Category Archives: lizrael update

what’s going on in the world of lizrael, in review form.

Fifty-Two Frames: Self-Portrait

Posted on by
Comments

First off, I started participating in Fifty-Two Frames exactly 52 weeks ago, January 2012, and this week I completed it, in time for a new round called 2013.

Secondly, this week’s theme was a good one. It had the potential to be awkward, narcissistic, lame, or reflective. Sighofrelief it became the latter.

This week I was lucky to find myself in the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. You know that wonderful mosaic statue park, right outside the kids’ petting zoo area? It’s my favorite part of the entire zoo. The statues are beautiful, kids can climb on them, and just eyeing the colorful tiles makes me feel creative. While there last week, I noticed a few of the abstract stone creatures had mirrored mosaic tiles so I took advantage and experimented. 75984758461 photos later, I had a few to choose from.

Now for the reflective part… I’ve been around a little while. Three decades. I’m a lot of things. I’m a writer, an amateur photographer, a blogger, a student, a former junkie of a few left-behinds. I’m a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter. I’m a dual citizen, split down the middle by an ocean. I’m a lot of someones.

Week 52: Self-Portrait

I’m a lot of things, but I’m not broken. I'm a lot of things, but I'm not broken. Fifty-Two Frames is a collaboration of artists, sharing the best of their work to a weekly theme. Want to join? Contact Yosef.

My NYTimes debut: experience of an expat Staten Islander during Sandy

Posted on by
Comments

My New York Times debut: A journalist found my post on my experience of helplessness as a Staten Island expat, far away during the Hurricane Sandy disaster. After some emails and a phone call, my Staten Island-based mama and I became the lede of his article on New York expats taking action during crisis.

Here’s the article, in this weekend’s paper in the New York Times Giving section:

Tied by Heartstrings to Calamity

It was kinda cool to be on the flip side of reporting as the interviewee. Probably made it a lot easier for the writer, too. And I also got a kick out of collecting info for him to find other local Israeli resources.

The experience reminded me of my old reporter ambitions (which, since abandoning them, I’ve partly pursued here for the last 8+ years; so one might say). It got me thinking that I might want to revive that old life a little, perhaps staying online, maybe starting with guest posts? Might be fun to give it a shot.

Next stop… byline somewhere!

Back to school (again).

Posted on by
Comments

Move over Billy Madison, I’m going back to school (again).

Had my first class at David Yellin College in Jerusalem, and looking up at the giant stone arches ushering me and dozens of other students through, I felt home again. Classrooms piled on to other classrooms. A little sandwich kiosk at the entrance. Students walking around with steaming coffees between their funky nailpolished fingers.

Everyone texting as they walk. Everyone talking to someone. Arabs and dosim salt and peppering the yellow hallways.

Ahhhhh. Academia.

So it’s not a university. I’m not in Dublin and this isn’t the psychology degree I sometimes wonder if I’ll get.

But it’s so refreshing to have one night a week to myself every week for the next two semesters. To pretend I’m in university again. To soak up every word of learning like it’s extra whip cream on the frappuccino at the coffee bar downstairs.

Walking through yellow hallways, texting and smiling, getting struck up in conversation by a young backpacked guy who has no idea I’m not really one of them.

Oh, it’s on.

Posted on by
Comments

As I slowly rouse from the last four years of pregnant haze and breastfeeding exhaustion, the world becomes slightly clearer, a little brighter, and just a wee bit more attainable.

I decided that I would spend this year investing in myself, dusting off the creative workshops, writing exercises, draft after draft after draft of whatever it is I call that, Short short fiction, prose, poetry, bla bla. It’s totally fine.

So I’ve enrolled in two courses – a short one with Channie Greenberg in Jerusalem, for three weeks. And a commitment of two semesters with the program run by Judy Labensohn called So You Want to Write at David Yellin.

I’ve already got some stuff I want to share but I need to work on it further. One goal of this new direction is to write pieces I’d actually prefer to keep sacred, so I can rewrite and maybe make something of them. Maybe read them to no one at a bar. Maybe read them to the goats that graze across the street.

Maybe read them to you.

lizrael update: Thirty.

Posted on by
Comments

In a way, I consider myself fortunate that on the eve of my thirtieth birthday, I spent my night at an אסיפת הורים for my kid’s gan.

I’m not a birthday person; I haven’t  been for a long time. If nothing else, surely my mother deserves the credit for being split open so that I could be yanked from what I suppose was the worst physical trauma I’ve ever endured.

Yep, I’m quite lucky.

Anyway… Numbers shouldn’t dictate our success, and our age shouldn’t dictate our achievements. So I was as happy today as I’m sure to be tomorrow.

Besides, my son says I’m turning three. Since Abba, is, of course, four. I appreciate the effort on his part.

 

Year of me.

Posted on by
Comments

Seeing as I’m a mother and there’s really no ‘me’ anymore, here’s what I’m thinking…

As of a couple weeks ago, when Bebe essentially weaned herself, thereby letting my body free into the universe where no one depends on it directly for sustenance, whether in utero or by breast… it marks the first time in four years I’m not trying to get pregnant, pregnant, or breastfeeding.

And though, I have to admit, a part of me is tempted to continue through to the next stop on the child train, I also think I’ll be a better mother if I give myself a break. Some breathing room. Some sleeping space. Some time to wear bras that are kinda pretty.

So I’m declaring Year of Me. Like I said… that’s pretty much a misnomer, but here’s what I’m thinking: I’m going to use the time to perhaps grow back a few of the lost brain cells my kids have eaten and learn a few new things. Do some cranial workouts. Explore the stuff I used to love before I home-made instant-and-forever all-encompassing loves.

Also, in about four months, I turn 30.

I’m all at once apathetic and squeamish. I don’t care about dates but I do care about milestones. I’ve already got a lot under my belt but I feel like there’s something memorable I should do to mark the new decade. It feels young and old. It feels tired and energized. It feels pretty and spent.

And, no, I’m not into skydiving.

Thoughts?

Lizrael Update: seven years.

Posted on by
Comments

So here I am, in Israel seven years today.

Did I consider where I’d be in seven years when I got in the plane from New York? Never bothered to go that far.

Maybe in the back of my mind I always wondered if the seven-year itch would grab me. It hasn’t.

A rarity, maybe, but Israel has been good to me the last seven years. The Universe has been good to me the last seven years.

I wonder how long this ride lasts for me…

Lizrael Update: Insane mom you hate on flights edition.

Posted on by
Comments

Bulletin:  I’m leaving tonight to New York, with both my kids, alone.

That’s one adult to two kids. Or, one adult to an infant and a terrible two.

So if you’re on my flight, sucks for you. Sucks worse for me.

Like I told my mom, who I’m sure is containing all the giddy-with-pleasure as best she can until we’re settled in and over the flight:

It’s going to be hard and I always come off cursing but this is the kind of life I chose so here goes…