Month: March 2014

Modern Life, Parenting, Relationships

Husband Envy

Jen

It’s not the first time I daydreamed I was

Nicole Krauss, authoress

all-around good

woman good Jewish but not so Jewish

writer I could aspire towards

and as a matter of curiosity

exactly one day

(perhaps only hours!)

older than I.

But today most of all

when I learned husband

Jonathan

Safran

Foer

(even his name sounds groovy out loud with line breaks forcing teeth against my lips)

cuts up old books to make

new books

Fresh! Magical!

I thought I couldn’t stand to

be me another day

I just want to be Nicole Krauss

just to be married to a man

who thinks up cutting up

old books to make new ones

who writes books called

Extremely Loud

Incredibly Close

and then writes a book

about not Eating Animals

because sometimes he

doesn’t eat them

out of kindness or conviction

and then – to top it all off with an all-natural maraschino cherry –

lives in Park Slope and wears

smart but sexy glasses.

I imagine him sitting there

next to her

at a wooden desk in their house in Brooklyn

(the desk was his

found at an antiques shop in New Paltz)

separating their two laptops is an

antique robin blue typewriter

maybe even with Hebrew letters like

the one I drooled over but

didn’t haggle over

(4000 shekels!)

in the artist’s colony in the Golan Heights.

There is an imposed silence every week day

in Chez Safran Foer Krauss

from 8 am to 12:45 for

Writing Time.

They write and write and write

while sipping organic espresso

a matter that is serious to both of them

but they’re considering giving up

because of stomachaches.

On Wednesdays they listen to

Van Morrison for inspiration.

On Fridays he makes her a spinach and goat cheese omelette

and takes out the recyclables

and this is their life

I imagine

unless one of their kids is sick –

then she is downstairs

on the couch watching

Phineas and Ferb and

gritting her teeth in

frustrated agony

the way writers who are also

mothers grit their teeth.

She considers calling the nanny

but she won’t while he is upstairs cutting up

old books

to make new books

new stories.

She’ll wait.

Or that’s what I’d do.

Wait and wait and wait

and grit teeth

until Wednesday when the fever breaks

and she takes

her laptop

to the café down the corner

and stays there

til the sun goes down

til closing time

so he can sing the kids to sleep

and she can see if her Wikipedia page

is longer than his or

for once write a novel on the napkins

like she’s wanted to for

the last three years

and glue them together

with Juicy Fruit gum.

Fresh! Magical!

Sometimes, she writes

in her journal

how she wishes the internet would break

so she could start over

and find the wooden desk

in New Paltz first.

Or marry a carpenter.

And this is when

I understand why

she is keeping her name

and writing poetry again

and practicing the Law of Attraction

on the door to the cafe

daydreaming it’s a portal

to that kibbutz she volunteered on

in the summer of 1990-something

a kibbutz in the Lower Galilee

a lemon tree in the front yard

that looks remarkably

like the one I see

through my bathroom window.

Mindfulness, Relationships, Spirituality

While we’re at it, let’s blame menopause and extramarital affairs on Gwyneth

Jen

“Ever since Gwyneth Paltrow became famous in her early 20s, she has made women feel bad about themselves…” begins Jessica Grose’s article in Slate this week.

Ouch.

This makes me want to write something along the lines of how ever since Jessica Grose starting writing articles in Slate she’s made celebrities feel bad about themselves.

Except I don’t know Jessica Grose.

I don’t know anything about her.

In fact, while I may have read her articles on Slate before, I don’t remember any in particular.

It’s not a jab. It’s just to illustrate how little I know her.

Which is why I can’t imagine laying blame on her for feeling bad about myself.

What has Jessica Grose done to make me feel like an unattentive mother, unaffectionate wife, less-than-compelling blogger?

(Oops. Did I just overshare?)

It’s not that I don’t get the point — how the media, let’s say, perpetuates an unattainable image of women or mothers. But blaming the media is very different from pinpointing one particular celebrity, especially one who actually has made it a point to do GOOD in the world.

It’s mind boggling to me. I feel compelled to defend Gwyneth, except I don’t know her.

But what I do know is that Grose’s article didn’t inspire in me a feeling of comraderie.

It made me feel sad for Grose. And for women who truly ascribe their feelings of inadequacy to female celebrities.

