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What I Learned in 2015

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friends

I’ve lost a number of friends in my life; most in the “normal” way–years pass, our lives change, we grow apart. No pain. In my adult life, however, I have suffered some big losses in terms of friendship, and sometimes it takes years of perspective to see my part in the demise of the relationship or to see that the relationship was not a good one to begin with. Over time, as these endings have added up, I am convinced that I must be doing something terrible to my friends, or that I am just a very difficult person, or that I am so totally unaware of my self-presentation that I make the same mistakes repeatedly. I need to figure out what it is and work on myself, I say. I talk to my spouse about this all the time. He disagrees; he points out the differences in communication style (New Yorkers have a way about them–what can I say?), he highlights what he calls a lack of stability in the people I choose. “You’re an artist,” he says, “and your friends are artists.” “Artist” is non-artist code for crazy.

He loves me.

As “tough” as I pretend to be, I am really not. I hate confrontation. That is, I hate confrontation with people who are in my life—taxi drivers who refuse to be paid in coins, customers who cut in line at the store are a different story. I have been grateful to have friends who demand face time, who believe our relationship is worth that, and I have been learning to ask for that myself, even though I can feel every cell of my body urging me in the other direction. To my surprise, though, I haven’t been as quick to let go, cut people off, as I would think; I do ask for an audience or a chance to listen.

The first big loss that comes to mind is B.K., a woman with whom I traveled across the U.S., settling in Seattle. We were both at a time of upheaval in our lives and could think of nothing better than chucking it all and heading west. To this day, I believe all people in their 20s ought to do this (not the direction we chose, necessarily, but the trip, the distance, the dive into the unknown). After two years there as roommates, the tension between us was heavy. I was terribly immature and unhappy. B. had made friends in our new city because there were plenty of young people at her job; I had made almost none (I worked at an all-male securities firm). B. had even dated a guy; the one man I thought had shown interest in me actually called me to ask for someone else’s number. I was dependent on B. for companionship. I had no plans, no view of a future me, so I packed up again, headed back to New York. I tried to keep my friendship with B., but she wasn’t having it. To this day, I’m not sure what happened, except for the enmity in our relationship over our respective experiences in Seattle. The last time I heard from her was just after I’d gotten married, more than fifteen years ago. My fiance and I agreed we’d pay for her ticket to come to the wedding. At one point, before my Judaism took over, I thought of having her perform the ceremony. She never responded to the wedding invitation. For years afterward I felt sad and confounded. I knew I had hurt her, I must have hurt her, but I didn’t know how, and she wasn’t talking. She lives across the country from me, so except for noticing when it’s her birthday, I rarely think of her.

Then there was W.D. We had become very close during graduate school, so much so that she had become part of my family–my kids expected her to be at our table for Friday night dinner. She was funny as hell, smart, sarcastic, maybe somewhat lacking in self-awareness, or maybe incredibly self-aware. Honestly, I’m not sure. I loved her, loved hanging out with her. I was the only one of our mutual friends to help her move, I made her a birthday cake, I made her a bed in my living room when she was too drunk to go home, I took care of her rodent when she went away. Then one day we went off to a professional conference together, and that was it. She got a cold (it must have been a bad one, though she looked okay), and the conference became a misery for her. Unfortunately, from my point of view, it seemed she thought it should then be a misery for me and our other hotel roommate, too. In a plot line that would become familiar to me, I became the target of her wrath, the one who didn’t seem to care about her. I have tried to apologize (I don’t even remember what for) a number of times, and my attempts at reconciliation or even just détente have all been rejected, or seemingly purposely misunderstood. She lives a continent away, and so it is easier to figure out how to move on, which, finally, I have.

D.S.’s relationship with me was short-lived. She and her girlfriend are very smart, well-read, interesting people who are devoted to social justice. I loved being around them, because I always learned something from them and they made me laugh—a lot. D. and I got into an argument on social media about something very, very stupid, and she broke up with me in a text. I was sad, but only for about as long as the relationship had lasted. And I have given thought to her perspective since; I still don’t think she’s right, but it matters a whole lot less to me now. I assume the problem began before this particular argument, but I don’t know what it was. Someone who can’t tell me to my face what the problem is doesn’t need to be in my life. She lives nearby, but as I have removed myself from many of the circles we have in common, I rarely see her.

