Dirt

I just received a greeting card from a friend which states that what I need is a totally out-of-control, deeply significant, all-consuming passion ..... other than my hair!
My hair has been described as 'hair of an angel' 'out of control' 'medusa-like' 'unkempt' and one I like most of all - 'boing-ey.'
In this particular entry I will not describe the tortured hair years of my childhood and teenage years - I shall leave that for a future entry.
I got married at the age of 25 and had been with my husband for several years before then. To the best of his knowledge, he married a woman with straight hair. After our wedding we travelled around Europe in a VW bus. A watershed moment occurred one cold and rainy night in a camping site in Amsterdam. I had washed my hair and wound it tightly around my head, clipping it down and waiting for it to almost dry, at which point I would unclip it and wind it in reverse, so to speak. This method had always worked and my dry hair hung as straight around my face as naturally curly hair can hang i.e. with kinks at the roots, and suspicious looking grooves, just waiting for a hint of moisture in the air to spring upward and outward, and spoil the entire painstakingly wrought straight facade. That particular night it was very cold and damp and after about two hours of my hair being clipped down I realized it was never going to dry and I may die of a cold instead. I unclipped it and combed it and went to bed. When I awoke my hair stood out in an afro, which, thankfully at that time, was all the rage. Imagine my husband's shock!
That was the last time I ever tried to straighten my hair. From then on I have paid no heed to the fashions of the moment, I just let it be. However, a new problem emerged - how to keep the curls looking ok and not a frizzy mess, looking like I have just stuck my fingers in the nearest electric socket!
My life has been spent in an eternal quest for the holy grail of hair products. I am deeply ashamed to admit that I have probably spent thousands upon thousands of dollars on mousses, gels, magic potions, pomades, oils from Morocco, shea butter from Africa, coconut oils from India, magic oils from Polynesia, olive oil, petroleum, non petroleum, phthalate free, silicone-full, silicone-free, and the designer 'curly' lines which have only appeared in the last few years. All to no avail, not one of them works as promised by brilliant advertisers. Nevertheless, I doggedly persist in trying everything in my pursuit of perfection. Inevitably after one or two pumps I give them away, recycle the bottles, or just throw it all away feeling terribly guilty for adding to the landfill and general pollution of our air and our waterways.
Have I learned anything on my life quest? have I become wiser in my advanced age? have I realized that this is as elusive a journey as is the quest for the meaning of life? the elixir of youth? the holy grail? -  of course not.
So, during the recent holiday season I attended a pop-up shop in Oakland. A beautiful african american woman with perfect, shiny, curly hair, was selling products for curly hair. She painstaking described each product to me - enticing mixtures of creams and oils and essential oils, all chemical free, hand made, not tested on animals, biodegradable. I looked at the array and settled on a product that she said was a shampoo and conditioner and curl enhancer all in one - I would not need anything else. The name of this product, on a cute hand painted label in soy based ink was "Dirt." That alone should have provided me with just a hint of what was to happen, but no, I plonked down my money, and put the bottle in my bag. Just before I walked away she said "oh, I must warn you to be careful when opening the bottle, because it grows."
"Grows" - what is she talking about, I smiled politely to pacify her and left.
The next day under the shower I opened my bottle of dirt. It positively exploded - a volcanic eruption of brown lava shot up like a fountain, on to the shower curtain and walls and bottom of the tub floor of the bathroom, and continued to spew forth, unabated for at least five minutes.
I wiped up globs of lava then put it in my hair and washed and rinsed it. It felt odd, like a mixture of seaweed, slime, and .. yes, dirt - mud in fact.  It was very difficult to comb out and then when it dried - not in Botticelli curls, it stuck out in strange spikes and coils and had very hard feel to it, almost like I could, if I so desired, begin to carve at it and sculpt it.
I decided I had not read the instructions properly. I read the now runny label - no particular expertise required, just to wash and rinse the hair. If you can believe it, I tried again, the next day, after the same lavic explosion had occurred.
I had a hair appointment the following day and I sat in the chair as my curly haired hairdresser tried to comb my hair.
"It feels strange," she said, "I can't get the comb through it Can I chisel it? I am going to wash and condition this before I do anything.
I broke down and confessed to her that I had washed my hair in dirt. She shrugged and clucked sympathetically, as a naturally curly haired woman she too understands the lifelong search. After she commiserated she assured me it is ok to throw away the bottle of dirt.
I came home with my hair looking soft and shiny, full of free flowing curls and ringlets, and threw away my bottle of Dirt.

