Chag Sameach Pesach! Happy Passover!

It’s begun. My favorite holiday of the year. A celebration of freedom and a recollection of oppression. My fondest seder memories are of Smith, of course, where I labored, sophomore and senior year, for hours in the weeks preceeding the holidy in the basement graphic design lab in Seeley, creating and digitzing the Smith Hagaddah. That is where I felt closest to the holiday and where I began to cherish its existence. My first year at Smith, I merely contributed a portion to the zine-like collaboration that turned into the Hagaddah. But, after that year, when the wonderful seniors had graduated, I aspired to make it easy to change out different sections, to reflect the annual themse. So, I digitized it, using first Pagemaker and then InDesign. It was a difficult, yet fun and intense experience for my partner-in-crime, M and I. The product was beautiful.

This year, I only went to one seder. It was the family seder, where we use a 1950s version of the Union Hagaddah. This is an old-school reform document with all the thous and thys in place. In years past, I’ve felt offended by its content. But, after I changed the gendered language when spoke last year, one of the parents finally explained why we still read from it. I love history, especially Jewish history and family histor. So, now, since I understand that it is a family tradition, a historic re-enactment, if you will, of our family’s seders, that happen the same way each year, I am accepting of its gendered language. And while we read from the book, I think about how far we’ve come.

Our seders have changed over the years of my memory. Sometimes, we’d have them in Florida. And some years, my immediate family couldn’t make it to the big Chicago family seder, and we’d have it in whatever small city  in Wisconsin we lived in, with a hodge-podge of other families who also chose not to travel. We used to have them at my aunt’s old house, and then her new house. And now that she’s older and tired, her daughter hosts the seder. We used to have brisket and chicken. Now, we have chicken and steak from the grill. We always have our cousin (parent’s age) who makes up a prayer to bless the egg, because no one ever claims to remember how to say it in Hebrew (although this year someone did). We sing out of tune. We compete on “who knows one”. And of course, the youngest look for the affikomen. What’s different is how old everyone is. We have some babies that didn’t come. But the children looking for the affikomen numbered 2, and they were in 4th and 5th grade. I can now have reasonable, non-awkward conversations with my college-aged cousins (I’m second oldest in our generation). Although I did regale  them of stories of our first family reunions, when they were babies and toddlers.

And even though I was tired from the crazy bus to train ride that it took to get out to the suburbs after a day of classes and a week of non-stop reading, the seder was fun. And it reminded me how I miss and love my extended family.

Thinking about friends

This year, before I started grad school for year (not the intensive) I worried about making school friends. I didn’t feel really connected to anyone, I was nervous that I was too different. Of course my friend worries were unnecessary, I quickly developed a neat little threesome. I felt safe in these friendships and although they were intense because our program is intense, they seemed lasting. They may still be lasting, but in one there is a bump. And that bump is forcing me to take another look at the goodness of friendship.

I am so used to having old friends. Friends that are predictable in behavior and that know and understand me through history (which, crazily enough, if we met in first year of college is about 9 years ago).  We get each other through the hard times. We make each other laugh. We celebrate success. Most of these friendships are over the phone, since I went to an East coast college. A few are here at home. On Friday night, my three old friends and I went out for dinner on the Northside. And for a little over 2 hours, we laughed and joked and enjoyed old camraderie that had NOTHING to do with school. Yes, 3 of the 4 of us are at the same graduate institution (in different programs). But, mostly, we didn’t talk about school. We just enjoyed ourselves. I felt good (and the Eithipian food was amazing). I felt normal and grounded and happy. I drove home thinking about how grateful I was to have those 3 friends. And how special it was to be able to take time out and laugh with them, no matter the mood that I arrived with.

Today, flowers were outside my apartment door. Flowers! I have never received flowers from anyone. I don’t typically have flower-receiving types of relationships. But, I have been having a rough quarter filled with failure, rejection, and self-flagellation. And another old friend, one I met when she was a first year and I was a senior at college, knew about my mood. And she knew that the hardest is yet to come–finals. So, she sent me cheerful, beautiful flowers that were a perfect antidote to the grey day and the long, paper-writing weekend I just experienced.  They made me feel loved and safe. I was reminded how good I have it. I have so many good friends, that live in Chicago and around the world. I am so grateful to have you all in my life.

thank you friends.

Back

Well, it’s back to real life. It’s now 2008 and I turned 26. I had my 10-ish days in the “tropics”, which began with a crazy bus trip to the airport at 2 AM, because our flight from Madison to O’hare was canceled.