The accusations against Gwyneth, in particular, continue throughout Grose’s entire piece, which was sparked by the recent announcement of Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin’s split. Grose shames Gwyneth (not Martin, by the way, but Gwyneth) for how she chose to announce her separation. The language she chose to use. The means by which she communicated it.

As if getting a divorce and having to actually ANNOUNCE it wasn’t bad enough.

“Underneath that psychobabble,” Grose writes, taking issue with the phrasing “Conscious Uncoupling,” “is the message that goes along with all Goop productions: Even Gwyneth’s separation is better than yours…”

Is that what’s underneath the “psychobabble?” Really?

I didn’t get that at all. Perhaps if I was in the middle of a messy divorce, I’d be envious of couples who seem outwardly to be approaching separation maturely.

My response? I actually considered for a minute or two that Paltrus mag cheatingow and Martin might be trailblazers.  Better coverage of “conscious” uncoupling than the ugly divorces we normally expect from Hollywood.

Unless, of course, we want celebrities to feel heartbreak and pain because it makes us feel a little better about our own.

The truth is finally spoken out loud at the end of the article when Grose writes of Gwyneth and another celebrity mother, “Their stories are meant to make mere mortals feel inadequate.”

Huh?

I may be susceptible to the “new-agey psychobabble” Grose mocks (I used to be on Goop’s mailing list), but I am under the impression that Gwyneth Paltrow is as mortal as the rest of us are. Maybe even moreso, since she is living her life on a worldwide stage.

Could be that I was won over by the restaurant scene in Notting Hill

but I operate on the assumption that even famous actresses feel shame, anxiety, humiliation, fear. I don’t see any reason to perpetuate the stereotype that they don’t.

My takeaway from Grose’s article is not an urge to join a rallying cry for honesty in media. It’s not a desire to band together as “normal moms” with limited budgets to spread rage about the injustice of personal trainers or nannies or vegan chefs.

I just feel sad.

For women who feel so disconnected from themselves that they have to look to others as perpetrators of their unhappiness.

Women who feel compelled to publicly shame other women, through blogs or through gossip.

And for this reason, I almost didn’t write this blog. I worried that by writing this post I was doing the exact same thing Grose was with her piece on Paltrow.

And then I remembered intention.

And how intention, God willing, often shines through, even when the language we are using may be misconstrued as branding, marketing, or public relations spin.

Gwyneth’s intention — even though I don’t know her personally — came through loud and clear to me in the quotes attributed to her yesterday.

She’s not looking to hurt or attack anyone. She’s not looking to rebrand marriage or divorce or motherhood.

She just thinks before she speaks.

Before she acts.

That’s what came through to me.

She thinks before she speaks.

And this is a brand I’m happy to be an early adopter of.

 

 

Childhood, Writing

Why does my story matter?

Jen

This is my question today.

And usually every Wednesday.

Or Tuesday.

Depends.

Why does my story matter?

Okay, so I can weave words in a way sometimes

that makes you almost cry

that makes you remember the time you had blintzes in that cafe on 2nd Avenue

that makes you look frantically in the closet for the sundress you know you didn’t sell at Buffalo Exchange — you know it, you just know it, but where IS it — for a pair of people earrings that looked like the ones you got at Accessory Place with babysitting money

that makes you comb the recesses of your mind for the smell of your grandmother’s perfume

that makes you wish you didn’t throw away your walkman

or your diary from 5th grade the one with the pink plastic cover that you got for free with a magazine subscription that said

“I got my period today.”

Sometimes I do that to you.

I make you remember.

Is that enough to make my story matter?

Sometimes I write what comes to me and what comes to you is like what comes to me

and it makes you miss someone

or kiss someone

or call someone

or, better yet, write them a letter

or draw them a picture or make them a mixed tape.

Or send them back the mixed tape they made for you once.

Or twelve of them.

Does that make my story matter?

Sometimes

on Wednesdays

or Tuesdays

Depends —

I wonder why I write.

I wonder my story matters.

I wonder why it can’t just live inside me

just inside me

just there

for me.

What must I tell you?

Why must I make sense of it?

Why must I

make it beautiful

or agonizing

or wonderous?

Why must I?

