“Do You Want A Snake?”

Dad speak: “Do you want a snake? How about a sneakers?”
Translation: “Do you want a snack? How about a Snickers?”

My parents, born and raised outside of the US, learned English as a second or third language. My father, born in Argentina and raised in Israel is a polyglot, speaking many languages with the oddest of accents. He doesn’t distinguish between snake and snack.  As a snake breeder, he would scare the bejeezus out of my friends, offering then a snake, as he held a real one in his arms. When friends came to sleep over, he would put shits on the bed. Toilet papers were used to clean up messes. I remember growing up, ashamed of his accent. My friends and classmates laughed at him. They laughed at me.

My mother wasn’t much better. Her thick Hebrew accent penetrated every word and every syllable. Her business English didn’t cut it when talking to children. She’d be lacking the most basic of words, reverting to Hebrew, making her incomprehensible to my childhood friends. Children are a cruel race and the fact that my parents were alien to them made me an easy target.

It’s been years since I’ve last been ashamed at my parents. I love them for who they are and for the work they’ve put into raising my brother and me, despite their mistakes, as well as because of them.

Now, living in Israel, I’m the one with an accent. Most times, it’s so slight most people don’t even realize I was raised abroad, but every now and then I’ll get some one who claims that it’s obvious that I’ve got a very American accent. I cringe when people tell me that. Not because I’m ashamed. Quite the contrary. Because of love. Because I love Israel and it’s my home and more than anything, I want to belong. I don’t want to be tagged as an outsider because of silly matters such as how I pronounce my r’s or g’s.

Broken Resolutions

It’s a quarter to midnight and as if there’s nothing better that I could do, I’m sitting home alone in my mom’s house (without a sweater, despite the cold, in the dark – just like a good Polish woman would do!), and playing on the computer. By playing I mean messing around with Photoshop, doodling, drawing, hoping the computer won’t freeze every few minutes. It does. And I’m starting to resent it. Wish I owned a Mac. In my next life, when I’ll have money, I’ll buy a Mac. In the meantime, I’ll pretend.

I could be making a list of new year’s resolutions and promises. I could be reading my diary entry from last January 1st. It seems pointless. I remember my list of resolutions. I wanted to get into better shape. Lose some more weight. Gain confidence. I wanted to be more friendly. Nicer to my brother. Try harder in my school work. Find a job. Find a partner. Maintain a relationship. Try to be more normal. Smile. Love myself.

The list is pretty much invariant of previous years. Probably similar to your own. Especially the get in shape and lose weight part. I remember when I used to work at a gym December-January and May-June were the months with the most new subscribers. The end/start of the year was when people realized it’s time to get in shape, as they’ve been delaying it all year or plan on getting in shape for the upcoming year. May and June are when the clothing shops start selling summer wear and swimsuits and suddenly people realize that they’ve put on a few winter pounds they have to shed before they’ll feel comfortable in a teeny tiny polka dot bikini. These are usually the exact same people who will use their gym membership for less than a month before finding a long list of excuses why there’s no time to work out. Belonging to a gym and going to the gym are two totally different things. One will get you in shape, the other…

I’ve tried to be nicer to my family and friends. I’ve tried not to get mad at people. I’ve tried to see things from their point of view and be fair. I think I’ve really gotten closer to my brother this year. And I’m constantly growing closer to my mother, so that’s another achievement for 2009. I’ve made many more friends. I’ve tried to retain all of the old ones, but it’s difficult, especially when we all lead such different, separate lives.

There are those resolutions which I couldn’t fulfill. I don’t have a partner (if I did, I probably wouldn’t be here, on my computer, alone, in the cold, dark, without a sweater…). I’m not in a relationship and I haven’t been able to maintain one for durations longer than a single date, two at best. Not have I actually put any additional effort into my school work. On the contrary, as I feel myself nearing the end, I feel myself letting go more and more. I cut myself a lot of slack and have low expectations.

