Meira of Hadera - My Initiation

I am returning to Sydney to celebrate my parent's fiftieth wedding anniversary, but Meira didn't know that. All she knew was that I had lost my Israeli travel document (a temporary passport issued to Orlim who leave the country before one year). She looked down at me disapprovingly through the glass screen between us and waited for an explanation I did not have. The implication was clear. Yes, of course I understand that in a country like Israel, where security is of primary concern, the loss of such a document is no small matter. I did not need Meira to tell me that, though she obviously felt that I did. "It's very expensive to replace" she said, her eyes awaiting some kind of grovelling apology for my very existence. "It's 500 shekels". "Wow, that is expensive" I said adding to my growing debt-guilt, "but what can I do, I've booked my ticket, I'm leaving in three weeks."

"Go over there and get a letter from that girl to say you've lost it" she commanded. I scurried across the office, dodging a blind Arab man holding on to a pretty young Arab woman wearing an elegant black scarf. 'Slicha' I said half smiling and wondering at the same time if perhaps my travel document hadn't fallen into the hands of a mad Jihadist plastic surgeon with a tribe of daughters willing to look just like me for long enough to complete some massively destructive mission.

I returned to Meira with my tail between my legs and handed her the paper. She handed it back. "Fill it in" she said. I looked at the page full of Hebrew and I looked back at her. She knew damn well that I was far from capable of filling out this form. At my request we were speaking in English. She turned the snobby corners of her mouth up, grabbed the form back, made a personal call on her mobile phone and filled out the form while continuing a previous conversation with her co-workers behind the counter at the same time.

This place reminded me of the Road and Traffic Authority in Bondi Junction, with its ticket system and windowed counter. I missed the rough faced Aussie women with whom you could always share a personal story, and open up a conversation just by admitting you were human. Meira wasn't human though. She was one of those beautifully groomed Tel-Aviv women, streaked blond hair cut sharply against her chiseled face. She wore a large diamond studded eternity ring on her stubby manicured fingers, a high maintenance girl, clearly too good to be working an office job at the Misrad Hapnima in Hadera. There was no breaking the ice with this one.

I gave her my Australian passport, my Israeli ID, my Tudat Orlah , I gave her my husband's Israeli credit card. "Who's Gabi ?" she asked suspiciously. My husband I said, calling him over to identify his legitimacy. Where's his ID? she asked rudely. I was starting to come undone. I pointed to my ID, which has his name and number on it, she continued stapling and folding, stamping and writing.

I thought about my dad and I started to cry. I don't know why but I did. She neither noticed nor cared and by the time she handed me back my card, and told me it would arrive in the post within two weeks, I had completely fallen apart. Meira had managed without actually saying anything to completely annihilate me. I had been initiated.

This is the Israel I had heard so much about, this is the beurocratic nightmare, the scorpionic Sabra of which I had been warned. Up until now, I had been spared. I left the office in tears and cried all the way home. I still don’t know why I was so intimidated by this woman, maybe it was the full moon or maybe I'm just terribly homesick, or maybe that's what Meira does to make her feel better about herself.

I could wipe Meira out in a psycho-spiritual battle in a flash. I have squatted down and birthed five times, I have lived in a rain-forest. I have sat in tribal circles with powerful women, manifesting healing and manipulating energy. I have immigrated. I am a strong woman, a powerful being, capable of drawing powerful forces to my aid. By comparison Meira is a child, an un-evolved being, caught in the superficiality of her unprocessed life. Life will process her, it always does. I hope it does so gently so she grows to see that her external beauty will only ever be a reflection of her inner essence.

Role Reversal in the Holy Land

I'm not a control freak, really I'm not. I'm really a pretty laid back person, ask anyone - except my husband. OK, maybe I am a bit of a control freak but for very good reason. I want everything to be done the way I want it to be done. That doesn't mean I'm a perfectionist though, I just like things to be ordered, not necessarily spotless, just tidy. I'm certainly not that mom scrubbing the kitchen cupboards down with meths; I'm that mom drinking it!

Our recent immigration has presented new challenges but money is not one of them. Money is an old challenge, one that's been part of our dynamic since I rejected the idea of contraception and married a man sorely lacking in a MBA, and now to add fuel to the fire we are trying a role reversal. I did the first twenty years and now it's his turn.

The playing field is pretty even because as things stand I'm not earning any money, but my housewife skills even back then, when we first started out were noticeable better than his. Now he's communicating with underpaid teachers, under aged postal workers and overworked secretaries - in a language he neither speaks nor understands; but to be fair I was pregnant, nursing and sleep deprived for fifteen of my twenty years, so that pretty much puts us on par.

The thing that really gets me is that nothing ever gets done along the way; there's an end goal and it gets reached but along the way, if you'd only pick up the socks and drop them in the laundry and let the cat out and close the dishwasher and fill it with powder and press start ...it's on the way!!! It makes no sense that you wouldn't just see it and do it, you're literally right there.

There is no forethought and no organisation and when it comes to the children there is little compassion and even less food. Am I being too demanding? I come upstairs from my office. The pantry is open before an empty chair some hungry child has stood on, to remind me that my umbilical cord still pulses with healthy guilt. The potatoes are out, five scattered along the kitchen bench top awaiting a future fate. I heard talk of hot fried chips for lunch, but that was before everyone mysteriously disappeared. Carrots spread with crusted Miso sit drying in a bowl on the kitchen table, and assorted empty packets of corn chips, spill out of the garbage onto the kitchen floor.

Yesterday I took a break from work and while feeding the cat I stumbled upon an old tin plate which I thought would sit well on the wooden shelf by the front door. When I brought it inside to wash, I found the kitchen sink full of dirty plates, which I furiously stacked on top of the crusty pots from the night before and wondered about the ingenious way in which the Almighty fashioned 'man'.

I am reminded of a joke. Man says to G-d "Why did you make women so beautiful?""So you would love her" G-d replies. "But why did you make her so stupid?" Man continues, "So she would love you."

Housework is cyclic. The washing has to go in the machine in the morning, be hung in the afternoon, folded and put away at night so a new load can be done at night ready to be hung the next morning before everyone wakes in need of breakfast and school lunch, shoes and permission notes. Dinner also has to be thought about in the morning and children have to be thought about throughout the day, not all day but from time to time, especially around pick up time when they all get out from four different campus's at the same time. Some forethought is required. They also need to be FED!

The house is silent. I can't imagine he's taken them all to the supermarket to stock up for the week's meals and snacks - that's what I would have done. Then we would have come home, the children happily bouncing off the walls from junk food whose ingredients I can neither read nor understand. I would unpack the shopping in neat categories in the pantry and start cooking dinner. I imagine they are at the park, cold and hungry. I make myself a cup of tea and contemplate our future. I don't think this is going to work.

I put the potatoes in to bake, clean up the carrots, and wash the dishes. I don't think he will ever be the housewife I once was, and I will probably never earn enough to keep us, still I think it's been a healthy exercise. I'm a better mother than I am a father and he's a better dad than mom. The dog barks ahead of the arriving crowd, they storm in flushed from an afternoon on the windy sandbanks of the local beach. "I'm starving" the little ones say in unison, tearing their shoes off leaving neat little piles of sand on the rug which they will try rub out with their feet when they notice. "What's for dinner mum?" the teenager asks. Some things never change.