Finding God in the holyland

Jerusalem-  Disneyland for the religious!  I’m sure those men in larges hats would consider that comment sacrilege, but humor is the only coping mechanism I seem to have left. Journal entry, April 8, 2011

It’s 8:45 on a Sunday morning.  I’m holding my son’s hand firmly against my flowered-skirt as I make my way through the quiet alleyways of Jerusalem’s old city.   The emptiness disorientates me.  I’m used to bodies pressing me up against the cheap tourist wares that lean like lopsided turrets into my path.  This morning I am accompanied only by the sound of my heels clicking against the granite cobblestones and the soles of my son’s sneakers squeaking rapidly to keep up with me.

I’m lost and I’m late.  Nothing annoys me more.  Especially on a day when I have set out to find the answer to a very pressing question, “Who is God?”

I see a sign perched high on a corner building that reads, “Holy Sepulcher” with an arrow pointing to the left.  Under my breath I mutter, “Ok, if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere.”   I mean this in the physical sense.  I already know that the strange edifice, where men dressed in robes of varied styles, fighting over lighting a candle, feels oddly void of God.  I would not succeed in finding my answer there.

My son is panting, “What did you say, Mom?” 

If I admit to him that I’m lost, endless questions will ensue.  “Nothing!  Just stay with me.  I don’t want to be late.”

The spring air is still cool, but I am beginning to sweat.  I come around a narrow, 90 degree corner and stop suddenly in my tracks.  In front of me is a black metal-gated entrance with a white oval sign on top that reads, “The Mosque of Omar.”  I consciously take a breath and a slow smile spreads across my face.  My son’s feet are still moving past me, but he stumbles as his hand trails behind, still pressed into my skirt.  He looks at my face, “What Mom?  Are you lost?”

“No, honey, look, the sign!  What does it say?”

I gaze at his eyes as he first reads the English lettering and then the Arabic script.  

He swings his face around, his black olive eyes sparkling, “Coooool.  My own mosque, the mosque of Omar!”  He does this funny 8 year old dance with his hips and arms moving in opposite directions.

He stops moving for a second.  He’s confused.  He tries to remain polite as he asks, “Wait a minute.  Is this the church you’re taking me to?”  

I laugh, “No, silly, it’s a mosque!  I’d let you go in and pray, even though we’re late, but its closed.  Let’s get a quick picture of you in front of it!” I snap the picture, grab his hand and rush him on in our winding journey.

I don’t think many come to Jerusalem to find their faith.  I guess all those religious pilgrims are much more confident than I am in their beliefs and they come simply seeking confirmation of them.  I wonder if they find it here.

Jerusalem, the city of peace also known as Al Quds, the Holy place, has already taught me all I needed to know about religion. I learned that religion is something that people use as a divisive force to grab lands and build walls and make frightening threats.  I learned that religion is simply a belief system that people use to justify inhumane acts against others.  I learned that religion is a set of rituals that people became dependent on so that they never have to look into their own hearts to find forgiveness.   I learned that religion is a required box on the Israeli visa application form and, for it to be approved, I had to lie and write “Christian” next to my son’s name.  Israeli authorities do not allow a mother and her child to be of different religious affiliations.  

We pass into the courtyard of the Holy Sepulcher where a group of Philippine women in white hats hold identical prayer books in their hands.  I don’t stop, and rush to the exit passage opposite from where we’ve entered.    We stumble into the square of my chosen destination.  Churches of varied colors, sizes and contours crowd the square.  Confusion returns. 

I am searching for the church which holds the English Congregation of the Lutheran Church.  Friends of all religious persuasions recommended this church to me when I’d tell them, “I’ve decided not to worry about my spiritual life until after the age of 40.  Then, maybe I’ll go and find a religious community.”   I knew I’d have a lot to be grateful for when I made it past 40.   And, based on my own Catholic upbringing, I had too many questions which lead to a general skepticism of anybody who clung fiercely to a religion.   

I set out for the most formidable structure in the square with a towering, dark wood door.  I smell incense and hear Russian.  I chuckle.   This daybreak expedition is truly beginning to resemble a religious pilgrimage.  I proceed to the church on the opposite corner with an equally large door, this one colored a golden oak.  The sign says it is the Lutheran congregation, but I hear Arabic.  A man hidden in the shadows of the door appears, and points a thumb in the direction of a glass door.  I trust that he knows what I am searching for.

Friends reassured me that this Lutheran church in the old city feed would feed my spiritual need to understand the world and my place it.   An added bonus is that it was so welcoming and accepting of all backgrounds that it would allow me to introduce my son to Christianity; not to convert him, but ironically to help him understand why I found my own religious roots just as confusing as Islam and Judaism.

Through the glass door, we enter an inner courtyard filled with palm trees.  My son’s hand now sweating in mine, I lead him towards the sound of a piano into a small, simple chapel with high, stained-glass windows.  The eastern sun is pouring through, casting a spectrum of blues and reds onto the white linen covering the stone altar.  As we take our seat on a wooden bench mid-way from the altar, a cascade of church bells rises up from the outside. I am a few months shy of my 40th birthday that morning.  

I participate in the initial rituals of the service with slight hesitation.  Some of the rituals seem so different than Catholic ones.  I take my seat for the sermon, knowing that this is the moment of the service where I might expect my question to be answered.

The American Pastor of the English Lutheran congregation, Pastor Fred, delivers simple but enthralling sermons.   He mixes the street scenes of biblical and modern Jerusalem to help his audience understand the timelessness of human experience, often interspersing it with historical facts that help convey the larger context in which the bible’s authors lived. 

Sitting in my seat, I am instantly engaged, imagining the apostles on the Mount of Olives hillside outside the door.   I’m still skeptical, however, if I’ve found what I’m searching for.   And then, quite suddenly near the end of the sermon, standing tall near the baptismal font in front of the altar, Pastor Fred delivers the answer to my question.  

“Our life is filled with experiences that turn our beliefs on their heads and that make us search.  And we become confused.  Who is God?  The simple answer, God is the one who allows us to be confused, who says, ‘It’s ok not to understand me,’  who says, ‘You don’t have to understand me  to believe’ who says, ‘look in your heart and there you will find my voice.’”  

My jaw gapes opens. My question has been answered as if on cue.  I glance upward, smirking.  I mumble, “Thanks.”  My son squeezes my hand and I look down at him. I give him a kiss on the crown of his head and mumble another “Thanks.”  

The Designer

I met the Designer near the beginning of my third year working in Palestine.  The Designer is a loose translation of his Arabic name.

