Category Archives: journal

Day 3, and 2017 is already looking interesting

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in dear apples, expat life, journal, new year, Uncategorized, writing

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Dear Apples,

It’s only 11:30am, and so far I have:

-Gone to the grocery store with my shirt on inside-out

-Put fabric softener in the washing machine instead of washing detergent

-Failed to do my writing work

-Thrown a plate into the trash can instead of the banana peel on top of it

-Remembered last night’s dream that involved Donald Trump doing a commercial for Kraft cheese that required him to sit in a tub of boxed macaroni and cheese.  (I was mainly confused as to why Kraft believed that this marketing idea would boost their mac n’ cheese sales.)

How’s your day going?  Happy New Year!

Antakya, Turkey: First Impressions

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in dear apples, expat life, journal, learning a language, refugees, Syria, Turkey, Uncategorized, writing

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Dear Apples,

We’ve moved! (From Lebanon to Turkey). We’re not quite settled; we’re still staying in a temporary guest house because frankly we’ve just been too busy to move into our new apartment, which is only a ten minute walk away.  We’ll use the New Year holiday to continue assembling our mountain of two-dimensional Ikea pieces into the objects the online catalogue promised they were.

I’m surprised by how much I love it here.  The thing about having perpetually low expectations for everything means that I’m almost always startled by my own happiness.  Here are some first impressions and recent happenings.

-We arrive in Hatay (Antakya’s province) at night after a long layover in Istanbul.  I have been breastfeeding Isla the entire second flight without eating enough, so I have a migraine and I’m too exhausted to notice our new surroundings through the taxi window.  C holds Isla, we arrive at the guest house, and he goes out to bring us food.  All I am aware of is the fact that we still have to put Isla’s crib together, which in the moment feels like knowing we need to run a marathon up a steep mountain range without sleeping first.  To C’s amusement, I start crying with joy when he comes home with a huge steak and puts the crib together by himself. (Me through my tears:  “I thought you meant you were bringing a raw steak that we’d have to cook!  But I can eat this right now!”)

-I wake up in the sun and look out the living room window to a view of the bustling center of the tiny city.  The red flapping of a Turkish flag, a mosque’s spire jutting up against the mountain, cars and pedestrians circling a roundabout with Ataturk’s statue in the center.  We go out for a walk and there are so many young people and the sidewalks are crammed with baby strollers vying for space.  You’d think babies would attract as little attention as the squirrels in NJ; they are so commonplace, but no, Isla receives more waves and smiles and admiring words than a celebrity would. We hear as much Arabic in passing conversation as we do Turkish.  We sit down in a restaurant, guess at the menu, and make the happy accident of ordering a breakfast that could feed about five people.

-We find a babysitter for Isla; a Syrian woman from Hasakeh who has one home in Aleppo and another in Damascus.  She doesn’t speak English and sings the Arabic songs that Isla has grown up with.  Isla loves her right away, and we walk to her house every morning where I drop her off, write for a couple hours, and pick her up.  Before I take Isla home, we have coffee or tea and watch the news together and learn the updates on Syria.

-C’s work is urgent and stressful: truckloads of food and winter supplies need to make it over the border into Syria, and war tends to throw everything off course all too often.  There is little predictability.  His office is across the street from where we are staying, and we have lunch together every day.  C and I haven’t done too much cooking for each other since we’ve been together, (I made my own meals and we ate a lot of C’s mother’s dishes before we had our own kitchen) but I have always loved real food and loved to cook.  Now once I day I make a meal for our lunch.  I haven’t found a good volunteering fit yet, so feeding him is my contribution to relief efforts for now.

-I am always homesick around Thanksgiving and Christmas, and so I call my family almost daily.  We celebrate Thanksgiving with a big group of American expats and we eat all the beloved signature dishes of the day including two large turkeys.

-Isla turns one year old.  She is happy here and sings a lot.  We laugh when she starts singing along with all the calls to prayer from the mosques.  She prefers tearing sheets of tin foil into tiny shreds over playing with her toys. She is stubborn and emotive and wonderful.  I think back to last year when her early arrival caught us off guard.  She was so incredibly tiny that we were scared for her, but she’s been a tough little girl from the get go.