 

 

Childhood

My kid plays in abandoned buses and I photograph him

Jen

Does this photo of my 7 year old “driving” an abandoned bus deserted in the industrial park on the kibbutz we live on instill feelings of longing in you?

My 7 year old "driving" an abandoned bus on Kibbutz Hannaton
My 7 year old “driving” an abandoned bus on Kibbutz Hannaton

Envy?

Or pure, unadulterated fear?

It’s rusty, that bus. And filled with trash. And likely painted with lead paint.

Maybe you just think I’m crazy. I know a lot of my friends and family back in the U.S. do. In fact, 35 year old me is looking at 39 year old me with a little bit of loathing and disgust; and plenty of confusion.

Today, on the Times of Israel, I blogged about what parenting (or really, underparenting) on a kibbutz in Israel looks like for me.

And how the dirty, sometimes dangerous life, has surprisingly created space for me in which I can breathe.

Childhood, Food, Memory, Parenting

I remember you on white bread

Jen

Meatball Surprise Mom is away.

Not like that one time fancy schmancy mozzarella with tomatoes from BJs unusual but usually some concoction something on the stove from scratch from what was in the fridge

No I remember Meatball Surprise little Jason little Jen

Pancakes log cabin syrup big glasses tinted lens steaming up with fog

laughing rather snorting rather smiling rather some blend

a beer on the back porch only when Uncle Steve’s in town only once a year maybe every other year

rootbeer or Pepsi Free from the fridge from the door in the fridge no don’t remember on the island there on Garwood Drive next to a plate of egg noodles with cottage cheese and sour cream and Wonder Bread and that was being Jewish I think

lunch on Saturday after cartoons after you went to the market but before soccer or after i don’t know there in the middle when it was sunny on the deck

Not like Wednesday when it was 5:30 and you were making green salad green iceberg lettuce green cucumbers green peppers Italian dressing French from scratch one time that didn’t work was yucky was too red not yellow or orange enough on the island

hamburgers on the grill but never cheeseburgers never with cheese not with Kraft American cheese in plastic never ever even though that’s what mom wanted and me too probably because hamburgers with bubbles on the top are gross

never parmesean on meatballs not like at Bubbi’s house not because it wasn’t kosher like you said but because you didn’t like the smell put the green container back in the spice cabinet now almost yelling but not

Flounder

But never shrimp

Never ever coconut shrimp except that one time at a chinese restaurant but i wasn’t there that’s just a story I think mom could tell or Uncle Harvey and Aunt Iris but not me I wasn’t there when your throat almost closed up but for years i didn’t eat shrimp God Forbid

Not because it wasn’t kosher

Fake poop but that’s for another time

Food food food this time that’s where we’re going

Never would’ve guessed it but it’s there on the top of a birthday cake 66 candles

but 39 years of food

funny i would’ve said beach boys beatles singing in the car bad smells bad jokes roll the window down the top down but no there’s

fried matzoh

syrup or salt or jelly perhaps, too, Grape Welch’s the flavor of 6 7 8 9 10

Passover

Pesach

Sandwiches on white bread

but what was in the middle

Yellow mustard for sure

but also what

Turkey? Bologna? Not ham, never ham

The only ham was you

on stage

with a frying pan.

* * *

Meatball Surprise Recipe

Ingredients

  • Egg Noodles
  • Ground Meat
  • Red Sauce from a Jar (Preferably Ragu)
  • Shredded Mozzarella Cheese

Instructions

Cook it all up regular like and mix it together in a pan and eat it up

Childhood, Love, Memory, Parenting, Relationships, Writing

They grow slowly

Jen

Spotted

My left eye spotted you

thanks to the light

that shines only in the first half of the morning.

Over the neighbor’s roof and down through

the dust

onto the purple chair

painted last summer by your father

in the light

of that same ray.

This is how they grow.

First one at a time, with pomp —

Then stealthily

like suburban mushrooms,

only noticed after the fact

by one who travels close to the ground.

And only in light that shines

in the first half of the morning.

Spotted

My left eye spotted you.

oliver freckles march 2014

Childhood, Education, Family, Letting Go, Love, Memory, Relationships, Writing

First love

Jen

Among my cardboard boxes, there is another. It’s plastic. A clear Tupperware container with a blue cover marked “Jen’s papers.”

