Tamarika

Change - would do you good

Up on my treadmill today walking and running, Sheryl Crowe singing to me about change doing [me] good. And I know just what she means. I feel it in the air as I enter a new phase since coming to Philadelphia in December. Bob, the therapist, brought me to what seemed like the edge of an ominous precipice and then, as I moved away from him, six months ago, I was left to face it alone. Once in a therapy session, I remember saying to him, "I fear I might fall into an abyss." He replied, "It might be good to just fall into it then."

About fifteen years ago I took a statistics course with a renowned grief counselor who later became my doctoral supervisor and adviser. What I remember most about that course was that every now and again, he would stop teaching us statistics and sit down to read us either a poem or short literary piece unrelated to the concepts we had been struggling with all evening. Sometimes it would be from Alice and Wonderland or even Winnie the Pooh. One time he read us A Story in Five Chapters:

Chapter 1. I walk down the street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter 2. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in, again. I can't believe I am in this same place. But it isn't my fault. It still takes a long time to get out.

Chapter 3. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it is there. I fall in ... it's a habit ... but, my eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.

Chapter 4. I walk down the same street. There is a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.

Chapter 5. I walk down a different street.

Last night there was an enormous storm. Lightening flashed and cracked and thunder rumbled and roared. I stood by the vast expanse of window in my living room looking out at the woods of Fairmount Park. Sheets of rain smashed angrily at the window and clattered on the awning. The huge old trees were shrouded in an eerie light. TJ was flying on his way to Japan, Ada and Molly sat one on each side of me and we stared out together in awe. In the morning, when I awoke there was peace. As I opened the window fresh air drifted through the house and the world outside was washed clean. We stumbled out onto the porch, squishing and squelching under foot although the cats tiptoed silently through the puddles to watch birds clamoring at the feeder. I sat with a cup of coffee and smiled to myself.

"Bob," I said out loud as if he was sitting opposite me, "I did fall in, " I thought. It was painful as hell. I was so mad and angry at everyone, past husbands, siblings, the world, all the wrongs I imagined done to me over the years, and all my frustrations at TJ for bringing me here. But just as the storm raged outside my window last night so, I realized, the storm within me was gone. If it was an ominous precipice, I pondered, the valley is lush and green and the Wissahickon creek winds peacefully transporting ducks, geese, and trout right down the hill behind the woods of my back yard. Fox, raccoon, chipmunks, and all kinds of birds come to visit around the feeder a couple of feet from the porch - even Indigo Bunting. Yesterday, before the storm, a deer strolled up for the first time, and munched at the seeds that had fallen from the feeder.

After yoga, I put on a colorful summer dress and chopped up a fine salad, all the while humming Sheryl Crowe's tune. I think I am out of my cave - anger and pain remnants are lying back inside to remind me to take care of myself in the future. The sun peers hazily down clearing away the clouds.

________________________________________________________________________

Kibbutz memory

My first early care and education experience. I am on the floor with our group of infant-toddlers (12-18 months), in Ephrat's children's house, "Tamar" on Kibbutz Yizra'el. I was twenty one. If memory serves me correctly, the woman on the right is Dina. I guess those children in the picture are about 34 today.

From there I went on to study in a teachers' seminary (In those days it was called "Seminar Bet Hakerem") in Jerusalem, and became a pre-school kindergarten teacher with the Israeli Ministry of Education for 13 years.

Plumbing daughters

Here's one for your daughters from Plumbing the Deeps:

Yeats, A Prayer for My Daughter:

May she be granted beauty and yet not
Beauty to make a stranger's eye distraught,
Or hers before a looking glass, for such,
Being made beautiful overmuch,
Consider beauty a sufficient end,
Lose natural kindness and maybe,
The heart-revealing intimacy
That chooses right, and never find a friend.

A kimbofo meme

I wasn't "tagged" but when I saw what kimbofo did - it looked like fun ... so here goes ... some light entertainment for the weekend.

 

The place I grew up: Bulawayo, Zimbabwe (once Southern Rhodesia)

The place I live now: Philadelphia, PA. USA

 

My name: Hebrew for "date-palm" or the date itself.

My maternal grandmother's name: Annette (as in Annette Bening)

OR ...

My paternal grandmother: Clara (as in Clara Bow)

My favorite food: stroopwafelen

My favorite drink: something Starbucks

My favorite song: Nightingale, Nora Jones

My favorite smell: Lavender

Hidden aspects

Recently Ronni's discussion about Jung's seven tasks of aging had me thinking. As I wrote about my socialist roots, I identified with one of the stages: self-confrontation and the discovery of hidden aspects, good and bad.

I was always under the impression that I was weak and afraid, everybody's shadow, always making decisions to please people, and believing what others thought about me as reality. Now I begin to realize and understand that, in fact, I was strong, particularly in my resolve to reach for people, ideas, or organizations that I intuitively felt were good for me.

