I'm Free, I'm Free!

Oh heavens, it will be so good not to have to wake up at six for the next ... counting on fingers ... TEN DAYS!!!! YAY!!!!!

Yes, btw, Passover is a very happy holiday, and Happy Passover! is the appropriate greeting. You know, I am free with the Yiddish, but Yiddish is not universal among Jewish people. It's the language of the Jews of Eastern Europe, certainly the largest group of Jews there were (and probably still are), but not the only. It's my heritage, but a friend whose parents were refugees from Nazi Germany, and who is of German Jewish stock going back centuries, does not have Yiddish in her background, and their foods and traditions are a little different. Most different for me, though, is another teacher at school who was a refugee from Iran (along with her family) after the revolution there. The history of the Persian Jews goes back to Biblical times, and their customs, foods, etc. are very distinctive.

Okay, finished with that holiday. I look forward to a week of sleeping, reading, getting tasks done, one medical test, more sleeping, and so on. Especially the sleeping.




waiting for FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #2022
READING: --- by ---

Bad Girl

I have not been so good with the updates lately, partly because I am SOOOOOOOOO TIRED when I get home, and partly because my life is boringly not-unpleasant these days. I did promise to let you hear the library at lunchtime, though; it's here. Turn up the volume.

I'm re-working the library website at school, which is interesting and keeping me occupied, so that was good today.

Big weekend coming up. K turns 25 on Friday, plus Sunday is Easter at the IlS. Going for brunch this year, which means noon; I have no faith whatsoever that the SIL and her family will be there on time. But at least we won't be driving north on the Parkway in all the traffic after dinner.

So, my baby is 25. That's very weird.

And tonight is the first night of Passover. We don't do anything to observe it, but it was so my favorite holiday as a child, a family dinner with Grandpa Sam center stage. It was never about the religion, or even the food, which was ordinary; it was about him. Ah, he was the best.

And so we wish each other a zissen Pesasch, a sweet Passover. Even now, it feels somehow good to know that once we were slaves and became free. There is always hope, and a sweetness to a holiday that commemorates that as spring brings the earth back to life. And for me, memories of Grandpa Sam singing the prayers; Grandma Ida bustling around the table; awful, super-sweet Kosher wine; collecting my little reward of a dollar for bringing the afikomen, the ceremonial matzo, back to the table (kids have to steal it and adults have to ransom it back to continue the service); and tipsy Grandpa laughing all evening after the seder was over and we were singing Had Gad Ya and Dayenu, both of which, now that I look back, were clearly drinking songs, since the tipsier you were, the funnier they got. Next year in Jerusalem! we say at the end of a seder, but my hope for next year is to be here with my family, and with you all.

Ooh, seems to be maudlin day here at the Chai's. Speaking of which, l'chaim! (To life!) And good night.



waiting for FRIENDS :: ENTRY #2021
READING: --- by ---

At Last!

I've had this entry rolling around in my head since last night, but I was sure I had already written part of it in some other entry, and it took a long time to find it, because, as it turns out, it was one of the earliest entries I wrote.

After I finished reading Exodus last night, around seven, I thought I would watch the movie. I had gotten the movie on sale last summer so I had it, even though I'd never seen it before. I got up to put it in the DVD player and saw that it was three and half hours long. Oy. I would have to stay up until nearly eleven, so I passed.

I had some dinner, saw that there was nothing on TV, and decided that it was going to be three and a half hours long whenever I did decide to watch it, so I put it in. It was nearly 8:30, so I watched until nearly midnight, after which, of course, I couldn't fall asleep for an hour or two.

Anyway, a good movie, worth watching, not a bad adaptation of the book. The screenplay was written by Dalton Trumbo. And the music is wonderful; the Exodus theme was a very popular song for a long time. But the music that stuck with me was Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem.

One of the things that struck me about Hatikvah is that I knew the song immediately. In the movie, when the U.N. resolution partitioning Palestine is announced, the waiting crowd begins to sing the song. I couldn't make out the words as sung by a crowd, and there were no captions for it, and they were in Hebrew anyway, but I knew all the words, and sang along with it in my head. Now, how the hell does that happen?

The how has to do with the old entry I was looking for all afternoon, which is here. (The entry is actually the whole story of my original tattoo, but the relevant parts for now are the first two, about Sunday School.) I didn't attend Sunday School at a synagogue; my parents would never have joined a religious congregation. But I went to secular Sunday Schools, three all together. They taught us about holidays, and there were history stories from The Bible -- I still have my Sunday School story book -- and I picked up a very small smattering of Hebrew. And there were songs.

The songs we learned were in Hebrew, even though none of us were really learning to speak or read Hebrew, but these were the traditional songs. We learned the songs phonetically, by repetition. I learned three songs all together that I can remember. The first, and really, the most important one, is Hava Nagila, which is the song played for the hora, which is the most well-known traditional Jewish folk-dance. (You can hear a reasonable version of it here.) It's played/danced at every wedding or bar mitzvah. It's not a difficult dance; it's the only dance I can actually do, or am ever willing to do. (I looked for a YouTube of people dancing the hora, and this is the closest I could come to what I know. The hora is what the people in the circle are doing. At a wedding, the bride and groom are often lifted onto chairs in the center of the circle. In this video, btw, the people are not dancing to Hava Nagila; it's some other song.)

I also learned a dance and song called Mayim. The words consisted mostly of "mayim mayim mayim mayim HEY! Hey mayim!" and so on. This was also a circle dance; I have no idea what the word means.