I laugh a little at this because the markings on the masking tape are in my mother’s handwriting and I would have expected it to read “Jennifer’s papers.”

But Jen is shorter than Jennifer, shorter than Jenny, shorter than any of the names I answered to during the time of the papers. And easier to write on a label.

I opened this container a few months ago when the shipment arrived, and was first struck sick by the smell, a strong combination of mildew and 30-year-old paste.

I quickly secured the top back on  (imagining my own ironic, horrible scifi death by spores) and put it back on the pile of boxes for later review.

A bit heartbroken, I intended to throw the whole thing away. Clearly the papers inside were ruined; forgotten leftovers stored too long. But before I got rid of all of it I wanted to document the contents.  After all, my mother took care to fill this container over the course of a decade and to rescue it — not once, but many times — from basement catastrophe (flood, hurricane, divorce).

Despite potential ruin, after all these years, the Tupperware reached its destination: in the hands of grown-up Me. It would be a shame not to unload its cargo. Also, and most important, as a mother who hoards, I know well the affection wrapped up in the saving of those papers.

I approached the container again this week, when I had a few hours to myself during the day and when the weather was mild enough to be able to go through them in fresher air outside.

I took out our good camera and prepared to archive my findings.

I knew that most of what I’d find would be handwriting exercises, A+ papers, and art projects. Nothing extraordinary, I imagined, would be discovered inside. What could I possibly have produced in elementary school that would elicit any deeper emotions than sentimentality? On the other hand, my boxes  constantly surprise me and this one was no different.

Among the findings:

  • My first voting ballot — indecision written all over it — from a Weekly Reader in 1980. Anderson or Reagan for the Win? I had checked off both, though I wonder if the Reagan was an afterthought as I remember distinctly wanting Anderson.
  • A report on Voyager 2 when it was still hovering near Saturn
  • A now-vintage souvenir postcard sent to me and my brother (addressed to Miss Jennifer and Master Jason) from Disneyland
  • And, a drawing I made when I was three or four in which my mother’s image was a presence greater than anyone else on page, larger than me, larger than life.

I also found love letters.

Between me and Mrs. Aducat.

I completely forgot loving Mrs. Aducat.

Mrs. Aducat, who wasn’t even my homeroom teacher, not even the woman I spent most of my day with in first grade, but simply my reading teacher. The woman who taught me language, sentence construction, how to express myself with carefully crafted words.

Based on the persistence with which I sought her love, my affection was strong.

ms aducat i love you

Over the course of months, I wrote many love notes to Mrs. Aducat on the back of my writing exercises.

And she wrote me back.

“I love you, too, sweetie,” she wrote in red cursive on the back of one.

And with a smiling heart on another.

i love you too jenny

“Yes!” she answered me with an exclamation point one time when I asked her if she loved me too.

I even made it simple for her once. YES or NO, I wrote under two boxes. An ultimatum, perhaps?  If so, she took the bait and checked off YES. “Lots and lots,” she wrote underneath it in her red pen.

I am struck by this.

I am struck by the love given me by a grownup; not a relative, just a woman paid to teach me to read.

And I am struck by the unrestrained expression and bold audacity with which I expressed my love for her and asked for it in return.

Oh, to love and be loved again — unabashedly, without reserve — as I did, and was, when I was seven.

= = =

This is one in a series of essays inspired by my cardboard boxes. If you like this post, and want to know how it began, read A Case for Hoarding. One post in the series, “Note to Self,” was recently featured on Freshly Pressed. Additional posts are tagged “the boxed set series“.

Family, Love, Parenting, Relationships

The lump in my throat called life

Jen

The first sensation

is a swell

in the space

behind the back of my tongue but before my

esophagus.

What is that space called?

High up

on the other side of gagging?

I call it my crying space.

The space tears come from.

Ha!

You thought crying started scientifically in some space

known as

ducts,

No way, Jose.

Crying starts as a lump —

there in that undefined on the anatomical map because it’s function is almost obsolete

like the appendix.

Except it functions still.

I know it because I try to make it stop sometimes and it won’t.

Good cries

Bad cries

Nervous anxious I don’t want to talk to you right now cries

How could this happen I don’t understand it cries

My baby’s okay my baby’s ok my baby’s o.k. cries

And you …

you little one little new one little brand new life that just began first as an idea then as a mister mister then as a real live thing in the world as a lump in my throat cries.