I walked into a glass-enclosed conference room and handed him my business card over the width of the table.  He stood to greet me, dressed in a well-tailored suit and a bright red tie.  He seemed young for an accomplished lawyer.  His blue eyes sparkled behind  metal framed glasses.   I had no intentions of ever becoming romantically involved with an Arab man again in my life.  So this is the story of a romance without the romance.

 

When a colleague introduced me to him as the one in charge,  he turned to me with a smile, “So you’re the one I need to keep happy?”  The outside corners of his eyes crinkled up to show deep lines.  I have a soft spot for well-dressed, intelligent men.

 

Most of the facts surrounding the Designer’s biography came to me from third parties after this story ended as very well-known public information, although he never revealed them to me during our lengthy, intimate conversations.

 

The Designer was born to his father’s second wife in the mid-1970s in Jerusalem before walls and checkpoints were used to define birthrights.   Shortly after, the Designer was handed to his father’s first wife to raise.  His father refused to divorce his first wife when they learned she suffered from infertility, even though it was his right under Islamic law.  He loved her too much.  In my overly romantic vision of life, I imagine his father  handed the Designer over to his first wife as a gesture of generosity.   Even though the second wife bore 4 daughters, the son in Arab culture is the pride possession.  My ability to imagine romantic scenarios ends there.   Knowing what I know now of the Designer’s inherited conduct of his own personal relationships, I imagine him being raised inside a house whose walls held a silenced confusion of relationships that was never spoken out loud.  Who exactly was the matriarch of the house and what feelings hung between the two wives and their offspring?    My anger for taking on the relationship with the Designer only melted into sympathy for him when I learned this important framework of his biography.

Six months after our initial meeting,  the Designer and I agreed, over a slightly more-than-friendly handshake,  to meet on a rainy evening at a restaurant with a large fireplace.   It took a lot of courage for me to show up that evening.   I had taken myself off the dating scene since moving to Ramallah.  But I knew  I needed to remember how to share myself with another person and to re-learn how to be in relationship.  So  I approached it more as an experiment than anything else, or at least that is what I told myself in hopes of protecting  my heart from any emotions that might find their way out. 

The Designer reflected my nervousness when, arriving his habitual 20 minutes late, he rubbed his hands over his khakis as he sat down.  I asked him about his family.  He never mentioned his two maternal figures and never shared the names of his sisters.   Cutting off any opportunity for me to provide a typical reaction to learning that he was the youngest and only boy, he protested,  “But I am not spoiled!”  I asked him, “Do you cook?”  He gazed at me, puzzled and responded, “I can cook eggs.”  I gave a polite nod, trying to disguise my disappointment.  I later learned that his mothers took turns cooking his evening meal which they delivered to his house after he returned each day from his law office.

The Designer’s father pioneered the psychological medical profession in Palestine.  His first wife speaks unaccented English from having accompanied her husband abroad in England during his medical internships.  She has long, blonde hair that she wears loose down her back.  The second wife speaks no foreign language, comes from a “good” Jerusalem family and wears the Hijab.  I imagine the Designer growing up in a family home with twinned living wings and a single wall separating the sides that belonged to each wife.  I wonder how, if at all, that was explained to him as a child?

 

The Designer’s father passed away in the late 1980s after battling a cancer which medical procedures at the time were too unsophisticated to treat.  The Designer doesn’t like to talk about how his 16 year-old self handled this traumatic loss, hesitating to speak only about the role he was required to take on as the new family head during the mourning period.  “I had to wash the body.  I had to deliver the eulogy.  I had to greet the hundreds of guests and remember their names.  My purpose was to serve the mourning of others.  That was too much for a 16 year old boy, don’t you think?”   The story made me sad and I wondered how men in this culture are taught to process grief, if at all.  A child stood in a man’s shoes.

 

He described with quiet reflection the one gift his father’s untimely death gave him:  the freedom to choose a non-medical vocation.   I had passed up several men in my life because of their lack of courage to follow their dreams and who instead chose to follow in the dusty footsteps of the family business. So that choice alone endeared me to him.

 

The Designer started his own law firm a few years ago and it has grown rapidly, with a reputation for high-quality work that caters to local and international clients alike.  He describes the decision to start his own firm as, “one which gave me much more control over my life. “  His work is meticulous and thorough, although he misses most  deadlines.

 

The Designer revealed a significant detail about his life later that evening in the restaurant whose revelation to me solidified our status as more than just professional, as it is a subject rarely talked about in public for the shame that is inherit in Arab culture.  He approached it in the most indirect manner, describing to me his decision to buy a unique sports car.  His ex-wife loved to go to the beach, but was not a Jerusalem ID holder, making it impossible for them to go to the Mediterranean together.  He bought the car to fool the Israeli checkpoint soldiers into thinking that they were Israeli.  Together, in the convertible-top sports car, they were waved through checkpoints without ever showing  an ID.   Like me, the Designer was divorced. 

I’d sit in the passenger seat of that sports car next to the Designer’s tall, trim figure navigating our way on long, evening road trips in the year to come.   Because I felt such a sense of safety with him, I pursued conversations aimed at building a greater sense of intimacy between us.   Logically, I told myself again, I was just experimenting.  We’d contemplate what  our personal stories were teaching us about life and faith.

The Designer liked to recount periods of his life to me by describing his relationship history.   During University, his first serious girlfriend was from Nablus and published poetry about him.  He lived with an American activist during the second intifada, explaining, “I used my life quota of romantic gestures on her, and as a result I have none left.”   I cracked a joke in response to cover my hurt when I realized that I might not get any of the romance I was hoping for from this relationship.  The Designer married an unveiled woman for love.  After 5 months of married life, the relationship began to unravel.  He couldn’t explain why.  With a far-away look and an imperceptible shift in the conversation, he signaled that the subject was closed.   I became suspect of the part of the story that remained hidden, and instinctively continued to withhold the best parts of myself.   When I revealed my own marriage story, he responded gently, “Never believe your ex-husband that he cheated on you because of who you are.  That is the cowardly excuse that a man uses to hide behind the shame of his own behavior.”  Even though I was blindly reading only what I wanted to take away from these conversations, I hung onto that response as one of the few indications that he cared for me.

The Designer has an impulsive side.  Citing the need for companionship after the divorce, he bought a house cat, a highly unconventional decision for a Palestinian man.   After a veterinarian warned him against the multitude of illnesses suffered by purebreds,  he ignored the advice and chose a white, long-haired, Persian.  The veterinarian examined the kitten and diagnosed it with a viral herpes eye infection typical of purebreds.  Seeing the look of horror on the Designer’s normally stoic face, she tried to reassure him, “Don’t worry, it is not infectious to humans.”