Spanish

Whew, I have my evenings back.
The telenovela (or should I say miniseries) I have been glued to since my return from South Africa in October (!) had its grand finale last Monday night, January 12th 2015.
I was channel surfing one night last year when I saw the name, Pablo Escobar el Patron de Mal on KSFS. That was it, I was hooked from the moment I clicked on - every monday to friday at 9 p.m.  I put off writing, phone conversations, dates - I recorded it if I couldn't, for some outstanding reason, watch. The only productive thing I did do was knit while I watched. I knitted a baby blanket for the soon to be arrival of my nephew's baby - I knitted baby hats and finished scarves.
This miniseries was made in Colombia - where Pablo Escobar, the notorious narco trafficker, terrorized Colombians during the 80's and 90's. It was without subtitles. The spanish was Colombian - different from the spanish I am familiar with. Furthermore, it was spanish spoken by gangsters from Medellin, but somehow I followed the whole thing and soon added many new words to my repertoire: words for hitmen, bodyguards, kidnappings, extradition, "plata o plomo' - (money or lead/bullets) used by these charming people to bribe everyone from judges to journalists, police etc.
It is very violent, quite often causing me to gasp at the coldblooded manner in which they killed people, anyone - women, children, old people, judges, journalists, policemen, their colleagues whom they double crossed or tired of, brought down planes.  That is how they remained in power for so long, but I am not here to write a critique of the series, no, I am here to say that I am inordinately proud that I watched and understood.
Growing up in south africa we barely knew there was such thing as a spanish language.
I learned spanish when I began my work in healthcare, first with homebound adults, then in early intervention.
This was way before the use of apps for absolutely anything and everything. I now rely on s-translate.
I had Pimsleur learning cassettes in my car. At that time I drove long distances, to Antioch, Pittsburg, Brentwood - way out in East Contra Costa County. I spent so much time in my car repeating words and phrases in spanish, that within a couple of months I deemed myself ready to advance from beginners to intermediate spanish. I also attended classes in conversational spanish at Centro Latino in Berkeley.
I carried a notebook with all my other paperwork and wrote down new words. It is very interesting to scan over them now, because I can tell what subjects I was talking about with the families and caregivers. Food and recipes dominated many of our conversations, then when I began to work with the babies I quickly learned words like farts, diarrhea, constipation, diapers, pacifiers, bottles, nursing, and so on.
I remained living in the here and now for a long time. If I wanted to indicate something in the future I pointed ahead of me and for the past I gestured behind me. When I reached this juncture I decided to go to adult school to learn grammar, but quickly I understood that this is not the way in which I learn. For many people it is fine, but I simply cannot learn by reciting verbs and their exceptions, I learn through immersion, and that is how I have been learning every since, up to the point where I can follow Pablo Escobar, El Patron de Mal.
TV is a wonderful way to learn - most of the latino families - (all of them, in fact) seem to have TV on all day, a permanent background fixture. In this way I began to watch "Casos de la Vida Real" in the mornings at 11. I arranged my schedule so that I would be at a house to watch it without having to leave in the middle of the show. These were enactments of events in women's lives - mostly heartbreaking, involving domestic violence, child abuse, poverty, desperation,  somehow all very familiar and universal.
That lasted for years, but has since been replaced by "Rosa de Guadalupe" - more heartening events occasioned by the miraculous interventions of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The problem with this is I now only see a few children, just one day a week. The little girl I see at the time when Rosa de Guadalupe comes on is watched over by her father who insists on watching football!
I am not yet staying home to watch on the mornings I am not working - I have managed to stay away from spanish TV and still lead a life, attending the gym, art classes, and such, and hope I can continue to stay away - with the help of the intervention of the Virgin!

