Top 10 things I learned from my mother in law

October 24 is here again.  It's been 9 years since Sylvia died suddenly from malaria.

Here are top 10 things I learned from her:

1.  Live in a beautiful place
2.  See every part of the world you can
3.  Get into a swimming pool whenever possible
4.  Stop the car if you think you see a monkey
5.  You can open a can of tuna or sardines and eat anywhere
6.  A dinner mint will solve any nausea you get from eating a tuna sandwich while driving down a winding road.
7.  Comparison shop
8.  It's not a depression mentality, it's "good Yorkshire sense"
9.  Visit your mother whenever you can
10.  And as true today as the day she said it in 1996 "Gail is kind of high strung".

We miss you Sylvia.

What I'm here for

It's that time of year - unbelieveably nine years have passed, and I'm of course thinking about Sylvia Kacal, z"l, my mother in law, whom I knew for too short a time and who will always be with us.

And I'm thinking about connections and about a piece a friend posted on facebook, about unfriending someone before facebook.  Many people found this funny, but I found it sad. 

I feel like the greatest blessing in my life is that I continue to have people from all parts of my life and all kinds of connections with me.  That I can quote something I said 25 years ago in my status and have my friend say "I remember that moment."  I want every day to be worthy of this blessing, so I work to stay in the game when things get difficult with friends, or when I'm going against what is easy to build connections with my Israeli relatives.  When I realized my 3rd cousin was living here in this town, and when my kids' 4th cousin was born here, I felt like G-d was somehow bringing things back together again.

It's my lifetime wish to find out where my Uncle Jack is buried and to be able to go to his grave and say I'm sorry for the break in our family.  And when I connect on facebook with my young cousin Jake or my cousin Andrew who brought us so much information about our family tree, I feel like all my ancestors are smiling on me.  It is such a huge privilege to be part of this world where we can be reconnected and where people don't have to disappear. 

As hard as it may be sometimes to stay in the game - with family, friends and community - I don't want one more disconnect.  I want this whole life to be about connecting the dots, about keeping the strands woven.  I can see the past - quite a few miles back - and I am grateful for this present.

About the verse - Eleh Toldot Shamayim VaAretz - these are the generations of heaven and earth - I said last week that these are the people who are in heaven, who are always with us, and the people who are here on earth.  Let us always be connected.

Grief again?

I got up in the morning and opened facebook.  Sasha saw that Auntie Lisa had a photo of Lucas, and he asked to see it, and then the next time I saw he had a huge page of photos of Lucas up on the screen.  I'm thinking, this really sucks.  First thing in the morning my 6 year old is looking at photos of his cousin who died.  Why am I waking up in this kind of world?

We went to visit the kids other cousins.  I somehow made my way through watching Sasha so want the approval and attention of his 13 year old boy cousin.  How many 13 year olds want to play with 6 year olds?  The whole interaction made me want to cry.  I didn't figure out why I felt so strongly until we were on our way out the door and Gabi said something about "I have four and a half cousins." Her aunt tried to say she has five cousins, but it's not really true, because one of them isn't alive.

I've tried to soften my words here.

Then I read on Lisa's facebook that she just went to church for the first time since Lucas's funeral, which was almost 18 months ago.  That said it all.

Once upon a time...

I've spent the past week in a kind of culture shock feeling of weirdness, triggered by spending the weekend with an LGBT birthright group.  We were invited to bring our family and be kind of Israeli gay role models of sorts.  Expecting to find ourselves somehow mirrored by this group of 20 somethings, we were instead confronted by how the world we came out into has disappeared.  Nearly all the women in the group had long hair.  Anyone who looked much like Alen had transitioned to being male.  We saw scars from "top surgery" for the first time (at the pool).  Rather than finding ourselves mirrored, I found myself fighting to understand what I saw, searching in vain for the world I came out into in 1987, the community I thought I belonged to.

It took quite a few emails with a young friend in Boston, and a conversation today with a gay man my age to get back my sense of humor and to remember that Romanovsky and Phillips already described this phenomenon in their song, "Once upon a time..."

Best of all, my old brain remembers all the lyrics (more or less):

Once upon a time when life was simple and serene
My roommate was a lesbian and I a happy queen
I lived to go out dancing in my tightest fitting jeans
While she read the well of loneliness and lexus magazine

But now I go to pot lucks where the food is rather bleak
And I've joined a new support group that meets every other week
While she lives to go out dancing with her hair done up in curls
It's getting hard to tell the boys from the girls

Once upon a time when life was easy to predict
Sex was something I could get and I could get it quick
I'd look at all the men and know that I could take my pick
While she frowned upon my lifestyle with each and every trick

But now my sex adventures while still fun are rather tame
While she's discovered Joann Loulan and she'll never be the same
Cuz she dates a lot of women and she buys erotic toys
It's getting hard to tell the girls from the boys

Once upon a time when life was crystal clear
Each of us had favorite music that we loved to hear
I'd go dancing to sylvester down in key west every year
While she went to music festivals and worshipped holly near

But now our taste in music has completely turned around
And instead of going to michigan she goes to provincetown
While I play alix dobkin on my walkman now and then
It's getting hard to tell the women from the men

Times they change, fashions rearrange themselves
If you don't stay on top, you find yourself
Parked on a shelf

Once upon a time when life was black and white
I used to do the drag shows to be famous for a night
While she drank her beer without a glass and shopped for Mrs. Right
I'd cruise the local customers just asking for a light

But now she is the only one who steps out in a dress
While I've been wearing all her flannel shirts and sandals I confess
Now she smokes Virginia Slims instead of lucky strikes
It's getting hard to tell the boys from girls, hard to tell the men from women, hard to tell the faggots from the dykes.

