Mining Nuggets

A passing thought

When I was young

I had a hole in my soul so big

I fear

my son might have fallen into it

Keep on ...

[New Yorker Cartoon]

A year ago at Tamarika: Maybe this will quell my anger

Keep on keeping on

Quotes of the day:

The only thing I knew how to do
Was to keep on keepin' on like a bird that flew,
Tangled up in blue.
Bob Dylan

This is the life of a family. This self-absorption, this shared separateness in the same room, this silence and slow time. We are three galaxies expanding side by side, we are entangled particles at lightyears’ distance. We are connected by superstrings. Richard Cohen

Happy Easter to all who celebrate! With love from darling Sasha!

A year ago at Tamarika: I ain't your punkin

Think mediocrity

Years ago, when I was in the struggling to complete my doctoral dissertation phase, a parent of one of the children at our center, who was also a professor at the college, said to me, "Tamar, think mediocrity." He meant that if I tried to create the world's best masterpiece dissertation, I would never get it done. His words released my brain from its perfectionist streak and I was able to write, write, write until it was finished.

From time to time, when I get stuck with a piece of writing, work or life project, I think mediocrity, and my brain is freed to breathe for itself. What a strange notion, you might be thinking, not to strive for excellence. After all, we tell everyone to be the very best they can be for the rewards, once we have arrived at the destination at the top, are golden. I have always tried to be extra special at whatever it was I was doing, even washing floors. I always said that I learned to wash floors from the one person who knew best how to clean. I met her on kibbutz in the children's house where I worked when I was twenty one. Everyone was in awe because we got on so well. She was known to be a perfectionist and no one could match up to her expectations. However, I learned fast. She was especially impressed with how I wiped clean the light switches, without her having to tell me!

Competition for my mother's love was great in my family. Her favorites were clear. As a child I had the illusion that if I could just be as strong, as great, intelligent, lovely as whomever her favorite was, whether my brother, a cousin, or friend, I would finally become her priority. I worked hard at that and, naturally, transferred those desires to the rest of my life: husbands, work, friendships, mothering, you name it! Mostly I would put myself in impossible situations where the die was cast before I started out and, somehow, I just could never match up. In the end, I started to realize that getting it right to become everyone's priority was a futile task. It just was not going to happen.

About six years ago, it seemed as if I had reached the peak of my career. It was an exciting time. I headed up organizations, was recruited and sought out in the local early childhood community, invited to speak all over the place, and was even offered the opportunity to write a book. During that year I lost 40 pounds weight and looked and felt great. I was flying high. It almost felt as if I had made it, whatever that means. And then ... one day, it seems, it was over.

We moved away and I found myself alone, anonymous, and without work. It has taken two and a half years to regroup, rebuild myself, and find my place professionally. Personally, I realize that fifty eight years later, I am still not my mother's priority. Nothing has changed. I have to face the fact that I am just plain and simply me. Sometimes I do great work, give a terrific speech, write a good piece or two, but mostly I am as average as can be. No startling revelations or brilliant intelligence. On the whole, I like to get up in the morning, play with my cat, drink a cup of coffee and look out at the tall oak tree that stands outside my window. I do not get into a sweat if it seems I might be five minutes late for a meeting, or if my class does not go as well as planned. Somehow it does not seem as important to match up. I would not know anymore to whom anyway. All those so-called great people out there are just people, plain and simple, like me.

I joined the health club last week and as I was swimming in the pool back and forth, back and forth, in the lukewarm water with gentle meditation music piped through in the back ground, I started to weep. It felt like relief. It was as if I was wrapping my arms around me and warming my hungry, hole-in-the-soul spirit. It felt safe, caring, comforting. As if I have survived something. Like my favorite scene in The Last Temptation of Christ, when the angel saves Jesus from the cross and bathes his wounds. I can stop working so hard to be the most special professor, author, mother, daughter, wife, sister, friend, blogger ... whatever. Just relax and be me and if people like or want me - great. If not, it does not matter. Not really. Not in the grand scheme of things. I think I was there for a short while, at the top, I mean, and although there was a thrill, a buzz, it did not bring me any closer to feeling extra specially loved or acknowledged.

I smiled through my tears remembering Jeff's words: "Tamar[ika], think mediocrity."

A year ago at Tamarika: A few reflections

Knowing you, knowing me

Quote of the day:

This made me think how interesting, and unusual, it is that I know a lot of deep and important things about you, but nothing about your practical tastes and preferences! Jean, in an e-mail to me

I have been blogging for almost two and a half years and along the way have become quite close with one or two other bloggers. Close enough to e-mail from time to time. People I read daily, sometimes two or three times a day. And yet, how much do we really know about each other? Usually, we are drawn to people of like minds, but does that mean we are compatible in other ways? Are we night or morning people? What kinds of foods do we enjoy? Do we clean out the sink after brushing our teeth? Do we curse and carry on with road rage when someone cuts in front of us while driving? Do we allow the other to finish a sentence before jumping in? Do we use face cream, perfume, deodorant? How's about talc? Do we saunter or walk briskly down the street? What kind of laugh do we have? High pitched, guffawing, from the belly, rasping?

