Self Help

When I was a tween, I had this recurring dream where I was driving on the side of a mountain alone with a little kid. In the dream, I was a grown-up woman and the kid was my kid. And we were going on an adventure. We were living in Mexico. We were in Greece. We were in the desert. We were high up and there was a sea below and it was joyful.

I also remember dreams about flying. I would always fly low to the ground, swooping and hovering. 

I have had no such dreams since I was a child.

When did I give up on myself? Why do I think I need to be with someone else and not myself? I think I am happiest when I am on my own. I think I'm going to become a dog lady. I got a dog. I am a lady. I think I can be a dog lady without being a lesbian (not that there's anything wrong with it - that's a Seinfeld joke). Dogs are safer. They don't criticize. They will follow you anywhere if you have snacks. They like hiking. 

I always thought I would be alone and I always thought I would have kids. I never ever imagined a man in the picture with me. I couldn't then imagine any man would ever want to kiss me, let alone love me. Is there a part of me that still believes I am unlovable? And that the love of my lovers has all been faked? Like a sci-fi movie of emotions? I still see that vision of myself with my kids, alone. 

In Fat is a Feminist Issue, she writes that fat is a way of walling off the world. Perhaps this is the reason I've gained 15 pounds? Perhaps I am living on brownies and peanut butter M and M's to keep men away? I would like to keep everyone away. I pretty much want to sink into my couch and never leave. The brass ring is always just out of reach. But I'm better on my own. I don't like to share my cake. 

Flying shmying. 

But what about that adventure to Mexico with my kids? They are with me. I am not alone. But that's different.

The Palace of Tears

The Palace of Tears

Pushing my youngest child in a swing was like being in a time warp of joy.I grabbed her feet as she flew toward me, the little leather slippers with owls stitched on the front. “I got your toes,” as she giggled in delight. I remembered the blue ones with cars my oldest son had 13 years ago. Each time she came toward me, excited with a little drool slipping down the one corner of her teeny mouth, I was in the moment, my heart rising up a little with the black rubber baby swing. Each time she slipped away, I had this sense of the younger parents next to me and of all the years that had come before this, all the times I had pushed a baby on a swing, coached a toddler to reach his little legs out and in, and reach for the clouds with your feet, reach for the branch, reach for mommy’s hand held out just beyond the reach of their toes. It was like I couldn’t make sense of being 43 with a one year old, like I couldn’t understand how I could have a baby and a teenager at the same time, gray hair and nipples leaking milk. 

 The baby’s eyes crossed as the swing slowed. She pulled her hands from the metal triangles attaching the rubber seat to the chain and clapped them together. How much her father would enjoy this, it killed me not to have him here. I looked over at the couple to my left, pushing their chubby little boy with dark curly hair who kept giving them rasberries. They were arguing over who had left the towel on the floor. “I just felt caught off guard because I thought we were in good shape for the open house,” the wife was saying passive aggressively, “So I freaked out and shoved it in your bottom drawer.” She made a clucking noise to the little boy, avoiding eye contact with her husband. “So, y’know … just so you know.” She grabbed the swing, pulled it up to her chin, locked eyes with the baby and said, “Ah, ah, ah … ah-choo!” and let the swing go, the baby giggling and kicking his little feet. 

 I didn’t feel so bad to be alone anymore. 

 Probably the best sex we ever had was by a swimming hole he wanted to show me. We had talked about it for a while, doing it outside, and I had been obsessed with 10,000 Maniacs that summer. And we had wildflower fever. We had to lay down where they grow… But the honeyed haze with which I now remember those 20 minutes seem impossible, like somebody else’s movie. I remember the sweat dripping off of him, the bees buzzing around us, how amazing it was to jump into the water after that. I was 41 but I could have been 14. I could not have felt any younger, more free. Then there was the time I wanted to go swimming in the city pool the next summer, when I was pregnant. I was so big and he had been moving in for months, the whole summer it seemed. It was taking forever, just a few boxes at a time, but each time a new load came in it was like my house’s pants felt tighter after a big turkey dinner. We worked all day without the air conditioner to save on the bill. It was dark and dank in the house and humid and bright outside. Come on, I said, it’s the weekend. Let’s take a break. I have to jump in the water. He said he’d be out shortly. I waited and waited, trying to bite my lip, to be patient, shifting my hips around on the stoop to ease my sciatica, but he didn’t come. Sorry, he finally said as he walked out onto the stoop, closing the front door behind him, but he didn’t mean it. We got in the car. He was silent and dark. I kept pointing out the items I’d brought to make it pleasant: towels and water bottles, snacks and sunscreen. I heard my voice go up and octave and I hated it. This is how I’d been with my ex-husband, trying to cheer him out of his moods. 

 When we pulled up to the pool, it sounded like a party in there with hip hop thumping like a sound cloud around. It was one of the few city pools with trees in the outer park, and it looked shady and inviting while the pool seemed blue and crowded and cool. I unbuckled my seat belt. “No fucking way,” he said. “What?” I was so close to relief. “I’m not going in there.” I felt ready to cry. 

