Torrent of Consciousness

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions. 


Observations During Rabbi Kleinbaum's 20th Anniversary Shabbat Service



Erika, the wife of my college classmate Sari, and her pre-teen daughter Ruby walk toward us as we're all heading to the entrance. And instead of being with Pat, I'm accompanied by a friend Davina -- a heterosexual ally I met through our diversity and inclusion work -- but Erika doesn't know that and wonders where Pat is. I explain.


I can see that Erika's relieved and we go in...but not before passing through the gauntlet of Rick as he hands us each a siddur, "I'm watching you!" after I introduce Davina. "Rick, Davina is a great *ally* of our community." And she's also a good sport. A very attractive good sport, who more congregants are going to notice, I'm certain, especially the female ones. He's semi-satisfied with my explanation that Pat's in Green Bay with her brother, helping their mother move.


And I do feel guilty as we enter the sanctuary. Pat should be by my side. Which is worse? Not coming with Pat for this historic occasion in the life of our congregation, or not coming at all?



Pat's and my usual seats in the center, second row are taken, which seems right -- at least, another woman shouldn't sit in Pat's seat next to me. Our view is obstructed by a pillar. Pat might have left, rather than have such a crummy view. I'm Ok with our seats and again, Davina's a sport. And she has been to CBST a couple of times before -- once with Pat and me and one time on Purim with other friends.


A pretty, single (I think) congregant comes over and I feel bad that Davina is not eligible, but also further guilty somehow, like the woman is sort of winking at me without winking, at my sheer good fortune to have such an attractive friend, but is also perhaps a bit disoriented, since Pat and I ourselves are such an established pillar of our congregation, and who is this woman anyway...? Or it could all be major projection on my part. And then I explain Davina's ally status, and then the congregant might be personally disappointed as she moves on to her seat.



I'm missing Pat, especially at the start of the service, as we're singing "Shalom Aleichem" and swaying with interlocked arms, as is the congregation's custom. Why do the women on either side of me have to be so little? I can feel the imprint of my friend's tiny hand on my back and miss the solidity of standing with Pat, who is essentially my height, and miss that I have no one to kiss on the mouth when the tune ends and we pause to wish "Shabbat shalom" to those around us. I'm *so* spoiled. Later, before delivering her drash, the rabbi will allude to having been through a hard breakup with her "ex-partner" of many, many years, and will announce that she has a new partner. And during the kiddush, another friend will tell me that her partner broke up with her recently, and they were together for at least the 16 years we've been congregants. How were either of these breakups possible?



I can't imagine losing Pat, except to death, which I imagine morbidly all too frequently, since she's 15 years older than I. My dad was a year younger than my mom and he died at 56, so the younger ones can go first, of course, but -- and my mom never re-married. When Pat turned 56, she had a colon cancer scare and had a piece of her colon removed. We got off scot-free, so I relaxed...and then I remembered that I needed to get past 56, too, without Pat dying, since 56 was the terrible age that broke apart my parents. Nine more years of pins and needles and then I can relax, until I figure out another reason to worry, assuming I'm still healthy myself then!



The place is packed. I'm smiling at people I've known since we joined upon our move to metro-New York 16 years ago: Sari, Judy, Saul, Saul, Ruth, Jack, Marni, Ilene, Abbe, Diane, Joyce, Karen...how is it that 16 years later, I'm edging toward becoming among the elder congregants? Not quite yet, I guess, but when I look around me at the younger faces -- and bodies -- I feel wistful.



What a lovely trio of Orthodox women two rows ahead of us! They look like the just barely grown-up version of the prettiest girls in the Modern Orthodox Jewish day school I attended from Grades 1-8. They can't be older than their late-20s. Chestnut hair streams down one's back, another's fine, blondish-brown hair is swept up in a pony-tail that ends with a couple of sweet curls and the length of the third, dark-brunette one matches the chestnut hair's length almost exactly. Such simcha-inspiring symmetry!




When they stand for the Amidah, they supplicate themselves in all the right places. During the rabbi's drash, two of them emerge as a couple, leaning into each other's shoulders with one, tugging on the other's pony-tail at one point, twirling the curls -- ultimately, I recognize one as a far-flung Facebook friend who I'm seeing in 3D for the first time. What a chasm they've crossed to be here, as a couple, touching each other, even just a little, in *public*. How at home they must feel, to be able to do so. Again, perhaps another giant projection on my part...if only Pat were with me, so I could have my left arm around her as usual, draping my hand now visibly on her shoulder/back/neck, so that my wedding ring would flash in the sanctuary light as a literal symbol of our rock-solidness (k'ayn eyeen harah).



