Life

I am someone who is a contradiction in many ways. There are some things that do not bother me at all, they don’t even elicit a twitch. And then there are the others. They are the things that sometimes still make me feel badly. One of the worst feelings in the world is the one you get when you feel like you have let yourself down.

Some of these stories have been shared with you and some have not. Within this blog I am so very honest with myself. That is not to suggest that I am dishonest or less than truthful, but there is a stark reality to seeing the thoughts and feelings in print.

This morning I remembered the final exam of one of my political science classes. We were required to write four essays. There were five different topics to choose from. I don’t remember specific details anymore, other than I had three exceptional essays. I knew my stuff and I did a fabulous job of presenting it.

It was the fourth essay that was the problem. I just couldn’t effectively answer the final two questions. I tried. I really tried to come up with something but nothing came out of me, the bluebook was empty.

And then I had a brainstorm. I remembered the professor talking about someone who had been giving an assignment and was unable to speak about the assignment and deftly turned things by providing an outstanding presentation on a different topic.

So I said what the hell and I began to write about another topic that we had covered in depth, but was not part of the final exam. In my opinion it was the best essay out of the four. I got an ‘A’ on the exam and an ‘A’ in the course.

The next semester I signed up for another course with the same professor. On the first day of class he took me aside and used these words with me, “I don’t want you in here if you are going to try that bullshit with me again.”

It caught me offguard. I was unprepared and I kind of nodded my head and babbled at him. I felt exceptionally guilty because I realized that I had let myself down. I’d like to say that I learned my lesson and that I have never done anything to make myself feel badly, but that would be a lie.

As I have grown older there have been a few events here and there, but within my time as a college student I don’t think that I ever felt worse than I did standing in front of him that day.

I have written about my trip to Israel during the summer of 1985 more times than I can count. There are constant references to it here and a host of others that have shown up in other places. It certainly was among the formative experiences of my life.

Friends, those of you who have spent time in Israel more than likely understand that is a place in which you learn how small the world is. I have spent any time there where I didn’t run into many different people I knew, from all different walks of life and places in my own.

Especially in Jerusalem, it is just one of those places which draws people from everywhere, there is a magic and magnetic pull that draws you in.

Today as is my wont I was haunting Treppenwitz and reading his latest post in which he mentioned having worked at Richie’s Pizza in Jerusalem. It was a place that I spent quite a bit of time at. The pizza wasn’t bad, but it was the board that drew me there. There was this board on which we would leave messages for friends/relatives on how to contact us while in Israel. And it was a place in which you could search for messages for yourself as well.

Call me what you will, but when I look back on my life I can pick that summer out from the rest without any effort. It is like a freaking beacon of light that still shines and always will. I’d say that in some ways I am haunted by that summer, that the feelings and experiences from them are things that I subconsciously am still searching for.

There were ten years between my first trip in 1985 and the follow up in 1995. I was mildly surprised to see that when I returned not only did I find the piece of my soul that I left there but I still knew my way around quite well. In some ways it was as if I had never left and in others it was hard, at least for a few days.

Those first few days I caught myself looking for friends, for people who were back in the states, but had been there the first time. And then I adjusted and stopped looking for them, but made time to seek out the places and things that had made an impact upon me the first time.

Many were gone and some were still there but had lost some of the allure. I went to a couple of the bars I used to hit and was disappointed to see teenagers there, children in my eyes. And I realized that I had been one of those children, albeit I had most definitely not seen myself that way.

It is 20 years now since that summer. One of my best friends was made on that trip, he was like a brother to me. On August 25 it will be seven years since he died and I still miss him.

But when I think about him it is easy to remember what it was like to wander through Jerusalem with him.

Twenty years later….wow. I could not have imagined myself being or looking this way. I couldn’t have done it.

My head is spinning a little and I am drifting through the memories, floating around, cloudlike. Jerusalem still holds a piece of me, I leave it there. Here in the states I am not whole, not broken, but not quite who I could be.

