Hello Anxiety, My Old Friend

 

 

Truth be told, I am an anxious person, a very anxious one. A worrier, too. I suppose the two go hand in hand.

As a new mother and then a second time mother I was always afraid something bad will happen to my kids. With Maya it was so bad it went directly to post-natal depression. For example, once I called the nurse’s help line because Maya had slept through her feeding time and I was afraid she’ll become dehydrated. I kept a journal with her feeding, the quantity of milk she drank, toilet time, burps and such. Along with my thoughts about how bad a mother I was.

During their childhood and teenage years, my anxiety kept me awake at night.

With my son, I was young and naïve. Half the time I had no idea what I was doing. I had to work and study which meant he spent far too much time alone and the guilt ate at me.

With Maya, it was even worse. All my past experiences came crushing down on my head and I became even more anxious - I used to stay awake at night listening to her breathe. And keeping an ear for my son coming home after riding his motorbike to work or friends.

Since my husband got sick, I worry about him all the time. When he got Covid right after his second round of treatment for lymphoma and it was so bad only a miracle treatment saved him after four months of suffering, I eat myself into obesity.

“Luckily” for me, I got prediabetes and because I was afraid it’ll go into full blown diabetes I lost a ton of weight and started eating healthy food (well, most of the time, I’m no saint). Nowadays, when I go to the hospital with him for his treatment, I spend the next week inventing different scenarios about deadly diseases you don’t even want to know about.

When there is a war (and we had plenty here) I worry a bomb will fall on us and kill  us all or, in the best-case scenario, will destroy our home and we’ll be homeless and everything we gathered through the years will be blown to smithereens. I dream about alarms and terrorists and all kind of scenarios run through my head.

When there is an earthquake somewhere in the world, I worry it will happen here, too, because we are sitting on an intercontinental rift and deadly earthquakes happened once a century or so. Also, we live in a very old building that will come apart around out ears at the first tremor.

And even before you’ll ask, I am answering you. Yes, I took pills, and yes, I stopped thinking about apocalyptic scenarios. But they also transformed me into a zombie vegetable kind of being that I hated and so I stopped taking them.

So yes, I worry and I have panic attacks during the night just thinking about stuff and I have to breathe in a paper bag whenever I’m in a closed space with too many people around me. And beside pills, I tried aerobics and relaxation techniques and yoga and tai chi and what not and for a while they helped. And then they didn’t.

And you know what?  Even when I was all shanti and relaxed, bad things happened. My son did a shit-load of bad stuff, my daughter got sick, my husband too, to speak only about the important things. Because karma is karma and it is a bitch, no matter what. People tell anxious people that worrying changes nothing. And they're right. But neither does not worrying. Life still has with its own plans...

And you know what I did? First, I appeased it with books, lots of books, dead-tree and audio, and with many pages and poems written in its honor. Then, I acknowledged it. I acknowledged my anxiety, I recognized it as a part of my soul- the anxious woman, mother and spouse. Because no matter what I do, it will stay part of the way I am made, part of the fabric of me. And it makes me the person I am.

So, if my anxiety insists on walking beside me or taking up residence in my head, so be it. I will carry it alongside my dreams and aspirations (yes, I still have them), my books, my family and my poems. And yes, some days it will win. But some days, I will, too.

The Resurrection

 

On how a manuscript came alive but didn’t eat me

 

It’s three o’clock in the morning when a strange rustling sound wakes me up. After listening attentively for a couple of minutes, I am almost sure I’ve located the source of the noise - under the bed. I sigh…I’m certain it is Pitzi again, playing with the dust bunnies that live there. But no, Pitzi is asleep on the pillow next to mine, his paws in the air, tail twitching.

That noise again! It is definitely getting louder and coming from under the bed. I lower my face to peer into the darkness…I squint, my vision is not that good in the dark…I blink…And I see a corner of a white page emerging slowly from the “Sugar Plum” collection box from Sabon where I kept the manuscript of my book.

