Seattle 19, or Stories from Work

I got a lot of responses to my post about work, so I thought I might share some stories from work here. I've changed everyone's names, of course, and also some identifying details - none of which impact the outcome or the spirit of the story, but just to be sure.

the old man

Danny is the old man of the house. He wears jeans held up by suspenders and his belly strains his button-down shirts. He frequently complains of having woken "on the wrong side of the bed" and backaches, for which we give him children's Tylenol. He chews it with diligence and dignity. His favorite activity is playing with his tackle box - a gift from his grandfather, who visits regularly. Danny has to be supervised when working with his hooks and lines, and I often volunteer for the job. He tells me about lures and different kinds of fishing line, and, when I can get him in a good enough mood, sings me Johnny Cash songs in a squeaky eight-year old version of his favorite singer. A few days ago, he was having a tantrum and screamed "I'm too old for this nonsense!" while he was inside the de-escalation room. He then referred to himself as being in "a bigger hell than the frog swamp! And that's hell, let me tell you!"

in which dane rides a bike

Most every day, now. To and from work. Makes me happy like nothing else. Even when it's raining and my brakes don't work so well and I'm borrowing a big-headed kid's helmet from work, I love that I can ride. Wish my hip flexors agreed with me on this point, but we're working on it.

the new kid

The new kid is having a rough time. She just got in a couple of days ago and is testing us, hard, trying to figure out where the boundaries are and exactly which end is up. She was sitting on the couch with Nathan, one of the youngest kids and biggest troublemakers. I often wonder if Nathan really understands the consequences of his actions, or why we send him to time-out so often. But Nathan, for once, is sitting quietly and waiting for directions. The new kid is fidgeting and climbing all over the couch. I tell her to sit calmly and correctly once, twice, three times. I warn her that my next direction will be to time-out, and she yells, "Why? I'm not in trouble! I'm not going to go to time-out because I'm not in trouble!" Nathan opens his mouth, and before I can jump in to tell him to focus on himself and not his peer, he bursts out, "It's not trouble; it's for calming down!!" I take a minute and let another staff finish handling the issue. I'm grinning too hard to follow through, and I dance around in private, punching the air in victory. He's got it. By George, he's got it.


in which dane sings in a kitchen

Saturday morning, when I'm on duty, I always volunteer to cook breakfast. There's a perscribed menu for meals, but all the cottages are stocked with good spice cabinets, and if I happen to have leftover ingredients from other meals, I try to do something special. As staff, we spend so much time teaching and curbing and interfering, sometimes I think we forget to be creative when showing how much we love and care about the kids. So I do this breakfast thing, something small, something they'll smile about when they wake up, and remember all the way to bedtime. This week, I made apple cinnamon pancakes, with plenty of vanilla and nutmeg and fresh apples. I got the griddle at just the right heat for perfectly round golden cakes and cooked up a huge batch, trying to make the whole cottage smell good. One of my co-workers sat outside a child's door and plucked out a tune on his guitar, motivating the kid through room-cleaning. I made up a song to his tune, about how my dad always makes pancakes on Saturday. I stopped in the middle when I felt the tears coming. I don't even like pancakes as much as other breakfasts, but my dad's pancakes are the biggest sign that everything in the world is Okay. And I know that no amount of cinnamon-flavored mornings are going to reassure these kids that everything is really Okay, but, my co-worker reminds me - we do what we do. Whether it's guitar, or fixing bicycles or making up special nicknames and handshakes or even just the occasional pancake breakfast, we do whatever we can. And maybe, someday, we will be a piece of their story of how everything eventually became Okay.

Seattle 18, or Comfort Food

One of the nice things about my flexible schedule is the ability to take a sick day before I become totally miserable. This morning, after an interview with a school that's going to add me to their referral list for tutors, everything above my neck started to hurt. While I waited for the second of the three buses I needed to get home, I was drawn into the little Indian grocery store/restaurant next to the stop that seemed to be wafting delicious spicy smells straight into my aching head.

I grabbed two samosas - the Indian version of every culture's meal-wrapped-in-dough. The Jews have knishes, the Hungry Ghost Bakery has Savory Folds, the Italians have Stromboli, the Mediterraneans have falafel and schwarma, and many South Asian countries have these:


Packed with potatoes, peas, cumin, coriander seeds and other spices, when you can grab yourself a couple of fresh, hot samosas wrapped in a paper bag with a little mint chutney on the side and eat them furtively on the bus home...well, at least my headache was cured by the time I got back to the kibbutz. The long nap that followed seems to have gone a long way towards the rest of my symptoms. Let's just see if it holds.