God, why can't Pat be here with Davina and me? It makes me so lonely to be without Pat, and it sets my imagination to catastrophizing. How sweet can this service be if we're not together to share it? How easily my mind moves like a magnet to noticing the especially lovely women in the crowd. If I do lose Pat in the future, will this one I see a few rows back from me still be single? Probably not. Nor that one. And she won't be Pat in any case. What if I'm alone by 56 and by then, no longer look at all attractive and can't find anyone to approximate Pat? Why *didn't* we adopt when it turned out that I couldn't bear a child organically? Who will pay attention to me when I'm old?



As I look over then at a baby who's cooing in her mother's lap, I see Judy, one of the long-time congregants, in the row behind them and recall my sobbing silently nearly a decade ago as Sari and Erika went to the bimah for their second daughter's baby-naming. Judy, herself a mother of grown kids at the time, knew enough to recognize why I was crying and simply paused to rub/pat my back gently as she walked by. It was the simplest kindness, and it convinced me that I was a bonafide member of this congregational community. We never spoke about it and I hadn't thought about her kindness in years, till I saw Erika, Sari, their three daughters, and Judy at the service.



It's our fate, instead, to have feline daughters, I guess, and suddenly, I want to be playing with them back at home, in our nice, suburban, split-level house, petting them and hearing them purr. Toonces, especially, has been missing her other mommy all week. If only I could train them to bentch licht....



I'm distracted from my day-dreaming by Rabbi Weiss, who is ready to recite two blessings for two families now up at the bimah -- one for the two women who just had twin boys and another for two men who've been together for 40 years and who are marrying on Sunday. Later, during remarks in honor of Rabbi Kleinbaum's tenure, Rabbi Weiss mentions that during Rabbi Kleinbaum's first month, she officiated at five AIDS-related funerals and this month, there have been five babies born to congregants.



During the kiddush, Davina says, "Every time I come here memorable things happen." And a bit later: "These things should be happening, of course, but they're in the realm of, 'Who ever thought we'd see -- What moved you about the service?'"




"Well, I'm kvelling a bit because we've come so far -- as a congregation and community, and personally. As a congregation, we now have our own building and our own prayerbook and personally, Rabbi Weiss married Pat and me two Julys ago [after 19 years together]."



As I said to Rabbi Kleinbaum after the service, "[Baruch atah adonai eloheinu melech ha'olam]... shecheyanu v'kiy'manu v'higyanu lazman hazeh!"/"[Blessed are you our God, creator of the universe] ...who has supported us, protected us and brought us to this moment."

 

Like the Jewish Cartoonists Who Invented Superheroes

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Feeling Part of the American Family Once Removed

Every year around this time, I begin to feel un-American. U.S. Thanksgiving is the gateway to the Christmas season that many now inclusively refer to as the holiday season, but I always feel like many Americans really are still thinking of Christmas.

Thank God, this year, "a first look at life's newest solutions:"

This patented "menorahment" reminds me of a similar impulse I learned of five years ago with Pat and our friends Judy & Jim at the Milwaukee Art Museum. While there, we saw a terrific show on comic book artists. Through it, I learned that many of the most famous American superheroes were created by Jewish artists who were realizing their deepest fantasies of what it would be like to be ultra-American, which at that time, was a contrast to how they felt as Jews, i.e., to be loved/admired/respected by the whole community, and to be able to protect it from evil-doers. Somehow, this tree-topper seems born of similar wishes -- to be a star that is part of, yet in parallel apart from, the rest of the earth-bound ornament community. This item was featured in "Skymall" magazine, just in time for the holidays.

Who Am I Kidding?

When I am with people from beyond the United States, I'm reminded that compared to them, I'm as ultra-American as any comic book character, to the point albeit unwittingly of caricature occasionally. For example, with a Dutch friend who lives in Paris, I'm visible from a mile away when we're in Milan on business, in my bright red raincoat; Europeans do not wear such bright colors in their rainwear. Or I'm silly for taking a series of vitamins daily with my breakfast. But here, in the United States, I sometimes feel like a foreigner during this season compared to most of my fellow countrypeople. Perhaps it's the impossibly challenging combo of being a Jew who would never have need for a menorahment along with the challenge of staying engaged in the series of football games that populate our Green Bay branch of our family's home all day on Thanksgiving (and every Sunday and Monday night during the long season).

