Week 7 Prompts

 Layers of Me

I am the sum of many people. Some through biological traits I inherited, as part of the family gene pool, without my consent. Other traits I might have adopted voluntarily by watching, assessing, evaluating and deeming useful.

Some of my fathers’ aloofness and tendency to ‘fall’ into his world, appearing totally detached and ‘out of it’.

My mothers’ judgmental predisposition that I despised as a child, and young adult, but lately detect in my own behavior.

And maybe my fathers’ intellectual tendencies that manifested themselves in a clear preference of books (over people) and my mothers’ practical nature and deep rooted restlessness and love of nature. Perhaps it’s my aunts’ clear vision of the future and social interest in the greater good, or maybe my other aunt tendencies towards writing, acting and utilizing the power of words.

***

I am thinking about that moment, maybe just a fraction of a second, when for the first time I looked at the mirror and saw my mothers' face in it. My heart skipped a beat as I froze, rubbed my eyes and looked again but by then she was gone.

 It happened again, it keeps happening more and more frequently as the years go by.

 I am my mothers' child, so why won't I look like her. I am my fathers' daughter so it should come as no big surprise to me when at times I catch myself saying things that he used to say, or finding that there is more of him in me than I ever imagined.

 Nature plays some fascinating tricks on us and I try to find the hidden humor in this peculiar phenomenon. As I grow older the same family traits I used to try and shake off condemning them out of place, old, not up with the times or plain unwanted are rapidly catching up with me.

***

At times I wonder if the different careers I had somehow rubbed on me to the point that they become an integral part of my character. 

Being a teacher for many years, do I sound like one (like my husband in more than one occasion pointed out) the tinge of authorization in the back of my voice blending in with a mixture of encouragement and sympathy to create the familiar tune.

Or being a motel owner in the past few years, did I too adopt that sing-song kind of voice, sweetness that masks cold business like calculations. Did the selling and persuasive nature of the industry entrusted me to act differently then I normally do?

***

I will never be that person who can walk into a room, any room, no matter how many people are present or how unknown there are to him and immediately feel at home.

 I will never be that person who can approach any stranger and within seconds carry a vibrant conversation, as it they have known each other for years.

 The one who is unfazed by other people criticism and just shake it off and keep on going.

 The one who can think on his feet and always fabricate a quick comeback.

The one who comes up every other day with a new idea or a brilliant invention.

The one who comes up every other day with a new idea or a brilliant invention and even follows up on it and make a fortune.

 The sportsman who get energized by setting new more strenuous goals for himself.

 The fix-it all who can attack, without stress, any glitch in the electricity, pluming, roofing, you name it and he knows what to do.

The do-gooder who is so totally invested in his chosen project sand nothing will deter him.

Or the loner, the traveler, the lone hunter, the lone photographer, the lone long-distance walker, I am none of those either.

But I’ve been all of them at some point of my life.

Week 7 Prompts/ 32

32. Who's the last person you'd want to remember? (This has at least two possible meanings--think about it!)

Settling scores

“The entire world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is not to be afraid at all” Rabbi Nachman of Breslev

I run their faces one by one like in a lineup. Make them stand in a straight line facing me and then in profile, maybe facing the wall. Yes, at the time they all seemed like the ultimate villains but not anymore.

I dive into my memory to recheck the facts, shake the dust off and examine the evidence. Run the old scripts of “I said…She/he said,” over and over. From across the span of time I strive to reconstruct the hurt feelings, the anger, and the sense of betrayal. I close my eyes and try to concentrate.

Time like a miracle worker softens the angles; and portrays new ones, not seen, being blinded with rage. What doesn’t kill you make you stronger is the only thing that stands up, unchallenged, by the test of the passing years.

 I could easily pull out all those that at that split second I was ready to kill, so my face will be the last thing they’ll ever remember, even if they did not wish for it. But these moments are too far gone.

Week 7 Prompts/ 30 &31

30. Take a look at a photo of a person. What do you see?

31. Who's the first person you remember?

The young woman in the photo is my grandmother on my mothers’ side.  When I look at her picture, one of only few I have of my mothers’ side of the family, I am amazed and owed thinking that the picture was taken almost a hundred years ago.

I like the picture even though it does not match up to any of my memories of this woman who died when I was three years old, or maybe precisely because of that.

This elegant women, dressed according to the time latest fashion is beautiful and daring. The dark, rather formal overcoat is softened by the white lacy lapel, and it is at the same time somber but also festive. I like the white gloves and the hat, dress items not  often seen nowadays.    

