Alecto's Ophelia

What hurts you clings like a weighted barnacle

What hurts you clings like a weighted barnacle, a bad relationship. It sticks to the bottom of your foot like a photograph that has lost its pixels, grainy, hard to see. But you remember and so it stays, like all the other markers of time. 

Let it go.

Periodically I wonder why this is so difficult and then I remind myself that most adults don't downsize to by 75% when there are still children in the house and also, no children at a place in their lives ready to take on the things you have to discard. 

These are the CDs that get to stay. There are four or five too many. The measuring tape is to be sure I only have 23 linear inches because that is what I believed I had to work with. That took literally four rounds before I got it down to 114 plus what's on top. I think I've figured out how to effectively store 120 in their cases such that they are easily accessible, take up very little space, don't create negative space (black hole syndrome), and look more or less not heinous. See the two small stacks behind the two short rows? I'm pretending those don't exist. For now.

Here is most of the discard:

When I say, most, I am lying. At least lying to myself. The pile to the left, also not real. You can't see the entire travesty but there are approximately 40. All around the living space I find piles, stacks of CDs that were played and not re-shelved. Also not real. 

All around the discard are the not discard, the things that will be able to breathe again. Except the books. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with the books. 

Yesterday, at the transfer station (a MIRACULOUS discovery), I tossed the 1994 Denon tape deck along with approximately 60 no longer playable actual, vinyl records. I have another 60 at least that I love madly. The sound of vinyl in the evening...

Until yesterday afternoon, there was a black hole that started behind the lamp base, nearly reached the edge of the couch and climbed the wall a third of the way up the painting to the right. On top of that negative space there lived most of what you see on the couch, although a pile of children's books and a large family photograph lived on top of the marble lamp base which sort of destroyed the point of that particular lamp. 

On Tuesday, according to Amazon, a 23 inch glass monitor stand will arrive. It's not very deep and the legs are only 3 inches but sometimes that makes all the difference. On top of the stand there will be four stackable acrylic CD racks? stacks? containers? Think of a tall acrylic CD tower but make it short. A 2x2 that will hold exactly 120 CDs in their jewel cases. I'm kind of hoping that space on top will take the double CD cases which would be good because I have at least four of those. 

So, 17 inches high (stacked) plus the 3 inch lift, plus another half just because of glass and plastic puts me at 20.5 inches total height and 10.5 x 2 plus .5 for plastic and such is exactly square. No more, no less. I forget the depth of the monitor stand but I fear it may be quite enough to stack the excess. They can't stack on top, the damn thing will tip over plus I'll run into my height limitation which is 24 inches. 

Given what's not available for CD storage for small spaces, I think this is a damn fine solution, even if I have to anchor the fuckers to the wall and the stand. 

I wish I had pictures of the transfer station. I haven't seen anything like this since I was very small and it wasn't so busy at the time. Online, the only recognizable photographs of the truth are very small. I didn't find a single photograph of the actual process of hauling, weighing in, tossing, and weighing out. 

This:

This bear greets you at the entrance. A reclaimed, upcycled bear with signs from what was probably once very nice furniture. I'm thinking the bear hands didn't start their life that way. 

You drive your very full vehicle onto the weighing station. You only stop for a minute before the woman waves you on and you wonder how she captured your plate or if it was only the vehicle. 

This was happening inside and the cars and trucks back up to the bays or close enough and a man in protective gear that must be so damn hot meets you at your car. You haul and toss as fast as you can because there's a long line today. The man helps. You don't question why. 

When it's over and the car is empty, you wonder if you should feel some pang of regret, but as you drive back to the scale with the woman in the trailer (in protective gear), what you feel is as if an albatross has dropped from your neck and you can breathe a little. You're already planning the next load and pack the car as tight as if safe for next Saturday's haul. 

Half of haul number three is already on the porch, watching the clock. 

Yes, SM, there *is* a Santa Claus

SM suggested I might have dropped off the face of the earth; Not her words, exactly, but more or less a possibility when I go a month without a post. 

Truth.

And since some of you see my attitudinal behavior on Facebook, you know perfectly well I'm at least upright and hissing.

Oddly enough, the last post was about adulting, as in, I'm not doing this anymore. That post brought to mind a post I wrote not all that long ago about being fed up, disillusioned, and livid. I scrolled down a bit and didn't see it at the June 30 post which suggests I've been openly mad as hell for a while now.

I have no idea if this has anything to do with the blog having gone momentarily dark and, what my first husband would say about my overall communication, it's like I'm spitting up beets. Think about the visual and you'll get it.

What I do know is that I spend approximately 2.5 recorded hours a day walking which amounts to closer to 3 because the fitbit drops the first to minutes of recorded activity and anything less than 12 (which is 10) is unrecorded except in the steps and miles.

Here is evidence of my lunacy:

On July 19, the goals were altered by me as such:

• Steps                             15,000
• Floors                            40,000 (this formatting/indent business is as bad as Outlook)
• Miles                              7
• Calories                          2200
• Active Minutes                90
• Steps per tracked hour    250 in 10 tracked hours
• Number of Active days    6 of 7 but I almost never miss 7

This was a Friday, which means I did most of it in the parking lot at work. Not during the workday, just maybe an hour total, after work. In the parking lot. 

I started at 6 and stopped at 7:30 when a man in a large black SUV stopped to ask if I was alright. 

Of course, why do you ask?