-C travels to the US and Isla and I stay and prepare for Christmas by setting up a nativity scene, playing holiday music, making cookies and buying two small cypress trees.  Christmas involves cinnamon rolls, gifts, whiskey, games, and a Christmas Day lunch celebrated with a small group of (mostly Muslim) Syrians.  The evacuations from Aleppo have finished and peace talks are underway.  For now, things seem hopeful.

-I’m homesick for both New Jersey and Lebanon, but I do love it here.  Turkey is less accessible to me than Lebanon; the people seem more guarded.  It might just be my interpretation and the fact that I don’t speak Turkish, or it might be the result of all the attacks that Turkey has undergone lately.

For now it’s so right for us to be here and we’re soaking it up.  We’re in close proximity to a whole lot of suffering and terror, but we’re also amongst brave people and witnessing incredible resilience and humanity and ordinary life in the midst of it.  (I need to expand on what I mean by that in another post.) I know 2016 was a bruiser, but here we are at the end of it, and here’s to seeing what 2017 will bring.

For love of words IV

15 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in fiction, for love of words, journal, writing

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Below are small excerpts and clippings that I’ve extracted from things I’ve read or re-read recently.

(Posts one, two and three)

“I opened the tattered book.  Its onion-skin pages were stained with grease from his fingers.  On one page, I covered his thumbprint with my thumb and considered for the first time that Papa might have been more than just old pictures-0ld, repeated stories.” -Wally Lamb, I know this much is true

“Finally, by the sea, where God is everywhere, I gradually calmed.” -Patti Smith, Just Kids

“He was whittled down now, either to banalities or to simple truths.  Either way, they would have to do.” -Sharon Guskin, The Forgetting Time

“Later I will look at video made close to that day of the children watching the rapacious hawk, and hear the light tinkling bells in Simon’s voice and think, he was so young that April.” -Elizabeth Alexander, The Light of the World

“When the truth would be unbearable the mind often just blanks it out. But some ghost of an event may stay in your head. Then, like the smudge of a bad word quickly wiped off a school blackboard, this ghost can call undue attention to itself by its very vagueness. You keep studying the dim shape of it, as if the original form will magically emerge. This blank spot in my past, then, spoke most loudly to me by being blank. It was a hole in my life that I both feared and kept coming back to because I couldn’t quite fill it in.” –Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club

“So the challenge I face with children is the redemption of adulthood.  We must make it evident that maturity is the fulfillment of childhood and adolescence, not a diminishing; that it is an affirmation of life, not a denial; that it is entering fully into our essential selves.” -Madeleine L’Engle, A Circle of Quiet

How (not) to travel for 17 hours with a 9.5 month old

18 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by in expat life, journal, Lebanon, travel, Uncategorized

