Social services suspects problems in our family and investigates. Eli reveals that their father is hitting them. Social services recommend that we leave Seth, and warn me that if there is another reported incident, the children could be taken away from us. A few weeks later, Seth suddenly stops hitting them, and is even nice to Rafi.
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Homeless... at Home
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Dear Diary,
Having a wedding anniversary at the beginning of January encourages me to take stock each time the new year rolls around.
Seth seems calmer now that I'm distancing myself. He's more careful. Not all the time, but in general. Glimmers of self awareness here and there.
Maybe he has realized that he could lose us if he treats us badly. Or maybe he sees how it is to be treated coldly, and is trying to be warmer.
Or maybe, chimes in skeptical-Shlomit, it's just the next figure in our old approacher-distancer dance. Now that I'm not scaring him off with attempts at intimacy, he can risk being friendly to me. Or maybe his bad times just don't impinge on me as much now that I'm more aloof.
Or this could just be just one of his ups, and his next down is just around the corner.
It's nice that he's nice, but the price was pretty high. What's the point of having a nicer husband if I can only keep him lovable by being careful not to love him?
He still isn't much better with the children. I'm off his emotional roller coaster, but they're still on it. They still get friendly and happy and hopeful when he is in a good mood for awhile and then are crushed when he turns back into a bear.
Habits are so hard to break. Even after a year of trying to be more independent of Seth's moods, I have to work to keep myself from falling back into old patterns.
I've done a few symbolic things to remind myself. A mental string around the finger.
One of them is the way I deal with Seth's laundry. I sort the clean laundry on our bed, into a pile for each of us. Eli and Leora take their piles to their rooms and deal with their own clothes. Typically, Eli folds his and puts it into his drawers, and Leora adds hers to the pile in the corner of her room. I put away my clothes and Rafi's, and up until a year ago, I folded and put away Seth's, too.
But I've stopped. All he gets now is a pile on his pillow.
This represents that idea I had while I was pregnant with Rafi and was just doing too much physical work around the house. I was looking for things I could stop doing, which Seth would have to take over. Things he couldn’t just leave undone until I broke down and did them myself. It occurred to me that I could just let Seth do his own laundry. If he were doing one load a week, it would be that much less for me to lug up and down stairs, and to hang out on the line. I didn't implement the plan, of course, for fear that it would push him even farther into his depression.
Who knows whether that little bit of extra rest I could have gotten might have earned Rafi another couple of days in the womb. Fifty more grams. Maybe his hearing, and therefore talking, learning, understanding what's going on around him, would be just a little better. Maybe he would only get half as many sick headaches.
When we were first married, I mused, down by the table in the laundry room in the dorm basement, that folding your husband's undies was such a tender, intimate thing. Well, that's about as close as we ever got to intimacy, isn't it.
So, not only does my new laundry policy save me time - he requires that his handkerchiefs and undershirts be folded in a very specific way - but it reminds me daily that we're on a different footing, now.
In synagogue, yesterday morning, I heard the gabbai intone Seth’s Hebrew name.
“Did you hear?” I asked Leora and Rafi, “They’re honoring Abba by calling him up to the Torah! Here – Leora – stand up on the bench so you can see through the mechitza.” I picked Rafi up so he could see over the partition, too.
“See? There's Abba. He's going up to say the blessings for the Torah reading.”
“What does that mean, Ima, ‘honoring’?” Leora whispered.
“Well, it’s … like saying congratulations. For being … um … a good …“
“Because he gave a lot of money to the Shul?” Leora asked.
“No … well, partly, or if someone helps out …”
“Abba doesn’t help anybody,” Leora pointed out.
“Well, they also honor … just … if you’re a good … um … person.”
Leora gave me a troubled look. By now Seth had said the blessing after the reading and was making his way slowly, proudly, back to his seat. Looking taller and broader shouldered than usual, draped as he was in his big tallit. All along his path, the men shook his hand, as is customary, often with an extra clasp to the elbow. “Congratulations!” He nodded graciously to each one, with great dignity.
Leora’s eyes narrowed. “Ima, they should have seen him last night when he got home from Shul when he pushed me in the chest. He yelled at Eli and tripped over Rafi and instead of saying he was sorry, or asking if Rafi was OK, he just said, ‘Stay out of my way, Idiot!’…” Leora looked back through the curtain to where Seth had gotten to his seat and was acknowledging half a dozen hands extended to shake his, to congratulate him for being such a pillar of society. Eli also had his hand extended tentatively, but Seth didn’t notice. Eli took back his hand and looked down, fighting tears, probably assuming Seth was still mad at him for whatever it was that had upset him the night before.
Leora's gaze swept over the sea of tallit-draped, kipa-capped religious men, swaying to the rhythm of the next set of blessings, and responding with a powerful ‘Amen’ in unison. Leora looked back at me – her eyes wide. “Maybe all the abbas are like Abba?”
“Oh, no, I’m sure the other abbas aren’t … I mean … Well, we have to be quiet now, honey, OK?”
I could see from her gaze into space, that I had quieted her voice, but not her fears at how scary the world might be just beneath the surface. And how unfair that the community could honor, in public, a man who hurts little children as soon as he closes the front door behind him.
I just hung up from my little weekly phone call from Seth. It's Friday morning, the first day of the weekend in Israel, but of course I'm at work.
Being here alone, I can get more done in a few hours than in a whole day during the week because there's no one here to interrupt me, and because the mainframe’s response time is so good. And, frankly, since the alternative is to be home alone with Seth all morning, while the children are at school ...
But I would certainly not give up a day of my weekend unless I were chronically under hours.
Because I'm basically a single parent trying to hold down a job.
Yet, every Friday morning, Seth calls me at work and, with a seethingly angry voice, asks me when, or if, I'm planning on coming home. I really have to stay here until two today. Yes, I know Shabbat starts early in the winter. And yes, I know the weekly cleaning still needs to be done. He didn't mention the fact that Eli will have homework, and 'someone' will have to sit and help him, but I know that, too.
But Rafi was home one morning this week because he was sick again, and we were at speech therapy twice, and I have to make up the hours by the end of the month.
I was at Malki's house this afternoon, as usual. Ima says I spend as much time at Malki's house as I do at my house.
We were playing Barbies in Malki's room and we heard their front door open. Malki yelled, "Abba's home!" and she ran downstairs to see him.
My muscles got tense. "Abba's home" means something different in my house.
Malki called up to me, "Abba's going to twist us! Come on!"
I went downstairs and saw them out in the yard. Malki's Abba was twirling her around and around on the swing. Malki was, like, shrieking, and her Abba was smiling under his mustache.
It made me feel sad. Why can't my Abba be like Malki's Abba? I’m never glad to see my Abba. I guess it’s because he’s never glad to see me.
I saw a magazine article yesterday in the speech therapist's waiting room with a definition of mental health: "A sense of well being, awareness of reality, and behavior consistent with local norms."
OK. Before I analyze my spouse ... am I mentally healthy by this definition? A) Right now I definitely have a sense of well being. During the darkest years when I was alone with Seth and he was so depressed, I didn't, but if I had, I guess you could have accused me of falling down on the second criterion. B) I think I'm aware of reality. But maybe everyone thinks they are. C) Behavior. OK. I don't strive for conformity in all things, but hopefully my idiosyncrasies are viewed by others as being interesting or positive, and not weird or harmful.
But Seth?
A) When has he seemed to feel good about things? About life? About himself? Once he said that NYC makes him feel good. He must feel good at the lab.
B) Is he aware of reality? Well, one of us ain't, because our two realities differ. He throws tantrums for reasons that the rest of us can't see. He doesn't seem to see that he's hurting his children. When he's angry, he loses sight of the fact that we are his wife and children, with whom he will have an ongoing relationship.
C) Is Seth's behavior consistent with local norms? Seth is … different. Seth is weird. Sorry, but Seth is weird. Whether he can't, or just won't, he doesn't follow the norms. As Uncle Henry said when he visited … Seth is not 'normal'.
Has Seth noticed that I've been more aloof for the past year?
Last Friday, when I got to work, I remembered that I had promised to buy Leora a package of elastic so she can play 'gummie'. Two girls stand with a big loop of elastic stretched between their ankles, and the others take turns doing fancy jumps in and out of the rectangle.
I had gotten to work at six that morning and wouldn't be leaving until after the stores had closed for Shabbat, so I called home and asked Seth if he could go to the notions shop, while he’s downtown, and ask for a package of elastic. Have I ever had the chutzpa to ask him to pick up something for us downtown? Anticipating the disappointment on Leora's face made me brave.
When I got home, Leora came running, eyes shining: "Ima! Look what Abba got for me! A new gummie!"
Leora's happiness is always infections. I was so glad Seth had bought the elastic - even though it meant going into a shop full of women and asking for something that was out of his realm of expertise - that I gave him a big hug and said, "Thank you!" Just as I would have done any time before a year ago. Even though, when you hug Seth you get as much response as you would from hugging a telephone pole.
This time I got a response, though. Seth said, "Well! This isn't like you, lately."
Leora called me, just then, to watch her do gummie - the elastic stretched between a chair and Rafi's ankles - to save me from responding to his response. So ... I guess he has noticed!
Part of my campaign to get myself off of Seth's emotional roller coaster is, when he starts ranting and raving, not to start looking for something I might have done.
The past couple of weeks, I've had the perfect opportunity to practice. Seth is in a foul mood as soon as he gets up. I get dressed and come downstairs as soon as I get up, to check my email and work on DRILL SERGEANT, the educational game package I'm writing. We won't even have spoken yet that day, so he couldn't be upset by anything I had said or done. Then yesterday morning I was here at the computer, and he was in the kitchen fixing his coffee, sputtering and muttering. Crash-banging the cup and spoon around. Huffing. I sat here repeating my little mantra, "It's not my fault. I don't have to feel guilty. It has nothing to do with me."
Then his sputterings started evolving into words I could almost hear, but tried to ignore, until one sputter sounded like, "She does it for spite!"
OK. In a normal marriage, how would a wife react to a normal husband who said that? I went into the kitchen and asked casually, "Uh, what's the matter?"
He turned on me furiously, "You always leave the milk out."
"Yes, when I remember to. It cools down the coffee so much, when it's fresh from the refrigerator. I figured you would like it a little warmer for your coffee, and I definitely don't want the children's cereal to be so cold."
He looked at me as though I were the village idiot. "Milk spoils if it's left out."
"Seth, I'm sure it's cold enough in the kitchen on a winter morning, that it won't spoil from being left out for half an hour. The children will finish up that liter on their cereal anyway."
"Nobody asked you what you think. Just keep the milk in the refrigerator where it belongs," he muttered as he stomped upstairs to get ready for work.
OK. What does a woman who wants a normal marriage do now? How do I talk to him about talking?
He didn’t react very well when I brought up the problem of paying the bills a few months ago, but after storming out of the room, he did actually change his policy. He seems to have arranged standing orders at the bank to pay the bills. I still check the napkin holder now and then, but no new bills have been appearing there for me to pay, and our power hasn't been cut off, so I guess they're being paid somehow.
So last night, when we were in bed in the dark but he hadn't yet fallen asleep, I told his back, "Seth, I want to break your ban on communication to say just this one thing: it's clear to me that it's this restriction, more than anything else, that has caused our marriage to fail."
He was silent. My heart pounded even faster. What was he going to do? I was attacking the core of his whole philosophy on interpersonal relationships. A dozen possible reactions skittered across my mind before he finally asked, in a low incredulous voice, "You consider that our marriage has failed?"
I sat bolt upright in bed. "Don't you??? Seth, it's ... Look at us! Look at everything! Don't you???"
"No," confused, sad, "We've had many good years together, Shlomit. You've always seemed to be pretty happy."
"But ... but Seth!" I didn't even know where to start!
So he doesn't look at his behavior - just at my reaction to it. And that's after forbidding me to react to it.
Doesn't he realize that people try to be polite? Kind? To overlook other people's faults? He's never going to get an accurate idea of whether he's OK just by using other people as a mirror. Heck! He's the big optics specialist! He should know that even the best mirrors aren't 100% reflective. He should know that you have to make sure there aren't filters of politeness in between you and what you're trying to see. Or the distorting lenses of wishful thinking.
My thoughts were swirling, and I realized that Seth had proposed, "If you think we need to talk more, we could sit down on Monday evenings after the children are asleep and talk." Of our whole empty week, he picks the day when my folk dance group meets.
