I haven't been great about moving my columns to this here site, but the recent shooting at a LGBT facility in Tel Aviv made me feel compelled to put this puppy up. It's a bit dated, but enjoy...
It’s been a month since Donald Trump let an ugly bigot parade around as a beauty queen, and I still haven’t been able to rid my mind of the grotesque sight.
I understand the argument that some religious leaders still consider homosexuality a sin – and that’s, no doubt, what Miss California meant when she said her sentiments were “what I was taught.”
But those same religious leaders would recognize that hatred is a sin. The denial of civil rights is a sin. Espousing views that insight violence and dehumanize a great swath of God's creation is a sin.
At least, that's what I was taught.
Here's a dirty secret: I haven't washed my hair in five days.
I would. I have nothing against
shampoo. But I can’t wash my hair because I no longer know how.
At some point during puberty, my nice, normal wavy locks took a twisted turn. I woke up one morning to find a mass of matted, frizzy poodle fur atop my yiddishe kop, and I had no idea what to do with it.
Naturally, I did everything
wrong: I brushed it. I blow-dried it. I applied product after product
to it to make it look less… less… Jewish. But nothing worked.
Like a bat mitzvah present I couldn’t return, I was stuck with it.
Kids being the tolerant beings that they are made me feel totally comfortable with my new look by endowing me with such loving nicknames as “Cave Woman” and “Yeti.”
Around this time, I read about a hairstylist named Ouidad who billed herself as a curly hair expert. A dubious distinction, I thought. How hard is it to be queen of hair that looks perpetually messy? Still, hearing about her helped me embrace my twisted tresses.
I never became a curly expert, but I did make peace with the weird stuff growing out of my head, and I learned a few tricks (bye-bye hairbrush!).Over time, I came to see the fuzz, the fuss, the finger-in-the-outlet mess as a fate I could learn to live with.
Then I rediscovered Ouidad.
The woman I read about a lifetime ago has opened a salon in Santa Monica.
I went. I got cut. I got styled. And now I can never wash my hair again.
After "slicing" my hair, Kate
styled my locks in some magic way she described as “Rake and Shake”
that sets each curl apart like a precious little gem. I have no idea
what, exactly, she did, but I am now convinced that on the Seventh Day,
G-d did not rest. He created the Rake and Shake, and He saw it was good.
Using hair clips and advanced calculus, she separated my tresses into little tribes across my scalp. She then wiggled her fingers through each of them in a manner resembling someone ringing a bell, misting and blotting and geling as she went. When I told her that I doubted I’d be able to recreate this method at home, she tried to allay my fears.
“Don’t worry,” she told me. “I’ll give you a book.”
A book? Is there nothing our people can do without text?
Sure enough, when I was done, Kate handed me a book explaining how to wash, dry and “Rake and Shake” my hair.
I’ve powered through medical journals, legal briefs and Pynchon. But I can’t comprehend a manual explaining how to wash my own hair. And it comes with pictures!
So, for the last five days, I’ve sacrificed a clean scalp for sculpted curls. And I’m going to keep going until I can no longer get away with it.
Sure, it’s taken me back to the dark days of pubescent insecurity. Once again, I’m a greasy mess who doesn't know how to deal with the DNA heirloom on top of my head.
But at least this time around, my confusion looks fantastic.
Among the childhood episodes Zev will likely recount to his inevitable future therapist, I imagine “the thing at the diner” will come up a lot.
“I’m sitting there between my mom and dad,” he’ll probably begin. “And mom’s furiously cutting up a goat-cheese and Kalamata omelet on my plate while dad is trying to shove half a buttermilk pancake down my throat.”
“Uh-huh,” the therapist will say, her mind wandering off to visions of fabric swatches and yacht interiors.
“And they’re each piling it on, Mom with her lox scramble and Dad with his sugar-coated blueberry muffin.”
“Hmm.”
“My mouth is opened and stuffed like a garbage disposal, grinding away all these incompatible flavors while my parents battle for the bragging rights to cultural dominion.”
After Hubby converted, we thought we had worked out all the ethnic kinks: Any kids we had would, of course, be raised Jewish. All trans-Atlantic travel would include a stop to Israel. And, it should go without saying, no Christmas trees.
But there are subtleties to mixed marriages that we had never considered – bittersweet subtleties that play less on our ideologies, and more on our tongues.
Hubby is a thirteenth-generation American, raised with no religion, but plenty of divinity (as in, the meringue cookies his Kentucky-bred grandma used to make). He grew up with caramel cakes, milk chocolate and breakfasts sweetened with all the syrup this proud nation’s cornfields could produce.
I, meanwhile, am a first-generation daughter of Israeli immigrants who carted cream cheese and olive sandwiches in my lunch box along with sliced cucumbers and tomatoes. I prefer fish with the head still on it and had never tasted a s’more until the age of 27 (I didn’t care for it).