But now there’s M.I. She is a mother, a leader, a poet. She has been a teacher, a journalist, a boss lady, a fundraiser, a stay-at-home mom, and probably other roles I’ve forgotten or haven’t learned yet. She is a loving person who seems to have endless room in her heart for everyone, even people the rest of us might think were lost causes because of the evil they perpetrate. In solidarity with her, I quit a job at a place she’d been mistreated. I was in fact the only one to do so. Together we made a plan to help others doing what we love. We gathered around us like-minded women, but I was the one who continued to be her rock (and she mine), to actually perform the task we set out to perform, while everyone else did nothing. Our vision and motivation may have been slightly different, but only enough to give our goal needed energy.

Now that I am outside the great circle of warmth and friendship she creates, I can see the persona she has quite carefully constructed, built and fortified over time such that she has lost sight of the fact that it is just a construct. Her heart bleeds blue upon her sleeve. Her clothes are a costume; she embodies the word “poet,” she is earth-mother-warrior, she is a victim. Everything that happens or is said is about her. She has decided that I am an angry person. In some ways, it reminds me of the roles I always felt my parents had constructed for their four children–nothing we ever did or said was going to change us in their eyes. This is actually not quite true, but it is how I felt. I know there is nothing I can do to change her mind about how she has characterized me. My frustration at that is eating me, and I need to let it go for my own sake. Anger is not my state of being, but I am angry at her, for sure.

Shortly after M.’s father died, we went out for drinks, and were eventually joined by a mutual friend. M. got very drunk. And while she was drunk, she proceeded to verbally attack me in ways that were both ludicrous and prejudiced. It was crazy. I felt unable to defend myself against the wall of nonsense before me. The friend that was with us tried to get M. to see that what she was saying was out of line, but drinks plus grief had won the night. The next day, I made a fatal error. I wrote a lot of what I could not get across to her the night before in a Facebook post. No one knew what I was talking about except M. and my husband, but it was too much for her. It was the second time in our friendship that I had been bluntly honest about her privilege (a word she uses readily with others but doesn’t like to hear applied to herself). And I had done it “publicly.” Faced with reality, embarrassed by her own flaws and hypocrisy, she rejected the source of that truth. Does it matter that our mutual friend made the same arguments to her? No, the bile and venom is all for me because I put it on Facebook. There have been other times she has “forgotten” things she said to me when she was drinking. I have learned that she cannot be wrong. I have learned that my friendship is not worth much to her, that even though, in her mind, murderers and rapists deserve our sympathy and understanding, I do not. She has been so cold to me, I’d actually be impressed by it if it didn’t hurt so much. And so I feel I’ve been on the losing end of a great injustice, that I’m calling out my pain, only no one hears me, no one is listening. I have been sad ever since, though the direction of my sadness has been all over the place. My social life has taken an enormous hit, that’s for sure.

So, you could say I’ve learned some important things. I need to use social media differently; that is to say, I must use it cautiously. The temptation these days is to do all our communicating with a keyboard, and even as I yell at the kids to put down the phone or the tablet or the laptop, I have become utterly devoted to the fluidity, speed, and immediacy of typing and clicking. Bad idea*. Some things don’t belong on social media, and among them are personal conversations between friends, whether those talks are full of love or full of anger.

I’ve also learned that you can’t change someone’s opinion of you, and more importantly, you shouldn’t try. What people think and feel is not under my control. I don’t get to have a say, so allowing myself to be so upset and wrapped up in it is a waste of my time, my energy, my health. This is easy to say, less easy to do, but I am trying. I can only be responsible for my own crazy.

The common thread in these losses? Not one of these women would talk to me. They refused to tell me what I had done or said, or what their own issues were that required an end to the friendship. Upon reflection, I see that is very odd indeed. Schoolyard-level behavior, in fact.

