PURIM, LONG AGO---

 

Purim is celebrated today all over the Jewish world. This holiday of dressing in costumes, reading the scroll of Esther, and drinking to oblivion (by religious commandment to drink to a state where one can’t tell the difference between a Haman, the arch villain, and a Mordechai, the righteous hero) is a hoot.

 

I only celebrated it as a child, and drinking was not part of our allotment, thank you very much. But costumes certainly were.

 

I had the great fortune to have a best friend whose mother was a genius seamstress. Thus, in grades 2-4 I got to pair with my friend as her mother made us into Mini and Mickey (the Disney mice) and into a she and he sailors. In fifth grade I wore a costume my mother had bought for me while we were briefly in the Netherlands. I was a Dutch girl, and I only remember how uncomfortable the wooden shoes were. I didn’t dance that Purim.

 

In sixth grade, I was on my own. My mother said I was old enough to make my own costume, and for some reason, I agreed. I had to think fast, because the party and the yearly competition for best costume were only a day away, and my original idea for dressing as my favorite magazine failed miserably in my attempted execution.

 

I had never won first prize, and I wasn’t thinking of any prize. I just didn’t want to be that kid, the one who showed up wearing plastic glasses and calling it “a costume.”

 

We had a song we sang back then. To the American melody of She’ll be Coming ’round the Mountain we sang the Hebrew words, “Madman in Pajamas.” Trust me, it works. That ditty never made any sense. But less than a day before the Great Purim Costume Party & Competition, it suddenly made sense to me.

 

And so, I was. I was a Madman (mad person?) in Pajamas. I danced and sang the song and waved an old flashlight my mother had inherited, and wada-ye-know, I won first prize.

Which goes to show that life can be senseless. It also shows that spontaneity and desperation are underrated, and should be given more respect.

AUGUST'S LAST GASP

 

September first isn’t just a plain ol’ first.

It’s the (unofficial) beginning of fall.

It’s the whisper of the beginning of a new Jewish year.

And in Israel where I grew up, it is the absolute first day of a new school year.

That made August thirty-first a singularly wistful day.

Invariably we had to do something special on this last day of summer. Spending the day kicking sand on the beach, going for an ice-cream sundae the size of a mountain, or frantically beginning that art project we meant to do in summer but never did, only to leave it half-done once again.

It was as if we were parting with something we’d never experience again.

When you could count your years on earth on both hands, the prospect of next summer was as distant as the moon. You could see it, but experienced it as something unreachable.

This added melancholy and longing only August the thirty-first possessed. The closest thing to a heartbreak without a defined cause.

 

So Goodbye August. We never had a choice but to part, so we might as well pretend we do, and welcome September.

©By Shelagh Duffett

Storytelling is for Always

When I was one year old, my mother and I flew from Israel to the United States because her father, my grandfather whom I never met, had just died. My father stayed behind, and our stay in Florida, which was supposed to be short, lasted nine months.

It would be a foreshadowing of my parents eventual divorce, when I was seven. But for a time, it was an extended separation.

When we left, I spoke in two-word sentences in Hebrew. When we returned, I spoke fluently, and in English, a language my father barely knew. But my father understood the very first thing I said to him when he greeted us at the port of Haifa, where our ship had docked. He told me about this meeting many times. He said I looked at him, took his hand and said, “Daddy, tell me a story.”

I forgot whatever English I knew not long after. I would learn it (or re-learn) some years later in school, as a second language. But I knew this sentence because in re-telling my father always said it in English.

Tell me a story. No matter what or where, no matter how or whom. There are always the stories and the storytellers who tell them.

📚~Keep telling stories~📚

WHO IS THE READER?

When my father lectured university age students, he told me that in his mind he would focus on one student as he talked. This made it possible to impart what general thoughts and wisdom he had while keeping the thread personal.

Keeping a personal narrative is essential to have it be a compelling and emotionally evocative voice. Fiction writers know this is vital to good storytelling.