I know what I should have done, of course. Had my therapist been the little angel on my shoulder, I would have looked at him calmly and said, suit yourself, I’m hot as fuck and I’ve given up my whole damn summer to help you move in, bent myself over backward to make you feel welcome and clear out all my stuff and my kids’ stuff you can have room for your own, and now I’m going in the fucking pool.

But of course, that’s not what happened. If it was, I wouldn’t still need therapy, would I? Nope. Not at all. Instead, I said, okay there’s another location on 4th and Washington, but it might be closed by the time we get there. He drove, slow as molasses, and parked and as I got out, I heard the lifeguard blow the final whistle of the day. Everyone got out and went to their towels. I got back in the car, choking back tears, and he said sorry but didn’t mean it for the second time that day.  

Elegy for Fashion

 It's not just the Pandemic. That's a big part of it, of course. You can't exactly get excited about wearing the same leggings and T-shirt ... again. Or putting your baby in something cute when she's only going to visit the living room. That alone makes me sad and hopeless.

But it's also the rest of the fashion world. It's like a Peter Paul and Mary song: Where have all the magazines gone, long time passing. It's not going into stores, not trying things on, not flipping through catalogues. The only catalogue that ever comes to my house anymore is L.L. Bean because I bought the kids slippers there a few years ago. Let me announce to the world, I have never bought or worn clothing from L.L. Bean and I never will (okay a pair of socks, but they were sooooooooo cozy!). But I find myself pawing through it as I sip my coffee because there is nothing else. Why oh why, Victoria's Secret, have you not sent me photos of impossibly thin women wearing ridiculous underwear? I won't buy it and certainly wouldn't wear it, but at least it wouldn't be so damn depressing as mom jeans and turtlenecks. Turtlenecks!

And listen all you hopeful, bright-eyed millenials, do NOT try to smooth this over by telling me A) 90's fashion is back (to that I say, Like gag me with a spoon!) or B) well, I just look at all these great fashion blogs on my phone. Instagram is not a magazine. Suddenly all these lovely mom friends of mine who used to post cute pics of their kids or amazing yoga poses are trying to be influencers. Please! I do not want to see you in athleisure. I do not want to know about what face cream you use. I really just want to see the dumb pictures of you and your kids at the beach. I really just want to see your attempts to capture a sunset. 

In the famous words of Carrie Bradshaw, fashion is my cardio. It is also my bedtime, bathroom, morning coffee, and coffee break reading. It is my subway read. It is what I do when toddlers are playing around my feet so I don't go insane with boredom but also don't get so engrossed in what I'm reading that I can't pay attention when they start to climb the stairs or stick forks into electric outlets. It is not the same on a phone - you don't get free perfume samples and you can't rip out pages for your recipe books or your "one day i'll find this on sale at Loehmann's folder.

I find myself jonesing for fashion these days like a sugar fiend, which is what I've become. I have gained 15 pounds in this pandemic, stripped of all cardio, not just the fashion kind. And wandering from room to room between the baby and toys and un-folded laundry and re-folded laundry and various Chromebooks and wires, trying to get organized and never really being able to get anything done and never needing to actually get anywhere, which might force me to actually get something done. 

It feels like, why bother cleaning my house? Why bother putting on earrings? In fact, why bother putting on pants? I used to be a shoe person. I - gasp! - wear shoes in my house and invite others to do the same. Also in the spirit of Carrie Bradshaw, shoes are part of the outfit, and I don't feel fully dressed without them. Slippers are not the same. I just feel so frumpy in slippers or flip flops, like my bra is hanging out, like I'm in a bathrobe or what my grandma used to wear - a housecoat. That's what it feels like these days, like my grandma at the end of her life, in shapeless house coats, never going anywhere, never feeling the need to wear a bra. But she was a woman in her 80's she deserved a break.  She wore a girdle for decades for gods sake! She stood on her feet taking orders in a bakery for decades. She got dressed up for holidays and dinner parties and early bird specials. She earned her housecoat. 

But as Woody Allen said, It's important to make a little effort once in a while. I am not 80. I am not done living. And for me, fashion is about living. It is hard to care about an extra 15 pounds when I'm not planning to put on a dress for a long time. I'll lose it then, I say in my head, though I fear I won't. I feel like my life is on hiatus because my wardrobe is. And along with it has gone all sense of self-care. I've stopped exercising, watching what I eat, even showering regularly. There were even a few scary days when I wondered if it were really necessary to brush my teeth. 

So how to come back from this? Is it COVID sensitive to do an emergency trip to Anthro? Or Lucky? I'll even try on the size I really am at the current moment (and stare longingly at the size 4's I know I truly am way down deep beneath). Or, you know, I could just stop buying carrot cake in a cup from Acme. Please - I need to care about something again. And I don't mean spirituality or my fellow man. I mean skinny jeans and ponchos. HELP fashion gods! Help!

A Fran Leibowitz Life

 I felt the need to write today and decided to do it as a blog post. I vaguely remembered that I had a blog out there once upon a time, but I was surprised to log in and find that there were so many posts and that they actually went until quite recently. I must have started this thing when I was pregnant with my oldest, who is now almost 14!!! Reading these old posts was like being a time traveler. I thought I might be reading someone else's thoughts, but indeed, I do remember some of these events and definitely know my own writing style, so I guess it was me all along.