"OK." I guess one evening a week is better than nothing. I can't expect him to take the rash step of just saying, OK, let's talk freely from now on. And, of course, if these sessions really improve our homelife, it’s well worth missing dancing for.
The children and I are at the Science Museum in Haifa. It's great. Low budget. Hands on. The children have learned much more than they did last summer at the big fancy Science Center in New Jersey. There, they mostly watched, passively, the evidence of high tech. The exhibitions there display the imaginations of the museum planners, but don’t call on the children to use theirs. The NJSC is impressive, but the only exhibit the children still talk about is the cockroaches.
But here, in this old converted school building, they spent the afternoon actually moving mirrors and flipping filters and pulling pulleys and blowing bubbles and winching weights and combining chemicals and positioning prisms and pushing pendula and angling air pucks and riling up ripple tanks and getting zapped by VanDeGraff generators and duck-talking through helium.
I found myself, a few minutes ago, strapped down to earth with all of our backpacks and canteens and the remains of the lunch Ruthi had packed for us, standing in front of an exhibit, as I pondered the nice weekend we had had at the kibbutz.
Seth wasn't feeling well on Friday when we were getting ready to go to Ruthi’s. He wouldn't say what the problem was. It got later and later, and he couldn't decide whether he would go or not. Finally I said that if we didn't leave, we wouldn't get up there by sundown when Shabbat started. He said he just didn't think he was well enough. But instead of canceling the trip, as he seemed to expect, once I had determined that he would be all right if left alone, I just came up here with the children.
Last time I took this drive alone with the children, once when Seth was abroad, people at work commiserated with me for being cooped up in the car with three exuberant children for four hours. But we love the trip! We sing and talk and listen to bee-bop. Eli and Leora expound on things they have learned in geography class about the terrain we drive through. The time flies.
The whole of Shabbat at the kibbutz was relaxed and spontaneous.
Then yesterday evening, when we found out that the schools would be on strike today, Ruthi suggested that we come here to the museum. I'll go in to work late this afternoon and work a few hours, and make up the rest of the hours on Friday.
I started musing about Seth, as I stood there in front of a demonstration of normal probability distributions. I wish I had had this demo when I was TA-ing stat back in grad school. The children dump 1000 metal balls in the hopper at the top and they clatter down through an array of pegs. As it hits each peg, a ball bounces to the right or the left. It's totally random. And each and every time, the balls bounce down every which way, but wind up in the normal distribution so dear to every statistician's heart. The bell curve. Most of them clumped near the middle, because on average the bounces to left and right pretty much cancel out. But there are always a few little balls way off to the sides. Just their luck.
For these balls at the fringes, the lefts and rights just didn't cancel out, even though the balls are identical to all the others. The phrase 'odd ball' popped into my mind, and I suddenly saw my husband as one of these little metal marbles.
Each of us, with everything that comes along in life, reacts somehow. Each sickness, being left with a baby sitter, new food, new sibling, new house, successes and failures at school, social occasions. With most of us, the mistakes and the good moves average out. The times when a problem makes us rally, versus the times when we get discouraged and react badly. The times when we learn from our mistakes versus the times when they become part of our behavior pattern.
Even if we were all exactly alike to start with, and even if all of our experiences were identical, we would wind up in a bell curve. Some of us would wind up happy and well adjusted and a blessing to those around us. Normal. And others … not.
Seth has had some bad luck with his eyesight and some things that happened to him in early childhood. But for most of us, that would have been balanced out if we had had his intelligence, stable supportive family, available education and money, loving wife, good children, good health and career opportunities.
I guess he just had the bad luck to be ... again the clatter of balls bouncing down through the pegs ... that little odd ball there.
How different each child in a family can be! Eli at age eight and Leora at age seven seem to be opposite in just about every respect – probably the reason they get along so well.
Rafi, at age four, is interested in everything to do with armies and warfare. His favorite toys are guns and swords and soldiers and tanks.
Eli's favorite computer game is Hopper, where you try to get a rabbit safely across a road and a river. Rafi can sit for hours leaning on the 'fire' key, blasting enemy planes that appear relentlessly above his AA installation.
As Rafi gets older, his obsession with power and conflict seems to be shifting from the unseen enemy lurking out there somewhere to the power structure of our household. Lately he has been asking me questions like, "Why do the men tell the ladies what to do?" or, "Right, the Abba is the Ima's boss?" or, "Right, the Abba works more so he gets to decide what to buy?" or, "Right, Abbas hit more than Imas because they're stronger?" or, "Men are big and strong so they're the leader of the family, right?" or, "The Abba is like the general and the family is like the troops, right?”
I usually do the Jewish thing and answer his question with a question. "Do you think the strongest person should decide, or the one with the best ideas?"
But I doubt if my theoretical musings will hold up against the reality he sees before his eyes.
I should be at work, but I have to digest this. I just came back from a meeting with Leora's second grade teacher.
When Leora entered first grade, I braced myself for the hours of work Eli had had to put in every evening, to learn colors, numbers, letters, arithmetic facts, and reading. But Leora breezed through her homework, and by the end of first grade, was the best reader in her class.
But this year, Leora never seems to have any homework. I'm not getting notes from the teacher about uncompleted assignments, so I guess she's really not getting any. But I get the feeling that she's not learning much at all this year. She reads easy books in English, but wouldn't read Hebrew at gunpoint.
So I went to talk to Yona to find out when they're going to get into gear. We're well into the school year.
"Leora doesn't seem to get any homework,” I pointed out, “and I'm concerned that she's not ... learning much this year."
Yona looked at me pityingly. "Oh, I don't expect Leora to do homework."
"What? Why not?"
"Look. She doesn't disturb the rest of the class. She seems perfectly happy to sit and watch the other children."
"But ... how's she going to learn anything?"
That pitying look again as Yona put her hand gently on my arm. "You know, don't you, that Leora will never be able to learn the way a child with normal abilities can learn."
"What? But ... what do you mean? Last year ... in first grade she was the best reader in Dvora's class. In English she reads and writes at her grade level, even though she was born here. In math - she's fantastic! She helps me explain Eli's third grade math to him. She has such insights! Such intuition! She'll hear me explaining something to him - something she has never encountered before, and she'll say, ‘Ima, I'll tell him.’ And she explains it from a different direction, and often he understands it better that way. And if not, she starts over from another direction entirely. At home she ..."
"SHHHH ... shhh Shlomit. Your daughter is a sweet little girl but you know she can't read. The sooner you admit it, the better. You're not helping her at all by … telling yourself stories."
"But how ..."
"Don't worry. She'll be promoted to third grade along with the other children her age."
"But if she ..."
"Shlomit, if there were any chance that Leora would ever be able to do second grade material, we would keep her back. But there's no point. She doesn't disturb the class, so I suggest you just let her be.
"Are you coming to the activity tomorrow afternoon? Did Leora give you the note? It should be very interesting. A Sofer Stam is coming – he'll show us how he writes torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzzot."
"I ... guess. Maybe. OK. Thank you."
I stumbled home in a daze. Leora a slow learner? No! It's impossible! She's so tuned in to what's going on around her. Nobody who knows her would ever say she's ... retarded! I'm reeling. Is it possible that I’m really just living in a fool’s paradise?
I went to an activity at Leora's school today. And saw my daughter transform before my eyes. As we walked over to school, she chattered and skipped along beside me as usual. She quieted down when we entered the school yard, and by the time we entered the school library with the rest of her classmates, Leora had turned into a different child. She stopped talking, her body drooped, and she shuffled along beside me.
I sat on the little chairs with the parents, and Leora crawled up onto my lap. Silent. The other seven year olds were a chattering writhing mass on the carpet. Leora just looked on with her eyes half-closed and her mouth half-open. Leaning against me.
Yona came over and, speaking slowly and loudly, said, "Leora? Come, Leora, honey. Come and sit with the other children. Come sit." Leora didn't look up, or react in any way, but when Yona led her gently by the arm, Leora went and sat where Yona indicated. Still with that dead look on her face.
The presentation was interesting, but Leora showed no flicker of reaction to any of it. Part way through, she came and climbed back onto my lap. My poor Leora.
During Seth's first depression, I often found myself, at work, just sitting, lost in thought, digesting Seth's strange behavior. A few times I caught sight of my reflection in the screen of my computer terminal, and I had that same slack, hopeless, tuned-out expression. Like Leora, I had managed to function at home, but when I was away from the situation, and didn't have to be on guard, the fear and hopelessness took over.
I've been sitting with Leora over her workbooks. I don't know how far the class has gotten; we're just starting at the beginning.
In her math workbooks, I see that on some pages she has put zero in each blank. In her reading comprehension workbook, she writes her name sloppily in the blanks, here and there, sometimes in Hebrew and sometimes in English. Most pages are just blank.
I turned to a page with a picture of a snowman, and asked Leora to read the paragraph so I could help her with the questions at the bottom of the page. She said she can't read it. Couldn't even start to sound out the first word. Said she doesn't remember what any of the letters sound like. So I read it to her. And I read her a question, but she said she hadn't understood anything I read. It's easy to check if a bilingual child understands something - they should be able to give a translation.
I read the first sentence of the paragraph again. "Dani and Esti woke up and looked out the window." She said she didn't understand. I asked what it is about the sentence that she doesn't understand. She said she doesn't understand anything about it. She just knows the story is about a snowman.
I'll talk to the guidance counselor at the school. There must be something we can do.
For the past month, since the milk incident, instead of going dancing, I sit across from Seth at the kitchen table once a week so we can talk.
He usually starts with, "Well. So how was your week?" or, "How's work?" As though he hadn't seen me since the last time we talked. If I leave the conversation to him, he launches into a tale of something that happened in the lab that week. Usually a case where he has outwitted someone. There was a self satisfied gloating over an episode where he wrote a paper for publication, and gave it to someone at the lab for peer review. They suggested changes that Seth admitted could have been made in a matter of minutes. But Seth made the reviewers wait over two months, till they started getting nervous that the date for submission was going to slip by. "They'll think twice before they tell me how to write my own papers!" he crowed.
When I was in high school there was a boy who would call me up and regale me with the latest prank that he and his buddies had played on their chemistry teacher. I wondered, then, why guys think a woman will be impressed to know they are capable of acting like two-year-olds.
I've tried to steer the conversations to some of the things that need to be discussed, but he just gets annoyed. I guess if I want these sessions to continue, they have to continue on his terms. But if we're just going to chat about the weather, why must it be such a formal, once a week pow-wow?
Yesterday someone at work, who had met Seth at the Hanukkah party, mentioned that they sometimes see him on Fridays walking home from town with his big green back pack. They didn't mention the broad brimmed LLBean hat and the bright yellow walk-man strapped to his arm. Shorts and sandals. A hold-out for the typical Israeli look, though in this day of air conditioners, everybody else has gone over to jeans and sneakers.
I smiled wistfully at the image. It's not the first time someone has indicated that they know Seth as one of the town's characters. Like the guy who dresses all in green - from the frames of his sunglasses to the laces on his green sneakers.
I smile because ... I'm one of the city's characters, too!
I know that in the neighborhood they think I'm crazy - all my antics with the children - playing guitar out in the carob orchard, climbing trees, burning newspapers out in front of the house with a magnifying glass, demonstrating centrifugal force with a bucket on a rope, riding a 12" bike around the block, knees at my chin, to check whether we have fixed the brakes.
One Shabbat morning I sent the three children off to synagogue with some pretzels for a snack. In little draw-stringed bags left over from a birthday party at kindergarten. As they left the house I said, "If you were horses, I would just give you your snack in a feed bag like this ..." I looped the strings over their ears, so their giggly chins were in the bags. When I got to synagogue and slid into the seat next to Malki from next door, she grinned, "Your three had everybody cracking up when they marched in here with birthday sacks hanging from their ears!" "Oh, No! Did they still have them on?" I had been sure they would take the sacks off way before they got to synagogue!
I'm the crazy middle aged lady who tears around town on a bright pink bicycle plastered with stickers the children contribute. Skirts flying. Ragged backpack stuffed to the gills. Baby seat still on for more cargo space, though Rafi doesn't fit in there anymore. Often humming or talking to myself or grinning at the memory of something one of my children has said.
I'm wistful because ... Seth and I could have been the city's odd couple, together! Just being ourselves. Harmless eccentrics. People would smile as we passed.
Thirty years from now we could be the old eccentric couple hobbling around together, entertaining the neighbors.
It could have been so good! Life could have been fun.
Something else is going on with Leora. Other than just her underachievement at school.
