Twenty-Seven Years, One Suitcase, and a Life I Never Expected

 

Today marks our 27^th wedding anniversary and as I sit down to write about it, I still cannot wrap my mind around it…27 years…where did they go?

When I met and then later, agreed to marry my husband I didn’t know that my life would change almost completely. And not because of the marriage, no. Because, unbeknownst to me, I would embark on a journey that would change my life. Naïve as I was, having been born under a communist regime that liked to keep us ignorant and uninformed, I didn’t have any idea what would mean to me to travel and settle myself across the world. For love. For having someone in my life. A partner.

I arrived in a country that was different from anything I had known or imagined. Different religion, different customs and holidays, different language and totally different climate.

How do you build a family when everything around you is strange and unfamiliar?

It wasn’t easy, I must confess. But, in a sense, it forced me to try and make it work, because I had already chosen this life and I was determined to make the best of it. It is easy, when things don’t work in a marriage, to just pack one’s bags and leave, isn’t it? It is more difficult though when leaving is not an option. Because then, you have to find a way to get by, to cope.

If someone ever tells you that marriage, partnership are easy, don’t believe them, they’re liars. Marriage, as any other human relationship is complicated and not straightforward. Sometimes you are facing certain situations that make you think “I’m done” and then you step back to gain a bit of perspective and try to find solutions instead of just walking away.

After 27 years of marriage, I can tell you, marriage is hard work. Compromises. Good days and bad days. Decisions that have to be made. Kids that must be raised and educated. Tears. Joy and sorrow. Money. Responsibility. Words that elevate and words that hurt. And some days, just putting one foot in front of the other.

And the real test of a marriage doesn’t come during good times. No, it comes during bad times, when you have to grit your teeth and try to survive, to come out of it (mostly) unscathed.

And that’s marriage for you.

So, happy anniversary to us, to our struggles and our moments of happiness, to everything we built together and, I hope, to many more years to come.

Adventures in … Carrefour

 

 

Everybody was so, so happy when Carrefour, the French retail chain came to Israel… We thought maybe we’ll have variety, lower prices, better services, high quality goods... Well, that’s not what happened. There weren’t many brand products and all the other stuff they sold in their super-markets was the same as everywhere else, only more expensive.

We have a mini-market in our neighborhood, among Russian delis and shops. For 27 years, since I’ve moved here, I’ve been shopping there. They are close, while the big supermarkets are usually in the outskirts and I don’t drive. The place had a lot of owners, before becoming a Carrefour branch.

I go there mainly because I have no other choices around, I know the place and everybody who works there and they have a bomb shelter – very important these days.

Like every Israeli neighborhood shop it has its daily struggles. I mean, there is always some “drama”. Not enough cashiers, not enough smaller trolleys, no milk, the watermelon is too expensive.

But today, oh, today it was absolutely crazy. First of all, the shop was messy as usual, with huge crates full of merchandise smack in between the aisles so it wasn’t possible to pass through. They always do this, they unpack the merchandise at noon, when it is already full with shoppers.

I was waiting in line to get my stuff scanned.

Woman: “Excuse me, do you have a Carrefour card?”

Me: “Yes, I have”.

Woman: “Could you buy these two jars of spaghetti sauce for me, on your card? They are on sale if you have a card. I’ll pay you back cash”.

Me: “OK, no problem”.

But, we soon discovered there was another lady who was after me in line and in front of the lady with the jars. So, I had to wait for the cashier to scan her stuff. But…before she even started, an old man with a cane and two packs of cheese moved in front of her.

Man: “Can I scan these? I am in a hurry, I have to go to the hospital”.

Everybody agrees.

Man (to the cashier): “And while you’re at it, bring me a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes.”

SAY WHAT???

Everybody protests.

The line is getting longer and longer. The cashier has to leave her seat in order to bring the man the cigarettes (they are somewhere else entirely in the shop).

The man pays and says: “Where is the customer service here?”

Cashier:” Why? What’s the problem?”

Man: “I want to complain about the high prices you have at Carrefour”.

Everybody begins speaking at once.

“Why didn’t you someplace else if it is expensive here?”, somebody asks.

“You aren’t in a hurry any more”, adds somebody else.

The cashier, on the PA system, asks for help. Nobody comes.

A nice young woman convinces him to go somewhere else to buy stuff if he is not pleased with the prices.

