SHORT
In 7th grade, I wrote the best short story that I’ll ever compose. It was about a boy with maple-syrup breath and long hair. He was relentlessly bullied but determined to win a recess game of four-square.
I drew a picture of the boy on the cover of the printed pages. My English teacher read the story aloud to the class. I sat in my bedazzled jeans and imagined winning a foursquare game as him.
MEDIUM:
The first time I got braces, they put needles on the back of the brackets so my tongue wouldn’t touch my bottom teeth. Without the needles, my tongue would push the lower set back to the way they grew in: in two crowded rows, like a shark’s.
I remember wanting needles to wear on my back and shoulders during the part of synagogue services where people put their arms around one another.
The cantor would begin a song about community, and I’d duck and weave through the congregation, trying to avoid getting “lovingly embraced”. The ducking and weaving usually ended unsuccessfully. I’d get wrapped up in the arms of a distant-friend-of-my-mom’s. She’d hold me and croon “Od yavoh shalom aleuni” - may peace come unto us. “Veh al culam” - and everybody.
The song usually ran about 4 minutes unless the cantor decided to take a dramatic minute-long-solo-moment for herself. Then it ran 5. At the final strum of the guitar I’d snake out into the foyer and stare at the loaves of braided bread. I wanted to fill myself with it all. Rip apart the bread and drink in the smell of the yeast and egg-brush.
You can’t drink wine or eat until everyone exits the chapel. Then you say two or three more prayers. When I finally got to eat the bread, I’d remember that I actually do like being a part of this community. I’d feel better about peace coming unto me and everybody.
LONG:
In middle school, we did “Jews Around The World” presentations. We were each assigned a country, and we had to make a complex, detailed trifold poster about the Diaspora and modern Jewish culture of the location we were given. Most of the kids in my grade chose countries based on their personal roots and heritage. I chose Ireland.
I am Irish, on Dad’s side. But the non-Jewish side. My dad’s relatives came over to the United States during the potato famine and cleaned houses. They were Catholic and settled in New England. Years later, my dad would grow up Catholic and in New England. With seven siblings in a house with one bathroom. Years later, my aunt would jump out of the only bathtub in the only bathroom in that New England home and chase a boy down the street screaming “I Love You”. Years after that, her husband, a cop, would wear a maroon suit to a family wedding– everyone still talks about it. How wild it was.
My Irish-Catholic grandmother would tell me these stories as she pulled a hairbrush through my sand-snagged hair at her Florida condo. I’d cry about the hair-tangles and she’d say: “you have to suffer to be gorgeous”.
For my “Jews Around The World” project, I called the Head Rabbi of Ireland. He told me about the small-but-mighty Jewish community in Dublin, and the small-but-less-mighty Jewish community in Cork. He also told me that Irish Jews eat lemon cakes on Hanukkah. I asked for the recipe so I could make them for my class presentation.
His history was not my history, but I presented it on a gorgeous green and red poster. I talked about the emigration of European Jews to Ireland during the Holocaust. I talked about the Irish Jewish Museum in Dublin. I talked about how I felt connected to it all even though I was just Irish and a Jew, not a proper “Irish Jew”.
I got an A on the presentation. The lemon cakes that I made were good but burnt around the edges. I doused them in powdered sugar out of a fear that some stupid boy in my class would comment on the bitterness of the crust.
David Blumberg commented on it anyway. Then he asked me if I wanted to go to the Fall dance with him. “Sure.”
I wore a blue v-neck and white mini skirt. When I was getting ready, my mom told me that I had “a bubble butt” and that’s why my skirt puffed out in the back. Me and my bubble butt went to the dance in our blue shirt and white skirt and felt very weird. The dance DJ was the same DJ that did everyone’s b’nei mitzvah’s. He liked to do interactive dance bits. A call and response sort of deal. Something about: Sunlight, Moonlight, And Good Times, Baby.
Later that year, he DJ’d my Bat Mitzvah and I wore a colorful dress and danced on a grass dance floor and then the sprinklers went off. I had a meltdown as water sprayed my friends and family. Everyone else kept dancing in the mud.
I liked my Bat Mitzvah. I thought I sounded great when I read Torah and led prayers. I was proud of my speech. I didn’t like the pictures that the photographer took. My gold headband and blue dress were nice but not on me. When I go home, I still take the photo album from my Bar Mitzvah and flip it over. I shouldn’t care about something that was captured a bajillion years ago, but I still do.
I don’t know if I believe that “you have to suffer to be gorgeous”. Some days the statement feels accurate. Other days it feels masochistic.
I’m trying to stop romanticizing– difficult things, good things, all things– but I find exercises in nostalgia and sadness to be both addictive and comforting.
I suppose that’s the Irish-Jewish way.
Did you enjoy this? Did you hate this? Are you like so tired of hearing about my memories? Less Judaism stuff? More Judaism stuff? Still annoyed by my poor punctuation and grammar? I wanna know ur thoughts!
-Meg
Social- @megspope@mpopetweets
Venmo- @mpope-venmo-26
Website- meganpopework.com
Donate to The Audre Lorde Project
EXTRA:
I hope you are able to find some sort of respite/moment of calm this Election Day.
For work at my muggle job, I made pictures of beans voting:
