Holding all the Truths at the Same Time

It's been two years since November 27, 2021--the day my Dad took his last breaths and left us. My world changed that day.

And it's been almost two months since October 7, 2023--the day so many took their last breaths and left us.

I feel...numb? I miss my Dad all the time. I miss him like crazy. I missed him today when I went to Costco, and I even missed him when the raspberries fell out of the car, spilling all over the floor, and I know he would have been as upset as I was. I miss him when I eat soup. He loved soup. And when I try to figure out what to do with our lives, knowing his advice would have been both wise and kind. I miss him when I go for walks, and when I read an interesting article. I miss him when my kids are hilarious and he would have smiled so big. He was my Dad. And also, my buddy. I liked him as much as I adored him. I loved being with him, talking, not talking, doing, or not doing anything. I just loved him, so, so much.

He was also 73--not nearly old enough, and not tragically young. And we knew he was dying. And we got to say goodbye. And, and, and. So many blessings in his end. So much love. So many blessings others were denied when they were murdered.

I feel like I am juggling fire. My soul is screaming WHERE ARE THE REDHEADED BABIES WHO LOOK LIKE MY BABIES and at the same time I MISS MY DAD and it's hard to swallow both of those thoughts. 

It doesn't hurt anyone for me to miss my Dad, but some part of me feels guilt for it. Because our babies are missing, and there are nearly 200 hostages and as he always used to say "there but for fortune..." my babies and I would have been among them. 

I know how lucky I am. And I know how sad I am. And today, those are the truths I guess I am trying to hold.

Somehow, a Month

It's been a month since October 7th. One month, and 100 years. So many people have asked how we are. I'm so grateful. 

Here's the truth: we are so very, very lucky, and so very, very Not Ok.

It feels absurd to complain. 

We are incredibly lucky--that's all it is, to be sure. Luck. 

Our kids are alive, and healthy, and don't know what happened a month ago, beyond "there were rockets and there is a war". We had a safe place to go, and a loving school for them to attend. Their camp counselors are the same ones who greet them after school each day. My son raked leaves with his uncle this weekend. When my daughter got a double ear infection, we got the care she needed. We are lucky. Beyond lucky, really.

And we are Not Ok. 

If it weren't for those wonderful children, we would never have left our home. I've never in my life felt so Israeli, so foreign, in the city where I, my Dad, my grandparents, even my great-grandparents were born. The world goes on. I take my kids to trick-or-treat, all too aware that monsters are real, skeletons, far too present.

I cannot listen to the news in English, or even my favorite music in English. My heart beats in Hebrew. I change diapers, shuttle my kids around, make dinner again and again, but my mind is elsewhere. 

Every time I bring my daughter to my breast and she eats, I think of them. The babies, trapped in Gaza. My friend's son, murdered in his home--the same friend who taught me to breastfeed my babies. 

I think of the babies who were burned alive, who were murdered in ways too gruesome to consider. The mothers who were taken, who don't know where their babies are. The mothers of Gaza, held like prisoners by a terror organization that cares nothing for their lives.

I cannot cry, because I fear that if I do, I will never be able to stop. 

I feel the way I did the day after my Dad died--like I barely know how to breathe, to walk, to do the never-ending laundry of a family of five. I am--we are--in mourning. The world shifted under us. 

And none of this is ok.

The Post I Never Thought I'd Write

I've never dreamed the classic American Dream. I don't want the house in the suburbs, with a private yard. I don't crave a second car, even though it would have fancy features my trusty 2012 Honda lacks. I don't really want to live in America, much as I love my family and friends there.

I picked up a beautiful life and left the US in 2009 for Israel because I craved a country that would be mine in a way the US never was--where the air feels different on Friday afternoons, where my kids dreadful "spirit week" comes not before Halloween but before Purim--where they wouldn't hear "Jew girl" snarled at them as I did in fifth grade, when I was only two years older than my sweet son.

I loved the Israel I discovered on my year here after college, and in the years that followed. I loved spending most of my time with secular Israelis, and I loved volunteering in a pediatric oncology ward that treated both Palestinian and Jewish children entirely equally. 

I savored making friends who identified themselves as Haredi and spending a weekend in a Catholic Arab village. 

I saw what this land could be, and made it mine. I worked for an organization whose employees included all kinds of Israelis, and for one fighting for justice for Ethiopian-Israelis. I didn't have rose colored glasses, but I was never an Israeli with a plan to go back. I married a man who felt the same way--we were here for good. 

And now? Today?

Today, I feel disgusted by what is happening in the country I chose. Last night, in response to two Jewish boys--brothers--being murdered, my fellow Jewish Israelis launched a literal pogrom in the village of Huwara. They burned houses with people still in them. And the government is backing them. The head of the National Security Committee endorsed these despicable acts.  