What is happening?

Now more pages are materializing from the box, one after the other, dragging themselves across the floor, like a rustling white river of printed words.

I stand on my bed looking down. It seems that my own abandoned creation decided to stage a rebellion.

Pitzi is still sleeping peacefully. I hope he’ll wake up because of the noise and maybe seek vengeance on the attackers.

And out of nowhere, I hear a faint whisper: “Whyyyyyy? Whyyyyyyy did you abandon me, Ramonaaaaaaa?”  The raspy voice is getting louder:” Why did you put me under the bed in that box smelling of cinnamon and burnt sugar, together with the plastic Christmas tree and the artificial flowers?”

“I am sorry”, I reply.

Am I talking to some pages I once called proudly “my book”? Am I still asleep and this is a nightmare?

“I am sorry”, I say again. “But you know how busy I was…”

“No”, it interrupts me. “You bought books, you read them!” it finishes in a higher, indignant note and with a papery huff.

“You know how many problems I had. You know I was sad and depressed and lonely. The books helped”, I press on.

“Well, I could have been your companion and friend”, it replies bitterly.

I don’t know what to say. Of course it was right. I had no excuses to abandon it like that. Yes, I had a million bad things happening to me, my life wore me down to the bone, but still…I felt ashamed. So ashamed.

“I am sorry”, I say again, like a broken record. “I am going to fix it”.

“If you’re still willing”, I whisper.

I get down from the bed, paying attention not to step on any pages. I kneel on the floor and gather them holding them to my chest. The familiar scent of old paper and ink wafts around me. I get up and stride to my desk, putting the pages on it. I then spend some time smoothing them down, putting them in the right order.

And I take a deep breath and I say: “Now, where were we?”

 

Replanting a Garden After Years of Neglect

 

Replanting a Garden After Years of Neglect

On rediscovering creativity after years of neglect and how some seeds survive beneath the weeds

 

Twenty years ago I’ve put a part of myself in cold storage. I tried to revive it some years afterwards, but the experiment failed. And so, a part of my soul remained in stasis. Like in those sci-fi movies when you see bits of people floating in big plastic tubes filled with green liquid. That's how it felt. My alter ego. The creative piece of soul. The writer. The dreamer. The gardener – planter of ideas and reaper of harvest.

In a sense, I was dead. My soul was dead. Until, one day, when suddenly and out of nowhere I decided to defrost myself. To give myself another chance…And I did it. It was a slow process, thawing a part of myself that was frozen for so long…It felt like walking through a barren, deserted place that once was a beautiful and lush garden. Now? Only weeds and some feeble plants here and there…a small sunflower and some withered wild flowers.

How does one replant a derelict garden after years of neglect? What could survive after such a catastrophe?

A few ideas, some words here and there, a forgotten manuscript in a box under the bed.

During all this time while I left myself to wane, to rot, things have changed in the outside world. People I knew disappeared, communities just shriveled and went away. Meanwhile, new ideas, new fellowships formed. And truly? It feels more like a jungle than like a deserted garden. Paths I once knew and followed simply disappeared. New plants have appeared and old trees have died…

The work of replanting a forsaken garden will not be easy. But if I begin with a few seeds and seedlings, if I will tend and care for them, I hope a new garden will appear. Maybe different, definitely smaller because I don’t have that much time anymore, but definitely a place where things will grow.

And do you remember that butterfly with a broken wing that I found near Emmaus and brought home? It will be there, too.

On Tuna and The meaning of Life

 

On Tuna and the Meaning of Life

— A cat, an existential crisis, and the strange ways we stay afloat

 

 

A couple of days ago I was going through an (almost) existential crisis. I have been thinking a lot about my past, my present worries and about broken dreams. And about my desire to burn the book I have been trying to write for such a long time that it began to feel unreal.

