fresh off the chopping block

I don't really remember when we met. I was really more friends with your across-the-hall neighbor, and to be honest, rather foolish and flirtatious with said neighbor. The first time I really remember you was one day when you were scolding him for missing me in chapel. "C'mon, man," you said, blue eyes wide. "I always notice my friends!" Thinking about it now, you were angry with the other guy for being oblivious (only one of the masculine traits you would attack in the coming years). At the moment, though, I was just grateful for your verbalizing what I was grumpily thinking. After that, there were a few more incidents (properly described) that cemented our friendship. One rainy night, a friend and I banged on the boys' dorm door and you popped out, barefoot, and played in the monsoon with us and our pathetic, broken umbrella. You watched me cry my way through every huge paper that first year, all without freaking out or fleeing the scene. When I was having a major self-esteem freak-out about my upcoming gym class, you drove me to the store to buy pants that made me feel hot. ("These better be the best darn pants in the whole world!" you snapped at me in the car.) You knew both sides of the circumstances of my first serious broken heart, and you didn't throw it in my face when it predictably blew up.

Most people either feared or disliked you on sight. I did neither. Somehow I understood and accepted your sarcastic bitterness, your pessimism, your apparent chauvinism, and your brusqueness. It was like I already knew you before we began, and it was easy to just continue on. You sort of just rolled into my life . . . and stayed.

On my twentieth birthday, you rescued me from awkward advances from an awkward boy, then went ahead and talked me down from the emotional cliff. That was the first time you gave me any type of good advice, and I think, perhaps, that was when I began to really love you. Instead of reciprocating, you found someone else. That became the motif of our relationship. When you were free and unattached, I was very interested in someone else--someone "better," I told myself. When I yearned for your affection, you were in love with the pattern girl--someone skinnier, shorter, funnier, smarter, classier, more intriguing, more ambitious, and much more obnoxious than I was. Somehow, we stayed friends through it all. I called you whenever I needed help with picking up guests or checking car engines or taking care of my plants over break. You answered your phone all those times, and, unasked, you held me as I wept from stress and hurt and fear. Without fail, we had screaming, knock-down drag-out fights every time we spent too much time apart. You always "won," but I really won because I avoided doing the one thing you aimed for. ("You know you want to hit me. Right here," you'd say, patting the side of your face.)

I watched you grow up while we were at school, but so much of you remained enigmatic to me. There were so many things I hated about you--the way you stole my food right off my plate, how you ignored me when someone "better" arrived in the conversation, your chuckle right after making a jerk-ish comment, the stubborn belief that you were always always right. There were times when I silently cheered for people who called you "arrogant" or "rude" or worse. But mostly, I was on your side. I never understood why you went through random phases when life was good, and everything was looking up. It made me vaguely uneasy when you were so optimistic; I didn't quite know how to handle that version of you. And I couldn't fathom why you endured my ignoring you for weeks, then suddenly responded to my frantic phone calls with such tenderness. I didn't understand . . . but I was grateful. Was that the real you, trying to get out?

I think that was really you--the one you should be. You wanted to be the understanding, enthusiastic, tender version of yourself . . . but you didn't know how. No one ever showed you, maybe, or you felt strange and unnatural when you were like that. I wish I could tell you how much I believe in the real you. I wish I could tell you that I know you can be the man I started to see in you--the one who's tender, and thoughtful, and strong in all the right ways. I wish you would believe me . . . but I'm pretty sure you'd laugh and roll your eyes.


And then I just might hit you.

best. boss. ever.

The first time I met him, I wrote in my journal,
He is indeed a great boss, like B. said he would be. But I am insanely curious about his background. He speaks perfect American-accented English, perfect (as far as I can tell) Hebrew, walks and dresses and acts like an American man, has a small tattoo between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand (revealing he has a past, haha), has sort of Jewish-looking dark eyes and hair and skin, is married to Liat (who sounds . . . Jewish? I'm so bad at discerning accents), and has boys with rather Jewish-sounding names that I can't pronounce.