There is a judicial shift underway that will essentially destroy our court system, leaving it to the whims of the government to decide if Israel's Basic Laws stay intact, with no checks or balances. In a government supporting the destruction of a Palestinian village, it isn't rocket science to think what that will mean for the 25% of Israelis who aren't Jewish.

Our Finance Minister committed financial crimes. Our Security Minister committed security crimes. Our Prime Minister? Also a criminal. It reads like a bad movie script. 

And we live in a bubble--a beautiful bubble. Here, on election day, the right wing criminals now in power didn't even show up to canvas for votes--they know that we live in a city where they won't get them. Of course, we are not a bloc--no city is--but by and large our disagreements with neighbors and classmates are about superficial matters, not core ones. 

For now, that is enough. For now, I can keep my children from the news, and teach them how to say "thank you" in Arabic and that we share this country with others. They have neighbors who are religious, who are secular, who are gay and straight. There are friends with skin as pale as theirs, and those whose families come from other places.

But I wonder how long it will be enough. I wonder if I should start thinking about where we would go. I never thought I would ask these questions--and I'm not the only one. Israeli friends, one after the other, tell me in Hebrew that they're asking these questions, too. That they're scared for their future--for their kids and their families. I get it. I'm scared, too.

I don't have a happy ending, though if you care, I implore you to read this piece by some of Israel's fiercest advocates, immigrants like myself. Take their suggestions to heart. Do what they ask. The future of this country literally depends on it.

What We're Losing: Ruminations on Reopening, or Not

The thing about sourdough starter--what you use to make the bread--is that you constantly throw away most of it. Every few hours, you toss the majority of what you've made, and add new materials (flour, water), so that eventually you will have something worth baking with. To move forward, you have to get rid of most of what you have.

Maybe that's the reason sourdough is so popular right now (mine is cooling on the counter). It feels like we are tossing out most of what we've got in this world. My question is if what we're left with will be worth keeping, or not.

The other day, I took my kids out for a walk within the bounds allowed by law. We wound up seeing one of my older kid's classmates--she's not someone he's especially close to, though he likes her and pretty much everyone. After just a few minutes of talking with her  and climbing a homemade fort the way five year-olds do, he was GLOWING.

As we walked away, he said to me "what a great day, Mom!" because he got to play with a kid his age. She's a lovely kid, but not one of his closest friends. And no more than five minutes with her absolutely made his day. 

He's a happy kid, he's been mostly ok throughout this period, but it broke my heart that he was so desperate for time with kids his own age.

All he wants is to play with his friends. And he's 5. I should be able to give him that.

He will only get to be in kindergarten once, and he is losing that, day by day. 

For weeks after this started, my three year-old would ask "is there preschool today?" and we'd have to tell him there wasn't. I'm not sure what was worse--hearing the question, or hearing him simply stop asking.

I know kids are resilient and they will be ok, but this feels like a lot to ask them to recover from.

In the debate about when and what and how to try to maybe reopen our society, there seem to be two extremes: OPEN NOW and KEEP CLOSED. The thing is, no one is actually at the extreme. None of us think we should shut everything down and go to military lockdown for months (or years) until we have a vaccine. What kind of society would that protect? What would it do to us, and to our children?

So it's a question of how we reopen. And none of us think we should just go back to the way things were, because we can't bear the consequences. We need only read what has happened in Spain, Italy, or New York to know that we must avoid that, too. Movie theaters aren't an option right now, for even the most optimistic (or ignorant?).

We're talking about our jobs, and the economy. Those things are important--critical. We need to be able to pay rent and buy food. But the thing is that in all of this, we are losing some calculation of the other things that matter, too--the soft things that make us live, rather than merely exist.

Five year-olds playing tag and running in the park with their friends. Three year-olds singing songs with their friends. Family dinners beyond the nuclear family. Nights sharing cocktails with friends. The long weekend I was supposed to have with my Dad, across an ocean. Are we tossing too much of the world that we've built--accidentally throwing out too much of the sourdough?

I don't know what the right way is to do any of this. No one does. But our kids--even the happy, well-adjusted ones with two loving parents and enough of everything--even they are starting to be Not Ok. And at some point soon, even for the science-lovers among us, that might just outweigh the fear.

Purses, Parties, Conferences: On Mourning the Little Things During a Pandemic

There's a purse I ordered about three months ago; it fits easily over a suitcase, it's nice-looking, and it came recommended. In the first year in my job, I flew abroad for work seven times. The bag was my reward for a job well-done. It was functional, without being too much. An indulgent gift, at just the right level.

My beautiful (I imagine) bag sits in my parents' home, untouched. I wish I could have it, even though I don't really need a work bag these days.

