Thursday, May 19, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Bubbe
I’m long overdue on blog entries----I’ve got lots to say about my post-Soviet Passovers and the Peace Corps freedom seder, and I’ve had some really extraordinary experiences cultivating the small plot of land my neighbors have given me to plant. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention something about Bubbe, who died early Tuesday morning.
Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother, closely tied linguistically to the Ukranian Babusia, was not my relative. Frankly, I don’t know how to describe my relationship with her, if the sum of our interactions even constituted a loose definition of that term. Bubbe was my friend Jeff’s grandmother, and she was tough as nails.
I don’t know how old Bubbe was, or where she was born. I’ve got bits and pieces of her biography scattered throughout various stories I’ve heard over the years. Her legal name was Tilly Gittelman, but even though she was not my grandmother, I always called her bubbe.
Jeff lived about five minutes away growing up, and we spent a lot of time together. Sometimes too much time together. We rode our bikes around town, we played basketball in the park, we meandered around the local mall for hours. And every time, there was bubbe, warning us to take a helmet, or a cell phone, or a full body styrofoam suit incase we fell.
Bubbe never went to a doctor. Not in years, at least. But she must have been pushing ninety when she died, proving most anti-aging techniques tenuous at best. Bubbe simply had this unbelievable will to live, a refusal to get sick, a refusal to die. For a woman who couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, she had a mental strength that I’ve rarely seen.
Everyone will likely always remember where they were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was in Jeff’s living room, scared shitless, waiting, because Debbie, Jeff’s mom, Bubbe’s daughter, hadn’t yet returned home from her office on the 64th Floor. She never did.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully verbalize what happened in those few months. But I do know that somewhere, somehow, Bubbe, and her husband Ralph (or in the Yiddish Zayde) decided they were going to stay alive to help raise all the kids. Jeff was 14, and he had siblings as young as 9.
Here we are, almost ten years later, and they did it. They woke up early every morning and firmly planted themselves within the confines of Jeff’s house at 19 Clarkson Court, making lunches, running errands, dropping off at after school programs. They gave up everything, and they got even more in return.
At the time, they were occasional complaints. Her chicken often needed salt, and the nagging could be a bit much. But I can guarantee that ten, twenty, fifty years from now, Jeff and his siblings will remember they had a Bubbe who loved them, and who showed it, in her own tough, stubborn way.
Sometimes I am walking around in my village, and I see a woman with a hunched over back and little hair and bad eyes. And they are lugging a bucket of water or a pile of hay or occasionally a live chicken. I always offer to help (well, sometimes not with the chickens) and they almost always refuse. They’ve been doing this for some time now, they tell me, and they can take it a little bit farther. This is the picture of the Ukrainian Babusia, never quitting, strong of spirit, an unspoken power. They go to the well every day because that is was Babusias do.
Bubbe raised children for 60 odd years, first her own, and then her children’s children. She cooked and cleaned and nagged and helped and taught and warned and loved. And when people told her to stop she kept going, because that was just what Bubbe’s do.
Bubbe, Yiddish for grandmother, closely tied linguistically to the Ukranian Babusia, was not my relative. Frankly, I don’t know how to describe my relationship with her, if the sum of our interactions even constituted a loose definition of that term. Bubbe was my friend Jeff’s grandmother, and she was tough as nails.
I don’t know how old Bubbe was, or where she was born. I’ve got bits and pieces of her biography scattered throughout various stories I’ve heard over the years. Her legal name was Tilly Gittelman, but even though she was not my grandmother, I always called her bubbe.
Jeff lived about five minutes away growing up, and we spent a lot of time together. Sometimes too much time together. We rode our bikes around town, we played basketball in the park, we meandered around the local mall for hours. And every time, there was bubbe, warning us to take a helmet, or a cell phone, or a full body styrofoam suit incase we fell.
Bubbe never went to a doctor. Not in years, at least. But she must have been pushing ninety when she died, proving most anti-aging techniques tenuous at best. Bubbe simply had this unbelievable will to live, a refusal to get sick, a refusal to die. For a woman who couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds, she had a mental strength that I’ve rarely seen.