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  1. Make sure your flight leaves at 2:00am. That way you’ll have to wake up your baby to leave for the airport at 11:00pm, ensuring that her sleep is interrupted and she is off to an exhausted start.
  2. Don’t pack Benadryl, ZzzQuil or any other sleep inducing nectar of the gods for her. They are surely dangerous for so young a child, and you wouldn’t want to jeopardize her health …or give her anything that might possibly help her to fall asleep at all during your journey.
  3. Go by yourself. Make sure you leave at the height of allergy, flu, cold and airborne virus season.  Tell yourself that you are a strong independent travel warrior, that this will be an adventure and a challenge, and that you are looking forward to this opportunity to prove yourself. Who needs help? (You. You need help.)
  4. Attach the baby’s pacifier to her clothing using a metal clip. That way, you’ll have to go through the detectors multiple times before you realize why you are both beeping, even after you’ve removed every last scrap of excess clothing and jewelry possible without actually walking through naked.
  5. Don’t wear slip on shoes. Make sure you wear shoes that have a lot of laces and require a bit of elbow grease. While you struggle to tie and untie, the baby can crawl around on the germ-ridden airport floor, chew on the shoes of the security guard, and bring down the stack of gray plastic customs containers onto her head.
  6. Order special meals on your flight. Once your baby has finally fallen asleep, the flight attendant will find you and ask in a yelling tone if you’re the one who ordered the gluten free meal, thereby waking your baby who will not sleep again for the remaining 14 hours of your trip. Also, the gluten free meal is basically made up of small separated portions of flavorless cardboard that no amount of salt and pepper can salvage.  It’s fine; you won’t be able to eat it anyway because you will be busy holding down the baby while she tries to dump rice on her head and throw the food tray onto the lap of the person next to you.
  7. Let your phone fall out of your pocket as you exit your first plane and head into your layover airport. Exit the plane and realize that your stroller is missing. Lug your baby and your carry-ons across the entire airport, and wait till you arrive at your departure gate to realize that your phone is missing. Consider leaving the baby and the bags behind the help counter and running back to retrieve your phone. Reconsider, and give up hope after much useless begging, pleading, and bribing of the customer service personnel.
  8. Sit next to an Asian professor who has to grade economic term papers for the entire 8 hours of your second flight. The baby is a sucker for a good gnaw on a stack of papers, and she is not easily dissuaded when she is running on a sleep deficit.
  9. Bring the baby into the plane bathroom with you, and place her on the baby-changing tray while you use the toilet. The tray is located above the toilet, so it’ll be fun to try to reach up and hold her in place the whole time and make sure she doesn’t careen into the sink, grab the highly questionable waste from the trash, or fall into the toilet itself. Douse both yourself and the baby in hand sanitizer, which she will want to drink, and repeat the whole process every couple hours.
  10. Breastfeed the baby to calm her and help her with the pressure at takeoff and landing. She will be distracted by everything around her, and subsequently leave you exposed and subject to disapproving glances every five minutes.
  11. Walk up and down the aisles for the last four hours of the trip while she cries. That way, you’ll allow all the passengers aboard to partake in her unhappiness.
  12. Upon arrival to the United States, make sure you have a suspicious story to tell the border control officers. Your exhaustion will help you look particularly guilty and sweaty as you talk. Yes, you are traveling by yourself from Lebanon.  Yes, you and your baby have different last names but she is your baby. No, your husband is not with you because he is in Turkey. Yes you live in Lebanon but will be moving to Turkey soon. (This sounds mild as I write it now, but in the moment you can be sure that I dug myself into a dark pit the more I spoke as I tried to explain my circumstances while under intense interrogation, and without having slept for 30+ hours.)
  13. Do it all again on the way home. Practice makes perfect, and soon you’ll be electing to travel alone with your offspring all the time!

Update: I had told C that although we both miss him very much, we simply will not be able to return until Isla is five years old, but then my gracious baby girl offered to take a separate flight on the way back to ease my journey.  What a gem.

September Stories

03 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in dear apples, journal, learning a language, Lebanon, Syria, Uncategorized

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Dear Apples,

I was just doing a mental round-up of the month, and thought I’d tell you about it.

Here is September for you in snapshots.

-We take many Sunday morning walks, and we see a hoopoe land and skitter around in the dry grasses and then fly up into a pine tree.  We’d never seen a bird like him, so we had to look him up.

-I become entirely immersed in the world of Cormoran Strike for a full week, and barely think about or do anything else until I am done reading Robert Galbraith’s (gradually more grisly) mystery series.  I drink a lot of strong tea with milk during this time.

-The details of our rapidly approaching move to Antakya, Turkey are still foggy as the paperwork is processing, and the anticipation is bittersweet.  I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet, because I’m so absorbed in what’s happening here that it’s still this distant vague reality that I can plan for, but can’t quite imagine yet.  My biggest concern is ensuring that Isla will be able to continue to learn Arabic, since there are so many Syrians in the region.

-We attempt a Star Wars marathon on our home projector screen, and I am surprised that I have most of the lines memorized.

