We’re out, now, living a safe, happy life. My prayers have changed from, “Please help me,” to, “Thank you.”
Navigate to other chapters of Homeless... at Home by Shlomit Weber
Homeless... at Home
Table of contents
Chapter 18 - Woman of Valor
Chapter 20 - Home
Well, we're still here. The civilized world still has lights and computers and phones and TV. Mankind made it into the twenty-first century.
My worries about that transition were dwarfed, of course, by my fears for how the five of us will weather our personal one just to come.
Tomorrow I will get the key to our new house.
When I walked in the front door this evening, after picking Rafi up from karate, Eli was standing on the stairs. "Ima?" he said, very seriously, "Can I talk to you a minute?"
"Sure." I followed him to his room with some trepidation.
Eli closed the door behind us. "Ima ... what's this about a house? A guy called ..."
"I bought a house," I blurted, to dispel the ambiguity as quickly as possible.
Eli just stared at me.
"I'll get the key tomorrow,” I continued. “Then ... we'll go live there.
"Without Abba," I clarified. "I'll … divorce Abba." I added since Eli still seemed dazed. Understandably.
His face crumpled into a silent cry. Then he looked up and asked, suddenly, "Where is it … our new house?"
I smiled at the quick transition from sadness to curiosity. He laughed as he wiped his eyes. It was like - "OK. There was my obligatory moment of regret - now let's move on."
"It's near here. On the street across from your school. It's like this one. A row house. Four bedrooms."
"Oh. Yeah. I know the ones you mean. Oh. So it's close to here."
"I ... I don't want Abba to know until I've actually gotten the key. I hate that period of being sort of out but not quite."
"Of course. I won't tell anybody. Does Leora know?"
"No. Just you," I smiled. "I'm glad you know. I guess we should go downstairs, now."
All these months, the owners knew to call me at work. But it was reasonable to assume that a day before getting the key, it would no longer be a secret.
Well, here I am. In our new house. I just said the blessing for seeing the fulfillment of a long-awaited goal: "Blessed art thou, Lord our G-d, King of the universe, who has kept us alive and sustained us and brought us to this time."
I am sitting on the stairs in my new house. Avishai gave me the key and showed me around. Light switches, the automated sprinkler timer, what some of the trees are. And then he left. So ... here I am.
The place is bare and empty, of course, except for a ladder and an old white table they left, and assorted odds and ends in the kitchen. It has the normal scrapes and shadows revealed on the walls after people move out. I'll go out to the car now and get some cleaning supplies I brought over - mop and bucket and window spray and rags. I'll wash the floor. Wipe out kitchen and bathroom cabinets so I can put in a few things I've brought over.
I'm being careful and strict. I only took things that are definitely mine and the children's. And that he won't notice. The children’s Mickey Mouse plates and some disposables we bought for Y2K. Some towels that are definitely mine, a couple of my old black rootbeer crates from my first apartment.
Oh ... and ... I've been carrying this around in my pack for a couple of weeks. I bought a squeegee for the kitchen countertops. The only place I could think to keep it where it wouldn't seem strange if discovered was in my pack! Every time I would reach in and feel that hunk of red plastic, I would smile.
Well, if I sit here, I'm just going to fill the page with "I can't believe it! I can’t believe it!".
I’ll to go to Habad on my way to work and buy mezuzzot for all the doors. Several people, when they’ve heard of our troubles, have asked if I had had my mezzuzot checked. I don't really believe that a cracked or rubbed-off letter on the little piece of parchment, could cause a family to have bad luck. But ... I don't want to take any chances with this house. I'll splurge and get the extra kosher ones!
I showed Eli the house this afternoon. He agreed that Rafi’s loft would go best in the green bedroom, and he chose the blue room for himself, because it's identical in orientation to his old room.
Eli strode around the backyard. "The banana plant needs to be propped up. That branch up there is dead. So is this bush."
"Oh, no, that's alive!" I told him. "That's a pomegranate." So few Israeli trees shed their leaves, that we tend to think a bare tree is dead, even in January.
Eli will be so glad to get a chance to do some real gardening. I already have two house plants that the previous owners left. I intend to have many more. A whole house full of living things!
"What's this?" he asked, when he came back in, turning up his nose at the little set of built-in shelves in the alcove off the living room. "Shelves made from wall board?"
"This was their TV nook. They had video tapes …
"We're not keeping it, Ima! As soon as I get my tools over here ..." He looked at me and asked, worried, "Do we get the tools?"
"I hope so, Eli. Otherwise, we'll buy you whatever you need. Of course you'll get the ones Grampa gave you."
"Good. We'll take this out and I'll build real shelves here."
I smiled at his self-assurance. No more having to clear everything with Abba first!
I'm so glad Eli likes the house. I'm so glad!
Since Eli knows, I have to tell Leora. She and I got into the car after her math lesson, and instead of starting the car, I turned to her and said, "Leora, I bought a house."
"What?" she exclaimed. "What do you mean? Ima! Tell me! For ... for us, right? Without Abba, right? Just us, right?"
I nodded.
"Does he know?" I shook my head. Leora put her hands to her cheeks. "I can't believe it! I can't believe it. Ima. Finally. I can't believe it. We're finally going to leave him!” She looked off into space. Or maybe off into the past, because her face looked, for a few seconds, as though she were watching a tragic movie. She blinked as though to bring herself back.
"Where is it, Ima? The house. When can I see it?"
"How about going over now, quickly?"
So we stopped by on our way home.
"Ooh, I love it, Ima! Look at the kitchen! She ran upstairs and flicked on lights. "I get the blue room!"
Uh-oh ... "Um ... Eli wanted that one ..." I winced.
"Eli!” she spun around to face me. “Eli already saw the new house? Ima! No fair! I've been telling you since I was seven that we have to leave Abba! And you go tell Eli??? Before you tell me????"
"Well, he found out by mistake. I wasn't going to tell any of you until I had told Abba."
Leora had gone into Rafi's room. "That sort of has to be Rafi's room because of the loft," I said, before she could get her heart set on it.
"Then this is my new room!" She announced, as she marched into the third children's bedroom and twirled around. I don't think Leora has ever accepted last choice at anything, but she's being wonderful about this. "Oh! It's nice, Ima! This wall is at an angle! And it has no carpet, but I have my pink rug." She looked at me, suddenly, "Do I get to bring my furniture?"
"Yes. You children get all of your things. It will be quieter here at the back of the house," I added, but she was already oo-ing over my little bathroom.
"I hope your school bus has a stop near by ..." I worried as we went back downstairs.
Leora thought a moment. "There's one on Jerusalem Way."
"Oh. That’s not as close as the bus stop by the other house. I'm sorry, Honey."
"Oh, Ima! It doesn't matter! I was just really lucky before, to be able to jump over the back wall and be right there. This is fine. I probably leave the house at the same time, anyway, because this is two stops later. It's fine. Look! The stairs are so much nicer, aren't they. The wooden railings. What's this? She opened some little doors at chest height in the stair well. "Oh, storage! Oh, I see! It's over the bathroom ceiling. And ... what's this door down here? Oh, Ima, look! Just like at the Dursleys'! A little broom closet under the stairs for Harry Potter to live in! Oh, I love our new house, Ima! When are we going to … move?"
"Abba and I have to sign some things. I think I'll tell him on Sunday, so we'll have a week to settle the paperwork, and then by next Shabbat we'll be camping here, and we'll gradually get things moved over, and settled."
"Oh, Ima! I love settling in and getting everything all arranged!" She looked critically at the living room. "Even if Abba doesn't give us the table, there's this little built in table in the kitchen. If we really squish. And some of my furniture will be in the living room because it won't fit in my little room here. Remember, Ima, I always said I wanted a small bedroom.
"I can’t wait to tell my friends! Oh. I can't, can I. Till Abba knows. It would be terrible if he found out from someone else. Who knows, other than me and Eli? Does Rafi?"
"No, only you two, so far. I wish you children could have helped me pick it out, but it wouldn't have been fair to make you keep the secret for so long."
"So Ima ..." realization creeping over her face, "that time Abba made me go to my room, and he said I would wind up in jail, and I said we have to leave him and you said, 'I'm working on it, Leora ...' that was because you had already bought the house, right?" I nodded. "Ooh! Ima! I can't wait to live here!!!!!"
I was right to buy a new house for a fresh start, wasn't I. I could have rented, or bought Seth's half of the old house, but psychologically it's much better this way. No ghosts. He won't ever have set foot in our house. In our home.
Seth was slamming around looking for something in the kitchen cupboards. Angry. Annoyed. "Where's that big blue plastic mug Eli has?"
Oops! It's over at the new house. Why on earth does Seth need davka that mug, davka now? "I think it's up in the bathroom." That's not a lie - I just didn't mention that the bathroom is two blocks away.
"Yeah," said Leora quickly, "I have some stuff in it." Like ... a new toothbrush and a new tube of toothpaste.
Seth growled and got out a different mug. Leora and I exchanged relieved looks.
"It's over at the new house, isn't it, Ima!" she whispered when Seth went out to the dining area.
I nodded. "Thanks, Honey."
I had been hoping I could have the children in the car minutes after I told Seth, and be gone, but Dina said we have to sign a document before I dare leave. I've waited so long, I don't want to make a stupid mistake right at the end and be charged with desertion or abduction.
So yesterday was a very strange Shabbat, which Eli and Leora and I knew was our last Shabbat as a family, and Seth and Rafi thought was just another Shabbat.
When Seth came down this morning to make his coffee, I followed him to the kitchen. "Seth?" Why should my voice be wobbly? I've had enough practice doing this. "I want to activate the divorce."
He looked at the wall for a moment, clamping his lips shut, and then said, as though clamping down on his anger as well, "Fine with me."
Wow. Why couldn't he have reacted like this when I first brought up the subject, and saved us five years of grief!
“Just out of curiosity ... why now?"
"Because I bought a house and I just got the key."
Pause. "Fine. I'll call Zed when I get to work."
Thank you, Seth, for making this so easy. I was all ready for the pleading and the promises and the put-upon act. I was going to tell him we will communicate by e-mail if he has anything to say. I was determined, this time, not to go 'round and 'round with him again. I guess the existence of the house told him that I'm serious.
Poor Rafi. Seth told him he had 'something to tell' him. Seth broke the news so doomfully that Rafi started to cry.
Seth was good, though. He concentrated on assuring Rafi that we will both love him and take care of him, instead of trying to say it's my fault. I said all the things you say. That we will both still be his parents and we will make sure he always has everything he needs. Now he'll have two homes, is all.
Rafi was OK moments later, and when Seth was out of the room, I asked Rafi if he wanted to go see the new house.
When Eli and Leora found out we were going to walk over, they decided to come along. I felt badly, to just leave Seth behind, but that's exactly what we are doing, isn't it. We all might as well get used to it.
Our upbeat chatter, on the way over, about plans for the new place, was the reality check Rafi needed, to know this is going to be a good adventure.
As I was unlocking the front door, I was glad I had left the little light on, over the kitchen sink. Leora repeated to Rafi what I had said to her. "For awhile it will be like camping. Till we bring the furniture over. But we like to camp!"
"It's a pretty nice tent!" Rafi giggled as he stepped inside, indicating the house around us.
Rafi came out of his room a few minutes later looking panicked. "Ima! Ima, there isn't room for my loft! It's too big! And the side of it will block the window!"
"I know, Honey. It's OK. You're right – your new room is smaller, but ... I happen to be on very good terms with the carpenters who built the loft in the first place ..." He frowned for a second and then his face burst into a grin as he realized I was referring to Eli, Leora and himself. "… and I'm pretty sure they would do me a favor and shorten the loft by a foot or so. And the master carpenter has assured me ..." my grin met Eli's, "that it will be no problem to cut a niche in the side for the window. But we want to paint the walls before we bring the loft over. What color do you want it?"
"Oh! I like the green walls! I want to keep the green!"
"If you're sure, that’s fine!"
With all the good advice I ignored over the years, at least I listened to Nora when she told me to go buy a house. Now we have this happy project to focus on.
