The Chrysalis; Giving In

I gave in.

I struggled against the tides and tried to write, tried to resume the life I had, while juggling the mothering of a newborn. I hired a nanny. The nanny didn’t work out. I fired the nanny. I was left by myself, which was kind of better than having a nanny-that-wasn’t-working-out.

I was trying to write. Trying to compartmentalize the fact that I was now a mother. Ignoring it, in order to write, and resume my former identity. Struggling to make elaborate meals (never happened), when slapping some cream cheese on a bagel (un-toasted) was the best I could do. Maybe this is what people mean when they say “trying to have it all.”

It was like swimming upstream. And in the end, I hadn’t made much progress. I didn’t get any further upstream. I think I ended up downstream anyway. Didn’t get any writing done. Didn’t get any reading done. For all the sacrifice–for all my exertion and for all the time I didn’t spend connecting with my daughter, I was left unfulfilled and exhausted. So I decided to go with the flow. Follow the water. Let my life lead me.

Frankly speaking, I was too exhausted to do otherwise. I was beaten into submission. I looked at my daughter and whispered, “P, you got me beat. We’re just going to do it your way.”

This resulted in many many days in which I sat in bed with my kid, napping when she did, alternating between feeding, diapering, burping, pumping, and then napping with her when I could. Some days, that is pretty much what I did all damn day. All day. All night. Just that. Maybe get up and load the dishwasher full of bottles or do a load of laundry. Watch a TV show. But pretty much, just that. Especially when my husband was out of town on business trips.

(And why am I writing this in past tense? Because this is what I’m doing everyday, even now). My biggest thing last week was ordering a rice cooker online, because I was so desperate for hot food and I couldn’t track a stove with a baby. And deal with being chastised for clogging up the holes in the burners with boiled-over-rice-paste-water. I was So Excited about this rice cooker. I tracked its progression on UPS, salivating as it neared. I tweeted about The New Rice Cooker. One of my best friends emailed me, worried about what he perceived was increasing desperation. No, I told him, I’m okay. Just Really Excited about a Rice Cooker, because you see–my life has condensed down to a rice cooker. I’m not unhappy! I told him. Just! A little! Crazy! About a rice! Cooker! Hot! Food! Ohdear, I told him. I may be a little crazy.

I did worry about my writing. About returning to my novel revision. I dreamt about making a meal from scratch. And I fretted about who I’d become–just some clichéd stay-at-home-mom with unwashed hair, making no contributions to society, obsessing about breast milk. But that’s kind of like letting the river carry you and straining your neck to look at the river bank from which you originated. So I forced myself to just be, again. I stared at my baby. I smiled at her. I had conversations comprised of back and forth cooing (what was I saying? I had no idea, but my baby seemed pleased). I gave in. I forgot what day of the week it was.

I haven’t given up. I’ve given in. I acknowledge the different journey, the new journey, under my body. I acknowledge that I have no map for this new place. And I basically say, “Fuck it.” I am going to give up control and just explore without agenda and without an end.

Good things happen when I say, “Fuck it.” Excellent things happen, actually. But I’ve never done it simultaneously with giving in.

Giving in made things a lot more peaceful; to just be with my kid, make my mind a blank slate, and see what would happen. In short, go with the ease. Nothing kind of happened. Everything kind of happened. My life became little milestones comprised of minutiae–feedings, diapers, burps, naps. Picking out her outfits. Shopping online. Looking out the windows. Putting the baby in the sling and getting the mail. Maybe walking up and down my block. And yet these little things are kind of huge.

And–little surprises from the outside world are coming to me. An email from a former student, thanking me for inspiring her. (Which of course in turn, inspired me). And my writing community came to me, threw me opportunities. My friends sending me galleys of their new books (holding a book in my hands makes me feel human again). The world had not forgotten me. I should not forget me. I was able to sequester a little bit of energy. I started to read in snippets. I wrote this blog post while the baby napped (and she woke up right as I finished writing this post, as if this post were meant to be).

It’s my time in a chrysalis. As a writer. As a human being.

Making the most of my time in the chrysalis. By giving into it.