I wrote about it and published the essay here, on my blog. After that, inexplicably, I began to cry.  I felt relieved in a sense and also sad. I don’t know, so many feeling and so few words…

And then, a furry, ginger head appeared in my field of vision. It was Pitzi, the cat. “I can see you have a profound existential crisis. Is that the “pop” of a tuna can opening the sound I’m hearing?” his expression was telling me…and I smiled despite my dark mood.

He grounds me, my cat. Grips me when I hover dangerously over the precipice of depression and anxiety.  And brings me back to sanity. And then he looks at me with his orange, demon-like eyes as if asking: “Tuna catnip biscuits?” And it is really difficult for me to spiral into madness and despair when Pitzi is demanding my unwavering attention.

He doesn’t really care that I am going through an existential crisis. While I worry about curses and the universe punishing me for enjoying life, he drinks water from my glass if I leave it unattended.

While I am asking myself if I really wasted my life in a major way, he sleeps on my desk, between the keyboard and the monitor. If I try to move him or even pet him, he bites me.

While I am asking myself where I am going, he makes biscuits on the blanket he somehow dragged from my bed. And then he takes a nap.

What is going on in his head, I often ask myself. He dreams, that I know, because when he sleeps, his legs twitch and sometimes he cries.  

Does he have memories or is he anchored solely in the present?

Does he remember the time he was a baby and my husband found him near the trash bin outside our building, riddled with fleas and worms and sick with cat flu? Does he remember how we took him in, cared for him and loved him? Now, when I look at him sleeping on my lap, curled like a shrimp I wonder if he remembers any of it. I wonder, too, wheter his nightmares come from that forgotten past.

“Ginger cats are tough”, the vet told us back then. “He’ll survive. But they’re also mean bastards so I worry more if you’ll survive”. Well, he did. We, too.

And now, when he runs like a deranged being zooming through the house and scratches the insides of cardboard boxes like crazy, he makes me forget about life’s real or imaginary disasters.

He doesn’t judge me. He doesn’t tell me my poems are lame, that my writing sucks, that I am a bad parent. He doesn’t scold me when I forgot he likes a certain brand of canned tuna.  He just stares at me with his oval, a bit oblique eyes as if he wants to say:” Come on, life is not so bad, what about those chicken-cheese snacks I like?”. And then he goes to fetch me his multicolored ball to throw it for him.

And his silence speaks to my soul more than a thousand words do.

The Day I Didn't Burn the Book

 

A husband with an unexplained fever. An old manuscript. A curse that wasn't. A little girl who finally gets the answer she deserved.
 

Yesterday my husband had a fever. It came out of nowhere, as he was in his fifth day after the treatment and fever without a cause is a reason for concern. It surprised (in a bad way) and scared us. At first, we didn’t know what to do or how to explain it. And so myself, the pessimistic and anxious person I’ve become, came with an explanation.

I am cursed. 

Whenever I do something I love or enjoy, something bad happens. To myself or to the ones I love. Because of course a curse extends its influence over the ones I care about, too. And this time, it was THE BOOK. 

Many, many years ago when Maya was around two, three years old I began writing a book. To ease my longing for my homeland, Romania, I’d decided to put all those sentiments in a book. I was a “new” second time mother - well, with a 20 years difference between my children it felt like a first time. I was a newcomer in a country I had discovered I didn’t fully understand. So of course, I had done what I knew best – I wrote.

The problem was whenever I wrote something, something bad seemed to happen. Most of the times, it was my daughter getting sick. Time after time after time. And in the end, after she was hospitalized and then had to do so many tests, I’d decided simply to put the book aside. In order to protect my daughter, I said to myself.

And I convinced myself I was cursed. So, if I wanted my daughter to stay healthy, no more writing. The truth? Even with me not writing, my daughter still got sick. My husband still got sick. My son still hated me. My life still got ridden with problems. And among all that bad stuff that kept happening, I forgot about the book.

Until now.

Out of the blue, one sunny day, I decided I had to dig up the manuscript, the research I’d done and continue where I had left.