My sunny, open, spontaneous ‘light’ is, lately, anything but. She is closed and suspicious and dishonest. If I ask her a question ... "How was school?" "Is Yona still out with the flu?" "Did you get your feet wet crossing the street?" ... she stops to think. Narrows her eyes. Gives a vague answer, or an untrue answer.
She cheats at the board games and card games we play on Shabbat.
Last week she asked if she could take her new doll to school. I said no, because it might get lost. When I was straightening her room on Friday, I noticed that the doll is missing. When I asked Leora where she is, her expression clouded over. Suspicion. "I don't know." Did you take her to school? "I don't know."
She's in a cocoon. I feel that my daughter is slipping away from me.
Is she just, at age seven, entering a new stage? Is it the influence of her classmates? Is there something I'm doing? Is this a legacy of Eli's first grade year when, nearly every day, I sat and worked with him, and poor Leora took care of baby Rafi?
Or ... is it because Seth is so often brutal with her? Has she lost faith in my ability to protect her, so she's protecting herself?
What to do?
Tread carefully, first of all. I don't want to scare her any farther away. Do special things just with her? Hug her. Talk to her. The relationship we have had until now, of Mommy with her little girl, has to expand into a real mother-daughter closeness.
I have to show her that I do trust her. Compliment her for her many good traits and the nice things she does.
I've just got to win her back!
Nora and I saw Prince of Tides last year, but it bears only a superficial resemblance to the book I'm reading now. In the book, the romance between a handsome southerner and his analyst is just a subplot to a case study on the long term effects of child abuse.
The author was looking in our windows. The father is a brutal, frightening creep. The mother tries to appease him. Denies that anything is wrong. The three children pull together into a mutual protection society, as mine have, relying on each other for emotional support.
At one point, when the youngest brother is grown, once Barbara Streisand has him healthy enough to try and digest his childhood, he talks with his father. The father says, "Your mother always poisoned your minds against me!" This is exactly what Seth said my friend Naomi was doing.
When the son points out, "But Dad ... you hit us," the father just grunts. Like Seth, ignoring the relationship between how you treat a person and how they will react to you.
The oldest brother dies, the sister winds up in and out of mental hospitals, and the youngest is struggling to mitigate the effects of his childhood, and get on with a normal life.
My children are living a nightmare of a childhood. The most important thing for a parent to give a child is a healthy, safe environment. And I haven't managed to give them that.
On religious issues it is said, tongue in cheek, that if you go ask a Rabbi whether something is kosher, it probably isn't. So you might as well not ask.
I've been wondering for ... well, I guess for most of this 'marriage', if Seth is trying to force me to leave him, but I'm so stubborn that I just stick.
Should I just ask him? But if you get to the point of asking whether a marriage should break up … isn't it pretty much broken up already?
Seth was so viscous with the children today, and so hateful to me after they were in bed, and all for no apparent reason.
He came out of the shower and beamed his hate look at me. As though disgusted that I exist. "Seth!" I said, more sharply than I've ever spoken to him before, "Do you want a divorce?"
He looked away from me. Stared at the wall. "No." As though I'd asked if he wants meat loaf for dinner.
"Then why do you treat us as you do? Why do you act as though you're trying to convince me to leave you?"
"I don't want a divorce, OK? You asked me and I told you."
"Then please act as though you want this family to stay together."
Is this a symptom of the 90's? That a husband and wife can discuss the possibility of divorce so unemotionally?
Where you would expect some emotion, Seth is flat. Then for no apparent reason, these furies well up in him and tear the heart out of the family.
Leora stopped me to ask a question about the book I'm reading to her. "Where's the boy's father? They only talk about the boy and his mother. Is the father dead?" she asked almost hopefully.
"No ... they mentioned at the beginning that the parents are divorced."
"What's 'divorced'?" I'm sure any American seven year old would know what divorce is. In some ways Israeli children are so sheltered.
"Well, it's like getting un-married. Sometimes it's better if the parents don't live together. They ..."
"Ima?" Leora gasped, bouncing her wide-eyed excitement as she knelt next to me, patting my arm, "Ima! Really? You can get un-married?"
"Well, yes ... if ..."
"Ima!" Pure joy shining from her eyes. "Then ... why are we with Abba???? Why don't we just get divorced with Abba????”
"Uh ... Well ..."
"Ima, really! Let's just get divorced with him and it will always be like when he's on a trip! I'm going to go tell Eli!"
It's conventional wisdom that a marriage should be preserved for the sake of the children. That doesn't hold for us, does it.
Seth and I went to a concert last night at a kibbutz near here. I had seen posters on the way home from work last week - the Brandenburgs. The summer that Seth and I were on campus, there was a free chamber music concert series, and we went to most of them together. Not dates. Just friends going together.
When you listen to music next to a compatible person, it enhances the experience. Just knowing that the person next to you is experiencing the same things and that they're enjoying having you next to them.
But now it's different when I sit next to Seth. Even hearing the familiar Brandenburgs, I couldn't forget all that has happened since that summer twenty years ago. During the concert, when my mind flickered to what Seth might be thinking, sitting there beside me, I felt repulsed. From the evidence, his thought patterns are alien to mine.
My taste in music isn't very sophisticated. I like Bach because his works are almost predictable. Just the right blend of pleasing surprises and expected rhythms and patterns.
As you want in a relationship, I guess. Familiarity and predictability you can relax with, and an occasional pleasant surprise to spice things up. Our relationship is Bartok at best. Mostly it's the cacophony of the tune-up before the music starts. After two decades, we're still out of tune.
Rafi came to me yesterday with a set of little flannel teddy bears Mom made for the children. There's a Papa bear, a Mama bear and a Baby bear. They have snaps on their hands so they can hug and hold hands.
"This is the teddy bear family!" Rafi announced.
"Nice." I said. "Are they playing Ring Around the Rosie?"
He thought about that. "Yes," he decided. I went back to the dishes, but he was still standing there looking at the bears in his hands.
"This isn't the Abba,” he said, holding the biggest bear out to me.
"No? Who is it?" I asked.
"The big brother. They don't have an Abba!"
"They don't?"
"No. Just the Ima bear and the children bears."
"Oh, that's too bad. Where is their Abba?"
"They don't have one. They like it. They're happy."
"Oh ...” What am I supposed to say now? "It's nice that they're happy ..."
"I have two Abbas!" Rafi announced.
"You do? Who's the other one?"
"Eli. Eli is my good little Abba, and Abba is my big bad Abba!"
"Oh, honey! Here. I can finish the dishes later. Let's go play." I dried my hands and squatted down to hug him. Poor little Rafi.
Most people think Seth focuses his experimentalist energies on his laser. Little do they know he's also perfecting floor washing techniques. For the past few months, he comes to me every couple of weeks and describes a new technique that he wants me to use when I wash the floors. Sweep first or vacuum first or nothing. With or without soap. Air dry versus squeegee dry versus damp rag dry versus dry rag dry. Endless variations. And I've been going placidly from one method to the next. Doesn't matter much to me, and if it brings peace at home it's worth it.
Till this week. His latest method is - no bucket. It involves wringing the huge floor rag out under the tub faucet each time I finish a room.
Well, my hands are just not big enough or strong enough to wring it out completely, so the rag just got dirtier and dirtier with each room, and each floor was left duller and streakier than the last.
I went down stairs and told Seth that I need to go back to the next-to-last method because I can't squeeze the rag well enough to get the dirty water out.
"Just do it!" he spat out, not even looking up.
I found myself pushing four rooms worth of dirt around on Rafi's floor and it just seemed such a stupid waste of time. The floor looked better before I started.
OK. Deep breath. Reality check. What’s a normal thing to do, here. So I went downstairs to get the bucket and do it right.
As I walked through the kitchen where Seth was mixing up cornbread batter, I walked quickly and held the bucket in the hand away from Seth. But he looked around and demanded to know what I needed the bucket for.
"To re-do Rafi's floor, Seth. I can't get it clean with your new method."
"Fine. I'll do the floors. Don’t ask me how I’m going to get supper cooked!" He crashed the bowl down on the counter and stomped up the stairs. Oh, no. This is the worst. When I don't perform to spec and he has to 'do it for me', there's always hell to pay.
"Seth! I'll do it!" I followed him up the stairs. "I just can't get the rag clean under the faucet!"
"I. Said. I'll. Do it. Forget it. You had your chance."
So he’s crashing around washing the floors. And I sat down to write this. It's going to be an awful Shabbat.
I don't mind doing housework. I like it. But he puts so many restrictions on it that it takes all the fun out of it. Why didn't I just go with the no-bucket method until he thought up another one? Now he'll never switch, come hell or dirty water, and this will be a weekly source of grief. I guess I'd better start doing hand muscle exercises.
Benji and I used to sit back-to-back at work, but since he moved to the developers group, we mostly communicate through the messaging system on the mainframe.
TO BEN > RU there?
FR BEN > Yup. Already at the rat race.
TO BEN > How was yr Shabbat?
FR BEN > Great. 8 and slept. Do I dare ask how yours was?
TO BEN > Don't ask. Awful. I didn't wash the floors right.
FR BEN > I figured it was bad, when you were late. Rafi didn't want to be left at gan?
TO BEN > Yeah. Remind me to tell u about a talk I had with his teacher.
TO BEN > How broad r your shoulders this AM?
FR BEN > Shoot.
TO BEN > Remember I told you about Leora's question, ‘What's divorce’ and that she wants us to 'get divorced with Abba'?
FR BEN > Yup ...
TO BEN > And how Rafi came to me with the Teddy family who were happy they don't have an Abba ...
FR BEN > Uh-huh ...
TO BEN > This'll be too long for a message. I'll write a note. I'll get some work done, and then send it over coffee.
FR BEN > Bye now, Kimosabe!
TO BEN > Thanks!
*** *** START NOTE FROM SHL TO BEN *** ***
Last night I came upon Eli weeping in the bathroom, as he was getting dressed, after his shower.
I asked what's wrong, and he said, "Ima, I know that half of a person comes from their mother and half comes from their father. That means half of me is from ... from Abba." He dissolved into tears. "Ima ..." he wailed, in a whisper, "You don't see any of Abba in me, do you? I'm not at all like him, right? I'm not going to be like that! Am I? But if half of me is from him ..."
"Oh, Eli!" I hugged him, stalling for time to think of something to answer. "Hey. Maybe you got all of Abba's good parts! He's smart and strong and healthy and ... you're well organized, as he is. You certainly didn't get that from me!" I smiled at him, but he wasn't amused.
"Ima," he said soberly, "If I were half from you and half made of Abba's good parts ..." he passed his hand down the middle of his chest, solemnly, "I would be half a person!" He stood there staring at me. A haunted expression in those sad eyes of his.
So, Benji, I've heard scary things from all three of them in just over a week.
Of course, long term, I worry about what the violence is doing to them. How it's scarring their development. But my immediate fear is that he will hear one of them say something like this and he'll beat the living daylights out of them.
We've had this tacit agreement not to refer to Seth's behavior. But they're crying out for help. I wouldn't put anything past him if one of them broke the rules and mentioned his problems out loud.
I'm sorry. I shouldn't dump on you like this. It feels good to share it, though. Thanks for being there inside my terminal!
*** *** END NOTE FROM SHL TO BEN *** ***
TO BEN > Are u asleep or shocked or did I send that note to somebody else by mistake?
FR BEN > I'm thinking. I have a 2 word answer, but ya ain't gonna like it ...
TO BEN > Shoot.
FR BEN > 1) Tell 2) him.
TO BEN > Yikes!
FR BEN > Note follows.
*** *** START NOTE FROM BEN TO SHL *** ***
Years ago I was having a bad time with one of the kids. Everything he did at that age drove me crazy. Then one day, J told me that if I didn't watch out, I was going to lose him. I wouldn't have any relationship with my son in the future.
Sure. At first I sputtered and denied that she was right, and pointed out how annoying he was and how he needed to be set straight. But once I settled down and thought about it, I realized she was right. I started to work on the relationship and we have a really close friendship now. I am so so grateful that J risked my anger and told me. So glad.
I could have lost him, Shlomit.
Seth can't necessarily see the mess he's making of his relationship with his children. But if you wake him up to it, that one act might be priceless to them and him.
OK. There are my 6.5 agurot worth.
*** *** END NOTE FROM BEN TO SHL *** ***
TO BEN > I thought you always had good relationships with your children. I see your point but I'm petrified.
FR BEN > Go for it!
TO BEN > Gulp! I'll see ...