My Book

My sincere apologies to anyone who may have logged onto my blog in response to my announcement on Facebook about the digital launch of Tree Barking: A Memoir, only to find nothing! But know I am posting this just a few short hours after the announcement on Facebook - so hopefully some people will have returned to the blog.
The book was first published by Heyday Books in Berkeley - a wonderful non profit publishing company. The book came out in April 2008 at the beginning of the great recession - not an auspicious time! Heyday does not have a publicist, and I am abysmal at any kind of promotion, especially when it comes to self promotion! Suffice to say, in 2013 the book went out of print, and the copyright reverted to me. At the same time as that happened, I was not officially laid off, but I was taken off salary - all very unnerving events. At the very time it went out of print a middle school planned to use my book as a set reading over the summer! They received my very last copies, and there weren't enough copies  so the school made copies of the book. The irony was that on Amazon the book was going for $800 or more (??????????????) supply and demand, or something. I knew that the parents of the kids in the middle school were not going to shell out 100's of dollars for a book of any kind. Of course I would not be receiving any of that money! Sort of like a painting sold for billions by a long dead artist who died penniless!
One of the 'advantages' of being taken off salary was that I had more time to devote to writing, and also to converting the book - hence the 'new' launching digitally more than a year later!
I hope some of you will read it, or at least download it because the issues I wrote about have only become worse. I am writing about the children now, but if you do read my blog you will see from the entry "Endgame" that I have reached burnout.

BART

I took BART to San Francisco on Saturday - I was to meet a friend at the Civic Center at 5.30p.m.
I changed at MacArthur Station for the San Francisco train. It was crowded, but I did find a seat next to a window, and, as usual, began to read. The train got fuller as more people got on at the Oakland stations. Just after West Oakland I glanced up from my kindle and saw all the passengers looking at their different devices, cords of ear buds dangled around necks, the asian woman next to me was  engrossed in listening to something on her phone - no one made any eye contact with anyone else. Suddenly out of nowhere a woman stood up in the middle of the aisle - she had her back to us, but I saw she was wearing black pants, and a black hoodie and had a black backpack on. She was holding a sign which from our section could not be seen. I saw one woman who was holding her bike hand her some money. Then the woman turned our way - the cardboard sign read, "Broke and Hungry" "Please donate money for food tonight." She had on glasses and looked kind of squirrelly - all she did was hold up the sign, she was not hurting anyone. Suddenly a man came up behind her - he appeared to have   had a bit too much to drink, and looked rather unkempt. From behind her he said very loudly"hey, you are not allowed to do that, it is illegal." Everyone was now looking in their direction, devices forgotten. Then he said "get off the train" and she said "I can't, the doors are shut." He then grabbed her from behind and began to push her toward the back doors and he shouted, "Get off the fucking train." At this a number of young men got up and went after them. They all disappeared through the doors on to the next carriage. The woman next to me raised her eyebrows and shrugged, people turned in their direction, and the train continued until it reached Embarcadero. The doors opened and a crowd began to form near the doors of the carriage they had disappeared into. Our driver announced that we would be waiting for BART police to arrive and then he thanked the passengers who had held the suspect down and prevented him from getting away. After about 10 minutes a police man got on to our carriage and asked what had happened - we told him as best we could, and then he said 'but where is the victim - what does she look like?" Apparently during the fuss and commotion she had run away. Eventually we were on our way again, and everyone returned to their devices as if nothing had happened. The woman next to me raised her eyebrows and smiled, and I smiled back.