The man leaves. The cashier resumes her work. The woman after me has three carrots, one zucchini, one kohlrabi, one fennel, two pots of yoghurt, a bag of pasta and some other small items. She pays and leaves. The woman with the sauce jars finishes too, and gives me the money she owes me. 12 effing shekels. I would’ve gone home instead of waiting for one bloody half an hour.

Finally, I exist the shop. The nice young woman in line after us had to wait to pay for a quarter of a watermelon.

 

 

She Really Gets Me, But No Arts and Crafts

 

Today, my daughter and I talked about death. Mine, more exactly. We were in my bedroom, trying to tidy up the mess a bit and she said:

“Mum, please, before you die, just get rid of some of your stuff, O.K?”

I told her no way I am going to throw away my stuff while I am still alive and that she can get rid of everything after I die and not before. But she was: ”Oh, mum, I couldn’t…I couldn’t just throw your things away. You know what? I’ll burry you with them…”

I reminded her that I didn’t want to be buried, you know, in a grave, in the ground. She promised me some time ago she’ll arrange for me to be cremated.

So I added: “You can send me in style. Put me on a raft, on the Sea of Galilee, with my fake jewelry and my candles and my skincare and set me on fire”.

“Mum, I cannot do that! It’s illegal”.

And we laughed and laughed…

“Ok, then cremation it is.”

“You know that the ashes of a cremated body can be stored for a long time. I’ll keep you at home. In a jar.”

“Listen, no crazy stuff with my ashes, Ok?” I replied. “No arts and crafts and stuff like that. Don’t put me in places I wouldn’t like to be. Just take me to Romania. Scatter my ashes over the lake at Valea Draganului. Or bury me under a tree, in the forest near the lake.”

“How am I going to get you there?” she asked, practical, as usual.

“Well…after I die we’ll have to improvise… just dress me nicely, put me in a wheelchair and take me on a plane. Tell them, I’m sorry, my mother is sleeping. Problem solved.”

We laughed until we were breathless. And then we cried.

She really gets me, my daughter.

Random Thoughts in the Morning

 

Today, I am drinking my coffee alone, my husband went to the hospital because he is still unwell. The treatment he receives and all the medication that comes with it makes him nauseous and hurting all over. A good friend, the best, actually, took him, because he cannot drive in his condition. Before he left, he told me- “You stay at home, it will do you good”. In a sense, it’s true. Each visit to the hospital steals a piece of my soul. So much suffering, it breaks my heart.

So, I told myself I would sit for a while with a cup of coffee and clear my thoughts. Only, my thoughts refuse to be cleared. They ask for my attention, like little kids in a crowd, jumping and shouting:” Take me! Me! Me! I am here! Analyze me! Ponder on me!”

And so, instead of sitting calm and serene and do a little meditation, I hyperventilate while chasing my thoughts, trying to tame them, because now , when they had my attention, they started running away from me.

I won’t tell you everything that goes on in my head, no way. Even I don’t know what is really going on in there most of the times. A huge party of over-excited ideas, like teenagers when they first have alcohol; a funeral of good intentions, lines from the books I am reading, fragments of poems I want to write. And worries, worries like an army of buzzing bees relentlessly chasing me; and here and there the fluttering of butterfly wings – good thoughts, usually drowned by the noise of the other annoying insects...

Usually, all these attempts at clearing my thoughts, of cleansing and cleaning leave me frustrated because even if I manage to solve one problem, while patting myself proudly on the shoulder, other problems appear instantly. Annoying bitey ants.

Well, my cup is empty. Didn’t clear my head at all.

Ready for a new day.

While We're Waiting in Line

 

Since my husband is not mobile at the moment, besides my usual chores I am the one responsible for getting his medication for him. That means periodic trips to the pharmacy.

I hate going to the pharmacy, any pharmacy. In Israel they are an entire world by themselves.

The one I usually go to is small and almost always full of people. Sometimes, if weather permits, after I take a number, I go and wait outside. If not, then I have to go inside. At least in summer there is air conditioning.

Today, an old lady, I think from Georgia, has a prescription for Voltaren, unfortunately uncovered by the health insurance.

Old lady: “Why is it so expensive?”

Pharmacist: “That’s the full price. Do you want it or not?”

Old lady: “Yes”.

Pharmacist: “Big or small?”

Old lady: “What?”

Pharmacist: “The tube of ointment. Voltaren. Big or small?”

Old lady: “Show me both of them”.

She takes both tubes and examines them for, it feels like, long minutes.

Old lady: “I want the small one. Why is so expensive?”

Pharmacist: “I ‘ve told you. It is not covered by the health insurance”.

