What Will I Be When I Grow Up?

Something strange has happened to me, not completely unexpected and yet unsettling at the same time. I think that I have all grown up.

Top Secret Group, Hasamba

Remember when we were little, and our aunt, after squeezing our cheeks, asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up? I had so many dreams! I wanted to be prime minister and bring peace to the middle east, to sing on the stage of the Metropolitan, to be a famous piano player, a best-selling writer, a painter of amazing proportions. I wanted to get married (and stay married) and have four children and a house with fig and pecan trees. I wanted to be a journalist, and Spiderman (also Yaron Zehavi, the fictional teenaged leader of Hasamba who battled, in the 1940s, for Israel’s independence).

Now I’m forty, and all grown up. We could argue, perhaps, about whether middle-aged is an appropriate description (I’m going to take the devil’s advocate side). I have some white hairs and lots of laughter wrinkles, you know the kind. There were other signs I’ve been ignoring, like the fact that I have a house (one fig tree, no pecans), a boyfriend, two children, three dogs, seven chickens and one cat, all of whom I love. Or that my parents have both turned seventy already, my sister a successful pediatrician, my brother a game programmer, and my youngest cousins, the ones who are fifteen years younger than me, in the university pursuing their own careers.

But the truth is, I put all these signs on a back burner in my mind, because I was not ready to admit to one important fact: it is time to let go of some of my dreams and concentrate on one.

In this life, I will not be Israel’s prime minister. Or get a PhD. Or turn into a pianist or a singer at the Met. I will not become Spiderman despite the fact that we all, apparently, swallow a lot of spiders by sleeping open-mouthed at night. I could plant pecan trees, but a walnut will probably be better in the climate here, and there’s always my one fig tree.

Cover of White Bim

What I want to be now --not when I grow up, but now -- is a writer. An author with readers who read my book, come to hear me speak, and send me emails. That is the one dream I have held onto from the first novel I read by myself (White Bim, Black Ear by Gavril Troipolsky) and all the way till today. And in order to become a writer, an author, I am willing to let those other dreams go.

Life is so often about letting go, but I hope (and I think somewhere inside me I know) that by letting go of these dreams today I am opening up a wider door to the one dream I truly love. Writing.

What do you want to be now that you've grown up?

Vignettes in Honor of Eden’s Birthday

Nine years ago on this day, Eden was born. She clearly wanted to arrive in this world. After sleeping through her first night, she then refused to sleep at night for the next year, waking up every forty minutes to stare at the darkness with big brown eyes. At eight months she spurned the food I made for her, finally splashing into her first soup (prepared by our friend Lior) at ten months. This brought about a laundry crisis in our family which caused me for a while to consider dressing her in single-use clothes.

Eden’s favorite activity once she learned to sit was to be driven around by her brother Uri. Uri would help her onto the bed of his little black truck, lift the tail door shut behind her making sure she was safely inside, and only then would he get into the driver’s seat and start pumping his little feet in a Flintstone-imitation run.

Uri: Do you want to sit in the truck and I will drive you with a big whoosh? And I will tie you.
Eden: Want! (It takes a long time till she sits).
Uri: I will tie you. You’re on the other side. Driving, driving, driving. Woosh! (he runs the car around the family room and kitchen). You want to eat?
Eden: Yes!
Uri: We will put it up here.
Eden: What?
Uri: We’re driving some more. Are you ready?
Eden: Yes.
Uri: One two three four five. We are starting! Digidigidigidigidan digidu digidigidigidu. Are you okay Digidigidu? Do you want to eat a banana? (They both eat a banana).
Uri: This banana is crazy. We have to eat it when we come back from the trip. Come on, Eden. Let’s go. Do you want to take the banana? (Makes a noise like an engine starting, runs around the room in the truck).

At age two Eden started attending preschool. She screamed for the entire first week, after which I moved her to Teacher Lana’s room, where she screamed for the rest of the year, but only after I picked her up. One time Teacher Michael had to help me dislodge her from the tire swing to which she held, screaming bloody murder, with a strength unbelievable for her two-year-old arms.

But Eden’s true love, from the moment of her birth, has always been and still is Saba Amos, my father. She calls him Sabi as an endearment and twirls him easily (and sometimes cruelly) around her little finger. She swims with Sabi in the pool, discusses important computer issues with him, and snuggles with him as often as she can.

Today Eden is nine, and I am amazed. Where have the last nine years gone? How could she already be done with third grade when I remember exactly what she looked like at age five? I love how she’s growing up (but why so fast?) into this wonderful, joyful human being.

Happy birthday Eden, sunshine of my life, and may we celebrate together many many more!