Everyone will likely always remember where they were on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. I was in Jeff’s living room, scared shitless, waiting, because Debbie, Jeff’s mom, Bubbe’s daughter, hadn’t yet returned home from her office on the 64th Floor. She never did.
I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to fully verbalize what happened in those few months. But I do know that somewhere, somehow, Bubbe, and her husband Ralph (or in the Yiddish Zayde) decided they were going to stay alive to help raise all the kids. Jeff was 14, and he had siblings as young as 9.
Here we are, almost ten years later, and they did it. They woke up early every morning and firmly planted themselves within the confines of Jeff’s house at 19 Clarkson Court, making lunches, running errands, dropping off at after school programs. They gave up everything, and they got even more in return.
At the time, they were occasional complaints. Her chicken often needed salt, and the nagging could be a bit much. But I can guarantee that ten, twenty, fifty years from now, Jeff and his siblings will remember they had a Bubbe who loved them, and who showed it, in her own tough, stubborn way.
Sometimes I am walking around in my village, and I see a woman with a hunched over back and little hair and bad eyes. And they are lugging a bucket of water or a pile of hay or occasionally a live chicken. I always offer to help (well, sometimes not with the chickens) and they almost always refuse. They’ve been doing this for some time now, they tell me, and they can take it a little bit farther. This is the picture of the Ukrainian Babusia, never quitting, strong of spirit, an unspoken power. They go to the well every day because that is was Babusias do.
Bubbe raised children for 60 odd years, first her own, and then her children’s children. She cooked and cleaned and nagged and helped and taught and warned and loved. And when people told her to stop she kept going, because that was just what Bubbe’s do.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
What Peace Corps Service means to me
This is in response to a prompt for a Peace Corps Ukraine Essay contest, "What does Peace Corps Service mean to me?" Here is my half-witted response:
Somedays I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ve finally got it. That one magic idea that will transform my small village, the magic pill that, if I just get them to swallow it, will cure all of our problems. I am too excited to reenter my sleeping state.
And other days I hear my alarm beep and fail to move. Its cold and dark outside of the covers. My self-described brilliant idea has been shrugged off once again, a pill not just to hard to swallow but one that they won’t even send to trial. Outside my covers await another day of little progress.
But most days I wake up even before my 6am alarm, because the roosters next door are crowing and then the dogs start barking and then the tractors start moving. The sounds of a country morning is an obstacle that I have yet to overcome. I sometimes find myself yearning for that urban clatter of my beloved New York, taxis raging and pedestrians bustling and the subway rattling beneath many stories that aren’t my own.
Every day I wake up, though, every day I head to school and I teach some English and show a few students a new chord on the guitar. And I’ll be in the middle of a breakthrough, explaining the difference between “the” and “an/a” to a twelve year old, when my director will barge in to my office, telling me to take a break so we can sip on some chai.
As we sit there drinking our very Ukrainian tea, I tell him of my new plan, to build a recycling factory or sell our produce over the internet or run a feminism camp or produce our own music album or start a school newspaper. He always supports me, but I’ve begun to think he finds my idealism, this American “can-do” attitude, a bit amusing.
And I’ll stop in one of the two local stores on my way home, and the local prodavetz will ask me about my day. I always produce a huge smile and force out a “fantastichno,” and she’ll laugh heartily in return.
The walk back home is long, only one long street crowded with the same faces. There is Slavik, 13 years old, whose parents don’t much care for his whereabouts, and he, in turn, doesn’t care much either. There is Nazar, just barely four, who always seems to find himself eating something he picked off the ground, which have ranged from a piece of an old tire to a small pick axe. No one is around to tell him how hard it all is to digest.
I walk farther to find Sergei, a 22 year old who lost his two front teeth in a battle with the street, collapsing after a day-long drinking session. He has no job, save the bottle. Just past him is Baba Natasha, lamenting the village’s downfall. I go a little farther to see Sashko, in the eleventh grade, smoking his 5th cigarette of the day.
And just when the road seems endless, I come to Yanna, beautiful, precocious, seven year old Yanna. She’s just beginning to string letters together into words. “Dog,” she says, as a local canine attacks my leg. “Snow,” she said in the winter, “Sun” now that it has begun to get warm. “How are you,” I ask her, “I am good, thank you” is her reply. “Koly mi yidem do New Yorka,” she asks, when are we going to New York. “Zavtra,” I tell her, tomorrow, always tomorrow, always the day after.