Who is the reader? I realized long ago that, for me writing for younger readers, the reader is who I was back then at the intended reader’s age.

Only it isn’t really. I see through a lens of my understanding of now. Obviously, this is not the real young me of then, but who I have come to think I was.

Confusing?

The attempt to reach a reader is always an act of faith. You can’t hold it in your hands and verify the path with your eyes. Faith, augmented with hope, is the engine that drives the telling of a fiction story to a fictional reader.

The goal is one—

Saying “hello there,” and hoping to connect with you.

Day of Fooling

Maybe we need comic relief more than ever and maybe mischief is what passes for comedy to some. But this is my blog and so it's my plea to seriously not fool around on this April Fool's.

I know. Bummer. Tomorrow is a sanctioned day for pranks. I like clever humor, but was never fond of the sort April first brings.
Blame it on my first memory of this thing we call April Fools’ Day.

I had just turned five, walking hand in hand with my father. He said that today it is all right to lie. I asked why. He didn’t explain, but said, “Watch me.”

We were approaching our apartment building, where we lived on the second floor. The first floor apartment directly below us was the home of my best friend. Every apartment had back and front porches, and we played on either. That April first, my best friend (who was four at the time) was standing on her front porch and waving to us enthusiastically.

“What happened to your face?” my father said to her, his face painted with a horrified expression.

“What?” she said.

“Oh, dear girl, this is terrible!” my father said. “We have to take you to the doctor right away!”

I was baffled. I squinted to see better. My friend was shaking.

“What is it, Abba?” I whispered.  

“Her face! It’s bright green!”

My friend clutched her face and burst into tears. She ran inside.

“See?” my father said to me. “This is April Fools’.”

My father was a gentle and kind person. I viewed him as the voice of truth. This was very confusing. I had seen no green or any other unnatural color on my friend’s face. I tried to absorb what just happened. I rubbed my eyes as if that would fix my vision.

Then I started to cry. If her face was bright green and my eyesight was failing, April Fools’ was about ill health and possible imminent blindness. A reasonable conclusion under the circumstances.

In the years since I have found most pranks to contain some element of cruelty. Maybe this is a residual taste from that one long ago. Ten years later, my friend told me she didn’t remember this at all. No harm done except that, well, I don’t like it. So there.

Take it easy, everyone. Especially on the young’uns. Especially now.

A Conversation with a Four-year-old

This morning I had this conversation with a four-year-old who lives next door.

            4YO: “What are you doing?”

Me: “Cleaning my backyard.”

4YO: “Why you’re not cleaning my backyard?”

Me: “Because it’s yours. You could clean your backyard, and I will clean mine.”

4YO: “I think that’s funny.”

We both laughed. Me, because his conclusion was funny to me.

When writing for young’uns, it’s good to remember they see things from a different perch. 

Bless my neighbors for sharing their kids, when mine are no longer the age I write for.

Welcome, SUMMER*

*...almost

{June 21^st 9:07 AM, PDT}

So, we are just about to enter official summer.

I was never fond of Summer, until I moved to the SF bay area.

Growing up in Jerusalem, Summer was HOT. I mean, too hot.

Later, in upstate New York, it was hot and muggy, thank you very much.

Growing up, Summer meant a long school-break. It was also a long time of missing my classmates and my home-away-from-home, which is what school was for me. Not a happy thing.

Swimming pool weather meant sunburns. Later, in adolescence, it entailed being self-conscious about my figure and the growing attention it got. I never felt all right about having someone look at my body who didn't bother to look at my face first, or make conversation. This happened a lot more in summer.

So Summer and I were not friends.

Now we made peace, Summer and I. I’ve passed the point of others gawking and I live where the Summers are gentle. I've grown up, and Summer has definitely matured into a mellow fellow. 

©Shelagh Duffett

Welcome, Summer. Happy to be with you again.