 

I asked myself what I was expecting from my deepening friendship with the Designer.  I was happy to indulge in the connection that I felt with him, so I heartlessly ignored his response when I asked him that same question.  His reply was clear and firm, “I admire you. I think you are an incredible woman. But I don’t do romance and relationships.  I want you as a friend.”

 

A few weeks later, the Designer stopped taking my phone calls but then suggested we meet up for coffee.  He had news to share.  “Believe it or not, I am getting engaged in a few days!”  I suspected that he had taken on a relationship, but with effort I maintained my composure and asked, “Am I to assume this is a traditional marriage?”  In a tone that made it sound like he had decided to order a shwarma sandwich for lunch, he replied with a half grin, “Yeah, I thought I’d give it a try! I've never done that type of marriage before.”   His new wife is a second cousin and comes from a “good” Jerusalem family.  She donned the Hijab after the engagement.  She speaks English, has traveled extensively and loves to cook.  She was selected as the bride-to-be by the Designer’s birth mother.  

   

An early memory

I am standing in the large entrance foyer, looking down towards the baby doll clutched in my hands and past the hem of my purple cotton dress (much too light for winter, don’t you think?), to my bare feet which still cling precariously to the baby years recently left behind and press unevenly against the red woven rug.  Like any child at the age of three, it’s difficult to tell if I am coming or going.  Maybe I am on my way to join my mother in the kitchen.  The raucous shouts of the boys playing on the street accompany our afternoon routine.

Suddenly there is a scream.   My mother’s aproned figure turns dramatically away from the sink to face the foyer.  She pauses, her gaze staring acutely past me.  That brief moment of instinctual curiosity is broken by the clashing of the heavy lead-glass front door.  In runs the boy they call Fishman, dressed in his habitual mustard-colored jersey.   I thought Fishman was a nickname.  I remember seeing an aquarium filled with goldfish at his house once.  Many years later I learned that Fishman was his last name and that’s what boys did - they addressed each other by their last names.  I never understood how that worked with my 3 brothers, so close in age.  When somebody called, “Stefano!”, who would answer?

My mother whizzes past Fishman in a blur.  The cries from the street of my eldest brother come to a crescendo.   The game of ice hockey has gone bad.  At that age I had not yet realized that accidents could happen when playing a game.

My feet patter slowly after my mother’s.  She reaches the street in the time that I make it to the front door.  She stands next to a makeshift wooden goal box, bent over my brother who I cannot see.  Curiosity overtakes me as, unaware, I let go of my grasp around the baby doll and walk unsteadily out the front door.  

It’s an unusually warm February day.  My naked feet step onto the street, sinking into the soft slush that coats the under layer of solid ice.  At the opposite goal stands my youngest brother, alone, holding his hockey stick, frozen in place.  Near center-ice, my other brother stands with a couple of friends.  They are laughing, impatiently shifting their weight between their feet, ready to slap the hockey puck back into play at any moment.

My feet stop just short of my mother’s.  I look down and see circles of bright red blood melting into the ice.  I unquestionably understand that there is an injury.  My mother’s calm voice asks my brother, “Where are they?”  A pause, an inaudible answer.  “OK, hang on to them.”

I step around my mother’s legs to see my brother sitting on the ground. He meets my stare.  Teasingly, he shoots me a toothless grin and then holds out the palm of his hand to reveal his two front teeth.

Interpreting Trauma

Digesting news sources in this part of the world is a work of art, as I guess it is all over the world. But in Israel and Palestine, there are the facts and there are the ways that each party to the conflict decides how to interpret the facts. I am skeptical of all interpretations, regardless of the source. Ideally, I’ve wished I could read fluently in both Arabic and Hebrew to get an even more indepth understanding of the interpretations, but I am left to do the best I can with English resources – on the Israeli side its mainly Haaretz, on the Palestinian side, its Maan News Agency both of which leave key facts out of most of their stories. Then there is the Jerusalem Post.

When I first picked up the Jerusalem Post I was surprised by the news I saw and instantly compared it to what I would consider what USA Today newspaper reports as news, not the serious hard-hitting stuff. So I quickly dismissed it as a resource. A few months ago I was over a friend’s house and he pulled out the Friday edition of the Jerusalem post to show me an English magazine pullout that covers all entertainment events in English in Israel. This was like a goldmine. I now pick up a copy of the Friday Post when I can. The first few times I do so, I would toss the paper aside and just focus on the entertainment pull-out. A few times I read a story or two that caught my eye.

Yesterday, however, I found myself settling in for a long wait at a doctor’s office with a copy of the paper on my lap and I began to read the front page stories. One was about Iran and its nuclear capacity – without fail this is a daily story with some twist or new analysis in every single Israeli newspaper daily. The remaining stories had to do with past or current events with Palestinians, all filled with the words of terrorism and terrorist. Oh, and there was a photo of Madonna with a caption reading how she had decided to kick off her new tour with the goal of creating peace and she thought it was important to do it in Israel where she could send her message of peace to both Israelis and Palestinians. Nobody seemed to inform her that Palestinians would have had to apply for a special permit and cross a 7 meter high wall miraculously to reach that concert.

In any case, what I have learned about the Israeli narrative is that they have a historical narrative that involves the trauma associated with their belief that the entire world is out to annihilate every single Jewish person. While I understand that this was the clear intent of Hitler’s Nazism, I cannot fully understand the mental leap to using this interpretation in the Israeli media as the lens through which it covers stories in the region.

Over the years, quite a few Israeli and Jewish people have talked to me about the trauma of the bombings of the second intifada; how they or their friends or relatives were killed and the traumatic responses to those. I’ve never asked for or invited these stories, but they were always told spontaneously to me. What I’ve come to wonder about is the perception that trauma is an exclusive right to the Jewish people, as if there is no recognition of the fact that trauma is an unfortunate human experience. Nor is the recognition that a response to their trauma may be to inflict trauma on others who experience it just as humanly and deeply as they ever have.

When an Israeli friend recounted to me how she could not go into cafes in the States after her time in Jerusalem during the second intifada without having intrusive thoughts that a person with a bomb might walk into a random café in New Jersey, I wanted to tell her about how difficult it was for me to walk into near-empty buildings in day light hours after I had been assaulted in one in Yemen. I had also escaped unhurt, as she did the second intifada, but even though I suffered severe PTSD for several months, it did not leave me with a long term scar of believing that every Yemeni man and every empty building held an assault waiting to happen because I was what…a white woman?