I like to think of myself as pretty easy going, usually waiting to see what others choose to do or eat and then following suit. This, on the other hand, can drive people crazy. They find me indecisive and do not know what I want. I am not very good at small talk and so when I remain silent during those parts of the conversation, people sometimes see me as snobbish or as having a superior air.

Like anyone, it takes awhile to get to know me.

And then, again, does anyone ever really know anyone?

A year ago at Tamarika: Change is in the air

SOS Redbud

Just in from my friend Mira:

Please watch the YouTube video made by students in Colgate University’s teacher education program in their American School class taught by Professor Barbara Regenspan. The film carries the message that the money being spent on High Stakes testing would be used better to eradicate child poverty. They are trying to get 2000 "hits" in the next 3 days.

Life is what happens ...

[New Yorker Cartoon]

... when you're making other plans.

I found this at Blogging in Paris. In the end, it's all about relationships:

Pass-over-days

Quote of the day:

Chag Pessach Sameach.

May this be a spring of renewal.

May we gain freedom from whatever we are enslaved by.

From my friend, Huw.

________________________________________________________________

Dedicated to Tamar at Only Connect.

Passover in Israel is just not the same as the holiday celebrated in America. During the past nineteen years, living in the States, I have tried to replicate the feeling of the season of a time left behind. Filling the house with flowers, for it is those wild spring flowers I remember the most, with great longing. It is the smells of the warm air and a time of celebration that tastes of re-birth and new beginnings. And, for me, the holiday has significance. I wish we could celebrate it with everyone, telling a story about a people who struggled to be free from slavery. Using the story as an example for all peoples everywhere, instead of huddling and keeping it to ourselves. One year, when I was first living in Buffalo, New York, I invited all my friends, only one of whom was Jewish, to celebrate Passover as a Freedom Festival. Each person or couple was asked to share a freedom theme of their choosing. We created our own song-book of civil rights songs. One group talked about the emancipation of women, another about freeing slaves, and one told the Native American story. The children had prepared banners as if at a peace protest rally and greeted the visitors at the door with their placards. It was a great night.

Indeed, in Buffalo, I would invite friends almost each year and prepare a fine feast. Only once or twice did we actually tell the freedom story or perform the rituals, and it always felt good for me when my son was able to participate. One year, when he was there we realized we did not have any cipot (skull caps) for reading the blessings. Later that same year we both visited Israel, me to my family and he to his father. When we met back on the airplane to return to the States, we discovered to our surprise and amazement that I had bought him a beautiful hand embroidered skull cap, and he had purchased for me a fine, hand-painted Passover ritual plate.

During one of my Passover celebrations in Buffalo, as we were all sitting around after dinner with desert and coffee, I overheard my friend Charlie talking to one of the other guests. He was saying something and then added casually, almost humorously, "That's if I don't have cancer ..." I waited until I had a moment alone with him and asked him why he had said that. He explained on that same day he had just seen a doctor about something on the back of his neck and was waiting for results from a biopsy. Charles died three years later. Passover has a different memory for me now. A Charlie memory and one I will cherish forever.

It is two and a half years already since relocating to Philadelphia, and I have not yet made quite enough friends to create a festive dinner. But I love the way the daffodils in my yard spring up to greet the season. I am sure some of you are shaking your heads from side to side. What on earth does this atheist want with holidays anyway? And I will answer this: holidays mark time, bring people together on a day that is special from the ordinary, and often symbolize some kind of hope for the community. I love the foods, flowers, candles, incense, wine, clothing, gifts, whatever else, and especially the good will that accompanies the festivities. Plus, I really just love participating with all kinds of people in all kinds of communal situations. When I was Director of the University Child Care Center in Buffalo, I would get such a kick out of seeing all those hard working dedicated women coming together all spruced up and beautiful at our holiday celebrations!

Perhaps in the future we could create a special Bloggers Holiday. In different parts of the world computers could be set up in the center of chosen rooms, decorated with flowers and candles, and we would dance into the night celebrating our Cyber community, YouTubing and instantly sharing the good will in between bites of special blogging foods, while creating virtual memories for years to come.

In the meantime, I am cleaning my home, gathering some daffodils and preparing myself for, as Huw says, gaining freedom from whatever enslaves me.

Happy Passover to all those who celebrate!

April One

My mother-in-law sent me this Download Best_DUI_Ever.wm via e-mail.

I thought it was a really good way to herald in April via April first.

Happy Fools' Day!