Well, you've been walking in circles for 90 minutes and it's hot as hell out here.

~I resisted the urge to tell him this was a deterrent to becoming homicidal. I said I just needed to blow off some steam and was heading to my car right now. Pointing in the general direction of the red RAV4 about 250 steps away (I can gauge these things now).

I watched me get into the car and he watched me start the engine and drive out of the lot.

To be clear, the parking lot is enormous. It's actually four connected parking lots for four buildings. There is also the road that goes up the hill to the Japanese American school and the back entrance to Manhattanville College and the same road going the other direction, both of which are significant hills.

And somehow he knows I've been walking in circles. Like the CIA of Office Park Security. 

I stopped doing that. Now I limit my Polar Bear at the Central Park Zoo behavior after work to no more than 40 Active Minutes. I reset the a few of the goals to 12,000, 6, 2139 (the original), and 60. It seems to be helping.

In the meantime, I've been discovering my neighborhoods, or at least the neighborhoods directly adjacent to mine. 

I nearly had heart failure the first time I saw one. This isn't the first. The first is a lousy shot. I'm not comfortable photographing other people's homes. I find it intrusive and a bit stalker-ish. This is actually 6 of 6. The last one on my way home. I cropped the shit out. I don't want any confusion. I also don't know if it's better that the faces and hands have been painted white or worse. Leave the face and hands dark is at least honest. 

If you don't know what this is, look it up. It's called a lawn jockey.

If you don't see a problem with it, don't ever talk to me. Ever. Overt, oh hell, even subvert, is not negotiable. 

There are 6 within a mile of my home in one of the bluest towns I've ever lived in. A town so blue its Republican candidates are centrists. 

Except I think back to the protesters at the Memorial Day fair and the one man holding the anti-abortion poster with graphic images of mutilated fetuses These are very effective; designed to get him pummeled and tossed under the firetrucks in the parade or effective enough to rile up the sheep. Sheep don't research anything other than what supports existing beliefs. 

I told myself he wasn't from here. 

So that's the update. Way too short but I'm just about late for the shit show called my job. 

This post has not been edited in any way.

 

I'm Tired. You do the Adulting.

When the alarm went off at 2:30 AM very early Saturday morning, I was OK with that. I mean, I knew why it went off and I understood my job. No questions here.

Get the fuck out of bed, Woman. Go downstairs, make some coffee because you forgot to set it up last night, put some clothes on. Any clothes. No, not those clothes. She doesn't think you should leave the yard in those clothes. Fuck it. Who the hell is going to be looking at who's wearing what at 4 AM in Newark? Seriously. ANYWHERE in Newark.

Dump the rest of the coffee into the travel thingie with a bunch of ice and milk and sugar because that's as close to a milkshake as I'm going to get for at least... doesn't bear thinking about

And out the door...Testicles Spectacles Wallet and Watch. Check.

Seatbelt. hnnnnnnnnnn white noise. WAKE UP AND DRIVE THE CAR!

I don't actually remember how to get to the airport from here, I only did it that one time three weeks ago to drop her off and she was navigating. Waze? I've had trouble with Waze and that airport before but it had to be done.

I guess the best way I can explain or evaluate my condition was compromised. Drunk (I wasn't but I might as well have been). I'm too old for 2.5 hours of sleep. I was meant to have more but I had it out with the cat between 1 and and 2:15. See the problem? I must have finished whooping the cat's butt and then gone straight into a coma.

The good news: I only jumped the median once (this time) and me and medians in Jersey have history. Also, I did not blow out the back right tire although I had it coming.

I allowed Waze to take me through the long term economy parking entrance which was lunacy. I KNOW how to get into an airport, especially this one. 

I was panicked because she was due in at 4:30 but then at 3:50 and I just can't drive that fast in a coma. 

I was in time. I received a few text messages and then radio silence. Eventually people start coming out. Some of them look a little disheveled but that's a long ass flight. But not my kid. My kid did not come out.

I was thinking, you know, she waltzed right through El Al security like it was nothing both incoming and outgoing and now this? But there she was, so happy to see me, so happy to be home but more or less wanting to get back on UA 91 and see you in another couple weeks, Mom!

She was chatty the whole way home. At the very end of the drive she said, oh, you know, that was special?

What?

Um, the interrogation.

Sweetie, that's immigration. You pass through immigration, get your passport stamped, get glared at in the process and then you go to customs.

No. The interrogation.

What?

I was interrogated.

Are you OK?!!!

Oh, yeah, I'm fine. I mean, if you want to put me in a room and do a VERY thorough search (could be worse), take both backpacks apart completely and then send them through the thingie again while you're asking me to explain one more time exactly what I found in the dirt. I FOUND A SHIT TON OF BONES BUT ASHLYN GOT THE TOOTH!

Whoa. 

So then they let me pack my shit back up and I came out. Big grin.

It's congenital. At least 75% of us have been strip searched, 25% of us put in holding cells, one for 24 hours on his birthday and ours is the luggage that gets sniffed first. I looked at my kid. 

You know, you do sort of look like a boarding school mule. 

No shit! You know what they said the first freaking week of the dig? 

No... what did they say?

That I was with the Hotchkiss kids, WHICH, by the way was a travesty.

What was a travesty?

The fact that the Hotchkiss kids were there at all. It was this four week tour of Israel, two weeks being tourists and two weeks being pack mules like the rest of us. But some of them were as young as fourteen and there is NO supervision there! Mom, seriously!!!