Yoga and Infertility

(the ceiling at Strala Yoga; one of my favorite views)

It took me thirteen years to get pregnant. I don’t talk a lot about my infertility, because somewhere during those thirteen years, I decided to not let it define me or my life. I didn’t want to sit around at home pining for a child while allowing other opportunities to slip away. And I certainly didn’t want to be seen that way by the world; I didn’t want to be known for what I did not have–I wanted to be known for what I could do and what I’d done.

I mean, there were plenty of days in there where I would draw the curtains in my bedroom, crawl into my bed, and cry for hours on end, grieving a life I didn’t have. I would be very happy for my pregnant friends, but found baby showers unbearable, so I stopped going. And I’d be very happy for my pregnant friends, but simultaneously found their round pregnant bellies torturous. But for the most part, I kept my grief very private, for better and for worse, to the point where some people were very surprised to learn I wanted children.

We bought our home in Berkeley with the intention of having children, many children. Over the years, the extra bedrooms became guest rooms and and an office. Still, the aura of empty bedrooms never escaped me.

In some fit of optimism, I decided early on that the first child I’d hold in my arms was going to be my own, so for many many years I politely declined holding people’s babies. Eventually, I wondered if I should go ahead and hold a baby, because maybe I’d never get to hold my own. But by then, very few people offered up their babies to me. And the significance of the act had become quite large–whose baby? And what would that act signify? Would that mean I’d totally given up? And uh, yah. Awkward.

Yah, it got complicated.

At one point, I picked up my head and made a concerted effort to “do what people with kids cannot do.” That meant that when we were asked to move to New York City, we immediately (okay not immediately, but twenty-four hours later) said yes, we would. (Plus hello? New York!) We picked up and moved within two months, wending our way across the country (through a blizzard in Arizona!) in a MINI Cooper with two geriatric wiener dogs in the back. We lived a bicoastal life. We flew back and forth. These were things that people with kids could not do.

And then–we got pregnant.

I wrote a little essay late in my pregnancy on my infertility and its intersection with yoga for my friend and yoga instructor, Tara Stiles. I met her completely by chance at her yoga studio Strala Yoga. Yoga with Tara changed my life. Tara read this essay at a conference on infertility (Fertility Planit) at which she was a keynote speaker.

If you want to hear it, Tara’s presentation is up at MindBodyGreen; she begins reading my essay at the 24:30 mark.

And here is my essay if you would prefer to read it:

2013 To Do List

I have no idea what’ll happen in 2013. I wish I knew. But at this point, given that 2012 has now turned into past tense, I do know I’m going to give birth in 2013. And then–? Who knows? It’s like the time I adopted my wiener dogs, and thought to myself, “I don’t know what I’m going to be doing in 10 years, but I’ll have these wiener dogs.”

I make yearly “to do” lists. In fact, I prefer making yearly “to do” lists to resolutions, because “to do” lists are actionable and they aren’t dependent on other people’s actions (i.e., things like “win a fellowship”) or overwhelming (like “finish writing novel” or “lose ten pounds”).

To repeat what I said last year:

Resolutions are, in the end, comprised of many “to do” items, anyway–so why not break them down into more reachable increments? A resolution to run a marathon involves training milestones and “to-do’s” just like a resolution to “relax more,” involves defining what it is that helps you relax, and then doing those very relaxing things.

2012 was an amazing year, and even though I stopped tracking my 2012 To Do List mid year last year, I found I did pretty well at achieving most of the items. And yet–so many other brilliant things happened that had nothing to do with the list, and yet had so much to do with the list, because I think positive actions, no matter how little, beget positive outcomes.

Interesting to note that I keep failing at the whole ferry riding to-do (I didn’t do it in 2011 or 2012). You’ll see it again on my 2013 To Do List, here.