-This is the first full month in our new home, but it feels like we’ve been here forever.  I’m already looking forward to coming back to it for our visits to Lebanon after we’re gone. I love it so much, with its constantly unhinging kitchen cabinet door and its lack of hot water.  Cold showers are an acquired taste (painfully shocking but incredibly refreshing)…and if you don’t reach that place of appreciation, there’s always the old-fashioned option of heating the water on the stovetop, which makes you feel like Laura Ingalls Wilder.

-I have the biggest case of writer’s block that I’ve ever experienced.  I think I’m sure it has to do with my expectations.  

-The Syrian civil war right across the border shows no signs of letting up.

-Lebanon’s garbage crisis continues, but we continue to be impressed by the management of our local municipality.

-I am so glad to be abroad during election season, but watching from a distance is worse.  The longer I live abroad the less I like US culture as a whole, and the more I love New Jersey and specific aspects of or places in the US.  Strange but true.

-Isla turns 9 months and loves crawling under and inside things (tables, chairs, her walker, cabinets), standing up, trying to walk while holding onto things, trying to stand without holding on, waving goodbye, finding the light in every room, talking to the cats, imitating things her great grandmother says, and riding in the cart when we’re grocery shopping, which they call a “chariot” in French here.

Happy October!

On Ideas and Execution

13 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by in dear apples, journal, writing

≈ 2 Comments

Dear Apples,

Yesterday I was brooding for much of the day.  It was the last day of a long weekend (Lebanon was on holiday for Eid Al Adha), and the fourth day in a row that I hadn’t written, and the internal pressure had really revved up.  My story has been running all over the place like a capricious teenager, and I have been sitting and wondering how to pull it back on course, and asking it what it wants to be, and panicking over the self-inflicted deadline that will probably arrive before the plot reconfigures itself into a more promising shape.  It’s been a bit paralyzing, honestly.

C suggested we go out last night to break up the schedule, and so we went to catch dinner and a movie.  I reluctantly updated him on where the plot had veered off course, and it was hugely relieving to be able to think it through out loud and realize that there might just be a way forward.

Today I have to begin gutting much of what I’ve worked on and finding out what the essence of the story is and working from there, which feels both terrifying and exciting.  Heavy on the terrifying.  I am trying to force myself to take it slowly and sit in the ideation phase for as much time as I need without scurrying right into execution and finding that I have to scratch half of what I’ve written and redirect.  What is the balance between the time spent mapping out the book and the time spent writing it?  For me, the ideas are sluggish but the writing is quick.  It’s probably different for everyone, but I’d love a good formula.  So far, this story has taken me by surprise at almost every turn.  It’s been fun, but I am exhausted from chasing it around, and I’d really like to return to the driver’s seat and decide where we’re going before we set out.

With that in mind, I am giving myself a week to let the story percolate.  It feels extravagant and wasteful, but I have never tried it before and I am simply not ready to move forward until I have something stolid and dependable that will not run away from me the minute I let it out onto the page.

Wish me luck.

In the meantime, here’s what Walt Whitman has to say about it:

“I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.”
― Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman’s Camden Conversations

And Amy Poehler:

“You just lean over the computer and stretch and pace.  You write and cook something and write some more.  You put your hand on your heart and feel it beating and decide if what you wrote feels true.  You do it because the doing of it is the thing.  The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing.  This is what I know.”  –Yes Please

And Steve Jobs:

“If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”
― Steve Jobs

My Writing Manifesto

12 Friday Aug 2016

Posted by in dear apples, journal, Uncategorized, writing

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For the past several months, I’ve been working on drafting a young adult novel.  Since it’s a solitary activity as well as a first attempt at novel writing, it can be hard to take myself seriously and keep pushing forward.  This podcast spurred me to come up with my own Writing Manifesto as a mission statement of sorts to keep me going when the going gets tough.

  1. You are only the conduit.

Similar to the old concept of writers receiving visits from the Muses, I like to think of myself as simply the instrument for the ideas working through me. If the creative energy is what’s doing the real work, it takes a lot of pressure off of me, and also gives me the impetus to try and channel that energy in the best way possible and to keep working at it so as to be a better conduit. On the mornings when my motivation is lacking, the thing that gets me going is the realization that I just have to play my part in allowing the ideas to get to the page.  Elizabeth Gilbert talks quite eloquently about the value of taking this perspective in her book Big Magic.

