Banana Muffins - Yummy!!!

I will never be disloyal to Joan Burstyn's banana bread, but what do you do when you have 2 bananas instead of 3, and half an hour instead of an hour?

Here's the solution, adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Lowfat Favorites - thanks Nancy for this great cookbook!!!!

I cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1 cup oats
2 eggs
2 tbls oil
2 mashed bananas
1/2 cup yogurt

preheat oven to 400 F(200 C) and grease your muffin cups
sift dry stuff except oats. add oats. mix up the wet stuff well. add wet to dry and mix till just mixed. put in muffin cups. bake 20-25 mins (took a little longer here). leave in tin a few minutes if the kids can wait. loosen each muffin with a knife around the edges before tipping out. one batch is almost gone the next morning - try a double batch if friends are over!!!

Coming Out Again

I think I want to rename this blog and call it, "It's complicated."

Alen was home sick and heard some young teen girls gathered outside our house talking and saying, "That's the yard of the lesbians." She was pretty sure one of them lived in our building.

I had a pretty good idea of who it was and while Alen was dubious about it, I decided to go talk to our new neighbors. I thought about what I would say for some time. On the one hand, what other people think of us is none of our business. On the other hand, my kids also live in this building.

So I asked to talk to the mom privately, and I told her what happened, and that I thought it might have been her daughter, but that I was not sure, and her first response was "my kids have no idea about you. We haven't said anything. It's a completely private matter." These kids are about 13 and 15. I'm not sure what planet this lovely woman is living on.

I said, "Well, we don't keep it a secret that we are two women raising two kids."

She said, "No of course not, it's nothing you need to hide."

And there we have the dilemma in Israel - it's nothing to hide but it's a completely private matter.

So I said, "well, it's totally your call, but maybe you want to talk to your daughter. She might have questions about it."

Then she told me about her teenage son who has become orthodox under the influence of Shas type activists who were in another part of our town influencing teenage boys but have supposedly left, and how against it she and her husband have been and how she would never mention something like this to him (her son) because of the attitudes of that segment of the religious population.

So I said again, "it's totally your call, but maybe you want to talk to your daughter."

And she told me she was glad I said something to her, and she thinks we're great and our kids are great.

And I'm left wondering, if she talks to her daughter, what on earth will she say? That it's a totally private matter not to talk about but nothing to be ashamed of?

Stay tuned for why I'm ambivalent about joining a speakers bureau for GLBT issues. It's not what you think.

Ushpezin Challenges

So we were in the Sukkah last night (the kids and I slept there). We have pre-printed walls made of fabric and on them are the names of 7 Ushpezin (guests) - the traditional men. So Gabi is asking me what the symbols are - why does Aaron have a breastplate as a symbol, etc. And then she sees Yitzchak (Isaac) has a fire and wants to know why. So I kind of gulp and then explain about the binding of Isaac and how G-d told Abraham to kill his son and then told him not to, all the while thinking, "should I be telling my kids about this?" And Gabi thinks it's pretty weird, especially that G-d changed his mind, and then Sasha says in Hebrew: "G-d told him to kill his son and then told him not to? G-d is confused." And then they start singing about Yuval Hamebulbal.

Has anyone else told your kids about this? It made me pretty uncomfortable.

Shanah Tovah!!!!

To all our family, friends and loved ones, and to my readers near and far -

I hope that this blog has in some way touched your hearts this year. At this season, I feel the many blessings of so much love all around and the ways that we can connect and inspire each other. I hope that the coming year brings you all that you dream of, with many opportunities for service and for giving back. Thank you for connecting with me in some way - great or small. May you go from strength to strength.

Much love to everyone,

Gail

Driving questions again

Mom, don't read this post.

So now the question is which way to drive. There have been shootings on West Bank roads the past three nights. So it seems that if I drive to or from Jerusalem at night, I'd best be taking the other route, a scary windy road through a deserted forest. Gee, that sounds great. But what about the days? Alen drives the forest route all the time. I'm not so used to it, but took it yesterday. It got me to work about 10 minutes later, through an area I'm completely unfamiliar with. I don't like the sense that my part of Jerusalem (Baka, Talpiot, Gilo) will be cut off from me if I drive the other way. But on the other hand...

I can't change whether people are shooting on the roads, I can't change what's going on in Washington (the proximate cause of the shootings) but I can change my driving route. So I may be saying goodbye to checkpoints for awhile. Husan, Wadi Fukin, Beit Lehem and the separation wall will be hidden from my sight, as they are from so many Israelis.

