Tamarika

Roses remind me of you

I just can't resist!

Happy Loving Day to all my new friends and bloggers today. Some of these roses I have given and some received (Kim-Alla - thanks).

You left
left me with the red red roses
whose fragrance and elegance
remind me of you
and of the beauty of life
one should always pursue (Nian)

In case you are wondering, I called Jan and we talked from Philly to Italy. So Happy Birthday dear Jan today too!

This is just for the fun of it! (Thanks Leanne)

Gift package to New York City

A gift for Tom.

"It remains on view for just 16 days. Consider yourself forewarned. Time is fleeting."

How will they live without me?

I think I am going to have a very difficult time dying. It will probably have to hit me out of the blue. I just cannot imagine people living without me. They will never be able to think of things to do or do them as I well as I. And how will they manage when I am not around? For example, the cats need me early in the morning. Ada wakes me by pulling on the telephone chord and sometimes sits close to my face, gently patting my lips with her paw. She and Molly want to play. More urgently they like to watch me clean their litter box because they know that those seafood tasty treats are on their way. 

I think about them as I plan my new fall position at a college three hours drive from my home. This will mean that I will have to rent a small studio where I will stay for half the week. On the one hand I am thrilled at the opportunity for this new position. On the other, what will Molly and Ada do without their morning treats, tuna once a week and the twice a day litter cleaning ritual?

I remember when Gilad and Anna went up into the Snowy Range. Gilad was sixteen. He took a pack and headed out from Buffalo New York to Wyoming on a Greyhound bus. After a week, Anna returned. It had been so high in those mountains that she had felt quite unwell. Gilad stayed behind to wander the range alone. I did not sleep for days. There were no cell phones then. How did I allow him to go off like that? Lying awake each night in my comfortable home in Clarence, I imagined all manner of terrible things happening to him. When I would get to the part about him lying alone in a pool of blood, I would sit up sharply in my bed and head quickly, urgently for the kitchen to make a cup of tea. In my family, all crises are dealt with by a cup of tea. As I write this, I can hear my mother calling out, "Put on the kettle, I'll make the tea!"

Gilad returned two weeks later looking well. His hair was knotted and tangled into natural dreadlocks but he looked tall and strong. Soon after Anna had left him on top of the Snowy Range he had stumbled onto the "Sand Lake Lodge." There he stayed for a week or more, helping out with chopping firewood and other such chores. Where had he learned that? He handed me a letter from the owners:

Dear Tamar, We had the pleasure of meeting and knowing your son, Gilad. He stopped by for a drink of water and through mutual agreement he stayed and helped us at our lodge. I just want to let you know what a good person your son is. He has pitched in and helped doing anything he was asked to do, and cheerfully (I might add). Please stop and see us if you are ever in this part of the country, and the door is certainly open for Gilad at any time. Take care and hope to meet you some day.

Gilad could more than survive without me. But was that a good thing? At age fifteen, he started making his own sandwiches for school and I was mortified. I wandered around feeling depressed and listless for days until I realized that I was not feeling needed. After all, making food for the family is one of the ways we give love. Imagine my joy when one year Gilad wrote to me in a mother's day card, "I love you and I need you but I allow you to rest once in awhile. I take that back. I love you and I need you UNCONDITIONALLY. Love Gilad."

Is my self-worth dependent on being needed?

In March I will be presenting to directors of campus based child care centers about delegating. As a director of a large campus based child care center for eleven years, I learned to let go of being the only person who knows what to do, or the only person who does it properly. Before I left the center to move to Philadelphia I would sit in my office and weep silently to myself. Who would know that when you feed Nacho, the cockatiel, you have to chirp and sing so that he/she would reply in kind? Who would talk to the plants, as I did in my mind, as they watered them? Who would ...? It was agony. I was sure that no one, parents, staff, children, would be able to live without me. And then we hired one of the teachers who had been at the Center longer than me to be the new Director and, presto! Everyone is growing and thriving. When last I visited Nacho and the plants looked happy, strong and joyful!

Whenever I go off to conferences, Hawaii or to Israel to visit my family Tom does just fine! Even though he does not always give Molly and Ada those special seafood tasting treats at the right time early in the morning, they all seem to be thriving and joyful when I return.

So perhaps I can allow myself to feel worthwhile in ways other than being needed.

I wonder how.

Like a dark cloud obscuring the sun

I have been reading a lot of bloggers out there and therefore have not had time for a posting of my own. What a job this is! I just cannot seem to do both at once! I feel as if my work is never done.

For some reason,it reminds me of a cartoon I had pinned up in my office where a guy has been called into see his boss. The executive leans back in his chair and says to his employee, "It's come to my attention that you have a life outside the office."