Rafi was sobbing hysterically and clinging to me as I tried to leave him off at kindergarten Sunday morning. The assistant teacher can usually coax him away from me with the prospect of helping her get out the clay or straighten the dress-up corner. But this time he really didn't want me to leave him.
"It's Sunday mornings that are hard for Rafi," Bat Sheva observed. "I guess he gets used to being at home, on Shabbat."
I never know how much the school needs to know. Three enough? Six too many?
"Shabbat is often difficult at home," I told her. "Their father ... loses his patience when he's with them all day."
"I know what you mean!" Bat Sheva came nearer and lowered her voice. "These men ... there have been times when my husband has gotten so angry! And it only gets worse as the children get older. You're only seeing the beginning! Often I've had to step in! 'Think about what you're doing to your children!' I tell him."
This sounds like another vote for taking Benji's advice and telling Seth that the hitting has got to stop.
Bat Sheva and I talked some more about how scary it is when your husband loses control. I was imagining scenes in her house like the scenes I see on a daily basis at home. I even wondered if I'm exaggerating my problems. If a level headed, religious woman with so much experience with children seems to think this is just the way men are. If she can mention violent episodes so casually.
Then, seeing that Rafi had calmed down, and that more kindergarteners were arriving and that she had to start some activities, Bat Sheva took Rafi's hand to lead him into the building. In parting, said, "Well, they might yell, but at least they don't hit them!" She shook her head. "There are some men who actually hit their own children!"
Bat Sheva looked back at me to nod good bye, and saw my surprised, confused expression. She reacted with a look of shock. "He … hits them????" I nodded imperceptibly. She stroked Rafi's blond head and bit her lip. "Oh. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, poor little thing. He even hits little Rafi?" I nodded again. "And Eli? And Leora?" Bat Sheva has been second mother to all of my children. "Oh, Shlomit. Oh, that must be so hard. So hard to watch. Well, come, Rafi. Come help me change the date on the big calendar." She turned to me. Gave my arm a parting squeeze. "Good luck, Shlomit. HaShem will help."
For her mouth to G!d’s ears.
I guess I'm not as independent of Seth's feelings about me as I had hoped.
Israel, at age 45, is more patriotic than older countries. We still have to fight for the right to even have a country.
Our synagogue has an annual dinner after evening prayers. Everything blue and white – tablecloths and napkins, cake frosting. Little flags in the humous and tehina. It's traditional to wear blue and white clothing. The men wear white shirts with blue slacks, and the women dress in blue and white, and wear white head covering.
Last night the children and I were scurrying around to get ready to go over to the synagogue. At the last minute Leora discovered that she didn't have any blue and white hair clips, so I made some loopy bows from blue and white yarn and tied them to a couple of Eli's kipa clips. Now we were all presentable!
Seth was hunched impatiently by the front door by the time we all came bouncing down the stairs, the children clutching flags they had made in school. Seth threw me a disgusted look.
"I hope you realize you look ridiculous!" he spat out, and then slumped out the door.
I guess it's true what the children say - sticks and stones can break your bones but words... can break your heart. It was right there, inside my chest, that I felt ... broken.
I followed with the children, wondering if I really did look ridiculous. Leora and I had picked out my outfit – a blue blouse and white skirt and vest. OK. I might not wear such an outfit normally, but it's blue and white. Seth's mother gave me the skirt and it's probably the first time I've worn it. My lifestyle is disastrous to white clothes.
I've always wished Seth would notice how I look - especially when I take pains to look nice for him. Well, I guess he finally did. Oh, well, maybe by next Independence Day I'll have achieved more independence.
Last night when I brought the clean laundry upstairs, Seth was in the shower and, of course, the TV was on. A documentary. As I sorted clothes, I watched. Then I stopped sorting and went closer to the set. The show was about people who go into uncontrollable rages.
A man told about how he literally blanks out when he gets angry. There was an incident where he and his wife were discussing what time they should leave the house in order to get to a movie on time. And the next thing he knew (literally!) he found himself kneeling astride her, on the floor, punching her in the face and head. From her condition, when he noticed what he was doing, it was obvious that he had hit her many times before he came to his senses.
A psychologist told of other cases. Some even worse.
Wow. Is this what happens to Seth? Does he really not know that he hits the children when he's enraged? Was he being truthful, as far as he knew, at Sandy when he said he doesn't hit the children?
By this time, Seth had come out of the shower and was watching as he dried off. Suddenly, he strode around the bed and barked, "How can you watch such garbage?" and turned off the set. I looked at him but he didn't meet my gaze. It's obvious that he saw himself in those case studies.
We went out for Malawah last night for Rafi's birthday.
Leora had pointed out, excitedly, a couple of weeks ago, the sign taped up at the Yemenite fast food stand, announcing that they now serve pizza, too. Maybe we're not the only family who can't agree on what ethnicity of food to get. "Abba will eat pizza - so maybe he'll let us go here for Rafi's birthday and we can all have what we want. Not like last year."
Seth actually agreed to try it.
So Seth ordered his Yemenite pizza and we ordered malawah and jahnun. (The owner looked at our Ashkenazi faces and said, "to go easy on the skhug, right? Not too spicy?")
We had taken a few bites when Seth got up and strode toward the street, muttering, "I'll be back." He returned a few minutes later with a large book he had bought at the shop across the way, opened it, and started reading as he ate.
I gazed at him, trying to imagine how Seth would react if I did something like that.
So even though the children and I had 'won' the round of where we eat, he is still the boss in that he can spend money as he pleases, with no need to even explain why heiss leaving the table.
My friend Zahava at work is in the process of adopting a baby. She asked if I thought you could really feel that an adopted child was your own, and really love her as much as you could love a child who was your own flesh and blood.
We talked about nature versus nurture, and rights vs responsibilities.
Responsibility is something you have by virtue of having brought this human being into the world. A legitimate way to fulfill this responsibility is to give the child up to the care of someone who can give her a better home than you could provide.
But rights ... as always ... you must earn.
Which, of course, brings me to Seth.
He's the sperm donor for my children. He created them with his knowledge and consent. So he has responsibilities. Which he seems to ignore.
But he claims rights. Claims the respect a parent deserves from his children. If we split up, he'll surely claim visitation 'rights'. He claims the right to punish them. The right to order them around. He wouldn’t feel he has the right to treat someone else’s children as he does his own.
He doesn't seem to feel any responsibility for their education. Never helps with homework. Never even helps with the annual pain-in-the-neck of buying schoolbooks. Seth never goes to teachers meetings. Absolutely doesn't lift a finger to help with the extra effort needed to help Eli. Never offered to take on any of the running around to specialists.
He even falls down on the most basic responsibilities of all - that people feel even for their pets. To consistently provide food and safety.
It's all backwards, isn't it. He demands rights that he has never earned, and shirks the responsibilities that are incumbent upon him.
OK. I’ll just have to make sure I’m fulfilling my responsibilities. And, gulp, I have to admit that Benji was right. I have a responsibility to confront Seth about his treatment of our children.
Last night we had our weekly talk session. After some chit chat, I got up the nerve to say, "Seth, I have to tell you something. About the children."
"What about them?" He leaned forward – ready to go drag the offender out of bed and punish him for whatever infraction I was going to tell him about.
How do you tell someone the blatantly obvious? "By the way, you're hair's on fire ... you’re stark naked ... you have bananas in your ears."
"Seth, the children ... are being affected … by the way you treat them."
"What's THAT supposed to mean?"
"Well, until recently they have bounced back to loving you and wanting to be close to you, each time you're nice for awhile. And then they're crushed and disappointed when you go back to ... to how you usually are. But they're showing signs that ... they're not going to spring back forever."
He was looking down, playing with the cloth I had used to dry the table after supper.
"I ... I know what they're going through, Seth, because it happened to me a year ago. I bounced back each time, for sixteen years, waiting out the anger and hatred, and if you were a little nicer one day, I would forgive everything, and try to like you. But I finally got worn out with being jerked back and forth, and for the past year, even when you're nice for a change, I can't forget all the nastiness, and I can't warm up to you. I'm just trying to coexist, now. Any affection I ever tried to feel for you has finally been squashed flat.
"Eventually, Eli and Leora and Rafi will snap, too, and ... you will have lost them. As ... as you have lost me."
Silence. How was he going to react to this bombshell? This wasn't just a gripe about how he forces me to wash the floors or pay the bills. I was breaking his policy that we ignore and deny his strange mood shifts.
But all he said was, "OK. I'll try to talk to them more," and made a move to hoist himself up to walk away.
"You don't have to talk to them more, Seth. Just ... hit them less."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, don't hit the children."
Tisk of annoyance. "But, what do you mean, exactly, when you say that?"
I felt like giving his stock answer: 'I mean what I said'. But I'm not trying to squelch communication. I'm trying to get this point across. Is this really some subtle psychological child rearing principle that I only understand because I've taken psychology courses and read Children: the Challenge? How to get my mystified physicist husband to know what I mean by 'don't hit the child'?
"I mean ... OK. Seth. Don't let the distance between your hand or foot, and any part of Eli's or Leora's or Rafi's bodies, get to be zero."
"Fine." He shrugged as he stood up. The talk session was over.
OK. Benji said he would need time to digest this. It could have gone much worse. I'll keep my mouth shut and my fingers crossed for awhile.
Seth is sitting out on the patio with Sam - Nora's husband. Seth’s protege at the lab. Seth often calls Sam up as soon as he gets in the door, to continue their conversation from the bus, even though they're together all day at the lab.
Lately, Seth mentions Sam in connection with everything, even if it's not relevant.
It's like the always-together friendships of adolescents. Or, now that I think of it, it's like the smothery way he was with me until we had children. The way it would have been if I had gone to work at his lab as he once suggested.
Maybe, since I stopped my adoring act, he has had to find someone else to adore him. I replaced his mother as caretaker, and now that I'm not fulfilling my forgive-and-forget-all function properly, he has found a new source of unconditional acceptance.
Anything that will potentially put Seth into a good mood is good for all of us.
Seth is in Germany for two weeks.
Whenever Seth is away, I laugh. Anything from giggles to attacks of hysteria that leave me weak and the children surprised. And often it happens at totally inappropriate times. When someone knocks over a cup of juice or a window gets left open on a rainy day and things get wet, or I burn a batch of cookies or someone tracks mud in on a freshly cleaned floor.
I laugh at any situation that would invoke Seth's wrath or disapproval. For a moment the feeling of dread rises, and then …
Relief. We're safe. Nothing is going to happen. We will just wipe up the juice or scrape the bottoms of the cookies or run the mop over the floor once more, and the problem is solved. It's not going to trigger a bad weekend. Nobody's going to get hurt. We're safe.
When we moved from the apartment to this row house, I wondered how we would split up the Friday cleaning chores.
"You'll clean the house and I'll take care of the yard," Seth decreed.
"Oh, but I'd like to do some gardening, too," I protested. Otherwise, what's the point of buying a house with a yard?
"Fine. We'll see."
Back then I still thought that 'fine' meant that he thought my comment was reasonable, and that 'we'll see' meant that he would consider my point of view.
Seth doesn't do much with the garden, but it remains his fiercely guarded realm.
Except that whenever Seth goes on a trip, the children and I tackle the yard. Well, 'tackle' is a bit strong. We sort of sneak up on it, rationalizing as we go. "Well, we have to water, but we can't water until we sweep. And there's no point in sweeping if we haven't raked, because junk will just blow back onto the sidewalk. And if we've got to rake anyway, we might as well trim a few branches first ...
We try to do the gardening at the beginning of his trip so that by the time he gets back, entropy will have smoothed things out a bit, and our incursion into his realm won't be so obvious.
I love to scrape out handsfull of mushy leaves and wind-blown trash from around the bushes. The before and after difference is much more dramatic after twenty minutes of garden cleanup, than after anything I could do in the house.
This time, Eli asked if he could actually plant something, instead of just cleaning up. I started to give reasons why not, and then decided there was no reason on earth not to (except the reason that's 5'10" tall with thinning blond hair and Goldwater glasses). Ten years ago, when we were considering buying a house with a yard, the whole idea was so there would be a place for our potential children to play, right?
So the children and I went out and bought seeds and some small plants and little plastic picket fences to go around each child's plot.
It's such a pleasure to see the children work. Eli is experimenting with a desert watering system he saw on TV - involving a tent of plastic sheeting.
The little plots make me smile every time I come home. Our dinner conversation makes us sound like a bunch of old farmers. Rafi is talking about getting a goat. He knows how to milk one, from a class trip to a nearby moshav.