Yet almost every news story in the Jerusalem Post this week was clearly painted in the frame of mind that every single event was about the desire by the Palestinians to annihilate Israel. The front page has one story each on Lebanon, Syria and Iran. Only Egypt and Jordan are missing from the front page, but well covered inside. The celebration of the return of the remains of Palestinians “martyrs” is a statement of the support of terrorism for Israel. A story about 30 year old Israeli military tactics used in the “first” Lebanon war is written as if it all happened just yesterday as “news”, but seems to point as a reminder to its readers – “don’t forget Lebanon!”

What deeply worries me is the seemingly inability of Israelis to understand the trauma that their occupation policy is causing to Palestinians. Everything is covered in a way to bring up again, instead of heal, the trauma of the past. It is in fact when I’ve tried to explain to Jewish and Israeli friends how the occupation is hurting their attempts toward peace, that there response is to defend it by recounting the trauma they’ve experienced. Who will decide to be the evolved species in this debate and decide to end the trauma?

The Wall Between Right and Wrong

My son’s former babysitter writing messages on the Wall

Recently when I was in the States, I was telling a friend of mine some minor story about a recent even in my life and it began something like this:  “I have this friend of X nationality, who is X religion and is married to man of Y nationality and Y religion and lived in Z country….”  When I concluded my story, my friend commented to me, “I can tell how much living in Palestine has influenced you, you started that story with the need to identify every person by their origin and religion even though it had nothing to do with what you were telling me.” It was a telling comment considering one of my biggest complaints about Jerusalem is the feeling that everybody is observing everybody else to figure out where they come from and what their religious background is.

So I begin this story carefully telling you that the main subject of the story is an American-born, Jewish woman who was schooled in a Yeshiva and is engaged to a British-Israeli Jew.  She is not a close acquaintance of mine, but recently she asked me if I would give her a tour of Ramallah because she has heard such wonderful things about the city, is curious, and wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to visit it before she may be undergoing the Israeli citizenship process as a result of the upcoming marriage.  I was actually honored that she asked me to be her guide.

I took her into downtown Ramallah and she accompanied me on my shopping errands.  We stopped at the post office where she picked up some Palestinian stamps.  She picked up a very cool turquoise purse, asking me what colors she thinks she can wear with it (Red, definitely!). She purchased a Hebron-manufactured Kuffieyeh (the traditional black and white Palestinian scarf popularized by Arafat who was said to be adept at folding it into a map of Palestine) for her fiancé who is a tour guide and would like to use it to describe the different “layers” of society here (layers is her word). I took her through the crowded fruit and vegetable market where we bargained for the newly, in-season sweet cherries.  I took her to Stars and Bucks where she bought a couple of souvenir mugs for her collection.  Then we had lunch at one of Ramallah’s best outdoor cafes.  All along the way, I told her stories of what daily life is like for an average Palestinian.  She had no idea why she had never seen cars with the white Palestinian plates on roads in Jerusalem (because they are not allowed to go into Jerusalem).  When she observed that most of what was in the stores in Ramallah was in the stores in Jerusalem, I explained to her the laborious system of “importing” goods into the West Bank which Israel  exposes to extensive searches in the name of security, which greatly adds costs to the importers and goods sold on the local market.

I thought it was a fairly successful excursion; success in my mind being equated to exposing her to some of the ridiculous hoops that Palestinians go through in the name of security, to which they are completely powerless.

But on the car ride back to Jerusalem, she asked me what my “reaction is” to all of this.  I wanted to answer her honestly without running our relationship.

For better or worse, I was born with a strong sense of right and wrong and a need to see and feel justice in all situations.   This has proved problematic in general and something I have cursed a million times.  Most of my life, my reaction to situations in which I see wrong has been relayed to others as judgmental.  And that has been the curse.  I’ve had to learn to be an observer and a witness to situations in which I take my time to consider, learn, and think before reacting.  It’s been a part of me that I’ve had to learn to tame and figure my way through.

Living in Palestine has provided me the perfect opportunity to figure out this life lesson.  I’ve witnessed and felt injustices all around me on a daily basis.  I’ve questioned what I should do.  I’ve felt such intense feelings of anger.  I’ve spat hateful comments at innocent passengers on the journey; knowing deep inside this was not the person I wanted to be.  I pleaded with myself to figure out another reaction to this overwhelming powerlessness that I felt.  Everybody who works and lives here knows in a sense, that because the most powerful country in the world decides to remain impotent to the situation, that the action of each individual, regardless of what they choose that to be, can feel so meaningless at the end of each day.

The only thing left for me was to learn to become a patient observer.  At first I practiced this, not knowing what the patience would bring forth.  The first and loudest question was, Why?  Why this injustice? Why the desire to be so unfair to a large number of people who have done nothing wrong?  Why the continue statements on both sides that are used to justify each position, but in the end do not sensibly lead to the concluded reaction?  As I started to investigate this question, I knew I had to learn more about the narratives that each side uses and where they come from.

And that is where I began my answer to Sarah.  I explained to her that without passing judgment, and being willing to disagree, each day I find myself asking questions of people from both sides to understand what beliefs drive their actions.  I explained that I withhold judgment and instead look for the all-human nature feelings that drive the need for the beliefs and actions – fear, hate, mistrust.  I explain that I’ve learned with much difficulty and my own misactions, that my job is not to contribute to wrong beliefs or hate.  But in any way I can, I try to get people of the other side to understand the humanness of the other’s beliefs – not so they can agree or disagree or justify their actions, but maybe so that they can feel a little more powerful in their role in this situation.

Her reaction to this is a familiar justification that I’ve heard from Israelis many times.  She began with a justification of how important Jerusalem is to the Jewish people.  I gently point out to her that this is no different than how most Christians and Muslims are also raised to think of Jerusalem.  She then brings up the holocaust, another familiar narrative of Israelis.  I respect the trauma that the Jewish people carry with them based on that event.  But I find ways to point out how that event has little reflection on the current events that Israel finds itself in the middle of today and that transference of this trauma to the Palestinians may be worsening the situation that Israel finds itself in.  This trauma unfortunately has no bearing on the frustration that is felt by the Palestinians as they watch their land being stole for the build-up of the settlements and the restricting policies of the occupation.  This is my main message to her, that Palestinian resistance is resistance to the policies of occupation.  I point out to her the many peaceful resistance actions that have sprung up in recent weeks, and how I am hopeful that this will start to get people outside of Palestine to look at themselves and start to question which of their own long term beliefs may not be serving anybody’s interests.