We all seem to be intoxicated. It’s the relief you feel on a day that has been gloomy and cloudy and then the storm finally breaks, and you suddenly feel better.
Eli had brought along the tape measure and was writing down dimensions. He went out the patio door and turned on the yard lights and looked out. "Ima?" he said with such hopeful longing, "Can we maybe put a pond in the back yard?"
"Eli!" I took him by the shoulders, realizing that this 15 year old is taller than I am, "I would absolutely love to have a pond!"
For eight years, since the neighbors put a little pond in their yard, Eli has wanted to create a water feature. Half a dozen times, he has come to show me his plans - the waterfall to aerate the water, plants, rocks, and fish. Where the pump would go. How the water would flow. Only the first couple of times did he bother to show his plans to Seth. For his efforts, Seth rewarded him with a scathing, "Forget it. You're not going to go digging up the yard and that's final."
“And can we stencil a border in my room?” Leora asked.
“For sure!” I agreed. “Tomorrow we'll come over and paint the walls."
"And sing in the empty room!" Leora cried.
"We can sing in the whole house, then." Rafi pointed out with an impish grin.
I wonder what the new neighbors thought when the three of them started whoo-whoo-ing in all the empty rooms. (OK, OK … the four of us …)
Dear Mom, Dad, Kay, Paul and Jeanie,
Now that Seth knows, I can make it public knowledge: Seth and I are finally splitting up.
The house I bought has a little back yard with grass and trees. Not much front yard, but I want to put in window boxes and a container garden like what Mom and Dad have on the patio. A beautiful kitchen (with a big window, this time, Mom, and white tiles.) They must have a brother-in-law who is an electrician - there are so many lights and switches. There's a beautiful roofed patio in back. My room has a funny jog in it, and Eli is planning me a custom-shaped desk.
The children and I are having a great time getting the house ready. Last night we were over there painting the room that will be Leora’s. Singing our lungs out - all the rounds that sound so great in an empty room. We're professional painters by now - each of us has a job. In a little over an hour we had painted and cleaned up. It looks great.
So. That's our news. Seth and I have to sign some papers, and then we can move in. I'll just move carloads of stuff over first - mattresses, bedding, clothes, school books, toiletries, kitchen stuff. If we could camp out west for a month with just a van full of stuff, we can certainly camp for awhile in a house with electricity and flush toilets.
Thank you for all your support! Love, Shlomit and ELioRafi
The other times I've told Seth that I was really going to leave him this time, I still didn't tell anyone else. Because I clung to the hope that my announcement would make him take me seriously and get himself under control.
This time it's different. I want to shout it from the rooftops. "We're finally getting out!!!"
And the children are high on the prospect of painting and arranging and planning and pruning. And digging. The tragedy for them is that they don't realize that this breaking up of their home should be a tragedy. They have no idea what they have missed all along.
Leora came to me today with a question. "Ima, how do I tell people? If I say," she deepened her voice and intoned, "'My parents are getting a divorce!'" she shrugged, "It sounds ... like on TV. A big deal. A family, you know, breaking up and everybody crying and nervous and the kids trying to get their parents back together. But this isn't that kind of divorce ... you know what I mean? In Hebrew it also sounds ... like a bad, you know, ripping apart. How can I tell my friends so they won't look at me all sad and say, 'Oh! Poor Leora! That's terrible!' because they would, you know, be thinking of their own family if their parents didn’t love each other any more."
I suggested that she tell people her parents are 'splitting up'. She liked that. It sounds more casual. More like what's happening. Just a simple geographic relocation with no emotional overtones.
Today Seth and I appeared before the local Rabbinical court so they could confirm the separation and the children and I can move out. It's hard to believe Seth has a Ph.D. in a field that requires him to be logical and consistent.
We stood before the three rabbis. It wasn't going to take long, because we had come with a signed agreement from the civil court. But of course, the rabbis had to ask enough questions to determine that everything was kosher.
For instance, if Seth could be declared incompetent, they would not have let the divorce go through. If I were to say that he's crazy - he plunges into depressions for months at a time during which he hurts us, and then doesn't even remember it later - they would say that he's mentally ill and I can't divorce him because if he’s not rational, the gett – the divorce agreement - would have no meaning.
The statement Dina worked up only says there are problems between us. It makes that document worthless if I ever have to prove him incompetent. In fact, Seth will be able to point to it and say, "See - I'm fine. We were just incompatible is all ..." But Dina had no choice, because the document must satisfy the rabbinical court, and not cast any doubts on Seth’s competency to divorce me.
"So ...", asked the older Rav in the middle, "when did the problems start, with the marriage?"
Making sure to breathe evenly, I just answered, "Pretty much from the beginning."
As I said that, Seth stated, "The problems all started four years ago."
"What happened four years ago?" the younger Rav on the right asked Seth.
"She suddenly decided she was no longer willing to forgive and forget the black past." OK. Couldn't have put it much better myself.
"The black ..." the young Rav frowned.
"The things that she claimed happened. According to her!"
"So ... you didn't get professional help to work it out?"
"There was nothing to work out!” Seth cried. “I wasn’t … It wasn't happening any more! If it ever did! It never did! Everything was fine until four years ago when she …"
"But professional help might have ..."
"The whole marriage we were going for professional help!" Seth explained.
The young Rav frowned again. "The whole ... But you said ..."
The older Rav met my eyes and put his hand on his colleague's arm. "Look, they have a signed agreement. Let's just ..." he glanced at me, "confirm it and grant them the divorce."
And so it's confirmed. We'll get an appointment for the formalities of the gett, in Jerusalem, in a couple of months, but except for that, we're divorced.
And Seth confirmed something for me, too, didn't he. That his thinking is still exactly as it was four and a half years ago when we sat at that kitchen table in Silver Spring.
For all you hear about the male-oriented rabbinical system, here in Israel, I have found the rabbis to be fair and compassionate and human.
In the end, we had another Shabbat with Seth, because I didn't want Shabbat to be our first night in the new house, in case something didn't work right, or we needed something.
Leora rolled her eyes at me, as Seth skipped singing Woman of Valor.
Nora had invited us for Shabbat lunch, thinking it would be our first Shabbat on our own.
“So should I … invite Seth as well? Or … shall we wait until next week to have you over?” Nora asked, uncertain of the correct protocol.
“Well, this is reality, now, Nora. We’re not a family any more. Let’s just keep it as we had planned. The children and I will come.”
It was strange for the four of us to leave the house after synagogue, while Seth stayed behind. But, then, everything is strange about this.
This is my last morning waking up in this house. After fifteen years, I should feel nostalgic.
But all I see when I look around me are the ghosts. Not like last spring when we all said farewell to Mom and Dad's house, where I saw images of all the happy family get-togethers. Here, it’s more like a haunted house at an amusement park, where ghoulish scenes materialize in each darkened corner.
Yehudit asked me why I didn’t keep this house. That was the only time, in all of this, that I was close to tears - when I told her that it contained too many reminders of the bad things that happened here. Ironically, when we bought this house, after Seth had come out of that first depression, I hoped that the change of scene would let me forget the frightening times that had gone before. He merely populated this house with its own set of frightening events.
I'm sitting in the kitchen. In the chair where Eli sat, that time Seth darted over to get a fork from the drawer, here, and the five-year-old flinched - putting his arms over his face. When Eli said he had thought Seth was coming over to hit him, Seth did hit him.
The refrigerator was where Seth was standing, when I, hunched and hurting in that chair there, asked him if he could please stay home one day and take care of four-year-old Eli who had hepatitis, so I could go to work and guard my pregnancy with Rafi. Seth asked, "What would they think at work if I took a vacation day to baby-sit some kid?"
The sink there is where he stood, eyes closed, washing and re-washing a plate, listening to an opera, while I wrestled two toddlers through another bath. I came and pleaded with him, in tears of pain and frustration, to let me do the easy jobs for awhile and have him take over the physically demanding ones just until the baby was born. He clamped his lips into a thin straight line and pretended I wasn't there.
This kitchen is the scene of all those meals punctuated with yelling and hitting and crying. The dining room is the scene of Shabbat meals that were longer and worse.
The stairs out there are the ones toward which Seth kicked and kicked his five-year-old son. The crime had been to want to sit out of reach of Seth's arm so the child could eat without being smacked in the head.
That front door is the one Seth came in through, night after night, and we all watched to see how bad his mood was - how bad the evening was going to be.
I was mopping that living room floor listening to the radio during one of Seth's blessed business trips, when my heart lurched upon hearing a news bulletin of a plane crash. It lurched again with guilt as I realized that the first jolt had been a surge of hope that it had been his plane.
This counter top, where I always lit Shabbat candles, is where, that same evening, I prayed aloud that G-d would bring Abba back safely. And seven-year-old Eli - gentle, sensitive, generous, forgiving Eli - muttered, "Hashem should make his plane crash."
The family bathroom upstairs is where eight-year-old Eli, in tears, asked me to promise him that I saw no trace of Abba in him. "If half of me were from you, and half of me were Abba's good traits, I would be half a person."
The children and I were sitting over there on the living room floor, when seven year old Leora learned that there’s such a thing as divorce, and immediately asked, "Ima! If it's possible to get unmarried, why are we still with Abba?"
I was washing dishes, right here, when Rafi came and told me that Eli is his good little abba, and Abba is his big bad abba.
Five-year-old Eli was sitting on those stairs, that time, crying, asking me why Abba couldn't just stay away on his trip forever and it would be just us, and we could always be as happy as we are when he's away.
The bathroom upstairs is the one I cleaned, sick and feverish, because Seth had gone on his standard rampage over my being in bed.
Our bedroom was the room I dreamed of making into a separate apartment for Seth - hoping that he would go up to hibernate in his den when he was too much of a bear to be with us.
The bed of course is the scene of all those long lonely sleepless nights, wondering what was going on with him and how I could help him.
I was at the sink in Seth's bathroom one of the times Eli came to tell me Seth was hitting Leora. As always, I kept up the normal-family pretense and asked the normal-family question, "What did she do." We both knew she hadn't done anything, and the disappointed look on Eli's face haunts me to this day.
And now, sitting here on this last morning in this haunted house, I vow to give these children some good years. I vow to make our new little house a place of peace and happiness. Of respect and generosity. A place we'll feel glad to come home to. To turn it into what Seth once accused me, scathingly, of wanting: 'a warm happy loving home like the one she grew up in.'
Diary, our homeless years are over.
When the children were little and we all left the house at 7:20 AM, I would crow, "Out the door!" at some point to announce that it was time to leave.
Well, last night we really did go out that door. Last night we left Seth.
Leora said, as we drove away with the station wagon loaded with bedding and duffels, that it was so sad to be leaving Abba standing there all alone.
I did OK, didn't I. We're realistic enough and healthy enough to get out, but we all still respect Seth on a human level, and as their father. We don't want to hurt him. We're compassionate.
Dad says that once a child is twelve, they already embody the results of how you have raised them. They still need your guidance, of course, but you can’t expect to redress any major child-raising mistakes after this point. Well, Rafi is almost twelve. And looking at these three fine people, I realize I did well. And, as their single parent, I can take most of the credit, can’t I.
Someone once recommended a book called, 'Raising Children to be Good'. I didn't read beyond the first chapter where the author likened raising a child to training a dog. I was much more in agreement with the goals of Miriam Adahan's book - 'Raising Children to Care'.
I did, didn't I. I raised them to care.
So - here we are. We slept here in the new house last night. I'm sitting in my new kitchen drinking my first morning cup of coffee here. This hand-written entry is being written at the little white built-in table.
I had brought the four spare mattresses over last week, and towels and toiletries. Stocked the kitchen with necessities. Luckily, there's a stove top, so we just have to plan menus around that. Well, whatever we cooked in the absorption center, or what we cook on camping trips.
We have the old Coleman ice chest that my parents gave me, sitting where the refrigerator belongs, full of ice from the other house. We'll get the old 'fridge as soon as Seth buys a new one for himself.