Last, but not least, are those abstract promises. Love myself. I do. Most days. But then again, how do you measure. Or smile. I try. As much as I can without looking like a grinning fool or a brainless idiot.

So this year, instead of starting with a list of promises and resolutions, I’m abandoning the thought. Instead, I’m going to wish myself the discipline to strive to be a better person. Period. And I’m smiling. Which is already a good start to this year.

To all of you, reading this or not, I wish you a wonderful new year, new decade, new beginning. Or maybe it’s just a continuation. Either way, work hard, succeed and prosper. May you strive to be better with each passing day, smile more, love more, and live more.  Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas To All

And to all a good night!

My parents raised my younger brother and me in a  reformed Jewish household. We celebrated holidays and acknowledged a few additional Jewish elements. But, growing up in a mixed neighborhood in suburbia, USA, we were bound to have friends from various backgrounds. Among them, we had many Christmas celebrators and there was never a year we weren’t invited to celebrate with some family and their towering, tinsel topped tree.

I remember red knit sweaters and getting flannel pajamas as gifts. Our neighbors, unlike my own mother, who was too worrisome to light our own fireplace, had a yule log burning in their living room fireplace. We exchanged gifts and sang songs. The adults drank eggnog and we children ate chestnuts. I love chestnuts. I can smell them now… (Yeah, I’m roasting a few in my microwave oven.)

As children we wished for a white Christmas. I look out my window now, open, to let the warm breeze into my dorm room. It’s 17 degrees Celsius outside. I wore a short sleeved shirt today. It’s too hot for snow. And I remember one Christmas day where my father woke me up and told me he had a surprise. I can see him opening my Venetian blinds, revealing a think layer of snow, covering our lawn, the streets, the entire neighborhood blanketed in white.

Nostalgia gently wafts over me, like a old blanket, wrapping itself around me, reminding me of the good old days.

It’s 2:30 am. I didn’t come home from any Christmas parties or celebrations. I haven’t seen anyone decked out in red and white or street corner Santas ringing their bells for charity. I’m sleepless. I know I should go to sleep. I have kayaking practice in the morning. I’m supposed to be up in less than four hours. There’s a part of me that’s sad. Despite it not being my holiday, its got a place in my heart. Memories of friends and family and happier, carefree times make me wish for the days when I was younger and socks were considered a “lousy” gift.

To those of you who are celebrating tonight, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year! Goodwill and peace on earth!

Holiday Blues

With eight days and eight nights, you’d think one would get sick of the holidays, but here we are, rapidly approaching the holiday’s close and I feel sad that its over. Now I have to wait another year for Hannukka to come around again. And yeah, that would be logical, but I’ve never been a patient person. Besides, I feel there’s a few nights there in the middle that I just missed out on… Not that I didn’t light the candles every night – I did – but, I feel that it was too short for eight nights. It should have been longer. I should have had another night during which I hosted a big party with lots of friends. Instead, most nights I lit the candles with neighbors and roommates. Not that it wasn’t fun, it just wasn’t what I wanted. I’m used to having big events, with lots of people and too much food.

