with a flood of sugar

We schedule a taxi for 3:00 pm. When I arrive she’s waiting outside, pressing into her cane, her coat heavy, her spine rounded and hunched. The sky is overcast, filled with big grey clouds threatening to break. The taxi arrives. The journey is long and she wants to talk. I’m still full of my day, and it takes time for me to ease into being with her, to be present.

We arrive at the hospital. To the left of the entrance there are twelve elevators, six on each side, some of them for passengers only, some of them freight, and when there’s a beep signaling that one of them has arrived, it’s always a mad dash to locate it before the doors close again. We ride down to an underground floor, fluorescent lights, long, narrow corridors, people waiting on either sides. She lets go of my arm. “Go ahead,” she says, “I’m fine”. We reach the receptionist’s desk with its tall glass partition, and she takes a seat on one of the plastic chairs nearby as I handle the bureaucracy. Every time it’s a struggle: paperwork, reimbursements, endless receipts passed through the little slot in the glass, the receptionist’s nails long and adorned with glitter.

Birthdays, Dessert, Family

Family

January 12, 2018

3 Comments

He takes me to the water tank

He takes me to the water tank. We walk through fields of wheat, tall and gold with the setting sun. My hair is long, and still a little red from that time I dyed it after our first date. He’s wearing jeans and a short black t-shirt. There’s a ladder leaning up the side of the tank; he says from the top there’s a view of all of Yavne. We climb up and our feet dangle over the rusty metal sides.  The view stretches out far and wide, at the edges stone houses lay in ruins. He points to them, and tells me that his grandmother exchanged her old stone house for a modern apartment in the housing projects, a house with fields. He says: “Imagine what that would have been worth now”.

He takes me by the hand and leads me back to the pickup truck. I like the contrast between his rough exterior and how gentle he is with me. 

He has one hand on the wheel, the other on my thigh; sunglasses shield his light green eyes. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes, places one between his lips, fiddles with the car lighter, twisting it around the end of his cigarette until the flame catches. When we turn onto his parents’ street, neighbors are out washing their cars, walking their dogs, lingering in the last rays of sun. They come up to the windows to say hello.

The door to his parent’s house is open, scents of cooking waft out. His mother rushes out to greet us, calling his name.

She sets things out for us on the kitchen table, even though the large white table in the dining room is already set for dinner and we’ll be eating there soon. She’s been cooking all day, and there’s a big, puffy, golden roll of pastry stuffed with beef, grilled chicken with garlic and rosemary, smoky roasted eggplant, matbucha shiny with oil. She sets down the heavy, shallow pot with fish drowning in a spicy Moroccan sauce, and he drags a piece of challah through it, leaving a trail in the deep red sauce, the bread dripping as he brings it to his mouth.

She laughs.

Later he’ll go out with his friends and I’ll wait for him in his childhood bedroom flipping through magazines. The sheets have this particular damp smell to them; his mother often forgets them in the washing machine. The room is his little sister’s now and there’s a turquoise wall, thin lace curtains at the window, a big pile of stuffed animals. I can hear the television on in the other rooms.

He feels strange to me, a mystery, an enigma; but then I feel strange to myself. Words don’t come easy. And yet there’s something about the physicality of him that makes me feel safe, makes me feel at home, makes me feel wanted.

They’ll ask: Did you see any signs along the way? I didn’t.

Dessert

Divorce, ice cream, Life

November 21, 2017

2 Comments

Where Home Is

I’m in the car with my best friend, and we’ve just had lunch at this quiet, quaint restaurant with huge windows so close up to the Old City walls it’ll make you gasp- hippie bowls of grains with roasted vegetables and a big, oil-slicked plate of glossy green lentils her baby couldn’t stop grabbing. We’re about to make a left onto my street, when suddenly police cars come wailing past, followed by big trucks carrying horses, vans with police dogs, and then: ambulances. We’re stuck in the middle lane, so there’s not much we can do. We alternate between closing the windows to keep the noise out, and opening them to try and understand what’s going on. The Old City is sprawled out to our right, majestic and strong.

