That Grin

No, I haven't been offered a teaching job for the fall (thanks for asking). I haven't finished my state teaching license. A lot of my friends are moving out of town or just gone for parts of the summer. It's been hitting 100 degrees most days and, if I'm lucky, I can keep my house under 75. I've been doing Crossfit for nearly 2 1/2 years but my body fat percentage is in the low 30s, I can't do a handstand pushup or muscle up, and I still haven't totally figured out my nutrition.

And yet, sometimes I find myself walking around the house with a big goofy grin on my face. And when I say walking, I mean jumping. Maybe it's because I just got a Magic Bullet blender and am having so much fun finding new ways to get delicious nutrition. Maybe I'm proud to to be done with my master's degree after 18 months of work and to have recently set personal records (PRs) of 273 pounds on my deadlift and 103 pounds on my snatch. Perhaps I'm reminiscing sleeping in Israel's Negev Desert or snorkeling in Eilat last December, remembering how challenging and exhilarating it was to meet up with 40+ strangers at EWR one afternoon and spend the next 10 days exploring a foreign country with them. Some days it's because I just got back from a difficult workout at the gym or a long walk with my 3-year-old puppy Kona. Or maybe I just caught a glimpse of Kona peeking out from under the couch where she likes to relax.

What am I going to do this fall? Who is going to hire me? Where am I going to live? Am I going to pass my last two licensure tests on the first try? How long is it going to take to get my body fat percentage under 25? Am I doing everything right with my nutrition? Am I going to keep in touch with the friends who are moving? Am I going to make new friends? I don't know, but I'm still grinning.

Let It Go

I'm a happy, goofy person. I like to joke around, I love to be with people, and I love life. So it's been a shock to realize that lately I've not only been angry and grumpy but that I'm taking it out on unsuspecting and undeserving victims. In order to be happier and more pleasant to be around, I need to adjust my perspective and, at risk of sounding like a Frozen character, let some things go.

I need to remember that my worth as a person is unrelated to what I can or cannot do, what others think of me, or even what I think of myself. I'm inherently valuable as a human being, made in the image of God. Nothing I or anyone else does, says, or thinks can make me more or less deserving of being on this earth.

I need to stop worrying about people who do not want to be in touch with me, whether I've tried to email or text them and they don't respond, they don't accept my Facebook friend request, they don't follow me back on Instagram, or they've blocked me on one or more forms of digital communication. There are too many people in my life who endlessly love and support me for me to focus on those who do not want to be part of my life.

I need to let go of traumas of the past. I've been viciously bullied, I've been fired from jobs, and I've been cut from teams. I've also graduated from high school, college, and a master's program, had many successful summer and long-term jobs, lived on my own since I was 18, gone to Israel for ten days with a group of 40+ strangers, and so on. Everyone has failures; I'm not special in this area and keeping a tally of failures is not a good recipe for future successes.

I need to forget about mean people. When people say and do nasty things to me, there is something wrong with them, not with me.

I need to differentiate between constructive feedback and comments that are just plain mean. Being told I need to fix something, whether at work, at the gym, or with family and friends, does not mean I'm being told that I'm not a good person, a great friend, a caring teacher, or a loving family member. It's not fair to assume everyone who tries to help me is being mean just because a small percentage of people are mean.

Finally, I need to suck it up. The world does not owe me anything. Some things in life are harder for me than they are for others. Sometimes things don't work out in my favor. Sometimes people are mean. So what. There is so much I can and will do.

Missing You

Dear Friend,

It's been over two weeks since we parted, but still, everywhere I go, I see you and I miss you. I thought since we had already met when I was younger that visiting you wouldn't affect me much, but I was quite wrong. I think of you every day. When I am walking with my dog around our neighborhood, I remember walking your beaches, hiking your pristine wildernesses, and strolling your bustling city blocks. I picture how much my dog would love it there, too. I think of you when I sit down to eat chopped tomatoes and cucumbers for breakfast or peel an orange for snack. You taught me that vegetables for breakfast are wonderful and that, while frozen fruit lasts longer and is cheaper, keeping a stock of fresh fruit is definitely worth it. I often think of the amazing people you introduced me to and miss them, too. I approach each day with a little extra confidence because of my experience with you.

Just today, I thought of you as I wandered through Walmart to get my groceries. When I was with you, we went to beautiful open air markets. I still remember the smells of fresh food cooking and the sounds of merchants shouting out their offers in Hebrew while the latest Israeli music blasted from someone's booth. Those markets were crowded and loud like Walmart, but they were also festive and fun. I wish I could have done my grocery shopping with you today instead of at Walmart, but I'm thousands of miles away now. 

