Here’s my story from Lip Schtick, which deserves more than one star. It got one star because my very own girlfriend Victoria tried to rate me and messed up obviously and then didn’t know how to change it. So ignore the star system. It’s probably wise to ignore the star system on all Youtube videos, since the stars were probably put there by somebody’s girlfriend. Probably somebody’s girlfriend who knew how to rate the thing with 5 stars. Clearly not my girlfriend.
Lip Schtick was a co-production of Lip Service and The Open Tent. We created a night of true, Jewish stories told at Books & Books during Sleepless Night Miami. Go to www.lipservicestories.com to watch all the stories. Let me know what you think.
Yesterday morning Tashi was thumbing through The New Yorker. She wasn’t on the pot, although she does sometimes thumb through magazines when she’s going to the bathroom. But this time she was lying on the bed next to Victoria, who was nursing Sebastian. I was getting dressed and pretending not to listen.
Tashi came to an advertisement for Ireland with pictures of all the fun things to see and do. Right there with the Royal Portrush Golf Links and the Carrickfergus Castle was a picture of St. Patrick. He was wearing a dress and a cape and a cardinal’s hat, which sort of looked like a dunce hat, and a big, giant cross. He was carrying a staff in one hand and a serpent in the other and he had a long white beard. Tashi pointed to him and said, “This is God.”
Victoria said, “No, I think God’s a woman.”
About an hour later, Tashi was sitting on the pot and I was brushing my teeth and pretending not to notice her. She pulled about two trees worth of toilet paper off the roll and held a big, fluffy wad in her hands. She said, “Mommy, this is what God looks like when SHE’s going to the bathroom.”
I have a friend who has a friend who doesn’t believe the Holocaust happened. She thinks movies like The Reader are Jewish propaganda films. How can she deny this?
I bought these stockings from a totally cool blogger called Kat. Check her out at Just Kat Stuff. She sells them at Etsy. But this is not an add for those awesome stockings, although they are even cuter in person. They’re made out of denim and feather boas and they’re very well priced.
This is a post about being a hero/asshole. That’s what I was the day I surprised Victoria with these little booties.
The box came. I ripped it open. I saw the stockings. I almost cried, they were so adorable. (There’s even a blue-feathered baby one inside the blue denim with the pink feathered one. That’s for Victoria’s baby.) I ran around the house looking for the perfect place to hang them. I put them up.
When Victoria came home I made her close her eyes and I led her to them. She opened her eyes. She smiled. She said she loved them. She didn’t cry like I imagined, but she seemed pleased.
I really thought she’d cry, being pregnant and all, because I was doing something very big, in my mind. I was accepting Christmas in our house, which is something I have been trained NOT to do.
But Tashi’s birthday was the next day, so I took them off the wall, one by one, and put them back in their box. Victoria’s face looked stricken and she asked me what I was doing. I said I didn’t want the stockings up for Tashi’s party.
That didn’t go over very well.
“Why?” She said.
“Because we have a Jewish home,” I said. “Jews don’t celebrate Xmas, that’s what makes us Jews. At least that’s what makes us SEEM like Jews. Because most of the outside American world celebrates Xmas, we have to distinguish ourselves as Jews by not having our stocking up when people come over.”
“Then why did you buy the boots?” (Victoria calls them boots.)
“Because, um, it’s your holiday and I want us to celebrate a little bit.”
She said that hiding the boots made us SEEM like closeted Xmas celebrators.
There is little I hate more than being closeted. So I put up the boots.
Last Sunday, Victoria and Tashi and I had lunch with Victoria’s friend Rita. Rita was born in Cuba, but moved to Miami 48 years ago when she was eight years old. Rita speaks English without an accent. She wore black pants and a black shirt and ate a tofu and avocado salad.
We were talking about religion and identity, which we think about often because Victoria, my Catholic, Latina partner, is about to have a baby and how are we going to raise the kids? Religion for Victoria is about God. For me religion is about culture and being part of a group.
Rita said that religion and cultural identity have been the cause of adversity and war since the beginning of time. ”We’re all mixing anyway. Some day we’ll all be the same. Don’t you want to teach your children that we’re all part of the HUMAN tribe?”
Rita is smart and I saw her point. Sometimes identifying as a Jew seems as un-evolved as identifying as a Miami Dolphins fan. (I like sports, but the way people paint their faces orange and baby blue is a little crazy.) And like every sports fan, our team vilifies the other team: we are good, they are bad. When nations do it, it breeds hatred and violence. But I argued the importance of preserving culture. I said, “I’m part of a culture I’m proud of. If we became just like everyone else, who would make the latkes?”
Rita said, “Ok, you have cultural pride. But then there’s the flip side. Where there’s pride, there’s shame.” Rita said she’s just from Cuba. She’s not proud or ashamed. It just is.
I asked if she’d be proud of a great Cuban the way we’re proud of Albert Einstein and Barbra Streisand?