Now that I am nearing 50, I am also learning what a friend is. A true friend. I am not as good a reader of people as I have always liked to believe. Because I can be used and abused for quite a while before I realize what’s up. I’m so pleased to have someone around who seems to like me, you see. The key to avoiding that pitfall is to learn that I am deserving of people’s admiration and affection just as I am. I don’t have to do things for people, nor do I need to hide what I think. If someone is my friend, she will love me because I’m me, and not because I can be manipulated or because I keep my mouth shut. Not because I fill a quota. Not because I embody something envied or something pitied. I think if I keep those things in mind, I can be a better friend, as well.

*I am aware of the irony that I am posting this essay on my blog.

 

Burned

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The door is gone; all is blackness inside. A cardinal darts across the porch, a bold contrast of life and color. The dogs have stopped to smell everything around a nearby tree, so I stand looking, from across the street, at the devastation of the house. There is a tarp on one part of the roof which lifts gently and rattles a bit in the cold wind. There are boards where the windows were, and the only view inside, at least from where I am, is the black hole of the front entrance. I see that there are burned items inside the house, but I don’t know what they are–furniture, perhaps. The rocking chair and its cushion still sit on the porch. There is still the small table with a brightly colored cloth.

And now I know–there is something about a burned house, one I am familiar with. I think of the retriever puppy who played under the tree in the front yard in warmer weather, now an adult dog who was carried out amid the flames by firefighters. I have seen things like this on the news, have heard before, “they lost everything,” but I have never seen what that means. This is physical, tangible. More than a loss of things, this is somehow a violation. To lose everything means so much more than stuff, money, mementos–it is to lose one’s sense of place, of safety, of home. A deep breath. The dogs are ready to move on.

Inside my own little house, I hang up the leashes, put my coat on the hook by the door. One dog curls up on the couch for a nap; the other runs to his favorite sun-drenched spot in the backyard. Their habits. My things and their places. I am away from the cold weather, safe from any harm that could come to me out in the wide world. I am enveloped in the sense of ownership, selfhood, belonging. What a terrible feeling to lose.

I Gotta Have Friends

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Do you know who your friends are? I thought I did.

That is, I don’t.

My husband tells me that one of my characteristics that leads to pain is that when I make a friend, I’m all in. I’m devoted. I’m loyal. I don’t see much point in relationships in which I need to remain guarded. If I can’t talk to you, really talk to you, what’s the point? After all, I can drink by myself. I believe he’s right; when I make a friend, she becomes a part of my life. She is not a satellite orbiting my “real” life with my kids, husband, dogs. I am also told that I’m quite honest, and that some people can’t handle that. I see where someone might think I’m honest and straightforward, but I suspect that’s mostly a matter of tone.

My tone really is a problem for me. I try to be aware, try to be sensitive, but I am misinterpreted a lot, and that can’t always be everyone else’s fault.

How well I know my friends is tricky, because I’m not sure anymore that I’m right about what I should know. I have a sneaking suspicion that I put far more weight on this than other people do. My oldest friend in all the world and I have been friends since we met at age four. So that’s forty-four years and going strong. We’ve been close, we’ve pulled apart, gotten back together again, and so on–forty-four years is a long time. I know a lot about her, and she knows a lot about me–at least each others’ pasts. I believe I know her character, and I’m guessing she believes she knows mine. But our adult lives have been at quite a distance; do we know the people we’ve become, or is our love for each other based on that shared past? Does that matter?

OldFriends

A real friend

I have also lost friends, and I admit that several of those losses remain a mystery to me; they cause me a great deal of pain because of the combined grief and inscrutability. I understand I must have contributed, but I remain in the dark about how I did so. It isn’t for lack of trying. I am not hopelessly lacking in self-awareness, or unwilling to admit fault, or even a person who cuts others dead rather than deal with conflict. And I’m neurotic enough to obsessively go over and over everything, to develop nervous compulsions while I try to figure it all out.