If the dreams all come true, I'll never buy another vegetable, and we'll have Leora's flowers on the table every Shabbat. And, of course, goat cheese.
Last night, I had that ominous feeling that I was ‘a-commin' daaown’ as Gomer Pyle used to say.
Sure enough, this morning, I had a raging fever and was weak as a kitten. I literally couldn't lift my head from the pillow. Oh, no. And Seth is away. How will we manage?
I nudged Eli, next to me in the multi-bed. "Eli, could you and Leora make your own snacks, and Rafi's? I'm not feeling so well."
He looked at me. Felt my head. "Leora!" He woke her, "Ima's sick!"
She sat up. "Poor Ima!"
"We have to make the snacks! Come on!" Eli scrambled out of bed.
"Eli," Leora called over her shoulder as she dashed into Rafi's room, "you make the sandwiches and I'll get Rafi's clothes out for him. Rafi! Go do pee-pee." She called down to Eli, " Make chocolate goo sandwiches! They're easiest and everybody likes them! Be careful with the bread knife!"
I drifted off, and then, seemingly a second later, Eli was standing by me with a cup of juice. He told me that he and Leora would take Rafi over to kindergarten, and then they would go to school. Unless one of them should stay home from school to be with me? And here's some juice. "Wow! You guys are great," I whispered. "Did you all eat something? Did you get your books together for today? Just leave the cup on my bedside table."
Just then Leora came in holding Rafi by the hand, all dressed, with his little snack pouch over his shoulder. "Eli and Leora got us all ready for school!" Rafi crowed, exhilarated by the emergency. "I fed Pepsi and the other cat."
Leora held him back, "Ima can't kiss you, Rafi, you'll get her germs. I'll kiss you good bye. No!" she said firmly, seeing Eli put the juice cup down next to me. "Ima, you have to drink. You have a fever!" She let go of Rafi's hand and came to bring the cup to my lips. "Did Eli tell you? You should call Nora if you need help while we're at school. Eli, bring the phone over here."
After they clattered and chattered out of the house, I slept a deep sleep until they all came home at noon. Leora came up and asked, "Did you drink? Should I make you a bed down on the sofa so you can be with everybody?" I smiled to hear my own sick-room words echoed by my seven year old. I nodded. "That would be nice."
When I was installed on the sofa, and had drunk some more juice, Leora read to me and Rafi, while Eli set the table, heated up vegetarian schnitzel, and opened a can of corn. Then he announced, "OK. Lunch is ready!"
Leora turned to look and then rushed over to the table all set up for lunch. "Where did this all come from?" she gushed, immensely impressed.
Eli looked pleased and embarrassed. "I made it."
"Ima look! Eli made lunch! Come Rafi! Eli made lunch! Oh, good! Corn!"
Regretfully, I turned down their offer to make me up a tray. I just lay there watching them.
We can manage, you know? We're a team. Eli just turned nine. They can take care of each other. And they can even take care of me.
TLC - Three Lovely Children.
Abba is on a trip in Germany. When he goes on a trip, we pretend to be sad when he leaves, but really we're happy. I asked Ima how long he would be gone, and she said two weeks. Eli said, "I wish he would stay away for a year!"
Eli and I made a promise that while he's away we won't talk about him. We want to pretend we don't have an Abba. That it's always just us.
Ima smiles all the time. We can work in the garden. At night we all sleep in Ima's room and take turns sleeping by Ima. We're on vacation!
We stopped by Nora and Sam's last night for coffee.
Seth was explaining to Sam how he manages his investments. Every Friday he runs around town from one bank to another, checking this rate and that, and shifting money from one account to another. We don't keep money in our checking account, so if we need to write a check or take out cash, he must first go and move money from an account that pays interest.
Sam was looking more and more amused, but Seth didn't notice. Finally Sam asked how much Seth figures he earns with all these machanations. Seth said it can amount to as much as 50 shekels a month.
Sam guffawed. "All that for seventeen dollars a month?? It's got to take you a couple of hours a week. That’s not even minimum wage."
Seth was shocked that Sam was shocked.
Both of them were neglecting to consider the warm feeling Seth gets when he is saving money, and the pain he would suffer if he thought he were losing money. He would do it for seventeen cents.
... was the creak of a closet door opening.
There are two problems that keep me awake at night. One is Seth's bad temper that makes evenings and weekends so tense and scary. The other is that all three children are having problems in school. Eli with his learning disabilities and Leora who has gone on strike, and Rafi who is tuned out - they're going to put him into a special kindergarten next year. Well, yesterday, I found out that the two problems are related.
Eli is getting extra help at school, so psychological services does periodic evaluations. He and I met with the school psychologist yesterday. As usual, we were told that Eli has amazing strengths that measure practically off the scale, that he's extremely highly motivated and is a pleasure to work with.
He's in third grade, but his special teacher is using a sixth grade history text to help him with language and reading comprehension. She got the idea one day when she was helping some sixth graders in the same room, and she and Eli got into such an interesting discussion about what the eleven year olds were studying, that he had asked where he could learn more about Israeli history.
When Michal had finished reviewing the results of Eli's latest evaluation, she closed Eli's thick file and folded her hands on top of it. She sighed and looked at me and said, “There's more, Shlomit.”
“I’m wondering,” Michal said, gently, “if there is something going on at home that is upsetting the three children. So that their scholastic problems are made more serious by tension or fear or worry.”
I found myself willing my emotions not to betray our secrets, as I do when someone says something that could expose me as a convert to Judaism. I pinched the inside of my wrist, so that my emotions could concentrate on that, and I wouldn’t blush or otherwise display any reaction to the words I was hearing.
“Often,” she continued, “when you see a family of intelligent children of economically secure, well-educated parents, who all have problems in school, it's a sign that there is something wrong at home. Discord between the parents, death of a grandparent, illness of a parent, a move to a new neighborhood.”
"Well," I reminded her, "Eli has learning disabilities. And Rafi doesn't hear well ...” Maybe we can avoid facing this.
"Shlomit,” Michal glanced at Eli, "Eli's main problems in school are not related to his learning disabilities. His teacher says there are days when Eli just sits in class and weeps. Leora sits in class and does nothing. Her aptitude tests show her to be very intelligent. Brilliant, in fact. At least on a level with Eli. And Rafi - usually a child with hearing problems tries to compensate. Rafi intentionally shuts himself off and withdraws."
She gazed at me and then at Eli. "Can either of you think of anything that is happening at home that might be upsetting the family?"
Eli and I looked at each other, volumes of communication in a glance. Then we stared down at our hands. I chipped with my thumbnail at a place where the Formica was separating from the edge of the table. Silence in the room.
Finally, I mumbled, "Well, their father is sometimes ... is usually ... he often loses his temper with them. With us."
And Eli burst out crying and started shouting through his tears, “He always hits us! All the time! All the time! For nothing! We don’t even know what we’re doing wrong, and he just hits and hits! He’s always angry even when we’re good. He just yells at everybody all the time.”
Michal placed her hand over Eli’s clenched fists. I put my arm across his shoulders. Trying to comfort him, even though his sobs were echoed by heaves from my own chest.
“Even your sister?” Michal asked, “He hits Leora, too?”
“All of us. All the time. Leora even more than us. More than Rafi and me.”
Michal looked questioningly at me. “He hasn't hit me,” I answered her implied question.
Michal nodded. She assured Eli that this is just the sort of problem she is there to help with. Well, he has heard that one before. Sandy was billed as someone who could help, and nothing came of that effort.
Michal and I made an appointment to talk about what is to be done.
After all these years of trying to keep our family's problems a secret, I'm relieved that this has finally come out, because I know we need help. But I'm so embarrassed that Eli had to do what I should have done years ago.
I can't believe Ruthi and Nahum have a thirteen year old son. We had a nice weekend at the kibbutz with a party in the afternoon.
Except for one minor incident, Seth was OK.
During the party, all the children were goofing off. Ruthi's nephew from America had his bar mitzvah a year ago, and was showing the Israeli children some of the dances they had done there - four people join arms, and they twirl around in a circle. Two opposing children keep their feet on the floor, and the other two let their feet fly up so they're swinging around, horizontal.
Rafi wanted to do it, too, so Eli held him around the chest, from behind, and swung him around and around with his feet flying out in front. Rafi was squealing with laughter, and I was laughing and clapping along with the other parents, when Seth charged over, red in the face with rage, grabbed Eli's arm and dragged him over to the side. Rafi slid to his feet, disappointed, as his brother was yanked away. Seth raised his arm to hit Eli in the face, but then shot me a disgusted look, and lowered his hand. Instead, he snarled, "Just leave Rafi alone! Jerk!" and pushed Eli away.
I don't know what the problem was.
Seth and Rafi and I were on our way back from our Shabbat walk, coming down the hill toward Remez Street.
When Seth had said, "We'll go down the hill till we get to Remez and then turn,” my mind made one of those spooky associations. Remez street is named after a labor organizer from the early years of the nation, but the word 'remez' in Hebrew means 'hint'. I was musing that Seth had to keep going downhill with his treatment of the children until I finally gave him the hint that he had to turn his behavior around.
And then, walking behind Seth and Rafi, musing about the change that has come over Seth – he seems to have stopped hitting the children entirely - I did a double take.
Seth wasn't acting like himself at all. Instead of his usual stomping along, expecting us to follow behind, Seth was holding Rafi's hand and was actually talking to him. Looking at him. Listening to him. They stepped down from the curb to cross Remez and he put his hand protectively on Rafi's shoulder as though to steady him and guide him and protect him crossing the street.
Even when they were back on the sidewalk, Seth was ... oriented toward Rafi. His body had a hint of a curve as though to shelter the five year old. I just stared. This isn't Seth!
Maybe the alien that had invaded Seth's body has gone back to his home planet, and I've got my husband back?
Norman Rockwell could have put this scene on a Post cover and called it … Father and Son.
Seth was packing for his trip last night. I was sorting laundry.
The radio on his bedside table was on, of course, and a song came on that stopped me mid T-shirt. A rich operatic tenor singing a powerful love song. One of those songs that goes right into your chest and stops your breath, and brings tears to your eyes. I knew that Seth wanted to finish packing and get to bed, and would have no patience with a stupid mushy song about the L-word, so the left side of my brain tore the right side away from the music as a second male voice joined the first, and I continued my sorting. "Here are your blue …"
But Seth hissed, 'Shhh!' and sat down on the side of the bed and turned up the volume. The majestic song went on about how the memory of love will see you through the lonely times. I sat next to him to listen.
The words were as breathtaking as the tenor’s voice. Metaphors of what love is to different people ... a way of living … ‘some say love is holding on and some say letting go’. Even our present troubles were there – ‘Perhaps love is like an ocean – full of conflict full of pain.’ And the last line spoke to me directly: if ‘all my dreams come true … my memories of love will be of you.’
The music faded away and Seth and I sat there side by side in silence. Only slowly drifting back to this mundane world.
I'm not deluded enough to think that Seth was dreading missing me, while we're apart for most of next month. But maybe the song made him feel nostalgic, as I so often do, for the early days of our relationship, before the scary stuff started, when at least the potential for real closeness was there.
Seth's pained, wistful, far-away look convinced me that I was right, and seeing that his regret parallels mine, made tears start to my eyes in earnest. And gave me a jolt of hope that maybe we can work things out, if we both want to go in the same direction. If I can just find that narrow path through life that will allow me to defend the children and to accept Seth for what he is, at the same time. He only has to struggle with his demons enough that such a gap opens up, and I’ll do my darndest to find it and stay in it.
Music helps us think with a part of our selves that is in closer touch with our emotions than this verbal self is. A part that, until this moment, I had assumed that Seth had hidden away well enough that he could deny its existence. But here we were. Doing the unthinkable. Sitting there next to each other, both of us regretting that things have worked out so awfully when they had every reason to work out well.
"That's nice." I whispered, almost inaudibly, so as not to break the spell.
"Yes," Seth said, in a strained voice – not yet quite back, either, from where we had been. "You don't often hear two men singing to each other like that."
"Oh.” I replied, my consternation bringing me back with a thud. “Right. You don't."
I looked over at Seth, and he was staring out the window with a look of longing on his face.
So ... he wasn't thinking of me at all? But of some … male bond? The old high school days with Arnold? Or his intense friendship with Sam? Or maybe another colleague at the lab?
How embarrassing that I assumed he was thinking of us as those two voices wended and blended. Sometimes in unison and sometimes in harmony. Sometimes answering each other – either presenting similar ideas, or contrasting viewpoints, as can work beautifully in a harmonious relationship.