More to explore.

For ...

Where on earth did this strength come from?

Naked?

Oooh, Ronni, I wish I could be there! You go, woman! And know we are there with you.

Measuring success

For Joel on rainy or any days.

Let us redefine measures of success, by Harry Emerson Fosdick

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.

Socialist roots (update)

This certainly has been a year of reunions of one kind or another. Mostly it has been meeting up with old friends of decades ago found through the Internet one way or another. In November last year I flew to Hawaii to see a friend, who contacted me after 35 years. Although nowadays he is a well established psychiatrist in his fifties, whenever I looked at him I could still see his sixteen year old soul twinkling in his eyes.

At the end of this month I will be traveling to Israel to my first real reunion. Most of the attendants I know will be people I have not seen since my late teens and early twenties. Yes indeed, 35 years or so. I imagine that I will look at them and think, "My how they have aged," and will realize immediately that they will be thinking the same of me. I know this because it has happened to me a lot lately.

Talking of critical moments lately, I realized yesterday while working in my garden, that two critical influences in my late teens formed my socialist ideology. An additional understanding came to me in the form of a revelation: the ideologies I learned then have remained constant.

The first influence was through my friend Jan and her family. I write about that extensively in my book, so I will not go into it here.

The second is directly related to the reunion I will be attending at the end of June.  When I joined Habonim at age 15 I felt at once, probably for the first time, a sense of belonging. It was a youth movement whose ideology was Zionist Socialist. Of course it was exciting to be part of an organization that connected me with a Jewish homeland even though my religious upbringing was strictly secular/atheist. Growing up Jewish in Zimbabwe (then white, racist Rhodesia), and attending an all white public school, I had faced my share of anti-semitism - including one day discovering a swastika engraved in my desk. [Just to digress a moment: the beauty of that incident was the fact that the two Venzo brothers, Roger and Adrian, Catholic Italians, came to my aid with support and concern the likes of which I will never forget! I wonder where they are now?]

In Habonim it was a relief to feel like it wasn't abnormal or wrong to be Jewish. There was a framework where I could fit in, and, more importantly, be accepted. This was my first real, social, education experience about the abuse of exclusion and discrimination, as well as acceptance of minorities. Even as I was teased for joining the movement, I realize now that I was strong in my resolve to reach for something that I intuitively felt was good for me.

More than that, though, much more than that, was the socialist ideology of the organization. In fact, the socialist component was the part that I immediately identified with. Although the philosophy was discussed and taught in an intellectual format, socialism could be realized and put into practice by living the ideology itself on a kibbutz (community settlement) in Israel. Each year, Habonim hopefully sent out a group of its members to one or another of their adopted kibbutzim (plural for kibbutz). It was, in fact, one of the goals of the movement. Not only to emigrate to Israel but more importantly, live, participate and contribute to life on a kibbutz. The idea that people would share possessions and monies felt to me as if I was being bathed in a warm, golden light of hope and enlightenment. I especially appreciated the idea that a person's position in society was functional instead of higher or lower than another. In other words, whether you were president or farmer, as well as receiving equal pay for whatever you did, you were expected to take part in cleaning toilets or doing kitchen duty for the community on a regular rotation basis as well.

For me the dream of a utopia, and Gandhi's saying, "May I live simply so that others may simply live," became a reality. I was inspired! During those formative teenage years from age 15 to 19 I passionately participated in the activities and running of Rhodesian Habonim until I was able to emigrate to Israel. For almost a year I lived on Kibbutz Yizra'el (place of the reunion this month) in the Jezreel Valley, lower Galilee.

Fifty five years later after I have traveled to many countries and participated in different communities and organizations, and after all my life experiences, I still believe that we need to share our wealth and all people's work is equally functional and important to the community. Interdependence is the key! Yes, I did leave the kibbutz for many reasons that could probably fill a hundred different posts, and I often wonder what course my life would have taken had I remained. However, I still hold dear the very same values, ideals and beliefs I learned thanks to the intellectual thinkers and creative leaders of the movement when I was a young member.

Habonim changed my life and planted in me a socialist seed whose roots have grown long and deep forever.

______________________________________________________________________

I guess this post got Pax Nortona "tapping" into his! Here is some of what he says:

There is no justice, no compassion, no morals without dedication to a society founded upon the greatest good for the greatest number and protection of minority rights without allowing domination of the whole by any part. Go deep within me and that is what you will find. A rebel, an experimentor, a striver after the truth, a kind man, and a socialist. I hold no shame for being what I am.

Barking fox

We heard and saw her/him last night, running into the beautiful wooded Fairmount Park right outside our window. Checking out fox sounds on the Internet I realize we heard "warning yawps."

What can I say ...

"I re-met an old friend."

Thank you, Ronni. I learn so much from you every day.