‘Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.’
— Max Frisch
(1) My mother did not like me hanging around outside: to stand on a street corner any day, any night, she said, be ready to lose. That’s how it is for girls. She’d punish me when I broke this rule. She didn’t want me to lose.
(2) In every history class I’ve ever taken, all the teachers and textbooks said the same thing: in order to keep the peace, you say you must kill. But what you really mean: it is you or I who always wants more.
(3) Evolution seems like a luxury, and for the last one on earth. There are days it seems we as a people will only evolve when there’s no one left to fight with, to take, to claim what one thinks is his or hers. When we are only one.
(4) We compare scars because we want to be heard. For what is pain in solitude?
(5) Borders are not eternal. Today it’s Russia, or perhaps Poland, that my father’s family fled during World War II. Most did not make it. His family guarded their past with a sense of shame, as if they were not refugees but fugitives starting their lives over. I imagine it’s like taking your first steps again. You have an idea how to do it, but that makes it all the more difficult. You’re trying to perfect what once came naturally to you.
(6) In the Talmud it says: Eternity means Jerusalem. My first Hebrew school teacher told us that once found, you can never abandon it. But I did. And not just once, but many times over.
(7) After we read the story of Cain and Abel, I was the only one in my class who felt a great sympathy for Cain. I could not explain why. My teacher was dumfounded: why I couldn’t see this is why we enter the history through hatred?
That night, I dreamed of Cain standing over his brother’s grave in a cemetery. I wondered aloud if death was natural before the need for burials, but he did not answer me. I waited for an epiphany when our eyes locked, that I’d understand what drove him to this. That he’d understand both my mistrust of and empathy for him. But all I saw in his eyes: it’s already done.
(8) I was bullied as a kid: for being Jewish, for being Mexican, for being light-skinned, skinny, undersized, under-incomed, uncategorizable. I lost every physical fight I was in, but I went into every fight with an uncontrollable rage. It didn’t do much for me. I did not know how to hit properly. Years later, a past bully who finds me on Facebook: WOW I’d never guessed you’d turned out so good. You got real hot. He keeps writing me: that he’s married but unhappy, doing well but never went anywhere, lots of emoticons and no recollection he once broke my hand by slamming a locker door on it. I never responded. I don’t hate him. But I haven’t forgotten that self, that little girl equally parts scared, angry and vengeful. She stares me down when I tell her we are all just kids once.
(9) My Chinese mother-in-law had our wedding bands made in Hong Kong; they bear the Hebrew letters from the Song of Solomon: “I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.” She and the engraver check with me many times on the shape of the letters; they are patient, kind, wanting to get it right.
At the wedding for my side of the family, no one from the Jewish side showed up. The female rabbi led an Orthodox service in Hebrew, translating into English and some Spanish for my Mexican family, in full attendance. At the reception my father gathered the placecards bearing the names of my Jewish relatives and began to tuck them into his suit pocket. There are too many, so my mother helps him.
(10) I marry a man who met me when I was ill and cared for me until I was well, but because he is not Jewish, I have lost some family over our marriage. It makes me angry and I rail into these relatives during late-night phone conversations. It is my husband who whispers in my other ear to be patient with them, the very man they are against.
(11) The first and last time I was truly peaceful is a time I cannot remember: in my first year when I grasped my father’s hand for the first time without thinking of what I was doing.
I wish I could I do it again.
This is the first installment of a 4-part series. Check out the second, third, and final installments.