She said, “Not really. What’s the big deal?”
Well, what is the big deal? Why do we have Jewish fraternities on college campuses and websites like Jewcy and magazines like Heeb? Why do we gather in groups of like kind?
A few weeks ago, I was one of seven people invited to tell a story at an event sponsored by Heeb at the Miami Book Fair International. The only rule was that the story be Jewish. I had some Jewish pride that night, but also some shame.
One woman’s story was Jewish because her mother was a neurotic mess. Another woman spoke with a New York accent and said, “Oye veh,” twenty times. There were jokes about sleep-away camp, playing shuffle-board with grandparents in Florida and small penises. The Holocaust was mentioned, of course, and getting discounts and ha, ha, we’re the chosen people. We were caricatures of Jews, at least that’s how we looked to me.
Six high school students sat in the front row. I’d met them earlier that day and I told them I’d be telling a story from my book, My Miserable, Lonely, Lesbian Pregnancy (I see that Jewish is missing from my title). They laughed when I told them my title and so they came. I don’t think the kids were Jewish. They looked like a Miami mix of Latinos and gringos and I wondered what they thought and why we perpetuate these ideas, especially when they’re really not that funny?
Last Sunday night, hours after lunch with Rita, Victoria, Tashi and I were invited to dinner by a new friend named Nighad, who had a boss many years ago who told her to go by Niki. He said people were calling her Nigger. She didn’t know why that was a problem. Now she knows.
Niki is from Pakistan and came to Miami 37 years ago when her husband (an arranged marriage), came to school here. Niki speaks English with a strong accent. She wore a silk, red and purple blouse draped with a scarf. She had a nose ring.
When we walked into her house, Tashi held her nose. The air was thick with unfamiliar flavors. Niki made rice with chicken, beef kabobs, chick peas, and the most delicious goat stew. For the second time that day, we talked about religion and identity.
Niki is Muslim. She told us that being friends with a Jew in Pakistan is impossible. I asked which would be more taboo, to be friends with a lesbian or with a Jew. She said Jew because lesbians are so underground no one would know.She said, “Religion is everything in Pakistan. You are your religion.”And I thought how stupid and how sad. I thought about Rita and how really we are all the same. But are we? If so, we wouldn’t have enjoyed the goat stew.
This and other posts about Jewish identity is also posted on Jewcy.com, where I am a regular contributer. It is also posted on Offsprung.com, where I contribute stories about parenthood as Mama La Gringa.
We were reading before bed when Tashi said, “People have to die, otherwise there won’t be enough beds.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“If they die and they don’t go to heaven, where do they go?”
“I don’t know. It’s a great question. The problem is, the people who have died, who know the answer, aren’t with us anymore, so we can’t ask them,” I said. Then I got into some stuff I thought might be too complicated for a 4-and-three-quarter-year-old, but if I err at all, it’s always with too much information. I figure more is better than less. And right now I’m taking my parenting cues from Atticus Finch.
I’m reading To Kill a Mockingbird and Atticus Finch is the dad I want to be.
Scout asked her uncle what a whore-lady was. He didn’t tell her and Atticus said, “When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness’ sake. But don’t make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, and evasion simply muddles ‘em.”
So that I wouldn’t muddle Tashi, I said, “Some people say they can communicate with dead people and maybe they can. Some people might have an understanding of things that other people don’t have. Like dogs can hear things people can’t hear.”
I was proud of that dog analogy. I continued: ”But I’m not one of those dogs or those people, so I don’t know.”
“We’ll know when we die,” Tashi said.
“Yea, we’ll know when we die. I hope that’s not for a long, long time.”
This post and other posts about parenting can be read on Offsprung.com where I write as Mama La Gringa.
About a year ago, when Tashi was nearing 4, we visited Rosetta, a 93-year-old woman, who had been my mother’s nanny when my mom was a kid. Rosetta lived in an old house in a black Miami neighborhood about a mile from ours. Duct tape held the floor boards together in a few places and all the cabinets in the kitchen had fallen off. There was no air-conditioning, so Rosetta, my mom, Tashi and I sat next to a metal fan on the narrow front porch. Rosetta was ill and looked it. She had only a few teeth left and very little hair. But she remembered life in Miami more than 60 years ago. We had a nice time with Rosetta that day. A few months later, she died.
I wondered what Tashi took away from that visit with Rosetta: Her poverty? Her skin color? Her teeth? Tashi didn’t mention any of that, but after Rosetta’s funeral, Tashi asked me why Rosetta died.
I said that everyone has to die to make room for new people. And Rosetta was very old.
A few weeks later Tashi asked me what happened to Rosetta. I reminded her that Rosetta died and Tashi asked, “Where is she now?”
I said I didn’t know, but that some people say that when someone dies they go to a place called heaven. Victoria believes people go to heaven, I said, but I’m not sure. I’m only sure that when someone you love dies, they go into your heart.