The trip had both ups and downs. The ports of call were all really interesting. I don’t want to talk about it now. I’ll write about it later.

After the trip, I had a few lovely days with my friend V from San Francisco, who braved the freezing cold winter weather to spend time with me.  She’s happy to back to CA.

My sister took tons of pics from the cruise. Check them out here.

On National Coming Out Day

I’ve been trying to decide whether or not to mark the occasion of National Coming Out Day. I keep thinking about how this day was celebrated at Smith. I remember vagina’s chalked on the sidewalk near Neilson Library and other places. I remember the year that the angry senior wrote messages telling everyone that if they are queer they should come out, Now! so that there are no more Mathew Shepards.  I still fail to see the correlation. NCOD always occurred around the same weekend as Parent’s Weekend, which made for some interesting grand/parental moments.

Since watching Transgeneration, I’ve also been thinking about trans-activism and how my grandparents truly understood what being transgender means.  They ate brunch with a housemate known on livejournal as Transersely. He appeared to them as male and they, although they knew he was a Smith student, accepted him as male. Afterwards, my grandfather was astonished to know that transversely had an official “female” name. My grandfather said “he just looks like a boy.”

I  was also thinking about another friend of mine, who actually had a “coming out” project in 8th grade/summer of. She impressed me beyond belief that she was coming out with a project, of all things. Since I wasn’t in the same place as her in the coming out process (as in, nearly completely naive about my own sexual orientation), I didn’t catch on that in the process she was also coming out as queer! (hello 14 year JJ!).  I wish that my “coming out” was as plotted instead of messy and traumatic (not that things weren’t traumatic for her, but….).

And so, happy Coming out day!!! To those that are in the process for the first time (since we all have to come out over and over again), I wish you strength and grace and love for yourself.

Friday 5

1. I am still sick. It’s an annoying cold. But, it’s just a cold and eventually it will be gone! (soon, I hope).

2. We saw Knocked Up last weekend at the cheap theater, it was really funny. There was one joke during the movie about Matisyahu. We (my sis and I) were the only ones in the  theater laughing. Which made it even funnier.   I didn’t see 40-year old Virgin, but maybe I should, now.

3. I finished watching Transgeneration in the last week.  I have a little crush on T.J. and am sad that he had to go back to Cyprus as Tamar (which is my Hebrew name, btw.). It was strange to see Smith in the episodes and to recognize students in some of the shots. I was even more intrigued, though, by the reasoning the administration had for limiting the filming to just Lucas and Kasey, instead of the whole campus. What needed to be protected, exactly? Or, was it just fear about the transgender issue?

4. Ellen Degeneres is really funny and I am happy to occasionally catch bits of her show, like I just did.

5. My grandma from California flew in to celebrate her 75th birthday. It’s her first solo trip. She is here until Tuesday. I’m proud of her independence.

To Smith and back again

I flew out to Northampton, Massachusetts this weekend for a training conference at Smith.  If I hadn’t been in love with Smith since the moment I set foot on its campus in 2000, I would be now. I have never had a better conference/training experience and felt so well cared for. Most things ran smoothly (there were some minor glitches, which I would attribute to the beginning of the school year), the food was healthy and tasty, and timing amazing.

The intent of the conference was to train alumnae volunteers, which included class officers, reunion officers, club officers, Alumnae Admissions Coordinators (me!), NAAC (Network of Alumnae Admission Coordinators), Affinity group volunteers, and RCC (Regional Coordinator). Besides specific trainings, we had ample opportunities to network and socialize. Our keynote speaker talked about Women in ages and stages, which was so interesting. Hetty Snyder Fore ‘90 works for Roper Reports, and was able to show us all sorts of interesting demographic information about 20th century women.

I can’t decide what the best part of the conference was, but I felt so proud to be part of the same legacy as these amazing older women (graduates of ‘42 and up!) who flew, by themselves, to Northampton from across the country. I hope that I can be just like them when I’m older.

 Smith felt like home from the moment I arrived at the Alumnae House. I had the opportunity to meet up with a couple of ‘06 Lamonsters, 2 of which were visiting to hang out with another conference attendee. I popped over to the Kosher K to chat with Rabbi Bruce, and I met their new daughter, Mayaan, who is beautiful! I enjoyed a stroll by the pond during Saturday’s hot and muggy, pre-thunderstorm weather.

All in all, I had an enjoyable weekend.  Now, I’m in a rush to get things done around Rosh Hashana!  On that note: L’shana Tovah!