Other comfort foods of mine: (in order of descent)homemade macaroni and cheese, avgolemono soup, all manner of Mediterranean food...

Your turn, readers: search for a picture of your favorite comfort foods and post them in the comments. (posting a link to said picture is acceptable, as long as the image is isolated from the website. If you require assistance, let me know and I'll show you how to do it.)

Seattle 17, or In Which Dane Writes About Work on Shabbes

By now, most of you know what I do for work: I work at a residential center for kids who've been abused and neglected, and/or been removed from foster care for being too overwhelming or difficult for their foster parents to handle. (Usually, the difficult/overwhelming behavior stems from current or previous abuse.)

Talking about work without breaking strict confidentiality laws is kind of difficult, so don't expect me to say much here, in this public space. But some readers have been asking (backchannel) if I could say something about it, so here's what I've got:

I'm basically a parent in eight hour shifts. When I'm there from 7am-3pm, I get the kids (ages 6-12) up, dressed, brushed, washed, fed and walk them to school (school is on the campus), then go back to their house to wait for the inevitable phone calls saying they've been asked to leave school and take some time to calm down. These phone calls usually start about five minutes after the kids have been dropped off at school, and often don't let up until lunch, when they all come home for a two hour break. Then, back to school.

The 3pm-11pm shift is the hardest, in my opinion - pick up kids from school, snack, quiet time, homework time, activity time, dinner time, and then two full hours of bedtime routines.

11pm-7am is easy enough, activitywise - just do the day's laundry and keep track of which kids get up in the night for bathroom, or bedwetting, nightmares or whathaveyou. But on quiet nights, without much more than coffee, ramen noodles and a book to keep me awake, it's a long slog.

I was terrified of this job just before I started it - the staff did their best to scare me in the interview, make sure I knew what I was up against. But so far, they're just kids. Kids like the thousands I've cared for before. And yeah, they're crazy kids, who are sometimes totally detached from reality, who can be violent and agressive, and require lots and lots of structure, rules and consequences to keep them safe - but they're also kids who need their noses blown and their shoelaces tied and their hair brushed and all the love the world to make up for what the universe has denied them.

Of course, that love has to be shown in the appropriate ways - can you imagine being in charge of a six year old child who is crying her eyes out because her mother promised to come visit her today and didn't show up, and you are absolutely forbidden to offer her more than verbal condolences and a quick one-armed side hug? Or maybe, an offer to brush her hair, since that's the most prolonged contact you're allowed to have with a child.

Or the heartbreak of listening to a child being restrained by three adults, as his screams turn from "I hate you!" to "Why are you being so nice to me? Why? I'm bad, and you're being nice, why?" and the pain and confusion in his voice is palpable, because you know, deep down, he's expecting to get hit or hurt and it isn't going to happen. Not here. And recognizing his own safety is as terrifying as it is a relief.

And you readers who are parents - you know the rewards of this job. You know how it feels when a child decides to say "I'm angry!" instead of having a massive meltdown, or the first time a kids says "I love you," and means it. You know why all the kids' doors are decorated in their artwork, the pride in their voices when they show me and boast "I made that." You know how it feels to be successful teachers, those small scattered moments when, for just one second - you feel like you're doing something right.

For me, it's watching them play ball in the yard, or on their skateboards, or jump ropes, and some small bird or butterfly catches their eye, those tiny silver moments when they look, perhaps for the first time, like children.

Seattle 16, or Things I Am Doing Today

- Moving here.
- Renting a car for the first time by myself.
- Driving in Seattle for the first time.
- Booking my first Seattle feature, thanks to my dear friend Jack

Writing will re-commence once stability has returned. For now, another of Andi's pictures:

Seattle 15, or Extra, Extra, Read All About It!

Actually, I mean read it over here.

(all pictures by Slam Photographer Andi Burk)



Karen Finneyfrock - a keystone of the Seattle poetry scene, she's the one whose blog I wrote for. Check out the link!














Maya Hersh and Ela Barton; an iconic picture of Seattle Slam's cutest couple. Maya made the team!















Jack McCarthy, grandfather in the scene; has propensity for doing poems about sex in ways that are funny, insightful, tender and only appropriate because he's old and can get away with such lecherous comments. Deliberately lost the Grand Slam because he didn't want to be on the team; he just wanted the chance to toast an old poet friend from the stage.