Endgame

I have worked in Occupational Therapy, first in home health, from 1992, then in early intervention from 2002 to 2004 with Contra Costa County which was then disbanded and taken over by Contra Costa ARC. I have worked with them ever since.
I have met inspiring and wonderful families many of whom have battled against tremendous odds. I have fallen in love with the children, and their valiant families.
There are many drawbacks to working alone in the homes - for instance, isolation from one's peers. It really does take a village to raise a child and many times, the village is not available. I recommend physical therapists, feeding specialists, and speech therapists for the children with whom I work. It would be nice to talk with them and see how we can cooperate, but so often no-one seems to have the time, or there are privacy forms to fill in and sign before we can talk and it becomes daunting. Recently it feels that there is competition between the different service providers and collaboration becomes increasingly difficult, and is not in the best interest of the population we serve.
In the beginning we were often able to talk with the doctors and nurses, but now that almost never happens. It was helpful, because doctors only see a child for 10-20 minutes and we spend far more time with them and can observe what is happening. There was wonderful collaboration with public health nurses who made many referrals. Over the years there have been more and more budget cuts and restrictions. There was a time when I could see a child for up to three times a week, now we are restricted to one hour a week, or once every two weeks. Often the referrals are 34 - 35 months of age which means we maybe see them four times at the most - what on earth is accomplished?
I could go on and on about the deteriorating system, but I won't. To compound matters us home therapists have worked with a non existent supervisor who doesn't have any idea of the work we do.
I have valiantly battled on with all these stumbling blocks, setbacks, etc. Last year we were taken off salary and paid per child. Because of stringent eligibility requirements, referrals are far fewer and therefore the amount of children I see is dwindling.  Of course ever since last year's layoff I have been struggling with what next - to work privately, to work for a registry, then it hit me last week.
That is it, I am done. I am done working with frightfully incompetent colleagues, I am done with this work. I will not take on anymore referrals.  I now have four little ones whom I care for deeply and will continue to see until they age out or go to another program, and it is high time I move on to something different.
I have reached the end.

Return from SA

SA is South Africa.

I am still at that stage of my return when I can close my eyes and feel myself right there - I hear the sound of the hah-de-dahs as they fly overhead at dawn and at dusk. I can imagine myself in a restaurant, I can taste the lamb curry, and I can hear the people around me talking in a familiar accent.
I can feel the sand scrunching underfoot as I walk along Muizenberg beach, I hear the great silence of Namakwa. It feels like I can still lie outside on the stoep of the little cottage we rented and reach up and touch the night sky, heavy and glistening with stars and planets.l I can see the Southern Cross and the Milky Way. I open the curtains of my room in Bakubung and see Wildebeest grazing not too far away. The Warthog family greet the day. I can smell the dry veld, and still can deeply inane the wonderful aromas of the flowers in the Hantam Reserve and all around us in Namakwa.
I can still feel and imagine all these things, but the memories are beginning to slip away, overrun by the constant noise of the demolition crew in our street - down goes a school, changes, changes.
On my first day driving down 23rd Street in Richmond I see more shuttered shops and buildings.
A drive by shooting takes place right near the office at 2.00 p.m.  I am back.

To Fast or Not?

Kol Nidre night of the Yom Kipur of the War, was spent in the disco of Ein Dor. It was the first time since my bat mitzvah that I was not fasting. This was because I was living on the kibbutz where no one seemed even to know about Yom Kipur. My first Yom Kipur there was so strange, because it was a day like any other and I worked in the children's house just like on any other day of the year. Growing up in South Africa it was a really special day, and everyone went to the synagogue and everyone fasted.
When the war broke out the next day I silently vowed to myself that if we all survived, then I would fast every Yom Kipur from then on. We did not all survive, but nevertheless, I kept to my vow and have always fasted - except for last year, Yom Kipur 2013. It was 40 years since the war, and I was on Kibbutz Ein Dor. Over the years, many things had changed, including Yom Kipur. For Kol Nidre there was a lovely, meaningful service next to the moadon (clubhouse.) Many people fasted and observed Yom Kipur. I was staying with a good friend and would be there for only that night - as usual it was extremely hot. We went to the cemetery very early in the morning and spent time sitting under the trees, amongst the graves, talking, remembering, just being. The thing that was completely different for me was that I did not fast. The friend I was staying with had asked other friends over for dinner, and for me it was more important to be with them thnt to be alone and to fast.
The sky did not fall, the earth did not open - the day continued and ended with the blowing of the shofar, night came, dawn came, another day ......
This year I am in America, and have decided that I shall fast, and I realize way - it is this symbolic act which ties me to the unbroken chain of my 'tribe,' to my ancestors, and here in the diaspora I do not want to break that chain.