But best of all I like this woman’s stature and bright eyes. She appears soft and confident at the same time.

She, beside my parents (and me) is the first person I remember. It’s a strange kind of memory based on my first three years of life. It is a limited collection of very few visuals, if any, combined with a vague notion of a person who was there and gone. More than anything it's a memory of a void sprinkled with some stories I heard later on but never completely manage to fill it up. It is also my first memory of death.

While a picture occupies only a tiny fraction of time  it can tell a whole story. If I had to choose I’ll pick this one of hers, in her late twenties, right after she left her hometown and married a man from another town. They settled in the big town, Vienna, and open their own business. I know from the stories that she was the mind behind the business operation.

I like this story more than the ones coming next of her struggle to survive during the war, the death of her husband (my grandfather) and her last years in Israel living, with no space of her own, in our tiny apartment. An old heavyset woman with a head cover, but that’s already from another picture.

    

Week 7 Prompts

34. Check out Carolyn See Locator of Lost Persons --those short, very evocative, mysterious, and poetic grafts. Try a few of those!

My best friend Chava

We met in the elementary school; you were new but immediately became the class unchallenged queen. I felt honored to be your chosen friend. You resembled everything foreign and exciting coming from the USA.  When you left, at the end of the 6^th grade you promised to write but you never did. My mother told me, that she met you, years later, in Jerusalem, you were married and fat. It made me happy…

My next best friend, Naomi

I loved your dedication to whatever the cause was at the time. You influenced me to push myself and examine my limits and together we made a great team. With the years our worlds grew apart and you were left behind in the old neighborhood. I always wondered why you never got married, was it because of your first love to you know whom, who ended up married your other best friend?

Ariela (not me)

I hated you even more because we have the same name. It was really spiteful of you to say what you said that night before we finished officer course. But you were my superior, at the time, and I couldn’t say what I felt. I saw you years later in the street, I was an officer and you were a civilian. I could say anything I wanted but it felt pointless.

Shlomo,

I can’t believe, till this day that it worked so well. A religious man and a women officer, but it did for a whole year. Your dry sense of humor illuminated our strange office makeup, a natural ground that enabled us to meet as equals. I know you got married but that was the last I heard. You must have a big family by now, I wonder if you ever think of that year.

Penina (I don’t even remember your last name)

Were you really part of the Jerusalem’s aristocracy click, or just adopted into it. I am not sure. You certainly did behave like one at the time. Later we became good friends. I was there when you got married and when shortly after you got divorced. Then we lost track of each other. Did you remarry do you have kids? Where are you?

Albert, 

You taught me how to shoplift halva (we both loved this heavenly sticky stuff) in that small Rinky-Dink supermarket in Arad. It was your idea to open it and eat it on the spot. It shattered a bit of my goody two-shoes, Jerusalem kid behavior.  Haven’t heard from you in years till I ‘googgled’ you and there you were, a gay photography teacher and artist, using his own life as the raw material. I still smile every time I eat halva.

John (can’t remember your last name either)

You were a great teacher. You taught me so much about counseling but mostly how being able to joke about someone’s origin is a good base for friendship. It was my first close encounter with American humor and the notion that there should be no sacred cows. I learned from you how not to take myself too seriously.  Also how not making a decision, when the time is not right, is actually a decision too. I have used what you said plenty of times in the years to come.

Daniella

You were my supervisor and mentor for many years. You were there for me in many difficult professional crossways but by the end it turned out that you did it all out of cold calculations and maintaining your lines of command.  When I crossed you, for the first time ever, you turned against me. It was the best thing you ever did for me. We both know who won. I wonder what you up to today.

Sarah

You are the best friend someone can have. We were work colleagues and personal friends for a long time. I admire your sense of humor. Always caressing, never stabbing, and forever lightening every situation, no matter how harsh.  I hardly ever saw you bitter or vindictive though you had many reasons to. You are probably as close to being one of the ‘Lamed Vavs’, as anyone I ever met. Luckily I know exactly where you are.

**********

*Lamed Vav

The Lamed Vav are two letters in the Hebrew alphabet. Numerically, they represent 36. Legends tell that in this world, there always live thirty-six men who are also called Tzadikim Nistarim, or the Hidden Just Men. They are usually poor, unknown, obscure, and no one guesses that they are the ones who bear all the sorrows and sins of the world. It is for their sake that God does not destroy the world even when sin overwhelms mankind.

When one of the Lamed Vav dies, another is immediately chosen to take his place. Often, the Tzadik Nistar does not even know he is chosen for the task. As long as the Lamed Vav continue to serve humanity and God in this fashion, the world will go on. But if at some point God will not be able to find someone just and good enough to replace a dying Tzadik, the world will end immediately.