Elizabeth. We talked about this before you left. You were adulting, remember? Like for real?

I know. But still. Actually, I was babysitting. 

Yeah. I know.

She does look a bit like a Hotchkiss Mule. 

Fast forward to Sunday. There was a Saturday. We did shit. We got stuck in the rain and walked an entire half mile up hill in a river. We had lunch and dinner and she did a load of laundry and then packed in the big girl corporate backpack to be an intern for a week (we don't know what that means, we just know she's at a STEM conference and somebody slipped her in). 

It was that fast. We got out of the car, did shit, and went to bed. 

26 hours after the fight with the cat, this noise starts up next to my head.

Oof. I made a mistake. Turn that off. Wha? Why is this thing going off at 4:30? Definitely a mistake.

Uh, Mom? 

What?

You should get up.

Hell no.

Mom. You said you'd drive me back to the airport.

FUCK!

I was pretty good on the way and pretty good until she said goodbye at the beginning of the line and promptly vanished because...

... when I had to replace half of her ticket (long effing story) because she booked two one ways instead of a round trip (I guess that was the short version) and the first half was fubar because she had to be there at 6. Right? I bought her a last minute one way seat on the 7:30 United flight heading to Orlando. I bought the cheapest one way seat available. 

No joke. I bought seat 1B.

There were a mess of economy plus and coach but that one first class seat about fifty percent lower than all the rest. I snapped that thing up so fast my head spun. If there was a person watching this shit, this shit would never happen. If there was an algorithm that talked to the other algorithm, but no, lucky for her. So she vanished through the short line and that was the end of her.

I started on the way to the parking lot. I stopped and looked around. Security asked if I was alright.

Um. Probably. I should just go home (before I'm arrested). 

I was asked two more times before I got to my car. Where I sat for fifteen minutes.

On the way down the spiral thing I just stopped. I wanted to make sure I knew EXACTLY where I put my bank card and parking ticket. Yay! They were exactly where I put them when I got in the car. Joy.

By the time I got on the Turnpike I just gave up and turned Waze back on. I just don't know how to cut through Westchester yet. See, there's a part where you get off and you drive about a mile and you take this hidden little left turn into the bushes and then there's another scary entrance ramp and I'm just not sure yet. 

Waze said, Stay left! Toward the Lincoln Tunnel!

ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? I AM NOT GOING THROUGH THE LINCOLN TUNNEL.

I yelled at Waze all the way home. When I got home I parked nose in which is a very bad thing in our driveway. I left it that way.

I am still not right. I don't expect to be right until morning.

Elizabeth's flight gets in at 10 or 11 AM on Friday.

It's really easy, you take the bus to GCT and the train to Chappaqua and then you walk half a mile home with that backpack on your back and here's the $27. Call me when you get home. Love you! 

I agree to go to work and you agree to keep taking care of yourself. :)

It's about how it FEELS

sort of like this...

Sometime around the middle of June I started walking significant miles. The Fitbit tracker wanted me to do this in a 24 hour period:

• Steps:                    10,000
• Floors:                   10 (it's all about the altitude, you can use a standard staircase or you can use hills. As Stairmaster sort of thing won't cut it)
• Miles:                     5 (you really can't do this in 10k steps unless you have a REALLY long stride)
• Calories burned:     2139
• Active Minutes        30 (under 15 minutes won't register, I changed it to 10 because that was all I had time for in quick sprints)
• 250 steps/hr          Get up and move 250 steps every 60 minutes from 9 to 5. This can be tricked. Walk 500 steps at the end of an hour into the beginning of the next. Sometimes you have to, you look really stupid getting up in a meeting and pacing the room until the buzzer on your wrist goes off.

If I burn 2139 (which was a serious struggle last year) then I could only consume 1389 calories if I even hoped to lose 1.5 pounds a week. Mostly I got to 1958 and that included walking multiple steps in my hotel room just to get anywhere near 2000. That leaves 1208. Should I decide I REALLY want an adult beverage at the end of the day, a single 8 ounce (seriously, who the hell actually consumes just 6?) that drops my calorie allowance down to just over 1,000. That's not recommended, apparently. My body did that thing called starvation mode and my metabolism took a dive. I just kept walking but there were a lot of Saturday morning weigh-ins that left me in tears. I kept walking. Eventually I got close enough but had literally two weeks to purchase a mother of the bride dress and it was NO LONGER DRESS SEASON. So that was last year.

I took the fitbit off my wrist in September and stopped counting steps. I did pay attention to calorie consumption but I added alcohol and sugar back into my diet. I put the tracker back on at the end of October, grateful the thing still took and held a charge. I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. It still thought I weighed 134 pounds.

At the end of November I started job that had me nearly sedentary for an average of 10 hours a day and left me feeling like road kill at the end of every single day. Weekends were for recovery. Period. I put my next size up business wardrobe back to the front of the closet.

By April those dresses were getting a little snug and I wouldn't take my sweaters off because I was convinced I looked pregnant. My NY driver's license photo is the worst I've ever had. Who is that moon faced woman? 

I looked at the tracker, I looked at the statistics and I decided to make the goal every single day even if I didn't make the nine hour increments.

On Saturday morning, June 1st, I pulled out the scale. Exactly what I expected. June 1 was the first day I met my Steps, Floors, and Calorie goals. I blew the calorie goal out of the water at 2228 but not the Active Minutes and not the miles. I have no idea how I burned those calories except maybe my body was in shock.

The week of June 17 I started tracking calorie intake. On June 23 I set a weight loss goal and blew every single stat out of the water. On the 25th I raised the stats because I realized in one day, without intention, I'd walked 8.66 miles. Holy crap!

New stats:

• Steps:                   15,000 (but in my head it was 20,000)
• Floors:                   40 (all those hills around here) 
• Miles:                     7 
• Calories burned:     2200 (but in my head it was 2400)
• Active Minutes        90 
• 250 steps/hr          Get them all, no matter what you have to do short of screwing up back to back meetings

Today I generally reach or break 100 collective minutes but I haven't hit 200 yet. I'm close though. If I don't break 20,000 steps, it's an oddity. 9 miles is my average. I don't always make 2400 but there's a trick to this. Start early. If you don't get those active minutes in before you leave for work, it's going to be a lot harder to do it as the hours progress. Metabolism. Most days I have a 1,000 calorie deficit. I've never missed the 750. 

I told someone I walked anywhere from 8.5 to 10 miles a day and got a jaw drop. I do it in flip flops in the evening, I said. I do that to force myself to walk slower because my morning sprints average a 14.3 minute mile.

Who the hell walks a 14.3 minute mile? Up hills!! Steep fucking hills.

It is no longer about weight although I actually step on the scale every morning (naked, after a pee, don't we all?) and I'm often shocked. It takes a 3500 calorie deficit to burn away a pound. 

It's not about weight, it's about how I actually feel. Day in, day out, in the rain, in the blistering sun, my body is in constant motion. 

And it feels GOOD.

Also, I've given up shorts and t-shirts with my flops. Lightweight sundresses are a hell of a lot more comfortable. Almost nothing is on your skin. Wear panties though; when you've soaked that dress and it's starting to stick, this is far worse than a wet t-shirt. 

Time to walk. I'm sort of late. And also, Elizabeth plane lands at 4:45 AM tomorrow morning which means I exit the house at 3:30. 

I can FIX THIS, DAMMIT!

he is not taking a selfie, people. he is desperately trying to get a signal...

You know who REALLY gets freaked out about their kids overseas? The parents who actually know what to freak out about. The neurotic parents think of literally all the wrong things to think about and work themselves into a froth, meanwhile, Little Pun'kin has got himself arrested in the Red Light District. It could surely be a lot worse. Trust me. It would be a lot worse. 

And god forbid Little Pun'kin so much as sniffles on the daily call home. 

I think this is probably for the best.

It's the parents who have joined the million mile club, or come close enough to be living the dream (no! no! nooooooooo!!!! you did NOT just drop that suitcase on my head and I swear to god, one more case of foot fungus in flip flops and I'm tossing somebody down the ramp), the parents who have lost passports in Geneva (yeah, that's pretty much ok), and parents who have lost it in Romania, maybe not so OK. There are parents who have checked into hotels in Kissimmee, FL at midnight with no idea how or where to find the client for an 8:30 meeting and noticed the bullet hole in the door on the way back from the front desk for a towel run.

The parents who have been stranded in the Pittsburg airport because their connecting flights to NY pulled back from the gate a couple minutes early and the flight out of Arizona got in thirty minutes late. There will be no joy in Mudville that night.

You can identify these people, parents or otherwise, as they bodily shove their way toward the front of the plane after a seven hour wait in the world's most exciting (that's a word) lightening storm ON THE TARMAC with food and water to last three of those seven hours. You can actually identify the parents if you're careful. They are the people vibrating so badly you think their heads might pop off (because they can see what's coming) but when the mother with the screaming infant just won't stop, they are the ones who reach out and say, here, let me hold her for a bit. 

The million mile lunatics are shoving their way to the front of the plane because they know what most of the herd does not know: There are exactly six open hotel rooms in the city. Everyone else is going on the floor at C3. The six lucky travelers who's calls make it through first band together and hire a van which drops them at the Marriott just off airport property. When all six arrive at the front desk, one man asks if room service is still available (the kitchen is clearly closed, it is 1 AM). The man behind the counter looks heartbroken. He's seen this over and over again and no matter how many times he tells himself, at least they got beds, it still hurts.

However, there are sandwiches in the kitchen, will that be ok? Six people say in unison: Any calories count! It's all about the calories, hand 'em over. And that is the truth. When you have been stuck somewhere, longer than seven hours, without food or water you learn to take it as it is, in the event that it might be a food sort of substances. The sandwiches were consumed before the travelers got to their rooms. 

You know a road warrior when you see them standing at the front of first class and begging for a seat. Just one seat, they say. Useless Air WILL give you a voucher for this airfare plus $200 cash. Please. I just have to go home.

It always works, but honestly, who else would even think to do that? It takes a certain level of desperation.

You know a road warrior when you see one. All hell has just broken loose in a strange city and the traveler walks calmly for cover and then calls their spouse. Over the screaming, they say, it's just tourists, it's perfectly fine. 

The road warrior just sighs and hands over their cash when the person sitting next to them on the train very calmly puts a knife to their throat. 

The road warrior might not have seen everything, but the road warrior has seen a lot; especially when they have left American soil and all bets are off.

These are the parents who come completely unhinged when their children have a flight out of Tel Aviv that really can't be missed because these children have another flight to catch 36 hours later which means home is just a layover. The parent is online immediately. No no no, you cannot take the 5 PM train, you will have no way to get from the city to the airport. I don't CARE what that guy told you, you have a problem.

Dude, you fly out on Shabbat. EVERYTHING stops on Shabbat. There are shuttles every hour on the :45 until 2:45, which is the last for the day. When the kid isn't buying it, the parent is online looking for one way flights out of Ben Gurion to any airport within a 200 mile radius that will get this child stateside fast enough to get on the next flight which has just been rebooked because this child booked a flight that would put it at it's final destination three hours after the required check-in time to a STEM conference that requires punctuality of its interns. The parent thinks, you cannot make this shit up.

The child thinks, what the fuck has happened to my parent? This is not my parent! This is a shrieking through text nightmare. 

Mom. I am not going to miss my flight.

Elizabeth, will you please just click the link I sent you? It's the actual rail and shuttle schedule for Shabbat. Please.

Mom. I just need to get this handled, OK?

Elizabeth. Trust me. You cannot take a 5 PM train. Well, you can but you'll spend the night on the airport floor or worse, have to find a place to sleep because I think they actually close that airport. 

Mom! Stop it.

OK, fine. I will stop. But here is the link and here is the link to flights you'll need to book as SOON as you realize you've missed your flight because THERE ARE ALSO NO TAXIS OR UBERS AVAILABLE. You can book a one way flight for about $800. Just use your debit card and it will come right out of my account. Or, if you call me and wake me up, I'll book it for you. I should just do it anyway. i can cancel within 24 hours and I think I need to find you a hostel just in case...

MOM! SHUT THE FUCK UP!

.......

Later: I'm going to bed now. I'll be on the 1:45 shuttle.

OK

I'm going to bed now.

Good night

Don't do it don't do it do NOT do it. Do not tell you're child you were right. Just shut up, Mother.

Elizabeth, take food with you, nothing will be open at the airport. Shabbat.

Mom.

Right, no problem. Eleven hour flight...

MOM!

You're right. I'm sorry. Good night.

Thirty minutes later the phone rang. A crying child on the end of a surprisingly good connection.

I'm sorry, Mom, you were right. I'm sorry. I miss you so much.

It's OK Little Pum'kin. Momma loves you and I'll see you at 4:45 AM Saturday. 

That was far from me at my worst as a parent but it was complete lunacy. I mean, the riots in the street were pretty much over and nobody actually got dead, ok maybe one, and it wasn't like it was an anti-American protest this time. Just a community that got a little PO'd when some off duty cop shot a 19 year old so they turned over a couple of cars, lit them on fire and sent approximately eighty wounded to some sort of care. Only six or seven of those eighty were actually civilians and they just happened to get in the way.

This is the thing normal parents are freaking out over.

And I never once thought about that. She'll be fiiiiiiine. But for the love of god, do NOT miss your flight. 

You'll be hungry and absurdly thirsty and stranded with no place to go. You will be willing to hand over every last Shekel in your possession for a 16 ounce bottle of water. You will sip it slowly, all night long. You will not sleep. 

Who are you?

Raise your hand if you know where this is, when this was, and why, exactly, that man is burning that other man in effigy.

No? Really? 

So what's up with the Kardashians lately? OK, she's probably outdated but if I google news for today in my browser, I don't come up with any of that. My browser has me figured out which is a little disturbing, actually. What if I WANTED to find out who or what America is obsessed with today? I can only find articles that tell me why. So. What's in your browser?

How many International headlines just jump right out at you? If so, how many do you read, AND, which publication is responsible for the content? Is it left leaning? Is it right leaning? Is it even REMOTELY religious (the bias on that stuff is sneaking and terrifying).

Lastly, are these headlines, assuming they're there at all (don't feel bad if they aren't; you are not alone) screaming the word INTERNATIONAL over and over again? No? That could be a problem. I'm not suggesting you get yourself a subscription to Foreign Affairs. I want you all to keep breathing and eating. Don't go there, too much, too much. We have delicate tummies. We can't even handle National news. 

Back to the original question, what's going on up there and SPECIFICALLY why and when? I'm not kidding. Our collective heads are so far up our collective asses it's terrifying. 

So there was this, right after her trip to Tel Aviv:

First, a geography lesson, so you don't have to look it up but later you probably should. When the War of Independence was over in 1948, there was this thing called the Green Line (not zone, line) drawn on the map of what is known as Palestine, or Israel, depending on which way you lean. The Green Line more or less divided a land mass about the size of New Jersey into a couple of parcels. The biggest was and is called The West Bank. The much smaller settlement sat all by its lonesome and it was called Gaza. 

How do you live like that? How do you live in a country that is divided in two with an entire other country in the middle of you?

It got worse. The West Bank had to be bisected (well, not really, you can always go around the really long way) to get to Jerusalem which belongs to no one and everyone. Thus, the Route 1 corridor was born and it is WALLED on both sides with that beautiful yellow stone. 

What sort of shit is this? First we have Gaza and now The West Bank is split in two. Keeping in mind that prior to the end of WWII it was all Palestine and prior to that, not worth getting into, it would take way too long for one entry. 

Backing up a step, I am clearly Israeli biased. These are my friends and I understand how they got here, what came before, and how hard they have to fight to keep the home they never had. And the reason for the largess of the multiple governments? 

What to do with this massive population of homeless Jews.

As an aside, Palestine was having a really hard time maintaining a foothold on Palestine too, and it's not as if the Israelites have not been given and promised that land for centuries. I'm just saying. It's a hot pot of murderous rage.