Hatikvah means hope. It is a beautiful, haunting song; I remember thinking that as a child. I could sing the song phonetically, but all I knew about the meaning was that it was something about the hope of the Jewish people for a homeland, Eretz Israel. You can hear the song here, and read the words in English.

I haven't started my next book yet, which is actually about a fictional past in which the post World War II Jewish state was established in Alaska instead of in the middle east. It seems like the logical book to read next.

WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1794
SUMMER BOOK #3: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

They're Killing Me

I'm not saying my kids and I don't have some sort of co-dependent thing going on, although I'd prefer to say that we are "close." Either way, I'm happy I have a good relationship with them, and that we are friends, and that they feel they can talk to me when they need someone to talk to.

All that aside, they're killing me.

It's been a tough week for them. K, as you know, is sick. She is sick because the kid she tutors Saturday mornings has a mother who doesn't know that she's supposed to keep him home when he's sick. Maybe his 13 year old immune system can throw it off, but K's cannot. This is the beginning of her last week of classes for the semester, and she's missed class, hasn't gotten a paper done, and so on. Her nose is so messed up inside that she cannot eat without choking for air, because she can't breathe through her nose at all when she eats, which I guess is what normal people do. Anyway, she's not the world's best patient, as we all know, so it's been trying.

As for the other one, who is, in fact, the world's best patient, her problem is not that she's sick. I think her problem is that she's stressed. She called me last Friday morning, having a meltdown over something or other, and again this morning. Her little cat, it turns out, is not a good patient, and chewed open her stitches the other night, having had her lady parts removed last Friday. So far this week, R has had to go in late to work twice and had to leave early twice, all for emergency vet appointments. And the cat is basically okay, and hopefully will not damage herself this time, but last night, they sent the cat home with new stitches and the warning "Don't let her lick them!" So of course, R was up all night making sure the cat didn't lick her stitches, and had to take her back this morning anyway to get a cone or something put on her. And I got the meltdown call.

Honestly, I don't know how people have their children later in life. I don't know how they have the stamina to put up with it. It isn't even just the toddler chasing when you're 45, it's the teenage thing when you're 60 -- how horrible that sounds -- and then whatever you've got for however long it goes on. I was thinking yesterday, if I won the lottery, I'd set K up in her own apartment before I even paid a bill or bought a car.

Okay, so, much later.

I had a very hectic afternoon, with one errand or another, out of the house, and in the house. I did have the luxury of the house to myself, up until the minute I was finishing with phone calls and was going to have some peace and quiet and then K came home early from class. Ah well, she went to class, and although she looks miserable, she must be feeling better because she's waaay less sick-y tonight. And R's evening is better -- talked to her twice, once she had a nap in her -- and the cat, hopefully, will deal with it all and let her sleep.

It is freaking cold out there. Possible rain and/or snow tomorrow, ick. I have so much less patience for winter as the years go by: don't wanna wear a coat, don't wanna drive or walk in the snow, don't wanna wear bulky layers and still be cold! I went to the ATM on my way to school this morning, but my window wouldn't open. Horrors! Electric windows not working is what killed my last car, you may recall. (Car was too old to get replacement parts for the third time.) But it worked fine after school, so I guess it was just frozen. Damn. That never happened before.

Oh, happy third night of Chanukah. We're doing very well this year; we've actually lit the candles all three nights and I've even said the prayer, which is not to say that I'm praying, just that I know, more or less, the right sounds to make when the Chanukah candles are being lit. My mother had a pamphlet with the phonetic pronunciation on it, which is how I learned it, although I think the prayer has two parts and I only know the first one. And unlike French or even Spanish, I cannot pull off a reasonable Hebrew accent, so it all sounds very un-official, if you know what I mean. But I say it anyway. On the sixth night, I also especially remember my Grandpa Sam, whose birthday was the sixth night of Chanukah. He only ever knew the real date of his birthday because once he got to America, he went to the office of a Yiddish newspaper and asked them to look up the date of the sixth night of Chanukah for the year he was born. (He knew how old he was, exactly, because he had been Bar Mitzvahed just before leaving the old country, so, 13.) It was December 16, 1892, just in case you're keeping track.

Well, I have rambled on here a bit more than I meant to, and now I'm off to change into my jammies and settle in for Ugly Betty.

WATCHING LAW AND ORDER :: ENTRY #1642

Erev Yontef

On the eve of the holiday (which is what today's title means, "the eve of the holiday"), the proper greeting, I believe, is Le shana tova tikatevu, which means, "May only good be written for you this year." Of course, I'm telling you all this as if I have ever actually observed this holiday in my life, which I have not. Rosh Hashonah, along with Yom Kippur, on its way a week from Saturday, are the big-time religious observances, and therefore, got little notice in the house where I grew up. Jack and Shirl did not do religion, and even Grandpa Sam (Shirl's orthodox father) knew this, and so spent this holiday elsewhere, where he could go to services at the shul (synagogue.) The only holidays we covered chez Jack and Shirl were Chanukah, the present-giving event that's around Christmas, and Passover, the wonderful family/tradition event that was always held at our house but presided over by Grandpa Sam.

So what am I doing tomorrow? Waking up without an alarm, getting K's car re-inspected, taking a nice walk or two, and either getting my new car radio put in or making an appointment to get it done on Friday.

