now big enough to come out into society, which unties me from the hearth. So Yay!

A deeply personal understanding, because the beach never fails to knock me down, drag me out, and wash me back up, cleaner: The big kids don’t know the real me at all. I’m not sure if that’s because I (or mothers in general) am not totally myself with them, or if kids will never really try to get to know their mothers as pre/teens (or if just mine won’t.) The “uptight” mother things I feel I must do and say to keep people safe (You are out too deep! No rafts in the ocean! Etc.) and moderately responsible / productive (Do have any homework over this vacation? Can you please help me with this since you have time? Etc…) take a huge toll on my ability to be (or be perceived as) rolling with things, creative, nice, cool, etc.

And maybe having kids makes you be less of those things in the first place. Demeter – Mother Nature in Greek mythology – is the prototype for organic beauty turned uptight by progeny. When her daughter went missing (kidnapped by her uncle, the God of the underworld…really, a long story…) she became enraged and insane, wandering the earth like a bag lady to find her; the seasons were thought to be a result of a joint custody arrangement Demeter ultimately worked out with Hades.

I think this fear of ultimate loss takes away a piece of yourself, even if it the loss never actually comes to pass. I am not sure if fathers experience this in quite the same way, but I’d like to hear from any of you who feel it, as well.

In any event, I think the greatest sacrifice mothers make is not the years they spend putting family before career or self. It is the years they spend not being seen, not being fully real, for what they feel to be the greater good.

Is it really the greater good? The answer is blowing in the cool evening wind.

The New Year’s wishes fill my inbox (tomorrow, the Jewish Year 5770 begins…) and the apple crumble is cooling, but I’m not that ready, and I’m not that into it.

A time for introspection, repentance, and resolutions?
A day of judgment, talking to God, and mild religious / spiritual anxiety?
A lot of shopping, cooking, hosting, gifting, family?
Why is this day different than all the other days? (Oops. That last one. Wrong holiday.)

I’m not sure how we got from May to September, the summer having melted against the back of my neck as I worked. Somehow for years I’ve felt like I am never DONE, always crossing off something undone and moving it to another crowded day only to move it again… And before you know it, it’s three months (or three years) later, but there is a continuous feeling to that time because those tasks are STILL undone, still brought forward in the filofax. Familiar friends. As if it was yesterday. (It occurs to me that perhaps this is why I leave stuff undone…. But I digress.)

That feeling of being new and renewed, of trembling before a power larger than yourself, of acknowledging that everything and everyone you have is a gift and hoping that you’ve earned those again, of deciding what it is you will do different….Those are things that are continuous, as well. Shoving them all into two days and then moving on with life after the holidays is not my style. Compartmentalizing angst would be cool, but I can’t do it, any more than I can compartmentalize the chores of running a home that hosts family and friends regularly on weekends.

So no, I’m not ready and I’m not done and I’m not inspired. Any more than I always or never am. That may be because I’m hanging on to yesterday, or because time scares the crap out of me in general, or because I’m just a super aware spiritual chic, or because I don’t like sudden shifts in schedule, but whatever the reason – the New Year is making me nervous because I am not even remotely finished with the old one.

Can I save this one in the package and open it when I’m ready? Ya’ll go ahead without me.

Every summer, right in the hot, soft belly of July/August, I’m hit with it in the head, like the skillet of an angry housewife: the urge to play Alan Jackson loud with the windows of my minivan rolled down (ain’t got no truck, just my luck), hang back on my porch at sundown, and go out drinking with the girls. You guessed that right, son – Redneck Fever.

I’m guessing I can’t be the only (sub)urban sophisticate, the lone overly-serious Jewish girl, with an occasional thing for white trashiness. Growing up in Baltimore / Silver Spring in the 80’s, I was buffered by a strong, warm, and nosy Orthodox community, but just beyond the breach in the bubble stretched vast redneck territory, and boy: the country radio was sweet, and so was the drive out to the pool where I guarded up in Reisterstown, and the trip out to Spa Lady in Timonium. And going Down-the-Ocean, or to school down in Montgomery County via US route 29 from B-more, you best believe we crossed paths with plenty of Earls and Randy’s.

I’ll tell you what: The thing I miss most about America, truth be told, is not the jumbo sized Mountain Dew or even Bed, Bath and Beyond. It’s the people. The space they give you, the space in them. Things are simple, basic, and on an as-need basis. Ain’t no right or wrong way to breathe, hon.

Take the relaxed way the locals speak, south of the Mason-Dixon, the reassuring gait out back to the truck to get another part, the walk of a man who isn’t quite sure (and doesn’t quite care) what the final result was of the Civil War. (Yes, I am aware – this has its downsides…) He’s got time, and he keeps his thoughts to himself. They are probably straightforward thoughts and not historically complicated, mired in guilt, or otherwise needing of footnotes and subscripts and ardent, multi-nuanced opinions.

And I’m betting on no Bluetooth sticking to his ear.

Where’s the Israeli ability to sit quietly with one’s thoughts? Or to separate sin from guilt, wrong from outright lost? We could use some self-forgiveness around here, some private 12oz. absolution. Calm contrition. Contemplative work. “Hell, was I wrong, but tomorrow is for fixin’. Now back to what needs doin’.” Can you hear that coming from a Levantine mouth?