What about my friends in Tekoa, Efrat and Kiryat Arba? They can't choose the safe road.

It's complicated.

Reflections on our wedding - August 18, 1996

Yesterday was our 14th wedding anniversary. (And the first we've ever spent apart - Alen is at the Bird Fair in Rutland Water, England.)

A few thoughts about our wedding - in 1996 a gay wedding wasn't nearly as common as today. It was actually just starting to be at all fashionable. We did find a gay wedding consultant - they helped us with the invitations. We had a wonderful (Reform) rabbi, who was nothing but supportive through the whole process. I think it helped our guests that he was a man with a beard - he looks like a rabbi and that gave a sense of "normalcy" to the proceedings.

Alen wore a tux and I wore a wedding gown - something I had always wanted to do. The tux store lady encouraged Alen to wear tails - a cutaway which fit over her hips as a jacket would not have done.

My gown was altered by a lady who was very into weddings. On our fourth visit in which I had not exactly told her what kind of wedding it was she said to me, "Gail, I know."

We didn't tell people at my congregation. I had been told that either you invite the whole congregation or no one, so we opted for no one. This was largely because of Alen's work with a youth organization in a state that did not yet have a non-discrimination law. I told my congregation president a couple of months before that we were doing this privately. As I recall, he was concerned what others in the congregation might think.

Our lack of openness meant that on the day before our wedding Alen had to go to work. There was some big event and she had no excuse to get out of it. At the time I thought I'd never get over it - today it just seems like a piece of evidence about how not out we were compared to now.

We went back to work wearing wedding rings. Alen's very straight boss asked her if her ring meant something and then said something like, "Congratulations, Gail is a lovely girl."

What we didn't anticipate was how our families took us much more seriously after the wedding. Neither of them had been particularly enthusiastic and we dealt with quite a bit of negativity on the way to the chuppah. But somehow the ceremony gave us more legitimacy in their eyes. At least that's how it seems.

I'll never forget the toast Alen's brother made at the wedding - he said that this kind of thing was completely not done in Trinidad, but that he saw how much love and acceptance we had around us and that he hoped that in future, we would have more, also in Trinidad. And I feel that this really has come to pass in the 14 years since then.

Our friend Debbie and Shoshana sang a wonderful song which ended: "Here's a toast to Hannah who today is undercover. May she soon be blessed with a sister or a brother." Hannah, our dog from those years, passed away without getting to meet Gabi and Sasha. But Debbie and Shoshana's blessing has also come true.

Mazal tov to Mindy and Alan, who share our wedding anniversary and just celebrated 8 years, to my parents, who are celebrating 52 years of marriage today, and to Sara Rivka and Gideon who are getting married tomorrow.

Driving Questions 2 - Gabi and Prop 8

Once they learn to read, it's a whole new world of parenting.

A recent care package from our friend Rosalind who lives in California included a bag of buttons, "NO on 8". When we picked up the package on our way to the pool, Gabi wanted to know, "what is NO on 8?".

So I was trying to explain Prop. 8 to her and that some people don't want people of the same sex to be able to get married. She thought she understood that, "so when the law passed, people like you and Ima have to get divorced???"

That just about made me cry - that she would think they would pass a law that we have to get divorced. Then she decided it would have to have a grandfather clause, "No, people won't have to get divorced, just new people can't get married."

So I tried to explain to her that there's a difference between being married in the eyes of G-d, family and friends and being married by law. She understands the G-d, family and friends thing, and she checked that Ima and I are married that way, but she didn't really understand what being married by law means. It was weird to tell her we aren't married by law after all these years of telling her we are married. It felt very strange to tell her that not everyone recognizes our marriage. I mean, this is the kids whose classmates when they came over wanted to know which one of us broke the glass at the wedding. How much more married can you get in their eyes?

It's even more complicated because here in Israel, there's a long legal tradition of giving folks who are common law married, in Hebrew "known in public", the same rights as legally married folks. And our courts have extended those rights to same-sex couples such that there really aren't so many legal rights that have not been or could not be claimed by same-sex couples. So here in Israel, not married by law does not have so much force.

But of course that's not true in the US, as any bi-national couple like us can tell you.

But the hardest part of the whole discussion was the punch in the stomach impact of her 7 year old words, "so if the law passed, people like you and Ima have to get divorced?" As though a vote in California could create havoc in the lives of thousands of kids like her. Thank G-d it is more complicated.