This is Where I’m at
I started today by coloring my hair.
The last time I cut and colored my hair was late October. It was the day my husband was returning from a business trip from Japan. I wanted to see if he, tired as he was returning home from the other side of the globe, would notice the greys were gone and my hair was restored to the dark brown my hair was when I was young.
He did.
That was before any of us knew or heard the word coronavirus every hour of the day. Before my husband’s business canceled travel to first China, then Japan, then Europe, then, anywhere.
I really meant to color my hair last night. Some self-care would do me good.
But I was just too tired. Now, at week number three, like right after dinner, I get real tired. I excuse myself from the table and go up to my bedroom to … I don’t know. Each night, I have every intent to read, to journal, to color. But I end up watching CNN.
But then CNN gets me upset and then I flip to some mindless TV to distract me from the fear, from the rise in cases, from the dwindling supplies of masks and ventilators. Then I feel bad because, to me, a reporter, turning away from the news is a sign of apathy, so I turned back to watch #ChrisCuomo report from his basement wearing a hoodie.
And the box of Nutrisse #40 just sat there on the vanity in my bathroom.
Today, after I found the energy to color my hair, I felt better.
I visited with my son as I folded laundry. Sterilized bath and dish towels and cleaning rags. Because of Coronavirus, I’ve discovered the “sanitize” settings of my washer and dryer.
My son sat in his Cincinnati apartment and played me a new guitar line he’d been working on while in quarantine. He played for me for about 15 or 20 minutes. He lives with his girlfriend who is a nurse. They, with two other housemates, are quarantined together, only leaving the apartment for groceries and work. We never made it to his campus for his spring performance. I don’t know when I’ll see him perform again. I’m not sure when I’ll see him again. But it was nice to hear him play while I folded laundry.
Today I find myself with less and less work because my freelance writing gigs are all drying up.
But still, I am lucky my husband still has his job, and he “goes” to work, as usual, and is at his desk by 7 a.m. But his desk is now in our son’s empty bedroom. And my daughter works at her Boston job in her bedroom. Nothing is usual.
After lunch, I went for a walk to the CVS. I needed to pick up a prescription for my son, who has asthma. I have barely let him set foot into a store since our state’s shelter in place executive order. Besides from coming down for meals and taking a zoom call for a play that most likely will not happen now that the rest of the school year has been canceled, except in the virtual sense, he does not come out of his room. He’s re-listening to all of the Harry Potter books. His Junior year is over. He never took the SAT’s.
That’s where he’s at.
Back on the trail.
Walking is one thing one can still do, something that has not yet been canceled.
Before coronavirus, I’d take an afternoon walk on the trail, or in my neighborhood, and there’d barely be another soul out and about.
In week three, I’ve never seen so many of my suburban neighbors out and about on a Thursday afternoon. We walk quickly past each other. Some say hello, others just keep their heads down or look straight ahead. Everyone is nervous.
The thing these days that makes me most nervous, aside from overdosing on the news, is going into a store. It’s there that I see people wearing gloves, and now wearing masks.
Today, as I was about to enter the CVS, another woman entered ahead of me. She wore scrubs from head to toe, had some kind of surgical cap on, and a mask. But this was not your average cotton mask, the kind like so many are wearing now, if you can find one to buy. Or have the supplies and the craftiness to construct. This was a full-on respirator mask that had dual filtration vents on either side of her face.
Clearly, this woman was a nurse or a home health aide coming to pick up a perscription. Her mask was on so tight she had to shout the patient’s name and date of birth twice before the pharmacist, standing behind plexiglass, understood her.
I was afraid. Afraid for her, for having the kind of job where she had to wear so much protective clothing. And afraid for me, not knowing from where she was coming from dressed like that.
Tape markings were going down the vitamin aisle indicating the proper social distancing. I stood not one but three tape markings away from this woman. I tried to distract myself by looking at the vitamin offerings. I do not think the one that claimed to boost immunity is going to help us this time.
She got her prescription, then I was clear to get mine. I took my homemade hand sanitizer out of my purse, and swabbed the pen and then the credit card screen with a gob of it while the pharmacist got my son’s inhaler. I could not wait to get out of there. To breathe the outside air, to take off my latex gloves and wash my hands at home.
But this afternoon, on a second walk with my husband, I noticed how the sky was crystal blue. I have not remembered the sky so blue. With so many of us not driving, flying, with all of us in a big cosmic time out, Mother Nature is getting time to breathe.
So, today, the sky was blue, my hair once again is dark brown with no grey.
And my immediate family is healthy.
That’s where I’m at today.
How about you?
