Saturday morning. I am drinking coffee. The radio is in the background while I read the SF Chronicle online.
I vaguely hear the tail end of an interview with a woman writer - something about coming to America to begin again.
Apparently her book is based on this, but I am too late to hear her name, or the name of her book. Of course I could go online to check, but I don't. I feel a tingling in my nervous system, this remark has deeply impressed me.
I was in Montreal for 5 days last week - (more about that later.) There I was faced with the inevitable question from new extended family members.
"Why America? Why California?"
Of course I have thought about this for the last almost 40 years! I have dreamed about it, written about it, discussed it extensively, spent a long time in therapy. And of course I have many ideas, theories, thoughts, but something about the term "reinvention" touches a nerve. I don't think that thought ever came into my conscious mind! How odd, it must have always been there, percolating, simmering, bubbling, but it is in this moment, this morning, that it feels like it has surfaced.
People come to America to begin again, to reinvent themselves. I came to shed the identity both of being married and being widowed so shortly afterwards. I came to form a new identity as a young, single woman. One with enough courage and sense of adventure to begin a completely new life. (Of course I did not feel at all courageous - this is in hindsight.)
If my first pregnancy had not ended in a miscarriage I would have been the mother of an infant when the war began. If my second pregnancy had not ended in a miscarriage as well, I would have been seven months pregnant.
From 2 o' clock on Yom Kipur on October 6, 1973 a new life began for me. I am sure if I had been a mother I would have stayed on in Israel and probably would have remarried, but I was no longer a mother, or a married woman.
But it never consciously occurred to me that I came here to reinvent myself.
2 comments:
Nesta, I agree it is easier to reinvent yourself as a single person. After my divorce I wanted to move back to Ohio to be near family but I didn't want to uproot my daughters so I stayed. After they left home, even though I had remarried, I was forced to reinvent myself and began writing and tapping into other artistic endeavors. Eventually aging forces us all to reinvent ourselves as we adapt to the loss of people, jobs, mobility.
Your insight is so wise, thanks
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