Funny how much I got right in that first impression.

I was terrified of Natan for the first few weeks I worked for him. He had a temper, and tended to be contentious, which intimidated me. I also was certain he didn't like me, as he never ever smiled or praised or actually really looked me in the eyes. Then, one day, he randomly picked me to be the first double-checker, to be sure the rooms were really clean. In the face of more-experienced volunteers' protests ("But . . . she's new!") he said, infuriatingly calmly, "I know. But I rely on Katie. She has perfectionist tendencies."

It was a little bit of an oh moment for me; I think I walked a little straighter afterward.

In the few months I was in Israel, there were many people who surprised me, beat through my reserved-ness, and attached themselves to my heart, but I think that none was so surprising to me as Natan. I don't even know how to explain it to someone who hasn't met him.

He was this strange strange mix of American cockiness and Jewish stubbornness (and that without any Jewish lineage--the dark eyes were Armenian, from his mother). He was raised, right outside Jerusalem, by two resident aliens, Americans who emigrated to Israel "before it was in style"; he grew up speaking Hebrew and English and spending summers and especially the Fourths of July in Kentucky. ("Fireworks are the only good thing about summers in the States.") He ran in some ridiculously-named street gang in junior and senior high school. ("Were you ever in any gang fights?" I asked him one day. "Yes, Katie," he smirked, "we had our 'rumbles' in the parks."). He served in the Israeli and U.S. armies ("The American army was harder, actually, because they expected everything to be so clean, but their breakfasts were great.") He was a rebel, a hippie, a drunk, a runaway, a shame. And then, suddenly, he came back to the faith of his parents, got things together, and met his wife. ("When she was single, she used to tell people, 'My husband is in a bar somewhere, drunk,' and she was right.") He went from being a disappointment to being a husband who loves his wife, and a father who wants to raise his boys in the best way he knows how. ("Well . . . I don't want to make them celebrate Christmas, because that's really counter-cultural here and I don't want them growing up confused and feeling like outsiders.") Mostly, he hated being put in a box, any box. ("I am not a third-culture child! Do you even know what that is?!?" "Yes, I do," I told him, "and you most definitely are one." "No," he insisted, "I'm distinctly my own culture.")

And even though, maybe, he didn't realize it, he sort of became a father to "his" volunteers. On one of my days off, I had a fight with one of the other girls, and when it was over I slipped off to Natan's office. "Can I stay here for awhile?" I asked him, barely holding back the shaking in my voice, and he just nodded. I sat on my stool, far away from him, and breathed. He stayed at his desk, making up the schedule and ignoring me, but I knew, somehow, that he was sliding his eyes over to survey me when I wasn't looking. I grew to understand the veiled affection, just nod and ignore his doomsday words about all things dear to him--like the housekeeping cat, which he secretly smuggled food every day. ("Do you know that cats usually die of kidney failure because they refuse to drink?" he grumbled one day as he put a huge bowl of water outside.) Housekeeping wasn't an easy job, but Natan stood as an advocate, a protector between us volunteers and the rest of the moshav. When he'd leave following a tense or angry or stressful conversation, I learned to expect and even be relieved by the faint scent of nicotine that clung to him when he returned. If Natan disappeared and came back smelling of cigarette smoke, I knew things would pan out okay.

As my close volunteer friends left, as my time in Israel drew to an end, as my heart became more and more afraid of leaving all I loved there, I found myself drawn again and again to the housekeeping "office" and Natan's presence. On my days off, or my night-shift days, I'd come in and help him fold laundry and ask him dozens of questions about his life. There was strange comfort in his stories of recklessness and bad decisions, even in his sarcasm and cynicism. He answered my questions, understanding both my culture and the Israeli culture as his own. He debated my theology, my practices, my politics. ("I'll get you an article about that subject," he told me. "Natan . . . your father wrote this! I can't argue against it!" "Well--I just wanted to get you the best information out there.") He infuriated and frustrated and challenged me . . . and I loved him for it.