I got home from the dreaded Back to School Night around 9.30, at which point I was wired. I hadn't eaten dinner because I was too keyed up, and I went back to school at 5.30 anyway. Why keyed up? A variety of reasons, none of which were school-related, but I knew I had a lot of work to do, so I skipped dinner and went back early. The evening was not unpleasant, although by 9.00 I could have eaten the furniture. I came home, had a frozen pizza, and finally fell asleep around 11.30, only to wake up at 1.30, and then ... you know. I finally fell back to sleep around 5.00. My alarm rings at 5.40.

In the last three days, I have printed approximately 300 school I.D. cards for various people, and done nothing else whatsoever, since I didn't have a minute to spare. So remember, kids, get your education! See what fascinating work you can do when you have multiple graduate degrees?

One of the parents who stopped into the library last night looked around at the books in awe and asked if it cost anything for the kids to be able to take them home. I was not rude to her, and actually did not feel the need to be, because she was clearly from some country where the concept of a free lending library does not exist. She was delighted to hear that no, her child can borrow our books just by being a student at our school. All the parents who dropped by were lovely. I was particularly touched by a couple who were clearly from India, and who looked around admiringly at the new furnishings, posters on the wall, and so on, and who stopped dead when they saw the big poster I put up of Gandhi. They were actually moved, and expressed their gratitude and delight. To me, it was no big deal; you may recall the fun I had last winter picking out posters. But I think to them, it meant that their child had a place in this American school, too.

I'm going to investigate dinner -- I think I'll have it tonight -- and then ... no idea.

WATCHING REBA :: ENTRY #1578

Is It Still Monday?

I guess I didn't write yesterday, and I don't know that I have that much to say today. I'm feeling kind of random, and also very anxious lately. That's just the way it is, nothing I can do about it.

I've been very busy at school, and I'm going to get busier starting tomorrow, and that's all good. I have Thursday and Friday off for Rosh Hashonah, and I've got cars to get inspected and stuff like that. If I can make a decision one way or another, I'm going to get a new radio in my car. The CD player in the current one is very erratic; it plays home-burned disks but not purchased ones, which I've never heard of before. The radio reception is iffy, and there's the iPod thing, which I mentioned last time.

I went to Best Buy after school to look at either an iPod adapter or a new radio, and I confirmed what I really already knew: never buy such a thing at Best Buy, because the salesman in the Mobile Audio/Video department is whichever ignorant high school kid was posted there at the moment, and there are few devices which fit this car. I knew the thing about the fit because, of course, I had a Tracker before, and it was hard to get a CD player put into it. After I left BB, I decided there had to be a car stereo shop here in Bizarro Town, and dang if I didn't find one up the street from where I grew up. The guy was very very nice and not a moron, and he has a good, inexpensive radio on special this week, including installation and the adapter that will make it fit my car. All I have to do now is decide if I want to spend even more money than I just spent to buy the car. Hey, if I buy a lottery ticket tomorrow, maybe I can win enough to cover the $200.

Other than already having every moment of the school day scheduled tomorrow, I have a nail appointment after school and Back to School night tomorrow night. I totally hate the BTS night, but maybe the library's less-than-intuitive location in the school will help us out there, and no one will even know that we're open.

Rosh Hashonah, by the by, for those not in the know, if also known as the "Jewish New Year." This is a two-day holiday, which, along with Yom Kippur -- "The Day of Atonement" -- which follows a week from Saturday, comprise the "High Holy Days," aka, the most sacred holidays for observant Jews. If you live in an area like this one, your schools will be closed for these holidays, because if they stayed open, they would be empty, and you would never find enough substitutes to cover for the absent teachers. I always thought this was because we're part of the New York metropolitan area, but for all I know, all schools in New Jersey are closed. No idea how far this reaches. And now I really am rambling.

Perhaps no entry tomorrow, due to all the ... you know.

WATCHING FRIENDS :: ENTRY #1577

Jewish Food Night

[copied from dland]

We are currently in the midst of a weeklong religious holiday, A Really Big One, and one that is unnaturally focused on food, and the preparation and eating thereof. Even so, I do not celebrate or observe the rituals of oranized religion, although I respect and honor the history and meaning of such events.

In other words, Passover is upon us, along with its strict rules about what one can and cannot eat during this time, and although I have never observed those rules in my life, I like the food. So I gathered my wits about me and made and/or ate some Jewish food tonight. Not all of it Kosher for Passover (or any of it Kosher at all), but I cooked, and I ate, and let me tell you ...

It was really good.

The most traditional food I make, and one of the very few things that Grandma Ida made well, is matzo kugel. Kugel means pudding, like a bread pudding (not like chocolate or butterscotch pudding.) But since I'm eating all healthy-like, I actually found a lower fat and other bad stuff recipe, and made that instead of Ida's, and it had the same comfort food effect on me. I also had a couple pieces gefilte fish, but K doesn't care for that, so I also made some latkes. Latkes are not only not Passover food, they are prohibited on Passover, I believe -- they are Chanukah food, potato pancakes -- but since I don't care, that's what we had.

This is the best meal I've had in weeks. Oh, okay, the lobster a week or so back was plenty good. But this was my soul food. And I didn't even go over my points for the day; I'm not sure how that happened.

And that's the story of my day and my food, which is pretty much the Passover thing anyway. It would seem to be all about the food, but it's not. Passover is nothing more than the story of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, and of how God miraculously brought the Hebrew people out of slavery. It's all about the event in history that codified the Jewish religion and solidified the Hebrew people into a single unified group. Which we celebrate with food. Okay, done with that now.

In other news, our weather continues to be atrocious: rainy, cold, damp. Okay, it rains in April, we all know that. The cold has got to go, though. And my feet are getting wet through the vent holes in my crocs.

Had a relatively good day at school, which you know I don't get to say often. It looks like we'll definitely be getting the upgraded library software, which should be lots of fun to play with as well as a real improvement over our current version (which is also pretty good.) Also, it appears that we -- the library -- are finally coming out of the year-long slump that began when we closed down the old library just about a year ago now. We've been very busy lately, often with a class in the computer lab and maybe 20 or 30 kids from various other classes in and out with passes to do this or that. It's as if everyone has finally woken up and remembered that we're there. So this is very nice. We still have a lot of bugs to work out, especially in getting people to tell us things that are going on. We found out today quite by accident that research papers are now mandatory in the 10th and 11th grade, as well as the 9th, with which we have always worked closely. Well, we're delighted, but it would be nice if we had known. I don't even know if there's enough time left in the school year to get all those classes in for research. But I guess it'll be fun to try.

Don't know how I'll be able to stay up for Lost tonight. It's almost 8.00 now, and I'm going to get my jammies on.

WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1421

Good to be Home

[copied from dland]

MWAH! I love you all, and it feels so good to be back home with you where I belong.

Perhaps I should explain.

I had a bad day on the W8 Watching message boards. How fucked up is that? I posted a question early this afternoon -- things were slow in the library -- and within a half hour, I had about a dozen replies, all telling me how terrible I was and not following the plan and why was I even there if I wasn't going to follow the plan and how I should do everything just the way they all do it and ... okay, you got the picture.

Feeling like an idiot, I posted a reply to clarify things a little bit. And they came back with more, more about how just awful I was for not wanting to do things the right way. I should have stopped there, but I tried to clear things up again -- I was home by this time -- and it went on.

By this time, I was very upset, which is also stupid of me, but I couldn't believe that what I was writing just wasn't making sense to these people. It was as if I was writing in another language, one unheard of on this planet. I mean, I realize that I was using semi-colons and other linguistic type stuff previously unknown on the WW message boards, but honestly. And the whole time, I'm thinking: Who are these people? My buddies all understand me when I write!

By this time, K was home and advised me to put it behind me and let it go. I told her what I originally wrote and she said I should never try to be funny or light-hearted on message boards. Oh. What the hell do I know? I generally only write for you guys.

Anyway, it's a freakin' jungle over there. My final response (after K told me to let it go) was yet a third apology, and also a request for no further replies, which no one who reads me here has ever failed to respect. I didn't go read the replies when I got back from the audiologist, but I checked, and there were about five more after mine.

Animals.

Enough of that shit. I'm just glad to be back here where I belong, among humans who know how to write, and read, which apparently they don't seem to be able to do.

Anyway, I got a couple of things done after school (in amongst the angst) and then I had the audiologist at 6:30. He was delighted that I went in with a page-long bulleted list of all my hearing aid concerns; he said he wished everyone were that OCD organized. So he made a bunch of adjustments and they do seem better right away, although I still have to live with them for the next week and work with the volume controls to see how good they are. But my own voice has a much more normal quality, and I'm having a lot less trouble hearing K's continuous occasional comments about America's Next Top Model. At the moment, in fact, the aids are not bothering me at all in any way.

Oh, I just got another lovely comment (this one from the locked boxx) about my picture yesterday, and again, you are all The Finest Kind. I wasn't fishing for compliments, though, mostly I was just sharing with you all how cool it is to have self-esteem for a change. Boxx commented, btw, that I look Italian, and I have been told this for most of my life, although I am Italian in last name only, as the Hubs is Italian/Irish. (Which no one believes because he appears in most ways to be 100% Italian.) The funny thing is that my first name, which you know I rarely share because it's a) uncommon and b) I hate it, is actually not an uncommon Italian name. When I married the Hubs, my mother said "Oh, that must be why I gave you that name, because I knew that one day you'd have a last name to match it." And I pointed out to her that when I was born (1953) the typical Jewish mother's reaction to a daughter marrying a nice Italian boy would have been to put her head in the oven. Which was true for 1953, and not so far off the mark when my cousin married a not-Jewish guy in 1966, but not any kind of deal, big or small, for my parents and family by the time 1977 rolled around for me. (And not for the Hubs' family either, fortunately.)

Once again, I have been very good with my eating today and even took a nice long walk around the school corridors at one point this morning, so it's time to have a bit of a snack since I have more than enough points left to eat. And my two-week headache, which is mostly dull and just there, is rising some, so I think I need to eat something. Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking with it.

Love,
p. chai


WATCHING TOP MODEL :: ENTRY #1401

And What's More ...

[copied from dland]

Postscript to my last entry: As I said, my mother's mother's family was not religious -- they were what used to be called Free Thinkers, which was a prelude to being a Secular Jew, which is, I guess, what I am -- and so keeping kosher wasn't even a thought to them. But my mother's father was raised Orthodox, and held those beliefs and customs all his life as best he could, so my grandmother did keep a kosher home for him. However, one of my grandmother's sisters -- Aunt Becky -- was very good at business, and at one time, she and her husband ran a deli. An Italian deli, of all things! So from time to time, my grandmother would take my mother and her brother there and they would gleefully partake of the sausage and ham and other foods that they couldn't have at home.