Seattle 14, or Placeholder

Things I will write about very, very soon:

- the Seattle Grand Slam
- my first week at work (with all appropriate confidentiality boundaries in place)
- moving
- thoughts on "Jewess"

They may not all be in the same essay, but I wanted to park them all here so I wouldn't forget.

Seattle 13, or Warmth

I was supposed to get trained to do my job yesterday, but only two of us bothered to show up for the training, so they paid us for two hours and sent us home. I was mad, but not too mad - the sun was out, and it was close to 70 degrees, and the city seemed to be sprouting color from every available crevice. I came home to find Jason curled up on the back porch with a glass of tea (he always has tea - he's got entire cabinets devoted to bags of loose tea. pineapple green tea. hibiscus lemon. chamomile.)

I joined him with my lunch: yesterday's leftover stewed black beans and greens, served with a fried egg, wrapped in a tortilla. We didn't say too much at first; we were busy basking like lizards. This happens in Seattle - when the sun appears, people get out, as though they've got solar panels in their shoulderblades that need recharging.

I spent the whole afternoon on the porch, emailing work to fix my schedule (it's fixed - I've got more work now, and I have the dates for retraining) and on the phone with friends, family and the insurance company. (For the record, I'm not going to be pursuing physical therapy here - it's just too expensive. I'm good with what Deb gave me before I left, and Jason's keeping an eye on my knee, working on it when I ask him to.) By the time I left for writing class, I even felt a little - dare I say it? - golden.

Writing class was hard this week - hard edits, hard prompts. I'm hitting a bout of writers' block for the first time since arriving here. Luckily, writers' block here means I'm still held accountable to writing something, which is far healthier than my usual writers' block diet of kvetching and junk food. I did some grocery shopping after class, came home on the late bus.

As I walked up the driveway, I smelled smoke. When I opened the high fence door into our patio/backyard (there's no grass; it's all terra cotta bricks), I saw Jason had made a bonfire in our outdoor fire dish. It was roaring, hissing, spitting (he was burning pine), and he'd set up his laptop with a projector, and was projecting a Margaret Cho video on the wall of the garage. (Margaret Cho is an excellent comedian.)

"I've been waiting for you, little one!" he cried when he saw me come in. "What took you so long?"

After I put my groceries away, I came outside and pulled up a chair next to him. We turned off the video and talked for a good two hours, just curled up there by the fire. He's a Vermont boy in his bones, all woodsmoke and maple syrup. After working on the fire, his shirt smelled like smoke and boy and pine, and I breathed deep while hugging him. He smelled like summer nights in Canada, like all the men I've ever known who loved fire.

We sat under the magnolia tree, next to the forsythia, watched petals fall into the fire and onto our heads. I collected forsythia blossoms, made a circle of them in my palm. We burned bags of raspberry tea, breathing deep as they puffed and vanished.

I said I wished I could've taken a picture of this moment and sent it to myself six months ago, as reassurance that I would get somewhere wonderful. "Me too," said Jason. We both said "hmmm" and watched the coals, thinking about other fires and other places, feeling grateful and scared and entirely blessed.

Seattle 12, or Sunday at the Kibbutz: a True Story

"Bagels"

They are impressed with my kneading stamina
at the dining room table.
It is important to use barley malt syrup
instead of sugar or honey,
and high gluten flour. I pocket these secrets
like keys to the house I grew up in,
though I know I am as likely to make my own bagels
as I am to walk through that door again.

Adam holds a piece in two hands and pulls,
the dough hardly stretches,
but doesn't break, either.
This means it's ready.
The kitchen is a warm like a schoolhouse in April:
yeast, steam, sesame seeds, sliced cucumbers.
Everyone takes a turn at the stove
to watch the baby bagels float
in boiling water.
Then, we decorate them with crowns
of sesame, flax, poppy, garlic.

We eat every single one,
passing the schmear and the lox,
the slices of avocado,
the bowls of strawberries,
melon, pineapple.

As we clean up, I sing.
No one really joins,

but no one complains, either.

Seattle 11, or An Essay Draft about Jews

I knew coming here just in time for Passover was a bit of a mistake. Though I've found Jewish community, and there are plenty of synagogues, let us be honest: Seattle is not New York. Your average non-Jew Seattleite has no idea there's a Jewish holiday going on, not only because they don't know many Jews, but because the stores are putting matzah in the aisle with the crackers, and gefilte fish next to egg noodles, and nobody seems to have heard of horseradish in a jar. Creamed horseradish, next to the ketchup? Yes. Raw horseradish, in the produce section? Yes. Bottles of Goldman's red and white horseradish in the kosher aisle? What kosher aisle? You mean the place with the Maneschewitz grape juice next to the egg noodles?

