SHORT:
The first time I sang in front of anyone was in a broom closet at my Jewish Day school. I sang Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” for a man named Dan who had come to record the seventh grade bible songs. I have no idea why I chose Mraz for my audition. On the CD we’d be singing original songs about god. In the broom closet I sang about “when the cool done run out I’ll be givin’ it my bestest”.
My friend Eliza also auditioned. She and Dan said I was really good. I believed them. I had no idea what it meant to love someone. To be “theirs”. But I was glad that I made the concept sound nice.
I did the CD solo. When they played the finished track for the class, people turned and stared upon the slow realization that it was my voice. A few minutes later, I went to the bathroom and sort of just sat there. After a year of quietly reading by my locker, I had made noise.
MEDIUM:
I went on a water slide last year.
When you’re on a waterslide and your ass is wet and you’re rocking back and forth you know you’re not going to fly out of the half-tube-canal-thing but you could... become a statistic: first 23 year old boygirl to splat onto the sizzlin’ summer deck. You’d cry or throw up or die. All things you kinda have been wanting to do since you put your swim shirt on and drove over to the waterpark in the first place. Your body hit you like a brick, your schedule cleared up, and you were able to look around– spend time with Miranda whose favorite thing to do is go to the waterpark even though she’s an adult.
You’re heavy and buzzing. A thick, uncomfortable, little rocket-thing. Unlaunched and slippery. Everything’s real slick, and if you rock too far, you could fly out and break apart and maybe it’d be exactly what you want and need and deserve. But you stay in the half-tube. Stare at your flexed feet. Shoot out, legs into the water, sink.
Synthetic rocks and chlorine and Miranda waiting for you at the bottom.
An hour later, you sit across from one another at an umbrella-table. Eat orange slices that you packed from home. The Ziploc bag makes the oranges taste like toys. Miranda picked the oranges off a neighbor’s tree two days ago and put them in Tupperware and now they taste like they’re from a factory.
Miranda gets up. The slatted bench has made an indent on the back of her thighs. You stand, have a matching one. Bumping hips, you laugh and line up the marks to make a long path. Despite the plastic slide and plastic rocks and plastic oranges, there’s now a feeling in your gut that is undeniably good. You try to get carried away in it.
LONG:
We used to celebrate Christmas with my Dad’s parents in Stuart, Florida. Stuart is death’s waiting room™️. The only things that exist in Stuart are a nail salon and an aquarium for people to go to when they’re tired of hearing about Gail from the nail salon talk about her son’s fly fishing business. There’s a stingray tank at the aquarium. When I’m in Stuart I want to dunk my face in the stingray tank.
In Stuart, my Catholic Grandma would put Jerusalem ornaments on the Christmas tree. She would wrap my sister, brother, and my presents in blue paper to be inclusive. This was a very kind gesture. It also still sort of ended up being wildly isolating because all of our cousins would gather around and be like “ oh wow look at all of these green and red presents I wonder which ones are ours,” and my siblings and I would be like “Yeah same. Ours definitely aren’t 3 blue ones standing out like Shaquille O'Neal at a gymnastics convention.”
My mom makes us light Hanukkah candles in front of our non-Jewish cousins. I used to be very embarrassed by this. I think we could’ve given our Catholic cousins a bit more context on it all. I’m not saying that every time we light candles in front of them it sets Jews back 20 years, I’m just saying that the last time we did it, the littlest cousin looked up at this mom and said “ when are the crazy people going to be done singing and dancing around the fire sticks?” So, we’re not exactly Abraham Joshua Heschel-ing it.
On Christmas morning in Stuart, our cousins would go to church and we would stay behind and clean the house. Yeah. The Jews were slaves in Egypt so we could be slaves in a 2-bedroom condo in Stuart baybeee! We helped build the pyramids, so we could help clean candy cane crumbs out of the carpet! Our splitting of the red sea? When we finally get to leave and drive 4 miles to the nearest Starbucks for coffee, Hallelujah.
The last time we went to that Starbucks my mom laughed so hard that she cried because her drink was called “Peach TranquiliTEA’ emphasis on the T-E-A. Sometimes I think she’s on drugs but then I remember that she’s sort of scared of everything. One time she told me that if I waxed my crotch, I would die. I’m proud to say I debunked that myth 2 calendar weeks later. “Mother’s always right” unless you can literally walk into Salon Persia, walk out, and realize that you’re still breathing. Walking funny, sure, but still very much alive.
One year in Florida my Grandpa fell on Christmas Eve while trying to shoot a basket on a slippery sport court. He broke his hip but refused to let us call an ambulance.
When the big Florida hurricane was coming to Stuart a few years ago, my Grandparents refused to evacuate. They told my Dad to buy a jug of wine, a bottle of gin, a Publix baked chicken, three bags of ice, a bag of bread, and then sent him on his way. He had no choice but to drive off the island and hope they made it through the storm.
I think about this stubbornness. I have it. I’m trying to find places and times and circumstances to tap into it and use it in a way that feels productive.
I used to complain about my bad genes and bad skin and my 5’4’’ stature and my mom would say “you were blessed with a lot of good genes too”.
I Googled Stuart, Florida. Mostly because I wanted to know who “Stuart” was. According to the internet, Stuart Florida is named for Homer Hine Stuart Jr. who was born in 1855 in Willow Tree, New York. Stuart came to Florida and eventually settled near the St. Lucie River in 1883. Why he came to Stuart is unclear. He eventually built a bungalow on the north side of the St. Lucie River and started growing pineapples. There’s a house in Stuart that was once used as a haven for shipwrecked sailors in the 1900s. This all seems about right. You can sort of feel it in the air when you walk around.
When my mom laughed until she cried at the Stuart Starbucks, we did too. My sister, brother, and I. I have a video of it. You can hear the Starbucks employee trying to take our order, but we were laughing so hard we couldn’t speak. I think my brother eventually pulled it together and choked our orders.
I watch the video every now and then and smile. I was in Stuart and had long hair and was a girl but was still able to lose it laughing.
I was still able to feel a pang of excitement as a Jewish kid on Christmas morning. An appreciation for my grandmother’s efforts to include her Jewish grandkids in Christmas festivities. A sort of strange awe for the stingrays in the water-basin at the Stuart aquarium.
This is what I’ve inherited. I am stubborn and stupid and 5’4’’ with bad skin but some good genes too.
When I feel like a shipwrecked sailor, I have a little video of a Starbucks drive-thru to watch.
EXTRA:
For the bible song project, two boys in my class wrote a tune called “Move Evil Get Out The Way”. The teachers thought it was brilliant. Then two weeks later they found out it was a word for word rewrite of Ludacris’s “Move Bitch” and the boys got detention.
Did you enjoy this? Did you hate this? Could you tell I really procrastinated on this one and didn’t edit? Are you a family member and mad that I keep writing about you? I wanna know ur thoughts!
-Meg
Social- @megspope@mpopetweets
Venmo- @mpope-venmo-26
Website- meganpopework.com
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Text Of The Week: [When Joe won]