Second postcript to my last entry: When My Fair Lady was over, Gone With the Wind came on. **deep and repeated sighs** As soon as the music started, I was swept away (no pun intended.) When I hear "Tara's Theme", I start to sway back and forth. I cry often when I watch this movie, and over the years, it's more and more because of the horrors of war that this movie shows, I think, particularly well. It shows them from the home front, a home front being devastated itself. It gets me when all the young southern men run off gladly to fight, because they have no idea what's coming. When all the families wait to get the lists of the wounded and killed at Gettysburg, and every family has at least one loss, it's heartbreaking. And of course, the famous scene of the train depot with all the bodies lying helpless, waiting for medical care or death. Say what you will about Gone With the Wind, what it does well it does exceptionally well.

Let's talk politics. David Geffen, in his recent show of support for Barack Obama, said that Hillary Clinton would be the easiest candidate for the Republicans to defeat. And I think he's right. A presidential candidate needs to be, as they say, Caesar's Wife; that is, above suspicion. Clean as a whistle. Hillary is not. There is too much the opposition can attack her on, and that makes her a bad candidate. What can they say about Obama that we know of? He did drugs in college? Yeah, well, he's already said that himself, moving on. Hillary -- and I like her, for the most part -- is just not good candidate material.

I'm not 100% behind Obama either; his lack of experience disturbs me. Edwards, for some reason, seems to have more; he's my favorite at the moment. I like Bill Richardson, too, but I don't think he's in for the long haul. Now he's got experience, as does Joe Biden, but he doesn't have the charisma to win the nomination.

I'm pulling for an Edwards-Obama ticket at this point. I think they have the best shot.

---

It's a little after 6:30 am. They've declared a delayed opening of school today, so instead of leaving now, as I usually would, I'll leave in two hours. I don't know what to do with myself.

The Hubs emailed that his drive to work was not terrible, but of course, there are hardly any other cars on the road when he goes at 5:30. As for K, well, Houston. (We've got a problem) The college is open. The public schools in the town the college is in are closed for the day, not a delayed opening, but closed. The college, I think, must believe that the students who live on campus can get to class, so, no problem, but it's maybe an 80% commuter school, so what's up with that? She and I decided that she'll skip her first class -- she emailed the professor -- and then see what develops. As always, I'm most worried about her night class that gets out at 8:00 pm, by which time the walkways and parking lots there, as well as all the roads, should be pretty slick and frozen.

Ooh, hot flash time! How nice that I have all this extra time and haven't put my make-up on yet.

---

Later. Much later.

I won't go into my day, since I've already vented to the Sibs and a bit in email to the Chum, and anyway, I'm not there anymore, so things are a bit better, and I've heard from K so I know she didn't die on the way to school and since the roads aren't that bad she probably won't die on the way home, and so in general, my totally sucky day has eased up some and I'm not going there tomorrow, so that's good. The audiologist's office says that just maybe my hearing aids will be in tomorrow, but I don't think so and I'm not counting on it. I gained a pound since yesterday, it seems, so that bummed me out first thing this morning, but now I'm going to eat a nice Lean Cuisine and look forward to Heroes tonight.

Signing off.


WATCHING REBA :: ENTRY #1386

Food and Things

[copied from dland]

Okay: What the hell is chorizo? Is it some kind of sausage? Why do so many recipes call for chorizo? You know, it would never in a million years occur to me to put sausage into a recipe; I would eat sausage for breakfast at IHOP or McDonald's or someplace, and I do at this moment have veggie breakfast sausage in the house. But sausage for dinner is completely off my radar.

I learned long ago that as adults, we tend to eat -- and cook -- the way we were brought up to. I learned this lesson via Phantom, my college boyfriend, whom I wrote about not too long ago, here, and the extreme rural-ness of his background.

My second year in the dorm -- his last, he was a senior -- we had decided to screw the meal plan and cook our own food. A terrible idea in retrospect, but I digress. I made scrambled eggs once, or an omelet or some kind of eggs, and the first thing I did was drop a chunk of butter in the pan and let it melt.

"Ew!" he said. "Why would you cook eggs in butter?"

This was like asking why you would put milk on cereal.

"Wha...? What else would you cook eggs in?" I finally asked.

With an air of authority and of-courseness, he said "Bacon grease."

"What if you're not making bacon with your eggs?"

Now his air turned to how-stupid-can-you-be, and he told me that at home, they saved the bacon drippings and had a can of it on the kitchen counter near the stove. Now it was my turn.

"Ew! You keep bacon grease?"

Certainly they did; why didn't we? I thought about it for a minute, and knew why.

I learned to make eggs from my mother, who learned it from hers, and so on, and so on, and so on. Now, even my grandmother's mother did not keep a kosher home. But she certainly didn't cook bacon in her kitchen in her Little House on the Shtetl. It's just not in the cultural background of Jewish people to cook with pork products, even if you're not kosher and even if you eat pork products yourself (which I do, as did my mother, and even my grandmother, once she moved to New York and was first exposed to it.) There are many Jewish people who do not keep kosher but who are grossed out by the thought of anything that mixes meat and dairy, like, say, chicken parmesan, or even drinking milk along with a meat sandwich. They'll eat the ham sandwich, but drink a glass of milk with it? Ew.

There's no value judgment here, certainly, just an observation, and it works both ways. I can't think of a great many non-Jewish people who chow down on gefilte fish, but if you were raised with it, it's a comfort food.

Oh, here's another one, one that I didn't figure out until I was grown up. Do you eat strawberries and cream? If you do, I bet it's sweet cream you pour over your berries. Over here, it's sour cream. In Jewish cuisine, anything served "with cream" means sour cream: blintzes (crepes with cheese or fruit filling), strawberries, bananas, borscht (cold beet soup), latkes (potato pancakes). When I was a kid and one of my grandmothers was giving me lunch when my mother was out, or when I was with them, it was bananas and sour cream. Literally, with sugar on top. Talk about your comfort food, man. What's more comforting than what your grandmother fed you?