Add Syria and Lebanon to the mix and now we're cooking with gas; one already boiling powder keg.

Elizabeth asked me to name the wars and I told her I could not name very many of them, I would have to look it up. I said that I knew about the War of Independence, the Six Day War, and the intifadas. I told her the one I remembered most vividly, on a personal note, was the 2006 Lebanon War and the day they sent rockets into Nazareth. I told her that the name Hezbollah felt like sand paper in my mouth but that Hamas did not. I haven't told her why yet. It's hard to have that sort of discussion by text. 

So, Palestine is protesting for three days (I love that they schedule the start and stop times of this shit, we really need to try that). It's an anti-american protest, this much we know, but we don't know why.

No, Elizabeth, I don't think being on a bus will make you safe. I think any bus you're in will have a big red bullseye on its top and full of Americans? Neon, baby, Neon! And a bullhorn. So let's wait until Thursday and see what has happened and also, let's see what this is all about. 

In the end, there just was not enough coverage to be certain that everything had quieted down. I found no coverage at all from US sources but, you know, we wouldn't cover that. A drop in the bucket or because we're assholes or all of the above plus a few more?45 is not the first asshole president in terms of foreign policy by a long shot; he's just the most embarrassing, hateable president since... we've had a few in the last two centuries. Remember the 'I like Ike' buttons? OK, maybe a little before your time but a significant part of Americana, the button's housed in the National Archives. What did I like Ike do? You'd need a little Congolese history for that to really slam home but BOOM! There it is! How many of you clicked that link and justified it within twenty seconds?

Anti-American protest. OK, dig into the Foreign publications. The Palestinian paper I found wasn't translated. That would have been exceptional. The Israeli publication was pretty much OK. They're not happy about this either. Both leaders, of each state, boycotted the Bahrain Summit (pick anything that comes up in that link). Israel will get away with it, Palestine will not. 

What is the Bahrain Summit? #45's Middle East Peace Plan launch. Ish. 

Do everyone a favor. Read about it. Dig into it like it matters, because it does matter. We fought and continue to fight for free speech, and sometimes more importantly, freedom of the press. It's all out there. Read it. They wrote it for us. 

You're not going to find some nefarious plot to take over the world, you're going to find Jared Kushner being obnoxious, and Trump wasting time and boiling the pot. That's the thing, boiling the pot. He has a 12% approval rating over there.

The only reason I know this was because my daughter's wifi was spotty and she needed the information to make her own decision about the trip. Would she get on that bus on Thursday afternoon or would she not?

In the end she did. She did get on that bus. We had a horrible connection but I heard that part loud and clear.

This is too important, Mom. I have to do this especially because of the uproar.

And so she went, to the old city of yellow stone, to the four quarters when she felt the change in the air as they passed into the Arab quarter. They hate us, she told me later. Of course they do. We are reprehensible. 

She went to the wall but it was the eve of Shabbat and so she could not sit and pray but she could put her hand on the wall.

I felt all the voices coming through my hand. I felt all the pain and all the prayers and I could not stop. I cried for hours.

This is not the wall. It is a wall, but it is not the wall. This is the mosque. THE Mosque. And behind it the gold dome which the whole world believes is there's. 

She made that decision alone, fully informed. She grew up about three years in the last two weeks.

(unedited)

Elizabeth in Jerusalem

Of course there's a story. 

Elizabeth in Tel Aviv and other things you should probably know

I've deleted two drafts about Elizabeth's trip to Tel Aviv. Too angry about too many things in the world and missing the point for sure. Elizabeth has done nothing wrong and she has handled her situation remarkably well. I would have sent them home. 

Here she is with my dear, dear friend, Lior whom I have not seen in fifteen years. She is on the rooftop with his family and there is that photo as well but this is the very best.

She would never have been this brave at home and yet she had already resolved at least one accuse issue all by herself.

Elizabeth's time in Tel Aviv was invaluable for many reasons. Maybe I'll write about it later.

On Thursday she will get on a bus full of American students bound for Jerusalem. Or she will not. 

To get to Jerusalem you have more or less two choices, both of them dicey if the god of war is grumbling.

It is grumbling. Publicly.

Driving the long way around puts you on the border of Lebanon for a couple of hours. You are trapped between the Lebanese border and the other side of the West Bank which is the problem just now.

Driving on Route 1 over the land bridge which is the road called Israel which bisects the two largest chunks of the West Bank IS dicey when there is an actual scheduled anti-american protest between the 24th and the 26th. I want her to muzzle her two traveling companions until they clear the area, no matter what happens or doesn't happen. 

On the afternoon of the 27th she will make a choice. Do I talk to other people about it? Yes, if you want but I wouldn't do anything like yelling fire in a movie theater. Your traveling companions need to be sent home but Jerusalem is used to them showing up in droves. Tel Aviv, not so much. Tel Aviv expects to to pay attention and not be a dick inasmuch as you can manage to not be a dick by accident now and then. Kinda like me,last week, mentioning that it had been four years since the people responsible for bringing that plane down in Ukrainian airspace were captured.

Dead silence. And then, only because we have a relationship built on mutual trust and care, Slava said, so, so quietly, everyone makes mistakes.

Ah Fuck! I forgot it was. Shit. I'm sorry, Slava, everyone makes mistakes. Look at our current president.