Yesterday was my son's best pal's birthday. He turned six. It should have been a really fun day, with a party to look forward to, and even the little brother excited. Instead, we took a quick video of my boy wishing him a happy birthday, and that this corona passes soon, so they can play together once again. I wish they could play together, now.

I was supposed to go to Austin in March, and my (wonderful) manager offered for us to check out some SXSW events. It would have been a great opportunity to grow, personally? Professionally? I'll never know. The trip, where I would have picked up my bag, was canceled. I also missed the (canceled) wedding of a dear friend. I wish I had been at the wedding, wish I could have picked which SXSW sessions to attend.

None of these losses are huge. My job is safe, for now at least, and we have enough resources. No one in our family has so far suffered major loss from this plague.

But somehow, every time I hear someone expressing pain about a loss--it is always cast as "not worthy". 

What I want to say, with absolutely no authority, is this: pain is valid. It doesn't have to be the worst pain in the world to be valid. You are allowed to mourn the little things, even now, when a global pandemic rages. 

It is ok to miss the trip you couldn't take, the meal you couldn't go out for despite making reservations. I give you, and me, permission to miss the little things as much as we miss the big ones. We as humans don't just mourn the big losses, even when we've experienced them. I can wish I could have my bag, even though I've been through things one million times harder. You can hold multiple truths at the same time. We all contain multitudes.

I leave you with this observation from the brilliant Meg Keene, commenting on a question someone sent in on her wedding advice website (her writing is worth reading, whatever the topic). The letter writer's husband had almost died at their wedding, and while she was glad he was alive, she was also sad she missed her wedding, a relatively "small thing":

"We actually had a big conversation in our office about the terrible-ness of the suffering olympics when this question came in. When my dad fell WALKING HIS DOG, and got a terrible brain injury, and I had to drop everything to care for him (while caring for two kids and running a business) for three months, and then he suddenly died anyway from hospital mismanagement I kept like I needed to say like, "Well it could have been worse."

WELL LIKE YEAH. EVERYTHING COULD BE WORSE. That's what survivor's guilt is. Even people who survive the worst atrocities known to human kind are like "it could have been worse, because I survived and other people didn't."

And I feel like we're in this place in liberal feminist culture where we feel EXTRA responsibility to disclaim all of the reasons that things could be worse and we have privilege at every moment. And those things are true. And we know those things. And in big picture political conversations we should really consider them. My dad had insurance. I want everyone to have insurance. California has paid family leave. I want everyone to have paid family leave. I can go on and on.

But there is a time to put that aside I think, too. It's call grief, and grieving, and we're all human and we all deserve to have it in it's pure rawness. My dad DIED and he should be alive right now playing with his grandkids and talking politics with me and he's NOT. The LW's husband almost DIED and it was horrific and traumatic (I've been in those asthma attack car rides with my son, and they are trauma that will live in my soul forever.) And she should have had a WEDDING and she didn't.

So fuck all the mitigating circumstances right now, fuck the "who has it worse", fuck the "I'm so privileged that I even have this problem." FUCK ALL OF IT. Something terrible happened when you should have been experiencing one of your greatest joys, and I am SO SORRY, and we see you, and please just let yourself feel whatever you need to feel, and not pick yourself back up till you're ready and then do LITERALLY WHATEVER you and your partner want to do.

I'm sorry sister. The world is a hard damn place, and I'm sorry this happened to you, and I see you."

Being an Expat Parent is Hard on the Best Days. These Are Not the Best Days.

More than 10 years ago, when I decided to make aliyah--to pick up my wonderful, happy life in the US and move to Israel with the intent of building a life and a family here--my parents and I had a discussion. They would visit Israel twice a year, I'd fly to the US just as often. We'd never go more than a few months without a visit. If you've met my parents, this is not a surprise. They're fantastic.

Today, I have no idea when I will see my parents next. I've been through a lot of hard things in the last 10 years, but this massive question mark around my next trip to Rochester--this is what's keeping me up at night. We've had some health struggles in the last few years, and my ability to jump on a plane at a moment's notice is what has kept me sane until now. Being an expat is hard.

And being an expat parent is hard, all the time. It's hard when I can hardly help my kid check out his book from the library on a Friday morning, because I never learned to write block Hebrew letters. It's hard at pr-school birthday parties when I don't know the songs or traditions. It's hard on holidays, when the songs I associate with those special days are only sung in our house, not in my kids' schools. There's no 'I have a little dreidel" in Hebrew.