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One of the things I wrote about last night was the classic movies that are on -- it's Oscars weekend -- and how I couldn't watch Lawrence of Arabia if you paid me; the Hubs was certainly watching it for the zillionth time. So now, My Fair Lady is on, and you can bet that I'm watching this one, although he isn't. I know I watched it not that long ago; did I ever mention how I first saw this movie, in a fancy theater in New York at night? OldFriend's parents got tickets, just like getting tickets to a Broadway show, and took us both and bought us programs and everything. We got all dressed up and it was very cool. We were 11, I guess, based on the date of the movie. An unusual experience, I would think.

Speaking of musicals, the musical director at school has conceded that he may do a Rogers and Hammerstein musical once before I retire because he knows I love them and I've been trying to convince him to do one for years. He doesn't like them because a) they're not dark enough for him, and b) there are no opportunities to dress girls in scanty costumes and/or dress them like hookers. (He leans towards Chicago and Sweet Charity and the like. And he likes to sell tickets.) So he's considering Carousel, which has no naked girls, but is pretty dark, and about death and morality and all that. Not my favorite -- that's probably The Sound of Music, just because it was the first musical I really knew -- but I'll take it. I wish he would just do The Music Man, which is actually by Meredith Wilson, but it's so much fun. And it's about a librarian, too.

I'm going to feed the cat, who's eating now but her schedule is all off, and then peruse the crockpot recipe magazine I just picked up at the supermarket. Oscars tonight!


WATCHING MY FAIR LADY :: ENTRY #1385

Christmas, and the Jewish Thing

[copied from dland]

**In 39 days I will be 50 years old**

One of my family rituals each year around Christmastime was taking a ride one evening, in and out of all the streets in the town we lived in and neighboring towns, oohing and aahing at all the pretty, lit-up houses. One year my mother and I went into the city to shop at Macy’s, where the real Santa was. I never did think Santa was real, though, I always knew it was a man in a suit, pretending to be someone that other kids thought was real. But I remember the crowds, and the Macy’s toy department, and the excitement. I guess this was around 1958.

At home, we lit the candles on a Menorah, a plain, chrome-plated, ordinary thing. Sister and I got several presents, not one each night, but all at once. We never got anything fancy or expensive, since that was out of the family’s budget range, and anyway, Chanukah wasn’t really a big deal holiday. We didn’t celebrate the really big deal holidays at all, in our Jewish-by-culture-but-not-by-religion family. And all of that was totally okay. I never felt cheated, I never felt that I missed anything. I was grateful for what I got. (Especially the Quick-Draw McGraw doll I got when I was 7, that was the BEST! Thanks, Mom!)

Since religion wasn’t a big deal, marrying someone who wasn’t Jewish wasn’t a big deal either. When we got married, my grandmother gave me a Menorah that someone had brought her from Israel as a gift, but she had never used. (She never used anything anyone gave her – that’s another story.) I didn’t like it much, but I liked that she had given it to me, and when Chanukah rolled around in early December that year, I fired it up.

And then, a week later, we got a Christmas tree.

I GOT A CHRISTMAS TREE!!!! How cool is that?

So here I am, 25 years later, and I still just love this whole Christmas thing. We’ve got more ornaments than we know what to do with, because I’ve made a whole lot of them and I collect all kinds of others. We’ve got traditions, man, real American traditions. It all makes me feel like I finally put a foot in that candy store doorway.

I’m not belittling the religious aspects of Christmas, not at all. My girls have always been free to join their grandparents at church, and to make the most of their mixed heritage. But Christmas is many things, and different things to different people.

We light the Menorah still, the beautiful one I bought myself a few years ago, and the ugly Israeli one Grandma gave me, because the girls insist on using that one. When they were little, I gave them a present each night for 8 nights: one night a book, one night a video, one night the “big” gift, etc. They got to pick which one they wanted each night. Once in while Chanukah would start on December 26, and they felt like they hit the jackpot: the Christmas that didn’t end.

Christmas, of course, was spent with my husband’s family. I loved that I had children who believed in Santa Claus, and when they asked me if I thought he was real, I would think seriously and answer honestly, “Yes, I do.” Words mean different things to different people.

I asked Jack just a few years ago why we had always driven around town looking at the lit-up houses, and he admitted that he had just always gotten a kick out of Christmas, all his life. He grew up as one of just a half-dozen Jewish kids in a town near Boston. And Shirl told me that when she was a kid growing up in the Bronx, her father, her Orthodox Jewish father, would take her to Macy’s each year to sit on Santa’s lap, because all children deserve to believe in magic things, and to know that if they are good boys and girls, Santa is there for them. Even if they have a Menorah at home, and not a Christmas tree.


ENTRY #23

The Purple Chai

[copied from dland]

Here's how I got the purple chai. Like most stories, it starts in more than one place and then comes together, the way streets come from all over the city and converge at a traffic circle. (Forgive me, I spent last weekend in DC).

First Avenue

When I was a kid, I wore a tiny little gold star on a chain around my neck. We were wearing, we said, Jewish stars. All the little girls I knew wore them, no more than a quarter-inch across, on a delicate little chain. All the little girls I knew were Jewish, like me. But back then, when I was small, I never knew anyone who went to synagogue or actually practiced the Jewish religion, except my grandpa. Grandpa is a story for another day.