And what do you think happened? My husband had a fever.

I was so, so upset I decided I would burn the book and my soul with it and just be done.

But before that, I sat down and thought about it, really thought.

About this fear of mine to do things I enjoy and love. About this curse. About why it happens or I think it does.

And I went back in time. To my childhood. Back to the days I had spent doing things to please my mother, to convince her to love me. And because she didn’t give a damn about me, I grew up thinking that something must’ve been wrong with me, making me unworthy of my mother’s love. And that if good things happen to me, I have to pay for them, to be punished, because I wasn’t worthy. I was always afraid to enjoy life because I thought that, for sure, some disaster was around the corner, being my doing, of course.

And I came to this conclusion that maybe, maybe, the book was never cursed. And neither was I. Maybe I am still that little girl trying to understand why her mother didn’t love her. And so maybe I didn’t cause my husband’s fever by returning to write my novel.

And maybe I won’t be burning the book after all…    

And whenever that little girl will nudge me , reminding me that I am undeserving, I will tell her that I love her and that nothing was wrong with her, it was her mother who didn’t deserve her love.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

A Place of Pain and Miracles (Notes from a Sunday at Hadassah)

 

Every Sunday my husband has to have his treatment at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem. Although it is not a merry occasion, I have to say I enjoy travelling to Jerusalem. Yes, I know, shame on me. But just hear me out and you’ll understand and even agree with me.

First. The road. The feeling that with every kilometer traveled I get closer to the city I love with all my heart and soul. When I see the Jerusalem’s hills my heart skips a beat… Then, as we get near I see the hospital and above it, the golden domes of the Russian orthodox church.

At the hospital entrance, the security guards always have a smile for you.

People from all layers of society mingle in the huge entrance hall.

A tall old man stooped over a piano plays soulfully. Somebody is recording him. A group of young men are surrounding another young man with an amputated leg. Friends? Family? They are talking all at once and laughing together.

Haredi men in their black suits, white shirts, and black hats.

Jewish women. Two dressed from head to toe in black garbs, only their eyes showing. What sect are they, I ask my husband. Lev Tahor? Maybe, he shrugs. A secular woman wearing a miniskirt. A religious woman reading from a prayer book.

Two white nuns in white habits, waiting their turn in reception.

People getting in and coming out from elevators, talking in French, English, Yiddish, Russian, Hebrew. Me and my husband, in Romanian.

Arab women, young and old, patients and workers, doctors and nurses. Young and old. Traditional and secular. Arab men, Bedouins dressed in their traditional clothes, with white keffiyehs held on their head with thick black cords – agals.

A hospital - especially its oncology section - is a sad place to be. And yet, somehow, a hopeful one, too. A quiet place for people to come and be healed.

Shevael. I liked the name of the nurse who administered my husband’s treatment.

Among machines that make annoying noises, and medicine and drawers filled with stuff I don’t know and scary medical equipment, she has a warm smile and a kind word for everyone. She knows that people that come to her are scared, terrified. So she assured them with a smile. That there are in good hands and not to worry. God willing, everything would be all right.

After I leave this place of pain and suffering and miracles, I feel hopeful for us, as individuals and as communities as well. Until Shevael has a smile for everyone, we’re good.  

 

The Symmetry of Cakes and Words and Love

 

 

Last week we had three birthdays in our family.

My husband’s was on the third. Our daughter Maya baked him a cake. Maya’s was on the fifth. Her boyfriend baked her a cake. His birthday was on the seventh and it was Maya’s turn to bake him a cake.

Three birthdays.

Three cakes.

Each of them with its own story to tell.

Maya baked her father a lemon-pound cake. For her boyfriend, it was Black Forest. Her boyfriend baked her a cheese cake. Each recipient received their all-time favorite cakes.

In the outside world, they were talking about missiles and alarms and wars. We were reminded about things that are out of our control.