Sarah Tuttle-Singer captured it so beautifully in her piece about so-called "mermaid mothers" when she observed: "I can speak Hebrew. I can spend the whole day in Hebrew. I can spend the whole day and even find my way back home again and order a fucking glass of whisky in Hebrew. But I’m not smart in Hebrew. I’m not funny in Hebrew, I’m not INTERESTING in Hebrew except maybe as novelty and a “Oh, why would you leave America?” or ARGH “What do you think of Israel,” and then I have to hurry up and say it all before their eyes glaze over, and I’m just standing there with my strange feathers and fins, my funny weird voice and the quieter I am, the louder the difference, and the conversation turns into something that I can’t follow, and so I sit there with my hands clasped, drowned bird, flailing fish."

But today, it feels harder than usual. 

I'm not just dependent on Israel properly managing this crisis to drive across town and see my parents (though it will be great to do that and see my in-laws again). I'm dependent on the US managing it.

We aren't debating our Passover trip to see my parents--it's canceled, without so much as a discussion. 

And suddenly, somehow, the country where I birthed my babies, built a hi-tech career, really grew up, if I'm being honest, all feels so much more foreign, with me the outsider again. 

This week, I had a fever and a cough, so Dan (rightfully) ordered me into isolation in our bedroom. As I fought the authorities to figure out if I need a test for Coronavirus, I felt like a new immigrant again. The words stick in my mouth, though I now know how to discuss quarantine and shortness of breath in Hebrew. 

This time is challenging for so many. I am so lucky to have a stable job I enjoy, an apartment with a balcony, a husband whose competence is incomparable, and children whose energy is matched by their need for sleep. I know all of that.

But right now, this just feels hard. Brutally, incredibly, never-endingly hard. Here's to better days ahead.

I'm an American, an Israeli, and a Mom. Here's why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton.

There have been a couple of pieces recently, about why specific Jews and people who claim to love Israel are not voting for Hillary Clinton in this election. I'm not going to talk about her opponent, because it's clear that he's an embarrassment to his party, but I am going to tell you why I'm voting for Hillary Clinton--gleefully and full of joy, and because given my identities, I have no other choice.

I'm an American. That was probably my first identity and though I moved away from the US in 2009, I worked in the House of Representatives for a year, cried when President Obama was elected, and brought my pocket-sized constitution with me when I moved to Israel. I love a good hamburger, though I hate apple pie, and I love the country that welcomed my ancestors, allowed my father to build a successful business, and gave me opportunities that I never would have had in so many countries. The Fourth of July always makes me teary as I think about the beauty of the United States, and even though America is already great, I want it to be even better.

That's why #imwithher. There are a lot of articles that are more effective than I can be, so I'll leave it to them to describe her power when it comes to the domestic issues that matter most to me--a woman's right to choose, children's rights to education, stopping the absurd gun violence, equal rights for all LGBT Americans, having a wonk in the White House who can actually read, understand and act on policy briefs. You know, the basics.

I'm an Israeli. I chose this country nearly seven years ago and choose it every single day, as I watch my son learn Hebrew as his first language, delight in the challah everywhere on Fridays, the quiet that descends with Shabbat, and the reality that unlike when I was growing up (and I had an amazing childhood), here I have no need to explain anything about my Jewish identity. Trying to explain my love of stuffing is another story...

If only it were that simple, right? Hillary Clinton understands what it is to be Israeli, and that the US-Israel relationship is not as simple as "send us a big check". (Campaign site) It started in the 90's when she was First Lady of Arkansas and started collaborating with us on a program to help children at-risk, and continues with her support to this day. Did you notice that Israel was the only foreign country in her convention speech? She understands that a two-state solution is critical, that a one-state solution is not an option, and that our being in the settlements is certainly not helping the peace process. She gets it that in every war, they sacrifice their children on the front lines for headlines while we build missile defense systems to protect ours. Hillary gets it. She's worked with the left-wing and the right-wing in this country, and been praised by both. She's not just the best candidate in this election for Israel--she's the best candidate ever. That's why #imwithher.

I'm also a Mom. To an Israeli little boy. In the last war, I could protect him, because he was inside me. When the sirens went off and we ran down the stairs in the middle of the night, I knew he was safe. I can't know that in our next war--and there will be a next war. I do know that with all likelihood, in just over 16 years, he'll go off to the IDF to protect our great nation, just like his father, grandmother and grandfather, great-grandfather, and uncles did before him, 

I have skin in this game--fair, redheaded skin, to be precise. I have a boy who loves peas, and hates pizza (I know it's temporary). A boy who thinks things are "awesome" and loves his stuffed blue bunny.Voting for Israel means voting for the best interests of Israelis like me and my family, and that means voting for Hillary Clinton. I'm an American, I'm an Israeli, and I'm a Mom. 

And this November, with tears in my eyes and a pen on my absentee ballot, I will prove, once and for all, that #imwithher. I hope you will, too.