Miscellaneous Pleasures

• Get out for dessert/dinner with just my husband at least once in the first 3 months of parenthood. Omg, we are doing this tonight! At Annisa in NYC.
• Celebrate our 14th marriage anniversary in May and our 14th wedding anniversary in October!
• Buy nice postpartum clothes and wear them.
• Take a ferry around the SF Bay.
• Visit Korea.
• Visit Manhattan. We are *here*!!!!!
• After 2 years away in NYC, revive our Berkeley vegetable garden.
• Make the Silver Palate Carrot Cake.
• Use my new bundt pan. To make coffee cake. Good stuff. I took an afternoon off just to bake this for my sanity. I asked my husband to watch the baby and leave me an hour to make coffee cake. Yes, making coffee cake is my relaxation activity.
• Learn to make a really good Bloody Mary. (I am not good at making cocktails).
• Okay, just looking forward to having one cocktail. Whether it is a Dark ‘n Stormy, or a mimosa, or a bloody mary, or some Lillet Blanc, or a bit of American Honey.
• Make an Upside Down Cake.

Writing

• I’m supposed to be on a panel at AWP, but I’m not sure when my kid’ll decide she wants to start breathing air or how high maintenance my kid (or I) will be, so let’s just say I want to be at AWP and will try to be at AWP, and if I do that, wonderful. If not, I hope I don’t get too bummed out. Alas yes–I opened my eyes and there was reality telling me that I just could not go to AWP with a 7 week old; too many germs, too exhausting, etc. And I was already exhausted to begin with (I fell asleep during my first postpartum haircut yesterday). So I bowed out. However, Jennifer Derilo, my peer at Kartika where she is the Creative Nonfiction Editor, will be stepping in and taking my place on our AWP panel.
• Allow myself 6 months off from my novel revision.
• Delve back into novel revision by September 2013. i.e., establish a writing routine.
• Look up feedback from past writing mentors and reread them/frame them.
• Start major revision of novel by end of year.
• Write a four page long, grammatically correct sentence. I’ve long-admired Roberto Bolaño’s 2666–which includes a four page long, grammatically correct sentence.
• Write an essay I’m proud to have written.

Fitness/Wellness

• Get back to yoga: pop in a Tara Stiles yoga DVD by 3 months postpartum.
• If I visit NYC (*fingers crossed*), drop by Strala Yoga to do some yoga. I did this, and it made me feel human again. It was good to drop by my “yoga home.”
• Get back in shape so I can hold crow for at least 5 seconds. (Update as of January 31, 2013 (21 days postpartum, I can hold crow for 3 seconds! Onward!) Update as of May 1, 2013: I totally did it! Like, 8 seconds, even.
• When I’m ready, get back up to my 5 miles/day minimum.
• Do a juice cleanse.

Parenthood

• Birth my kid. It was an amazing experience. It was the best part of the first week of parenthood–which just tells you that the first week is really grueling or birthing was very fantastic.
• Send out baby announcements.
• Ask for/accept help with postpartum meals at least once. Ohlawd, thank you C and O and N! For awhile, I was so sleep deprived and exhausted that I’d just STARE at the contents of my fridge–including the pre-made freezer stuff and think to myself, “OMG. I don’t think I have the energy to THAW any of this,” and then shut the fridge/freezer door and walk away nearly in tears. As a result, I lost over 5 pounds the first week. So grateful for the food. I should have added, “make it through the first week” and “make it through the first month” on this To-Do List.
• Ask for/accept help with babysitting at least once in the first 6 months.
• Check out and learn baby sign language.
• Hop in the pool with our kid.
• Fly somewhere with our kid.
• Go to a drive-in movie with the kid.
• Photograph our kid smiling, but also ugly-crying her head off.
• Make it through the first 3 months. (vague, I know)
• Make it through the first year. (vague, I know again)
• Make baby food from scratch.
• ???

What a difference a year makes, for the record. Last year on New Year’s Eve, we went to a New Year’s Eve dinner at a friend’s place in Tribeca, before heading out to Times Square, where we got about a block away from the ball dropping. We were in the shadow of celebrations, but it was close enough to be a part of the energy that is so very much NYC. Confetti fell as everyone counted down–it was thrilling to be part of such collective anticipation.