This has been a long weekend. School let out on Tuesday, so Wednesday and Thursday gave us a nice long four day weekend. I came home on Wednesday evening. With no one else home, I lit the candles on my own. Yesterday my brother and mother came home at a decent hour, so we lit the candles together, over leftover dinner scraps and mindless chit chat. Today was the last night and being Friday, my mom decided to invite her brother over as well as another friend of hers. We were six, so we sat around the large dinning room table. As always, my mother prepared way too much food, especially considering what a picky eater her friend is and the fact that it always seems that my uncle will eat anything my mother serves him, praising her fabulous cooking skills. Although she oversaw the cooking, it was I who peeled potatoes, cut vegetables, ground meat, minced onions, fried, served, washed dishes. But I’m not complaining. It’s not like there’s anyone else around to help. The second my brother hears guests are coming over for dinner, he bolts out the door. Even if he didn’t my mom wouldn’t make him do much. As modern as she is, she’s still pretty chauvinistic when it comes to who needs to work in the kitchen. Most of the time, I think she’s unaware of the fact that she does it, but she never really makes my brother lift a finger around the kitchen, unless it’s to open a really tight jar, and even then it’s usually I who manages to pop the top off. It really gets on my nerves and while I’ve tried drawing her attention to it on a few occasions, I usually get some lame retort along the lines of “But your brother isn’t hear right now.” Oooh, like that’s ever stopped her from calling me up to get me home to help around the house. And this is where the holiday tension all starts. This is a long weekend and I’m home for too much of it. I can’t be here for more than two days. Small doses. I want to go back to my own apartment. As much as I love my mom, we are so much better off when we live apart from each other. I can’t handle this any longer! Too bad there’s no public transportation on Friday nights or I’d already be back in my own little place where no one bosses me around and I do what I want, when I want. I do it for me.

The Flight From Hell

I was just packing my suitcase as my father called me from New York to ask if my flight was still supposed to arrive on time. Apparently, a snow storm was heading for New York just as we were supposed to land. With the wonders of technology, I checked online and even called El Al up to make sure the flight was still supposed to fly according to plan. Thumbs up and green lights said yes and I was excited to be flying west for the year.

We were the last flight that landed that snowy morning, as crew cleared off the landing strip so we could make it into JFK safely. Originally overjoyed that we managed to land, I called my father up to see if he was on his way with fresh bagels, as promised. I was supposed to have a three hour layover which would have been cutting it close with anything more than bagels, but here I was being given all this extra time to see my dad. I waited for him to pick up the phone, worried that if he took any longer I’d run out of quarters with which to feel the pay phone. But, lo and behold, he answered, while driving. He was on his way. Or at least until he made it to the city road, which was blocked due to the snow rapidly piling up and making the roads dangerous for such vehicles. The conversation started to break up just as I was beginning to understand that our runway rendezvous wasn’t going to happen.

With no one answering our questions regarding how long we’d be snowed in, I splurged and made a few very expensive long distance phone calls. First, I called my mom. I missed her. I regretted not taking her advice about the sweatshirt. I thought that going from Israel to tropical Hawaii, I wouldn’t need it, but apparently airport control thought that turning down the heat would keep us from getting rowdy and assisting in crowd control.

Secondly, I called Randy, telling him I was snowed in at JFK and that I wouldn’t be making it in on the flight I had originally planned. The phone call seemed pointless as he had forgotten he was supposed to pick me up. Later on I would learn how really scattered he is and that it’s amazing he still has his head in place.

In the meantime, I was disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to get to see my dad.

I started to wander around the airport, aimlessly. At 6 am, stores weren’t open yet and if the snow wouldn’t let up, it seemed like the sales people wouldn’t be making it in to work today. I had already finished the first book I brought along for the flight and was trying to enjoy the second, but it couldn’t interest me less and I put it down with a sigh,  restless. All over the terminal people were sitting with their loved ones, bummed about starting their vacations late or calling work to tell them they were snowed in at JFK. By noon some of the stores had opened, including a book store, a pizza place, candy shop and random, overpriced gift stores selling I(heart)NY stuff to frantic tourists who realize they forgot to get a gift for uncle Joe and aunt Betty. There’s only so much window shopping I could do before the handful of stores began to bore me. I looked for conversation and found it with a very nice perfume sales girl, who seemed to have enjoyed my company as much as I enjoyed hers. She didn’t seem overly busy, yet happy to have a chance to talk to someone about random stuff besides Channel No. 5. Before I left to look for lunch, she gave me a Milano cookie. I remember these cookies from my childhood. Sweet memories of my mother hiding them from my brother and me as we pulled the kitchen apart in search of the delectable delights we knew were hidden from view. Faced with a tough choice between pizza and pizza, I opted for the latter. Sitting among families, couples and friends, I started talking with people, telling them tales of life in Israel and my service in the IDF. They shared stories of the ski vacation they were just on or of places they want to travel to. Despite having been snowed in for so long, people were nice, friendly. I don’t think Israelies would have that patience. I think that within a few hours they would have been at the throat of the airline, demanding to leave now. I guess it’s a good thing we don’t get snow in the central part of Israel, in and around the airport.