I refresh the news ticker on my iPhone: nothing yet. When I get home, I sit on the couch and learn that two soldiers were shot, and a few minutes later, one has died. Female, twenty. Helicopters hover low in the sky.

My neighbors call: Are you ok? Did you hear the gunshots?

My landlord threatens to increase my rent because the air-conditioning (that has not yet been installed) has added value to the property.

When he comes to visit for the first time in two and a half years, he calls to ask for directions. A few minutes later, he calls back, saying he drove straight into the Arab side. His voice is anxious, full of panic.

I want to say: This is where I live.

Around the corner, people are getting stabbed, killed. I leave my house with a can of pepper spray in my hand, at the ready.

In winter, my house is so cold that I sleep with socks, sweaters, a hot water bottle, the radiator next to my bed turned to the highest dial. I’m still cold.

He says: I can replace you easily.

Dessert, Easy, Snacks, War

Apartment Life, Cake, Israel, Landlords, Life, Neighbors, War

March 14, 2017

5 Comments

Cooking for One

 

He asks: What do you like to cook?

 

I want to say: I cook for one: I roast salmon and roast chicken until its skin cackles and its juices drip onto the tiny potatoes below; I make myself a single serving of chocolate cake. All while sipping a glass of wine, low music in the background.

I don’t.

Healthy, Salad

cooking for one, Life, Musings

January 9, 2017

2 Comments

what anger feels like

1. I don’t remember much of my childhood before I was nine, which some say means I blacked it out. Some scenes, yes: swinging in the swings in the grassy backyard, sitting on the ledge of the bathtub as my brother’s girlfriend washed her very long blond hair in the bathroom sink, finding my favorite doll with needles poked into her forehead. The way the living room felt both large and cozy, the way we would heat up blueberry muffins on weekend mornings, then eat them split open, the whipped cream sputtering from the can, the blueberries popping between our teeth, fresh and tart. I don’t remember how I felt other than little, and then: very scared and alone and not understood.

2. “I have finally isolated the problem: that we were born at all. That we have bodies, and minds. Also, parents. Who made us go to school. Where a third of the children were absolute beasts, especially on the blacktop, when teachers weren’t looking. At about the time a grandparent or cat died, and we began to realize everything and everyone was going to die. Even Mom! Who was insane, who either had to be highly medicated, or who cleaned between the piano keys with Q-tips, or hated Dad, or adored Dad, who hated her.” –Anne Lamott

Dessert

Dessert, Life, Pavlova, Pomegranates

November 3, 2016

4 Comments

They’ll come with you

I want to wake up in a foreign country. The cityscape beyond the window exotic and unfamiliar, the sheets white and crisp, the noise of the city muffled and undecipherable. I want to wake up in a jungle, the tangle of trees coming close to the glass, nature hushed and thick. I want to wake up by the sea, falling asleep to the noise of the waves crashing against the cliff, the horizon endless and blue.

Anywhere but here.

She says: You can run, but your demons will come with you.

For the past few months, I’ve been facing them. Sitting in circles of other humans, closing our eyes, baring our scars, listening. Showing up for therapy, climbing down the stairs past the guard who never looks up from his iPad, down into the basement with the tattered ceiling, past long corridors, into a small conference room with a table so large, there’s barely room to move around, the walls lined with collapsing, half-opened old boxes, and pictures of oil rigs and digging sites in cheap dusty gold frames. I cling to my coffee as she pries open things I don’t like to share.

Sometimes, I find myself on a loop, rehashing the same things over and over until my brain feels like such a broken record, I wish I could just fling it against the wall. I quiet it by getting into bed, bringing the covers up above my head, a flannel-wrapped hot water bottle close to my skin; by going to a yoga class followed by a sauna and a steaming hot shower; by showing up at her house and surrendering my demons to her.