Now if all of this should seem to show that everyone's gone mad
It's only part and parcel of a somewhat larger fad
Look no further than the glint of gold in many a straight boys ear
It's getting hard to tell the breeders from the queers.

Thanks to Romanovsky and Phillips and to my friends for reminding me I'm just getting old, and this happens every few years.  I don't know if I'm parked on a shelf yet, but I apparently need to heed their advice to "stay on top".

Fresh Grief

A wave of events has brought fresh grief about Lucas.

It started innocuously (sp?) - almost in a way I felt good about.  In the first of three visits with friends from overseas and their kids, we talked and laughed and the kids played and then almost as they were getting ready to go, we realized they did not know.  They had not seen us in a year and a half, aren't facebook friends, don't interact with us daily.  At first there was an almost giddy shock - here we had spent two hours together without mentioning it - how life had changed in a year - one year ago it would have been the very first thing we mentioned.

But then the grief came back.  Suddenly the photos jumped off the shelves - at least figuratively - and I saw Lucas everywhere.

A few days later Sasha had a really scary asthma attack.  The next day I felt like I had post traumatic stress - it still has not completely dissipated.  That came a couple of days after Gabi and I thought we had lost him in the woods (he was playing with friends in a safe place).  It was just a few minutes, but enough to shake me up and to really scare Gabi.  At night she told me, "I'm afraid I'm going to lose him, afraid that poof, he just won't be here." 

Then we made plans to see some more friends we have not seen since before Gabi was born, with their kids.  So I tried to pre-empt it by telling them on the phone.  But she was horrified and I had forgotten how to tell.  Last year I knew to start, "we had a tragedy in our family" and then to tell.  I had forgotten how to do that.

Then yesterday Gabi and I went with an old friend of mine to see other old friends of ours and their kids.  I felt so heavy on the way there and on the way back.  I had a lovely time.  It was right after the final party for Sasha of kindergarten.  I could be in all this when it was happening, but before and after I felt like I was carrying a weight.

It's of course a joy to watch other people's kids grow - a marvel, one of the greatest miracles in life.  Our kids also are growing so incredibly - easy to see why these are called the wonder years.

This is not promised to us, it is not "muvan me'elav".

So we're starting another summer, I'm about to welcome another wave of students, Alen is somewhat back on her feet after breaking her leg but still not driving, I'm very tired, I'm still parenting a testosterone enhanced version of myself, still feeling so strongly the fear that I call the dark underbelly of parenting.  Taking lots of joy in their changes and trying each day to hold it all lightly and be grateful.

What is the Torah we will receive this year?

I've been feeling like my head is going to explode. 

Last night before I went to sleep, I could see Africa, Africans all around.  I am distressed beyond belief at the recent anti-refugee, anti-immigrant violence in Tel Aviv.  At the same time, this is the first year we've had a number of applicants from Africa who want to come learn at my work.  So I've had pause to think about the continent and how close it is, to talk to staff at the Israeli consulate in Nigeria, to come closer to knowing Africans personally.  When I saw Africa last night I felt that my mother in law z"l, who died in Malawi in 2003, was close to us.  I woke up at night scared.

This week when the police harassed women rabbinical students I know for wearing their tallitot at the Kotel, I thought, "yes, a government that will treat its citizens the way it does will treat anyone that way when they choose."  And non-citizens?  Our government helps them not at all.  Don't they remember "we were strangers"???

Through the fall and winter, watching everything about women in Israel going on around me, I felt for the first time a feeling of not wanting to be here.  Yesterday I sat with four North American young Jewish women here on a social justice fellowship.  We deconstructed much of what is going on around us regarding gender.  I tried to place it in a larger context.  I mentioned Mordecai Kaplan and found out one of the women is distantly related to him.  We studied Talmud and commentaries.  They loved the session.  I did not emerge feeling safer or reassured.

This morning, I was down at the school for the Shavuot tekes for Kitah Aleph.  I could not help being moved despite my grave concerns about our country and where we are going.  But the music was about "the land you gave us" - quoting from Torah.  It's not the verse I think we need to hear most right now.

Alen has taken to watching Rachel Maddow on TV.  I feel no desire to connect with US politics.  I feel mostly scared and insecure.  Like I'm trembling at the foot of a trembling mountain.

What is the Torah we will receive this year? What is the Torah we will teach?

Please explain this song!

מדורת השבט

מילים ולחן: שי דקל

לא יודע מה יהיה. הולך ברחוב ומשתהה.
באמצע היום לחות וחום.
נעצר בתחנת האוטובוס באותו מקום.
רואה חבר בגלגל הזמן חולפות תמונות בעיני
מרחוב קטן בניו יורק ובן יהודה כאן
קצת געגוע וסיפור ישן.

איפה הם אומרים שבט אחים גם יחד
מדורת השבט נעלמה נשאר הפחד
לא משעמם בארץ המובטחת
ורק הצחוק מתגלגל עם הכאב ביחד
ורק הצחוק מתגלגל עם הכאב ביחד

ריקוד ההורה כבר נדם. מהשרשרת מה נשאר.
החיבוק נעלם כמו לא קיים.
אולי נשאל את הזקן ודרומה ניסע לשם.
חוזר מהר למציאות ומחר עוד יום של תחרות
כמו שתיל נטוע כאן איך שחולף לו הזמן
כי עוד נשאר חלום חלום קטן


Let me know if you have any ideas what this song is about. Now that I'm reading the actual lyrics, I'm not sure if it's an Israeli writing from being away, or someone who is here. People in the know, please advise. Meanwhile, I greatly enjoyed the Lag B'Omer Tekes where Gabi's class sang this!