underwater

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.

I keep going back to that in my head, wondering if I can turn upside down my 7 year old self’s idea of what it means to be other. Maybe this entire mermaid concept is more apt even than about this whole move/immigration thing. Maybe it’s a bigger answer to my four year old self’s giant existential dilemma. Maybe we are all kind of mermaids in this world - not from here, not destined to stay here, always feeling kind of unsure and other when we let ourselves think about it too much, always kind of flopping about on our imperfect tails and wondering why we don’t feel more at home on this planet, why we are always struggling. Like my 4 year old says, its weird to be a human animal.  

baby guru

I have an almost 18 month old in my life, for the sixth time. In some ways, it is repetitive enough that I just do it on complete auto mode: mirror their feelings when I'm feeling like a good mama, help them verbalize and own them, wipe up their ridiculously messy high chair trays, read them Sandra Boynton 32 times in a row, tolerate their frustrated tantrums, cuddle, repeat.

Yet it is nearly 18 years since I first had an 18 month old, and lord, the world has CHANGED. So, this is what happens pretty much nightly now: I put her in her crib and lay down on the bed nearby, and stick my hand between the slats so she can cuddle holding my hand as she drifts off, as she likes to do. So far, pretty much the same as the other 5. But this one, this baby that felt the vibration and buzz of a cellphone in my pocket in utero and every day afterwards, she is just DONE with all that come bedtime. In my other hand, I like to hold my phone and catch up on emails or whatever. She is not having any of that though, thank you VERY much. She screams bloody murder if I break eye contact with her and glance at my phone. She is literally forcing me to be present and pay actual, unadulterated, perfect attention to her as she drifts out of consciousness. She does not want to look at my face and see it staring at the phone, my expression shifting in tiny ways as I react to whatever I am reading...she wants full, calm, and undistracted presence, and will accept nothing less. This is the only time of day where she seems to have an opinion on the issue. 

I honestly find this absolutely fascinating. It feels like she is a more evolved iteration of myself, saying to me ffs, ENOUGH already - just be here. It kind of gives me hope for the next generation. I know people worry a lot about the downhill slide into screen-y life. But I really think our generation, the one that grew up without and has to adult (somehow) with, we are the ones that can't seem to find a balance that feels ok. I really believe that our kids, that grow up immersed in it, intuitively will find their balance, because their very development was in the presence of this thing, and so their entire being rejects being swallowed up whole by it. SO that is my optimistic read of the future of humanity. Because my 18 month old baby is totally my mindfulness guru.

goodbye homeschooling

I have this narrative in the back of my head kind of constantly, when I think about the life choices that have brought me to this point. I worked in a Montessori school for a year, teaching, before I chose to switch to teaching a small homeschool group, and then shifted to homeschooling my own kids for the next 9 years. I’m technically still homeschooling one of them, and also have a baby (turning one tomorrow!) at home, but since I have three kids in various school institutions, I feel like I’m winding down on the homeschooling. 

Its been a defining part of my identity for most of my adult life. I love the jaw drops, the stunned stares, the incredulous people basically communicating, you are a fucking GODDESS, I could NEVER do what you do. And also, looking at my awesome, creative, free kids, living life on their own terms, connecting to all sorts of diverse people, and just reveling in a sort of smug feeling of them having escaped the jaws of the soul crushing system that is school. No peer pressure, no bullying, no grades…seriously, I felt like I was doing something amazing, mostly by not-doing, by not-sending. 

Of course I understood that most people couldn't or wouldn't want to make that choice, and I honestly respected them and lived in a sort of awe of the grown-up-ness of people that were actually a part of the productive adult world and work force. Deep down (or maybe not even so deep) I believed that I was not capable of functioning in the grown up world of bosses, accountability, and paychecks. 

So, this whole situation, even when it was supremely challenging juggling kids from newborn through teenager and all of their needs, fit into my psyche perfectly. It let me keep my self-talk intact and consistent. And now, I look around and wonder what next. I’m 39. My life is moving along, the weeks flying by faster than I can even believe, and I am struck with a sort of deep and abiding terror. What am I doing? What can I be if I stop letting fear of the adult world be the driver? To add to the issues, I moved into a country where my lack of fluency with the language will also be a factor holding me back, making me feel less-than, if I choose to allow that into my narrative. 

I’m just emerging from the postpartum haze, and this final baby of mine’s one year old birthday feels huge and significant. I feel like I can lift my head up, open my eyes for a few brief glimpses around me, take a breath, survey the landscape.