Pesach meets Easter

... and immediately ignites into a glorious ball of flames, consuming everything in its path like a soul-sucking Dyson Roller Ball of destruction. Details follow.

After Christmas, I remember saying on this very blog how well the holiday went and how pleased I was about the balance I struck but my real fear was going to be Easter. Turns out, that was totally warranted, and so I present to you the fantasticastastrophe that was my recent past.

For starters, I went to church. Real, serious, orthodox, old-school, red carpet/dark wood, candles flickering, incense-scented, smiling baby Jesus pictures on the altar church. My family was in New Jersey with my extended family and as much as I really, really dislike going to church, it would have been beyond rude to be the only one in the house while everyone else piled into cars and spent the morning together. See, it wasn't just any Sunday -- it was Palm Sunday. That's the Sunday before Easter and it commemorates the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem and all the Jews laid palms along his route, hailing him as the moshiach and it's a big day in Christianity because it essentially kicks off what's called Holy Week. Holy Week is like a religious tornado: Palm Sunday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday -- Jesus is lauded, captured, crucified, buried, and then rises again -- along with the ire of my entire family and a few displaced farmhouses.

From the second a random guy waved at me in the parking lot to the grandmother who introduced her son to me to the priest who inquired as to my weekly whereabouts, the whole thing was uncomfortable. I walked in and out of the packed church three separate times (everyone looking, absolutely everyone) and ended up sitting in the very front row (next to my uncle, the shady deacon), listening to the fluffiest sermon I've ever heard (fairly certain he mentioned Harry Potter more than the Bible), trying to fold my palm leaf into a Magen David and not a cross (which is surprisingly difficult).

Silly me to think that this might have been enough, because the shit hit the fan when I didn't go to church again on Good Friday for evening services. And the shit stayed on the fan into the next week -- even though I went to Easter brunch that Sunday. And then the shit blanketed the city last Friday, when my sister called me a stupid Jew, when my mother refused to visit my Hillel, when my ex-fiance told me he was sick of my "stupid kike bullshit", or any of the other unbelievable meanness that's happened in the last week.

There's an author, one of my favorites, who wrote that "compassion for our parents is the true sign of maturity." That being said, I'm sure dear Anais Nin never had to juggle her conversion to Judaism with her family's longstanding, sincere adherence to Christianity. So I understand it's very, very difficult for my family -- especially my mother -- to grasp that this isn't a phase. I know they wonder why I'm still talking about all of this or why my youngest brother is discussing the etymology of yeshiva at their dinner table. I know they try to hide their resentment, but it's not too hard to see their impatience with the disappearing act I pull every weekend -- when I "escape" to hang out with other Jews instead of driving the hour to the family home to garden, see my grandmother, run errands.

It's because I have compassion for my parents that I ride the fence as much as I can, as much as is permissible, and I don't usually mind. However, there are times when I make more of a reach than what is truly comfortable and it's in the aftermath of those times where I really start to get pissed.

My non-Jew family takes on shidduch situation

When I started this whole Jewish thing, I began keeping lists -- dozens of them. Words I didn't know, phrases I heard frequently, Shabbat rules I observed, and maybe most fantastically, the amazingly ridiculous things I overheard said about/by Jewish people. This only became more hysterical as my family and my Judaism started to collide. (For example:

Dad, via phone: "Nameless, where have you been? I want to see your face right now!"
Me: "Ah...turn on the kotel cam?")

Anyway, now that my family seems to be totally taken with the whole Nameless vs. Shidduch thing, it's gone from good to better, and so I present to you a smattering of examples from this month.

From my mother, the heavy hitter:
"Nameless, I know there are are cute [our ethnic group] boys out there, but they are hiding because they don't want the ugly [our ethnic group] girls to find them! Look at my son -- you don't think that the matchmakers don't have his phone number and address already?

"Honey, I went to camp and boys from Detroit who are now dentists picked me and Blankety Blank who was always on the phone with me -- he's dead now, you know -- he was the big catch and I was his choice!"

and in a rare moment of commiseration,
"Nameless, I know the horribleness of going to college and realizing there are only two boys there who you are allowed to marry and you've known them your whole life and they are so not even boys you would ever touch...."