Even if he didn't want to make things easy for me, you might expect a normal father to consider that his three children need a 'fridge more than one man who gets his dinner at work. But, of course, if he were a normal father, all of this wouldn't be happening, would it?
That Coleman cooler really makes it feel like camping!
We still have to park on the street because there's a big dog house in the driveway. In fact, there's a big dog there, too. The previous owners will come next week to get poor confused Dusty. I think she's glad to have people living here after two weeks when we just dashed in and out.
We scurried around, so excited, last night, settling in. For each thing the children asked, "Do we have..." I was able to say, "Yes, right here!" Toothpaste, chap stick, Sheba's pills, bed, leash and food. Licorice for Slinky. An extra blanket, the alarm clock, cereal for a snack, James Herriot to read before bed, copies of the key so everybody can take one to school today.
There’s a pile of books and clothes in a corner of each child’s room. Rafi has the 'Wandering Webers' in his room to put his things in - the old kitchen cupboard my family used to take on camping trips. Leora has the little chest of drawers my parents used to have in the basement. We still need to paint Eli's room, so his things are in half of my built-in closet.
We all hunkered down on the mattresses on the carpet in my room, and Sheba tried out all the beds before she settled on Leora's. We sang the lovely three-part harmony to 'Shema Israel' when I turned off the light.
Every night for the past ... ten years, I guess - since that awful winter when Seth was so depressed and cruel - my nightly prayers have started, "Dear G!d help me ..." Help me know what to do. Help me have the strength to keep struggling.
Last night my prayer started itself differently. "Dear G!d, thank you. Thank you for everything you have given us!"
Dear Family,
Just to let you know - the children and I moved into the new house last night and it went very well. I gave each of them a huge body bag duffle to cram all their clothes into, and a couple of my old black root beer crates for their school books. I emptied their medicine cabinet into a box, and put Slinky's cage and the big bin of pet food in the car. We rolled up the bedding off the beds and away we went! Everything went fine, once I remembered where I had put the soap. It's a nice place to sleep. Smells and sounds good. There's just enough light from street lights so it's not pitch dark.
Love, Shlomit
Dear siblings-in-law,
I guess by now you have heard that Seth and I are finally getting divorced – so I guess we’re not really in-laws anymore.
You know things haven't been very happy at our house for a long time.
I hope relations between the four of us, and Seth’s family, can be good. I need to write to Mom and Dad, too, but that will be harder. If you talk to them, and it comes up, please remind them that I hope they will still have good relationships with ELioRafi. And with me. Their photos are alongside my parents' photos in our new kitchen.
We're happy and relieved. Seth is being very good.
Thanks for listening! Love, Shlomit
Seth's cousin Joanie called me today at work. “Shlomit! I just heard the news from my parents! Are you guys OK?”
“Oh, Joanie, hi. Yes, we’re – we’re more than OK. You know basically what has been going on with Seth. I’m … glad you called. I didn’t know if …”
“Shlomit! How can you think for a minute that I wouldn’t want to keep in contact with you and the children! Hey – if I had to dump one of you, you know I would dump creepy Seth and keep you for my cousin.”
“Thanks. And, Joanie? Could I ask you to put in a good word for me with Seth’s parents? If you speak with them, or with your parents … I want them to know that I still want to keep in touch with them, and of course, for them to see the children whenever they can …”
“Shlomit … just tell them yourself.”
“I don’t know how they would …”
“I say just dive in. The direct approach is usually the best.”
“OK! Gulp! You’re right. I’ll feel much better when I have spoken with them. Thanks, Joanie!”
Hi, Kay,
So far, we're all high on moving and planning and settling in. We painted the living room last night. After the children were in bed, I arranged a mattress and bolsters as a sofa with my Noah's Ark quilt over it, Rafi’s highways-and-mountains rug in front, Leora’s Eli-made bedside table next to it, with a desk lamp on it, and two old lawn chairs facing it, to make a cozy conversation area. I have the white patio table in the dining area with your PARTY! table cloth over it. I have Mom's watercolors hung on the hooks that were already in the walls, but they're all really high up. It's hard to relax in a room where the pictures are way above eye level.
So when the children came down this morning it looked like a room - sans ladders and rollers and rags and newspapers and paint buckets and echoes. We all four (six if you count Sheba and Slinky) are sleeping on the wall-to-wall in my room. I agree with Leora - I love settling in.
This house is (literally, I think) a Godsend. Gives us something positive to do. And each day it gets better. Looks better, and has more stuff in it. Yesterday we were all hungry, so we went out and bought food. There are solutions for everything.
These children are so great! Helpful and cooperative. Love, your happy sister Shlomit
I’m remembering a conversation I had with a newlywed friend in grad school, discussing what we should call our mothers-in-law. How do you start, as an adult, to call a new set of people 'Mom' and 'Dad'?
Milly said that so far she had gotten by without calling Shimi's mother anything, but it sometimes took some verbal acrobatics.
I sort of worked my way into calling Seth's parents Mom and Dad. Before I could actually address them by their new titles, I could refer to Dad as 'Dad' when I was speaking to Mom, and the other way around. Then it gradually got to seem normal to use the terms in addressing them.
I just sat here for a moment, after writing that, trying to think of what Seth calls my parents. I’m sure he never called them Mom and Dad. Or Sally and Abe. Or Mr. and Mrs. Weber. Can it really be that in a quarter of a century, he has had no occasion to direct conversation their way?
So it was with dread that I listened to Seth’s parents’ phone ring, after I dialed their number tonight. Their number, which I know by heart, as well as I know my own parents’ number. It had always been, "Hi, Mom/Dad? This is Shlomit!" What was I going to say this time?
I had decided that the best way to indicate that I want to keep in touch with them, and the most logical reason to call, was to give them our new phone number.
Like most people, I hate talking to answering machines. But when theirs clicked on, I was grateful! "Hi, this is Shlomit. I just want to make sure you have our new number ..."
There. That was painless!
Seth's mom called back an hour later. It went fine. She said, "Hello, Dear," as she always did, and my, "Oh, hi, Mom!" just jumped out. OK. So we're still 'dear' and 'Mom'. The rest we can play by ear.
She asked how we all are. I reassured her that the new house is near the children's schools and that their friends have already been over to check it out.
"So, you and Seth are dividing the furniture?"
"Well, sort of ... the children will get their own furniture, and… basically that's it. Seth pretty much keeps the rest. Everything in our bedroom and downstairs."
“Oh? So Seth will have to buy new furniture for when the children are at his house???"
"Mom. The children live with me. This is their home. They will visit him if they want to. But they live with me."
“I hope you’ll encourage them to see him, Shlomit.”
“Well, I’m hoping he’ll encourage it, Mom - that’s his responsibility, now.
How many of these diary entries, over the years, have been titled something like, 'Jessica and Yehuda to the rescue'?
Well, we've spent our first Shabbat in the new house. It turned out fine, but an hour before Shabbat, I thought it might be a disaster. Leora was at a class Shabbat at school. The boys and I were trying to finish up the walls in the hall. We probably weren't going to make it before Shabbat, because I was going to have to stop and fix dinner. A rather uninspired dinner of Khaes-nudler - the Swiss equivalent of macaroni and cheese.
The house was cold. Painting had definitely lost its charm after doing Leora's room and the whole downstairs, and Eli's. The house is still so empty and bare, and Leora wasn't here to perk things up with her chatter and cheer.
I'm sure all of us were remembering how it was at the old house an hour before Shabbat came in - furnished, neat and tidy, with the warm smell of real Shabbat food.
"Well, I'll go start supper," I announced without much enthusiasm.
As I was washing my hands, the phone rang.
"Hello, Poopsie!"
"Yehuda! Hey you guys! It's Uncle Yehuda!"
"How are you doing, Poopsie!"
"Great! We're painting. When are you guys going to come see our new house?"
"Well, I was thinking maybe in about half an hour. Jessica is visiting her mother."
"Oh, good! Come over! Um ... dinner will be kind of ..."
"Don't you worry about dinner, Poopsie! I'm bringing dinner. Do you have a stove to heat up soup? Meat dishes? I'll bring everything else."
So the boys and I finished up the painting and moved the heater to the bathroom for showers and then to the living room where, frankly, it didn't have much impact. No furniture to absorb and convect the heat. Just the big open space lit by light bulbs dangling from pigtails.
But soon we were lighting Shabbat candles and singing "Peace be with you," and eating hot Chinese soup with Yehuda who can lift anyone's spirits. Big Yehuda who can fill the emptiest room. Yehuda to the rescue again!
When Yehuda had first arrived, and was going into the kitchen with his pile of Tupperware, he stopped in his tracks. "What the hell is this?" he asked as he spied the green camping cooler sitting where the refrigerator should be. "The creep didn't even give you guys the 'fridge?"
"We'll get it, once he gets a new one."
"Right. Because his royal high-ass couldn't be without a refrigerator and his wife and three kids can."
"Ex wife."
"No matter. He didn't treat you any better when you lived with him. Creep. Well, that's why you left him, eh, Poopsie! You got a real nice place here. You got the TV at least."
"That's the old TV from upstairs," Rafi volunteered. "It's got stripes in the picture."
"Lemme guess. Ol' Seth kept the new one for himself." Yehuda shook his head in disgust. "Hey. Did you ever notice that the Hebrew pronunciation of his name comes pretty close to describing the guy?"
Rafi looked puzzled, but Eli grinned as he realized what Yehuda meant. The original pronunciation of Seth is 'Shet'.
"Abba got the black and white TV, too,” Rafi added.
"Eli made us the TV table," I bragged, to change the subject. “And he built shelves in the closet under the stairs.”
"Nice!" Yehuda acknowledged, hugging Eli’s shoulders.
"Can I tell Uncle Yehuda Eli’s joke?" Rafi asked.
"It's a riddle," Eli corrected.
"Sure," I smiled.
"Uncle Yehuda ... what's the only thing we got that's not older than Leora?"
"Not much," Yehuda said, looking around him, and idly poking a finger into a hole in the upholstery of Rafi’s chair. "Gimme a hint."
Rafi giggled. "You're looking at it!"
"Ah! You! That's a good one! Come here, Munchkin!" he gave Rafi a bear hug.
"That puts it all into perspective, doesn't it, Shlo. The kids are with you. Long term, that's all that matters. You guys helping your Mom?"
"They're great, Yehuda, you know that. They're helping me paint. Or I'm helping them. I don't even know which."
"Yeah - I can tell you've been painting. Your speckled glasses and ..." he put a finger on the speckled soup ladle that we had cleaned off as well as we could, a half hour before.
"Ah!" Yehuda leaned back after we had finished off the sweet and sour chicken. “Great excuse to over-eat. No space in your little cooler thing for leftovers!”
Yehuda sighed. "You have no idea how good it is to see you guys in this nice house. You need anything? Just call, Babe, and ol' Yehuda and his side kick Jessie will be right here."
"Thanks. I think we're OK, but it's really good to know you're there for us. Really good, Yehuda."
Seth came to the mall with us, yesterday, so he could look for a refrigerator while Eli and I looked at ovens.
I’m still uncomfortable being with him, because my heart goes back to doing the fearful flip-flops it did in his presence for all those years. But I’m trying to use my brain instead of my emotions. It’s good if we can all be on good terms. When I got new phone books for us, I picked up a set for Seth, too. We were buying hooks to hang pictures on, and I suggested getting a couple of packages for Abba. I asked for an extra copy of this year’s directory for our HMO so that Seth could have one, too. It’s best for everyone if we can be as normal and no-fault as possible.
Seth decided on a fridge and handed over a credit card. The card on our common checking account. He must have felt me stiffen, and he looked up at me. "I'll pay you back half the amount."
Out in the car he took out his check book – our check book – and was about to write a check, but then he tisked and muttered, "That won't work, either."
He thought a moment. "I haven't got a check book or a credit card on my own account yet. But if I write you a check on this account, half of it is yours anyway. Could you just wait a few days until I can order some checks?"
"OK, sure. No problem."
But something was bothering me. Today, while Seth was at work, I was at the house packing up my summer clothes, and I opened the file cabinet. I took out the file for our common checking account, and spread out the printouts on the bed.