But … the truths of the song still apply, even if Seth’s romantic thoughts, just now, aren’t of me. If all my dreams come true and Michal can help Seth win his battles with … whatever … my memories of love, when I’m old and gray, will be of him. At the end of it all, when we have proven that love conquers all, we will be able to sing this song together, having experienced all of love’s vicissitudes.
And it will all have been worthwhile.
"Hey, you're here!" Benji greeted me as he passed by my desk, "Come eat lunch with me. These ingrates ..." he said, loudly enough to be audible over the partition, "went ahead and ate without me. Couldn't wait until my meeting finished up, could they."
"Yeah, OK. I should eat."
"You look as though you've lost your best friend," Benji said gently as we sat down with our trays.
I nodded. "Benji? Did you ever do something and ... you know it's either the best thing you've ever done in your life, or the worst, but you don't know which?"
He looked at me questioningly.
"I reported Seth for child abuse this morning." My voice sounded dead and toneless. 'Child abuse'. It's something you read about in the newspapers - not something that should have anything to do with my own family.
“Oh. That was today?” I had told Benji about shy, quiet Eli's uncharacteristic outburst to the school psychologist.
"Yup. So now it's official."
"What does that imply? What happens now?"
"They're going to start family counseling. And now that he's on record, I can't just sit back and be wimpy and let him hurt them, because ... if there's another reported incident, the children could be taken away from us."
"Also from you?"
"Well, yes, as long as I'm married to Seth, and their only home is with him. Obviously I haven't managed to protect them. I've been thinking for years of reporting him to the authorities so he could be forced into treatment. So it's good that Eli forced my hand. But ... what if it goes wrong? What will Seth do if he finds out that Eli reported him? The social worker promised not to tell him, but ... it's bound to come out somehow. And Seth already doesn't like Eli."
"Well, Shlomit, for what it's worth, I think you did a very brave thing."
"Well," I looked down at my plate, "I guess I'm finished pushing this food around. We can go upstairs. Thanks for your ear."
It's always in the back of my mind, these four years that Seth has been on his rampage, that if anything were to happen to me, the children would be at Seth's mercy.
He hasn't actually hit them all summer, since I warned him. He still 'charges' at them, as they call it. Bursting toward them, stamping, lifting his arm as though to strike. Growling. But he has been able to call himself back. I need to know that the children will be protected if I'm not around.
I have started to come out of my closet with my friends, but friends would hesitate to intervene. And they wouldn't have the authority, anyway. Now that social services is aware of the problem, hopefully Seth would be under supervision of some kind. But I think someone in his family should know the situation.
Seth was here in the US for two weeks of conference in DC, and now we're all together visiting his family for a few days. He'll fly home and the rest of us will head for my family in Ohio.
Since we're all together in Boston this weekend for a sort of impromptu family reunion at Jerry's house, I decided to tell Seth's two sisters in law some of what goes on between Seth and the children.
Mindy and I were making up the sofa bed in the study, last night, while everyone else was down in the den checking out Erich's new Nintendo, and I was just thinking this would be a good opportunity to spill the beans. I was wondering how to say, casually, "By the way, Seth is abusive," when Mindy lowered her voice and asked, "Shlomit ... how are things going between Seth and the children?"
I looked at her across the bed. "Uh … Not so well … He’s been better lately, but, in general, he's … not at all good with the children."
She sighed and shook her head. "Jerry wanted me to ask."
"He did? What has he …"
"Shlomit, years ago - when Leora was a baby - you were visiting us and Jerry noticed how Eli reacts to Seth's presence. He could tell that Eli was accustomed to dodging Seth's smacks."
"When Leora was a baby?" I repeated stupidly. Then Jerry and Mindy had noticed that Seth can be abusive before I was even calling it abuse. Eli was two and a half. The really punishing treatment only started when he was five.
"Jerry told their Mom that Eli flinched whenever Seth approached him," Mindy was continuing. "He hoped that maybe she would say something to Seth."
"Ah! He did?" Realization lighting up, like a spot light, the barrage of clippings she has been sending our way over the years about the dangers of corporal punishment. And the broad general comments she is always making, about how harmful it is to hit children, especially in the head, or to shake them.
I told Mindy about his mother's campaign. "I had been wondering if there had been violence in their family when the boys were little. That would explain her concern, and also, would be where Seth got the idea that this was a normal way to treat children."
Mindy and I finished setting up the bed, and went to join the others.
Jerry didn't think to talk to Seth? Or to me? I guess the family has been dealing with Seth in indirect ways for longer than I've been on the scene. I wonder what else is going on right under my nose that I don't suspect, or for which I’ve been finding alternative explanations.
Seth's mom's radar must have picked up on the fact that I was tattling to the other daughters in law. All weekend, she managed not to give us 'girls' any opportunity for private talks.
Becky does miles each day on her treadmill, and suggested a long brisk afternoon walk. I'm accustomed to biking every day, so I was glad to go along.
Mom said a walk sounded lovely. We warned her that we intended to take a long fast walk, but she said there was no reason to go too terribly fast, and called to Dad to get ready for the walk.
Becky and I walked briskly along, making sure to keep Mom and Dad out of earshot while we talked. Mom periodically called to us to slow down or wait, so we did, a bit.
I told Becky, breathlessly, from our pace and from the topic, what the past four years with Seth have been like. She had one piece of advice. "I say, ditch him."
At one point, later in the afternoon, Mindy and I were talking out on the deck, and Jerry came out. Mindy muttered, "Now he's going to settle himself down, and we won't be able to talk." Jerry came over and sat down. "So! What are you two talking about so conspiratorially out here?" Mindy turned to him and said, deadpan, "We're talking about sex, Jerry." "Oh," he said. "Well, I guess I'll see if any of the children want to go for ice cream ..." and he was gone. Neat lady!
I'm so glad I talked to them. Women always have so much in common. Neither of them knows Seth very well. (Well, I've been living with him for seventeen years, and I don't know him either!) But neither of them had any trouble believing that he would hurt his children.
When we got back to Seth's parents’ house in New Jersey, Seth said he had a present for me. I figured it was a clipboard or fanny pack or pen, from the conference, or from a booth at the trade show.
But it’s a huge stainless steel coffee mug. Nice. Not my style, but ... nice and ... big.
"It's insulated,” Seth said. "This top goes on and it will keep coffee at ninety degrees Centigrade for two hours or more. It's from the gift shop at the Air and Space museum."
"Wow. It's nice. Thank you!" I stroked the soft brushed-metal sides.
Wow, indeed! What has come over him? A real store-bought present! As I put the box down on Seth's desk, I saw a sticker on the top. '45.00'
"I hope that's not the price!" I joked.
Oops!
"It's high tech," said Seth, disappointed at my reaction. "Japanese."
"Oh! Fancy! I'll go upstairs and try it out."
Seth reached into his pack and took out another one, just like it. His. Ah. I see. So it didn't start out as a present for me. Even Seth couldn't justify spending forty five dollars on a coffee mug for himself, so he got one for me, too.
Sigh. If we were going to spend nearly a hundred dollars on dishes, I would rather have finally gotten proper meat dishes to replace the hodge-podge we’re using. But that wouldn’t impress the guys at the lab, would it.
Shlomit, now, stop! Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Maybe he's nostalgic for the days when we used to drink our morning coffee together.
I was setting the table for Seth's mother while she put the finishing touches on another hearty dinner for us. "There was a terrible article in the paper today!" she informed me. "A woman killed her poor husband. Stabbed him while he was sleeping. She claims he beat her for the fourteen years they had been married."
I had seen the story. What struck me was the woman's claim that her life in prison would be better and safer and freer than life with an abusive man had been.
"Her story just doesn't ring true," Seth's mother continued. "Why would she stay with him for fourteen years if he were really so mean to her? Why wouldn't she simply divorce him? Really! To kill him! And in his sleep!"
"Mom!” I burst out, my voice quivering. “You have no idea what it's like! You have Dad. You can't imagine what it's like to live with an abusive, unpredictable man. Leaving him … it isn't even a realistic possibility, if you're afraid of what he might do to you afterwards! And it certainly isn't ‘simple’."
She pursed her lips in disapproval at this show of emotion right there in her own kitchen.
"I was only saying, Shlomit, that there was no need for her to resort to murder! They could have gone to marriage counseling if there were misunderstandings between them. She could have simply told him that she didn't like the way he behaved. And, Shlomit, if she left him and he bothered her afterwards, I'm sure the authorities would step in. OK. Could you call the others? The roast is ready and I'm putting the salad on the table."
I don't know if Mom was trying to give me a message, or if she really didn't realize that I would see that story from the inside.
Even though she expects me to be a loyal forgiving little wifey, she wouldn't tolerate for two weeks the treatment I have gotten from her son for nearly two decades.
Seth hurt Leora, today, in the back seat of his parents’ car. This time, at least, it was for a specific reason. Leora had been singing, "There once was a farmer who took a young miss" – a song that her cousins in Boston had picked up at camp. Seth had told her to stop, thinking it was too bawdy for his parents to hear, and she didn't stop.
Seth gripped her arm in his vice grip. Leora was yelling to Mom and Dad in the front seat, "Why didn't you teach your son how to behave!" Only when she finally broke down and started crying, did Seth release her arm.
Dad, conveniently unable to turn around and see what was going on, because he was driving, said, "I guess Leora got her feelings hurt." If you can find an explanation for something, you don’t need to deal with it.
But that’s not the strange part.
Rafi had been sitting on Seth's lap, and without knowing it, while gripping Leora's arm with his left hand as hard as he could, and mashing his jaws shut as hard as he could, Seth was also gripping Rafi's little shoulder as hard as he could, with his right hand.
When Seth came out of his rage, he looked down at Rafi, who was crying and holding his shoulder. Seth asked, annoyed, "Why are YOU crying!" When Rafi pulled the collar of his shirt down and showed Seth the four pink finger marks on his chest, Seth growled, accusingly, "Where did those marks come from?"
"You were digging your fingers into Rafi's shoulder," I found the courage to tell him. We were in very close quarters, and I didn’t want to get him any angrier than he was.
"I was not!" Seth said, disgustedly, looking daggers at me. Of course there was no apology.
They always ask, "Where was the other parent?" Well, this one was sitting, frozen, BETWEEN Seth and Leora. I was promising myself that it couldn't be so bad, could it, with Seth's parents right there in the front seat of the Cadillac. It couldn't be so bad, could it, surrounded by all that civilized maroon plush.
I wish I had seen more of that documentary about uncontrollable rages, before Seth turned it off. He really does not know what he's doing when he flips out. I guess that's why it's called 'losing it'!
Seth returned to Israel, and the children and I flew out to Ohio for two wonderful weeks. We wound up our visit in the US, as always, with a few days at Seth's parents, before they brought us to JFK. We had checked in our luggage, and were all at the snack bar having yogurt - the four of us, Seth's parents, and his Aunt Esther. The children were chatting about things we had done in Ohio.
Then Aunt Esther said, "I'm sure you children will be glad to get home to your Daddy. You haven't seen him in two weeks."
Can you skid to a halt while sitting in one place? The four of us stopped talking at mention of Seth. I had been assuming we would have another twelve hours before picking up that yoke again. We sat back. Shrank down. Rafi looked at me. Eli and Leora looked at each other. We were obviously supposed to agree with that observation. It wouldn't really be a trick question in most families. Eli looked down at his hands in his lap. Then, with horror, I realized that Leora was going to say something.
But my fears, that she would lay the whole thing wide open, right there in the coffee shop, minutes before our flight, were unfounded. Leora was as diplomatic as possible, ending the uncomfortable silence without being too truthful. "Why should we be glad to see him when he's so grumpy all the time?"
I heaved a sigh of relief. I hadn't even noticed that I had been holding my breath. 'Grumpy' isn't bad at all, considering what she could have said. And obviously everybody here knows that Seth isn't the relaxed, happy type.
But, in a flash, Seth's mother was on her feet, shouting at Leora, "Don't! You! Ever! Ever say something like that about your father! Never! You have a good father! He's a good father! Do you hear me? Don't you ever talk like that about him!"
Leora just sat back. Wide-eyed with surprise at hearing her grandmother shouting, and to hear her telling untruths.
My own emotions, which in the last sixty seconds had bounced from joy to dread to worry to relief, touched on shock and went right on to anger.
A normal reaction, upon learning that a child dreads being with her father, would be to wonder why. What’s going on between them? What is the parent doing? Especially since his mother does know that Seth has problems, and she does know that Leora is a good, loving, respectful child. Mom's overreaction only shows that she does know that the children's fear of Seth is all too well-founded.