Me. Who is that person and aren't we supposed to have that figured out by the time we are 20? 25 at the latest? I think I might still be discovering this person.

Don't get me wrong - I have a very solid sense of self, but we are not all Fran Leibowitz, and some of us have self-doubt. Especially those of us who were bullied as kids, were pressured into pleasing our fathers all the time, and who generally felt out of place our whole lives. As an adult, I embraced that outsider quality and used it to find friends and a community of like-minded people. After my divorce, I felt even more sure of myself. I loved meeting new people and saying, here I am. This is who I am, fuck-ups and all. Take the whole package or feel free to shop elsewhere.

But I have always been so SO susceptible to other people's views of me: My ex-husband, my son, my sister. I seem to fight with EVERYONE. All the time. So much drama. I am in therapy with literally every member of my past and present family. Except Eli, who probably needs it, too.

So? If I have so many problems with so many people, who is the problem? Who is at the center of all of these problems? Me. 

My son keeps telling me I do inappropriate things as a parent and I make poor parenting decisions. My ex-husband seems to agree and has hired a lawyer to tell me so. If I'm not fighting with my dad, it's my sister or my sister-in-law, or my mother. My daughter tells me every day she hates me. My boyfriend seems to generally like me, but I think I make him mad plenty. 

I just want to run away for a long time to someplace warm. Help me Fran Leibowitz, help me!

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

So Cute I Just Had to Share!

Ok, I know, how corny, but come on ... I'm his mother!!!

PS See if you can hold out for the jumping. I heart the jumping.

Feminist Star Wars

Of course a movie with a woman and a black man as its heroes would be a feminist film, but the thrust of the message doesn't come from casting the protagonists alone. It's not just that we have a powerfully progressive duo at the center of the film, but more to the point that they are also the icons of a new generation of progressivism. They are heroes not just of the film, but of the current era of inclusion that we'd like to imagine we're approaching.

Finn and Rey are, of course, fighting the bad guys in the movie, and it should be eminently clear who the bad guys are modeled after, the Nazis, of course. Largely white men, with the occasional chic but cold frau who uses sex to help meet the Empire's needs or violence to quell insurgencies, the army of the Dark Side literally Sieg Heil's at one point to a commander wearing an insignia that looks suspiciously like a swastika. In a call out to both slavery and the practices of African warlords who strong arm child armies, Finn explains that he was taken from his family at a very young age and trained from his earliest memories as a loyal killing machine. In many ways, Finn is the escaped slave crossing the Mason Dixon Line to fight for the Union, or even a Lost Boy.

Of course, the opposite of the organization Americans most closely associate with pure evil is the Rainbow Coalition of genders, races, languages, and even species. Princess Leia leads the Rebel Forces with grit, though we have seen the Star Wars franchise give wise and powerful roles to female characters in the past and from its inception the men around the hologram planning table (and they are still, with the exception of Leia, still all men) have hailed from the seeming four corners of the Galaxy, but now we have female fighter pilots and pilots of color (as well as pilots of creature :), though it would have been nice to have had at least one black woman in a named part. How telling this is at a time when the U.S. military has just agreed to allow women into combat roles. The Rebel Army is, of course, our idealized view of American society, a mixture of immigrant peoples, perhaps more rag tag at first but emerging as a strong fighting force for good. The ideal itself is a blending of the values around freedom and bravery in the face of evil  that characterized the Greatest Generation and the Millenial values of race and gender equality.

So it makes a lot of sense that while Finn is the one who kickstarts the action, the climax and denoument belong to Rey. As a black man, Finn must prove himself to be gentle (but strong and brave - he is, after all, still a man), smart, and good from the gut. This he does from his very first act, and we accept it immediately, as do all the characters. But Rey has more to prove, and like all strong women, must fight even her allies to make them see her fortitude, her physicality, and her mental ingenuity. In the end, it is her fight against the Dark Side because she is the least likely, though in the days of Catness and the Frozen duo, it is also true that we are living in an age in which the lady is likely to save not just herself, but the whole kingdom.

If superheroes are our modern mythology, and if Star Wars could be considered a very human superhero franchise, then both the movie and its popularity say a lot about our current cultural moment, who we are, who we were, and who we are likely to become. While it was once a big deal fro a tough talking Leia to even hold a gun the first time her two rolled buns appeared on screen, it feels natural today to have her leading the Rebellion. She didn't even get a medal the first time around, but in The Force Awakens, Rey wins the ultimate prize.

I need to write about being a Jew on Christmas. It is hard. It was hard for me as a kid and now it is hard for my children. I don't know if it is less hard for Indian Hindus or Chinese Taoists, but I know that one of the reasons it is hard for me is because of the specific history of antisemitism, both globally and in the United States. And when I say history, I mean historically open, but not gone.

I teach first year writing in college and we mostly focus on cultural studies type topics to introduce the students to the basics of argumentation, so we often touch on the triange of race, class, and gender. So often I get papers that say, "when there was racism" or "when there was a women's movement" and I'm like, wait, is it over, did I miss the bulletin? All of this hatred seething under the surface, and we are so unwilling to acknowledge it openly. I feel it when I walk past the cigar store on my corner, the old boys hangin' out, putting women in their place, wolf calling and discussing titties over their continuous poker game. I hear it when my liberal friends talk about sending their kids to a "good" urban school, which they might characterize as having enough kids with educated parents to tip the scales, but which I hear as "enough white kids." And let me fess up now, I send my kids to one of those schools. So, it didn't take Ferguson to spill the beans on some big secret, though it sure broke the seal on this pretense that we're somehow living in a post-racist society. The conversation on sexism will be harder to explode, since cops aren't actively attacking women, but enough of us have gained all different kinds of power that at least we are slowly, steadily taking back the "f" word (feminism).

But what of anti-semitism? I mean, is anyone talking about it? It seems like Jews my age, who should be the prime movers and shakers on the issue as we move into positions of power and prestige in the workplace and in our communities and into the role of parents at home, have given up to make indie films and run organic farms on former urban dump sites. Do we truly feel so comfortable? This isn't France, of course. Not only will no one spit on you for wearing a yarmulke, but I actually saw a man walking through my South Philly neighborhood wearing one the other day - I swear! I had to look twice to make sure I wasn't losing my mind that I think I made him uncomfortable. I must have looked I swallowed fish. And it's not like I could announce - hey, it's okay, I'm Jewish, too. I'm the token Hannukah mom at all my kids's schools.

But that discomfort, I feel it, too. Jews aren't like people of color. We don't walk around with a flashing sign on our heads that says, "I'm different from you. I am of a reviled people." Except, I guess, if you're wearing a yarmulke in South Philly. And the hatred agains Jews is so different than the hatred agains blacks. We are stereotyped as rich and stingy, rather than poor and out buying beer with our welfare checks. If we have a lot of children, people assume we're very religious, not ignorant of birth control. If we ascend to positions of prominence, it is assumed we got their because of our daddies or the secret Jewish media/banking/doctor/lawyer network, not because we worked hard or used our keppes.

Planet Money, one of my favorite podcasts, did a story about the history of Iceland, focusing on the poverty and cold that kept Icelanders indoors for a thousand years of winters during which time the only thing they had to do was read and write Sagas. This, the reporter felt, this culture of reading and writing, has made Iceland very successful in an age when education, intellect, and written communication has become valuable. Icelanders publish more books each year than many other, much larger countries. And I thought about how no one has ever researched Jewish culture to come up with such a reasonable, anthropological explanation about how "the people of the book" might generation after generation keep landing in journalism, film, and English faculty meetings. Or at least I've never heard it put so plainly, or even positively where Jews are concerned. It is a truism that Judaism is both a culture and a religion. And guess what, intellectualism, critical thinking, textuality, logic and argumentation are prized in both. I mean, is it really a surprise? And does it have to be negative? Here's the big conspiracy everyone: it's nurture, not nature.

When we moved into our first South Philly home, it was just a few days before Rosh HaShana. As we met our neighbors, who are very nice, very warm people who we grew to like very much, we explained to them that we would move our things into the house and then go to my parents for a few days to celebrate the holiday, and return to start putting the house in order after that. The continuous answer we got was, Oh you're Jewish. Oh, that's okay, that's okay," almost always delivered with their hands up in a kind of "do not kill my baby to use his blood in your Matzoh" kind of way as they backed slowly away. We joked that we knew it was okay and that we were fine with it, but it stung. After all, when we bought the house, the man selling it to us told us how releived he was we weren't black since his mother and aunt still lived on the block. Other neighbors told us it was a "good block" because they didn't have any black residents and "not even any Chinese!" So, despite the fact that I do believe they are good people, this was not the most enlightened crowd. Or maybe they were just more up front about things that the more PC crowd we usually run with. And I think our living there - being good neighbors, being down to earth, bringing food when someone died, bringing our kids to play on the stoop with their kids- I think that made a difference. Although I think the biggest revelation was when our wonderful neighbors Ray and Ricardo bought a house next door to us and presented the neighbors with the first openly gay couple. Ricardo, as his name might suggest, is from a wealthy family in Venezuala, has an MBA and impeccable taste. When swine flu was wreaking havoc in Mexico, he got a big kick out of all the neighbors being concerned for his family, especially when he had to explain that Venezuala was actually an entirely different country than Mexico.

At no time is our neighborhood more alive than during Christmas season. The lights on 13th Street are amazing and Christmas Eve is full of our Italian neighbors cooking up the traditional Italian feast of seven fishes - which I have always longed to be invited to. I actually love Christmas time, or many things about it. I take my kids to see the light show at Macy's and visit the Dickens Village upstairs. The Morris Arboretum has an adorable holiday railroad and I really enjoy some of the more traditional music and hymns. And, of course, I love going to my husband's family's parties as well as friends' parties. I am happy for them to celebrate. The best part is that when we go to one of Larry's sister's houses to enjoy the holiday with them, I feel none of the stress that so many of my friends feel and none of the stress I usually feel during Jewish holidays. Although, I think the stress for people celebrating Christmas must be so much more intense because there is an entire world of media building up your expectations whereas you never really get car commercials pressuring you to have an amazing Yom Kippur!

And somewhere in that overwhelm is the point I'm trying to make - Christmas is the time at which I feel most alienated from American culture and from non-Jewish friends. It is also the time when antisemetism is at its most obvious and most present. People who are able to keep it in check usually, are simply so appalled that anyone might not celebrate Christmas. It seems a slap in the face to them, I guess, a rejection of this value. That's almost what it is. It's as if as Christ has fallen out of Christmas, to be replaced by Tickle Me Elmos and ugly jewelry, Christmas has taken on it's own value. Friends who are lapsed Catholics (you rarely meet a lapsed Lutheran) or "nothing" will talk at length about the "values" of Christmas, which seem from the outside to be roughly about appreciating your family and togetherness, as well as something about enjoying the magic of childhood. All of which is very nice, but it certainly doesn't mean that you can't value those things without celebrating Christmas. I also get comments from friends who ask me to make sure my kids don't tell their kids that Santa isn't real, as if I've gone around trying to get my kids to ruin Christmas for them. Yes, some of this comes from inside - my own feeling of being left out - but some of it is about the ways in which the dominant society is so blind to difference and to their own dominance as to make all other groups invisible. Just as we are invisible when we walk down the street without yarmulkes, so are we invisible at Christmas. And because Christmas itself is overwhelming, I think we are invisible-er. And dare we announce ourselves, via yarmulke or suggesting somehow that we don't celebrate Christmas and I'd actually rather you didn't send my kid home from public school with an ornament that reads "Santa's Little Helper", when we make ourselves visible, this becomes offensive, and the latent antisemitism emerges. People are offended when you don't want to take their ornaments.

James Carroll just wrote a very interesting book about the antisemitism on which Christian culture is based. He reminds us that it is only a decade since the Vatican announced its reversal on the deeply held belief that Jews are Christ killers. I don't feel like I walk around in a world in which people reflexively think "Christ killer" when they learn of my heritage. We are many degrees removed from France. But it's there, as Carroll points out in his book. It's underlying our society and it's there. I don't think we will get a Ferguson - I certainly hope it wouldn't come to such violence. I think perhaps, though, we get an annual way into the conversation through Christmas.

Modernity and Fear

I'm doing a unit with my students on modernity, a nebulous term that I am using as a waiy to bring together gloabalism/big business, revolution, and information. I am finding it really interesting and I think my students are excited about exploring this new topic with me. But it's a little slecary - for them as well as for me. I'm asking them to go from these very structured assignments to a very free fall paper where they have to bring together all of these topics and connect them in some crazy new way. Knowing this would be very different for them, I've given them a lot of small parts to build up to the big paper, but these are also hard and scary for them, and I am wondering if I've given them too advanced a challenge here. But then when I have a chance to talk to them about what they think, they sound releived to be free enough to go out and make the connections on their own. They seem excited to be let off the leash a bit. I am excited to see what they will come back with, but really - I feel a bit in a free fall as well. What exactly are they supposed to DO in the paper? Well, I guess I'll find out.

This has lead to a lot of interesting lessons from and for me. I need to model a bit of the making connections, so I am doing that by drawing the connections across some of the readings and also by introducing current news that relate to some of the readings and showing the connections there. Today, I taught what might be a really crazy lesson. I think it worked out really well in my second class, and it lead to some really interesting discussion there. Also, because they actually read the assigned readings (as opposed to my earlier class, who definitely did not), they got really deep into the discussion questions, which was nice. It was nice to see them get so excited about the questions and I could hear that they were leading to real conversations among the groups. We didn't have very much time to report back to the group, but that's ok.

But the thing is - and here's the fear part - I was being observed through this whole crazy experiment! The colleague observing me seems really great, but it's so it'ss o har to read someone's face when you're doing this really hard thing and they're writing down everything you're doing. I think that either he thought it was a really interesting lesson OR he thinks it was totally insane teaching. He did catch one factual error I made (and it made so much sense when he explained it!), so then I'm wondering what else did I do wrong, what else did I do wrong????!!?!?!?! and before long the fear (that I'm a fraud, not a very good teacher, not a very nice person, not very smart, more interested in showing off than in helping students make real connections, just like to listen to myself talk - kind of true) just takes over.

But I don't want it to. I want to stop getting in my own way, and I don't want to be too afraid to take risks. And it is totally possible I will decide that this is not the best assignment for them at this point in their writing lives. Or perhaps I will re-think the assignment and the unit entirely - that's certainly possible. But I know it will help these students along the path of critical thinking and reading and writing. And I know that it's not the end of the world if it's not perfect - I'm not going to lose my job for it. But that's such a scary thought, that I really want to just shut down. It's so hard to get things wrong. I think critique is really helpful and I don't profess to be a master teacher. I told the observer that I wanted to use this as a professional development opportunity, but really I am so scared he will say: that was insane teaching, you are a terrible teacher and we never should have hired you, that assignment is coo coo for cocopuffs and you need to get rid of it now, give them a new assignment or just expunge it from your portfolio or just give all the students in all of your classes As for just putting up with you for the semester). Then I hear my therapist telling me that I give away all my power and I shoot myself in the foot over and over for no good reason - or maybe there is a reason and the reason is fear.

It felt so good to start this crazy assignment and to be open to going where it takes me. Now it feels harder, not because I believe in it less or even because the students are befuddled (I'm truly ok with a little confusion and have faith that they will work through it) but because I'm worried about criticism. I just don't want to live in the shadow of judgement my whole life. How can I get to the point of accepting people's constructive criticism without feeling judged? How can I push myself to try daring things, even though, they may, in fact, be judged and quite harshly at times?

Yoga Opens You Up

I have been missing my grandmother so, so much. I look at her photo and I can feel her hand, the soft, wrinkled skin, the ridges of her thin fingernails, the hard circles of rings. I can picture the blue dot between the bow of her upper lip, the one slight snaggle-tooth, the pouf of her permanent. I can hear her laughing, saying my name when I came over to visit. I remember the warm place in her arms, breathing in her pefume, her terry cloth housecoat against my face. She always smelled fresh, she always made you take a grocery bag, she always had ORT cookies. On her dresser, she had a little Victorian chair that was a pincushion. She liked to sit in the easy chair in her room by the window, where the light was good for tweezing the hairs from her chin. She had a drawer full of photos, some from the old country. My grandfather had a drawer full of monkey post cards and fat lady cards.

I don't think my grandmother ever felt guilty. Not for working at the bakery when her children were little, not for quitting over the summer to take them to the bungalow colony, not for going out with her friends or her husband, not for drinking to the point of hangover or for dumping boyfriends or saying no or demanding what she needed and wanted. She said yes to life at every stage. Did she have have that survivor's guilt that my other grandfather has? Certainly, she grieved the losses of her family, but did she feel guilty for leaving them behind? Is that what pushed her to send her other surviving sister money in Argentina? Is that what pushed her to help my grandfather's family out whenever they needed it? I think she was more or less a happy person, despite the obvious dissappointments that come with long marriage, fallable children, and disappointing friendships. I thinkshe was so grateful to survive, to have had the great good fortune to be in America, working hard, falling in love, and raising a family with enough food, solid education, and tight community, that she was able to avoid or get past that kind of guilt. I think it made her a happier person and so much better able to give to others. I wish I could have her strength, her sense of self, her strong moral center.

I remember one time on winter break in Florida we walked through a tropical rainstorm to see a movie at the clubhouse, which was the center of the enormous complex where they were renting their apartment for the winter. My grandmother wore her plastic rain bonnet and my umbrella blew inside out. I have no idea what we saw - I think something about fighting racism in the south. But I remember how much fun that walk with her was. I can still hear her pushing me on the swing in my backyard, ticking off her nicknames for me: Lady Jane, Amelia Earhart, Lady Godiva, Sara Bernhardt. I remember her putting a propeller leaf on her nose. I remember her holding me standing on her lap and showing me the paintings on the wall, Pretty Picture. I remember her letting me go upside down on her lap, and then pulling me back up, Upsy-daisy, downsy-daisy. I remember watching the Golden Girls with her and eating brownies. I remember weekends of crawling into bed with them when it was still too early to wake up my parents, but we were allowed to wake our grandparents. It was the end of the 70's and there were many nicknacks made of painted rocks or with cutesy sayings, and my brother and I loved to touch them and let our grandparents explain what they were, or what they said, and why this was meant to be funny. I remember all the sweaters she made for me and her delicious chicken soup. Nothing was better and nothing will ever be the same without her.

The phone

Remember when you would curl the wire around your finger for hours? And you'd have to switch ears? And only if you were very lucky did you get one in your own room - otherwise you'd have to stretch the cord as far as it would go to get away from your mother in the kitchen. Remember that?

My first call from a friend came in the fifth grade from Sharon Felsenstein, who had blond hair with a blue ribbon worn as a headband and a deep voice. I must have had calls before but probably just to set up play dates or ask about homework. This was my first intentional, set up conversation. Perhaps I remember it so clearly because I ruined it. God- even in the fifth grade I was able to offend people out of friendships.

And in college, my grandmother would call every week. My mother never knew what to say on the phone, my dad was good but busy, so those calls from my grandmother sustained me through tough times. She would talk first and tell me what she and her friends were up to, mah Jong or canasta or someone died. And then my grandfather would get on and he'd tell me one of his monkey jokes, and then my grandmother - who would still be on the other extension- would tell him to get off because it was long distance. And I'd say, They deregulated, Grandma. There's no long distance any more! But she never listened. She'd tell him I didn't want to hear monkey jokes and he'd say, Ah, whaddayouknow?! And then the'd be off fighting and I'd hang up. God- I miss those phone calls.

Now all of my conversations have become two fingered typing flurries. And my kids will never have to learn to say "Hello, Mrs. Finkelstein, this is Dylan. May I please speak with Andrew?" And then wait patiently while Andrew is roused from his room or the basement or the backyard to come to the phone. Or perhaps to be told he is busy or is out, and could you please call back again later? Because of course they'll each have their own phones and their friends names will pop up like jelly beans and if they choose not to answer or text back, it'll be wordless, or at least soundless. No having your friends listen silently on the other extension to hear how the voice of someone who likes you likes you sounds, and glean potential from long silences or heavy breathing.

I find it all so sad. Sad for my kids, sad for me, sad for our culture of thumb and fore- fingered busy people, constantly connected, but always so thinly, loosely, surfacely. There's something so mediocre about it all. So unprivate, so general and banal and scary (someone can always go back and read your old texts). The diction is so staggeringly boring! I never have an interesting thought on text. I never have an epiphany. I never hold my idevice close and whisper things to Siri. But it's really good for making dinner plans.

I feel like lamenting this mediocre life, which is fine and honest and full of love and joy and hard work, too. It's fine. I make dinner. I make dinner plans. It's all fine. It's just not what I thought. It's many things I wanted: kids, career, friends, city living. It's just not what I thought when I was huddled on the landing of the front stairs, taupe cord stretched taut, my own hot breath hitting me in the face because my hand is cupped around the mouthpiece, my chapped lips grating against the little holes when my plans were so much bigger and so much smaller and so much mightier and more hopeful than dinner- that was only a thing my mother was cooking around the corner where the cradle of the phone waited patiently for its receiver, and I tried to hold off as long as possible from replacing it.

February Is Shortest Month For Good

Just a lazy 70's mellow afternoon. Jim Croce, Laura Nyro, Carole King on the new kitchen radio/ipod player larry set up in the kitchen. Kids playing, baby and husband napping. Freezing drizzle tapping at my windows, which are steaming up from the inside. Feeling pretty okay. cooking. drinking tea. Oh -- holy shit! Just burnt the hell out of a batch of popcorn. Okay- fewer points to tally for weight watchers.

Thanksgiving

Okay, the date has passed, but I am filled with the need to say so many thank yous. It goes like this:

I have always wanted to own a mason jar. Thank you for anticipating this heretofore hidden desire and filling it with (winter!) daisies. If only I could bring you such cheer now that you need it.

I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, but I wanted to thank you for a lovely party. Dylan had such a great time bouncing around like a goon. Best of luck in Chicago.

I know it was late. I know you were so tired after running around taking care of everyone all day; taking Poppa for prune juice, making Grandma go to the mah-jong game despite her depression, cleaning up after the sick dog. And then taking us to see Shalom Sesame. It was so cold outside and I was hyperventilating, I was so upset. Thank you for bundling up and going out to your car to see if my phone was lost in your backseat. Thank you for being so nice when I called minutes later to tell you I'd found it upstairs. I know you need my ear, and I wish I could give it to you more.

Thank you for making me laugh every day. Today it was blue icing all over your hands and then hiding under the table when I tried to make you wash them. Thank you for telling me you had a secret and whispering it my ear, "I love you." I love you, too.

Thank you for calling me short and cute. It made me smile all day long.

Thank you for telling me again and again that I could always talk to you. Thank you for meaning it.

Circled

So, we're in therapy, and I shake my head yes, but I really mean I have no idea what you are talking about. I come home from a 12 hour day and the kitchen is a mess crawling with food and my husband says I think we have roaches and the therapist says you shouldn't be such a clean freak. It makes me want to take a nap.

Ok, I get it- that I should work on myself before others, that I have a sickness, too. Actually, it has a name: generalized anxiety disorder. I know that this is a term therapists give to relatively sane people so that they can charge their insurance for their sessions. I'm not a total idiot (though I could possibly be convinced that I am), but I hold onto this diagnosis like a rare jewel, shining from my cupped palm. Aha! So there's an explanation (besides my apparent allergy to dairy) for why my hands bleed into the dishes and the keyboard, stigmata-like. And the answer is not that I'm a martyr.

They say other people can't make you feel anything. Only you can make yourself feel and you can decide to feel whatever emotion you want. I feel very weak that I do not seem able to accomplish this task. I leave the therapy session and I am more frustrated than when I walked in, because now I feel like I have not only to actually do everything at home, but I also have to pretend that I'm not so that I'm not called a workaholic and so that my mind can be empty. I try it for a few days: don't make my lunch, let the dishes sit in the sink, do not fold the laundry, leave the toys where they fall, walk on floors gritty from my husband's construction projects. It feels fine mentally to not do stuff - I read, I make a household budget (not not doing something I realize, but something I've wanted to do for a long time), tell my husband he has to deal with the bills this month and the math that lends itself to negative numbers. But it feels a lot less okay when I come down in the morning to the assault of things everywhere in the kitchen, a scurry of little legs and antennae across my counters. It feels less okay when the baby's pacifier is covered in grit. When the numbers still don't add up and we have to go into savings ... again.