Because ... how has he been paying for his sessions with the social worker all this time - three years - if he doesn't have a check book?
I don't know how much he pays Batia. It must be around 200 shekels. Here's 220, a couple of weeks ago. And the week before that, another 220. I flipped back and back. The bah-stahd.
He hasn't been paying Batia from his own money, has he. He hasn't been paying anything out of his own money. Here's his pool membership. And his concert series. These debits in lira are expenses on his trip to Italy with his buddies at work. These dollar debits are from his hike across the grand canyon. Air France … that's his ski trip to France next month.
Of course, I could have checked at any point over the years since we opened our 'allowance' accounts. Did it really never occur to me that I should? No, I don't think it ever did. I trusted the bah-stahd. He was my husband, after all.
He owes me heck of alot of money! If Batia had helped him/us, I would be willing to forget it. But over and over he reminded me that what he did at Batia was his own affair. That they didn't discuss 'things like' his altercations with Leora or his favoritism toward Rafi or the insults he hurls at Eli. Batia was helping him know how to 'deal with' people at work. It had nothing to do with keeping the family together.
I didn't try to persuade him to use Batia for the good of the family, because he had told me that he was paying with his own money. Was he really lying, or is all of our money 'his money'?
OK. Strike while the iron is hot. I picked up the phone.
"Hi, Seth? This is Shlomit. I've been wondering something. Since yesterday at the store. You always said you were paying Batia out of your own account. But if you don't have a check book ..."
"I never said anything like that, Shlomit."
“Yes you did … you said yesterday that you don’t have a checkbook, so you …”
“I never said I was paying for Batia, myself.”
"Of course you did! After we split up the money! Three years ago!"
"Look. If you want, I'll start to pay for her out of my own account, now, as soon as I get a checkbook."
"But ... what about all those years? All those sessions? All that money? If I'd known I was paying for half, Seth, I would have expected ..."
"Some other time, Shlomit. I have work to do. Anyway, what’s done is done."
“But we could figure out approximately how much …”
“Not! Now! I’m very busy.”
The fates that Liza thought up for 'Enry 'Iggens are nothing to what I'd love to do with this utter utter creep. Three years. Three years x fifty dollars x fifty weeks is $7500 that would be sitting in our common account if he had been honest with me. Half of that is $3750. Groceries or mortgage payments for half a year.
But now I wonder. I was just assuming that he was being fair with all this money business. Who knows what his little NPD mind was deciding he deserved versus what I deserved? I looked back at the printouts on the bed and saw pairs of equal amounts going out, at the beginning of each month. Presumably what went into our ‘allowance’ accounts. OK. But how can I know if there were other transfers? Maybe he decided on the sly that he shouldn't have to pay for piano lessons. Or the ingredients Eli and I bought the time we made the quiche, because he didn't eat any. Or to have photographs developed, because he doesn't care if we take pictures. Maybe he slid little amounts into his allowance account from time to time to counterbalance these expenditures. There's no way to know, is there.
I have trusted Seth with all of our finances since the early years of our marriage when he seemed to get upset when I made suggestions. It was easier to let him play with the money if it was so important to him. Once we had children, I had plenty to deal with, without taking care of the finances, too. He has made some disastrous moves over the years, but it was worth it if it bought Shalom Bayit.
Well, I won’t make a fuss about this today if he’s having a busy day. Hopefully it was a genuine oversight on his part. We’ll settle it later after he has had a chance to think about it.
I've been waiting to call Seth’s Uncle Henry, to give Seth or his parents a chance to tell him. I thought Henry might even call me when he heard the news - he told me ten years ago that I should make getaway plans. But I didn't think it was appropriate for him to hear the news from me first.
So tonight I called him. He was pleasantly surprised to hear from me. We chatted about his many activities and about our mutual friend Henny and about what the children are up to. I guessed he was waiting for me to mention the divorce.
"So ... when are you going to come for a visit, Henry? To see our new house?"
"You have a new house??? Why, I had no idea, Shlomit! I didn't know you were moving! I spoke with Seth's mother just the other day and she didn't mention that you and Seth had bought a new house! Was this a sudden decision?"
"She didn't mention that we ... the children and I ... moved ..."
"The children and ..."
"Henry, we’ve left Seth. We moved out a week ago. I thought you would have heard."
"You left him. Ah, I see. Why, no, Shlomit, I hadn't heard. Though ... I'm not really surprised, now that I think of it. You and I have spoken several times of the advisability of such a move. Well! What does one say, Shlomit?"
"Henry, we're so happy and relaxed. We have a nice little house. The children are all excited about fixing it up and getting settled. Leaving the old life behind." I told uncle Henry about our painting and cooking and rigging up.
“Well, then, Shlomit, I guess I say … Mazal Tov!”
Hi, Kay,
Yes, we’re still semi-camping, but are getting more and more civilized each day.
We're still doing laundry at the old house until the guy comes to install the washer I bought. I go over before work, after Seth has left, and spend the hour packing and loading the car. I exchange the ice bottles for frozen ones from the freezer, and bring the wet laundry home to hang up here.
This morning, after a good conversation with Uncle Henry last night, I got a really supportive e-mail from Seth's brother. If all of the people who thought of advising me to leave, over the years, had actually said something, I would have gotten out a decade earlier. Maybe this means we should be more ready to poke our noses into other people’s businesses!
Jerry said that since he’s no longer my brother-in-law, he guesses he’s just my brother.
Love, Shlomit
"Oh! This reminds me!" said Leora, from up on the stool where she was arranging things on the top shelf in the kitchen. She held up some pretty candlesticks that Seth's parents brought us years ago from Yosemite. "Abba asked if you want the Shabbos candle holder." Since our year in the US, my Sabra children sometimes use Yiddish terminology.
"The aluminum one? The one he made?"
The one he gave me before we had actually talked about getting married, but when we both, I guess, thought we probably would.
Seth made a little ceremony of it. Gave me a box of Shabbat candles, first. I thanked him, a little puzzled, until he said, "I guess you'll be needing something to hold them. Maybe this will do the trick." And he handed me a beautiful brushed aluminum cylinder, cut at a slant at the top, with two holes drilled in to hold the candles. So beautiful. Beautiful in its own right, and more so because Seth had made it for me himself.
And also for what it implied. A married woman lights two candles, and then adds one for each new child. This gift implied that Seth hoped to be around, week after week through the years, every Shabbat when I lit candles.
I had stared at the beautiful gift and stroked the soft, smooth, cool sides. I couldn't even trust my voice. "Thank ..." I whispered.
"Look at the bottom," he directed me.
There, he had etched, FROM ME TO THEE. TWO LIGHTS HELD TOGETHER IN UNITY.
And now it has come to this. He is offering them to me again, but in such different circumstances.
I looked up at Leora, who was waiting for an answer, and I shook my head to clear the twenty five year old vision.
Wow. I can remember where we lit Shabbat candles in each house we've lived in. Our first little apartment, then in graduate student housing, even on picnic tables on camping trips. The absorption center, the first dingy little rented apartment, and finally, the first apartment we owned. Things weren't going so well, by then. He was in that first depression. Every week as I lit those candles, standing side by side, I hoped that we would some day get together again. That we could be, as the etching on the bottom implied, together. In unity.
Then, when that bad depression lifted, and I thought everything was going to be fine, the most wonderful thing in my life happened. Eli was born. And I lit three candles every week. An extra one standing down at the side. I can remember the first Shabbat that I lit three candles. We were a family! I sat there in that kitchen, holding my new baby, just grinning at those three flames. Totally, totally happy.
We moved to the townhouse, and soon added Leora's candle. Leora. My light. The first Shabbat that I was home, she was still in the hospital struggling to grow. Again, after lighting candles, I sat watching them. Four. Then hers flickered and I worried that if her flame went out it would mean she wasn’t doing well.
Rafi also spent his first Shabbat in an incubator, and I was still in the hospital, too. All Shabbat, I worried because I had forgotten to remind Seth to light five candles! What if he had forgotten! How would my tiny boy thrive if he hadn't had a candle to add him to the family constellation, on his first Shabbat? The first thing I asked Seth when I saw him on Sunday was whether he had remembered, and he assured me that had.
I don't consider myself to be superstitious, but when it comes to my children - well, why take chances!
From there on, of course, things went down hill. Shabbat was the worst day of the week, so that candle holder witnessed the worst of the yelling and hitting and crying. Eli's wish that Seth's plane would crash.
I sighed and looked up at Leora. "No. I don't want it. Let Abba give it to his next wife," I joked.
"Ima! You can't let him!!!!"
"Why not. It has too many sad memories clinging to it."
"No! I mean you can't let Abba get married!"
"Hey - as soon as he gives me the gett, he's free to ..."
"No, Ima." Leora had stepped down from the stool and held my shoulders, looking me urgently in the face. My fourteen-year-old daughter is nearly as tall as I am! "You would warn her, right, Ima? You wouldn't let another woman be stuck with him like you were. And ... what if she has children? Ima! You can't let Abba hurt other kids!"
"Leora, Honey, I doubt that Abba would marry again. Not after the shambles he made of things the first time around. And even if he did - if he had wanted children around, he would have tried to keep you guys. Do you think he could ever find better kids than the three of you?"
"But, if he does get a girlfriend - I mean, he's rich, right? And Batia taught him how to smile and act interested in other people - you would warn her, right?"
Would I?
"Ima!" Leora brought me back to the present with a little shake of my shoulders. "You don't make sense! You donate money to the battered women charities, and to the abused children charities. You bought that little hand-shaped pin with 'Enough!' written on it. You signed that petition for more shelters. So how can you just let it happen to another woman when you know exactly what she's getting into! When you know exactly what Abba is like!
"Well, Leora, we'll see. If Abba meets someone, we'll see. You know - she wouldn't believe me, anyway. She would believe she can help him."
"Oof, Ima!" Leora oofed and we dropped the subject.
Uncle Henry called last night. He had talked with Seth’s mother. "She's quite worried because now there will be no one to drive him when he needs to get someplace."
"To drive him?"
"Yes. Because he himself doesn't drive."
"So ... that's the most important thing I was to him, in her eyes? His chauffeur? That's the big difference we made in his life by leaving him?"
"That's the point she raised as her main concern."
"Oh. OK."
Maybe I was wrong all along that Seth’s mother was happy to have me in the picture because I was good for Seth. Maybe a Seeing Eye dog with a driver’s license would have filled my shoes, for her. Maybe for him, too. Sigh.
I never appreciate magazine headlines that make a cute pun or alliteration or rhyme, but give you no idea what the article is about. But they’re so much fun to come up with, that they’re hard to resist.
Seth and I finally sat down last night to split up the kitchen things. Of course, you can bet that if it were Seth who had been eating off of Snoopy plates with plastic forks for a month, he would have found the time way before now.
Seth brought the dairy silverware drawers out to the dining table and sat down. He picked up the ladle. “I’ll need this,” he stated, as though talking to himself, and he placed it at his end of the table. He picked up the egg beater. “I’ll need an eggbeater,” and the eggbeater joined the ladle. The new flipper was next: “I bought this.” The spaghetti server: “I like this.” The rubber scraper went to his end of the table with no pause for explanation.
“Wait, Seth ...”
“What!” he spat, and glared at me. Daring me to continue.
But his threats won’t work any more, will they? I have taken our sails out of his wind. The retaliation I dreaded, if I would oppose him – a silent evening or week, escalation of the favoritism of Rafi, sabotaging something I want to do, skimping even more on food – hey – I’m, as they say, outa here. “Seth, if we go by who bought things, I might as well walk out now, empty handed. I never bought anything, right? And if you get everything you like or need, you’ll wind up with everything. Because you obviously wouldn’t have bought things that you didn’t want or like or need.”
“No, Shlomit, you’re exaggerating as usual. There’s plenty of junk here that was definitely not my idea, and that I wouldn’t take if you paid me.”