This year, we spent it watching the ball drop from our couch in Berkeley, while I bounced on an exercise ball, and also hopped up and down (trying very hard not to wet my pants, because seriously, wetting your pants while hopping up and down at nearly 40 weeks pregnant is a realistic concern even though hopping up and down in hopes that it’ll get labor started is not very realistic at all), thinking, “When am I going to be done being pregnant?”

Last year:

Now time to eat some tteok guk. Hope you have an amazing 2013. And if 2012 was awful for you (I understand Awful Horrific Years all too well), I hope 2013 is waaaay better than 2012.

What are your To-Dos for 2013?

Delightfully Weird

Scarlet the Wiener Dog, sunbathing.

I love weird things and people. And I loved my delightfully weird wiener dog, Scarlet.

Here is a montage of some of her weirdness over the years.

She loved to eat flies.

She always knew where to find tasty things (this time, not a fly).

The things she found tasty were quite odd. Toilet paper.

Here’s a wink and a razberry from Scarlet the Wiener Dog, in her later years.

She taught me to ask for all of it. Because sometimes you *get* all you ask for.

Oh, mirror love…

She loved to read.

When you have 2 wiener dogs, you can make one very long wiener dog.

Also, they just really liked each other.

They were in sync.

And always knew how to get comfy.

But mostly I loved her.

Giving in to the process

(Above: 9 weeks on the left…33 weeks on the right)

So I’ve accepted the reality that I won’t be revising my novel to the extent I’d like. That my novel-writing will eventually return in earnest (hopefully sometime next Summer/Fall), and that my novel will benefit from this break. I believe this, because every break I take from my novel benefits the novel, and because this particular break is a rich and life-enhancing break in which I am still creating something–a person, really.

Which takes me to the topic of “breaks”–not brokenness mind you and not vacations either, but breaks. Ones that result in greater strength and conviction.

A break in my tailbone. A bone that heals stronger.

A break from a relationship. A relationship that reunites later with more conviction and clarity.

A break in my psyche. A renewed set of life priorities.

A break in my my brain. Singular determination, revealed.

I’m looking forward to what the next year will bring me. I’m hoping I’ll be surrounded by support, because it won’t be an easy year, but I hope it will be fantastic nonetheless. I’m excited about meeting my kid. And I’m interested in the writer I will become.

Scarlet the Wiener Dog, 1992-November 5, 2012

I picked up her cremated remains today, with the expectation that I’d be sad, but not devastated. In fact, the plan was that I pick her up, because I was holding it together way better than my husband was holding it together over her death.

She was my dog, and I was her human. I wrote a post about my wiener dogs once; she was so steadfast. In the end, she got so old I was doing things to keep her alive/sanitary/healthy that pretty much only other people with pets-over-the-age-of-20-years-old could fathom. I was doing all of this while four months pregnant, six months pregnant, and then eight months pregnant. In the end, I couldn’t do it anymore, and I had to make a terrible choice. I killed my dog.

When people tell me, “She’s no longer in pain anymore,” a gigantic cloud of guilt looms over me. She wasn’t in pain. She was happy. She was ollllld. I don’t know how many more months she’d make it. She was arthritic. Her teeth were falling out. The first time a tooth fell out, I called her Mike Tyson, because well, she’d bitten a chunk out of Ziggy the Wiener Dog’s ear a year earlier, and we’d called him Evander Holyfield. The second time a tooth fell out, it was not so funny.

Some mornings, it took her nearly half an hour to fully wake up and pull herself out of her crate. And because I was impatient, I usually lifted her out of her crate myself and pet her to facilitate awakening.

And in all frankness, towards the end, every morning before I lifted her out, I had to double check her crate to make sure she hadn’t soiled herself in the night. She soiled herself a lot in the last few months. She lost bowel control. There are no dog diapers for fecal incontinence. But I loved her. She loved me. She was so loyal to me, how could I not clean up after her willingly? (And on a regular basis, also “express” her)?

If she were human, I know she’d do the same for me. She was tenacious and so fiercely loyal. She was neurotic as hell. When I first rescued her in 1999, I almost returned her, because she was so crazy. But my husband said I couldn’t return her. So I didn’t.

Over the next thirteen years, she became my best animal friend. She would wait for me at the door for my return. She would lick my toes while I wrote my novel. She would lick my friends’ toes when they visited me.