I've been answering a lot of questions about Passover this week - my roommate wanted to know if Passover food traditions have to do with cleansing the body, someone asked if matzah is "that stuff made with lamb's blood", and, perhaps more understandably, another Jew asked, "So why do beans and rice count as bread?" (The answers: No. No. It's complicated. And has to do with rabbis and geography.)

But there's been one other question that's come up twice, from two different people who do not know each other, who both are Black and were raised Baptist. One is my roomate's boyfriend, the other a student in my writing class.

"Is Jew a bad word? Isn't it correct to call someone Jewish, but not a Jew? Is calling someone a Jew like calling them the n-word?"

I've never had to articulate this before. My use of the word "Jew" has been intuitive for most of my life. I was lucky enough to grow up in a place where I never heard terms like "Jewing people down" or "kike". And yet, in both literature and history, I encountered the use of the word "Jew" as something derogatory. After talking it out with both these folks, I realized that the distinction is one that's very Jewish-specific, and was able to form some coherent thoughts on it.

Because "Jewish" is both a religion and an ethnicity, it challenges the assumptions we make about language. When referring to someone's religion, it's entirely appropriate to refer to them as "a Christian", "a Muslim," or "a pagan." In this context, it is appropriate - and to me, preferable - to be called "a Jew."

Ethnicity is a little more complicated. After all, many people identify as Jews without ever practicing the religion. If we look at other ethnic groups for precedent, it gets more confusing. We refer to people as "Latino" or "Asian." These are used as adjectives to modify some other identifier - "an Asian man," "a Latino professor." With race, it gets even more defined - would any politically conscious person of my generation ever refer to someone as "a Black?"

And yet, many of us Jews persist in identifying ourselves as "a Jew." What's more, some of us identify with the ethnicities within Judaism, calling ourselves Ashkenazi, Sephardic, or Mizrachi. I have used (and have heard) Jews resist using these words as adjectives, calling themselves "an Ashki", "a Sephardi", "a Mizrachi," though use of the adjective form is more common, as in "I'm a Mizrachi Jew." Does this mean other people shouldn't? Is there a parallel between Black-on-Black use of the word "nigger" and Jew-on-Jew use of the word Jew? I'm pretty sure there isn't. "Jew" isn't a derivative of another word, designed and meant to be used disparagingly.

I think, for some of us, it comes down to the question of central identity: what you're willing to use as a modifier, and what you want to hold firm. In Hebrew school, they once asked us:

"Do you identify as a Jewish American, or an American Jew?"

Many of us didn't get the difference; as assimilated kids, our identities were never challenged. Most of us didn't feel like our Jewishness excluded us from American culture. Most of us didn't know what it meant to choose assimilation over culture. It has already been chosen for us. Those of us who did get the distinction had very clear and specific preferences.

"I'm a Jewish American, because I love my country more than I love Israel."
"I'm an American Jew because my grandma says no matter where they kick us out from, we'll always be Jews."
"I'm an American Jew because I pray in the morning before I say the Pledge of Allegiance."
"I'm a Jewish American because I never pray."

I never forgot that lesson. My answer is not among those above. I had no answer at the time. Today, I'd say I'm an American Jew because when I'm in a foreign place, I look for communities of Jews before I look for communities of Americans. The rituals of Judaism create a home for me, even among strangers.

But of course, that's not the case for everyone. There are those Jewish Americans (or Jewish women, Jewish doctors, Jewish Canadians, or Jewish Marxists) who choose to centralize some other aspect of their identity. To call them "a Jew" would not be incorrect or cruel, and certainly not the equivalent of calling them a racial slur. But it might make them uncomfortable, especially if s/he isn't used to identifying solely as a Jew. In short: if you're unfamiliar with someone's identity, say they're Jewish. But don't be afraid that the PC police will come running after you for saying "Jew."

Unless, of course, you accompany it with a word like "dirty." There's no confusion about that.

Seattle 10, In Which Dane Joins The Ranks Of the Gainfully Employed

Okay, so it's nothing to really jump up and down and scream about. It has no health benefits, pays above minimum wage, and consists of many night shifts. But it's a JOB. An honest-to-G-d job, doing something that is not irrelevant or time-wasting or wildly off track, but a job that might actually give me tools to do what I want to do one day.

More later.