Until next time, Israel.

Fondly, your friend and ally,

Sarah

Mahaneh Yehuda Market, Jerusalem

Mahane Yehudah Market, Jerusalem

Carmel Market, Tel Aviv

Carmel Market, Tel Aviv

2017 Goals

While I am always setting goals for myself, a new year is, of course, a good time to set some longer-term goals. Here is some of what I plan to accomplish in 2017:

• Squat snatch 100 lbs
• Squat clean 150 lbs 
• Back squat 200 lbs
• Deadlift 300 lbs
• Perform 1 strict (no kipping) pull up from a dead hang
• Eat food from a restaurant, drive thru, convenience store, etc. not more than one day per week Update: I will exclude going out with friends on this, so it will only count if I am by myself.  
• Read 20 books (keep track on Goodreads)

Birthright

I spent 16 nights in Israel in December 2016: 10 on Birthright and an additional 6 having a ball with my mom exploring Tel Aviv and visiting friends. This post is specifically about the ten days I spent on Birthright.

How was Birthright? Everyone keeps asking this, but how should I put my experience into words? How do you describe the feeling of arriving at the airport in Newark on a Monday afternoon, meeting 40 other participants and two trip leaders, and not being separated from these people until late Thursday night, a week and a half later? How should I summarize the thrill I felt walking off the plane into Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, the awe I felt snorkeling in the Red Sea and seeing fish swimming just out of my reach, the camaraderie I felt spending virtually every moment with at least my two roommates if not 40+ other people, or the fear I felt when I was so carsick on the bus and thought I might feel that way the whole trip? How can I express the security I felt when talking with our trip leaders, the bitter cold I felt when my roommates and I couldn't get our heater to work, the exhaustion I felt each morning after a short night's sleep, or the silliness I felt when I was wrapped as a mummy in a game? I don't know, but this post is my best attempt to convey it all.

Birthright was intense; it's as if I experienced at least a month's worth of life in those 10 days. The program is for young adults aged 18-26, and I'm almost 25, so I've been debating about going for over six years. I knew Birthright trips tended to be jam-packed, with 15-hour days, not a lot of sleep, and constant social interaction. I wanted to go, but I honestly didn't know if I could handle it. I posted to Facebook as soon as I was approved for the trip I wanted, and it was both to share the exciting news and to keep myself from backing out. I couldn't cancel once I had shared with so many people that I was going. I was both excited and nervous. Would I sleep enough? Would the other participants like me? Would I like them?

Now it's over and I'm left with a few hundred photographs, several dozen new Facebook friends, and an endless stream of memories. I climbed Masada, stayed on a kibbutz, visited a winery and an olive oil factory, ate falafel and more falafel, rode a camel, went out for a taste of the night life in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, and listened to speakers explain their views on the region's complex political situation. I floated in the Dead Sea, snorkeled in the Red Sea, spent a night on the ground in a tent in Eilat and a night on a mattress in a Bedouin tent in the Negev, put notes (my own and others') in the Western Wall, walked by the Knesset, and enjoyed hike after hike taking in Israel's beauty. I laughed and cried, enjoyed and survived, watched and listened, asked and explained.

And yet, despite the immense physical, emotional, social, and spiritual journey I just completed, the world is eerily just the same as when I left a few short weeks ago. How weird that I will never again sit in a circle with this group, discussing Israeli politics, sharing our thoughts on the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, or distributing "Mysterious Moses" gifts to each other. We began as strangers, spent every moment together for 10 days learning about Israel, each other, and ourselves, and then went our separate ways, almost as if something extraordinary had never even happened.

Yad Vashem World Holocaust Center, Jerusalem

Masada

Ramon Crater

Jaffa

Beware of Dog

11/14/08 (11th grade)

Beware of Dog

It’s about nine o’clock

The dead of night according to my dad
But to my teenage brain the night is just beginning
I’m out on a walk with my dog, Scout
We walk about three miles
It’s just in our neighborhood
But still my dad is concerned
I hear strange sounds sometimes that make me a little uneasy
But then I notice that Scout sees a man across the street
Or a loose cat under a car
The death glare in his eyes
And the growl in his throat
Tell me I will be okay

Cave canem, beware of dog

My Colorful Grandmother

I wrote this piece in 9th grade.