She loved to do things like dig and hunt. I once allowed her to hunt the gopher in my vegetable garden. That was when I learned that dogs (or at least Scarlet didn’t) don’t close their eyes when they dig underground. Her eyes were so bloodshot when I pulled her out, gopher-less.

She was very bossy. She was the alpha dog. Which meant she did things like sit ON Ziggy the Wiener Dog to get a better view of things, when she found it necessary.

In her younger days, she liked her toys, even though in her last few years, she lost complete interest in any of her stuffed animals. Which means we have a closet full of dog toys, because Ziggy never cares for anything that isn’t food or my husband.

In the end, on the very last day, we did all her favorite things, to the extent that her 20 year old body would allow. She had potato chips for breakfast. She had a few bites of Big Mac for lunch. On your last day, you can have whatever you want to eat. She took in a five minute walk at the Berkeley Marina, where she used to roam in her younger days. She had some beef jerky. She went on a car ride, fresh air smacking her in the face.

I let her have as much toilet paper as she wanted. Because some of you know that for some reason, she loves eating toilet paper. I’ve spent 10% of my life keeping the toilet paper away from this dog. It’s weird, but she was a weird dog.

She took a long nap when we got back home in the afternoon. She napped and napped, as usual, only waking up in hunger. And then she’d nap again. Then the mobile vet came late in the evening. We prodded her gently awake. I put a used towel on my lap and took her in my arms. And there she rested, in complete trust. The vet gave her a handful of liver snacks.

The first shot went in. It stung, but then she relaxed. The vet gave her more liver snacks, and all was forgiven. She relaxed further. This is a dog who is always a little tensed up, who when I lift her, tenses her whole body up as if she is saying, “Mama, I am helping you by lifting myself up off the ground!”

She was in a deep sleep within seconds. “She’s asleep,” I said.

My husband was next to me, watching, and I could see the grief on his face. I don’t know whose perspective was more difficult–mine or his. Participant, or spectator. In that deep sleep, her body felt as light as I’d ever felt her to be.

And then there was a second shot. The “kill shot,” is what I call it. And then–then I could feel her go. Her breathing became jagged. Deep and uneven. “That’s normal,” said the vet. I knew. I’d done my research. She wasn’t in pain. She was just–going. And then her breathing became shallow. And then–she became so very still and so very very light. Her weight felt like it had been halved. She was gone. And I said so.

My husband had by this time lost it more than I–and so I handed Scarlet to him. She was still warm. I tried to close her eyes so she’d look a lot more like she was asleep rather than dead. I tried to squish her tongue back in, but that didn’t bother me so much; in her old age, she’d started sleeping with her tongue sticking out. Come to think of it, she sometimes slept with her eyes cracked open and rolled back. As if she were preparing us for this moment, as if her body were inching closer to this moment on its own.

We spent a few more minutes. And yes, there was poop. I am forever grateful to a good friend of mine who’d recently let his cat go. He said, “There will be poop.” So we were prepared. The vet wrapped her up, picked up the checks I’d pre-prepared and set out on the coffee table. I’m grateful to this vet for helping facilitate this last moment in Scarlet’s life.

And today–I picked up her remains. I’d been joking about having to get a coffee can to hold the remains. I sometimes make inappropriate jokes to deal with death. They brought her out in a small cedar box with a clasp. It was the size of my hand. I could not believe how something so huge could be so very tiny. I was surprised and relieved that she already had a little house. I could smell the cedar.

I made it to the car, and almost out of the parking lot, before I had to park and just cry my eyes out. I parked under a sign that said I wasn’t allowed to park there. I didn’t care. I cried and cried and cried, because one of my best friends, and one of my biggest fans in life, was now in a box in my hand.

And if you are now too too sad–here is a video of her in her much much younger and livelier days. I hope it will cheer you up, because it cheers me up.

juxtaposition

I am not sure why, when I was dealing with infertility for 13 years, so many mothers either stayed silent or looked at with me pity and said I was missing out on the Greatest Thing Ever. They rarely shared with me motherhood hardships. I had to figure out the upside of being childless, and embrace a life without a child.