I suppose not every woman needs this, but I need women friends–to talk to about spouses, children, books, sex, art; to drink with, to laugh with, to argue with. There are few things more comforting to me than a shared tmi. I am all ears as soon as a friend says, “this might be an over-share, but….” Recently I was at a party, and a woman I had just met was telling people a story that involved the words “my sexual awakening.” I knew immediately that I liked her, and scooted forward to listen in.

My husband tells me that I am always making friends with crazy people. Isn’t that sweet?

 

 

Thinking About Dad (A Re-post)

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Dad’s Birthday (a short post to keep myself going)

A friend of mine recently lost her father to a long illness, and of course this got me thinking about my own dad, my own loss. This post from September 2014 means a lot to me, and so I offer it up again.

Happy birthday, Dad! If you were alive, you’d be 80 today, and I would call you and 019_16you would make silly remarks about what an old man you are and how just waking up was celebration enough.

If you were alive, you’d read my rough drafts and offer truly useful critique. You’d encourage me and treat me like a real writer.

If you were alive you’d see my children and how grown they are, and how funny, and you’d be baffled by their problems and offer me help.

If you were alive you might be writing another novel that I would show off to everyone. Or we’d just have a few drinks and write nothing at all.

If you were alive the same old tensions would babble like a brook beneath our gestures and silences. Your Englishness, my Americanitude, your maleness, my femaleness, my love for you and yours for me. Your wife’s inability to hide her dislike of me. My efforts to hide my dislike of her, in my still-child mind a feeble replacement of my mother.

If you were alive, you’d still be mine.

If you were alive, we’d figure this out.

 

Bi the Way, (A Love Letter to My Husband)

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I am bisexual. I have not said it in public before, except once at a PFLAG meeting, largely out of respect for my marriage and the man I am committed to in that marriage. I’m not even sure I actually used that word; I probably did a fine little dance all around it. Also, it has taken many years for me to own that name. One of my own children encouraged me to own it. And how can I tell that child it is great to be “out” if I am not? Children need example, not words.

What does being bisexual mean about me, about who I am in relation to you?

I have two kids I love without measure. I have two dogs. I’m Jewish. I go to synagogue sometimes to be in the company of other Jews. I don’t believe in a God, but I respect those who do. I don’t respect people who use their belief in a God to damn others. I’m left-handed, but only for eating, writing, and crocheting. Sometimes I have tremendous doubts about my life and the decisions I’ve made. Most of the time I love where I am and who I am. I love my very straight husband. Deeply. Romantically. Academically, too. Sometimes I want to hit him. (I don’t do it.) I love my friends fiercely, for they have so often been my family to me. When they hurt me, I am deeply hurt. When they show me love, I am thrilled. I often eat too little. I often drink too much. I love hot yoga. I hold grudges and try very hard not to. I want to be more forgiving. I am sensitive to criticism but need and want it. I think farts are funny. I am a terrible housekeeper. Really. Awful.

I’m in an odd position, I guess, though not an unusual one. A lot of women who like women are married to men. I have read about sexual fluidity in women–it’s more typical than not. I know only very few women who have never been sexually attracted to another woman. And most of my female friends are straight.

My sexuality is much more of a problem for others than it is for me. Like any other married person, I sometimes look at other humans I find attractive. The gender of the person is irrelevant, as far as I am concerned; I’m only looking. To do anything else would be cheating, would be disloyal, would be wrong. I am married. For some of my female friends my sexuality is a problem for them they haven’t recognized. Some might feel hurt that they are not my “type.” Others may wonder if my behavior toward them is motivated by sexual attraction (it isn’t). Still others may be hoping I’ll make a move on them (I won’t). Sometimes when things get weird between us I wonder if their knowledge of my bisexuality is somehow in the mix of emotions. I usually end up telling myself that my sexuality has nothing to do with it. It’s easier.