I don’t know yet what she took away most from that day in Ramallah.  I am just grateful that at no time she did state how the Wall was a successful Israeli security policy as most Israelis believe.  I would have had to point out how wrong she was.

Writings

Two of my recent published writings
Huffington Post - Global Motherhood Article
Role/Reboot article on Single Mothering in Palestine

Forgiveness and Endings

I see the bright shine of a brand new wedding ring on the engagement finger.  The ton of bricks hits me.  But because of my recent, new-found befriending attitude towards myself, it feels more like a heavy down comforter being thrown on top of me in the middle of the summer.

He plays with it, twisting it around his finger.  A semiotic precious metal.

The west seems to have a very mixed up  idea of things like “endings” and “forgiveness.”  We like to think that when something ends, it’s over, behind, in the past.  We like to think that when we have forgiven, it is over, behind, in the past.

Even a good book or musical theater or an 11- inning baseball game is not over when it’s over.  We still recall the magical highs and cathartic lows of the characters, the foot-tapping songs and the crack of the bat against a home-run ball.  It may be in the past, but its beauty and ugliness and sensual experience is not forgotten. And so it is with human relationships. 

I’m taking a mediation class with a small group of individuals, all of us in the same type of humanitarian aid work.   I thought I knew all there is to know about meditation.  But studying meditation for meditation sake actually requires an examination of how the different styles and types of meditation impact us.  Recently, we practiced a befriending meditation – to befriend ourselves first as we go onto befriend others.  I’ve done this type of meditation before (Pema Chodron).  But this time around it made me realize how far I am from befriending myself.

In the ensuing discussion, participants focused on forgiveness, even though this was not anywhere near the purpose of the meditation.  But as the meditation required us to wish “well-being, safety, peace, contentment” on people who we experience difficulty with, some participants manipulated this into meaning we should forgive these people.  It took much patience for me to sit there and listen to the conversation.   I am in a stage of struggling with the meaning of forgiveness...and endings.

Forgiveness doesn’t feel like a finality, an either/or.  It feels like a process.  And so ending, doesn’t feel like an end.  It feels like a process of letting go.  It feels like welcoming memories with smiles or sadness and than just saying “thank you.” 

Some days I wake up and I long for this friendship that I clearly and compassionately pushed out of my life.  This friendship meant more to me than maybe it should have, but I don’t live in the world of shoulds and should-nots…just is and is not, or in this case was or was not.  It meant a lot to me, but I had to say no to it because it was never going to lead to where I wanted it to go.   Even though I want a relationship with a life partner that is built on a solid foundation of friendship first and foremost, this was not what my friend believed.  I blamed myself for getting caught up in it, for the should and shouldnots.  If I “ended” it, if I was “forgiving” this person than why was I missing him?  Why am I alternating between remembering the fun times with sweetness and recalling how unfit this person is to hold a significant relationship in my life?  Why was I feeling anger towards myself?  Resentment for him being so beautifully human that he could not fit into some box that I wanted to fit him neatly into?  How could I declare my stamp of approval on “ended” and “forgiven” with these feelings running through my head?

In the odd way that life seems to always want to show you two sides of the same coin, another friend recently told me that she does not forgive me for wrongs.  Demonstrating a trait that has tripped me up many times in my professional and personal relationships, I withheld my heart and communicated in a very insensitive way with her.  The first time it happened with this particular friend, I looked myself in the mirror and offered an honest apology explaining the  feelings and experiences I was going through that caused this trait to rear its ugly head.  I mistakenly thought that forgiveness had been granted on her side, again, as if it’s an act that is done in finality.  When the trait showed up again, I again went through a protracted apology, but this friend made it clear that even the first apology was not enough to fix the damage that was done.  I’ve also clearly walked away from that friendship with a two-fold lesson now.  One, as to how important it is to stay present to my heart so that I don’t continue to repeat this trait.  Second, how difficult it can be to grant forgiveness in the desire to protect our hearts by holding onto narratives about ourselves and others.

I’m learning to accept that forgiveness is not some dot at the end of line that we reach with finality.  It is a cycle, a process and a beautiful wave of life which we are called to ride out and learn more deeply about ourselves during the ride.  It requires a high degree of security, self-reflection and a dose of your favorite brand of “seasickness medicine” might help as well.  I have ended relationships these past few months.  They are over, at least the process of being over.  And I have forgiven myself and them….at least as I understand it in the sense of it being a process.

Nomadic

I was recently asked if I would consider myself a nomad.  I quickly and definitively answered “no.”  To me, a nomad is a person without a permanent home, who is out in the world wandering in search of their living.  I don’t consider myself a wanderer as it implies that I am moving because I do not know what it is exactly that I am seeking.  My decisions to move abroad, multiple times, have been made while I was firmly planted in what I consider my permanent home (DC-area).  And I made the decision to move abroad with what I consider full awareness of my choice and possible consequences. 

I have friends who I consider definite nomads for various reasons.  There are those who have been living an expat life for many years and that is their future – they arrive at one “post” with a definitive timeline (usually 2-4 years), and some time near the middle to end of that stay, they are beginning to plan and choose their next foreign post.  They may own a nice piece of property in the States or Western Europe that they consider their “investment” or “retirement” or “home leave” property; the place that they are working now to spend their permanent sometime-in-the-future life in.  Or, they see the property once every year or two on their home leave.  I grew up in the upstate New York house where my parents still live.  I own a house in the States, that I still have furniture in, that I rent out from time to time, but I am actively paying the mortgage on, and when I think about returning to the States, that is the house that I imagine going…now, or soon.

I also think of nomads as people who resist putting down roots wherever they stop temporarily.  I recently attended an “expat” party.  People were congratulating each other for making it 6 months through their 12 month stay.  A young guy was proudly saying that he would never choose Jerusalem as a place to live and began talking of his plans to move to Lebanon in August.  Of the nearly 100 hundred people at the party, I think I counted maybe 3 Palestinians.  Do these people not even put down enough roots to make friends with the people they are living with?  I can understand why keeping oneself surrounded by expats makes another expat feel comfortable – there is camaraderie in the rootless.  But when I think of nomads, I think of people like Gertrude Bell or T.E. Lawrence who a wandered, but always with a seemingly principled approach to their work and the people with whom they lived. 