And now that I am nearly 7 months pregnant, I am not sure why so many mothers congratulate me and then share all these AWFUL things (sleepless nights, subjugation of personal dreams, no time to write, no time to groom, your vajayjay will no longer be the same, etc.,) about motherhood.

Couldn’t they have switched the juxtaposition? Why not tell me how hard motherhood is, when I couldn’t be a mother? And tell me about motherhood’s joys when I’m pregnant?

And either way, I’m going to have to deal with my life. I’m going to have to figure it out. Why not at least be kind?

I am going hysterical with panic about writing and motherhood.

Update:
I went to the NYPL last night, where I heard Cheryl Strayed talk about WILD, The Dear Sugar column, and mostly about her writing life.

A large chunk of her talk focused on “writing like a motherfucker, during which Cheryl discussed “motherfuckertude.”

And whodathunkit: in reviewing her words last night, they are the VERY things I need to hear with regard to this whole panic about motherhood and writing.

Here are a handful of quotes from Cheryl Strayed last night:

“Being a motherfucker is a way of life, really. Having strength instead of fragility. And leaning hard into work rather than anxiety.”

“I actually think true motherfuckerhood has to do with humility, doing the work. Resilience and faith, being a warrior.”

“Being a motherfucker is about digging really deep. About going beneath the surface to find the truest thing.”

And there you have it. I’ve gotta be a motherfucker about my writing. I feel better now. Juxtaposition wins–I thank my good friend Nova for inviting me to the talk last night. Her kindness and generosity juxtaposed with my panic. Cheryl Strayed’s kindness and wisdom juxtaposed with my panic. It can overcome so much.

I’ve been a motherfucker before. I can be a motherfucker again.

Freaking out

I’ve kept this news on the down-low. For so many reasons. Because it makes me feel vulnerable. Because I don’t want to jinx it. Because it is scary business. Because it’s been a largely private journey. Because I’m wary of everyone’s reaction to the news. Because everyone expects me to be giddy-happy, and the journey has been so complicated and heartbreaking. Because it fills everyone else with expectations.

Because it’s one of the things I’ve most desired, and I wanted to keep it to myself for awhile. Because it’s one of the things I’ve most desired, and I wanted to protect myself for awhile. And I’d like to keep protecting myself, but it’s just impossible.

But now–I feel compelled to share, because I am freaking out, partly because I’ve been shrouding myself in quiet privacy. And this fear–this fear has found its way into the crevices of my identity as a writer–because my identity itself is changing. I’m in this weird transition–from one thing to another.

Because you see, after thirteen years of trying and not-not-trying and multiple times given up and then, after wiping my tears on my sleeve, forged on ahead again…I’m pregnant. I’m over 26 weeks pregnant, in fact. About 2/3 of the way through my pregnancy.

And yes I’m happy. It took me a long time to allow myself to relax and be happy, to say it will be okay, that this is real. I shared with one friend and then another and then another, one at a time, dipping my toe into the water, revealing my secret, getting used to saying, “I’m pregnant.”

I couldn’t even say, “I’m pregnant” to the OBGYN receptionist on the phone, which prompted her to say, “Why are you making a checkup appointment with an OB? You can call your primary care physician, you know.” To which I said in garbled voice, “Because I’m prrrrrregnannnnnnt.” Oh it felt weird to say that. It felt like someone else saying so. It felt unreal. In those early weeks, I was cocooned in caution. The caution cocoon happens when you try and try and try and never get something you want.

We reached milestone after milestone. In disbelief at the good news each time. Deep down, we were thrilled. Deep down, the drumbeat picked up its pace. And yet, we measured our outward reaction, because all those years trying to get pregnant? They took away a big chunk of our innocence. And that’s okay. Sometimes things cost innocence.

I’m not freaking out about being pregnant anymore. I’m excited. I’m not freaking out about giving birth. It’s going to happen. I’m not freaking out about the changes in my body. It’s a part of the process.

There is a new freakout: I’m freaking out, as I do most changes in my life, about how it will affect my writing, which is a core part of my life, identity, and sanity.