If you’ll forgive the drama and mild hysteria I suspect that in time I’ll return for longer and longer periods of time. And like the elves in LOTR eventually I will leave Middle Earth and head to the docks to sail away.

But not yet, not yet.

When I was younger I vowed to stop crying. I was 14 and I had decided that men were not supposed to cry. I can remember the events that led to that decision. I was one of those people who didn’t just cry, if I cried it was all encompassing and it just wracked my body.

Not every time, but enough that I felt it in every part of my body. I think that the final moment came as a result of my cousin’s funeral. Typically Jewish funerals have a closed casket, but this one didn’t. I remember seeing my cousin’s body and watching her son cry, he is seven years older than I am and I always looked up to him.

The moment just hit me hard, it rocked my world and I had trouble staying composed. I wasn’t scared, just sad, so sad for my cousin and sad for myself. As my grandfather drove me back to the house for shiva I was crying. He didn’t condemn me or make me feel badly, he tried to make me feel better. But it was enough that he was not crying.

I didn’t understand that his lack of tears was not indicative of a lack of emotion/feeling not to mention that he may have cried, I don’t know. But that day I determined that I was through with tears. And for 21 years I have stayed fairly true to that promise.

I was an idiot.

It doesn’t take a genius to realize that I crippled part of myself and stunted my ability to mourn the loss of things and people. I am not an emotional cripple or mental midget, so I didn’t prevent myself from feeling, all I did was make the process of grieving more difficult.

In the last 21 years there have been a few moments where I shed some tears, but there were not many and it happened when I was completely caught in the moment. As soon as I realized that I was crying they began to stop, I learned how to stop myself far too well.

So now I have been consciously working on reversing this, giving myself permission to cry. I don’t want to keep stuffing it back into the cage. I have been known to carry a deep and abiding sadness with me and I think that the lack of tears is part of the reason why.

Some of the women of my past were aware of this and tried to convince me to cry on their shoulders, to let it out. It is not that simple, if it was I could do it on my own. I suspect that some of them were offended that I did not. They took the lack of tears as a lack of trust and I suppose to some extent it was.

But the walls that I built and the towers that maintained their vigil over my mind were not going to be defeated that easily.

I am confident that this is going to change. I think that one of the benefits of maturity and fatherhood is that I see the ability to cry as a sign of strength and not weakness. It still scares me, I haven’t sobbed as an adult, but the day is coming.

I am taking a momentary break from trying to explain to executives why they should spend their advertising dollars with my publications to remark upon the upcoming weekend and return of the school year.

September is a hard month for me. I find the end of Summer to be disappointing, I always have. Summer is when I feel most alive. I live for days in which I can feel the sun beating down on my back. Memories of the park and metal slides that were so hot your legs were branded, bike rides, the beach, camp, Summer love and all that other stuff just make it my favorite time of year.

And even though I haven’t had a real Summer break or vacation in years there is something about the end that just bothers me. It helps to explain why I love living in California, it just feels right. I am not a guy who likes snow. It is fine for a short visit and then I am tired of it. I could live my life in a tank top and shorts and be happy.

Of course in order to try and live that life one has to work. The problem with working is that I find that I don’t have enough time to do the chores/projects I have around the house, let alone handle the ones that my wife prepares for me as well. On a sidenote in my next life I want to come back as either a dwarf or a very wealthy man. Either way I won’t be seen as the moving man for everyone.

So this weekend I have to bring the crib in from the garage and assemble it for my daughter, fix the gate on the side, clean the garage, my dresser, go through old clothes, work on the sprinklers, get the car a lube and oil, attend a birthday party for a three year-old, find time for my parents, in-laws and great-grandparents to see my children and probably a half dozen other things that I have forgottent to add.

What happened to the weekend and why can’t I get it back. If it wasn’t for Shabbos I wonder if we’d slow down at all.