You started in someone else’s belly but for me you start now as a lump in my throat trickling up through that space between my esophagus and the back of my tongue.

I breathe in relief and gratitude and respect for your mother.

(I also sigh a long sigh called MOTHERHOOD because this is what all mothers silently sigh the minute a new baby is born and all our collective memories swirl together in an almost scream.)

But then I stop.

You are you. Something new.

The lump, I swallowed it.

You are in my stomach now. In the space I hold allllllllll my love. All my love is there. So much. Too much. Old love. New love. If I could keep it all there I would but I can’t and it turns into lumps sometimes. But what’s there in my belly, all that love, keeps me alive and going and facing forward.

Love. New love.

New life.

You.

Childhood, Writing

I don’t know why I’ve been dreaming ’bout the Echelon Mall

Jen

Tacos for 79 cents,
mild sauce ask for extra and squeeze

Children’s Place, a tunnel with carpet inside
crawl through the storefront window

My first Walkman wasn’t Sony
downstairs at a stereo store in the corner next to Strawbridge’s across from Heroes World
before Heroes World moved upstairs
One time
downstairs

I saw a man there
the inside of his ear on the outside
But that was when it was
still cool because it wasn’t cool
Smelly erasers
Sanrio
I stole one and my mom made me give it back

say sorry to a lady who maybe once stole stuff too.

White tiles – big
Black tiles- small
Step on a crack, break my mother’s

back by the Clinique counter.
Pantyhose (stockings) downstairs, down an escalator
watch your shoelaces, “tie them!”

Sbarros a booth and the back of a perm seen from
the old Gap which was new once jeans only then V-neck sweaters

Seasonal in and outs up near JC Penney’s or Sears, the anchors I never explored ’cause someone said they were for poor people

Broken glass my dad ate inside a Chinese stir fry at a restaurant that once lived near the top of the escalator over the Food Court
but that was before
Bananaberry shakes
gyros
Mr. Bulky’s
Giggling at boys
Skater boys
Yummy blonde skater boys named Jon P with bangs hanging over one eye
never paid attention to me ’cause my bangs were too crunchy or my nose too big or the scrunchy socks before hair scrunchies or was too Jewish or too rich
even though I never thought I was rich
just had nice clothes and got to go on vacation
back when my parents were married still.

CVS
Silver City Pink
painted on like cum on my 13 year old lips before trying to get in to see Down & Out In Beverly Hills and then again to see House which wasn’t as scary couldn’t have been with the guy from Greatest American Hero

I have his autograph

had. Rated R
Rocky Horror Picture Show sometime later after the Sophmore Cotillion Josh made me sit on the end and I was scared of the transvestite.

Bighair
Bigbighair

Cookie cake – so many cookie cakes
Sam Goody’s 2 for 99 cents bin
Teeny tiny chicklets in a yellow envelope damp at the top with my saliva

Loitering
Once we were kicked out for loitering
Me and Dylan and maybe Sondra or Meghan, I don’t remember but what a dumb cop to think good girls knew how to loiter
We weren’t even hiding the Benson & Hedges cigarettes in our pockets that day.
Passing by girls who used to sleep over my house in my double bed with me next to me after softball but now hardly say Hi to me pretend they were never there.
Giggling
Those girls do
Laughing at a fat kid because Michael P. with his feathered black hair said to and because that’s what you do when you travel in packs

at the mall
McDonald’s a book store Hallmark that T-shirt place that awesome iron-on T-shirt place where you could choose cute critters or Papagalo’s Pizza logo or Adam Ant what was it called up there above Woolworth’s where I used to buy tye dye with Rachel so we could make t-shirts and sell them on my street where cars passed by because it was a busy street not a quiet court like hers
One time I got lost
— or was that Jason?
One time my mom hid from me, from us, to teach us a lesson
One time I saw Brian there and he winked at me and I felt pretty and popular and was certain that my life was about to change
One time I dared to go into Spencer’s
One time I got my ears pierced at Piercing Pagoda in front of everybody, why did they do that? in front of everybody?
One time I went back there and it wasn’t there anymore
Not even the piano store where they used to give lessons and play Liberace reminds me of Bubbi and Poppop always because I took organ lessons there for a week or two or maybe a month but not long enough to know how to play the piano or the organ or any instrument that would allow me to make music  ( I just want to make music)
Not even Structure or Express, nothing
not even one whiff of anything that once smelled like Drakkar Noir