Easy, Healthy, Mains, Vegetarian

Buddha Bowls, Vegetarian

March 2, 2016

2 Comments

Just hold on we’re going home

The wood cracks and hisses as my father approaches. Zack and I are sitting on the second to last step, huddled together, the wooden railing high and thick. From the corner of my eye I can see my parents’ bedroom door half open, my mother’s toes at the edge of the bed. We’re eight and nine years old and my father towers above us. He’s big and tall and he has a deep, resounding voice.

He says: “Go inside and give your mother a kiss.”

Zack gets up, and I inch closer to the wall.

I hesitate, then say: “I don’t want to.”

I saw the way she looks- a cast on her head, her long hair gone, the blankets up to her chin, her eyes closed. Is it true that this is my mother? Is she even alive?

He repeats: “Go and give her a kiss”. He watches me until I get up.

“Smile,” he adds, as I reach the door.

WHAT?

What kind of god took her away? Made her sick? Made me almost lose her?

I check under my bed, under the blankets; I wash my hands three times; pray in Hebrew, enunciating the same word again and again until I get it right; when I twist the doorknob I count: one, two, three, four.

How do I make sure it doesn’t happen again?

I go and give her a kiss, but a bubble comes down and settles itself around me and from that moment I’ll always feel alone.

Breakfast, Brunch

Breakfast, Muffins

February 19, 2016

1 Comment

Stabbing Season

It’s stabbing season here. The few people still walking the streets twist their heads back every few seconds to make sure no one’s behind them. They stab from behind- there’s been instructional videos and everything, and somehow that’s scarier than if they came straight at you, faced you, and raised the knife to your heart.

Snacks, War

Intifada, Israel, War

December 14, 2015

2 Comments

Losing Balance

He asks: “Why don’t you write anymore?”

“I don’t have time,” I say. “My day job keeps me busy busy busy”.

Later: “But you follow fifty food blogs? What about all of that time you spend reading?”

*

Setting aside time to write is good for other things: the ironing you didn’t do in six months, rubbing your wooden cutting boards with coconut oil, taking a walk.

*

I’ve been scared of the sirens again. Two, three missiles on the south and that’s it. I can’t breathe well, I’m scared all of the time, my brain is back on that tortuous “what if” loop.

He says: “The chance of being hit by a missile is like winning the lottery”.

(Why aren’t I playing?)

We’re sitting in his apartment and he’s holding a tiny baby cat that’s curled against his chest. The balcony doors are open wide onto a monastery with an iron flag that has 1817 carved on it. His floors have the same marble that runs into my kitchen and seeps out into the hallway, the same high ceilings, the same majestic arched windows; two Hebrew letters that spell miracle hang above the dining room table.

I feel it beneath my shoulder blades, stretching down to my legs; the weight heavy on my shoulders, balling up my chest. If I’m not in control then…

“Then what?” He asks.

Breakfast, Snacks

Fear, Israel

November 15, 2015

11 Comments

The End

I’m waiting at the edge of a square room, to my right there’s a narrow hallway with a long bench against one wall and couples sitting on it tightly. I’m surprised there are children.

I hear couples whispering and talking loudly. I hear doors opening and shutting. Light streams in from high windows past dirty curtains.

I wait for his arrival.

People come up out of the stairwell and make a right into the hallway, but none of them are him. I haven’t seen him in four months, the longest we’ve ever been apart.

My arms fall to my sides, sweat gathers on my palms, where is he?

I’ve tried calling all of the people who might know where he is- his father, his mother, friends. The conversations are stilted and short, foggy with heartbreak.

I wait. I feel self-conscious, bloated, the color drained from my face, my hair falling past my shoulders.

Will he come?

Will he be sad? Apathetic? Furious? Will desire flood my body even after all of this? Even though he didn’t come for me this summer like he said he would? Even though when we spoke it felt like we didn’t speak the same language, like somehow we had never understood each other, could never understand each other? Will he lean down and kiss me? Grab my hand and run, run away with me?

Will he come?

Brunch, Vegetarian

Brunch, Divorce

March 29, 2015

1 Comment