Inside our home, small gestures of love. With everything we were going through lately, it felt big and significant. My husband has this awful disease looming over him and the ruthless treatment. Maya has her own worries about her future. Her boyfriend, too. And yet, they expressed their love with cakes.

There is something concrete and practical and centering about baking a cake. Maya once told me that when she is stressed, she bakes. Strangely enough, even though I am no baker, I understand her. Baking gives you something to focus on. Baking a cake has rules. You measure the ingredients; you mix them and put them in the oven. You are in control of the process. And yes, most of the time something good and delicious comes out of it.

Me? I write. I try to transform my anxiety into words, the words into poems. I like to say that both of us create something. Maya – her cakes. Me – my poems, stories, essays. And no matter how much work we put into it, I am sure Maya’s creations are way better than mine. Well, at least tastier.

So, this is the story of our family this past week. Three birthdays and three cakes. Our love to wrap them in. And my words for us to remember.

The Invisible, Suddenly Visible Summer

 

Last night, the summer I thought would be an invisible one for me became visible.

Iran attacked us.

And everything that I was carrying with me for the past weeks, months even, felt like a wave that came crushing over my head.

The sirens are back. The late-night run for shelter. The flashbacks.

And so is the fear. For my daughter. For my husband. The anxiety. The exhaustion of spending so much emotional energy on medical appointments, procedures, tests and uncertainty.  I though I could at least move through them, survive them like I always did. For the past 14 years.

But no. Suddenly, the pre-alarm sounded. The headlines said: “Hey, you have one more thing to add to your piles of worries”.

But I won’t stop living my invisible, suddenly visible summer. I will try to cope, as I always do, by writing. 

Words never fail me, they come when I summon them.  

Invisible Summer - The Beginning

 

Sunday

I have to go outside today, to take care of some important documents. Otherwise, I would’ve stayed at home. It’s summer and it’s already hot outside, and it’s not even noon.

I smear sun-protection all over myself.

The first thing I see outside our building is the overflowing garbage bin. They haven’t collected it in almost a week. Is there a garbage-people strike?

Under the unforgiving sun, the stench is unbearable.

On the road, a cleaning machine thingy putters away, doing nothing for the dirt.

There are a lot of people outside. The coffee shops took out on the sidewalk their tables and they are packed. Everybody speaks loudly, about prices and politics. Does anyone go to work these days?

The sidewalk is dirty.

A cat, black and white, a Zorro look-alike face, is waiting near the butcher shop’s door.

A man is looking for his dog, I think, shouting his name. Or his child?

I do some shopping. Mainly milk because there is a shortage of cottage cheese and yogurt, only God knows why. Maybe they want to raise prices again.

The cleaning machine thingy has caught up with me. It still doesn’t clean anything.

Near our building the garbage didn’t magically disappear.

I enter the coolness of the apartment. Klara watches me obliquely with her yellow eyes. “Where have you been?” Pitzi opens an eye and then promptly goes back to sleep.

I turn on the TV. A terrorist attack. One dead, five injured. The perpetrators were two Israeli Arabs.

 

Happy Birthday My Sweet, Sweet Baby!

Today was an emotional day...My daughter's 20th birthday! 

It is hard for me to believe that 20 years have passed since Maya entered my life. I am happy, so happy to see her becoming a young woman, finding her own way in life...and I am also sad, so sad that I am getting old and sometime in the future I will go to wherever God will sent me to and I won't be able to witness her life any more.

But no tears and no sadness today. 

Today I am grateful for being Maya's mum for 20 years, for the happiness and the worry, for the good days and the bad ones too. For the smiles and the tears and the adventures we had together, the books we read, the games we played...

I am grateful for having her in my life, for the lessons she taught me, for her presence, for this entire Universe that she creates with her personality.

Happy birthday my sweet, sweet daughter!

I wish you happiness, health, good friends and may all your wishes come true and your dreams be fulfilled!

I love you with all my heart and soul.