Living abroad may make the ground beneath my feet feel unsteady at times.  And I try to approach all that I see and witness with what I consider an idyllic nomadic curiosity.  And I constantly feel the longing of missing the company of old and new friends.   Yet that is where any semblance of a nomadic lifestyle ends for me. Maybe one day I’ll go out into the world as an aim-less, goal-less wanderer, but I’ll save that for the time when I don’t own a retirement home.

Spring Blossoms in Winter

I’m in the middle of an 8 week course on mindfulness mediation whose purpose is to provide NGO workers with tools to prevent burnout.  As I’m sitting in meditation the other night, observing my thoughts wander I suddenly hear a question rise inside my mind, “Are you burned out already?”  The question scares me and I move away from it.  It returns, I touch it with my thoughts for a little longer, than back away in fear.  Over the next few days the question becomes more and more prominent.

I find myself sitting at my work desk, unable to focus on the document in front of me.  I find myself in a very important meeting, arranged and requested by myself, unable to conjure about sincere interest in the subject at hand.  I find myself backing down.  I bring attention to actually feeling my physical body and feel nothing but pain and fatigue.  I am surrounded by the most loving, attentive and caring friends and still I feel extreme loneliness.  I have a busy, full and fun social life, and still I find myself bored.  I find myself at the end of the day, lying on my bed, staring into space.  Feeling nothing.  I start to worry about myself.

After years of practice I bring myself to the place of, “Ok, what can I imagine doing that would make me feel better?”  And I see myself in my home.  I see myself in the middle of the day, with no routine, no waking in the middle of the dark before dawn, no driving through checkpoints daily.  I feel a sense of lightness with these images, like small blossoms just beginning to open: those blossoms that are so small and undefined that I do not know to which type of tree they belong.

And yet, it is so difficult for me to admit that I may be burned out.  I hear myself responding, “But you should be stronger than this!”   In the perfect moment, a friend calls to tell me about a friend she is worried about who recently experienced a traumatic incidence that is unfortunately all too common in this industry and she is worried that he is so burned out that he is unable to think or plan his future clearly and….he will never admit that he might be in the place.  So I describe to her what I’ve been experiencing recently.  And how I find it much too difficult to admit that I’m not strong enough to handle it all.

What is strength to me?  The ability to handle it all…..perfectly.  The ability to be enthusiastic, and chipper, and successful at my job….every single day.   The ability to parent with love and enthusiasm….every moment.  The ability to know what my heart dreams for….and take steps confidently and without fear to get there.   I am none of these at the moment.

My friend reminds me of what a difficult job I am doing as a single parent trying to manage all of this.   She is trying to hold a mirror up to me and is asking me, “Do you see this?”  And the fact is, the reflection is empty.  All I imagine is somebody who is supposed to be “just doing” it, what we all do.  I don’t think I’m any more special or burdened than all those other people walking around me holding it together.

Last year I had begun to plan a 2-3 month sabbatical from work where I was going to remove myself from the world, hang out at a friend’s beach house and write.   The plan was falling beautifully into place when all hell broke loose at work.  My boss who I had worked this sabbatical out with was suddenly no longer my boss.  I was asked to take on two extra jobs and despite my attempts to say no, a promotion was dangled in front of me that I didn’t want to say "no."  And here I sit, 9 months later, fully burned out (so difficult to admit as I write that), and feeling like even a 2 month sabbatical would not be enough to heal from the frantic pace that has been my life for 8+ years.  I have given up so many bad habits that I had in those initial years.  I have so many more external and internal resources than I did even just 4 years ago.  And yet still, I have burned out.  But the blossom of an idea has opened this winter.

Foreign becomes familiar

Disturbed when I found myself on the road in the back of this van advertising  "security" services.

There are so many things I’ve become accustomed to now that I’ve been here for almost 4 years:  not being able to read road sides and ingredient lists on food at the grocery store, being closely observed so that I can be efficiently put into somebody’s box view of who I should be, not having answers to “what? Why? How?” on a very frequent basis, being the only woman present in a crowd of men.  Then, there are those things that I have not become accustomed to: the wall, the religious “costumes”, the bad hair dye jobs of the Russian Jews and the sight of weapons in the most innocuous of places.  I blogged previously about seeing large AK47s over the shoulder of a settler on a recent emergency room visit and how completely out-of-place it seemed. 

It’s been a rainy winter, similar to one that I experienced my first winter here.   We’ve had some pretty dreary days and weekends here lately, with predictions of many more to come, and even possibly snow.  So when the sun comes out on a winter weekend day, even with a stiff, cold northerly wind, we take our mandatory Vitamin D excursion.  Today, we ventured out to a park just north of Jerusalem city limits called Sataff.  It’s a free, public park with many hiking and biking trails perfect for families of all ages.  There are caves to explore, water streams to explore and rocks and trees to climb.  A friend who I believe has probably visited 99.9% of Israeli national parks, had been pleading with me to discover this park so I knew it should be good.

We arrived to be greeted by a traffic jam, an odd sight on the morning of Shabbat.  I made a quick call to my friend who gave me excellent directions to a few out-of the-way trail heads.  Fortunately, even with the crowds, there was so much park space, that it didn’t feel crowded once we got in.  The exception was an area around an underground spring rising out of a cave. There were kids and families all about, so I knew whatever was inside this cave must be good.  Inside the cave was a small pool of water, and towards the back it lead through an underground stream/tunnel that only kids could fit through and climb their way out of a rocky exit 20 meters later.   Just the kind of exploring my son loves!

After I grabbed my son’s shoes and socks from the cave, I walked down to the end where he would exit from.  There were plenty of parents, mothers and fathers, milling about with their cameras in hand.  It reminded me to take out my own.  One man bends down in front of me to pull his splashing 3 year old out of the water and his shirt rises from his pant waist.  I suddenly see a nice fire arm, in plain tucked neatly into his side waist.  I do a double-take….and then a triple take.  What the F&*(?!?  (is what my mind is saying over and over and over again).  I decide I want to take a photo, but it becomes too difficult with the crowds and running children.  A few minutes later I saunter off along a hiking trail, quiet, and peaceful and the early spring nature in full view.  Red poppies and cherry blossoms and the olive trees all seem to be smiling with the bountiful winter rains.    And yet with all that, I still not get the image of the firearm near small children out of my head. 

I’ve actually seen this frequently during my outings in Israel.  Usually when I see it, I start looking at the legs and waists of all the other Israeli men around, trying to discover who “is packing.”  I’m a firm believer that violence begets violence.  I don’t know why Israelis think they are exempt from this universal truth.  They themselves, victims of unjustifiable violence, so adeptly and unquestioning they seem able to arm themselves with the firm belief that they are and always will be under attack.

