I’m four years old, standing in a very yellow kitchen. Mustard walls, mustard and brown patterned floor tiles, a small window by the sink, shaded by green. The sunlight filters in, fighting its way through. My grandmother stands at the sink, and I am by her legs, looking up. In preschool that day Kimberly dropped a bombshell - you can get dead if you go under water and all the blood falls out of you. There was a hollowness starting at the very pit of my stomach. I can’t really understand what she is talking about, but in this snapshot of a moment, I am looking up at my grandma and crying, stunned that this dead thing applies to PEOPLE and that means there is going to be a time that my grandma is not here, and that revelation is unbearable. She gathers me into her arms and we move to sit at the bottom of the stairs, and I’m crying and she’s talking and I don’t really understand what she is trying to tell me, but the loss is real and palpable and I can’t shake it off.
I decide to avoid water for the moment since I prefer my blood to stay inside me. The hollowness of the idea of my grandma not being with me is already too much; I can’t also comprehend a world without ME in it. I return to this idea over and over in quiet moments - I try to picture the earth spinning around, people moving, things happening, and me not being there to know it. I try to remind myself that things happened before me, so of course things will happen after me, but lord, the emptiness that punches me in the gut every time I grab a moment of actually GETTING it, is both unbearable and addicting.
I’m nearly ten times the age I was then now. Ive spent a lifetime trying to escape that early pain, denying to myself that time moves forward - if I just dig in my heels and refuse to commit to anything, refuse to accept that THIS is my one and only precious true life, maybe it isn’t. Maybe if I shop and Facebook and eat that truth away, I can forget. So, not shockingly, that doesn’t work all that well. I’ve moved a zillion times, had a zillion (or 6) babies, lost that precious grandma, and lord, I’m tired.
Another moment - I’m seven now. It’s a hot, un-air conditioned Long Island day. Leaning on the bathroom counter, arranging my head on it so that it looks like it’s just a head resting on the counter, not attached to a body at all. I practice making weird faces, pulling my mouth in every different direction, squinting my eyes. I pause and just look into my own eyes. Thats ME. That is the face that is me, I tell myself. That big Russian forehead, gray eyes, buck toothed face is mine. Thats the only face I’m ever going to get. I try to reserve judgment. Its not a pretty face, I think. I turn around and look in the full length mirror behind the shower door. Knobby, bony, horrendously ugly knees jut out. Pale, pale skin, purple circles under my eyes. Hmm. How odd that I can feel so special and fancy in my imagination, and then there’s this irritating mirror-me, making it impossible to keep dreaming.
I don’t really know where I fit. My parents came from Russia in their early thirties. Russia in my head is a bleak, snowy empty space, the space of before-ness that I can’t remember. The few grainy black and white pictures they managed to save don’t give much context, they just add to my feeling of grayness. I erase the fact that my parents had a life before being here really. Here is what I know, with its greens and browns and blues. I believe them when they talk about the past but I don’t really.
My dad has to call the plumber. He stumblingly introduces himself on the phone, formally announcing his full name before starting to make arrangements for the help he needs. He repeats himself a few times, struggling to be understood through his accent. I feel a twinge of something, pity, shame, and I turn away, back to my english, my homework, my daydreams. I agreed to move myself and my kids around the world to Israel two years ago. I know and I knew then that my kids might look at me just that same way, as I struggle with my hebrew, fumbling over the rolling R’s of the language. I know its not the same - you canNOT compare being an American in Israel with being a Russian immigrant in America. Here, English is everywhere, you can get by because the country is made up of immigrants and everyone understands that this language that only a few million people on earth speak, its not so simple, it takes time, and there are all sorts of cushions to protect you. Everyone can switch into English whenever they need to, and so we get by pretty much fine. But this society will still never fully be mine, just like my parents had to accept that their other-ness will always be a thing. My kids are still struggling here, but they will not struggle forever. They will begin to blend in more and more, and though they will always have the edge of richness that English brings, they will not feel other here eventually. I don’t know how they’ll feel about me, I guess its not really in my control or my business. I do get edgy when I remember how embarrassed my immigrant parents made me feel.
I read an essay another immigrant mom wrote here the other day. She used the image of a mermaid - not from here, not exactly of this place, always a little off because this is not where we were born and bred to exist - but still captivating and powerful. We're underwater, blood inside, faculties basically intact. We're in the air, wishing we were still in the water. Nothing feels quite right.