Some of my non-mama friends have told me it’s just like anything else–that I’ll just make the time–that people have jobs and responsibilities and they manage to carve out time for writing. But I have a strong feeling that motherhood is unlike anything else–even while pregnant, this thing has taken over my psyche, my thoughts, my heart, my finances, my time, my body, and my time. It’s all-consuming.

For the record–I haven’t had that creative-burst that people say women have during pregnancy. It just hasn’t happened, thus increasing my silent freak-out. I really wanted to finish a major revision of my novel before giving birth. That isn’t going to happen, even though I’m forging onwards in my revision so that I’ll have no regrets.

The closest I’ve ever come to having something hijack my writing is my stroke, which left me completely unable to write fiction for nearly two years. And yet my stroke recovery was still a time focused utterly on myself. That ain’t motherhood, either.

I am positive that longterm, motherhood will be amazing for my writing. That it will inform me as a human and in turn my writing. That my kid is going to give me tons of ideas and windows into the rooms of life that I haven’t yet entered.

But short term? I am anxious. I know I won’t be able to revise my novel for a few months. But will it be a year away? Two years away? I don’t know how I could handle that.

How do you manage? How do you transition your identity as a writer into motherhood? What are tips for making time? How long did it take to get back to your writing? Are there things I’m overlooking?

I have so many questions. So many questions.

R is for Rabbi

It took three tries, as expected, for him to return my call.

“Hello, this is a message for Rabbi F. My name is Christine, and I want to convert to Judaism, and study with you. I would like to discuss next steps. Thank you.” I was nervous and overeager.

If I’d known better at the time, I might have, among other things, winced when saying my name, Christine, the most Christian (i.e., non-Jewish) name out there. I certainly winced for the next several years when introducing myself at shul. And sometimes the congregants would also wince and add, “Do you have a Jewish name, dear?” No, I did not. You don’t have one until you finish your conversion.

I called two more times.

After the third message, Rabbi F invited me to meet with him at the synagogue. I sat outside on the steps, intimidated by the doors of the synagogue. I couldn’t bring myself to knock on those huge wooden doors, or to open them. Eventually the rabbi came out looking for me. He wore black slacks and a white short sleeved shirt. He had a large white beard and wore eyeglasses and a kipa. “There you are,” he said, and introduced himself. His voice, the tempo of which was of someone who chose his words carefully, was higher than I’d expected. He did not put out his hand to shake. This was an Orthodox rabbi, and touch between men and women is forbidden. That much I knew. Thank goodness.

He led me inside. It was an old building, and his office was a small room off of the main room, steps from the wooden bimah. The three walls without a window in the office were covered floor to ceiling with books. The window faced north, so that the office was covered in the cold blue northern light I love.

I’d just graduated from college, and the bookshelves were familiar to me, even if the synagogue was not; I’d sat in offices like this before in Wheeler and Dwinelle Hall, during office hours with professors. Throughout my five years studying with Rabbi F, he would often stand up and pull a book off those shelves to seek answers.

He expected me to ask questions. This was a major paradigm shift for me. I was coming from a culture in which learning occurred by passive listening and memorizing what I was told. In which authority should not be questioned.

What do you mean? I asked. I was scared. Intimidated.

He replied by asking me a question. He asked how I expected to learn if I didn’t have any questions. He also said that by coming with my own questions each week, I would direct my own learning.

It made sense.

So each week, I came up with questions. I felt self-conscious coming up with questions, and even more so when I dared ask them. But I was rewarded; these questions would lead to lengthy and enriching discussions with the rabbi. And over the next few months and years, the questions begat more questions, and I began to feel more at ease with my curiosity. I became an actively curious person.

Years later, when I started teaching freshman comp, I remembered going through this paradigm shift. And I channeled the rabbi and shared the above anecdote, in hopes that my students would take the leap, dare to ask questions, and become more active learners.