Week 7. Character

To my father

One of my favorite stories about my father is the one about his plan, which went belly up, to open a print shop in Jerusalem. All the equipment was already shipped from Europe but found its rest in the bottom of the ocean. Without any means to revive the plan, he was forced to turn to a plan B and became a teacher.

This story was not very popular in my family and I only heard it after his death, sitting “Shivea” in his apartment in Jerusalem, from my aunt Eva. It did not match my family’s preferred versions of him as A. “Almost a rabbi”, in which my father as a rebel, decided in his last year, of the rabbinical school, to split and become a working man. He decided that the future lies in true workmanship and tried his hands in different professions to the utter disgust of his father (who was a rabbi) and hoped this was a last and passing juvenile phase.

 Or B, “The intellectual”, the promised student who in times when Jews where hardly allowed into the Universities managed to get his PhD in Philosophy from the university of Budapest.

 Or the best one, “the Hero”, the World War II hero, who joined a Zionist youth organization as his “calling”,  and saved hundreds of people (including most of his family) by supplying them with false identification papers and hiding places.

My father was not big on telling past stories. If it was left up to him none of this would ever make it my ears. He was always very quiet, somewhat subdued and the constant aura of aloofness, wrapped around him, made him appear as if all the daily tasks evaded him. He was satisfied with putting everything down in his diary, the one he kept since his early twenties.

I knew about the diary and heard the family stories how he kept it during the war, in an old leather bag he carried from place to place. He even managed to hold on to it while hiding from the German Gestapo. He kept the diary on the way to Israel, on the boat, when he and my mother took the illegal route cynically called “immigration B”.  Many times I wished that I could read it.

 After my mother death, few years prior, and our move to the U.S we did not speak much. Neither he, nor I, were good with long distance phone calls. Our contact for the last four years before his death, were weekly letters I sent him and an occasional card from my daughters. I was surprised when we returned to his apartment, from the funeral, to find the diaries. He left them in a neat pile, on a shelf in his room, as if to say “Here, you can have them now.”

My aunt Eva, and I, spent the whole week of the “Shivea” together. The tradition calls for the close family to spend seven days in the deceased home literally “sitting” while friends and relatives bring food and “sit” with them.  We sat in the apartment in Jerusalem. During the day people kept coming, some old friends of my parents, neighbors, and some of my friends. They sat with us for awhile and we talked about old times. I heard many stories, some for the first time, about the great things my father did. My aunt, who is my father youngest sister, added color to the stories with her great skill of storytelling. At night I read his diaries.

There were 15 notebooks. The older ones, from before and during the war, were not in Hebrew. I looked with frustration at his small and neat handwriting and wished I could read them. Later, I gave them to my aunt who deemed them illegible and told me a long story how no one, including my grandparents, could read my fathers’ handwriting. She said she tried but could not make sense out of what he wrote. And anyways, she added, these were just old and uninteresting stories.  There was nothing about the war, nothing about his involvement with the underground for which he was decorated.

  I read the notebooks written in Hebrew, already in Israel. I have to be honest; I was disappointed too with what he wrote. It is not every day that you are handed a key to someone else’s most cherished memories.  I wanted to know more about my father but most of all I was curious to see what he wrote about us, his family.

 I read them very quickly, night after night, searching for him but mostly for myself. Fifteen notebooks, almost seventy years of writings and I could put everything he wrote about me on no more than two or three pages. Realizing what a small fraction of his world I seem to have occupied left me stumped. He wrote about his work, work and more work. I remembered, vaguely, how my mother used to complain about his total obsession with his work. Work for him was his school, teachers and other kids.

When I opened the last notebook a pack of letters fell out.  I picked them up. These were all the letters I sent him since the day we left Israel. Every picture I sent was there, every card from the girls. I showed them to my aunt the next morning. She was not at all surprised. She told me how every Saturday he would come to her house for lunch and bring the letter he got that week, to share with her.  That was the highlight of his week, she told me, reading about you and his granddaughters.

Week 6 Theme: Place

My home town/trilogy

Heat

I took the bus to Arad from the central bus stop in Beer Sheva. The bus, an old style, green and white, Egged bus, had slightly torn seats and was full of Bedouin men with their traditional head covers, and women in black embroidered long gowns that on first look appeared, disregarding the layers of dust, almost fancy.