But they sent me to Hebrew school for a while, in a scary old YMHA, in North Bergen, I think. The building looked like the original Jews who followed Abraham had built it there. I was about 6 or 7. We learned Bible stories and a couple of Hebrew alphabet letters. I learned to read one word in Hebrew: chai. This is pronounced like the word "high", but the first sound is the guttural "hhcchh" you hear in Hebrew or Yiddish.

If I remember correctly, chai is a letter in the Hebrew alphabet that is also a word and a number. The number is 18. The word chai means life. The Hebrew name for Adam, father of us all, is Chaim. The expression, used as a drinking toast "L'chaim!" means "To life!"

Sometimes I would see other Jewish people wearing not a little star on a chain (it is really called the Mogen David, which means the Star of David, and not a Jewish star), but a chai. In fact, I noticed, there was a small letter chai in the center of the little star I wore.

Second Avenue

I moved when I was eight, to a community, my parents said, where there were many more Jewish families. It didn't seem that way to me, I guess because my old home was in a heavily Jewish neighborhood within a larger Gentile community. My new hometown was much bigger, and much more diverse, so I thought. There were at least as many Catholic kids in my school as Jewish kids, and we were all in the same school together! There were kids in my school with Italian last names! I had never met any of those before.

I stopped wearing my star because I didn't like wearing jewelry anymore, and it kept sticking me, and none of my friends were wearing stars or crosses or anything. Some of the Jewish kids I met belonged to the synagogue across the highway, and most of the other kids I knew went to church somewhere. I went to Sunday school, in the YMHA in Paterson; it made the North Bergen branch look like it had been built that morning. This place gave new meaning to creepy, dark, and scary, especially on a Sunday morning when the only sounds in the building came from the old men going to and from the pool.

Still, no one in my house went to synagogue or seemed to believe in anything; my parents just wanted me to be culturally literate in my own background. After a few months they pulled me out of the Y Sunday School (Thanks, Mom! Thanks, Dad!) and found someplace new. Some local organization had decided to open a non-religious (yes, that's right) Sunday school for the local Jewish kiddies, which would be held each Sunday just up the block in my very own real school. The Sunday school group rented the space, and once in a while I actually read Bible stories at my own third-grade desk. They didn't teach us Hebrew (feh!) but Yiddish. If only I had paid attention. We had big Purim parties, you know, the Jewish Halloween where every little girl dresses as Queen Esther. This Sunday school lasted for a year or two, I think.

In seventh grade, the big fashion trend among my set was the name necklace, we each wore a little gold plate about an inch across (depending on your name) in print or script, that hung from a chain attached to it at each end. Everybody had one. One day a girl showed up with a tiny cross attached to the chain at one end of her name. Within about five minutes, each of us found the appropriate symbol and got it soldered on. I found my tiny Mogen David and there it was. The correct fashion accessory. I was okay.

Third Avenue

When I was 16, I got the CHARM BRACELET from my parents, the fashion accessory of that age and place. Friends gave me charms for my sweet sixteen, one kind of another. Grandma and Grandpa, as befit their age and nature, gave me the religious charm, the one I would wear on my cool bracelet as a sign of my Jewishness: a tiny little Torah, gold with a white gold door that actually opened, showing the sacred scroll inside. This is called a mezuzah.

When I went off to college in the strange southern land of Maryland just two and a half years later, I thought I should mark myself somehow as a member of my particular group of people. So I went and bought a cheap little silver (at least, silver-colored) mezuzah on a cheap silver (colored) heavy chain. I think it cost about $8. I put it on and set off to college, Jewish for all the world to see. I had still never been in a synagogue in my life, except once for each of my two cousins' Bar Mitzvahs.

Fourth Avenue

Just after Christmas of my senior year of college, I broke up with a boyfriend I had dated for nearly three years, and whom I had fully expected to marry. I broke up with him, for all kinds of right reasons. His being not Jewish was not one of them, for this was irrelevant to me and to my parents. He was, however, a schmuck. For his last act as boyfriend, he gave me a check as a Christmas gift. He gave me $35. A week later, broken up and with $35 in my pocket, I went to the nearest Service Merchandise jewelry counter to see what I could get. Remember, this was 1975, so it's not as impossible as it sounds.

There it was: a chai. Gold, flat, a little less than a half-inch across, both from side to side and up and down. A charm. Lightweight, but substantial. I thought, this is life, this is my life going on. I am okay, I am strong. I should wear a symbol of life, and of who I am. Jewish is a big part of who I am, not religion maybe, but my ethnic identity, my roots are Jewish. I bought the chai. I began to wear it all the time, on a simple gold chain around my neck.

Fifth Avenue

I wore the chai off and on for all the years since. I made sure to wear it through both of my pregnancies. My husband -- not Jewish -- thought nothing of it; he knew that it was not religious and that it was a symbol of life and of my heritage. In recent years, especially since my mother became ill in 1995, I wore it all the time. The same gold chai I bought for $35 in 1975.

Sixth Avenue

So I'm on a class trip with about two hundred kids and a dozen other teachers in 1995 and I notice that a few of the younger teachers have -- gasp! -- tattoos! These are nice normal teacher-types, not Hells' Angels bikers, and they have tattoos! How terrible! How revolting! How intriguing!