And excuse the non-sequitur, but what about baseball? Remember night games in August rained out in the 5th, beer and nachos floating down the aisles, sunburned women in yellow ponchos running to the car and thinking they’d be protecting their hair with the drenched paper program they were holding up over their heads? Shoot, ain’t nostalgia a bitch.

And if you still had any doubt that Rednecks rock, I have just two more words: True Blood. This show had me at Howdy because it involves my two very favorite things of the moment: Rednecks and Vampires. I’ll be a network exec’s uncle if I know what they have in common (predators???) but DAMN.

Throw in Brad Pitt’s debut in Thelma and Louise and know this: 10 months a year I LOVE that my argumentative, close-talking, fast-walking, dark, intense, complex, spiritual and spiritual-phobic, text-obsessed, content-driven, sarcastic and bombastic, cell-phone shouting, hi-tech worshipping, God-ambivalent family of Jews is who I live among, but LORD – if I don’t wish every summer for a wide open I-64 and a beat- up old Ford, some Virginia dreamin’, and a bottle of Mountain Dew so big I can hear my kidneys screamin’.

Amen.

photo by: crash.

It’s not that the well has been dry; au contraire, my friends. I have simply fallen in.

June – which I have some illusion as being just last week – was the month of end-of-the-year school / preschool parties. A blur of cute children and little chairs. Also lots of Bar and Bat Mitzvas. And birthday / anniversary celebrations – mine, and others. And conferences. And meetings. Upshot: I got dressed to go out at all times of day and night way too many times in June. My computer would wait up for me, but I said I was too tired and went up to bed. That’s when the trouble started.

Then came July. (See below.)

It’s been more than a month (closer to two) since I’ve blogged. The reason can be distilled into one intense truth:

I will never have more time than I have…right…NOW. (Or, as my brother likes to say, later is later.)

…OK, two intense truths:

Energy is finite (yes, even yours) and what you choose to focus on is itself a powerful statement, with broad implications on the objects of both you attention and your inattention.

Or, if you will, a Carrie Bradshaw question: When you multitask, are you doing everything, or are you doing nothing?

Here’s a little bit of what’s been keeping me too busy to blog….

1. Freelancing means you spend A LOT of time in administration and niggling project management tasks for which you can not (or at least I don’t) charge. And in business development. This is a fancy way of saying chasing leads and going to meetings that sometimes don’t even turn into real projects, because lots of people just like to have meetings. They collect them, like rocks or stamps. Then the work you already have takes over all the rest of your time, and blogging (and housework) gets shunted aside. Do you see where this math takes us? I’m doing something wrong – time and money-wise. Advice most welcome.

2. July: Some kids are home. Around. This brings even more kids. Right now there are teenagers in my den. I didn’t count how many. Before that they were playing cards right near me while I was typing. I said, welcome to my office. They said, hey. The hint was lost, it seems. Dining room table office losing its appeal and fast.

3. Suburbia means that when your neighbor itches, you scratch. Especially Orthodox suburbia, where scratching thy neighbor’s itch is a high art and at times (and for some), a calling. There have been lots of needs in our community this month, none of them too good, some of them actually terribly tragic. (Who believes in bad energy clusters? Raise your hand.) To the point of calling for special communal prayer, where the synagogue was half full on a regular weeknight to say psalms for the ill. Prayer and food. What else can you do?

Sometimes, honestly, I resent all the communal responsibility for the other, which is vastly time consuming and erodes privacy in the extreme. The fact that I blog (selectively telling everyone what I choose to tell you) doesn’t mean I’m not also intensely private; I hate that everyone here knows who has what.

Caring and nosiness gently lap on these safe shores in a constant tide. In fact, some of the people who are on the ill side of the equation struggle with the whole “do I ask for help or do I keep this private” thing, and several have chosen the latter. Another woman, on the other hand, recently told me that she has no idea why anyone would want to keep illness to herself, and has felt so embraced by her friends during her struggle with early stage breast cancer that she can’t even imagine going through it without that amount of support. Most find a balance that is right for their comfort level, but invariably some people end up feeling both grateful for the kindness and overexposed.

Most of the time I’m really glad to know 200 people have my back (and not only talk behind it.) It’s for real: There’s strength in a village. So I happily make soup and am just intensely grateful I can be on the giving end. It’s a blessing, and I know it, having in the past been a grateful and overexposed recipient. (But damn it, my cabin on a rocky Maine beach awaits me in my mind.)

4. Speaking of which: I’m not sure how many people realize that middle class Orthodox Jews basically make Thanksgiving dinner every week. When I read about the stress levels going up around the holidays, and the amount of guests / menus / budget responsible for said stress, I say: We cook that for Shabbat. Most weeks. This, too, seriously cuts into productivity. And savings. I always knew this but somehow lately have felt it more acutely.

In any event, I now have a full plate of projects (meetings paid off….) and a full plate at home, but I am going to be a productivity pig and insist on filling this plate, too.

More entries soon. Seriously.