This year, though, I came to think about this outsider sensation in a new way, since I'm fresh from finishing my Masters thesis on cultural intelligence. Yesterday, I even tweeted about it: "In one way, surely, I'm culturally intelligent: I try to dress like the locals when in Green Bay; today, I'm wearing Packer-logo'ed pants." In the case of my thesis, cultural intelligence referred to being able to work effectively with colleagues and clients from other countries, but in my own life, currently, I've come to realize that there can be a domestic version as well. In addition to aligning my sartorial choices with those of the townspeople, when in Green Bay, Wisconsin, I need to be able to "talk cheese." Or at least, I need to be able to comprehend it when Pat and random strangers engage in it.

At breakfast today, the hotel cook chatted with us during his break and Pat and he went on endlessly with what I've always thought of as small-talk. I've never seen a conversation like this anywhere in the Northeast, where I grew up. Here, it's common. I first learned about it during -20 degree Fahrenheit weather, when Pat was pumping gas in Green Bay during one of our annual visits 18 years ago. "Where were you?" I asked Pat when she finally returned from paying the gas jockey.

"Oh, we were talkin' cheese," she answered simply.

Somehow, no matter how American I seem to my European friend, with my multivitamins and red raincoat, when we head into Football Season, into the Christmas gateway of Thanksgiving and into Green Bay, Wisconsin, I feel like one of these things is not like the other, to borrow a phrase from the American kids' show, "Sesame Street."

City Gates

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Same Sex Stares

While I'm (still) in grad school part-time, it's such a luxury to have time to read more than one book for pleasure in a row. That's mostly what I've done this week -- read.

*The Gate at the Stairs* was my treat of the year. I don't know that anything else will thrill me in the same way, i.e., through its cleverness and pathos....I adore that combo.

The book I just completed, *Same Sex in the City (So Your Prince Charming Is Really a Cinderella),* was anthropologically interesting because I'm a 44-year-old lesbian in a 17-year, monogamous relationship while the essayists in that book all were in their 20s and 30s, and still fundamentally figuring out how to find and recognize love. It also made me realize that not all that much has changed since I came out in the '80s. In fact, perhaps the only difference is that straightened, long hair has replaced what we called "big hair," which was gelled-up, squiggly-wavy long hair.

If I weren't a lesbian, *Same Sex...* would not have been as compelling, and if I weren't a Lorrie Moore fan, a story about -- spoiler alert -- a heterosexual couple in a troubled marriage and their adoption odyssey hardly would have attracted me. As it was, I was able to appreciate both books for what they gave me (Spoiler Alert: Don't read the rest of this if you don't want to know key plot-points of each book):

• A yearning to write more, which I always feel after reading something great and/or something I relate to
  
• A better understanding of mixed-race discrimination; the adoptee is half-Black, half-White
  
• Some sympathy for today's lesbians, determining their happiest possible futures
  
• Memories of my early-days of being out in my 20s, in Chicago
  
• Delight from the rich word-play talent of Lorrie Moore
  
• Recollections of the early days post-September 11th
  
• Happy sense of familiarity during descriptions of Green Bay, supper clubs and other midwestern phenomena
  
• Double appreciation for Pat -- with her Green Bay heritage and as the perfect solution to my 20s, 30s, 40s...forever-companionship-need
  
• Gratitude for my Jewish heritage, as I think culturally -- and of course, this is just a generalization -- a disproportionate number of Jews express ourselves publically in writing, and that's perhaps why Lauren Levin's and Lauren Blitzer's *Same Sex* book got published, rather than just remaining a case of, "You know, we really ought to write a book..."
  
• A better understanding of what it's like to be half-Jewish, half-Christian, since two of Moore's main characters were, and since Lauren Blitzer wrote that she was
  
• A reminder that people of all classes struggle, e.g., one of the *Same Sex...* authors threw herself a giant coming-out party at a premier NYC hotel, and that did not mean she did not suffer any loneliness or was exempted from searching for love.
  

Intercultural Miscommunication

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Even in a Floridian Condo Swimming-pool

What's the worst that could happen if intercultural communication goes awry? The worst: the communicators decide that one another are not human. Do I mean that they think of one another as animals? Not necessarily. Some cultures, and many individual people, revere animals.