Feeling out of my League in the Company of Great Jewish Women
I’m going to start by saying this, bluntly: If I was making money — real money — it would be good for the Jews.
What I do now – educate the next generation of the Jewish community – is still good for the Jews. But, to be honest, it is still not as appreciated as a donation of the green stuff. I couldn’t help feel it this week when I attended a community fundraiser.
Now, I don’t play the lottery, I don’t gamble and I don’t believe in any get-rich-quick schemes. But, oh, if I were a rich girl, I would be so good at it. I would give a good part of it away.
But I’m not, and I can safely bet that with my liberal arts degree and my inability to get a career in public relations back on track after a decade raising our three children, I never will be.
I am happily, yet vastly, underemployed. I work three jobs: two in Jewish education, one in my originally intended field of journalism. And, waking up to the news this morning on National Public Radio, that companies are no longer hiring the long-term unemployed or underemployed, it looks like this will be my status for some time to come, if maybe for good.
I guess that, being a graduate of Rutgers University’s Douglas College, I was supposed to be a liberated, financially independent woman by now. I still feel I must make my own money.
My dear husband constantly reminds me that what I do – teaching the Aleph Bet and all the holidays and traditions to Jewish children – is an invaluable service to my community. He also reminds me that without me to raise our children full-time, his career could never have ascended to what it is now.
Even so, I can’t help but look at my own net worth. If not for my husband’s income, my three jobs wouldn’t even put me at the poverty line.
This post may seem controversial to some and may get me in a bit of trouble. And I do so appreciate the power of women’s philanthropy and the generosity of the many women in my community who are of means, who are generous and who can wear the pins to show it.
But, I am sure I can speak for my fellow Jewish educators, and especially Jewish early childhood educators, our contributions, if you had to value them in the form of a monetary gift to the Jewish community, are vastly overlooked.
According to the Jewish Early Childhood Early Education Initiative, today’s Jewish preschools are more than places that care for young children during the day – they are becoming centers to engage and re-engage children and their families in Jewish communal life. Attracting and retaining educators to the field is critical. But, it is highly unlikely to attract and retain the best and the brightest with the current compensation packages. Early care and education has not been acknowledged as a part of the larger educational system in the United States. As such, early childhood teachers and caregivers are among the lowest-paying of all occupations (Barnett 2003).
But, meanwhile, back at the fundraiser… there I was, in the company of almost 300 women at my community’s major fundraiser for Jewish Women’s Philanthropy. I have greatly benefitted from being actively involved in my Jewish community. I have co-chaired committees. learned about event planning and the power of women’s philanthropy.
In 2006 I received my community’s young leadership award from the Jewish Federation. I have attended the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities, thanks to my federation. And for my work teaching older children in afternoon religious school, I was sent on a Jewish educator’s trip to Israel thanks to the Jewish Federation. The Jewish community, on a macro level, does its best to make Jewish educators feel valued.
And yet, I felt I could barely keep up in the chit-chat at the table. I had not been to Amalfi Coast, had not sent my kids on a leadership program to Austrailia. I couldn’t seem to make myself say, “wow, that must be expensive,” or “that is out of our budget, I’m afraid.”
Okay, I get it. It was a fundraiser and the point was to raise funds. But, as I looked around the room, at the diamonds and all the bling-bling, I couldn’t help but ask myself, “What am I doing here?”
Many women attending the event, by way of their husband’s occupation or their own professions, were significant donors. If the message of the evening was being powerful through donating one’s own money or a woman making a gift in their own name, presumably with their own money, the message of the evening left me feeling, well, powerless.
I enjoy going to these events because you get to hear from powerful Jewish women – news commentators, columnists, brilliant comedians, prominent Rebbetzins, (rabbi’s wives.) In past years they taught me how we need to teach Israeli culture to our children to make them feel connected to Israel. That if you shed a tear while you are praying you are doing it the right way. That, although children may show resistance to Hebrew school, parents must stand firm and make sure their child receives a Jewish education.
Each year, I left inspired, given tools to further my Jewish involvement.
And this year? There was no mention of parenting Jewish kids. Israel — not even the singing of the Hatikva — was hardly mentioned – except a five day trip to the Jewish State this spring at a cost that is most likely out of my league as well.
The take away I got, and which I think other women felt of the speaker’s underlying message – is that if one marries a rich investment banker — you too can give millions away to the causes you care about.
As a Jewish educator who is not married to an investment banker, I’m sorry, ma’am, there was not much I could take away from your lesson. So, I will keep doing what I have been doing, for now, which is to make big gifts through every Hebrew word I teach, and every Jewish song I sing in the classroom.
For whatever it’s worth.
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Stacy Gittleman 