And now from my grandmother:
On the subject of me being past 22 and yet unmarried,
"I am praying for you, Auntie is praying for you, we are all praying for you -- all the women are praying for you. I think you are very strong, it's a very hard thing you are doing, I think God is making you strong."

On what will help me attract a husband,
"You know you should embroider something..."

"Why don't you clean out your icebox?" (Seriously, this is not a joke or a euphemism. She aggressively maintains that I will be more attractive to the market of men if i clean and organize the inside of my Frigidaire. Oh -- and iron my underwear.)

"You should be thanking me! Everyone knows how clean your family is! You know, your[other grandmother] and I only had one husband -- never remarried -- and remember, Nameless, your mother didn't let a boy touch her before your father!"

Which could mean that my mother was just an ultra-polite threesome participant, except I know it means the big V (virginity, not vonorrhea, vlamyida, or verpes) and so that right there is guilt my grandmother doesn't even know she's laying which is another reason she is out of control. At any rate, let's see what they say when I bring home the current Potential Husband -- after all, like my grandmother says, "You could do worse than a Jew...."

Right?

Not what I intended to write today.

Disclaimer: This is not about being Jewish, this is just about being me. I had something I thought of while I read the parsha this week, but last night someone in my section came out and stammered this question -- something no one would ask unless they were overtired and stressed and leaking stagnant jealousy into their abdominal cavity:

Them: "So, I heard about your job offer -- that's really great, congratulations!"
Me: "Thanks so much! I was very surprised and really lucky to get it."
--- Cue silent moments, Me working, Them evidently stewing ---
Them: "Fuck! Listen -- I just don't get it! How can you be so genuinely nice and then just shred people to bits?"

I wish I didn't, but I knew exactly what she was talking about. When I played soccer, I was disarmingly charming: I would chit-chat my counterpart on the opposition and while she was talking, convincing herself I was dumb and uncompetitive, in it for the lines on the college app and social aspects, I was watching her. Her stance, how she shuffled her feet -- were her movements fluid? what were her reflexes like? her reaction times? did she favor a side? Two seconds after that whistle blew, I had laid her the fuck out and by the time she was mad enough to realize what I had done, she was already beaten. Every motherfucking time and the thrill I get from just remembering that is almost as good as fucking for me.

So fastforward to the present and school is no different; no one sees me coming because I bake brownies and don't raise my voice and smile a real smile and then all of a sudden, it's too late. Look, on Sunday night I was three states away at a concert in hot pink patent leather stilettos and I still answered every single question about torts my section wanted to know. The hard part to understand is that I do those nice things because there is a very real part of me that loves kindness. On my best days, it makes me motherly and on my worst days I become a martyr, but it's still very genuine and very much at the core of me. The hard part here is that it's not the only thing at the core of me. How do I explain to this person that what makes me a good lawyer is not that I can speed-read or that I have a nearly photographic memory, but rather the convergence of a handful of horribly repulsive truths?

My flaws are destructive enough when existent separately, but in conjunction they are soul-crushing. Firstly, I am bored, always bored -- I need to be constantly entertained, doing at least three things at once otherwise I feel listless and frustrated. Secondly, I eschew all feelings and thirdly, I am arrogant in the most dangerous of ways, which is the completely founded way, of course. Put them together and you get a master manipulator with a pinch of psychopath, which might be all well and good for playing litigator or halfback but this doesn't stay on the field or in the classroom. It bleeds into my personal life.

My boredom claims other victims: the basketball player who drove me to the pool hall every night that semester failed his classes just like I did, but couldn't sweet-talk his way out as well as lil' ol' me. Or that boy who loved me while I was stringing him along for a bright spot. Or the girlfriends I convince to join me on all these ridiculous, poorly-timed escapades. Or in this case, my eviscerated sectionmates. And so here I am, questioning everything I've ever thought, wondering if maybe I'm not that nice but choosing to believe it anyway -- that it is quite possible to be kind, yet shrewd. Otherwise, helping people with their work, being generous with my money, offering rides and time and concern would just be some subconcious atonement for manipulations committed or people used and I don't know if my conscience or my Judaism could let me live with that....

To each his own

Sexy as hell.

This turns me on more than almost anything. Is that a problem?