He picked up a cookie dough scraper that Mom gave me once – shaped like a painter’s pallet - and tossed it over to ‘my’ side of the table. “I don’t need this ridiculous thing …”
“And these …” the cookie cutters I’d brought back from Mom and Dad’s followed the scraper.
“I can certainly manage without these stupid rusty corn holders …” they clattered onto my little pile.
Twenty minutes later his end of the table contained everything a functional kitchen would need.
My pile had some useful things we had duplicates of, but it looked more like what you would find in the show window of the exotic kitchen gadgetry shoppe in Mom and Dad’s little town. Because much of it was, in fact, presents from them over the years! Fondue forks, a peanut butter spreader, candy thermometer, little plastic spoons from cereal boxes that change color when dipped into cold milk. Plastic duck beaks with straws out the front. A pizza cutter bearing the logo of my parents’ local hardware store. A cheese slicer with a loose wire, tea ball I had in college, chop sticks, tongs, the oatmeal spurtle we had brought Mom from Scotland.
Hey! Look on the bright side! The children and I will be able to stir our iced tea and separate our eggs. Hull strawberries, brush pastry, make Spaetzli, scoop ice cream, open recalcitrant screw tops, clean baby bottles, roll out pastry dough, serve honey, crush ice, blend pastry, core apples, freeze popcicles, decorate cakes, pick ice, and hang bananas.
There were two sets of dairy cutlery, so Seth took the nice service for twelve that his parents had given us, and I got the old service for eight that Shimi and Milly had given us as a wedding present.
“You know …” Seth said, sounding reasonable and generous, “among the meat silverware, there are lots of odds and ends from the absorption center and what those people left here when they rented the house. You can have that stuff, so you won’t have to go out and buy a new set right away.”
“Or …” I suggested slowly, thinking that at some point the obvious alternative would occur to him, but it didn’t, “the children and I could take the meat set and you could take the odds and ends.”
He double took. He really, seriously hadn’t considered taking second best, had he? It truly never occurred to him to put himself in our place and us in his.
“Fine,” he said, disgusted. Probably making a mental note to analyze this failure with Batia – if he is still going to her. “But the meat pressure cooker is mine from before we were married, and I need the dairy one, too.”
“Well, Seth,” thinking maybe I was on a roll, “the children and I also need a pressure cooker …” He huffed a noisy huff of air out of his nostrils and glared at me in silence, waiting for me to back down. A pressure cooker costs a fortune.
True, I don’t have to fear him as I did when we had no place to go, but the last thing I want to do is to let him up the ante before we’re totally separated. His pressure was building and he was hissing faintly between clenched teeth.
“It’s OK,” I muttered. “Take both pressure cookers.”
We / he finished dividing the utensils and went on to the rest of the kitchen. Anything that went onto my pile was accompanied by a disparaging remark: “You can have the stupid rice maker Joanie gave us. I always hated this bowl. These cups don’t match anything.”
I held my breath when he picked up the beautiful tea kettle Joanie once gave us. If I expressed interest, it would go onto his pile as being from his family. “And a kettle without a whistle is useless.” And he slid it over toward me.
I sat back and watched him divvy things up. When we were buying things to furnish our first apartment and outfit our first kitchen, Seth made all the decisions. So we’ve come full circle. The divvying up is going as the marriage started out and as it staggered along for a quarter century.
I sighed and shook my head. He turned to me abruptly. “What! What’s your problem, now! You wanted the finjan?” He picked up the last thing he had put onto his pile. “I use it when …”
“No, Seth. That sigh wasn’t for the finjan.”
“What, then?” he looked over toward his pile, not even realizing that he put up a protective hand as though to guard it.
“Never mind, Seth. Never mind.” You wouldn’t understand.
I was going through things in that dim dusty attic this afternoon.
Everything seems symbolic to me these days. When we bought this house it was just a blueprint and an empty lot. And a dream. I had only seen Seth in that one depression, and I firmly believed it to be in the past. Something to forgive and forget and move on past. To symbolize our new start together and our goals of building a healthy family, we bought this little cottage with four bedrooms to fill up! We poured over the blueprints, daydreaming. We made sure to make every correct decision at that point to lay the groundwork for the future. We didn’t need the extra space yet, but we spent the extra money to have cement supports and beams put into place so that we could finish off the attic when the time came.
But it never happened, did it? At no time in all the years we have lived here were things stable enough to attempt a project of that magnitude. Not even the most basic home maintenance got done when Seth was depressed. For awhile I dreamed of finishing off the attic, but only as a place for Seth to hide himself away from the family when he got ‘bad’.
The attic remained the dark, dusty airless place it was this afternoon when I crouched over a box of Seth’s old stuff. Some copies of his theses and … wow … an old diary from his childhood! He was Rafi’s age. Eleven. Who was he then? I sat there in the dim present trying to get a picture of the dim past.
Seth never seemed like a diary person. His professional papers and lectures are polished, logical, and well constructed. He wrote me a couple of poems before we were married. Other than that, all I’ve read of his are postcards and e-mails. They’re idiosyncratic in that he consistently omits the first person pronoun: “Am fine. Will go to a concert on Thursday. Couldn’t find p.b. cups. Will look tomorrow.”
I always loved to be in a letter correspondence with a boyfriend, because you wound up sharing more than you could, face to face. But somehow that missing pronoun keeps the reader at arm’s length.
The little diary seems typical for a child at the end of the 1950’s. He tells of events and purchases. Factual, but you don’t expect introspection from an eleven-year-old. His enthusiasms are evident in what he records – going to a movie, getting a new medallion for his collection, enduring visits from relatives, participating in swim meets, going on outings. Staying home on a snow day. No evidence of mood swings or hungers or passions. This is the Seth I thought I was marrying. The old query pops up again: did I do something that kept this nice little boy from having a happy life?
We had such a nice afternoon on Friday, cleaning up our new backyard. The children noisily arranged ropes and ladders for amputating dead branches from the redbud. Leora and Rafi shimmied up the palm tree to take off several years worth of shag from the trunk. Eli straightened the edges of the lawn. We all raked and weeded. A large part of what had seemed to be hedge was actually a humungous weed that twined around among the bushes.
The three of them discussed plans for how we can make this backyard ferret-proof so we don't have to keep Slinky caged on Fridays when we're in and out, and want to leave the back doors open.
I mostly performed support services. Trundled bin after bin full of clippings and branches across the street to the pile. Cautioned, "Don't fall!" at regular intervals. Recorded the afternoon in snapshots.
Our neighbor called over the fence at one point, "It's nice to move to a place with a yard, isn't it!" I smiled and agreed, and only a moment later realized that, of course, we have had a yard for the past fifteen years. But I never looked at it, as I look at this, and imagined it with the iris we could plant over here and the ferns we could have along there. We sometimes cleaned up when Seth was away, but there was never a wholehearted gardening session like this.
The only interesting thing in that yard had been the volunteer pumpkin we had once. And the pop corn that grew from the kernels Rafi spilled once when he toddled around the back yard holding an open sack. Other than that, ours was the only neglected yard in the neighborhood. Maybe it was like sex - too cold to do anything in the winter, and too hot in the summer.
Well, Seth did the same thing with sex, didn't he. Demanded to be in charge, but then didn't do anything about it.
By golly - the insight you get from hindsight! He did that with everything, didn't he! Cooking - he was the only one who was allowed to cook, and yet he cooked only one meal a week. Shopping - only he could shop, but he didn't make sure we had enough food in the house.
Good riddance. I clipped that weed right out of my garden, didn't I!
Dear Kay-slash-Diary,
Last night the children ate at Seth’s. I was over there to get some things, and as I came downstairs with an armload, I heard Eli ask Seth why he doesn't eat at the wooden table and use the plastic one for the computer. Seth set his jaw in that all-too-familiar way, glared at Eli and snarled, "Because I don't want to. Period."
Hooooo! I am so so so glad I don't have to listen to that litany any more! Hallelujah! Literally. Praise the Lord! Here poor Eli goes over there, after being at our house, where suggestions are flying freely, being modified and accepted and praised and appreciated ... back to that.
Love, Shlomit
Tenth graders do a stint of community service, and Eli chose to help out at the city dog pound.
I warned Mel, today, when I offered him a lift home from work, that we would be swinging by the kennels to pick Eli up, and that Eli and his friend would be rather odoriferous when they got into the car!
Eli didn't get in, though. Exchanging significant looks with Yoni, he said he wanted to show me something. I followed him in through the gate. Eli peeked into the office and said, 'My mother'. I puzzled over why the woman behind the desk had given me a broad smile and a thumbs-up, and said, 'kol ha kavod'. Maybe she was congratulating me on having such a nice, hardworking son.
Eli reached into a wooden crate in the shade of the building and brought out a sweet little yellow puppy. "Awww … Isn't she beautiful!" I cooed, patting her head as she gazed into my eyes.
Mel was waiting in the car, so I turned to go, but Eli just stood there with that ball of fluff cradled protectively against his chest.
I had already read the look on his face before he asked, "Ima? Can we?"
Why on earth did I ever think a child of mine could work at the dog shelter without bringing home a sample of the merchandise?
But picking up a puppy at the pound is like picking up a candy wrapper from the sidewalk. Even if it's not yours, you can't just put it back down.
It didn't even cross my mind to ask, 'Will you take responsibility for her?' Eli takes care of everything and everybody that comes his way.
Well, heck. What have I been trying to do since we moved - and even way before? Reassure these children. Surround them with love. Fulfill their desires. I have been making sure we have good hot meals, and that there is always clean laundry. I have been keeping the moving and unpacking confusion at a minimum. We have extended or received Shabbat meal invitations for as far ahead as I can think. I have given blanket permission for sleepovers and eatovers and DVD rentals. I have been so glad we have had this house to fix up. But a puppy! She'll do a better job than I ever could at distracting, loving, warming. I want to fill our new house with happiness. Well, everyone knows that happiness is a warm puppy!
He grinned that great Eli grin. Whether reading my face or my mind or my heart, I don't know.
"Sure, Eli. Why not!"
They gave us some basic instructions and we brought her out to the car. Mel was a bit surprised to see that we were taking an extra passenger. We have to bring her back next week for shots and a checkup.
On the way home, Eli and Yoni named her Flie. It's the name of the nice mother dog in ‘Babe’, and the letters permute to LIFE. Representing the hope that she'll thrive after the rough start she has had.
So we are a two-dog family. Slinky is thrilled. Ferrets are perpetually juvenile, and he hasn't had another baby to play with since Luna got old enough to realized that she is a cat and is too dignified to romp.
We stopped to buy chicken on the way home, and Eli set to work boiling it up with rice as soon as we got into the house. Of course Leora and Rafi were thrilled about the new baby.
"Ima?" Leora said, that night, after the lights were out, "We added another nail to our yarn picture, didn't we?"
"What? Oh! Right! We certainly did!" I laughed.
"What do you mean?" Rafi asked from his mattress.
"Well, after we got Sheba," Leora started to explain, and we all laughed. Upon hearing her name, Sheba padded over, crinkling the wall-to-wall newspaper spread out to protect my carpet from puppy piddle.
"When we got Sheba, we noticed that adding another family member to love, doesn't mean everybody else gets less of our love. Ima said it's like those pictures we made at Ruthi's - with nails pounded into a board in a pattern, and you string yarn back and forth and back and forth around the nails. The more nails you have, the better the picture is, because there's more yarn. The yarn is the love, and the nails are us.
"It's like the love bounces off and there's even more of it. Now that we have Flie to love, I feel love coming from her, too. And I feel more love coming from Ima and you boys. And I feel I love you all even more. Even … warmer."
Rafi reached out and brought Flie over to cuddle. "Come here, little Flie! Did you know you're a nail? Yes, you are, you sweet doggie! You're the littlest nail in our family picture!"
But ... no one took the analogy the logical step further, did they. We yanked a nail out, a couple of weeks ago, too, didn't we. When a nail falls out of one of Ruthi's yarn artworks, it leaves a bunch of loose saggy yarn that's not attached to anything. It ruins the whole picture. But Seth's absence doesn't seem to have left any loose ends. Because his nail was just stuck off to the side. Few of our love tendrils made it over there. Any yarn that wound around his nail just kept winding and winding around himself. Any love that tried to hook on to him, just slid off that big wad of self love that protected him from getting entangled in our lives.