Think vermin, i.e., the peskiest sort of animals, e.g., how Jews were regarded by our oppressors during the Holocaust. We were to be "exterminated." My mom told me that her friend Maria's dad helped invent Zyklon-B, the gas that was used in the concentration-camp gas chambers. They are Jews and my mom said he never dreamt that his invention would be used for genocide, let alone that of his own people.

I'm thinking about the mini-series I didn't want to watch with my partner Pat, about the history of Native-Americans, as I didn't really want to know how filthy a number of the first settlers were to them. "They're rich *now*," a friend remarked, referring to their success in the casino industry.

"Yeah, some are," I didn't finish my thought, which was: rich by exploiting the gambling part of human nature, and I wonder if it sometimes feels to some Native-American gambling entrepreneurs like they're avenging their ancestors, since so many of the gamblers likely have Anglo-American foreparents. I'm referring particularly to the gamblers who are addicted to it. Is there a satisfaction in seeing some of the great-great-grandchildren of one's oppressors in a weakened state? Am I projecting?

Vengeance only gets people so far; it doesn't restore the damaged psyches, and bodies, of one's forebearers. Writing of vengeance reminds me of wars, which is apt, since it's Memorial Day. Up until yesterday, I was poised simply to add a tweet to Twitter, thanking our armed-services people for their service. The book I'm reading now for my upcoming Intercultural Communication course, *The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors and the Collision of Cultures*, moves me to write more than the 140-character max allowed by Twitter.

I am grateful for armed-servicepeople's personal sacrifices, including those of my father of blessed memory, who served as a radar technician on the U.S.S. Alabama during World War II, so that I could enjoy the freedom I do.

How Wars Begin

I'm also thinking about what *starts* wars. When beings cannot find a way to communicate peacefully, they become violent. The scar down the length of the inside of my left-hand middle-finger proves it; one of our cats was afraid to be put in a pet-carrier to go to the vet and we could not fine a way to help her understand that we weren't endangering her. So she fought bloodily.

The book I'm reading about a Hmong child's life is also a brief history of her people, and among the anthropologists it quotes, W.R. Geddes (1959) makes the analogy between the Hmong people and the Jewish people:

The preservation...of their ethnic identity for such a long time despite their being split into many small groups surrounded by different alien peoples and scattered over a vast geographic area is an outstanding record paralleling in some ways that of the Jews but more remarkable because they lacked the unifying forces of literacy and a doctrinal religion.... (p. 18).

People who feel oppressed, at some point, though they don't necessarily want to fight, are compelled to do so. The analogy with our cat Toonces is not meant to insult Hmong or Jewish people by making a comparison to animals; it's just another example of intercultural miscommunication. On Friday, as I was reading this account of an epileptic Hmong child, on the other side of the couch across from me, a crazy wail issued from the throat of one of our friends' pet-dogs. One of our friends rushed over to find her little dog stretched out rigidly, having a seizure, which had never before happened. And there was a little puddle of urine by her dog-bed, which also had never happened before.

My friend held her dog and no extra communication was necessary. We recognized what had happened. She was an old dog and she was failing, and it's sad, and they'll take her to the vet for advice in treating the seizures after the holiday-weekend. But what if she were a baby, with her natural parents to advocate for her, but no one would listen to her parents? What if they systematically misunderstood, ignored or contradicted her parents' wishes?

If I were her parents, I would fight to be understood and respected if necessary, no matter how uncivilized I seemed. And I think that's the worst that can happen with intercultural miscommunication: The cultures begin considering it to be a matter of inter-species communication challenges.

If only I could always remember the mantra about other cultures: They're not better or worse, just different, I'd be all-set. It's when I focus on how foreign they seem, or how alien(ated) I feel, that I set the stage for assuming ill-will. I'm reminded of my first few visits to Pat's family in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Pat told me that growing up, any of her classmates who were Black had to be the children of a Green Bay Packer; I inferred that there was not much diversity there.

God, how would I feel there, as someone who's Jewish from birth with East-coast roots? How exotic would I be? How exotic would they be to me with their rabid Packer football patriotism and near-Canadian accents? Standing with Pat, her mom and brother at the Packers Hall of Fame that first visit, I did feel out of my element.

Sixteen Thanksgiving visits later, I feel familiar if not fully kindred with Green Bay. I've been thinking about my historical arm's-length approach to Green Bay while watching the Native-American mini-series and reading this book about the Hmong people and the particular Hmong family. In Green Bay, the Oneida Indians have their own nation, with their own license-plates, and a huge casino. And Pat's mom was a literacy volunteer extraordinaire who helped a number of Green-Bay-based Hmong people to become literate.

The Swimming-pool as a Case Study

A circle of older women -- probably 30 years older than I on average -- stood in the shallow end of the pool when I began my laps this morning. "Would you please swim width-wise on the other side of the rope?" one of them asked me after my first lap.

"It's easier for me to swim laps length-wise. There's room for all of us."

"Well, we'll be going to the wall, so...."

I swam off in a huff and complied, with deep resentment. If I could become so irritable in such a low-stress environment, what a great reminder of how easy it is to interculturally-miscommunicate in more stressful circumstances. Why didn't they understand that it would be extra-repetitive for me to have to swim width-wise? They wondered why I couldn't understand that I had the whole deep-end nearly to myself.

Around 15 minutes into my swim, I relaxed and enjoyed it. Afterward, not yet even thinking of this swimming incident in the context of intercultural communication, I told Pat, "Pat, I know the secret of intercultural miscommunication: Everyone wants to be understood, but not to take the time to understand."

Brrrrrrrrrrrrr

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

In Anticipation of Our Trip to Green Bay

Early this morning, I had a sneak preview of how I'll feel all weekend. I went swimming at the YMHA in Clifton and the water was a lovely 82 degrees Fahrenheit, but the air was so cold that I kept warm only when doing the breast-stroke. Free-style and back-stroke were so chilly for my arms and swimming faster didn't help all that much; it was so breezy today.

Green Bay, Wisconsin is not its most pleasant in terms of weather around this time of year, but it's Pat's mom's birthday and we missed going there for Thanksgiving this year, since we were in Bangalore, and so we're going now. Bangalore had the world's nicest weather during the six months we were there.

Ugh, am I hitting some bottom with my blog entries, since now, I'm writing about the weather? Maybe. I've felt guilty lately that I've been less active out here, but then I recall the alternate writing activity I've been up to.

Over the past couple of weeks, I wrote my life story, i.e., what I've learned, for my life history and leadership course. The assignment was to write 10-12 pages, single-spaced.

Too Much or Too Little

I told friends about the assignment at a party last weekend. One asked, "Is the page-length too much or too little?"

"Both." I had written about 75 percent by then, but had trouble imagining completing the other 25 percent. Now that it's done, I feel like it's not at all as significant as I wanted it to be. I keep asking myself, What did the exercise teach me?

I've been writing about my life for years, and so I'm not sure that it was as revelatory as it was for a number of my classmates, probably. What did strike me was how my writing was a major theme; the number of times I wrote about how I value getting to write did feel like the key to some insight.

On Monday night, I'm trading my paper with the eight classmates, and each of them will give me a copy of theirs. I do need to celebrate that just several weeks ago, I was feeling anxious about taking the course and now, I've done the pivotal assignment....I'm done early again -- told myself it was because I won't have time to devote to it while in Green Bay -- so it might be sub-optimal, like my previous paper for a different professor, but I'm compelled to stop.

I wonder what my classmates will say about my paper. I wonder if my life history will be more interesting through their eyes.

Less Than an Hour Till Game-time

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Go, Pack, Go!

At 11:30 pm (India-time), Pat will call her Green-Bay-based brother Jim on Skype and they will provide color-commentary for the Packers game as Jim watches it on TV and Pat watches it on her laptop computer.

There were two conditions that needed to be met for Pat to be happy with me on this assignment: I needed to take Pat to the Taj Mahal (done!) and she needed to be able to download the Packers games from nfl.com (ongoing). There's a deal, where NFL lets non-U.S.-based fans pay to download the games on their computers.

Wisconsinites Are Everywhere!

Last week, at IBM in the Embassy Golf Links site, I met a colleague, who grew up near Green Bay. She's on assignment here for a month, on her own. She'll come eat with us on Thanksgiving.

I know that Pat will be happy to have another person with whom she can "talk cheese." (Wisconsin is famous for its cheese, and Pat refers to the conversations she has with people from WI as "talkin' cheese.")

Looking Forward to More Relaxing Times

The assignment feels like it did during the month before I arrived, now that the final month is approaching, i.e., I feel like I'm working non-stop to get stuff done....I say that as a disclaimer for why I've been scarce lately with my blog.

The fun part is that I'm synthesizing the experience of this Indian assignment, plus a literature review, into a final paper for my Masters independent study and it's pretty substantial so far. Can I make it compelling throughout? Just the right length? Will it intrigue stakeholders? I'm praying so.