At that point, Seth's father suggested that we go to the gate, and leave-taking was abbreviated and cool. We're settled on the plane, now, and I'm scribbling these pages.
OK. He's her son. But he's a grown man who is in the wrong. And Leora is her own granddaughter. To defend an abusive man over a hurting child is abominable.
When Mom was standing there in that public place, scolding so uncharacteristically, I could almost hear her, thirty years before, defending him as a child: "Don't say things like that about your brother / cousin / playmate."
Poor Leora. Poor Mom. Poor Seth.
This morning, Seth and I made our coffee in our new mugs. I carried them over to the table. "Hey, Seth. This is strange ... feel my mug and feel yours. Mine is cold and yours is warm."
He felt the two cups. "You put way more milk in, Shlomit, so your coffee wasn't as hot to begin with."
"Oh, right."
But, a minute later, I saw that he had drunk a third of his, and mine was still too hot to sip. We checked, and sure enough - his sweet coffee was luke warm, and so was his mug. My unsweetened coffee was lip blistering hot, and my mug was cold as steel.
After some investigations with the candy thermometer, it was clear that my mug was performing well within the specs quoted in the brochure, and his wasn't insulating at all.
Seth sat right down here at the computer and wrote a letter to the company in Japan, outlining all of his experiments. "Your mug is under warranty," he reassured me, "They have to replace it for you."
"But it's your mug that's not insulating," I reminded him.
"Aw, come on, Shlomit! They were identical! You just happened to make your coffee in the good one."
"OK, but you've now decided that the bad one was mine."
"It doesn't matter, Shlomit! They've got to replace it. You'll get it back." He put the bad mug back in the box, and the good one in his brief case to take to work. "We can switch back when they send the replacement mug if it's so, so important to you to have this particular one!!"
"That's not the point, Seth. It's just ... never mind." I didn't need a forty-five dollar coffee mug in the first place.
It was so funny at lunch, yesterday. Funny ha-ha, but also funny peculiar. As I've written, Seth has been in a good mood since the summer. It's nice. Home is homier. The children are happier and the tension is shrinking day by day. He hasn't actually hit any of them this whole time, even when he does lose his temper. He is almost the person he was before we were married and he was in love with me.
I ate lunch with the group yesterday, at work, and as we found an empty table and arranged our trays, Zahava commented that I looked happy. I said that Seth has been in a good mood since July. They all know there's a problem with Seth - I guess each of them knows different parts of the saga.
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew the conclusion to which Vern and Benji were going to jump. When they're together, their great minds go along only one track.
"Ah-hah!" Vern said, rolling his eyes as he started eating.
"We know what that means, huh, Vern!" winked Benji.
"Has he been coming home late from work with flimsy excuses?" Vern asked around a mouthful of gulash. Actually, Seth has practically stopped working overtime. He comes home on the regular bus instead of the late bus. Though, I was surprised, the other day when I was at Nora's, to note that Sam gets home at 5:20, and Seth gets home ten minutes later, and we're closer to the bus stop. But that's hardly enough time to rendezvous with a paramour.
"Does he go out in the evening?" Benji asked. "… on flimsy pretexts," Vern filled in.
I pretended to look worried, "He says he's going to the doctor." Though actually, I happened to be at our family doctor a few weeks ago and said, jokingly, 'Whatever it is you're doing for Seth, keep it up! He has been in a good mood for weeks.' And the doctor asked who's Seth! When I reminded him that Seth is my husband, he asked whether Seth is a patient of his, and said he doesn't remember treating him.
"Is he dreamy, preoccupied?" Benji kept up the interrogation. Actually, Seth has definitely been preoccupied and dreamy lately.
"Even the normal annoying events of daily life don't annoy him? He just smiles when the children roughhouse?" It's uncanny, but they are definitely describing the Seth I have been enjoying for the past two months.
"Have you guys been looking in my windows?"
"Nah - these are all just the standard signs of being in love, Shlomit. Have you found panties in the glove compartment? Lipstick on his collar?" I gave Benji a punch on the shoulder from one side, and Zahava punched him on the other side for good measure.
"There is someone he works with ..." I mused, purposely leaving this colleague genderless. "With whom he sits and talks on the bus. Then he calls up as soon as he gets into the house to continue the conversation." Oohs and aahs from Vern and Benji. “And everything we do, Seth wonders whether his ‘friend’ would like it." I reddened as I realized what the dirty minded duo would make of that.
"EVERYTHING you do???" Yuk, yuk, yuk!
The lunchroom banter moved on to other equally unedifying topics, but I was musing about the parallels between Seth's suddenly blossoming friendship with Sam, and a romantic attachment that would explain his good mood.
Just about every evening, Seth super-casually asks Rafi or sometimes one of the others if they want to go for a walk. I had assumed this was the 'talking' Seth had promised to do with the children. Nora said, a few days ago, that she wishes Sam would take walks with their children as Seth does. When I asked how she knew about the walks, she said Seth is over at their house nearly every evening, often with a child in tow.
Oh, wow. I just thought of the scene in ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ where the wife is puzzled that hubby suddenly starts volunteering to walk the dog he has always hated. It turns out that it's an excuse to visit his girlfriend. Seth walks the children as an excuse to visit Sam!
My husband is really having some kind of romance with another man! That look of romantic longing on his face when we listened to that "perhaps love …" song WAS for Sam!
Why don't I feel threatened? I doubt if Seth was ever obsessed with me to such an extent. Maybe he has found himself another Arnold to replace the high school friend whose place I never managed to fill.
Sam is always with us in spirit. "I wonder if Sam ... would like this ice cream ... has ever eaten fondue ... is watching this movie ... has read this article."
Not a day goes by - not an hour - that Seth doesn't mention Sam. "Sam and I have the same Hebrew name," "Sam and I both graduated from Brooklyn Poly," "Don't you think Sam's parents are alot like mine? Both couples are from western Europe, both have family businesses," "Sam also likes Tom Chancy. I'm going to loan him this one when I'm through."
Maybe that's why I can't rev up any jealousy. It's not that Seth is in love with someone else. He's in love with aspects of himself that he sees in someone else.
I've heard Seth regale Sam with insider information from meetings he has with the bosses. It must be nice for Sam to hear all the executive gossip.
Here I had been assuming that this peaceful period was because I told Seth about the children's disturbing comments about him. But - maybe he's just happy because he has a friend.
Several times this past month Seth has come down hard on Eli or Leora when they're playing with Rafi. A couple of times they were squabbling, but mostly they've just been playing. Seth will yell, "Don't hurt him!" when they're just tumbling around. Not hurting anybody. Seth charges in and grabs one of the others by the arm and does his drag and throw thing - flinging them across the room, away from Rafi.
At yesterday's talk session I told Seth that it's great that he's forging a relationship with Rafi, but the others need to be close to their father, too. And he seems to be pushing them away.
Seth said, defensively, "Well, I like Rafi. I get along with him."
"Well, of course! I'm sure you love all three of them! It's just that lately, you ..."
"I wouldn't say that," Seth interrupted, disgustedly.
"What?"
"I wouldn't say I 'love' Eli and Leora."
"You wouldn't? You don't?"
"They just don't get along with me, that's all." He looked at my stricken face. "I know you have this theory that it's possible to get along with everybody. That's just not the case. Rafi seems to like me and we get along. The others are too rough with him."
Seth got up and walked out of the kitchen to signal the end of the talk session.
Last year, when I started to feel that Leora was slipping away from me - that she didn't seem to trust me or want to be with me - I worked hard to turn that around. I think it succeeded. Leora and I have a good relationship, now. I certainly didn't say, "If Leora doesn't like me, I just won't like her either, so there!"
And gentle, generous, loving Eli is very much like Rafi - so easy to get along with. Leora might hold her grudges against Seth, and might resist peacemaking efforts. But Eli would fall into Seth's arms and heart if given half a chance.
Seth's parents are here for the holiday.
Seth's mother keeps pointing out what a wonderful husband Seth is. Every chance she gets, she'll say "Seeee? You've got a good husband!!!" Even far-fetched things like when he jumped over a large rock at one point - "He's quite energetic for his age!!" She forgets, as I sometimes do, that this old man is only 44 - a year older than I am.
At one point I was telling Seth's parents as much as I know about what Seth is doing at work - bragging about what a reputation he has world wide. And Dad, this time, said "See! You have a good husband."
Since August, when Mindy told me that Jerry alerted their mother to Seth's abuse six years ago, I see her machinations over the years in a new light.
Several times during this visit she has resorted to her mantra - "Children turn out all right, no matter how you raise them." Seth got his Ph.D., was never arrested, never became a drug addict. But he's unhappy and his own children avoid him. When she first held that little bundle in her arms, was this really as much as she hoped for?
In the car yesterday, she stated, "I think Seth hits the children less than he did a few years ago." I guess she has noticed how he dotes on Rafi since the summer.
"How would you know how much he hits them?" I asked. "He never hits them when there are other people around."
Her response was to chant, "Well, it'll all work out. Children grow up just fine, no matter what." I was silent, seething, for a couple of seconds. I'll bet she never says a house pretty much cleans itself or a business pretty much runs itself. If someone has an incredibly important duty, and they're of the opinion that it'll take care of itself, that person should be fired.
Yesterday Leora and I were singing in Rafi's room. I was sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed, playing the guitar, and Leora was sitting on my legs facing me. We were singing some of the songs from Kay's tape. We sounded good! Leora's crystal clear voice covering my occasional fumbles with the chords.
Seth's mother came into the room and listened. When we finished, she said, "That was beautiful! Shlomit! I had no idea you play the guitar!"
Leora looked incredulous, "Ima plays all the time! When my hands get bigger, Ima is going to teach me how to play, too."
"Well, it has only been for the past year that I've been playing regularly. Since last time you were here ..." I faded out. It was Mom's comment that Seth isn't as bad as the worst cases you read about, that woke me from my stupor and got me to look for ways to reclaim myself.
When Seth's parents visit, they come armed with a list of people to visit – relatives and old school mates from Germany. We only ever see Seth's Israeli relatives when his parents are visiting.
Today Seth's parents had spent the day with Mom's cousin Ruth on their moshav up north. They were hungry when they got home, and Seth was working late, so we ate without him. Seth's mother was chatting about the visit.
"My cousin has it so hard!" she shook her head. "That husband of hers is a tyrant! Werner makes all the decisions in the house, and the purse strings are firmly in his grasp.
"And Werner decided that he likes Uri – the younger son – and not Reuven, and their poor mother is caught in the middle. When the boys were little, he was really hard on Reuven. Now he won't even let Ruth visit him. Why she accepts Werner's domination is more than I ..."
As she was talking, I felt anger rising up in me. Doesn't she realize that she is describing my marriage with her son? I felt I was going to explode if I sat there any longer, so I jumped to my feet and started clearing the table, even though not everybody had finished eating. I grabbed my own plate and the nearest serving dish and started for the kitchen.
"Well, some of us were just unlucky in who we wound up married to," I muttered as I left the room.
She really hadn't noticed the parallels, because she sounded startled when she said, "Oh! Shlomit! Seth isn't like Werner!"
It only took her a split second to see the commonalities, though, didn't it. Seth is exactly like Werner - even down to his growing favoritism of Rafi over the others.
Seth's father quickly started talking about how much the highways have improved since the last time they drove to the moshav. And we stuck to nice neutral topics for the rest of the evening.
Is it a family trait - the power imbalance in marriages? If I had only my parents' marriage to go by, I would be puzzled as to what 'power' in a marriage could even mean.
Today at work, Malka asked how long ago Seth's father had passed away.
"He didn't. He isn't. He's still alive."
"Oh - he doesn't travel?"
"He does! He's here - he's staying with us."
"Really? You've mentioned your mother-in-law every day since she arrived, and you haven't mentioned him once. I assumed he was out of the picture."
That comment made me realize that ruling the roost has swung between the genders, each generation, in that family. Mom says that when she grew up, her mother 'couldn't blink' without asking her father's permission.
Did Mom just inherit her father's roost-ruling gene, or did she vow not to have a life like her mother's?
And when Seth saw his father good-naturedly letting himself be bossed around, did he decide that no woman was going to hen peck him? Or did he just inherit his mother's need to dominate, without her charm and restraint and social instincts.
And my darling daughter Leora? Ha! That woman will never be under any man's thumb.
Well, it's over. This meeting that I've been dreading all summer.