Old lady: “Why?”

Pharmacist: “I don’t know. It simply isn’t”.

Old lady: “I don’t want it anymore. It is too expensive. I think I have one at home, anyway”.

Gives the tube back to the pharmacist and exits the room. Comes back after a few minutes and inserts herself between the counter and another person that’s already there.

Old lady: “I’ve changed my mind. I want the ointment.”

Pharmacist: “You have to wait until I’ve finished with him”, points at the person that looks baffled at the old lady.

Finally, after much debate that lasted at least ten minutes, concerning the dimensions of the tube, the quantity of the ointment and the number of times it should be applied, the old lady leaves with a small tube of Voltaren.

Oh my, that pharmacist, she had the patience of a saint.

At another counter, another old lady. Small and frail, with a Superman cap on her head.

Pharmacist: “You have to take the medicine with a meal”.

Superman cap lady: “Why?”

Pharmacist: “You shouldn’t take it on an empty stomach; it could hurt it”.

Superman cap lady: “But I always take it on an empty stomach!”

After another long debate about the rights and wrongs of taking medicine with or without food, Superman cap lady is not convinced. But leaves with the medicine anyway.

At another counter, a very old man, crooked like a question mark over his walker, shouts in Russian. I guess he is almost deaf, because the pharmacist shouts back, too. The shouting goes on for several minutes.

Another number is called. A young man, smelling strongly of perspiration, shoves me aside in order to reach the counter.

“Let me pass, lady”, he says angrily. I make myself small to let him pass.

While waiting for my turn (already 50 minutes have passed) I scan the shelves. They have lots of shelves in this tiny room. On one wall and three shelving stands in the middle. As if the room isn’t cramped enough. But it is clearly a marketing strategy, because when I leave the pharmacy, one hour later, beside the medicine for my husband I acquired one shampoo, one tub of toothpaste, some face cream, a hand cream and some vitamins.

Don’t Do It Like I Did It

 

 

Everything went downhill since yesterday afternoon when we returned from my husband’s treatment. He has been feeling poorly since last week and nobody at the hospital was sure why. There were many theories floating around but none of them really helpful.

The last PET scan showed that the lymphoma is almost gone, so everyone was happy. Truth be told, yesterday I saw with my own eyes the differences between the two PET scans my husband had – one at the beginning of the treatment and the other last week. In the first one, I could actually see two dazzling, huge “suns” besides lots of shining stars. That’s how spread and active the disease was. And in the second one, well, almost total blackout, power outage. Here and there, lit candles and that’s it. No spotlights, no glaring supernovas. So, of course the doctors would focus on the positive outcome. And we were really glad, too. But my husband was still feeling unwell. So, they tweaked here and there his medication, added something new and sent us home.

The problem was my husband’s condition went from bad to worse.

He woke me up in the morning telling me he called his friend to drive him to the hospital because he was worse than he was in the evening. He talked to the doctor and he’s waiting for him.

I helped him pack all he needed in case they’d keep him there overnight and after he left, I tried, somehow, to begin my day. Coffee, then clean the house, change the bedsheets, you know, domestic stuff that needed to be done. So far, so good.

What did actually happen?

For once, I kept misplacing my mobile phone. Because I wanted to hear it in case my husband texted me, I took it with me while doing stuff and I kept putting it in all kinds of places.

Luckily, I know how to find it through google, so I did that. Several times.

Because I was so stressed and anxious, I kept dropping stuff. When I opened the fridge food kept falling out of it, stuff I didn’t remember placing inside it. One cup of ready-made coffee fell on the floor and broke, so I grabbed what was closer because the puddle kept getting bigger and bigger. It was a big towel I wanted to throw in the washing machine. After I mopped up the liquid I decided to drop the towel in the shower, to let it soak in some cold water. Of course, I then got tangled in other stuff to do and I realized I forgot the towel in the shower only when the water reached the hall between the rooms, heading to the living room. The drain hole got covered with the towel I threw without looking where, so the water couldn’t drain. I had to deal with the whole situation and after half an hour the water was gone. Bonus – the tiled floor was clean, too.

And I still couldn’t find my phone. Just kept running around like a headless chicken, or, as my Romanian grandma used to say “ ca o goanga fara fir”.

I then proceeded to share my lunch with Klara, our cat, because she is crazy about fish and I was having salmon.

At some point during the day my husband called me from the hospital telling me he decided to come home and I got in a frenzy trying to finish all my chores without doing any damage in the process.