All the rhetoric this week over the need to attack Iran seems absolutely senseless.  I wonder how the leaders can be so naïve about this part of the world not to realize that it will unleash a battle unforeseen.  I’ve decided to go to the Jordanian consulate in Ramallah this week to get visas for Jordan for my son and I….we may never know when that will come in handy.

Tips for being a good enough parent (abroad)

Recently I was being interviewed for some potential media coverage on what it’s like to be a mother who is parenting abroad. In the process, I uncovered some long-forgotten tales of my adventures; mostly forgotten for their nightmarish quality that I wish never to re-live. Although in retrospect, they are actually quite funny. I recently saw Sarah Jessica Parker’s movie, “I Don’t Know How She Does It.” It was loaded with clichés that mostly made me cringe and then laugh out loud. I have my own fun-to-tell lice story with the added element of the living-abroad, foreign experience. I was asked by the interviewers if I had any “tips” for other parents doing the living/working abroad thing. It was difficult to think of my experience being anything that somebody could garner some lessons from. On further reflection though I have come up with some "tips" to share, none of which are full-proof guaranteed to make you the perfect parent, but at least “good enough” for getting my son safely and sanely past his 9th birthday while living abroad.

TIP #1: Life is an adventure, and it’s all about the journey, not the destination.

To live abroad, you have to become fully comfortable with unpredictability. There will be days that will give you premature grey hairs. There will be days when you really want to stay under the covers and pretend that you are in your bed 10,000 miles away in a place that you tell people is your “real home.” You don’t want to have to try to explain to your children what even you can’t understand. You don’t want to have to practice in your mind the correct way to say “eggs” to your friendly neighborhood grocer in the foreign language of your choice for the 1,000th time. You don’t want to be starred at. You don’t want to feel like an outsider. You don’t want to fight the insane traffic and let your children hear the string of swear words that come out of your mouth by another, near-miss accident. Whether your home abroad happens to be a relatively-cushy London or Tel Aviv or a more “hardship” posting of Dushanbe or Timbuktu, these will be your experiences at one moment or another. And so the adventure part is remembering why you’ve chosen this place abroad (hopefully because your heart is doing something it loves). And at our heart, and at our children’s heart, there is the thrill of the adventure – think of all those fairy tales and children’s movies we’ve seen in our lifetime and shared with our children. Sharing that sense of playfulness in your new home with your children will get you through the hair-pulling days when you wish you could be Dorothy, clicking your ruby slippers, asking to go home.

Along the same lines, I would also recommend not trying to replicate your “real home” in your new home. Oh yes, all of us, no matter what our age, will be thrilled to find those coveted Oreo cookies tucked away in our favorite grocer. Our children will jump up and down at the familiar sight that reminds them of home (even if you rarely allowed oreo cookies in your home). You will begun to salivate remembering what an Oreo tastes like dipped in cold milk. You will not think twice about paying $10 worth of local currency for this pack of cookie. You may even overlook the just-passed expiration date and pretend not to taste the staleness in those cookies. But what nobody will tell you is that by indulging in that taste of home away from home, thinking you can get “home” back through a package of whatever consumer item reminds you of home, you will have immediately set yourself up for failure. First, the kids may notice the staleness and start whining and complaining from the first bite. Or, you will be so happy to see their radiant faces, that you return to the store as quickly as humanly possible to buy more, only to discover that you were unlucky enough to buy the first packet from a once in a blue moon stock that made it into this random store 10,000 miles away from where the cookies were produced. And you will thus spend the rest of your stay in this country wondering over THAT mystery – how the box of cookies made into your grocer’s that one day.

After a 2-week vacation to the States where my son was fed baby carrots every day as a snack, when we returned to Ramallah he refused to eat “normal” carrots that I cut to resemble baby carrots, insisting they were in fact a very different item of produce from baby carrots. Don’t waste your time – get your kids psyched about hummus and nan bread and pad thai.

Tip # 2: Always give yourself and your family a 6 month 7 month period of adjustment.

When I moved to Ramallah, my shipment arrived 6 weeks after I left the States. My son and I likened it to Christmas – we got to open up all these boxes and find our most treasured (stuffed animals) and practical (baking pans) that would make us feel comfortable in our “home away from home.” The next morning I woke at 5am in a panic with one thought running through my head, “Oh My Gosh, what have I done?! If I decide tomorrow I want to leave this place, I can’t pack a suitcase and go.” The relative permanency of my choice hit me like a brick. More unsettling was that I had this little being I was responsible for that also meant there would be no spur-of-the-moment decisions on where to go when. This certainly was not the same experience of my year working in Geneva, Switzerland as a single 20-something year old off to a new European city every weekend. Nope. Now there were school calendars to consider, and long term work plans, and stuffed animals (the items which have always given my son a sense of stability and comfort from a young age).

The “newness” of the adventure quickly wears thin when you walk through the door after work in those early months to hear your children complain that they don’t have any friends, that they hate their school, or that they don’t like how the streets smell. You may find yourself frustrated by all attempts to set up a new routine, only to have that interrupted by random local holidays that find you in front of the locked gate of the school door at 7:30 am on a Wednesday morning because you didn’t understand the local radio broadcast the night before announcing the “celebration of some war we lost centuries ago” holiday. You will feel inept at everything. Your children will mirror those feelings by also demonstrating their ineptitude to just “do as you ask.” The sixth month is the worst. You will start to consider the pros and cons of staying vs. going. You will wonder if a quick trip home will do the trick. You will wonder how you made your family completely unhappy with such a wrong choice that seemed like a great choice 6 months prior. And then, one day, early into the 7th month, you will wake up and everything will feel normal. Your children will not only go to school happy, but they will come home happy. You will learn how to say “egg” in the local language in a manner that can be understood by any native speaker at least 50% of the time.

I believe this little “tip” is quite golden – knowing this will save you the headaches of worry as you live through it. Unfortunately, this 6 month adjustment period is also necessary when repatriating.



Tip # 3: A reliable babysitter/childcare/house help is mandatory and the best one will not be the most experienced person you find.