I called Michal when we got back from the US, and told her that Seth had been better lately. He was keeping his temper with Eli and Leora, and was even acting like a real father to Rafi. I was hoping that she would say that in that case we could just forget the whole thing. But Michal said that davka now was the perfect time to address the issues.
Michal had promised not to tell Seth about Eli's report, during the meeting, but I was still worried.
But, OK, these social workers are professionals. Michal wouldn't have invited us all together if it was likely that it could - he could - explode in our faces.
When I told Seth about the meeting, I managed to make it seem important enough for him to miss three hours of work, yet routine enough that he wouldn't suspect that the agenda was to address specific problems. If he knew it was related to his behavior, he would refuse to go.
Eli knew what the meeting was about and was scared stiff. He dove for the chair between Michal and me, in the little circle, and scooted his chair closer to mine. Leora claimed the chair on the other side of me, and when Rafi puckered up, she told him he could have the best place of all - on Ima's lap.
Seth seemed bored with all the psychological mumbo-jumbo as Michal talked with the children about how things are at school and, skillfully wending her way around to it, how things are at home. I winced whenever she drew Eli or Leora out to talk about the abuse. Anything you say can and will be used against you.
Michal was very gentle and it only dawned on Seth slowly that we were discussing his treatment of the children. Seth let a look of raw panic flit across his face for a second. He looked accusingly at Rafi, and cried, “You're all just trying to make me look bad! I've stopped ... I'm much better now."
"Yes, that's good." Michal said soothingly. "Shlomit told me that since the summer you have been better with the children." Oops – now he knows that there has been communication that he didn't know about.
"I don't know what you're talking about. I don't know what she told you." Another glance at Rafi, on my lap, and then the hate look up at me, "I never did anything. You can't prove ..."
The way he kept flitting glances at Rafi made me cuddle my arms around him protectively.
"Seth,” Michal broke in, “We're not here to hash over what happened in the past. We're here to help the family get back on track. Now is exactly the right time to work on it. Now that things are more peaceful at home."
"Shlomit just thinks that every problem is like a bug in a computer program. She thinks you can just find out what the problem is and fix it and things will be better. It's not realistic, and she might as well stop trying.
"Anyway, she's the one who's causing all the problems in the house. She wastes time on all sorts of nonsense with the children and then she can't find time to get the house cleaned up by the time I get home. I don't think that's an unreasonable thing to expect."
So he's back to the state of the house as a reason for his grumpiness. I thought we had dispensed with that after Sandy.
"And she's the one who is destroying the atmosphere at home. For a year now, she's … not nice to me," he pouted.
Michal looked at me questioningly. "That's true," I nodded. "For the past year and an half I've been trying to distance myself from Seth's moods. I was ... drowning in them when I was trying to be close to him emotionally."
"Then it's not surprising that Seth is uncomfortable ..."
"But he has been better since I stopped bending over backwards to be nice to him. Ever since I stopped pretending everything is OK, even when it isn't. It was just after I was bold enough to talk to him, last spring, about the effects of hitting them, that he stopped. Things are way better at home since I 'stopped being nice'."
"Shlomit just wants to believe that she has suffered all these years. If she doesn't get her way in absolutely everything, she pulls a stunt like this," indicating the room.
"OK, Seth," Michal broke in. "We didn't come here to discuss your relationship with Shlomit. Though, of course, in a family everything is related to everything else.
"I would like to have all of you come here once a week so we can help Eli and Leora and Rafi to feel more self confident and to feel better about themselves. From talking to Shlomit and ..." Eli and I both jerked our heads toward Michal. "… and from the children's behavior in school, it is clear that some harmful patterns have evolved."
"No." Seth folded his arms across his chest. "I don't agree to this. No way. I see that all of you knew all about this and have been talking about me behind my back. She didn't tell me what this meeting was about, or I never would have come."
He stood. "Come on, Rafi. I'll walk you to kindergarten."
"I want to stay with Ima," Rafi whispered.
Seth turned and strode out.
"I'm sorry ..." I said, "I should have found a way to ... not to surprise him with this.
I looked at Michal. "So … what now?"
"Well, it's up to you, Shlomit. Hey, could you guys wait out in the waiting room for a couple of minutes while I talk to your Ima? Thanks. She'll be right out." Michal smiled as Leora took Rafi's hand and told to him that they could play with the toys in the big box until Ima came out.
"Maybe he'll surprise you, Shlomit. Maybe this meeting gave him food for thought and he'll agree to come and work on his problems. But in any case, now that you have started the process, any time you feel it's necessary, you can request that he be ordered into treatment."
Right. And go on living with him after I've done such a thing?
Just before I walked out the door, Michal said, “Shlomit, it might be wise for you to think about … alternatives.”
So. Back to the leaky roof paradox. Is it time to settle down and enjoy his current mood, or is it time to insist on changes? Or is it time to leave him?
He wants me to go back to being 'nice'. Is that reasonable? For me to go back to treating him exactly how I was treating him while he was treating us so badly?
Creepy. How scenarios parallel each other.
Seth and Sam are out on the patio. I was on my way through the living room with laundry from the line when I caught some snatches of their conversation. I stopped at the foot of the stairs, eavesdropping shamelessly.
They were talking about the most recent statement of PLO demands that Israel pull back to the borders as they were before the Six Day War, when all of our neighbors surprised us by attacking. And we surprised the whole world, including ourselves, by defending our borders so effectively that we actually pushed out beyond the cease-fire lines of 1948. And gained control over the Golan Heights, West Bank, Gaza Strip and the Sinai peninsula.
Seth told Sam, "Do they think we're crazy? They claim that if we go back to the old borders they'll be happy and peaceful. Hey! When we were at those borders they made life miserable for us. Life was worse for us before '67, because those borders were so close to the heart of the country, that they could reach us easily.
"What they claim they want is exactly what they had for all those years.
"If they want us to go back to the way we were, they've got to explain why it's any safer for us now to have indefensible borders than it was then.
"Their belligerence predated the occupation by decades. The new borders are the RESULT of the belligerence.
"They make our lives miserable, and then when we defend ourselves, they go sniveling to world opinion like a little kid to his mother. And we're supposed to forgive and forget."
I was turning to go upstairs when I heard my name. "… Shlomit tells of once when her brother complained to their mother about the little boy next door: 'Dougie hit me back!' Their mother laughed because it was such cute four-year-old logic - to expect sympathy when someone responds to your attack. The Arabs ..."
The laundry basket was getting heavy. So were my thoughts, so I came up here to write this.
That's my answer, isn't it. When he's not the one sniveling for forgiveness with no promises of change, Seth also sees that behavior as four-year-old logic.
Whoever said not to look a gift horse in the mouth wasn't married to Seth.
The company in Japan replaced the mug, but the mug they sent back wasn’t a huge one like he has, but a normal-sized insulated steel mug.
"So - we going to trade, now?" I asked, knowing the answer even before I saw his defensive frown. “You said that we could trade back after the replacement mug arrived, and I could have the one you took to work.”
Seth explained that he needs to be able to make coffee first thing in the morning and take it to the lab to drink slowly all morning, whereas I sit right around the corner from the kitchenette at work.
He's right. It doesn't matter. And of course, I would have suggested that he keep the big one, anyway, if he had offered it. But why couldn't we have just done the normal polite little dance: "Here, you take the good one." "No, that's OK, you take it." "You sure?" "Yeah. Go ahead."
Remember me? It's a good thing we got a chance to catch up in August.
Things are good here. Meaning Seth is on an even keel.
For the past four months he has really been a different person. A couple of weeks ago he was wrestling on the floor with our children and Nora's, and she looked over at me and said that's not a side of Seth she has ever seen before. Me either! There has never been a period like this since I've known him.
I wish I knew more about depression.
I saw something in National Geographic about people in Sweden getting sun lamp treatments to fight off depression during the long dark winter. I started thinking back, and his bad depression when Uncle Henry was here was November to Passover. The one when I was pregnant with Rafi was October to May. His first bad depression twelve years ago lasted for over a year as far as I can remember, and while we were in the US that summer, I remember thinking he seemed so happy. Maybe it was only because it was summer, and he was out of his sunless lab for a few weeks.
At Hanukkah, we went to the kibbutz. The whole visit was nice. Comparable to times when he was sick or away and the children and I went by ourselves.
On Sunday we drove up to a hilltop to see an array of wind turbines that generate electricity. I started asking the guy at the station some questions, and he was very eager to talk. Afterwards, Seth said, "Wow! I didn't know you could speak Hebrew like that!" I learned soon after we were married to keep my mouth shut in Seth's presence, especially when there are other people around, so as to try not to infuriate him in public, and cause a scene. I keep my mouth shut at home, too, but at home I'm keeping it shut in English. He's been so nice lately, that I didn't even worry about what he was going to think about what I was saying - I just thought about the windmills.
Later, we hiked out to an ancient city recently excavated - Gamla. We got back to the visitor's center, and Seth suggested getting the children ice cream. Usually I would hang back and Seth would make the whole thing unpleasant over prices and the children’s choices, and would alienate the person behind the counter. I hate going out to eat with him along - it's such a tense ordeal. When the children and I go for falafel, I always marvel at how uncomplicated it is without him. But this time I just acted as I would have if he weren't there, and went up to the kiosk with the children and ordered what everybody wanted, and paid. Again, Seth said, "Wow, you sound just like an Israeli, ordering all the types of ice cream like that!"
I've just been paralyzed all these years, Kay, as soon as he's in the vicinity. I guess he assumed that the cringing, watching-her-step, on-the-verge-of-tears person I turn into when he walks in the door is who I always am. That I'm as scared of everyone as I am of him.
I'm still watching my step. In fact, even more so, now that the stakes are higher - it's not just to avoid one more tantrum, but to avoid shattering the dream we have been living for the past half year.
Just by their relaxed behavior, I can see that the children feel the difference. But they haven't forgotten, either. Last week Seth was trying to fix the phone. When I fix things, the debugging is a child activity, and so Eli started trying to look on and give advice, and Seth push-punched him away and barked at him to get out of the way. Leora asked me, in the next room, why Abba always hits them so much. I asked if she hadn't noticed that for months he hasn't hit anybody, and she claimed she hadn't noticed. That night I asked Eli if he had noticed, and he gave me a derisive look, and muttered "Tssss! What a dumb question!" I said, "You haven't noticed that he's better?" and Eli said, "Of course I have! Everybody has! That's why it's a dumb question!"
A few days ago Rafi said, "I hate Abba." "Why?" "Because he hits and kicks." "He hits and kicks you?" "All of us children."
Maybe it's only now that he's behaving himself, that they dare refer to Seth's problems. Maybe they're doing a reality check - as I am with you, now. I think they really need the family counseling sessions that social services tried to set up.
Rafi’s remark surprised me because he is Seth's pet, lately.
Rafi certainly seems to think that only as long as he's the baby of the family will he have two parents. He's so dopey and immature for a five year old, and he certainly gets no encouragement from me. Rafi goes into a tizzy when you ask him to do the slightest thing. Everything is too hard for him or too heavy for him. I think he can count and knows the colors but he plays dumb and refuses to count correctly. He guesses at the colors too badly for it even to be random. His most frequently used phrase is "I can't!" or "I'm too little!" He's been at the same developmental stage for the past three years, though non-verbal intelligence tests come out above average.
OK. I'll get this out. Our sabbatical plans for next year look like they might be shaping up.
Hmmm. Something just struck me. It was right after that meeting with social services that Seth got all psyched up about going to the US for next year. Do you think he just wants to get away from the authorities over here who now know he is abusive? Hmmm.
Love, Shlomit
The day we went to see the windmills, Seth was surprised that I speak Hebrew. That I speak at all, I guess.
Doesn't he remember how I was before he married me and started to mold me into his image? He worked so hard, the first decade of our marriage, to bash me into a condition where I'm afraid of my shadow when he's around. Afraid of his shadow, I guess. Did he think his conditioning was so total?
Several times over the years, when I tell of a conversation I have had, or a discussion I have joined in a course or meeting, he has said, "Do you really speak out at meetings?" or, "Did you really ask that in front of a roomful of people?" or, "Did you actually suggest that out loud, or only think it?" I thought he was comparing my ability to join discussions to his own reluctance to do so. But maybe he thinks I'm as fearful and indecisive everywhere as I am at home. Maybe he thinks I hesitantly ask someone's permission for everything I do at work, as I do at home.
Or maybe he doesn't really believe I exist when he can't see me. Out of sight, out of existence.
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Copyright 2020 by Shlomit Weber
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