The therapist says my husband doesn't clean his pile of clothes because he doesn't give a shit. This is fundamentally true. I am not an idiot (though I am beginning to feel like one), but my question is why doens't he give a shit? Doesn't he want to live in a clean house (I do)? Doesn't he want our bills to be paid (I do)? Doesn't he care that it upsets me (I do)? Isn't it selfish to not do something just because you don't care, when the other person obviously cares so much? Isn't it caring to do something for another person because they will like it, to put your own desires on hold long enough to get your socks into the laundry basket? Why is it so wrong to ask for a little help?

I know I'm not thinking about this right, that somehow, I am supposed to do more for myself and less for my family/house/kids/husband and that magically this other stuff will get done, and then I'm supposed to be all zen and blase about it, but I don't get how this comes to pass. It seems like if I just sit there filing my nails, I'll be surrounded. I feel like I'm drowning and I don't know how to get it all done or allow it to not get done. Is that sick?

Copacetic

Listening to 90's grunge and power pop and screamy angry riot grrrrrl music that makes me melancholy now instead of happy. I feel wrung out.

My best friend is getting a divorce. Or maybe getting a divorce. Does it matter? It just feels all so complicated and messy and grim. I know there was never a time when it was all simple, when we were all just happy. I know that. I used to be angry at my parents and now I'm angry at my husband and I wonder how my parents ever put up with me. Is it any different now? I am clearly angry at whoever has control over my life. But what's the alternative? Life on my own (with two kids) - alone, lonely? That's why my friend's not ready to sign the papers yet, either. It's fucking scary and who knows if we'll ever be happy.

But there's something so soothing about those crashing guitars, all the sounds mashing together, nothing sharp except the baseline, but loud and pulsing. It's all that feeling. We feel dead now. there's so little left of us, all us old married ladies with our bitty babies. Our souls are thin. I am happy underneath it all, but there's so much sadness and anger and frustration and resignation piled on top that I sometimes don't recognize myself in the mirror. Whose tired eyes are those anyway, the ones with the crow's feet?

And yet, isn't there something beautiful about us, us thin women pushing to maintain careers, community, motherhood, love, friends, family, bodies, and spirits? We used to be the super-moms, but I walk around and see these other moms pushing their designer strollers or wearing their babies on top of their hipster sweaters and they look more like the babysitter than the mother. We've got our jeans rolled up and we're still drinking vodka tonics and accomplishing crow pose and that's got to count for something.

We thought we were pure and indie and destined for lives of art. But it all comes out as poop in the end.

Amreeka for Peace

I just saw a movie about Palestinian immigrants to the U.S. that showed the difficulties of life for new immigrants in general as well as Arabs in the U.S. and in Israel. It was such a human movie. I don't know if I agree with the political stance of the filmmaker on the Israel-Palestinian conflict - or the implied stance, anyway. I am not sure I totally disagree, either. But I do know that it showed Arabs as people. That's almost a ridiculous thing to say. Of course Arabs are people. But we tend to forget. I hear it from my family all the time. They will tell you they're not racist, but they are. They will tell you Arabs get what they deserve (as if all Arabs are one) for what they do to the Jews and to Israel.

I feel like my family is so progressive on so many issues. I would go as far as to call my dad a feminist. It is really painful that they have singled out this one group of people to hate irrationally. I guess hate is irrational. They will say I don't understand, that I am not close enough to the Holocaust to get it. That I haven't spent enough time in Israel. That I am a heretic. Even though the folks on the left probably consider me pretty far right on this issue.

In the movie, the grandmother sings a beautiful Arabic song at the going away party for the soon-to-be immigrants. It is heartbreaking to me how close I feel to that music. It is the melody and rhythm I grew up with - both Hebrew and Arabic. I realize that music appreciation is not a political solution, but it seems to bear witness to the fact that we are cousins, despite thousands of years living in Europe, just as African-Americans are cousins in some way to the cultures of West Africa. How can we kill each other, if we are cousins?

I do not know the right policy answers, but I do know that people need to live free and unafraid and no one in a place that is dear to my heart personally and spiritually is living that life right now. I do not know how to achieve it, but I know in my heart that we have to stop hating each other, we have to want peace. Love is not rational either, but it is better than hate.

I guess I'll get a lot of flack for this, but that's just something I'll have to accept.

Poisons

We don't know what dreams are or where they come from, but we know what they do. Sometimes the stories they create stay with us all day and we can't shake them. Sometimes nice dreams leave us feeling unsettled and some times bad dreams release all the poison you didn't know was stored up inside of you, like when you wake up and find out that the dream was not true and you are flooded with relief with your head so soft and immobile in the down pillow that smells of detergent and your shampoo and your husband's spicy deodorant and your toes are warm and not moving and the sun comes for the first time in days through the heavy wooden blinds and they neighbors are fighting out in the street again but you are not and you reach over and say, "I'm so glad it was just a dream," and your husband gives you his butcher hand and you roll your cheek onto it warm and calloused and you hear the baby in the other room, "Ah -ga-da-ba," and your little boy is still snoring away, and the dream sticks to you in shreds of color, but the rest leaks out like a fierce sweat from a high fever that soaks the mattress, but kills the illness, even though it leaves you exhausted. Like a good fight. Or a good fuck.