As time passed, the snow began to melt as new people started to arrive at the airport. Incoming flights were landing, but we still couldn’t leave and my westward flight had to be rerouted. As I spent more time walking the airport floors, I joined a duo of Irish boys with a guitar. One of them played as I and the second one joined in singing. I regretted the fact that my harmonica was not with me. Apparently, a harmonica resembles a gun clip, so after almost half an hour with the x-ray machine prior to my first flight, I had to give my harmonica up, as it wasn’t deemed safe. I know I’m bad, but never thought I was bad enough to be considered a weapon. I always thought that was part of the beauty of harmonicas – it’s really hard to play bad. (If you ever want to screw with security at your local airport, toss a harmonica into your hand bag.)

After thirty-five hours I was on a flight to Chicago, then to California and only then to Hawaii. I arrived almost four days after I headed out of Israel. Jet lagged - you bet. And, surprise, surprise – Randy forgot to pick me up at the airport. I called him while he was at work so I ended up waiting at the arrivals gate for an hour and a half before he arrived. I watched at greeters came, leis in hand, greeting honeymooners and tourists. To his credit, I have to say, Randy did come with a lei for me.

Those first few days were just a preview of the odyssey I was about to embark on…

The Fine Art of Procrastination and Printers That Don’t Work

Being computer-less, I decided to spend the weekend at my grandparents’ house. Aside from good food, they have a working computer, which is a definite plus. Don’t get me wrong – my mom’s home also houses a computer. Three, in fact. But, being that I’m not as computer savvy as my younger brother, I’m not allowed to use either of his two computers, for fear that I’ll download a malicious virus. (Reminds me of that illustration of a little boy and girl and he says to her “No, you can’t touch. You already broke yours off.”) My mother, the computer addict, always needs her computer. She can be talking on the phone, cooking lunch, watching the news on tv and doing three other tasks all at once, but she still needs her computer for G-d only knows what. Should I use it to check email and take too long, she needs it. Now.

At the start of every new semester I make a resolution that this semester I’ll start doing my homework the day it’s assigned instead of the day it’s supposed to be handed in. It’s never held past the first two weeks and this semester is starting no different. It’s Saturday and I’m only starting the assignments I have to hand in on Sunday and Monday. (Ok, still haven’t started the assignment for Monday, but I hope to get to it by the end of the day.)

Tried to turn on my grandpa’s printer. Doesn’t work. Bleep, bleep, dead.

The assignment is due Sunday morning at 9:30 am. If I head back to campus tonight, I could probably get into one of the computer farms, print it and have it ready before I go to bed. But then again, that would miss the point of procrastinating. Instead, I know myself all too well. I’ll set my alarm clock for 7:30, giving me plenty of time to push snooze a few times. By the time I wake, it’ll be nearing 8:30 or even 8:45 if I’m feeling very risky (lazy). I’ll jet into the shower, toss on a pair of shorts, tank top (apparently no one informed the fall that it’s supposed to come), flip flops and run to the biology computer farm, only to find out that the printer is out of toner/paper or just plain doesn’t want to work. If luck is on my side, my lab instructor’s printer will work and he will be kind enough to let me print. But, being it a Sunday, and Sunday’s usually don’t start too well, his printer won’t work either and as I think up some lame excuse, jetting to class, walking in ten minutes late, sans homework, bumping into a desk, attracting unnecessary attention, I find a place between my two friends, who have already handed their homework in and I curse myself for not having called one of them, asking to print my homework just this once…