In my last days in Israel, I was more drawn to the quiet reasonably-predictable moments and places and people than to new experiences or places. So it was that, nine days before I left Israel, I lingered in supply room with Natan, after all the other volunteers went back to their rooms to take showers and rest or go out or whatnot. I was sitting crazily yet firmly balanced on a narrow strip of desk, one foot on Natan's desk, the other on the arm of a broken plastic chair. As was usual after the volunteers' workday, Natan crouched near the doorway, scrubbing out the cups and mugs before putting them in the dishwasher. It was an unseasonably hot day, and we'd worked hard, so I was tired and smelled so bad I could nearly see my scent rising from under my arms. I don't remember exactly what I said to him, but suddenly he looked up from his work.
"What was Jesus' message, in one word--if you had to sum up?"
"Natan . . . I feel like you already have an answer."
"Oh, I do." (He probably smirked, and I probably rolled my eyes.)
"Well, just tell me then."
"Okay. Jesus' main message to people was--'Relax.' And most people don't. I didn't."
And then he looked straight into my eyes with his dark Armenian gaze.
"Most of the questions you have now, you won't have in ten years. The things that matter to you now . . . won't. The questions will mostly answer themselves."
I leaned back and tried to breathe without crying. Natan went back to his dishes, as if he hadn't just solved my entire life's problems in one sentence.

Saying goodbye to Natan was nearly harder than anything else I had to do when I left Israel. Different volunteers had come and gone, even roommates and best friends, but Natan--he'd been there to watch me from day one, and he knew and remembered all the ridiculous and horrible and lovely things I'd done. Surprisingly, he came to my goodbye evening at the volunteers' clubhouse (he hated that place) and even more surprisingly, insisted on doing a "confirmation circle" for me. When it was his turn, he looked at me, seriously, and said, "Katie, you were a cheerful worker . . . usually--" A tiny smirk quirked the corners of his mouth, but his eyes stayed roundly innocent. "--and a lot of fun to work with . . . most of the time." (I could immediately recall some days I'd not been fun.) He looked at me, eyes and mouth and voice all serious and gentle, and he said, simply, "You're a good girl."

When I said my final goodbye to Natan, hours before I left the moshav, he mocked my handwriting ("Why didn't you print my letter like you printed Liat's?!?") and hugged me (twice). As I turned to go, he said, "Don't worry--you'll be back. And in the meantime, I'll be showing your photo to qualified guys and finding you a husband."

I think I laughed at him.

Ohhhh, Natan. Of all the things you are, "matchmaker" would not be on the list, I'm sorry to say. But I am so grateful for your kindness, your trustworthiness, your honesty, and your strangely-expressed affection. Mostly, I am grateful for your respect, for I know it is not given easily. Though you hate expressing yourself, I understood what you meant when you said goodbye. It was all summed up in that one phrase that meant so much. You're a good girl.




And you, Natan, are a good man.

don't listen when they tell you that these are your best years

One year ago, I looked out an airplane window into a star-filled sky and lost the ability to breathe.

One year ago, I fought my way, alone, through Israeli customs and the Tel Aviv airport, finally spilling out onto a hot dusty sidewalk under a parking garage, where I was immediately approached by two or three eager taxi drivers.

One year ago, I sat in a sheirut and wept because I was tired and hot and overwhelmed by the gravity of what I was about to do.

One year ago, I watched the countryside of Israel flash past my window in the grey pre-dawn, and I thought, I am really and truly finally here.

One year ago, I paid the driver whatever he asked, out of simple relief that he took me exactly where I needed to go without trying to kill or rob me.

One year ago, I walked up to kabalah, dragging my suitcase behind me, and was shocked to find it locked and dark, with only one rather exhausted-looking man at the desk inside.

One year ago, I raised my hand and knocked on the wooden pine door.


And that . . . began it all.