Forgiveness

I had an epiphany in yoga last week. It was the simplest thing, a thing I've thought a million times over. But somehow, it did the trick.

The teacher asked us to set an intention for the class and I was thinking about how I need to judge myself less harshly and how I demand so much. I've been drowning in narcissistic self pity and I know it and I know it's not good for me, for my career, for my kids - let alone any kind of love life I might want to have. But knowing it and feeling it are two different things. But somehow, I came to the idea that what I needed was not to pretend that all of my fuck-ups never happened or that somehow I won't fuck up again (cause I will!), but that I can acknowledge them and repent them, and still forgive myself. Don't I always forgive others? Aren't I known as being too forgiving? And yet, as my sister has pointed out, the world has not been very forgiving of me. Maybe I need to be the first.

I was also thinking about how I forgive my parents for all their various missteps. As a parent, I now appreciate how hard they had it with all three of us, and especially me, the pain in the ass. I didn't mean to be a pain in the ass, of course, I think I am naturally contradictory. I swear it's genetic - the devil's advocate gene. I blame it on coming from an argumentative people. And also, I always see the other side. So, I was seeing my parents' other side, and Mr. Nation's other side (he was the theater teacher in high school - can you believe I was lucky enough to have a theater teacher at my high school? - and I drove him nuts, too). And it is good to look back on my past and see where others may have had quarrel with me, but I went too far. I began to see everything from everyone else's point of view, and completely lost my own. Like every argument in my entire 40 years was all my fault and never was there any shared blame. Or just good old difference of opinion.

I had been angry with my parents for so long and this all came to a head at Passover, both for the things they did when I was a child, and also the things they continue to do. It was the night of the chopped liver. My mother didn't trust me with it. But mostly, she didn't trust anyone to do anything right enough to please my father. It was always about pleasing my father and since no one could ever do that except here (and often not her, either), I could never be given the chance to try. I felt that as a little kid - you know when you want to be given grown up tasks and not just little kid busy work. And I felt it that night. I feel it when they don't want to come to my house for dinner or I bring some cookies over and they are okay, they're fine or even good, but they are given this raaaaave review like oh my god, no one has eeeeever made chocolate chip cookies before! Like I'm being pandered to. So I insist my mother let me handle the chopped liver and I'll get it done for her before she even wakes up, because I have to go out when she will be up and cooking the rest of the meal (the main meal, the meal that counts, because god forbid I should ever be given the chance to make the turkey. Have I mentioned that I'm a 40 year old woman with plenty of turkey behind her?) I want so badly to take the burden off of her, to please her by having done a job well, well enough that it might even please my father, which would in turn please her. And all of this is so embarrassing as I write it down - why am I still trying to please my father? I cook all the time, good meals, bad meals, sort of okay meals. I am perfectly competent in the kitchen and perfectly confident in my cooking abilities - usually.

So she leaves me the recipe and I get everything right - the onions are perfectly browned, they consistency is yellow and creamy. The only thing is that I hate chopped liver, so I have no idea how it's supposed to taste. My mother comes down just as I've finished all the dishes I agreed to make and I'm about to leave for my appointment. She tastes it and I am just so proud - finally, I have proven my worth as a daughter and a woman. And then she goes, Ummmm... how many livers did you use? And I say - the ones that were in the package. And she's like - All of them?!?!?! And I'm like yeah -- it was a frozen package - I just assumed I was supposed to use them all. And she's like - you were supposed to use 5. I wrote it down for you. And I say - So how many were in the package? And she goes - 20!

Oy vey!

So we fix it. It came out okay. There was a LOT of extra. And we used a ton more eggs. But the toll was taken on my ego and I just couldn't get out of it. She'll never trust me with anything again, I worry. She doesn't even see me as an adult. I'm not capable of anything. And it spirals out. I think of all the times I was proven incompetent. It must be true. I must not be able to pull off anything worthwhile. Certainly, I didn't ever believe I could get a real job, have a real husband, be a real mother. That these things have happened seem accidents of the fates - like the authorities haven't noticed yet that they should actually confiscate my children, that it's only a matter of time until my boss fires me, and that maybe my divorce isn't really about my ex-husband's drug use, but really about the inability of anyone in the world to love me - because I can't make chopped liver! And therefore can clearly accomplish nothing else worthwhile in the world.

Yes, I know this is all ridiculous. But it's the rabbit hole I went down. I picture myself as Alice, but not stopping off to taste things or notice the underground foliage, just scraping hopelessly at the wet dirt on the side of the very long hole, my fingernails breaking off and my voice going hoarse as I scream indignantly. It is no one's fault but mine that I am falling and I look very ungraceful with my arms milling about like that. I hear my father telling me I sound like an elephant as I stomp up the stairs, that I don't know my own strength as I hug a grown-up tightly, or sarcastically calling me a liiiiiiberal and a feeeeeeminist as I grow into a rebellious teen phase. I am angry and lost and feel like my little four year old with his sad pout when I make him sit in time out for hitting his brother. I hate myself, he cries pitifully and I hug him. I still make him sit in time out, but first I hug him, because a little child should not have to feel like that.

So can I hug myself? It is hard to hug yourself. It is hard to forgive yourself. It is easier to forgive others. I have never felt the victim of the world. I have often felt so different from the world, and tried to turn my monsterishness into uniqueness, to embrace weirdness. It worked for a time and I convinced myself that I was whole and happy. But apparently, it took a job change, a divorce, and ultimately a messed up recipe to get to the place where I could not stop pretending that the monster in the mirror was me. It is me, and I have to learn to love the monster or I will never reach the bottom of the well, nor be able to climb back out.