Just some of the walls were left
And a Lens Crafters

and a Lens Crafters

Uncategorized

My heart hurts with how much I love libraries right now

Jen

I’ve been suffering the symptoms of drought since I moved to Israel
three years ago, but
I didn’t know it
until I swam again in a sea of books;
otherwise known as the English Department Library at Bar Ilan University where I am currently studying Creative Writing.

Where my heart is opening faster than my throat can bear. Wider than I thought it could possibly stretch
without ripping apart,
my heart, my throat.

But I digress.

I’m sure — in fact, I know — that Israel is not without books; not even without English books; not even without free English books. But I live far away from the intellectual center of the country, closer to cows than cafés, and although I live among (thank GOD) intellectuals, smarty pants, voracious readers with amazing personal collections of English books in their homes, there is something about deciding today, yes today, yes right now, NOW, to have an Americano and a piece of whole grain toast and then head over to the library and quietly, almost anonymously, browse through the aisles waiting to be struck by a sense of urgency or felicity or naughtiness because

THIS must be what you read next.

The cover said so. The title did. The jacket copy. The reviews.

And then walking out with your newest bed companion without having paid.

For FREE.

Oh, the guilt.

You feel it for half a second and then you do the happy dance.

This is the library.

And this is what I’ve missed without knowing how deeply until just yesterday when I swam again in her sea, when I laid eyes again on my beloved Chabon, when I stumbled upon an older Tartt I’d never known before, when I touched a battered faded green hard bound copy of Frost.

I came alive.

I didn’t know I was dead.

Or, at least, so so thirsty.

Letting Go, Love, Memory, Relationships

Music is a Gift with Legs

Jen

I’m a big believer in the magic of books, music, and people falling into your lap when you least expect them to and when you are most ready to appreciate their messages.

(For this reason, I’m about to download The Happiness Project since three people in as many days have referenced it to me.)

But just because the wisdom fortuitously appears at just the right time doesn’t mean its vessel hasn’t fallen into your lap previously … maybe even shimmied back and forth a bit; stirred almost otherworldy sensations down there. Somehow, though, you overlooked the deeper message the first time around.

What’s even more incredible is when the words of comfort or inspiration have been there all along — in your CD cabinet, let’s say — just waiting to be understood.

There all the time
There all the time

This is the case with my collection of Grooves compilation CDs that were a hand-me-down gift from a boyfriend’s mom in the mid-90s.

I have seven of them still. Two I’ve loved since college, but the rest mostly gathered dust buried there at the bottom of my alt/folk rock section. This past week I’ve been listening to volume five (one of the dusty ones) on my way to work and school. It’s been a week of transition, and a week in which I need to feel understood, and loved.

It’s been, as I like to say (quietly to myself), a sing-with-the-windows-down kinda week.

Here’s the playlist of volume five:

Hold Me Up – Velvet Crush

Layer By Layer – Steve Wynn

You R Loved – Victoria Williams

Tell Everybody I Know – Keb Mo

Partisan – Katell Keineg

Holding Back The River – Luka Bloom

Who’s So Scared – Disappear Fear

Dreams In Motion – Felix Cavaliere

Good Times – Edie Brickell

Mockingbirds – Grant Lee Buffalo

Send Me On My Way – Rusted Root

Her Man Leaves Town – Rebecca Pidgeon

Two Lovers Stop – Freedy Johnston

You And Eye – David Byrne

Oye Isabel – Iguanas

And If Venice Is Sinking – Spirit Of The West

Century Plant – Victoria Williams

I’ve had this CD in my possession for two decades (the copyright says 1994 on the disk jacket), but I’m only now finding meaning in the messages.

Only now.

This is what good music does to a soul: Seeks it out and seeps in deep just when the spirit craves it most.

And the songs, just as they were advertised at the time, are fresh. juicy. like new. 

Gifts …even in the form of hand-me-down compilations CDs … have legs, I guess. And can walk a long, long distance in order to deliver a much-needed message.