Month: June 2013

Community, Family, Kibbutz, Letting Go, Living in Community, Making Friends

How dog poop can change your life for the better

Jen

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a post about pet love.

I got no pet love to give.

Unless you are a fish.

Then I’ll give you the best three weeks of your life.

I am many things, but I am not an animal lover.

More specifically, I am not a dog lover.

Don’t worry. I’ve never hurt a dog. Or a dog owner. Try as I might with my evil eye.

I get dog people, though. I get that you think your dog is cute, small, harmless, like a brother, like a son, like a burglar alarm, like a fireman.

But I don’t. I really don’t.

To me your dog is a poop machine. A scary menace when I’m trying to jog, which is hard enough without your dog chasing me.

Your dog is loud at night when I’m trying to sleep.

And there are times when I really, really wish he would disappear.

This is not something I often share with people other than close friends and family.

If you are a dog lover,  you can understand why.

You probably noticed your head sway from side to side in disbelief as you read my words.

You probably noticed the muscles in your neck tense up.

I know the feeling.

This is how I feel when your dog comes walking down the street toward me without a leash,

and you are nowhere to be seen

* * * *

Somehow, though, in the years since I moved to a kibbutz in Israel, my antipathy towards dogs has lessened a bit.

I didn’t realize that until earlier this week, when I scanned a thread of more than 100 comments by upset mothers on Facebook.

Kveller.com, a blog and community forum focused on Jewish parenting, asked on their Facebook page for reactions to a recent Tumblr written by a mom who brought her dog to the playground.

The mom is upset that another mom “tattled” to the park police after her dog “accidentally” peed in the toddler playground sandbox.

Ewwwwwww…

Kveller wanted to know: who was right? The mom with the dog or the mom who told on her?

FB kveller dog

I read the comments with interest, because I was totally and completely that tattle tale mom, once upon a time.

Ask anyone in South Orange, NJ where I used to live.

There was a dog park there, which– in my humble, non-dog loving opinion — was the only public place your dog should ever be off a leash.

Those that dared an afternoon frisbee throw with their canine best friend in a “no-dogs-allowed” park would certainly be on the receiving end of my wrath if my kids and I were there too.

I’m that kind of mom.

Heck, I’m that kind of person.

At least, I was until I moved to Israel.

* * * *

Dog or no dogs, I have always been more or less a rule follower.

If it’s against the law, I’m pretty likely not going to do it. And certainly not in public.

If there is a sign about not doing it, I am even more likely not to do it.

And when it comes to dogs — which I admittedly and unabashedly fear — I am rigid and unbending.

But then something happened.

I moved to a dog-loving community — by choice.

Sure, I didn’t realize how dog-loving my community was before I moved here, but looking back it should have been reasonably obvious that moving to a small community in the country would put me within spitting distance of lots of dogs.

Now, I live in a neighborhood of about 110 families — and at least 1/3 of them are dog-owners. And about 7/8 of those dog owners let their dogs off leashes in our public spaces quite often, despite it being against the law in Israel. And of those off-leash dogs, 95% choose to pee and poop in one of the three neighborhood playgrounds.

I kid you not.

Our playgrounds are poop-colored.

An unassuming guest may think those are just multi-colored decorative rocks — but no, it’s dried out dog poop.

For a few months when I first moved here, I was angry a lot.

Angry about the poop.

Angry about the dogs wandering in packs late at night.

But angry got me nowhere.

Angry has gotten no one nowhere.

Fast.

2 1/2 years later, the dogs are still here and walk around a lot more confident than I do.

And 2 1/2 years later our kids have been trained to play around the poop — barefoot, mind you, since that is how Israeli kids go in the playground. They’ve even designed careful games around the poop mines scattered beneath the slide and lining the ground in front of and behind the swings.

The littlest of our kids will even sit in the pebbles at the playground and scoop up with her bare hands rocks that are surely covered in dried dog pee. Probably wet cat pee too. Maybe even kid pee.  Israeli kids pee outside a lot … and not always next to trees or in grassy patches. Some just whip it out or squat into the sand.

We adjusted, I guess.

To the dogs… and their poop.

And their law-breaking mommies and daddies, many of whom are my friends.

At some point over the last 2 1/2 years, I had to make a choice: bend or break.

I bent.

Don’t get any false ideas. I am not reformed. My kid will likely never get a dog no matter how much he begs me.  Last week, in fact, I sent a text message to the county reporting a pitbull wandering around the neighborhood off a leash. An off-leash dog, a few months ago, attacked a girl in a Southern Israeli town.