More fears - middle aged and otherwise

Fear of a bad review at work
Fear that I am still a bratty tween
Fear that people can see that I'm faking being an adult woman on the outside while being a bratty tween on the inside
Fear of saying stupid things while drunk
Fear of getting drunk and sleeping with men and waking up and realizing I said stupid things all night long
Fear that the man will want to call me
But the other fear that I should want him to call me and what does it mean that I do not care?
Fear that I do not know enough
Fear that I can never know enough
Fear that everyone else knows more than me
Fear that I always say stupid things, drunk or not
Fear that I will know the right thing to do but do the wrong thing
Fear that I have made bad decisions my whole life and that this represents a pattern and that the pattern is strong enough to be "who you are" and that this essentially makes me a "person who makes bad decisions"
Fear that everyone else is making better decisions while I am out there fucking up again and again
Fear that I am beginning to hate myself for all of these fuck ups
Fear that I have always hated myself and am just now beginning to admit it
Fear that even though I have admitted this, I will not be able to change it
Fear that all of this fear is very self absorbed
Fear that my grandfather will die
Fear that my kids will not remember him
Fear that all of his knowledge and his experience of the old world - a world that does not exist anymore- will be gone with him
Fear that we will forget
the Holocaust
a world where people went hungry and walked miles for fresh water daily
a world in which you had to walk everywhere and you couldn't text upon arrival
that a 97 year old man was once a teenager who liked to sing zionist songs with his friends and perform in street plays on Purim and dance tango with young ladies at the rec center in the village
Fear of time

Why I Can't Stop Writing About the Holocaust

They say the second generation after a traumatic event actually has a kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome. My mother fits the bill - nightmares, guilt, acting from obligation, extreme dedication to the group. But what about the third generation? Are we supposed to be rid of it? I'm definitely not.

Last night, Larry and I came home to find all three of our kids cuddling on the couch with my parents. It was really sweet. Eli, who had a fever, was on my Dad's lap, and they were both draped in our couch blanket. Dylan was reading a book I'd never seen to my mom and Joey had her head in my mother's lap, listening. I noticed it was a sort of graphic novel. Then I realized it was some book about the Holocaust. Dylan is 7 and Joey is 4. They were reading about a boy whose parents had pushed him into a closet. The story followed the boy's narrow escpae from the Nazis while hiding in this closet. That sounds pretty intense for a 7 year old, when I think about it. They don't even start Holocaust education in Hebrew School until 4th grade.

Larry was upset - he thought the kids were too young. But they didn't seem upset; in fact, they seem interested. It is certainly too young for gory details. But is there an age that is too young to know about this world-changing event, an event that two of their great-grandparents survived? Great-grandparents they know, by the way, not just some dusty old pictures with hollow eyes and no smiles, people they love.

List of Middle Age Fears

Fear of eyebrows
Fear of being mean to other peoples' children
Fear of wrinkly underarms
Fear of overtalking - when you've made your point but you can't seem to wrap up without repeating yourself several times and more weakly
Fear of appearing too easy
Fear of wanting to be too easy
Fear of actually being too easy
Fear of liking being too easy
Fear of hating being too easy
Fear of overcompensating for being too easy by being an ice cold bitch
Fear of losing my sarcastic edge
Fear that the sarcastic edge might actually be hiding something less palatable
Fear that you're not really a nice person
Fear that you're a nice person who has no idea how to show it
Fear that you're past the age at which you can be forgiven for not being that nice
Fear of hairless balls - why on earth would a man shave his balls?
Fear that you are letting my children use screens too much
Fear that you cannot manage their screen usage are about to lose them down a hole in which the digital world is more real than the physical world.
Fear that you will never again spend a rainy trying to find the pattern in raindrops
Fear of your inner bitch
Fear that someone will show you his sketchbook, but refuse to read your story
Fear that your marriage was all your fault
Fear that you will repeat all the mistakes of your marriage
Fear of hemorrhoids
Fear of post-ice-cream bloat
Fear of squinting (because you can't find your glasses)
Fear that your sister is the nice version of you
Fear that never having been a friend's bride's maid was not because they had small weddings
Fear that you can't waitress
Fear of Facebook
Fear of camping in the rain
Fear of wildly fluctuating spring temperatures (a 40 degree difference over 4 days)
Fear of being recognized at CVS while buying popcorn and ice cream (3 days in a row)
Fear of small lies
Fear of your lack of fear of big lies
Fear that you are easily manipulated
Fear of over-realistic art
Fear of your sparking fuse box
Fear that you will run out of money before the end of the month
Fear that you won't be able to fix the fuse box
Until next month
After your house has gone up in flames
Fear that you will never get a promotion
Fear that your drug addict neighbor is trying to rob you
Fear that your kids don't get to ride bikes enough
Fear that your kids spend too much time in the car
Fear that you're letting everyone down
Fear that you don't visit your wheelchair-bound aunt often enough
Fear that you can't handle trying to have a conversation with her now that she's had a stroke
Fear that this means you are shallow
Fear that you are less important to her than her financial adviser
Fear that being anxious and depressed makes you a weak person
Fear that you won't be able to afford to send your kids to a nice camp
Fear that you'll spend almost as much money sending them to a crappy city camp that they hate
Fear that you are a real-life female George Costanza