My grandmother was a most irregular person. Born in Oregon to a family that had lived there since the opening of the Oregon Trail one hundred years before, she was first distinguished by her purple skin. How this came about no one quite knows, for it was not a giant bruise as some had originally thought. My family was not fond of paint, though some later accused them of using it to maintain my grandmother’s skin. I do not totally blame the neighbors for this accusation, because her skin looked like something right out of a comic book, a purple only found in fictional drawings of aliens. Not even artificial candies had a purple worthy of my grandmother’s skin. I always used to ask my grandmother if she was embarrassed about her skin, but she would always laugh and me and reply,

“Honey, I could not be more proud of my skin if it was a fine as Marilyn Monroe’s. I may not be a beauty queen, but I am still the finest looking lady with purple skin in the whole United States of America.” Every time she said this, I would think to myself that, purple or not, I did not know a woman with a more confident and queenly bearing than my grandmother.

For all that she loved her purple skin, however, my grandmother always thought the color purple sucked. For her whole life, she tested all foods with the color purple, from eggplants to grapes to beets. Once when I ask her to have a piece of chocolate cake we bought for my birthday she refused, saying it looked “toxic”. When I implored her that it was just dark chocolate; she replied that it was “as purple as the sunset” and stormed off to her study. Not incidentally, her favorite color was orange, and she flaunted it in numerous ways. Despite the relative cold of high desert New Mexico, an orange tree grew in her backyard and even in the dead of winter, we would go over to grandma’s house to find a big bowl of oranges. Carrots were another favorite of hers, and she was always lavishing us with beastly carrot cakes. She was a beast at making carrot juice and anything else she could think of. While most of the houses on her block were painted light brown, her’s was bright neon orange. Every year when springtime came, my grandfather would suggest to her that they let it fade a little just for one year, and every year she would tell him that if he stayed home and tended the garden and the yard that he could paint the house whatever color he wanted.

My grandfather was never quite as happy about my grandmother’s skin. He said he was attracted to her at first because she held her head high and had the most regal bearing of any girl in their small Montana town. By the third year of their marriage, anyhow, he was talking to local doctors and dropping hints that she should look into a way to color her skin more “normally”. My grandmother would always reply that she did not believe in tampering with her body given by God. One day my grandfather came home from work with a bottle of skin-colored powder tucked underneath his shirt That night while my grandmother lay asleep, my grandfather took this powder, which he had specially ordered from Seattle, and began massaging it into the beautiful purple skin of my grandmother. Unfortunately for him, the powder had to be made wet in order to work, and when he tried to smear the wet substance on he found that it stuck much more readily to his fingers than it did to my grandmother’s face. In desperation he tried to apply some dry powder and lick it on. But still the powder only stuck to his tongue. My grandmother awakened from a dream to be confronted by a cream colored version of my grandfather with strange pink powder smeared all over his tongue. After she finished laughing, she asked him to leave the house for a couple days, and when he returned with purple flowers, she let him back in on the condition that he never bother her again. 

The strangest thing about my grandmother was that she didn’t bruise like normal people do. She once told me that the color of her blood was red just like everyone else’s, but I never saw it because she always took immaculate care of her body and her appearance. Once when she slipped on a liquid solution my brother had spilled on her kitchen floor, she came down hard on her elbow. It continued to bother her for days until finally she swallowed her pride and took a trip to see the doctor. As the doctor was examining her, he said that with a fall of that nature it was almost impossible not to bruise something, and was rather astounded that he didn’t see any change in the color of my grandmother’s skin. When we took her home she spent the whole car ride muttering about how she didn’t need to see a doctor to tell her to ice her arm and relax. She laughed when we said it was strange that she hadn’t bruised. “Well, ladies, I’m purple, how COULD you see the bruise!” We laughed at her antics then, but it was much more serious when she went back to the hospital five years later, complaining of stomach pain. When she collapsed into a coma after three days in the hospital, doctors told us that they could have solved the problem much earlier if they could have seen the internal bleeding that had been caused by a ruptured spleen. As it was, they were too late. I lost my grandmother 24 hours later. 

Ever since that incident it has been difficult for me to speak about her, because I loved her so much and I still can’t believe that she’s gone. My grandfather, in a strange form of tribute, has slowly begun converting his orange house into one with a deep color of purple. Some things remain just as they were, to remind us of how she enjoyed life and how she lived each day with her head in the air and her thoughts composed. Her basket of oranges remains filled as always, and the Denver Broncos flag she got from my brother for Christmas still hangs over their bed, flanked by childhood pictures of her 5 grandchildren. At my house, we have found other ways of remembering her, one of them being to rid our diets of eggplants, purple grapes, and beets. This coming weekend for Halloween, my brother and I have one more tribute planned. We bought a big bucket of purple paint from Sherwin Williams and we’re going to paint ourselves purple and walk around with our heads held up high saying to anyone who asks,

“We may not be winning any beauty pageant, but we are still the finest looking ladies and gentlemen with purple skin in the whole United States of America.”