But bending allows me to still dislike dogs (and their poop), but continue living here, and loving my friends.

I’ve learned to live with dogs. Or, in truth, their owners.

With some tolerance and compassion.

Which is what I think both moms in that “playground pee pee tattle-tale” tale were truly seeking:

Tolerance and compassion.

playground

Climate Changes, Community, Environment, Family, Middle East Conflict, Survivalism, Terrorism

An imaginable future

Jen

When we first moved to Israel, I felt uncomfortable sitting on buses and in cafes.

I would casually look around, trying to avoid notice, to see if there were any suspicious people or packages about; not sure, exactly, what my reaction would be if I spotted one.

Over time I have found myself less and less suspicious. More at ease in public places, as it so happens, but still not at ease.

“At ease” is not a behavior I was born with — or maybe I was — and was just spooked one too many times by a mischievous friend or traumatized by too many VC Andrews novels.

The world, for me, has almost always been a scary place.

And I have almost always been easily startled.

While here in Israel, I cautiously scan the room for bombs; in the States, I cautiously scanned darkened evening streets for rapists and quiet alleys for thugs. I walked quickly through empty hallways and avoided elevators with lone men. I double and triple locked my doors, and was known to sometimes sleep with the lights on. Especially the night after The Blair Witch Project.

I remember being in a bar watching a band perform in New York City once, in the months just before 9/11 but fresh enough after Columbine to still be jumpy, and leaping off my seat at the sound of a small explosion in the back of the room. Someone’s hair had caught fire accidentally on the tea light candle intended for atmosphere, and instead of atmosphere we were treated to dramatic special effects.

After I caught my breath, I laughed out loud at my reaction, but internally asked myself what I had been so concerned about. What immediate danger did I think the noise indicated?

A gun shot?

An explosion?

A brawl?

It’s the first time I remember my unease extending from mild anxiety to a heightened concern for my immediate well-being and the well-being of others.

From then and there, unfortunately, my unease has only become gradually uneasier.

And not because my anxiety has worsened, and not because I moved to Israel.

In fact, my anxiety has significantly improved in the last decade since I started acknowledging it and paying attention to it and using focused breathing, meditation and mindfulness.

Moving to the slow-paced countryside of Israel, in some ways, has helped, too.

But no matter how significantly my anxiety has improved, the world hasn’t. Since 9/11, the way I see it, we have been witness to more violent crimes like those in Aurora and Newtown and Boston and have experienced the communal aftermath of incomprehensible tragedies like Katrina and Sandy and are becoming more and more awakened to the devastation of our planet and the resources we have taken advantage of all our lives.

And suddenly I am no longer a minor statistic in a clinical journal.

It’s not just me and my world viewed through an anxiety-colored lens.

The world itself has become anxiety-colored. The world itself is on edge.

I watched this video of grown men jumping out of their seats; seemingly reaching to hug each other at the sound of thunder booming loudly over Yankee Stadium during a rain delay.

At first, I giggled. It was cute. Funny.

And then I paused, and realized, it wasn’t funny at all.

Grown men — baseball players, even, symbols of fearlessness and recklessness — jumping out of their seats at the sound of a …

Boom!

We are living in a world in which we are now, clearly, all easily startled.

scaredy cats

I know I’m not the first to make the claim that the world is growing bleaker and blacker.

There are voices much louder than mine that have come before.

And even though my voice is not the first.

There is always a glimmer of hope it can become one of the last.

The year I was born poet and activist Shel Silverstein wrote:

“There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from his flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.

Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt flowers grow
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we’ll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we’ll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.”

(Where the Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein)

Those children are now grown.

Those children are now us.

And it’s indeed possible we have come to where the sidewalk ends.

And we need to choose in which direction we will continue.

We may continue to jump at loud noises, and then numb ourselves to an unacknowledged shared pain.

Self-medicating with food, technology, entertainment, drink, drugs, sex, consumerism, waste, whatever — silently signing the same consent form to ignore, to waive liability.

Or we may create together a world in which we can imagine its future.

A future not out of a dystopian film, but one lined with the vibrant green grass of my childhood memories and narrated by Shel Silverstein.

I want a future lined with colorful sunsets for my children to fall in love under.

And I want to hear thunder… and scream,

then giggle.

Knowing my fears are only imagined.