The death conversation is recurring in our house. Days, even months will pass before something triggers Tashi’s little mind to ask something again, but she always does.
Not long ago she asked Victoria about heaven and Victoria told her that it was a wonderful place. Tashi and I were walking to school two weeks later when she asked me if there was ice cream and candy in heaven. I said, that if you believed in heaven and if heaven is a wonderful place, like Victoria says it is, then I’d say for sure there’s ice cream and candy in heaven.
Last night, right before bed, Tashi said, “Is there really heaven?”
I said, “I don’t know. Some people think so, but I don’t know.”
“I don’t think so,” Tashi said.
I said, “Why not?” I perked up. I thought maybe Tashi was going to impart knowledge only a child could have access to. Knowledge that only someone 4 and three quarters or less might know. Someone much closer to a past life, if one exists, than her 40-year-old mother. Tashi was going to solve the mystery of death once and for all.
She said, “Dead people can’t eat candy. They’ll lose even more teeth.”
I said, “Yea, that sounds right.”
This blog and other blogs about parenting can be found on the totally cool Offsprung.com.
My mom is a typical Jewish mother. She called today to go over the details of Victoria’s baby shower. We were talking about round tables vs. rectangular when she said, “Victoria’s religiosity is going to seep into you and you’re gonna become Catholic, I just know it.”
I said, “WHAT?”
She said, “I read your blog. You said you were jealous of the rosaries.”
“Well I am, in a way. They relax her.”
“Andrea, listen, I have it too, it’s called Law & Order. When I get stressed I just turn on the TV. We all have it. It’s hypnosis of the masses.”
I said, “Yea, that works, but I don’t like TV.”
“See, you’re not like most people.”
“Don’t most people turn to religion? If I’m not like most people, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Andrea, I don’t want Tasha to be Catholic. I don’t want Mateo to be Catholic either, but I guess I don’t have a choice.”
I said, “Don’t worry Mom, we’re all Jews, even Victoria. We’re Jews for Mary.”
This post and others like it can also be read on Offsprung.com.
I was reading in bed two nights ago, on the start of the Jewish New Year. Victoria was curled up next to me and and I thought she was trying to sleep, but her hands were clutched at her chest and moving.
The stock market closed 777 points that day and Victoria’s clients had been calling, in a panic. Victoria told me earlier that she felt as insecure about the world’s future as she felt after 9/11.
This is not a good time to be a financial advisor. ”Are you okay?”
“Scared,” she said.
I saw that she was holding a rosary. Her eyes looked sad and even deeper-set than normal. She looked exhausted and so Catholic, like she could play a perfect Mother Mary in the school pageant.
I must have made a funny face because she held up her rosary. ”Does this scare you?”
I didn’t want to make her feel bad—she was so stressed—and I wanted to be a little open minded. I don’t pray. Don’t even know if I believe in God and frankly, before Victoria, I thought people who believed were not so smart. So I thought carefully about her question.
I felt a lot of things. I even felt jealous, as I have in the past when I’ve seen Victoria pray.
One time a friend called with scary news. She needed brain surgery. I got off the phone and even though it was midnight, I folded my laundry and then with a single baby wipe, cleaned the corners of our room where dog hair had gathered. Then I remade the bed.
Victoria kneeled down, put her hands to her chest and closed her eyes. Years ago, I would have laughed to see someone, especially someone I loved, in prayer position. But I admired her. She looked calm. And at least she had something to do.
This time she had rosaries. “Yes, those scare me,” I said.
“I’m just doing a mantra,” she said. She showed me how she fingered every bead. She said, “You start here…” and she said the prayer in Spanish. ”Look at how beautiful the colors are.”
She LOVED them.
When she got to the middle—a silver penny with Mary carved into it—she said, “I don’t remember what you say here.”
I said, “What kind of Catholic are you?”
She told me that young people don’t do rosaries anymore. She never formally learned what to say. She learned it watching the old women.
She said it quiets and calms her mind so she can sleep.
“That’s cool,” I said. And again, I felt admiration and a little bit jealous.
This post is also published on Offsprung.com, where I write as Mama La Gringa.
About a year ago, when Tashi was nearing 4, we visited Rosetta, a 93-year-old woman, who had been my mother’s nanny when my mom was a kid. Rosetta lived in an old house in a black Miami neighborhood about a mile from ours. Duct tape held the floor boards together in a few places and all the cabinets in the kitchen had fallen off. There was no air-conditioning, so Rosetta, my mom, Tashi and I sat next to a metal fan on the narrow front porch. Rosetta was ill and looked it. She had only a few teeth left and very little hair. But she remembered life in Miami more than 60 years ago. We had a nice time with Rosetta that day. A few months later, she died. 
My mom is a typical Jewish mother. She called today to go over the details of Victoria’s baby shower. We were talking about round tables vs. rectangular when she said, “Victoria’s religiosity is going to seep into you and you’re gonna become Catholic, I just know it.”