Respect for my husband kept me in the closet because of what others might say to him or think of him–because somehow his manhood is compromised by my attraction to some women. Because the ignorant will assume he’s being cheated on (because people who “claim” bisexuality are just whores), and that he’s a chump for staying married to me. Because some people will think that he’s married to a lesbian who’s too scared or repressed to admit she’s a lesbian. And that he, therefore, is gay. My husband does not care if someone thinks he is gay. He does not feel like less of a man. And if a man finds him attractive, he takes it as a compliment.

As I write this and read it over, line by line, obsessively, I am weighing the impact of these words on my life and my husband’s life–family members for whom this is news–other people who know me in social or professional contexts. It is a risk. It could be that some relationships will be hurt or even ended. It could be that some people I love will suddenly feel awkward in my (or our) presence. Of course, I hope none of that happens. I like to believe that at this point in my life (way too close to 50!), I have surrounded myself with people who understand me and who believe in loving the whole person, not just the parts that they find palatable. I have friends with deeply held beliefs that are the opposite of my own. But those friends are good people who aim to be a positive force in their lives and who are kind and generous. That is what I see and love in them. I hope they will see the good in me.

As a new (secular) year approaches, I find that I have reached an unexpected place. And when I have the presence of mind to reflect on that, I am filled with gratitude and joy. Professionally, I am right where I want to be at this moment, working on creative projects with “inner city” kids–the kids I grew up with–reading and writing and planning and dreaming about ways I can grow these programs to reach out to even more kids. Personally, I have a circle of upstanding, interesting, smart women friends, women with diverse talents, experiences, and opinions. My children are wonderful and daily overcoming obstacles. Culturally, I live in a city whose time to embrace the arts has come, I have a Jewish community when I want it, and I have access to a great deal of potential in the city, as yet untapped. It is exciting.

But what about my partner in crime? I do respect him. We’ve been married for fifteen years. Those years have held a startling number of difficult circumstances outside of our control. But we are also happy. We find each other interesting and funny. We like to talk with each other and also just sit quietly. We learn from one another. Our children drive us mad and amuse us by turns. We worry about them together and take turns talking each other off the clock tower. We’ve had plenty of arguments and therapy, rough patches, times when we needed some help to get back to teamwork. And we always get back. I cannot begin to imagine another human who knows me as well or would be as willing to live with me. Lucky me! It is this rock on which I stand that gives me the courage to share these words.

With gratitude.

The “Writing Life,” as Explained to Me by an Expert

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When I was working on my second graduate degree, an MFA in creative writing, someone had the brilliant idea to bring in professional writers to talk to us about the writing life. Unfortunately, the guests weren’t always as great as the idea itself. One evening, as we gathered around the conference table, the speaker was introduced to us by our professor–that night’s guest had been in school with our quite successful instructor, who had published a number of books, one of which got a lot of national attention. Her friend, well, not so much.

Nonetheless she was a writer and therefore qualified to talk to us about what it’s like to live that life. I was certainly the oldest student in the class, but most of the time that was not a problem for me. This evening, though. Well. We were told to max out our credit cards, whatever we had to do financially so that we wouldn’t have to let employment get in the way of writing time. We were told not to have kids whatever we do, because there was no way we were ever going to write anything if there were kids taking up our time. My favorite part of the conversation was when a classmate asked about getting an agent. Our speaker had an agent, all right–our professor’s. Seems the best way to get one to me! Hope I have a really successful writer friend who hooks me up, too.

Instead of laughing maniacally and calling her a nutbag, I will address her points one at a time.

  1. Telling young people to max out their debt has got to be the stupidest, most irresponsible piece of advice I’ve ever heard. Clearly the woman never wastes time reading a newspaper. Nothing like starting out a life likely to be impecunious with staggering, unpayable debt.
  2. I sat there, a mother of two, while she told us that mothers won’t write a word. Did I mention I am a mother of two, one a child with special needs, was a full-time college professor, and a full-time graduate student, taking care of my kids, writing my butt off?
  3. The right response to the question about agents would have been, “Don’t worry about an agent while you’re still working out who you are as a writer.” Additionally, she might have said, “I can’t really speak to that, anyway, because the only reason I have an agent is that my famous friend did me a favor.” That’s the kind of honesty we can all get behind, isn’t it?