So I ask the first idiotic question that everyone without a tattoo asks: "Did it hurt?" The answer, of course, is a derisive "Yeah." (Tone of voice here says, and rightly so, "What are you, a moron?") Yet my best chum and I remain intrigued. Not only do we begin to consider the amusing possibility of tattooing ourselves for our upcoming 50th birthdays, we begin to realize that there are a whole lot of other women our age doing the same thing.

Chum comes back from summer vacation 2001, now age 50, with a lovely tattoo on the outside of her left wrist. I'm thinking, thinking. Older daughter gets a tattoo the minute she's old enough, a small five-pointed star less than an inch across on the inside of her left wrist.

What will I do? What WILL I do?

Seventh Avenue

I decide: I will get a tattoo. All I have to do is decide what it is I want to carry on my body for the rest of my life. What shape, what design, what meaning, what color?

September, 2001. What will I do? Suddenly I realize: chai. I have always worn a chai, so I will always wear a chai. I would like a tattoo that looks just like my charm: a small, golden, chai. My daughter points out that they will never tattoo something small that looks gold. Yellow, maybe. Hmmm.

September 11, 2001, and I am watching along with everyone else as the horror plays out on the TV night and day. New York is only ten miles from my home; two of the boys at school have lost their father in the attack on the first tower. Life is short.

September 25, 2001, and I have taken the day off from school to go to the dentist, do some errands. Driving down the road, I think, if only I knew what color to get my tattoo, I would do it today. I would do it now. I would be passing the tattoo place anyway. Looking down, I notice that I am wearing a purple t-shirt with a purple button down shirt over it. I've got this purple thing going on; I've been wearing purple for about two years now. It's from the poem "When I Am an Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple." (That's not really the name of the poem.) It says that now that I'm older I don't have to care what other people think, I can just be me. I can wear purple, so I do.

Purple. Chai. Purple. Chai.

So I went, I got it. I wear a purple chai on my left wrist, where I can cover it with a watchband if I have to, but I haven't worn a watch since the day I got it. Each time I look at it I think, I did this for me. I did this because I wanted to. It says what I want it to say. It looks like I want it to look.

Thanks for taking the tour of the city, ladies and gentlemen, here we are at the traffic circle.

Chai.


WATCHING MASH :: ENTRY #1800

Heaven, What I Plan to Do There, and EBay

[copied from dland]

Have you ever watched Inside the Actor's Studio, and at the end, James Lipton asks those questions invented by someone or other in France? Here are the questions:

1. What is your favorite word or sound?

2. What sound or noise do you hate?

3. What is your favorite curse word?

4. What profession other than your own would like to have attempted?

5. What profession other than your own would you never like to have attempted?

6. When you die and go to the pearly gates (that's what Lipton says), what would you like to hear St. Peter (the gatekeeper) say to you when you arrive?

So the first three questions -- maybe the first four -- no big deal. Number 5 is easy: soldier. I would never want to be a soldier.

Number 6 is the good one. Here is what I'd like to hear someone say to me when I arrive at the gates of heaven:

"Come right on in; Grandpa's waiting for you."

What I expect to do in heaven is that I expect to be between 6 and maybe 11 years old -- it could change from moment to moment -- and I expect to be with Grandpa pretty much all the time. The best would be that I'm sitting in the den at the house on 33rd Street, the knotty-pine semi-basement room in the split-level house. I'm sitting on the old gold-colored vinyl couch that was so uncomfortable, like every other couch or chair in the house, but it looked right for the room. I'm setting up the game board for "Meet the Presidents", getting ready all the little silver coins, one for each president, and the big dial that you spin to get your presidential trivia question. I've got it all ready. I'm just waiting for Grandpa to come downstairs and play. He's coming, but first he has to use the bathroom.

And then he's there, coming down the steps. He's never changed, not at all, not since I was born. He's always the same. He wears gray trousers about two sizes too big for him, and a button-up shirt, probably plaid, buttoned all the way up to his neck. Unless it's really hot outside, the shirt has long sleeves. He wears glasses -- I never saw him in wire-rims, only plastic frames -- and he comes downstairs with a light step. He's about 70 now, and probably tops the scales at about 125 pounds. He has a round nose and a deep tan, unless it's December and he hasn't been to Florida yet, in which case he only has a light tan. A swarthy kind of guy.

He sits down and we play. There are four levels of difficulty in the questions; I always answer the easiest level and he takes the hardest, or second-hardest. He never went to school after he learned to speak English, but he loves American history, and especially he loves anything about the presidents. This is our game.

I would make him play for hours. Sometimes he could convince me that he had to stop for a minute or two to go to the bathroom, but usually I would take a lot of convincing. I was the baby grandchild, and I was indulged, at least by him. He would do anything I wanted him to do. I would have done anything to play games with him forever.

The heavenly scene shifts, and now it's Passover, and nobody in the house cares or gives a damn about tradition or religion except Grandpa. What we all love about Passover is watching him do the whole shtick, the whole seder routine. He says the prayers, sings the songs, eats the matzo, while we all eat dinner, watch him, and occasionally murmur "homain" when he gives us the high-sign. If this is an especially good seder, Grandpa will have too much wine and then will giggle all through the songs he sings afterwards. One year he giggled so much that he couldn't stop, and laughed for hours, even after the dishes were all done and we sat around the living room, watching him laugh and being delighted throughout.

James Lipton does not ask other questions, such as what quirks do you have? Not enough time for that one. One of my quirks is that I have begun using eBay to recapture my childhood. I started by looking for and buying some of the books I remember reading. More on that another time, perhaps. Now I'm looking for "Meet the Presidents", in good condition.


ENTRY #6