I'll stop here or I'll never get this photo published and it is the thing I most wanted to happen for her, and for Lior and his family.

I hope it's ok on Thursday, I really do. But I'll be watching the news (which will not be broadcast over here because we don't like to talk about it) and I guess the last card I've got to play is Lior who will probably say, don't go, Elizabeth. Stay on the kibbutz. Come back and go another time. And bring your mother.

We were born before the wind

I spent a considerable amount of time this morning working with this photograph to bring the signature forward. C. Romanelli, of which there are many, but not quite right. I don't know why it was so important to locate a photographer from the greater new york city area who photographed my dad in 1944 or 45 but not much later.

Maybe I wanted to see if there were more, if there were descendants of one C. Romanelli still making portraits. This photograph sat on my grandmother's dresser, probably from the moment she had it framed to the moment she no longer had a dresser, or a dresser no longer had her. I never really understood why this photograph was always there when there were so many others to choose from. Something about it prodded me, left me feeling vaguely uncomfortable with no good reason why.

I know why now. 

C. Romanelli saw the boy as he was before he fell into the great and unknown world. Before he entered the wild and became a piece of this and a part of that, informed by the nature of his life. Here is a boy on the cusp of the end of the age of discovery, undamaged and whole. 

My stomach knots at the vulnerability and sweetness and I have solved, for the most part, I think, the incongruity of the man who was partially responsible for leveling me, stripping my skin in the harsh embrace of parental control, and the dominance inflicted on all women, one way or another, of the patriarchy. I fought against him and then I ran and fought some more, coming to my knees over and over again until I could no longer breathe in his presence.

He is surely not responsible for all of this, just to be clear. And he is surely not guilty of intentional abuse. Our actions as adults, as parents are significantly informed by our past, often indirectly.

What couldn't be reconciled, this thing that knotted my stomach and clawed at my heart was this evidence of vulnerability and sweetness that I passed through or was held in one way or another throughout my life. My Daddy, the man I looked for behind the words and actions of the man I battled. 

When I was four years old, I climbed to the top of a dome jungle gym and then, of course, I could not work out how to get myself back down. I think, as I was climbing that he told me if I wanted to keep going, I was going to have to get myself out. I went to the top. Of course I did; it was scary and exciting and those things outweighed the need to be safe. A four year old is at the beginning of the age of discovery when we are willing to reach and when we can still hear and see.

When I got to the top and asked for help, he said, no, you have to get yourself out of what you've got into. I can still hear the tenor of his serious but not angry voice which is frightening and reassuring and safe all at that irreconcilable same time. 

He was not being abusive. He was teaching his daughter to think and to be strong. So he fucked that up. These things happen. I can and I cannot hold him accountable for what happened next.

I looked behind me and tried to set my foot on the bar below but the dome is at an angle and I couldn't work out the geography of it so I just kept climbing until I got to the very top where I sat, legs dangling, tears and snot running in my hair, onto my dress.

No. I am not going to get you down.

In my head, with whatever outraged words I had, I said to him silently:

Alright, fucker. So this is how we're going to play it. I'll see your cruelty and raise you whatever I've got. 

I remember glaring through the tears. I turned around and lowered myself through the bars. I hung from the top bar over the ground for more than a second and I believe I'd given up on any sort of help. I just had to work up the courage to do what had to be done.

I dropped like a 32 pound rock and hit the ground hard. It probably wasn't a terrible drop and maybe I could have broken something, I don't really know. Maybe he didn't believe I'd do it but I did it over and over again throughout my life until I stopped asking for help entirely. I remember the look on my mother's face when he brought me home bloody and bruised; pissed off like a wet cat. 

That experience was the shovel in the face that opened the tear in my universe. I can only see this backward but oddly enough, that memory is indelible and has always been in the forefront. That and the peanut butter sandwich event which happened at roughly the same time with mixed results; mostly anger and fear, but also the belief that I could indeed handle anything if I had to.

What happened to that boy? What shattered moments made him the dad who loved his girl through the lens of his own falsely identified fear?

It matters and also it does not matter. We are 55 and nearly 80 and his time is close. Not from bad or hard living but from an unfortunate card in his deck. We all have those cards in our decks, but they don't always come to the top. 

At the top of my deck, right now, is the face of my father below the layers. And it is beautiful.

 

The First Time

The first time ever you travel alone, the first time you truly venture from home, the world transforms around you and you are transformed by the world.

On the way to the Tel Kabri excavations for three weeks.

Do you see it, hear it, feel it, adjust and blend, and do you understand? Do you lose, or put aside, a piece of your Self in the process? Do you create that space to let it in? 

It is scary. The moment it stops being scary, or is not scary at all, is the moment you are no longer there; the moment you have placed your whole self back in your own communal circle. As an aside, this sort of scary is not the same scary that shoots you full of adrenaline, fight or flight, brain awash in cortisol... the drawbridge is up and the archers are on the wall. Not the same at all. 

It is vulnerability that scares us all; bringing the serotonin and dopamine second wind. When we let it.

On the way to JFK yesterday, routed and rerouted through the outskirts of City Island, parking only a few minutes shy of three hours early, she said, not for the first time: I have never done this by myself. I have never been unchaperoned. There is no one here to tell me where to go and when to go or how to behave or even find the way. I have been to five different countries, but I have never been alone. 

You are not alone. There are two girls from your school waiting for you before even checking in. 

I don't know them.