Even when I wasn’t living abroad, I rarely needed or wanted to see a resume of the person I was hiring to look after my child. I used only one thing: my gut. Yes, word of mouth and recommendations from friends helped. But I know my child, and I know who he likes.  If he didn’t like the person I hired, he would be miserable, and he would make the person’s life miserable. When I moved to Ramallah, I met many woman who came to me from references. Some interviewees would show up 30 minutes late, never having called to tell me they’d be late or apologize for being late. That spoke to me in volumes about a) how much they wanted to be there and b) how reliable they fail to be on a day to day basis. Other interviewees would walk through the door with a list of conditions, speaking to their most likely inability to be flexible when I would be most in need of it. And others would walk through the door declaring that they would make my son happy, without ever looking my son in the eyes or asking what it was that he liked. Some well-meaning colleagues suggested that I only consider women who were mothers themselves, overlooking the fact that not all mothers have the same parenting style, or that their priority would (as it should) always be for their own family, making me then not only accountable to the unpredictable needs and schedules of my own child, but to those of another’s family as well.

After a parade of “well experienced” candidates through our door who didn’t fit the bill for what I need it, I explained to my son that I was getting desperate and I really needed to work my 8 hour day uninterrupted. My son made one request: he wanted to have a vote, explaining that he too wanted to be comfortable with the choice. With much hesitation, I agreed to try to respect his wishes. The next phone call I received to an ad I had posted in a local listserv was from a young man. His first question in perfect English was, “Would you consider a male candidate?” He explained that he was a 4th year Chemistry student at BirZeit U whose real love was art, and to support his art, he needed money. He came from a family of 6 children, he was the oldest, and often looked after his younger brothers. Personally, I liked that a man would be interested in taking up a task that was traditionally seen as a “woman’s role” in Arab society and I thought a male influence around the house might be good for my son. We waited on the doorstep to meet Yousef.  Directly at the appointed time, we saw him walking down the street. His long, curly hair was an odd site for this part of the world. My son turned to me and declared, “Mom, this is somebody I’m going to be comfortable with!” Sure enough, Yousef was hired as the sitter and was not only reliable for the entire year he was with us, but made every activity with my son full of creativity and fun.

Regardless of family size and working/non-working spouses, I believe reliability in a child care provider is the one of the most important qualities. I also believe it’s a necessity too when living abroad so that you go out and have your own adult-adventures in the place you’re trying to discover. It models to your child that it’s impossible for any human being to do everything alone. It lets them know that it’s really OK, if not good, to put your own needs first some time. And it introduces them to the fact that people do things differently than your parents, which is ultimately the world we are preparing them to live in.

Tip # 4: Never wear white when you have a child under 10

Both when living abroad or not - ‘Nuf said



Tip # 5: Put time and effort into building bonds and connections with other parents

Not only will they be the greatest resources in helping you find those random things like the “must-have” Halloween costume in a country that has never heard of this odd American holiday, they will be the ones who have your back when you need to find the best pediatrician in town at 3am and they will be a source of sanity when you start having nightmares about invisible lice jumping out of your child’s hair. They will be the sounding board when you think you’ve come up with the best idea in the world to navigate the local school system, only to realize that what you were about to do was culturally incorrect on too many levels to count. When you are beating yourself up for forgetting your child’s lunch because you were too busy picking out the right shade of lipstick for the meeting with the Prime Minister, they will ‘fess up to the actual number of times they’ve sent their children to school without lunches. They will be able to translate the school directives about the upcoming field trip, when you are convinced you misread that the children will be having lunch with goats. They will steer you away from the bad after-school centers and steer you into the good expat men willing to date single moms (ehem?). And they will be the ones who can appreciate your brag about your child successfully reciting a verse of the Koran in front of their religion class that you, yourself cannot read. Your friends from home will not be replaced, but these new friends will be irreplaceable.

Tip # 6: Yes, Friends will be your best friends….except when they’re not

I think it is Dr. Seuss’s “Oh the Places you’ll go” book that puts into lovely rhyme and reason the fact that everybody, in life, will be alone…sometimes quite a lot. And living abroad can sometimes feel like a very lonely and isolating experience. Nobody else will come to this place, wherever on the map that happens to be, with the same exact luggage. You will find that experiences you have and people you meet will touch you in a very powerful way – sometimes negatively, sometimes positively. You’ll try to communicate this to others, in healthy and unhealthy ways. They just won’t get it. Maybe they’ll be unforgiving, maybe they’ll be less than enthusiastic, and maybe it will just be impossible for them to understand the perspective that you have. And those friends and family you left on the other side of the ocean won’t quite get it either.

The only way to end a feeling is to start to feel. And loneliness is a feeling that will come and go in different degrees. Sometimes it will seem like a wave running through the family – first it will infect one member, then another, and then another. One of the best bits of parenting advice I ever received was that the purpose of parenting is not to make your child happy all the time, that will ultimately be an impossible task. The goal of parenting is to give your child the tools to adeptly deal with those times that life doesn’t bring all the happiness that we dream of. And so it is with loneliness. I think as parents when we are overseas with our children and feel the loneliness, it’s an opportunity to become very conscious as to how we’re approaching it. You can isolate yourself, dig yourself deep into a book, waste countless hours watching those so-called inspirational videos  on Facebook, bake until every dish in your kitchen is dirty, or actually…one of the best remedies….just actually sit and share those feelings with your child. Listen to each other, talk to him/her about the feelings….just be a witness – you to his/her feelings, and him/her to your feelings. I found my son has an unlimited capacity for compassion at these moments. And it’s as good as any Oreo cookie(s) dipped in milk! My son has also come to know that one of my favorite activities at times like that is also sitting on the couch, snuggled under a blanket with him, watching “Pete’s Dragon” with a bowl of popcorn between us. Lonely, yes, but not alone.

Tip # 7: Learn to make promises with caveats

Nothing taught me better to not make promises to my child than living abroad. Before I moved abroad, I was a parent who was very eager to make promises to my child and then bend myself into a pretzel at 7am on a Sunday morning to fulfill it (ie, get into a car and drive 100 miles to a festival that was just “the” place to be that Sunday). When I make promises to my son, it’s because I want to know that he can trust me. Seeing him glow with happiness is a strong motivator as well! But sometimes strange, unforeseen events can happen in a foreign land – a sudden protest blocking a road, a nice dousing of tear gas by the IDF, or getting very lost on a road which is not on any map. At those times, there’s only one thing to do: surrender. I’ll turn around in the seat of the car to face my son in the back. “Look, I know I promised you {insert fun, once-in-a-lifetime activity}, but that unfortunately is not going to happen today…nor for the foreseeable future. But name anything else you’d like to do today and we’ll do it!” “Can we go to McDonalds?” (ugh) “Yes, we could, but it’s the Shabbat so it’s not open. Name something else.” “Can we go visit {insert name of best friend}?” “We could, but they’re out of town today.” “OK, let’s just go home” And an hour later, we’re sitting on the couch…watching “Pete’s Dragon.”