And when I came across challenges, Rabbi F’s advice was always three dimensional, sometimes quite literally so. When it came time to consider meeting the Beit Din, he told me something that sticks to this day. “Identity is not just one thing: it is comprised of legal identity, community identity, and self identity. The Beit Din will approve your legal identity, the community, which includes your family, will define your social identity as a Jew, and last you have your self identity as a Jew. If you self identify as a Jew, that is the most important of all.”

Rabbi F changed my life in so many positive ways. He was my guide into Judaism (a world that did not always welcome me with open arms–and a world in which I often stumbled, like the time I saw a salmon fish cake and before I could think asked, “Is that a crab cake?” I had already hung my head by the time the cook uttered a disdainful “No.”), and I will be forever grateful to him for his wisdom and kindness. In so many ways (maybe all ways) my conversion process was a major paradigm shift–not the least of which was turning me into a more active student. I am a bolder, more curious, and more confident woman today having studied with Rabbi F. And perhaps I would not have become a writer if had not unearthed an adventurous and curious self.

*****

Joining Heather’s Abecedary, Fog City Writer, and other writers like Susan Ito in working through the alphabet with short, memoir-like pieces. Except I’m going to go in reverse, beginning with “Z.” It’s called Alphabet: A History.

Becoming a Writer

When I was a little girl, I wanted to become a writer. Throughout the years, I wanted to be a doctor who wrote, a professor who wrote, and even a forest ranger who wrote, but the desire to make a writing life never ever abandoned me.

The only time I felt any peace or satisfaction as a teenager was when I was putting words down onto the page. And so I wrote. I wrote a lot, because I needed peace and I needed satisfaction and because I could not find it anywhere else. I wrote in the margins of my notebooks, and I wrote notes to my friends, and I wrote in the journal I carried with me at all times. I wrote my dreams, my fears, my complaints, my feelings, and all the things I felt I could not tell anyone.

Twenty years later, when I was recovering from my stroke and healing and reclaiming my memory, I wrote in my journal as therapy. My journal was my short term memory bank. It was my reassurance that I would “come back like Lance Armstrong.” I would write and write, and thus rebuild my neural pathways like muscles doing a particular movement in order to come back a better writer.

Writing has saved my life in so many ways. Writing enabled dreams, it heard my secrets, it gave me comfort, and it healed me.

I’ve thrown away many diaries and journals–at one point during my freshman year of college, I burned them all in a boyfriend’s fireplace, watching my secrets turn into smoke. I regret doing so, even though at the time I felt I absolutely needed to do just that. I felt I had to burn my past to move forward.

But there are a few journals that withstood time. I found my creative writing journals from the third grade. I was eight years old. It was 1981.

The very first entry was the first school writing assignment in which we had to write about our summer vacation. It cracks me up, because the basic imprint of the adult I would become is still there; having not read this in nearly three decades, I discovered that I hated waiting in lines even then.

Also, so much of what’s written is out of emulation–firstly, very apparent is the reasoning of my father, who actually asked us to have a strategy for which rides we rode and when, with the sole purpose of efficiency. If my dad had twelve kids, he’d be the Korean Cheaper By The Dozen Father.

My handwriting is also not my own just yet. It’s emulation of the standard cursive handwriting so many of us were taught back then (do they even teach cursive handwriting in school nowadays?). It’s nice to see the scaffolding of the person I’ve become.

“This summer I went to Disneyland. We went on Small World first because we knew that there was going to be a long line. Then went on the Submarine Voyage. There was a long line. We waited for a long time. And at last it was our turn. We saw lots of mermaids. And then we went on Skyway Fantasyland and the Monorail. The Monorail took us to the Disneyland Hotel and back. Then we went home. At home I put on myplayclothes. I played with my brother. I ate dinner. And then I went to sleep.”

And the next thing may have been my first piece of fiction. Or at least, my first recorded piece of fiction.

“Once there were four friends. Their names were Shorty the snail, Slow Poke the turtle, Fuzzy the duck, and Big Mouth the beaver. They were always helping. It started like this. One day Fuzz was taking a walk. Suddenly he slipped and fell in a pit. He yelled a lot and then at lat there was help. It was Big Mouth. He pulled Fuzzy out of the pit and thats why they helped a lot.”

Apparently, I had not yet been taught any comma rules.