Of course, in a normal divorce, the strings connecting the parents would be severed, but the rest would stay intact. The picture would be different but it would still be a picture.
Eli interrupted my musings. "Huh? My ... hey! Puppy! Flie!" He sat up. "Ima! I think she just peed on my pillow!"
"I guess there's a reason that the word 'puppy' starts with a 'P'!" Rafi joked.
Never a dull moment.
As I got home from work today, there was a now-familiar rush of happy anticipation in my chest as I pedaled around the corner and our house came into view. I stopped my bike just inside the gate, to smile at the welcoming porch light, turned on for my homecoming. I looked up into the kitchen for a moment, before going in. Our big kitchen window really is a picture window, on these dark winter evenings, displaying our antics for all and sundry.
All three of them were in the brightly lighted room. Eli was watering the plants that line the counter, pointing out to the others some new shoots coming up in the one Leora bought for me. Leora was eating a bowl of cereal, standing up, bowl held under her chin. Waving the spoon around to illustrate whatever she was telling the boys about. Rafi was going through a box of rocks from his collection that I had left on the counter for him to choose from, for the big glass jar Leora and I bought yesterday, to display them in.
As I watched, I heard, faintly, the beep of the microwave, and Eli went over to open it, giving a brief pat to Cyclops, resting on the towel Leora had put on top of the microwave for him. The cat bird seat. Or rather, the cat seat, where he can watch the whole neighborhood and at the same time know if any interesting food is being prepared.
Eli took something out of the microwave, and prodded it with a finger. Ah. Must be chicken and rice he had been warming for the puppy, who appeared on the scene just then in Rafi's arms. As I watched, Eli pushed up the sleeve of his sweatshirt and put his elbow into the dish. I heard Leora's outraged shriek as she grabbed Eli's arm. Rafi was explaining something to her, excitedly. I had told the boys, yesterday, that you use your elbow instead of your hand to check the temperature of a baby's bath water.
Ahh. If I could have viewed this scene of happy contentment, for just five minutes, while I was trying to stay with Seth, and seen how wonderful life would be, I would have gotten us out years earlier.
My thoughts flashed to the other kitchen. Seth's province. We weren't supposed to be in there if he was. And even if he wasn't - it was never the jolly center of activity that a kitchen should be. That Mom's kitchen always was at home.
We have lots more cooking and baking going on, here, than ever happened in the old house. We're all free to shop and suggest menus, now. Also, I have reversed the cleanup policy. Seth's oft-stated policy was a threatening, "Anyone who cooks has to clean up afterwards." Making cooking seem like a crime. You break it - you pay for it. You track mud in - you mop the floor. You cook – you clean up.
I want them to cook and bake to their hearts' content, so I have offered to clean up whatever high-entropy situation results.
Until last month, I used the phrase 'looking in my windows' to describe a book or movie where a dysfunctional or abusive household is portrayed. Someone looking in the windows of our other house would often have turned away in embarrassment. When we saw the movie, 'Truman Show' it crossed my mind that having a camera trained on us 24/7 might have kept Seth in line.
I wasted my money having cable installed, didn't I. The drama going on in our own home is as entertaining and heart warming as anything on Hallmark.
The people who used to live here finally picked up Dusty and her dog house, but they haven’t yet arranged to have their mail forwarded. Avishai came over this evening to pick up the accumulated pile, and I invited him in while I got the bag from the closet.
When I came back, he was standing there, arms akimbo, wordlessly surveying the living room.
And I suddenly saw the house through his eyes – comparing it with the nicely furnished civilized look it had when they lived here.
It looks pretty awful. Dangling light bulbs instead of fixtures. His old white table with the new computer on it. The highways and houses rug. Nora’s bean bag chair, Jessica and Yehuda's folding bookshelves. The too-low sofa because I’m sleeping on the top mattress, upstairs.
I had been comparing the house to how bare it was when we moved in. Every new thing we get or arrange or build is so exciting. The house is functional, but it really does look pretty bad.
Bohemian hodge-podge, I guess you would call it.
We have been having informal meetings on Fridays at lunch time. We list things we need to do or buy, or problems that have arisen. Things we want to change.
This week I made a little speech. As I clunked on the plastic tumbler for attention, Leora reminded, “Add real glasses to the shopping list."
"I just want you guys to know that ... it's good if you have a relationship with Abba. I mean, I know you know that, but I want you to know that I also know that. Anything positive that he can do for you or be for you, is good. Maybe he’ll be better with you, now, if you give him a chance …”
Rafi nodded, looking at me. Eli shrugged, looking down. Leora rolled her eyes and said, "Yeah, right!"
"So ... if I say things ... that aren't constructive ... don't listen to me, OK? Or let me know that I'm out of line.
"If I seem jealous ... of your wanting to be with him or anything, that's just immaturity on my part. Don't ever think you have to choose between being loyal to me and being loyal to him.
“I want the absolute best for you guys. Maybe in a self-centered moment I will lose sight of that goal, but it is my main goal. And a healthy relationship with one’s father is important. OK?" They answered with shrugs and rolled eyes.
"He doesn't call you 'Ima' any more when he talks to us,” Rafi told me.
“Right,” Leora confirmed. “He says, 'your mother',” she quoted in a deep voice dripping with exaggerated solemnity.
"OK," I grinned, "Could be worse."
During lunch on Shabbat, Eli pointed out, “The kitchen is too bare when it’s all cleaned up.”
We followed his gaze and he’s right. It’s a nice kitchen, but it’s bare. The only spot of anything we put there, other than the dish towels, is the pretty flowered tea kettle from Joanie. Oh, and Luna asleep on the microwave. But, being black, she doesn’t add much color, either. Otherwise, it’s just the white tiles and white cabinets and white appliances.
“I guess we need curtains,” I suggested.
“And we could make matching pot holders and towels,” Leora continued. “And Ima – the maroon Indian rug we got! It’s just the right shape for the floor!”
“And the cats could have a matching cushion up on their perch!” Rafi grinned.
“Some people hang their mugs,” I said, “The nice ones.”
“Good!” Eli nodded, “I’ll put hooks under the cabinets.”
“The clock could hang there,” Leora pointed. “We could see it from the whole room and it would break up all the white. And we need a real light instead of the pigtail.”
“Well, I want to wait and see what lights Abba doesn’t want from the other house.”
“More plants.” Eli suggested – his solution for everything, nowadays. “If we had plants out on the windowsill we could see them from in here. And more inside, too, on the counter and on the corner shelves. And up top.”
“I have more nice rocks…” Rafi offered. “We could get another glass jar and it could go on the counter.”
“Here’s what I was thinking,” I told them, “Do we need the window screens? I mean… let’s just take them off. They only darken the place and obstruct the view.”
“We shouldn’t be planning all of this on Shabbat,” Leora pointed out, “but …” she smiled toward the kitchen and I could see that she was also seeing it as it could look, “It’s really going to look good!”
I followed their gazes. They were all looking at our sterile white tiles and cupboard doors, but they were seeing curtains and clocks and mugs and rocks and plants and color and cheer.
Hi, Kay, Thanks for the wonderful, long letter.
I'm so different, now. I see a smiling, sparkling face greet me in the bathroom mirror in the morning. (My friend Henny, in Germany, refers to my having gotten rid of the "Seth-Burden") I walk differently. Sing all the time. Get bursts of gladness all day long. I drink coffee during the day, and sleep like a log anyway. I feel different. Calm. I'm looking forward to being this new person for the rest of my life.
None of the things I worried about have happened. I see good omens in everything.
When I kissed her good night, recently, Leora asked me, accusingly, what took me so long. She said she has been telling me for seven years that we have to get out. She asked if I would even have gotten out now, if she hadn't nagged.
Now I regret, a few years ago when you and I went through Granny's knickknacks, that I didn't save more. Back then, they would have just gone into the attic. Now I have pretty things all around me. That’s it! I feel more like a woman, now. I always had to keep the feminine part of me under wraps.
There are funny habits that persist and I get such a feeling of relief when I realize they are obsolete. Seth is abroad now, and I realized he's coming back in a few days. I got that lurch that feels as though your chest was full of sand, and somebody pulled a drawstring and emptied it - whoosh - into your stomach. Then I realized it doesn't matter anymore if he's here or not. Yesterday I realized it's Wednesday, and got a lurch - "only two more days till the weekend." Then I remembered that weekends are nice now. Very nice. On Friday we all pitch in and do things around the house. On Shabbat we've been going to people or inviting people. Time at home is nice. Cooking is fun.
Eli has bloomed with responsibility. I hope I let him be a teenager, and don't depend on him too much. He missed out on the chance to be a carefree little kid.
The thought struck me, last night over at the old house, as I was dismantling the closet shelves, that poor Seth still has to be with himself. We got away from him but he can’t.
Love, Shlomit
What I wrote to Kay is true. I feel more womanly, now. I can express the part of me that wants my surroundings to look pretty and to evoke serenity and emotional health. I can love and encourage the children without knowing he is going to complain that I’m spoiling them.
The textures I want in my home are the textures I want in my life. Wood, fabric, straw, clay. Soft. Earthy. Natural. Chrome and plastic might be easier to keep clean, but they’re harsh and artificial.
Whew! I’ve done this every February for the past three years. Pleaded with Leora’s school to give her one more chance.
In the three years since she started junior high, I’ve intercepted as many as I could of the letters that come in the mail after each failed exam. A form letter with three blanks. Her name, the subject in which the exam was given, and a number – usually between ten and thirty. The grade she got. Only in a couple of cases had I even known there was an exam. There was certainly no flurry of studying, beforehand.
Today, finally, I can give the headmaster a reason for optimism. “There have been changes at home,” I told him. “Things will be better now. Everything is more … settled. If you could give her just one more chance!”
Whether he has sensed a change in Leora, or whether he just had to respond to my desperation, he agreed to one more chance. Whew!
I was driving Rafi home from karate this evening, and as we turned right toward our house, where we would have continued straight to get to the old house, Rafi asked, “When is Abba coming home from his trip?”
Poor Rafi. Maybe I have been insensitive to how different his feelings must be from the rest of ours. He received acceptance and support from Seth. He got the message that he is valued. To some extent I took that away from him. Of course, now that the squabbles between him and Leora have faded away, maybe Seth’s championing his cause is not as critical. Because ‘his cause’ was all Seth’s creation in the first place. But still. It is certainly legitimate for a child to miss his father. I wish he had been, for all of them, someone who leaves a gap when he goes away.
“Abba will be back before Shabbat. Another couple of days. You miss him?”
Rafi didn’t answer. Just a slight lifting of his shoulders. He turned his face away as he does when he’s trying to hide his incriminating grin. Maybe he’s hiding sadness?
“Rafi, it’s fine for you to miss him. I want you to love Abba and miss him, and for him to be a special person for you. It won’t make me feel badly to hear you say that you’re looking forward to seeing him. I want you guys to love and be loved by lots of special people, and your Abba should be the most special. OK?”
“Well,” Rafi answered, “It’s … not really that I miss him so much, Ima, but … he’s bringing me the Pokemon game for my Game Boy.”
“Oh. Oh. That’s nice. That will be nice.”
“Ima, I guess … when you and Abba first told me you were going to get a divorce, I was sad. I didn’t want to live far away from Abba.”
“I know, Honey.” I parked the car in the driveway and turned to him, “I’m sorry I had to do that.”
“No! It’s OK! That’s what I wanted to say. Now … I see that it‘s a good idea not to live with him. Now we’re all much more … I don’t know. But now … if you said you were thinking of moving back with him … I mean, I guess I would say yes, because a family should be together, but … it really is better like this. Nicer. You know?”
“Sure. Good. I’m really glad you’re OK with things as they are now.”
Really glad.
We can manage!
Two cloudy days ago, Eli flipped the switch for the solar boiler's electric booster, and the main circuit breaker for the house flipped us into darkness. We got the lights back on, but there would be no hot water for showers.
“Well, Abba’s in France …” Rafi reminded me. “We can take showers over there.” Hey – it’s kinda nice to have a spare house!
So we took clothes and towels and shampoo over there, and I read Harry Potter while the electric booster heated the water. Legally, I have every right to take a shower in that house, but if Seth had been there it would have felt very strange.
The plumber replaced the boiler yesterday afternoon. He told me that the previous owner should pay for part of the cost. Luckily, I owe Avishay for a month of taxes that he had already paid, so we agreed that I would just not pay him back, and count it toward the boiler instead.
So that’s that! Our first crisis and it went fine. Luck, resourcefulness, cooperation and the existence of the people who help with things like that. It feels good to have had a problem and to have dealt with it successfully.
It used to be the opposite, didn’t it. Things that should have gone smoothly became problems because Seth was sticking all sorts of power play issues into the formula. Our first solar boiler, two decades ago, became a nightmare of bad feelings and tug-of-war.
Leora and I were at the cheepo-creepo bargain basement, on Friday, to fill in the gaps in our kitchen equipment. Shabbat tablecloth, strainer, mixing bowl, frying pan, whisk, flipper, dairy ladle, ice box dishes, glasses, mugs, bread board, casseroles, corkscrew, extra silverware, peeler, can opener, rubber scrapers.
The expensive stuff will have to wait - pressure cookers, a hot water heater for Shabbat, a toaster.
As we piled things on the checkout counter, the clerk looked up at beautiful tall teen-aged Leora and asked, “Do I wish you Mazal Tov?”
“Oh!” Leora and I both oh’d when we realized she thought Leora must be getting married, to need all this basic household equipment.
“No …” I smiled a wry smile, “the opposite, I guess.”
“Ah.” She nodded. I guess housewares shops do good business at both ends of a marriage.
I was thinking, as I surveyed our pile of necessities. If we had had a more or less functional kitchen after splitting things with Seth, I wouldn’t have gone out to replace the little gadgets that Seth had shoved to my end of the table.
But because Seth was such a cheepo-creepo and kept all the normal things and left us with the more esoteric things, now, after one shopping trip we have a complete kitchen, including the fun stuff.
I finished setting the table for dinner on Friday and sighed as I surveyed it. The new white tablecloth, paper napkins in my colorful aluminum napkin rings, the covered hallah on the new bread board, wine bottle, the children’s silver kiddush cups … and … two Mickey Mouse plates and two glass plates – one clear and one brown. Left in the house by the previous owners. I threw out the china they left, but glass can be made kosher.
Leora came over and followed my gaze. “Ima! Mickey Mouse plates for Shabbat? Don’t we get any of the white plates?”
“Well, Abba pointed out that all of the Corelle should stay together. He’s right. It doesn’t make sense to split it up.”
“OK. Fine, Ima. But why can’t it stay together over HERE … instead of staying together over THERE!” She made exaggerated motions toward the table and toward the old house. “You’ve always said how much you like the white plates.”
“Well, we already got the bowls because I said I liked them …”
“The bowls! The bowls that you got for 29 cents each, six years ago. And there are …” she went and counted, “twelve of them. So that’s – wow! Ima! We got almost four dollars worth of stained, scratched up cereal bowls!!!! And you saw when we bought the other stuff that Corelle plates cost 22 shekels each! That’s four dollars a PLATE! Hello? Isn’t something wrong here? I mean – I know you want Abba to stay calm and everything, but … isn’t it in the contract that you’ll SPLIT the kitchen stuff? So far we got the junk and we bought everything we need from your money! And he’s the one with the huge salary because you were taking care of us all those years when he was just working overtime every day. Not that I wanted him home, but we should at least get SOMETHING from the money he has now because he was never around and never got to know us or love us or anything, like you do.”
“OK. I’ll ask him when I’m over there next week.”
So I did.
“Uh … Seth … I was thinking … I … I really like the Corelle …”
“So …”
“So I … I would like to have the Corelle.”
“We agreed,” Seth’s lips went stiff and tight. His teeth clenched, “that the set would stay together. If you take half, neither of us …”
“Right.” How had this sounded so logical when Leora had explained it? “The set could stay together. I mean … we could … the children and I could … take it … all. I mean … you know … you got …” I waved my hands around his fully functional kitchen, “just about … you know … everything else.”
Seth clamped his lips together and stared over my head, waiting for me to read from my well-worn script and say, “OK. Never mind. I’m sorry.”
But it just happened that the cupboard was standing open behind him. With the whole gleaming white set of dishes arrayed there. So I pretended I had misplaced my copy of the script, and I just waited.
Seconds passed, and just as I was about to say my well rehearsed lines, he spoke.
“Fine!” A Sara Burnhardt sigh. “Take the dishes. I’ll go buy a set for myself with common money.”
Wow! Wow! I got the dishes, and he didn’t even seem very angry. Maybe I’ve sprouted negotiating skills in my old age. I replayed his unbelievable words in my head: ‘Take the dishes. I’ll go buy a set for myself with …”
“Wait, Seth. What do you mean, ‘with common money’? Why common money?”
He looked at me as though I’d sprouted antlers as well as skills. “How do you expect me to live without dishes??? I have to eat!”
“Seth? Is that what you’ve been doing? Using the Bank Hapoalim account for things you’ve been buying?”
“I use that account for grocery shopping, just as you do. And I must say that your grocery bills have been extremely high.”
Our grocery bill is high, as it was in the absorption center for the first few weeks, because we’re replacing all the supplies that a normal household contains – detergent and condiments and flour and sugar and spices and cleaning supplies. Things that Seth has right here in the old kitchen.
“OK, Seth, but what about for other stuff. I mean – it’s fine – if that’s how we’re doing it, but I’ve been paying …”
“What ‘other stuff’?”
“You know, things that you’ve had to buy to replace …” I looked around the kitchen and couldn’t see anything new.
“What things? What are you talking about?”
I was at a loss. I guess he hasn’t had to buy anything yet. What did we take that he would have to replace? I’ve bought file cabinets and lumber for a desk. I’ve bought a new washing machine and a new computer. The oven. . A hamper and wastebaskets. Shower curtain, bath mat, toilet brush. I’m always running downtown to replace something that stayed in the old house. I had cable TV installed, and internet, and a phone line.
“Seth, I’ve been using my money to replace things that stay with you. Was I supposed to be …”
“We’re talking about dishes, Shlomit! How am I supposed to eat without dishes?”
“Well, decide, Seth. One way or the other, but it should be the same for both of us. If you want us to use common money, I’ll check how much I’ve already spent to replace …”
“No. Fine.” A disgusted tisk that the children could have heard from our house two blocks away. “I’ll use my own money!”
I wonder how fair he is being with all of this.
Another Friday lunch speech:
"You guys seem to worry that Abba got a better deal in terms of dividing the possessions. That we're spending money replacing things, and he's just leaving his money in the bank. I just want to say that you don't need to worry. At the end of the game, when he and I die or whatever, all of both of our money will go to you. So if you get less from me and more from him at that point - who cares?
“But he's not putting it in the bank the way he used to," Leora corrected me.
"He's not???" Seth????
"Yeah," Eli contributed. "He's living at a higher ramah."
"A higher level?"
"Yeah," Leora complained. “Since he bought an apartment in that fancy building, he keeps saying this or that 'isn't at his ramah' any more. He bought new clothes. Like, teenager clothes,” she rolled her eyes.
"Well,” I laughed, "He can't live at the fanciest address in town and dress like a kibbutznik!"
“That's the whole point, Ima! He's moving there just because it's the fanciest. He just wants to be able to impress people." Her frown turned to an impish grin. "Well, I do, too. I love to tell people, 'My dad will live at The Towers.’ It's going to feel so strange just walking in the gate! They have a receptionist on duty and a lounge with artwork. And Abba's apartment will have a little TV to see who's at the gate, and that huge plaza thing with those palm trees! It's like a fancy hotel!"
"Maybe he sees it as a good investment," I suggested. He spent more for his three bedroom apartment than I did for this house.
"Maybe we weren't at his ramah," Rafi said wistfully. “I saw that he had some fancy cookies - you know, the ones that each one comes in a little paper - you know - cup thing. Cupcake thing. I said, ‘Oh! Wow! Did you have company and they brought you these?’ and Abba took them and said, ‘No, they're just for me. Now that I only have to shop for one person, why shouldn't I get the best?’"
"He said that????" Leora shrieked, "He really said that??? Oof! He's not embarrassed? Oof! See, Ima? He's not even embarrassed to say that he's worth spending money on and we're not. He even says it."
"And he got a new boom box. A big silver one with separate speakers." Rafi held out his arms to show how big. "And a new cookbook because the old one was starting to fall apart. So it's funny - he has two cookbooks just alike."
"Which cookbook?” I asked, not really wanting to know, “Joy of Cooking? The white one with red letters?"
"Yeah. The big white one."
Yeah. The cookbook he absolutely had to have, he replaces a month later. And after taking the two boom boxes we did have, they aren't good enough for him, so he has to go out and buy a third. But I don’t see him giving us back any of the little ones.
After I've really been trying to be extra fair. When I found that I had half of a set of sheets, I sent my half over to him so one of us would have the whole set.
Ah, well, if this is how he makes himself feel better, it's better than some of the alternatives. I guess I shouldn't have expected anything different.
At the end of my freshman year of college I got a ride home from my ex-boyfriend with whom I had recently agreed to be ‘just friends’. He would be staying overnight with my family to break up the long drive to New Hampshire. I was bringing him a clean towel, and he was sitting on Paul’s bed, and as I came closer, we looked into each other’s faces and I almost found myself just melting into his arms. The closeness of six months of ‘going together’ had gotten to be a habit for my mind and body.
There’s nothing like that, now with Seth, is there. A quarter century wasn’t enough to establish any habits of dependency or attraction or reaching out. Sad.
On Purim, the holiday that commemorates the miracles that Hashem did for us in Queen Esther’s day, people bring each other a basket of goodies. The minimum requirement is that there be at least two kinds of food – requiring two blessings. An apple and a cookie would do. Of course, people have fun making memorable manot for their friends and neighbors. Most people put in candies and Hammantaschen cookies and maybe a small bottle of wine or jar of honey. Maybe add a balloon or a Purim noisemaker. Wrap it all up with cellophane and ribbons and add a funny card.
Well, this year, Seth included something a little unorthodox (no pun intended) with his. A disclaimer.
The children and I decided that people get enough sweets, so we gave a bag of mixed nuts, and a couple of other goodies, and a note wishing everyone a NUTTY PURIM from the Dekels.
As the children and I were assembling our baskets, Rafi asked, “If we put ‘from the Dekels’ and Abba puts ‘from the Dekels’, how will people know what’s from us?”
“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “I doubt if Abba is sending to any of the same people we are.”
“All the same people,” Rafi said.
“Well,” Leora said, “Nobody would think Abba would wish them a nutty Purim! And who cares if we get credit for his huge baskets without having to pay for all of the stuff!”
“Yeah, Ima! You should see what he’s giving out!” Rafi exclaimed, wide eyed. “He’s giving everybody a big bottle of wine – not kiddush wine. Expensive wine. And a bar of fancy chocolate and those cookies Leora loves – like wafers but like a little roll. Plus the normal stuff. And sesame candy and those little halvahs.”
Purim comes out pretty expensive even if you don’t pull out all the stops.
Leora and I took a basket over to her friend's family. Zahava's mother told me how surprised they had been when Seth came by with a basket. And they were even more surprised when he declared, “I just want you to know that I have absolutely no idea why Shlomit left me. As far as I know, everything was OK until she suddenly got dissatisfied for no reason.”
When Nora brought a basket over to us, she said Seth had been to them, too, with a huge basket and the same disclaimer. “It was a good thing Sam said something at that point, Shlomit, because I was just standing there with my mouth open. If I had said anything, it would have been, ‘Well, I could give you a few examples of why they left you!’”
Oh, well. It’s a strange time. It’s hard to know what’s acceptable behavior.
Dear Kay,
Thanks for your letter. We're doing well.
You asked how Leora is doing in school. It will be a long haul to make up for seven years of underachieving, but you know Leora – when she sets her mind to something, nothing deters her!
She did a research project for school, to present to the class, and chose the topic, "Abuse in the family". She said alot of wise things that she has, unfortunately, learned first hand. Wisdom born of pain:
- - Abuse in the Family - -
Why do women stay with their husbands if they beat them and their children? Why should they take the risk of staying with them, especially if they have children? The thing is, they're too scared: "I can't do it alone," "Maybe he'll change," "Where will I go?" and other excuses.
The children think they did something wrong.
There are many families in Israel in which the father beats the children. Often the husband beats the wife, too.
You might think the statistics are wrong because you don't have any contact with families like this. You think you go to a school that would not have families like that in it. But that's not true.
Help them. If you know of someone with a problem like that, talk to the children and the mother. Don't let them think they're alone. THEY'RE NOT. There are places that can help them rebuild their life. Leora
After I read her essay, Leora looked me in the (teary) eye and said, "Ima, we know you did it for us."
You know what - I pray now. For years I couldn’t, except for a wordless ‘help me’ wail. I felt so far from G!d and from myself - how could I expect the two to meet? Now I ask for guidance, and it helps me to list the things I'm trying to do better for Eli, Leora and Rafi.
I keep thinking of your description of our childhoods as "charmed". The past three months of my life have certainly been charmed. In fact, since I bought the house. Things just work out! Our little family now has what is essential in any relationship - respect and generosity. That's what the kids and I never got from Seth.
Tomorrow we go to Jerusalem and finalize the divorce. After twenty-four years of trying to keep it together, the whole thing unraveled in less than three months.
Love, Shlomit
I’m already nervous over how tomorrow will go at the rabbinate – the final step where Seth actually gives me the bill of divorcement. Now this worrisome phone call from Seth: “I want you to give me the money you owe me for the car now, already.”
Yeah, right! That puny $5000 is the only leverage I have to encourage him to go through this final step. “The agreement says you’ll get it as soon as the divorce is final, Seth.”
“How do I know you’ll give it to me, once you have the gett?”
“You have a legal document that stipulates that I have to pay you.” I’m not about to remind him that I have no legal clout whatsoever to make sure he gives me the gett.
“Talk to your lawyer. Zed will reassure you that you’ll get your money, Seth.”
Is he trying to pull something or is he just as nervous as I am?
"I'm divorced." - "I'm a divorced woman." - "I divorced my husband." - "Seth - my ex-husband..."
I've been walking up and down the living room – trying out my new status. The D-word still sounds just as ugly as it always has. It's still just as hard to believe I've actually done this thing. Me! Shlomit! A divorcee!
I just got back from the rabbinil court in Jerusalem. Seth presented me with a gett - a bill of divorcement.
It was funny. I guess my heightened emotional state made me grasp at any cause for emotional relief, but - Seth did me the favor of being typical Seth, right up till the bitter end.
The four of us drove up together. Yehuda came along to be my witness, and we picked up our cousin Joanie's husband, to be Seth’s.
When Dave got into the car, Seth informed him, "I brought a kipa for you." A skullcap. Dave and Joanie are Conservadox. They keep Kosher, but the children go to non-religious schools and Dave doesn't wear a kipa except in synagogue or when he's making Kiddush on Friday night. As far as I know, this wasn't an occasion when you would expect a non-orthodox Jew to put on a kipa. Seth handed it to him, and Dave, rolling his eyes with his voice, said, "Gee, thanks. That's ... not something I would have thought of." '...in a million years' was implied.
Is Seth trying to win another round at this late date? He could have won the whole shebang by not always trying to win rounds. Is he trying to make the rabbis think his witness is more kosher than mine?
"Do you remember everything?" Seth asked Dave, next.
Huh?
"Sure, Seth. Got it all down pat." Dave patted a crinkly shirt pocket.
Yikes! A chill went down my spine. As far as I know, these witnesses are only appearing to confirm that we really are who we say we are. What could Seth have had Dave memorize for the occasion? I certainly hadn't primed Yehuda in any way ...
Of course, we had to wait for an interminable length of time, once we got there, while people walked in and out of rooms and names were called.
Finally, Seth and I were called in for the first stage, which was to work out the wording of the gett - a piece of parchment that the man presents to the woman as proof that he no longer considers her his wife, and she is free to marry another.
The part of the document that is not standard is the list of names of the two parties. Anywhere else, this would be a relatively straightforward inquiry. But here in Israel, a wandering Jew has his Hebrew name and maybe a Yiddish name. His civil name in the country where he was born, in the country where he grew up, and here in Israel. The family name he was born with, the one he wound up with at Ellis Island, which he might still use as his professional name, and the Hebraicized form he uses here. Any nicknames he has ever had. Plus auspicious names that might have been added when he had scarlet fever and his parents feared for his life. Every name and every permutation must be listed. So the guy can't come back later and say, "I never gave her a gett! This woman is still my wife!"
So the preamble might identify the husband as Moisch also known as Moishele also known as Misha also known as Micha also known as Michael also known as Mike also known as Moshe also known as Mo... Malumid also known as Milkovitch also known as Miller, also known as Melamed.
Ours wouldn’t be as complicated, of course, because we've only ever lived on two different continents.
The Rav, with just the right blend of sympathy for our plight, respect for protocol, and rabbinical wisdom and humor, asked for Seth's identity card.
Ah. First snag. Seth's name as it's written on his ID card is kind of strange. When we came to live in Israel, they looked at Seth's US passport and transliterated his name into Hebrew. Seth is actually a Hebrew name, pronounced, 'Shet'. He was one of Adam's sons. ‘King James’ wrote it as Seth. And the clerk at immigration saw 'Seth' and transliterated that as 'Seet'. So his name here, officially, is 'Seet', and Seth signs his name that way, but of course nobody actually calls him 'Seet'.
Or so I had thought.
The Rav peered at the name and copied it letter by letter, and asked, “'Seet?' Your name is ... 'Seet'?”
"Yes," Seth said, very definitely.
"It's an unusual name." The Rav frowned at the ID and handed it back. "So ... that's what people call you? Seet?"
"Yes."
"And ... are you known by any other names?"
"No, just ... Seet."
"No Hebrew name?"
"Yes! Shmuel Ben Yaakov."
The Rav wrote it down. "And other than when you're called up to the Torah in synagogue on Shabbat morning, does anyone refer to you by your Hebrew name?"
"I don't only go to synagogue on Shabbat morning!" Seth cried, emphatically, "I go all during the week, too!"
Curiouser and curiouser. For two reasons. Number one, why would this Rabbi care how often Seth prays. And, two, it's blatantly untrue! A religious Jewish man prays with a minyan of ten men three times a day. Our neighbors go over to the neighborhood synagogue before work. Most try to find a minion to pray with after lunch at work, and in the evening they get together again at the local 'shul'.
Seth goes precisely once a week. Saturday morning. In fact, he ridicules anyone who wastes their time going any more often than he does, and he refuses to be pulled into the post-prandial minyan at work.
Maybe someone told him that he should try to impress the Rabbi with his piety.
"So, everyone calls you ... Seet or your Hebrew name. No other names?"
"No."
I was wondering if it was in my place as soon-to-be-ex-wife to intervene, but the Rav had now asked for my ID card and we duly inscribed all of my names. Hebrew and English, married and un-, full and nick.
The Rav sent for Yehuda and Dave to come in. Obviously, from the bored, just-about-done-here look about him, the Rav expected this to be a mere formality. No one would bring along a witness who didn't know who he was, right?
The Rav addressed Dave formally, pointing at Seth. "Who is this man?"
Dave answered, just as formally, "Itzhak!"
From the fact that the rest of us double took, Dave knew that had been the wrong answer.
"Itzhak?" asked the Rav, surprised.
"Yes! No!" Dave looked helplessly at Seth for a moment. Seth was furious of course, at his ineptitude. I know where that name came from – Seth’s father’s Hebrew name is listed (incorrectly) on Seth’s ID card as ‘Itzhak’. Seth apparently gave Dave too many names to memorize.
"No!" Dave cried, then, "I mean Yaakov! No! Shmuel! Shmuel! His name is Shmuel! Shmuel ben Yaakov!"
"So ... you call him Shmuel?" asked the Rav, gently.
"Yes ..." Glancing at Seth to check that this time that he was on sure footing.
"Not Seet?"
"Seet???" Dave looked around as though to check that he was in the right room.
"You've never heard him called Seet?"
"Uh ... I don't think so ..."
"So, when you, you know, meet each other," the Rav said slowly, after a pause to think, "you see each other, and you want to say hello to him, so you say, 'Hello … Shmuel'?"
"Uh ... well ... sometimes ... I guess ... maybe ..." I wonder – is there a penalty for perjuring yourself in front of a beit din?
The Rav sat back in his chair, closed his eyes for a moment, and took what Jessica tells pregnant mothers is a 'cleansing breath'. "What else might you call him?" he asked gently.
"Well, usually just Seth. I usually just call him Seth."
"Seth???" The Rav looked down at the document before him. "That's not one of the names we've got down here."
I wanted to laugh, but managed not to.
The Rav turned in desperation to Yehuda. My witness. "Do you know this man?" he asked hopefully.
Yehuda nodded, trying not to smile.
"And you call him ..."
"I call him Seth," Yehuda shrugged. "I didn't even know he had all these other names."
"You both call him Seth?"
Time for the s-t-b-x-wife to chime in. "Um ... I always call him Seth ..."
Seth / Seet / Itzhak / Yaakov / Shmuel just looked strained.
The Rav dragged out of Seth the fact that, yes, there are plenty of people who know him as Seth. In fact … just about everybody. He amended the document and told us to wait outside while it was written up by the scribe.
"Be sure not to speak to each other during the half hour you'll be waiting," he admonished us, as we left the room. Why should this half hour be any different from the past quarter century?
As we went out into the corridor, Yehuda said, "I'll tell ya, kid, when he asked me what your name is, I was this close to saying, 'Poopsie!' What a circus! What a circus! Hey - what was he trying to pull, anyway? 'Seet'? Come on! Was he paving the way to being able to back out of this somehow?"
"I don't know, Yehuda. Maybe he was just nervous. Or - that's just Seth. Make people work for anything they get out of you. I think he amandizes himself before breakfast every morning. I can't believe he would really want to wind up married to me again."
I'm glad I had that dose of comic relief. Because the actual ceremony of accepting the gett from Seth was very poignant. We had to stand across the room from each other and look at each other. Seth held the piece of folded paper, as he had held out the ring twenty four years earlier, and repeated after the Rav, as he had back then. The formula is parallel - instead of, "Behold, thou art sanctified unto me," it's, "Behold, thou art cast away from me." The quarter century collapsed and it could have been a couple of months ago that we faced each other there in the university chapel, surrounded by family and friends. Certain that this would be the beginning of a union that would last our whole lives.
But the angry, disgusted look on Seth's face reminded me of all the anger and disgust I had seen there in the intervening years, and I knew it wasn't even a real marriage we were dismantling today, but only the illogical hopes I had been clinging to.
As we left, the Rav told us that we have to be careful never to be alone together, or a witness could claim that we are still married. Wouldn't that be the pits. Go through all this and a teacher steps out of the room for a moment at a parents' meeting and Brrring! we're back married again! We happen to be the only two people in a dentist’s waiting room and Bong! back married again!
I just realized that when I think back to the divorce ceremony yesterday - when Seth and I were facing each other across the room, I remember it differently from how it was.
I ‘remember’ the scene as it would have been three hundred years ago. Like the divorce scene from I Love You Rosa. I don't see a standard government room with standard government furnishings and fluorescent lights.
The walls I see in my mind's eye are rough stone. The windows arched. Seth and I face each other on an oriental carpet. He wears a caftan and sandals. I, a long dress and a scarf on my head. The bearded rabbis at the long table wear caftans and turbans.
Acting out an age old tragedy.
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Copyright 2020 by Shlomit Weber
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