The rest of the day just passed in a blur, trying to convince my husband to eat and drink something, my daughter came home, I went shopping, had dinner, did the dishes and now I am sitting here, in front of the PC, tired and a little dizzy from all the events of the day.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring. I hope I won’t spend the day chasing my phone, flooding the hallway, breaking cups or forgetting towels in the shower. More than that, I hope my husband wakes up feeling a little better.

It seems that some days are really determined to test how many things one person can juggle before everything begins slipping through their fingers.

Today was one of those days.

Tomorrow, please be kinder.

Down Memory Lane, One Golden Fry at a Time

 

Today, for the first time in a while, I fried potatoes on the stove, in a frying pan.  I usually bake them in the oven, it is easier, less mess and healthier, too.

Whenever I fry potatoes, I think of them as “cartofi pai” as we call them in Romanian – “straw potatoes” and I am instantly back in time as a child in communist Romania. Having “cartofi pai” at lunch was really a special occasion. My grandma didn’t approve of them because you had to use a lot of cooking oil and oil was on the ration card. So, whenever my gran wasn’t at home (something that seldom happened) we asked our mother to make us “cartofi pai”.

I can still see all four of us waiting impatiently as the heavenly smell of frying potatoes filled the house. We would grab them the moment they were ready, burning the roofs of our mouths because waiting another minute simply wasn't an option. Then came the real competition: keeping a watchful eye on everyone else's plate, ready to rescue a golden fry from any distracted sibling.

Of course there weren’t enough for everyone – we were four kids, and we had to fight for every morsel, every piece of “straw”. If we were lucky we would also receive one fried egg, ou ochi – “egg eye” in Romanian. And if we were really good, pickled cucumbers, a delicacy only my gran could make. All eaten with copious quantities of bread.

When we were kids we ate a lot of bread with or instead our meals. It was cheaper and there were times when there wasn’t enough food for all of us on the table to eat our fill. Our favorite was “piine cu unsoare” – bread and dripping. With a pinch of salt, some black pepper and paprika. And when times were really bad and money scarce, bread with mustard. I’ve no idea why even during the darkest days of communism, when grocery shops were empty, you could find jars and jars of mustard on the shelves.

So today I am thankful to the humble potato because it took me on a trip down memory lane. Even though I was a child during a difficult period in Romania's history, and my childhood was different from that of many other children, it was also a time of discovery and wonder, of small pleasures and quiet joys that I will never forget.

Nobody Cares

 

 

The world is not a good place for me right now. My husband isn’t feeling well – they say the treatment is working but he is still in a lot of pain and discomfort. It breaks my heart that I cannot to anything to help him. I listen to him, I give advice, but that’s all I do.

My daughter has her own problems; there is a lot of grief and tears and all I can do for her is to listen and give advice when asked.

That’s me, the great listener and giver of advice! Goodness, it destroys me completely, this.

Outside our home, the whole world has gone mad. Literally. The amount of craziness going around is overwhelming. It feels like a conspiration of mad clowns decided to conquer the planet.

We have these neighbors who, from time to time throw this huge parties. When I say parties, I mean they gather on their balcony, all their friends and family and God knows who else and take out their speakers and take turns singing. Well, not exactly singing, more like the sounds dying wild animals would make. Sorry dying animals, no offense intended.

I try to cope with my existential problems, my husband is in pain, my daughter cries herself breathless and outside my window the jungle howls into a microphone.

The world has gone off the rails. The amount of carelessness, callousness, insensitivity, and shamelessness -along with every other synonym the dictionary can provide, is at times, unbearable.

I try to mute the noise, to hide from all the insanity, but they really creep in through my defenses.

What the Hell happened to us?

This question has been haunting me for some time, now. When doctors shrug their shoulders, when passers -by look on the other side and nobody does their job the way they should.

The truth is, nobody cares. Our reality has changed. People had changed, or they were always this way but now it shows more clearly on their behavior. I don’t know. I looked for answers in books, TV programs, words said by clever people. In my opinion, they don’t have a clue either.

But what really hurts the most is not the fact that nobody cares. Because that’s not entirely true. Some people care. They care so much they lose sleep over stranger, family, over stray cats and the state of the world.

The problem is caring doesn’t solve problems or stop pain. It can’t quiet loudspeakers, cure illness or wipe away tears. It simply means that while others walk past, someone stops. Someone listens when nobody else does. Somebody keeps showing up even when the room is empty.

Today, that someone is ME.

I say nobody cares.

But I do.

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?”