 We stopped every few minutes at what seemed completely random locations to let one or few of them off. I watched, completely fascinated how they stood still for a second or two and then turn their back to the bus and walked. The driver would close the bus doors and continue to drive only to stop again few minutes later. Turning my head back I could see their backs as they walked with determination straight into what appeared, to my untrained eyes, as nothing but total emptiness.

When we got to Arad, almost an hour later, I was the only passenger left. In those days, more than thirty years ago, the bus used to circle the whole town and let people off in several designated stops. Mine was in front of the police station on the main street.

It was barely noon and even though it was already the middle of September the sun was blazing, and everything I looked at appeared slightly blurred.  Beside a number of tired looking trees there was no other live thing in sight. The trees, bend over from years of standing up to the desert wind, threw a thin shade over few flowers that bravely hanged to life, sustaining themselves on the precious drops of water coming from thin water pipes encircling them. 

Across the street, a big sign with bold blue letters announced, The WUJS Institute. This was my destination. Behind the sign I could see a four story building, with the grace of an apartment building built in the fifties. Gray façade decorated by old style cluttered balconies with a variety of objects hanging to the rails. Bikes, day old laundry and an occasional drying flower box.

I rolled this entire scene in my head, time and time again, examining every detail carefully. I thought about these few minutes, trying to recapture the feeling, trying to shrink down everything that went through my head to one comprehensible sensation that eventually led to my decision to stay.

But all I can remember is the bus stop with barely any shade, the empty street that looked somewhat blurry under the quivering heat haze, the sparse, barely alive, vegetation and the quiet. It was quiet; I am sure, because I could hear the water dripping from the small openings in the drip irrigation. Drip…drip… the sound echoed in my head going around and around.

Home

It’s completely square, with a red brick facade in the front, and sand color stucco covering the rest of it. The flat roof, tarred, and painted white, against the heat, does not do much to alter the simple lines, broken only by the windows of the living room on the second floor.

These big bay windows that we installed just a year before we left are facing east. In the mornings the rising sun can be seen, through them, as it is making its way slowly across the desert stark landscape and lights it up with hundred shades of soft browns and hazy pinks. It always finds its way inside and lands on the floor.

The front yard is partially hidden by a low stone fence with few bare stumps at the bottom. They are the remnants of the tall hibiscus bushes that once towered over it and decorated it with their bright red flowers. A circular crushed granite path connects between the street on one side and the big open deck stretching from side to side. We built it ourselves few years after we moved in, in an attempt to soften the plain appearance of the front.

In the back just few feet separate the house from falling into the deep wadi underneath. Crowded with big black boulders that mount over a surface of sand stones and low dry looking thorns, it cuts between the house and a row of houses on the opposite rim. A narrow, almost unseen footpath meanders at the bottom. It is occasionally used by the Bedouin kids herding their weeping goats and every once in awhile a runaway camel.

A tall phone poll is wedged in the left corner next to the back entrance. It is bare from any wires to help connect it to the next one on the other side of the wadi but provides a perfect rest stop for an occasional owl at night, or an ear-piercing falcon.

I remember when we planted every one of the trees in the yard. The palm tree that was one of many we planted in our numerous moves and died shortly after we left, and the big Rosewood, in the front corner, that we placed there hoping for it to grow one day and shade the whole yard. We did not realize, then, that it was growing under the power lines. And so every year now, the tree needs to be trimmed, never allowed to achieve its full size. Almost like us when we lived here, I repress a fleeting thought.

.

There is a place

There is a place at the end of our street where the road ends and the desert begins; where when you’ll step off the road, within minutes only the echo of your footsteps can be heard and the distant weeping of the wind. For the first few steps you’ll still turn your head making  sure you can make it back to the safety of the road, but then the magic of the desert will take over, pulling you, luring you to go further and further.

There is a narrow trail, lined with small white stones and it is the only man made marker for miles. If you follow it; walking carefully so not to trip on the stones; it will take you to the edge. One more step forward and you will find yourself lying at the bottom of the steep ravine. So while steadying yourself against the fall and catching your breath your eyes will wonder as if they have a life of their own.

Brown on brown is the desert color pallet. From the dark deep browns to the very light ones that appear almost white. Bleached by the sun they shimmer and almost force you to close your eyes. Standing there squinting against the blinding sun you can see for miles on end how the soft round hills go on and on until they end abruptly at the sea edge. One brown hill follows another, and another, broken only by an occasional lonely tree.  Nothing to stop your eyes from resting on the patch of blue just below the horizon  the Dead Sea, and on its other side the almost ominous mountain range framing the valley. The Sharp cliffs turn deep red at the end of the day when the sun, as it is going down, strokes them with its last rays.