Tomorrow will surely arrive, and I’ll wake up in the very same country in the very same village in the very same bed with the very same thoughts and ideas I had the day before. Hopes of miracles begin to vanish, dreams of grandeur dissipate with the morning fog. Slavik will still kick the stones and Sergei will fail to kick the bottle, and my director will still smile at my newly concocted plan.
So we all wake up just the same, except maybe, just maybe, Yanna wakes up a bit different. Another word learned, another letter’s sound mastered. And in 20 thousand tomorrows, maybe she will come to New York, and she’ll point to the dogs and the snow and the sun, and she’ll grab my hand and look in my eyes and say, in perfect english, “we are good, Jeremy. Thank you.”
Somedays I wake up in the middle of the night, and I’ve finally got it. That one magic idea that will transform my small village, the magic pill that, if I just get them to swallow it, will cure all of our problems. I am too excited to reenter my sleeping state.
And other days I hear my alarm beep and fail to move. Its cold and dark outside of the covers. My self-described brilliant idea has been shrugged off once again, a pill not just to hard to swallow but one that they won’t even send to trial. Outside my covers await another day of little progress.
But most days I wake up even before my 6am alarm, because the roosters next door are crowing and then the dogs start barking and then the tractors start moving. The sounds of a country morning is an obstacle that I have yet to overcome. I sometimes find myself yearning for that urban clatter of my beloved New York, taxis raging and pedestrians bustling and the subway rattling beneath many stories that aren’t my own.
Every day I wake up, though, every day I head to school and I teach some English and show a few students a new chord on the guitar. And I’ll be in the middle of a breakthrough, explaining the difference between “the” and “an/a” to a twelve year old, when my director will barge in to my office, telling me to take a break so we can sip on some chai.
As we sit there drinking our very Ukrainian tea, I tell him of my new plan, to build a recycling factory or sell our produce over the internet or run a feminism camp or produce our own music album or start a school newspaper. He always supports me, but I’ve begun to think he finds my idealism, this American “can-do” attitude, a bit amusing.
And I’ll stop in one of the two local stores on my way home, and the local prodavetz will ask me about my day. I always produce a huge smile and force out a “fantastichno,” and she’ll laugh heartily in return.
The walk back home is long, only one long street crowded with the same faces. There is Slavik, 13 years old, whose parents don’t much care for his whereabouts, and he, in turn, doesn’t care much either. There is Nazar, just barely four, who always seems to find himself eating something he picked off the ground, which have ranged from a piece of an old tire to a small pick axe. No one is around to tell him how hard it all is to digest.
I walk farther to find Sergei, a 22 year old who lost his two front teeth in a battle with the street, collapsing after a day-long drinking session. He has no job, save the bottle. Just past him is Baba Natasha, lamenting the village’s downfall. I go a little farther to see Sashko, in the eleventh grade, smoking his 5th cigarette of the day.
And just when the road seems endless, I come to Yanna, beautiful, precocious, seven year old Yanna. She’s just beginning to string letters together into words. “Dog,” she says, as a local canine attacks my leg. “Snow,” she said in the winter, “Sun” now that it has begun to get warm. “How are you,” I ask her, “I am good, thank you” is her reply. “Koly mi yidem do New Yorka,” she asks, when are we going to New York. “Zavtra,” I tell her, tomorrow, always tomorrow, always the day after.
Tomorrow will surely arrive, and I’ll wake up in the very same country in the very same village in the very same bed with the very same thoughts and ideas I had the day before. Hopes of miracles begin to vanish, dreams of grandeur dissipate with the morning fog. Slavik will still kick the stones and Sergei will fail to kick the bottle, and my director will still smile at my newly concocted plan.
So we all wake up just the same, except maybe, just maybe, Yanna wakes up a bit different. Another word learned, another letter’s sound mastered. And in 20 thousand tomorrows, maybe she will come to New York, and she’ll point to the dogs and the snow and the sun, and she’ll grab my hand and look in my eyes and say, in perfect english, “we are good, Jeremy. Thank you.”
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