Here’s what my writing life looks like. My alarm goes off at 6:30 am, and I begin the long and torturous process of waking my teenager. That is, if I’m able to bound out of bed right away, which is unlikely, given that my nine-year-old has been in bed with us, kicking me all night. In the kitchen, we drink coffee and make lunches and feed the dog and discuss when the dog walked and how much he pooped.

When everyone is ready, and don’t mistake this as a simple process–there’s yelling and crying and demands for weird breakfasts and a lot of “has anyone seen my…?” before anybody is ready to head out the door. Husband and son leave first. Then I drop my daughter at her school and pray I don’t get a call ten minutes later asking me to go home to retrieve whatever she forgot. On a very good day, I go from there to yoga. Home for a shower, a dog walk, food, and then writing and reading. That all happens if I don’t have groceries to buy, other errands to run, appointments, cleaning, cooking, and other minutiae to tackle (a bad day). I used to do all this stuff while holding down a full-time job. And in all honesty, I don’t know how I did it.

If I’m very lucky, I get two hours that are all mine. In that time, I write, I do research, I read good books (right now I’m reading We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, and it’s fantastic).

Then it’s time to pick up kids, deal with homework and dinner and extracurriculars. After dinner, there may be time to read some more, but now I’m too tired to write. Bed sometime between 9:30 and 11, ready to do it all again the next day.

And that is as much a writing life as the one this woman tried to sell us that night. It’s just a bit more firmly grounded in reality.

Next time: Rage vs. Outrage

I Miss My Daughter

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My almost-thirteen-year-old girl still lives with us–at least I think so. Sometimes I’ll hear a sudden burst of laughter or a snatch of her singing emanate from the direction of her bedroom, so I’m pretty sure she’s in there.

I see so many images of the American teenager, jokes about their refusal to look happy in front of their parents, their retreat into the world of their headphones, cell phones, video games. It’s a stereotype. And it’s one I was sure we were avoiding. We have family time–Friday night dinners, movie night, post-Sunday-school lunches out, walks. We used to have a story time and a game night, but the kids couldn’t agree on the books, and now my daughter won’t play board games. So we have game night with our son.

But it feels wrong. She finishes her dinner before the rest of us, and she leaves the table, disappearing into her room in a hurry to get back to One Direction, FaceTime with her BFFs, her DS, her drawing. We’ll get home from school, and she’ll put her stuff down and disappear. When we are sitting in the living room reading or talking or watching something our son wants us to see on his iPad, she’s in her room. When we watched Cosmos as a family, she was willing to be in the room with us, but she was otherwise occupied.

I have confronted her, especially since she spends all that time in her bed. I know what depression looks like, and this has me worried. She insists she’s not depressed. Most recently she told me her room is the only place she “fits in.” But how could this be true? Her friends love her, her family loves her, we are always trying to get her to spend time with us. She’s smart and funny and fun to hang out with. I have even made a rule that she is allowed a certain amount of alone time after school, and then she needs to COME OUT OF HER ROOM.

This has been bothering me for a while, but tonight it really hit me. I was out with the dog and the kids, having asked them to come with me on a walk. My son insisted on riding his scooter, and my daughter insisted on bringing her phone and headphones. She could not hear me when I spoke to her, and she made such a show of pausing the music so I could repeat myself that I just said “never mind” and walked on. I’m the grownup. I make the rules. But I’m human, and this hurts. I was walking alone, the dog intent on squirrels, my son hell-bent on self-destruction, my daughter lost to the song Harry Styles was singing just to her. Maybe this is the way of things. She is growing up, separating herself from me, having opinions different from mine, wanting ideas just for herself.

I want her to be independent, to have thoughts and opinions. But I also want to guide her, to help her think about the world so that those opinions are grounded in something beyond a rumor spread on the internet. I want to help her negotiate friendships and middle school and puberty and mean kids. I want to make sure she knows what to do in moments of danger.