They don't know you or each other even. You are going to help each other, apparently. You will be OK, there is always a way. Just pay attention.

I could not even pass through the gate to the checkin counter. I was stopped right outside the barriers and watched them dig through their bags for things they hadn't thought to have ready. She had everything in an envelop and her passport out. I may have over mothered her or she may have done most of that for herself. Regardless, I was not permitted through the gate. We weren't even within eyesight of security. I stood up straight, tightened all my muscles and allowed myself to shake. My face was a river. 

A passenger pushing a lifetime of luggage toward the gate patted my arm and said, It's ok, Mami, it's ok. Los bebés vienen a casa (I think). Babies come home. 

My heart twisted itself once, stood up and announced to the world that THIS IS NOW OUT OF YOUR HANDS, Mami. Let it go.

What am I afraid of? Not what you think, I don't think. I believe she will get herself where she needs to go no matter what. I believe that even though she is the youngest person on this trip, she will lead because she will believe it is a necessity. I hear her speaking to her traveling companions in the morning from Ben Gurion, "No, you need that! It's your visa and you should carry it at all times. Here. Put it in your wallet. Do NOT lose that." 

Momma, my friends are really, really scared about customs.

Why? What is in their luggage? The only thing I'd be really worried about are drugs and weapons. I'd say ditch the drugs right this minute if it's not too late and if there are weapons, run like hell. Away. Away from danger.

Nothing is in their luggage I don't think. It's just that we don't know how to get to customs and we could walk out the door right now.

Then you have already cleared customs. 

When?! 

When you picked up your luggage you walked through an open space or a wide hallway and you were watched but you were not pulled aside. You have officially cleared customs if you can walk right out the door right now.

What?!

You have cleared customs but you will not have cleared El Al security until you are no longer on airport property. 

What?!

You are OK. Also, it is Shabbat so it's probably quiet in there. Mostly empty.

Yes it is. 

Then find a place to sit with your luggage and wait for your ride.

OK. I love you. This is very exciting and very beautiful.

Yes. All that yellow stone. So beautiful. My friend Lior was asking for you. He wants to know if you will come to Tel Aviv and I said you wanted to drink Prosecco in Tel Aviv because you could. Lior is a VERY good friend and also his wife Orit. That's Lee-or and Or-eet. 

OK, thank you.

I said you could not travel alone if you were under 21 but that an entire group of you hired a bus to go to Jerusalem. I said that you only needed one friend to figure out how to get to Tel Aviv and then, as long as you come back to the dig in time for work, you can go anywhere you like.

OK, thank you.

(what is all this, ok thank you?)

Elizabeth, go to the museum part of the airport after you've rested. You have a three hour wait. Two of you can go at a time but you know you can never leave your luggage unattended.

YES, Mom.

OK, good.

Later I sent a text message because I hadn't thought to send it, I'd only realized I'd forgotten to say it at the airport.

Also: for what it’s worth, you are a diplomatic representation of the United States of America. Remember that, because the world will.

THAT is what had my heart twist around itself and then stand up.

Wherever we go, we represent who we are and where we come from. Don't be an Ugly American, I told her in the car. She asked how not to be an Ugly American. Isn't that a great question? So many answers and no time to teach what I haven't already taught. But.

Elizabeth, remember that you are not at home, not in any way. You are in someone else's home. Be how you would be when you visited someone else's home at home. Listen six times as much as you speak, and then speak into the context of where you are. The Kibbutz where you'll stay is entirely unlike Tel Aviv. Jerusalem is a whole other world; many worlds all in one ancient place. This is why you need the long skirt and the long sleeve shirt when you go there. You need it because the people from George Washington University wish you to represent your country by being aware and respectful. You may wear that outfit to Jerusalem and see many American tourists dressed as they are at home or in the city. It is expected but not appreciated. It says: I don't really know where I am. It is about stepping INTO the community as part of the community. You know how to do this, just don't forget. 

Elizabeth, Americans are assholes when we step out of our own space. We aren't just assholes when we leave the country, we're assholes when we leave our community. We are hugely disrespectful by way of being hugely unaware. I promise you, most people do not mean to or want to be assholes. 

Elizabeth, most of the world thinks we are freaking idiots right now. They think our country as a whole is bleeding insane. They are laughing at us while we are judging them. 

Elizabeth, represent your country as its very best self. The self we all have when we aren't terrified of being wrong or bad.

But I forgot to say this part, the part about being a diplomatic representation of where we come from. Diplomacy, we are all responsible simply because diplomacy is a grass roots sort of thing. 

When I see a Confederate Flag in a truck window with southern plates, roaring its way through the streets of the northeast, I want to scream. When the Northeast goes South with its passion and anger, the South DOES scream. When we go outward in any direction, we run the risk of offending the shit out of the communities we step on. With or without knowledge.

When we go outward in any direction, most of the time, unless the culture shock is extreme, we go in battle gear, defending our beliefs and actions. And we miss it all. 

The First Time we venture beyond the final sandbar, informs and often solidifies how we will experience, or not experience, the rest of the world for the rest of our lives.

Unless someone shakes the shit out of us. But I haven't known that to be particularly effective most of the time.  

I sent her a song. Listen to it on the bus to Tel Kabri. You will need it then. 

I think this thing as I shake off Weston, and take on Chappaqua, leaving my predispositions behind as best I know how. Even 30 miles and 50 minutes away, I am in a whole other place. 

 

Tel Kabri excavations