This morning I read Doug Ireland's column in the LA Weekly. It was one of those articles that I wanted to duplicate as fliers and give out all over the nation. Instead (and isn't that the beauty of this thing called blog?) I have copied only the conclusion here:

Well, historical truth tells us that our Founding Fathers — products of the Enlightenment — detested religion, and one of the best rebukes to Bush was written by Thomas Jefferson in 1813 when he declared: “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.” That’s a pretty fair description of our politics and governance today with the second coming of Bush. And it’s why the real state of our Union today is so bloody frightening.

I have a very, dear friend who hates it if we tell him he must read something or really should see a certain movie. Even so, knowing how he feels, and respecting those feelings so much - I urge you, please, to read the rest here.

Non-bloggish and piano

I just have to share this with you ...

Proud mother

This is a newsflash to my loyal readers. When you get there, click on jazz, then piano and scroll down to Gilad Barkan. This is my son. Click on his name and don't forget to read the blurb (spoken in a whisper ...)

What's love got to do with it?

Valentine's Day is coming. An important day for me. It is Jan's birthday. For close to three decades I have called Jan on her birthday, and she has called me on mine. When we were eighteen and graduated high school, she left me in Bulawayo for the big, wide world of college and the mother-land, England. When Jan came home for holidays I heard tales of exotic musicals (Hair) and the great university life. Ah, how I admired her worldliness and intelligence! She brought home "I'm leaving on a jet plane" with Peter, Paul and Mary. In those days I called her Janet.

Jan and I met in the girl's restroom at Milton High School. We were in the Sixth Form, seventeen years old and had come with a large group of sixth formers from neighboring schools to study for A-levels. I hailed from Northlea which was a co-ed school from way over in North End. Most of the students came to Milton from Townsend or Milton itself, which were all-girls, all boys. My friend probably remembers more lucidly details of the day we met in the girl's bathroom. Both suffering from stories of both our boyfriend's possessive behaviors, we bonded immediately. I could not believe that such a beautiful, talented and intelligent girl wanted to be my friend.

Jan was one of my first friends with whom I could share those important questions and discussions about sexuality, that were forbidden everywhere else. Not only that, we were die-hard liberals together, although she and her family taught me more than I had ever known about respecting other cultures. They changed my life, attitude, outlook, worldview - they taught me about compassion.

Ours is a long history, way too long for a weblog posting. Suffice it to say we have shared our loves, marriages, divorces, life and death stories. We have traveled to see each other, from one corner of the world to the other, England, Israel, Italy, America.

Jan is on my mind for Valentine's Day is coming and this year I will call her in Italy - this time, from Philadelphia. I will think of her with large lavender bushes, shouting merrily in fluent Italian to Giuseppe, "Mi amore!" with grand Alpine mountains overlooking her village nestling in the valley.

Bloggers unite? III

 

Holden Caulfield on blogging ...

It's all about grief (updated)

I find - I lost (How to Survive the Loss of a Love)

Oprah sent me this today - coincidence?

Like love, breakups change your brain chemistry. Don't let acquaintances belittle your pain or tell you to "just buck up." To speed your recovery, find a sympathetic ear.

Natalie Goldberg suggests making lists. I wonder if I could make a list of losses:

moving house, city, country, change of jobs, marriages, divorces, father dying, Charlie dying, leaving childhood, becoming an adult, giving up old neurotic habits, letting go of nemeses, graduating high school, leaving college, completing a PhD, leaving old friends, making new ones, different accents, speaking different languages, learning new cultural mores, giving up old ones, losing step-children, losing the way, learning new roads, leaving Wegmans, Gilad weaning, his circumcision, going to preschool, leaving UBCCC, children leaving me to go to kindergarten or first grade, teachers leaving to find new adventures, Gilad making his own sandwich for school, Gilad going to Israel for a year when he was eighteen, being kidnapped, loss of youth, loss of breath, loss of voice, finding it again, leaving Bob my therapist, Ziva my therapist, leaving Terry, losing Terry, losing Jenna, Jack and Diane, Nacho, Main and Bailey, losing my hibiscus tree, my sun room, smells of Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, movies with Judy and Alan, walks with Susan, Cheryl, Marion, Mar-Mar's kisses on infants' cheeks, nanny Margaret, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, my unborn children, losing dreams, realizing dreams, facing reality, adolescence, learning childhood heroes are human too, leaving on a jet-plane, over and over again, leaving Mom and Israel this past August, loving Naomi, Idit, Vera, Tali, Arik, Rivanna, Melinda, Swami Ji, Amaravati Devi, Trimurthi, Yigal, Nimrod, Andre, Barry, Maish, Dave, Louis, Robert, being 32, mikvah in the sea, dancing at parties

Tom Frantz says,

It's all about grief

and

We journey with people aways                  

Judith Viorst says that losses are necessary to grow.

Ecclesiastes (3:1-8) & The Byrds say:

To everything there is a season, and time to every purpose under the heaven (Turn, Turn, Turn...)

Bloggers unite II

Ain't this posting grand?