When we were dating, Santa Claus and haftarah portions made each of us seem exotic to the other, but our cultures were not nearly as foreign as our cuisines. There are five taste sensations: salty, sweet, bitter, sour and umami. (Umami is that indescribably wonderful taste of savory, meaty, delicious food. Think mushrooms, Parmesan cheese, and anything cooked with monosodium glutamate.) Hubby’s taste preferences lean toward the teeth-coatingly sweet while my tongue tends to wander to the rich, sophisticated spectrum of umami.
For years, Hubby and I have gently ribbed each other for our perceived “strange” taste in foods – I’d threaten to kiss him after eating an olive and he’d subject me to big pancake breakfasts.
But after Zev came along jokes turned to competition: Whom did Zev take after the most? Yes, he has his dad’s lips and his mom’s nose, but what we each really want to know about is his tongue. Does it take after the pedestrian sweet side or the discerning umami side? (I know, I know, but if Hubby wants fair, he can write his own column.)
At the impressionable age of 3, Zev has not yet decided his culinary identity – he’s as happy dousing his food with hummus as with ketchup. We’re trying to play it cool, but as our recent feeding frenzy at the diner demonstrated, we desperately want to know which side of the table Zev will choose. The love of food, after all, is the love of life – who doesn’t want to share that with their child?
Neither of us has bad-mouthed our spouse’s taste buds, but I fear that Zev is starting to realize that the fissure in the united front of our parenting runs right through the kitchen. Never mind his aching tummy, what is our endless jockeying of sweet and savory going to do to his psyche?
“And in the end,” I’m sure he’ll say to that future therapist, “I feel like, whatever flavors I am more drawn to, I’m letting one of them down. Like I’ve delivered some decided blow to my parents’ personal culture war. I feel sick to my stomach – and not just because I’ve eaten my weight in breakfast foods.”
“Yes,” the therapist will nod, adding, “Our time is up.”
Having unloaded his neuroses, Zev will walk out of the fluorescent light of the shrink’s office, blinking in the afternoon sun. He’ll get into his car and drive somewhere where he can unwind and collect his thoughts.
I can only hope now that it’s a Chinese restaurant.
I must have re-written my condolence card 500 times.
“I wish there were something I could do…” Too hopeless.
“I’m so sorry for your loss…” No. Sure it’s true, but it sounds so impersonal.
“This is horrible…” Yeah, that’s a great opening line. Why not just say, “Sucks to be you” and tie it to a bottle of gin?
When the aliens land, let’s hope they don’t mistake the rolling green hills of a cemetery for a landing pad. Because if they do, their first impression of us will be that we’re a stupid, stupid species.
After someone dies, we have clearly defined rituals – crystal clear instructions about what to do: Order a quick burial, sit shiva, recite the mourner’s kadish. We know how to mourn, but we have no clue what to say to those in mourning. And so, inevitably, we say all the wrong things.
When my father passed away 13 years ago, I sat aghast as one of my mom’s friends told my then 12-year-old sister that the pain Sis was feeling “will never go away.”
“It will just get worse. Every day.”
The woman – a psychologist, I feel compelled note – then rambled on and on about how she has never gotten over her own father’s death and how Sis’s loss would be like a giant hole in her heart for the rest of her days.
I’m amazed she didn’t underscore her point by handing my sister a rusty razor blade and bottle of sleeping pills. Saying “it’ll get better in time,” might have been reductive, but telling her she’d never be whole again doubled her losses – first she loses our father, then she loses all hope. We throw dirt on the caskets, do we really have to throw mud on the bereaved?
I was furious at the woman (and still haven’t quite forgiven her), but less than a year later, I was confronted with my own awkward moment of post-death wishes. A co-worker was in her office, next door to mine, when she learned that her mother passed away. I heard her sobbing and rushed next door. When she told me the news, I stood dumbstruck.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Thank you,” my colleague said.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m so …” it went on and on like this for several minutes before I realized what I was doing. I was at such a loss for words that I kept repeating the few I could think of. Finally, I left the poor woman alone – truly sorry for forcing her to play bereavement volleyball.
So, when a friend recently lost her newborn twins, I was determined not to say the wrong thing. Everyone around her was making all the usual funeral faux pas: “They’re in a better place.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “This will pass.”
My friend was getting more and more agitated. She was clearly touched that people came out to support her and her husband, but did they have to say such patently stupid things? When it was my turn to approach her, I just grabbed her hand and let her dampen my shoulder with her tears. She spoke to me of her anger, of her numbness, her shock, her confusion. I spoke little. Just hugged her and stroked her hair.
I didn’t end up finding the right words to say in a bereavement card, so I didn’t give her one. Words may be my living, but in the end, I discovered the only right thing to do was to shut up and listen.