The Joy of Being Completely Yourself
Last weekend my family celebrated my nephew’s bar mitzvah. He’s the oldest child in the next generation, so I hadn’t been to a bar mitzvah in a while, and it was a truly wonderful occasion. Judaism isn’t a big part of my daily life, so I was a little surprised at how good it felt to share the songs and prayers I know by heart with my children. Aside from one heart-stopping moment when I thought our youngest was about to kick a Torah, they all behaved appropriately and really enjoyed themselves. And now I get to have a long, complex conversation with my eleven-year-old about the ambivalence and importance of celebrating Jewish joy while also mourning the senseless loss of life in Gaza. I’m in one of those times when being a person who exists in a family and a culture and a world feels like a lot. But mostly the good kind of a lot.
There were two separate incidents during the weekend where I felt both completely seen and also extremely self-conscious. And they reminded me how amazing it feels, if sometimes also kind of embarrassing, to be completely and totally myself. Best of all, one of the stories involves this very newsletter!
In one of my first posts, I wrote about some common Latin and Greek errors that I’m trying not to be such a psycho about:
The Misuse of "Decimate" and Other Mistakes I'm Trying to Calm TF Down About
Toward the end of that newsletter, I shared a story about my older sister Randi’s anniversary party last Spring, where one of her guests told me that fifteen years ago I corrected him on the plural of “octopus.” This past weekend, at the bar mitzvah, I was talking to some of Randi’s friends at the cocktail hour and one of them mentioned he reads my newsletter. Then he asked, “The octopus story is about me, right?”
Friends: it was not! Which means there exist not one, but two human beings who I’ve known for a decade and a half whose first impression of me was that I couldn’t let the word “octopi” stand without comment. And very possibly more than two! Two that I know of.
As I struggled to process this conversation, my partner handed me a drink and said, “Look, I can see that this is hard for you, but also, you having corrected multiple people over the course of one destination wedding is pretty much at the center of my Donna bingo card.” Which is fair. Not completely flattering, maybe, but fair.
(If you’re thinking that it seems like the plural of octopus comes up in my life improbably often: you’re not wrong. These days, it’s because of my children’s marine biology obsession, but I also have a bit of a thing about octopodes because when I was a teenager I went snorkeling and got to hold one in my hand and have been low-key obsessed ever since.)
The second incident occurred the next day at Sunday brunch, when my siblings and I were reminiscing about our own bar and bat mitzvahs over bagels and lox. When we were kids, my parents offered all four of us the choice between the standard big-ass party with blow-up saxophones and the electric slide and a trip to Israel. I was the only one who went for the trip. I remember it as a pretty amazing experience — there were a lot of things we got to see in 1999 that I’m pretty sure you can’t do anymore, and I felt pretty cool reading my Torah portion on top of Masada.
My mom remembers the trip somewhat differently. She wasn’t surprised that I chose the Israel option, because I hate big parties and love history and archaeology. She hoped the experience would affirm and deepen my faith. “And then we went, and I thought it was going to be this amazing experience for you,” she said. “But you were so horrified by the misogynistic gender politics in Jewish history that you saw in Israel and said that women were still treated like second-class citizens. And then when we came home, you said you were going to be Wiccan now. And your father and I just said to each other, ‘What just happened?!’”
(I used to be really embarrassed about my teenage Wiccan phase, especially when I realized just how much of a basic bitch it made me to have had one. Mostly I’ve managed to internally recontextualize it as a common-for-my-socio-economic-milieu, age-appropriate attempt to confront feelings of powerlessness in a world where the power of teenage girls is both mocked and feared. But when my family roasts me about it, I still turn magenta.)
As I hid my bright red face in my hands, my younger sister said, “That’s the most Donna shit I’ve ever heard.”
I’m sharing these stories even though during both I longed for the earth to swallow me whole for a few reasons. First, my brilliant agent
has written a whole bunch about how important it is to pay attention to the things that embarrass and irritate you (in this piece, for example), because under the cringe there’s usually a lot of fascinating and real emotion. That shit is gold for memoirists (all writers, really). And second, both times once my face had returned to its normal shade I felt strangely grateful. I could see the true regard my loved ones hold for me, and honestly, is there any better feeling than that? To be a messy and ridiculous person and have your partner and mom and sister laugh and say, “Yup, that’s exactly who you are” with love and humor and acceptance?My partner and I call this feeling “teased and seen.” And it rules.
I hope you have people in your life who make you feel teased and seen and moments when you think, “Yes, that’s exactly who I am.” If you don’t — consider starting a newsletter. It’s a surprisingly wonderful catalyst.