There is a place at the end of our street where the road ends and the desert begins. Two worlds meet briefly in that spot. It’s a touch and go. You can stay on the road and keep on going like most people will or you can stop, turn your back to the road and walk.

Place

My biggest issue was this piece that I replaced with the one called - Home- and still not sure about any of them.

My Arad home

From the street it looks at it always did, boring, just a square building with a flat roof.  It sits below the street level separated only by a low stone fence. Once there were tall hibiscus bushes along the fence, burning in the summer with bright red flowers, shading the grass on one side and giving the small yard a feel of privacy. They are gone now. Curved granite walkway connects the parking to the house and the red brick deck.  A small entrance way leads to the front door. I turn to look at the yard. It looks much smaller than I remember. Only few steps from the deck to the stone wall and in between a tall Rosewood, and a broken lawn swing.

 I remember when we planted the tree. We just moved in and the girls were very young. We got it in the town nursery and it fit in the trunk of our car, looking more like a big bare branch then a tree. We planted it in the corner of the yard hoping for it to grow one day and shade the whole yard which it did. We did not realize then that it was growing under the power lines. And so every year now, the tree needs to be trimmed, never allowed to achieve its full size. Almost like us when we lived here, I repress a fleeting thought.

The deck I recall was built by Chuck few years after we moved in. It replaced a much smaller granite one, much like the walkway. I wanted a big deck that will be shaded by a wooden pergola. The deck was supposed to change the boring square look of the front and give us a place to sit, with our friends, on the cool summer nights. The pergola never materialized it was too expensive. But the deck stretches from one side of the house to the other. I spent almost every summer evening sitting there, enjoying the relief from the hot days.

Before I turn to go in I look at the other corner of the yard where the palm tree used to be.  For years, where ever we lived, we always planted a palm tree but never stayed long enough to see it growing. This one was the one we hoped will grow and become a mature tall tree but it didn’t. I can’t remember the exact circumstances of its death. It happened after we left and other people were occupying the house.

I open the front door slowly; it’s a different door now, replaced few years ago by the current tenants. For a moment it seems like nothing had changed. As if the time stood still and this is still the same house we bought more than twenty years ago just before Keren was born.  We moved in in the winter and felt for the first time, since we came to the town, that we truly belong. But the moment is gone and I can see the unfamiliar furniture, the different color of the walls, the curtains on the big windows overlooking the desert.

A year before we left we decided to change the windows. It might have been an attempt to hold on to what we knew was no longer there. It was an unsuccessful effort on my side to prove that leaving is not the only way to create a change. Like everything else we do, we spent days discussing the right windows, the colors and who is going to install them. We finally went with big bay windows that we painted ourselves and Chuck added the recessed lighting. They are still beautiful. From where I stand, at the entrance, I can see the open wide space of rolling hills and the Dead Sea, just a hint of blue in the distance.  I remember how the rays of the rising sun find their way in, no matter what time of the year it is.

 Walking down the stairs leading to the bottom floor I can see all the bedrooms in one glimpse. Originally there were three bedrooms, the third one leading to the back yard. We added the fourth bedroom years later by converting the bomb shelter, into a room for Keren. We put a lot of effort into it but she very rarely slept there. Now it is a storage room. We stored all our personal belongings there when we rented the house. Every now and then, Keren, even now, will stop what she is doing, look at me and say. “Do you remember...”And then “That doll I liked so much is she still there?”

I do remember. I remember a house full of life. I remember the girls and their friends and in the midst always few cats and at least one dog;  the ringing of phone calls, knocks on the front door, kids coming in and out and the unavoidable trivial fights. I remember when we moved our bedroom upstairs and left the bottom floor entirely to them.  I used to lie awake for hours trying to hear them breath, and later trying to hear the door opens when they came in late at night. I remember going down in the mornings and finding kids that were not there when we went to bed.  “Oh, it is so and so who came through the window in the middle of the night,” would be the answer to my inquiry.

I remember living in a small town where you know everybody and everyone recognizes you. Where you are never really alone. People nod and wave when they pass by your house and see you sitting on the deck. People stop and ask you questions when you walk down the street; in the store, the clinic even the swimming pool, you know that you are always seen.  We used to like it at the beginning. But as the years went on, what we used to perceive as closeness and warmth became meddling; seeing the same people and hearing the same talk became tedious. We became restless and then we left.

I go slowly, up the curving stairs and a minute before I step out I find myself glancing back and listening, holding my breath and waiting, everything is so still so I shut the door gently and walk away.