  1. You love this.

Writing–or the fear of writing–can be draining and feel immensely daunting at times.  Often I’ll get stuck or find some holes in the plot line or realize that the writing is flat, and I’ll reach a point where I’m driving C crazy and complaining about how hopeless the process feels.  In these moments it’s critical for me to remember that I am doing exactly the thing I love to do and there is really no other work I’d rather commit my time to.  I don’t think there has ever been a time when writing has not provided me with a deep satisfaction, and I am lucky to at least be trying at it.

  1. Write what scares you.

There are a lot of topics that are uncomfortable to dive in to, and it’s easy to second guess myself and chop out or gloss over the gritty bits.  But the fact is, the authors of all of my favorite novels are brave enough to go to challenging places, and that very willingness is often what makes the writing memorable and visceral.

  1. Keep going.

I am very prone to reviewing something I’ve written and cringing and wanting to give up altogether.  But I’m well aware that the only way to improve is through practice and practice and practice.  The feeling that comes after I’ve refined a patchy part over and over and turned it around in my mind for days and then finally happened upon something that holds its own is one of the very best feelings in the world.

Another thing to remember in this same vein, is that publication is not the purpose.  I’m sure it is a very gratifying outcome, but the process itself is the greatest reward.  The path to publication is paved with rejection, and if that is my end goal, it robs from the purity of the pursuit.

  1. Stay close to your people.

I really need to work on this one, but it is endlessly helpful to be surrounded (online or otherwise) by peers.  Writing can be a lonely thing.  The most bolstering solution when I’m in a pit is to talk with other people who are trying to do the same thing.  For me, this currently means reading books and articles and listening to podcasts about writing.  I know I need to build a peer network and find support in the writing community.  It is not just the critiquing and feedback that is necessary; it’s also the motivation and shared energy that’s really essential.

I’m sure I’ll have new points to add to this list as I go, but for now this is the essence of what I want to keep in mind as I work.

Lebanon: Looking back on a year

25 Monday Apr 2016

Posted by in dear apples, expat life, journal, Lebanon

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It was on Valentine’s Day in 2011 when I arrived at the Beirut International Airport and began my love affair with Lebanon.  I first came to do my Masters here, but to be fair, it had started long before then.  Somewhere during my high school years, I’d developed a curiosity for this tiny little Mediterranean, Middle Eastern country, and I promised myself I’d visit someday.

I’ve always had a fascination with anything and anyone “other” than what was familiar to me.  In high school I became fixated on the Middle East.  I remember one day my friends drew up caricatures of what they imagined the future loves of our classmates would look like.  When they showed me mine, it was a man with a turban on his head.  I looked at the drawing and smiled.  Destiny.  (C does not wear a turban.)

I’m coming up on one year of returning to live in Lebanon again, and I’m oh so glad that this lovely country will now always be a part of my life.  While this year has been a beautiful one, there’s also been a good deal of adjustment. It’s felt very full and fast and somehow very slow and quiet at the same time.  It’s been a year of struggling with my Arabic, sending job applications,  receiving job rejections, and waiting for many many responses that never came.  It’s been humbling and a little scary, but most good things are.

It’s also been the first year where C and I finished up the long distance chapter of our relationship for once and for all. It’s the year of Isla, and my first experience of pregnancy and childbirth (both of which were pretty amazing experiences despite –and perhaps because of–my tendency to expect worst case scenarios in which I give birth to a 14lb baby in my 10th month of pregnancy after 32 hours of excruciating labor.  Thank you for going easy on me and arriving early, Sweet I).

In reminiscence of our many travels to visit each other in our long distance days, C and I took a romantic trip to Paris to celebrate our one year anniversary….in the Charles De Gaulle airport waiting for our layover flight back to Beirut after a trip to New Jersey.  In our defense, we did bring some celebratory treats for the plane ride: nuts, dried fruits, and a knob of aged gouda,  all washed down with wonderfully horrible airplane wine.