She is open with me about a lot of things that many kids are not. Her confidences give me hope that she sees me as a safe person, as someone who can be trusted with her secrets or confused pubescent sense of self. We share many happy moments, singing, lusting after Harry, joking, being gross, cuddling. But the spaces between these moments are growing wider every day. So I treasure them, because I know I’ll spend the rest of my life missing her more often than not.

Survival of the Mitzvah-est

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My daughter became a bat mitzvah at the end of January. She killed it. She sings “like an angel,” my husband says. She gave a d’var torah (a lesson on scripture) about allowing people to be who they are, about suicide among LGBTQ youth. My pride in her knew no limit.

As she had requested, I learned a bit of Torah for the service. I was terrified, but I learned it, with the excellent help of the cantor, who has been (I think mistakenly) let go. I wore a hat, which I often do, but I also wore a prayer shawl, a tallit. I had no choice–the ritual committee would not budge on this point. Ya wanna read the Torah, ya gotta wear the tallis. I could refuse, and disappoint my kid, or I could suck it up. I sucked it up.

I felt a little better about it, because I was wearing a tallit that had been lent to me by the cantor; it was one he had designed and had made for his daughter. He was of a mind that the women’s garment should be a bit different, so the sides were partially closed to make arm holes. The blessing was embroidered on the collar by his wife. I was honored that he saw fit to lend it to me. It didn’t change my thinking that the tallit is a man’s garment; as I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, I’m a fan of custom and tradition. I’m conflicted about the roles women play in the synagogue. My ambivalence is no one’s problem but my own, but I wish people would not treat it as though it were a simple issue.

I was asked afterward how I felt in the moment, wearing it. The truth is, I didn’t think about it at all while I was up there, and I got a kind of “Aha!” response. But there’s no “aha.” I didn’t think about it because I was emotional about my daughter’s big day, my family’s bizarre decision to sit many rows away from us, and my own terror about what I was there to do–sing a prescribed tune in Hebrew words that have no vowels.

I was moved and excited by reading from the Torah. I memorized well. I felt nothing from the tallit, but the act of reading–that made me feel like I really was a member of the community, an active participant. The real deal. An emes yid. But that lasted only a little while and was soon replaced by the sense of being a fraud.

The bar or bat mitzvah must learn the trop; that is, the series of marks on the page that tell the reader how to sing the words–how many notes, where the accent is, etc. They learn it thoroughly, hopefully, and once they really know it, it becomes much easier to memorize a piece of Torah. And when they read their Haftorah (a short reading from the Prophets), the marks are on the page, along with the vowels. But Torah scrolls are hand-written by scribes, and they do not include vowels or trop. I never learned the trop. What I did, basically, was memorize a song, the same way I have learned the words to One Direction songs. I listened again, and again, and again to a recording of the cantor singing it. I hadn’t learned anything at all. I was not the real deal.

But let’s get back to the tallit. It seems to me that the tallit should mean something. My reaction should not be the same as when I get a flu shot–“Oh, that wasn’t so bad.” Here is a ritual garment over which one must pray before dontalllitpom-miriam-karp-webning it, and I didn’t think about it in any way past “guess I’ll have to wear it.” I feel no grand conversion, no desire to buy one for myself. No amount of pink or purple or beads or sequins will change that. I do not scoff at other women for this–I admire their beautiful shawls and support their decision to wear them.  I do believe it to be a personal decision, and not one my synagogue should make for me. I do not like to be legislated, when it comes to my body, and that includes my clothing.

It doesn’t stop there. Another way that women are being included in the service is adding the names of “the matriarchs” to one of the prayers–one. These are women who really aren’t discussed at any great length most of the year, but they are now receiving acknowledgment during the Amidah, the standing prayer. I’m glad we’ve added them. But let’s be realistic. It’s the equivalent of “I have a little dreydel” at a school’s Christmas, oh, excuse me, “Holiday” concert. Throw it in there, and “they” won’t complain.

Judaism is patriarchal. It will take a long time to change. I am a Jew. I take a long time to change.