Israel and Gaza

I beg all of you who are not consumed by hatred and fear to please join our voices in clamoring for peace. This cannot continue

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Perfection

It is a perfect summer day here in Albany. The early morning fog has given way to blue skies. I am sitting in my tiny patch of garden, next to my greek-isle-reminiscent yellow table, reading. My head and back of my neck are being gently caressed by the leaves of my curly willow tree. I have my hand in the soil surrounding the tree, and am enjoying the perfect bit of shade it provides, and am reminded of how I love trees.
A friend gave me two small branches of a curly willow that her neighbor was cutting down. I put them in a bucket and when both branches sprouted hairy roots offered one to my neighbor ,and I placed one in a pot. That was four years ago. Each summer the leaves have returned to the bare branches and this summer it is just perfect. Large enough for me to sit under its branches, and to provide me with shade.
Last weekend I removed a fuchsia plant that has been here for longer than I have, and which has been diseased for that same amount of time.  I removed the old woody roots and stems and the leaves with the disease which causes them to curl and wrinkle, and turn from green to spotty yellow with definite strange  deformities at their base. I have now put in a lace-leaf Japanese maple, and am hoping that it will grow and flourish like my curly willow, and that I can continue to enjoy this wonderful outdoor spot.

Three

I was considering entitling this entry 'triad' 'trinity' 'triangle' - then I looked at the date of my last entry - just over 3 months ago - hence the title.
Let me try to explain - after I was in America for about 5 years I began to pay attention to three rather distinct identities residing within me. My South African self, my Israeli self, and my emerging American self.
For the most part they all manage to exist without too much conflict. Over these last few months , however, these identities have emerged strongly again. For one thing, I will be visiting South Africa later this year - I have an important high school reunion to attend, and of course will see relatives, friends, and as much of the country as time and funds permit. So my South aArican identity has  resurfaced strongly. A month ago I went to a Johnny Clegg concert which was a walk down memory lane. The very same night I returned to messages on my answering machine and in Facebook from friends in Israel to say they were thinking of me. That night of the concert was the eve of Memorial Day in Israel. That night my dreams were of South Africa and Israel - populated with a mix of friends and scenery from both countries It was only when I opened my eyes the next morning that I realized that I am in Albany, California.Then 2 weeks ago I received a call from an Israeli friend who lives in New York to tell me that an American friends of ours who now lives in Israel had arrived in America and apparently had a major stroke. The next week was filled with e-mails and calls from many people I knew in Israel who are now all over the States. I found it extremely difficult to divorce myself from all of this and go to work and all my activities here as if everything is just fine. In fact, here in America I am just fine - on the surface, while my psyche roils between countries, memories and places.
At the same time as all these events are occurring I am attending classes in life coaching. Of course these classes require much self reflection - who am I? where am I? what do I do? what have I done? This time, instead of seeing all of this as inner turmoil or conflict, I am choosing to view this as enriching. I do not necessarily need to have 'one' unifying aspect - rather, let the different parts exist side by side occasionally blending together, but mostly not, and to view this as okay.
And this view may change ........

Culinary delights

I would be severely remiss if I did not describe my wonderful culinary experiences during the course of working in homes.
Almost invariably it is the immigrants who provide me with the best experiences. The reasons for this, I believe, are multi-faceted:
They come from cultures of hospitality.
The women  are in the home, caring for the family, they are not out working. Of course this means feeding their families, like their parents (read mothers), and grandmothers and great grandmothers did before them.
Feeding, cooking, is a source of pride, of creativity, of resourcefulness of nurturing and caring. The kitchen and the hearth are the vital centers of the homes.
Many of the families are poor, and I think for them, providing me with food and nourishment is their way of saying thanks for the work I do with their children.
Because they often live in multi-generational families it is difficult for them to comprehend that I live alone and I think they feel terribly sorry for me. I explain that this is my choice, and I do not feel bad, but as long as they ply me with food, their concern is fine with me!
My most recent treat was in the home of a family from El Salvador. Grandmom cares for the baby while mom works. I see the baby girl at one, and the other day grand mom left me with the baby while she disappeared into the kitchen from which emanated chopping sounds, grinding sounds, oil sizzling in a pan
I saw her lay plates and cutlery onto the kitchen table
She called to me to come and eat pupusas, as she set a plate of two healthy size pupusas on a plate. In the center of the table was a finely chopped salad of cabbage, carrots, onion, and a plate of what looked like a fresh home made tomato salza.
Delicious pupusas stuffed with mozzarella, she also makes them with ground meat and frijoles, or frijoles and mushrooms she told me.
A meal fit for a king, that saw me all the way through to breakfast.
A family from Ethiopia treated me to their wonderful coffee - a ritual similar to the tea ceremony. The mom showed me the green coffee beans which she then roasted in a pan. As the home filled with the enticing aroma of coffee she brought the pan of coffee beans to me and, placing a hand over the pan she waved the smoke in my direction. She told me this is part of the coffee ritual and I, in my turn, am supposed to inhale the smoke and exhale a satisfied 'hah.'
She then did something with the coffee and put it in a beautiful vessel, tall - sort of like a samovar, but not the same. This vessel, brought from Ethiopia, she placed on the table and brought out tiny coffee cups which she filled with the delicious coffee.
The Palestinian family would ply me with tiny cup after tiny cup of thick black coffee cooked in a finjan.
The mom of twins from Pakistan insisted on making me fresh chai on every visit.
A mexican grandmother sent me home very friday with containers full of chile rellenos, or quesadillas, or delicious moles, and a flask full of horchata!
I just mentioned "malawach" to the family of yemenites, and from then on was treated to endless piles of the delicious fried dough. I don't quite know how t describe this, but I first learned of it in Israel, where it can be served with soups, or just by itself.
I saw the woman kneading and preparing the dough which they formed into one large ball, and then took out and formed smaller balls of dough and proceed to roll them out until they were almost gossamer thin. They placed these circles of gossamer dough over a special elevated plate kind of thing brought from Quattar. The edges drooped over the circles and they cut these edges and made more circles until the plate is piled high. They put this into a corner on the counter and covered them all. The whole process was fascinating - three women kneading, rolling, slicing, and then the circles are fried in olive oil - it is quite delicious.
How I have not gained weight is a mystery to me, maybe kept in check by my endless kneeling and crawling and lifting -
I wish to give them all a deep bow of gratitude.

Li'l Tootsie

For obvious reasons names have been changed.

Yesterday late afternoon I walked into Richmond Kaiser for an appointment. Just ahead of me, walking through the sliding glass doors I saw the backs of three adult women and a little girl. Even from behind the little girl looked adorable, in black jeans, black and shocking pink Nikes, and a down black jacket with a fur-lined hood. Her hair was neatly braided and the pink barrettes exactly matched the pink of her sneakers. I judged her to be not more than three years old. When I saw her profile, I gasped.
"Is that li'l Tootsie?" I asked.
She turned and smiled and all the women turned toward me.
"Li'l Tootsie, hi, do you remember me?"
"Yes," she smiled. Her mother whom I then instantly recognized smiled also.
"We have thought about you so much, we all miss you" I said to Li'l Tootsie.
"My grandmother has just had surgery" she said to me. "
Li'l Tootsie is all of three years old. I worked with her from the time she was five months old. I will never forget when I first saw her. I had read the referrals and according to postnatal records I fully expected to see a very ill little baby, barely alive. Her young mother opened the door to let me into their home on Ohio Avenue in Richmond. We completed the paperwork while Tootsie slept. I asked her mom whether I could take a look at her before I left. In the crib was a tiny pretty ball of fire. A shock of hair surrounded her lively little face and she looked at me - a completely unfamiliar, out-of-place face - out of big, very alive black eyes and smiled.  My initial  thought was that the mother had shown me the wrong child, although there were no other children present.
And so I had the pleasure of playing with Li'l Tootsie from her earliest months of life. In an amazingly short amount of time she began to crawl - up the stairs she went, and down again all by herself. She did not like to be held. She wriggled out of the arms of whomever tried to carry her, quite the little Houdini. And, as her grand mom would say, she was "busy, all the time busy". By the time she turned one she was running. Her mom, grand mom and myself thought it would be good for her to attend the program at the George Miller Center. Because of the circumstances of her birth she did display some delays, although she herself had no idea! Absolutely no learned helplessness in our Li'l Tootsie.
She attended the program for about a year, winning over everyone's hearts. Everyday she came to school in a different outfit. She very soon saw the children with severe delays and began to help them. I will never forget a little boy who had Down Syndrome, and was fed via a g-tube. He had a dysmorphic face and cried and cried. Li'l Tootsie sat next to him at snack time patting him gently, "okay, okay - will be okay."
She continued to be very very busy, unable to sit down for longer than a minute, and seemed not to pay attention in the group activities, but soon she was talking, and obviously taking in everything and everyone around her. She practically ran the Center.
To our deep sorrow, we could no longer justify having her attend our Center and told her mom she needed to find a 'regular' program for her. The day she left was a very sad day for all of us.
That was a year ago, and ever since we have wondered how she is doing. Whenever I drive past their house I look to see whether anyone is home. In fact, it turns out, the home was sold and they have moved.
And now, after a year, here she is - looking as beautiful and as lively as ever. What is more, she allowed me to hug her - Toots was never a big one for hugs - ''down," she would say.
Besides explaining that her grand mom was having surgery she pointed to her outfit, black and pink sneakers, black jeans, and a pink shirt, and told me the colors in spanish as well as english. She then pointed out shapes to me, the circle of the reception desk, the rectangular doors, even  to the crescent moon bright in the outside sky! When I said goodbye and walked to the department I heard her saying to her great grandmother and aunt "Nesta is my friend."
How very happy that encounter made me. Maybe you, dear readers, have noticed that I haven't blogged much about work, although that was my original intent when I began the blog, but over the last couple of years, and in the last year especially, there have been so many disheartening changes that I have had little desire to write about them. These changes are what led me to write about the 'snow globe.' That disturbing sense of me having been tossed around and thrown up in a flurried landscape. I shall write about them in new entries, because these changes affect me, as well as our society. But here is "Li'l Tootsie" - a beacon of light and hope and joy!

Madiba

Our beloved Madiba has gone to the realm of his ancestors from where I hope he will continue to guide us.
His departure was not unexpected, in fact, it was more than timely, and even so, I feel bereft. What I feel is diminished, but so so grateful that he was such a strong part of my life.
There is nothing I can add to what has been said and written, and to what will continue to be said and written about Mandela. I want to write about his impact on me, from a totally personal and subjective view.  I cannot write this without honoring my parents.
My parents were born in South Africa. They raised us, their children, to be aware of the injustices of apartheid. Our eyes were opened from a young, tender, and impressionable age, and dictated all the future choices we made in our lives.
My parents belonged to a party called the Liberal Party, and their motto was "one man one vote." The party eventually has to disband when it became illegal for a party to represent people of every color that make up South Africa.My father was a lawyer, and at the dinner table he would quote from the speech Mandela gave in his defense at the Rivonia Trial. We listened to the trial on the radio and read about it in the Rand Daily Mail. Of course it became illegal for the media to quote or to read from anything written by Mandela. He became a non being, and if it weren't for my parents, I would have been quite unaware of him, or what he stood for. My dad also gave me the book "Let My People Go" by Chief Albert Luthuli. He told me about the African National Congress, then everything was banned - it was illegal to have these books or to read from them.  The fear of what the Government could do permeated our lives. Later, much later, I met Luthuli's daughter in Atlanta, but that is another story.
My parents met Mandela, and Oliver Thambo. They were both very impressed by Mandela, by his stature, intelligence, and compassion.
These were the people I heard about at the dinner table and in my home. I was made to understand that their struggle was for every South African, no matter their colour.
Eventually I chose to leave South Africa. Not too long after that my whole family left. One leaves one's country through choice, or because one has to flee, but it is there ones' roots remain no matter how hard we tried to uproot ourselves, and so we avidly followed the ongoing unfolding story of South Africa.
Madiba led the country through change and all South Africans felt better in the world, no longer pariahs. His influence spread over the entire planet. Indeed, we are all connected, over space and time. This is what his passing has made so clear to me, the eternal lesson. We are all interconnected. One man's death diminishes us all.
May we continue to live up to his legacy and to honour him and his teachings wherever we are in the world.

Vindication (sort of)

This ordeal sort of resolved just before I turned into a raving lunatic, gnashing my teeth, wailing, and tearing out my hair. It ended with me encamped in the Apple store on 4th Street in Berkeley refusing to ever leave again until my problems were sorted out - my tech problems, that is. In the end the smiling blue T-shirted genii won out!
My issues and problems  have been resolved for the most part although the battery is still being depleted swiftly on the iPhone. I have turned off every possible thing that may use too much battery time, short of turning off the phone itself and never using it!
Vindication sort of arrived when I read an article in the economics section of The New York Times in which the writer implied that Apple may be using planned obsolescence in the iPhones. Then this morning I heard someone on NPR talking about the battery problems many users are experiencing with the new upgrade. So …. not just me, but this has been such a lesson in the amount of time we spend with our technology, and how dependent we are on it.
We have made a pact with the devil folks, and there ain't no turning back.