In the midst of a lot of change this year, I think what’s been most consistent to the daily routine is my morning walk or run.  I cling so hard to this small space that’s all my own, where I can enjoy Lebanon’s many springtimes and bright hot summer.  In the spirit of gratitude, I would like to thank some friends who have been a source of returning joy for me throughout this first year.

First off, I am grateful for my five little Syrian neighbors.  There are three little girls and two little boys who are usually playing together on the gated ground floor of an apartment complex, and they are some of the happiest, sweetest little people I know.  They always stop their play to run up and talk to me for a bit when I pass by, and their cheer is infectious.

And then there is this wonderful dog.  He started walking alongside me way back in May of last year.  I don’t know who he belongs to, but he usually finds me about ten minutes into my walk and accompanies me for around twenty minutes.  When I was very obviously pregnant, he walked with me for almost the full hour of almost every day.  He seemed to sense that I might need the extra care and company.  He doesn’t want to be petted or played with; he’s just content to be there.  I love his gentle comforting presence.

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All in all, it’s been a good year.  I’m glad I get to be here for the time-being, and I’m grateful for friends who bring me joy along the way.

 

Ode to Twenty-Somethings

21 Thursday Apr 2016

Posted by in dear apples, everyday poems, journal, quarter life crisis, writing

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'Sure I'd like to have everything but where would I put it?'

Dear Apples,

I was going to write a post about children’s books, because I love them and because I love to write children’s stories, but then I read a message that you sent me last night and it really got me thinking. And then I wrote a little poem for our lovely generation:

“When you’re 30 you will thrive”
I told myself at 25.
But now that I’ve reached 29
I’m doubtful of that hopeful line.

“Lean in!” says Sandburg, “Show your clout!”
I whisper back…Can I lean out?
“It’s woman’s day! We won the fight!”
Am I ungrateful for my rights?

They tell me I can Have It All
But All’s too tall for one so small
“Do what you love! Forge your own way!”
…My way forgets there’s bills to pay.

“Single life is your best look!
But check out these weddings on Facebook!
Juggle all the balls at once!”
(And you’ll look like a fumbling dunce)

“If you’re outside the public eye
You may as well not even try
All that matters is your brand
Even the Pope has instagram!”

The questions swirl inside my head
Mind if I just go to bed?
I’ll do my best to check your boxes
If you’ll please help me with my taxes.

For Love of Words

19 Tuesday Apr 2016

Posted by in dear apples, everyday poems, fiction, for love of words, journal, writing

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Below are small excerpts and clippings that I’ve extracted from things I’ve read or re-read recently.

“I could absolutely taste the chocolate, but in drifts and traces, in an unfurling, or an opening, it seemed that my mouth was also filling with the taste of smallness, the sensation of shrinking, of upset, tasting a distance I somehow knew was connected to my mother, tasting a crowded sense of her thinking, a spiral, like I could almost even taste the headache that meant she had to take as many aspirins as were necessary, a white dotted line like an ellipsis to her comment: I’m just going to lie down” -Aimee Bender, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake

“Every morning he ties his shoes, packs newspaper inside his coat as insulation against the cold, and begins interrogating the world” -Anthony Doerr, All The Light We Cannot See

“Because it’s true: more than the highlights, the bright events, it was the small and the daily where she’d found life. The hundreds of times she’d dug in the soil of her garden, each time the satisfying chew of spade through soil, so often this action, the pressure and release and rich dirt smell…” -Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.” -Lemony Snicket

“That which Voldemort does not value, he takes no trouble to comprehend. Of house-elves and children’s tales, of love, loyalty, and innocence, Voldemort knows and understands nothing…That they all have a power beyond his own, a power beyond the reach of any magic, is a truth he has never grasped.” -J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

“She was a masterpiece of composure; nothing ever ruffled her or made her upset, and though she was not beautiful, her calmness had the magnetic pull of beauty — a stillness so powerful that the molecules realigned themselves around her when she came into a room.” -Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch