by Chana Wilson
As a result, the program director asked me to take on being host of the show. That was the beginning of the program I named A World Wind. At first, it was exclusively a music show, featuring recordings from around the world, with an emphasis on female musicians. Over time, I expanded the program to include women guests reading poetry and prose, and interviews with local and international women artists, musicians, and activists.
During the six years I hosted A World Wind, my sense of myself shifted. Good interviews require engagement, curiosity, and a willingness to have empathy. I discovered an aptitude for listening, for drawing people out. Letters arrived at the station, thanking me for this show or that, for something that touched someone. I gained confidence. I was still shy, but not so guarded. Some part of me always felt like an outsider, but over time there were moments where it felt as if the world had opened to me, widened to include me more.
IN 1973, ABOUT the same time I started with the Lesbian Air radio collective, Gloria began volunteering as a peer counselor at Identity House, located in a church basement not far from her Greenwich Village apartment. Identity House was founded in 1971—two years after the Stonewall riots—with the radical idea of gay people offering support and affirmative counseling to other gay people.
From across the continent, I imagined a young woman approaching the door to Identity House’s basement office, and hesitating. Dare she go in? Inside, in a tiny room, two dilapidated padded armchairs face each other. The door opens, and Gloria is bringing in the young woman. They sit opposite each other, and my mother encourages the young woman to speak. My mother’s face is soft and welcoming; she understands how much fear there can be in exploring sexual identity. She listens intently. There is such triumph in her helping other gay people, supporting them so they will never have to endure the psychiatric horrors she had survived.
Each of us, my mother and I, was in therapy, but not the old Freudian, hierarchical style. I was seeing a feminist therapist. Gloria was seeing a Gestalt therapist, participating in a group doing primal therapy, and went on weeklong encounter groups at the Jersey shore.
At Identity House, she began training as a Gestalt therapist. She wrote me that she was coleading groups, as well as counseling clients one on one. Once, she called me, almost breathless. “I met Laura Perls at this meeting of therapists. People think it’s just Fritz Perls, but they cocreated Gestalt. She asked if I’d like to be in her advanced training group. My God, the mother of Gestalt therapy is asking me!”
I’d never heard her so happy.
Chapter 38. Promised Land
GLORIA AND I ARRIVED AT Kennedy International in the thick of New York’s summer humidity, already stinking with sweat, and dragged our bags into the muggy airport,whose air-conditioning had been shut off in one of the metropolitan area’s energy brownouts. But we were both too excited to be bothered much: We were embarking on a monthlong trip to Israel, our first adventure in a foreign land.
In the El Al terminal, we took the escalator up to the departures level, and as we rose we were greeted by a huge silver Jewish star. My eyes teared up at the sight. I was slightly embarrassed—I was by far no Zionist, and such a reaction seemed corny. And yet the star felt like a marker for the trip, for some longing to experience a place where, for the first time in my life, I would not be a minority, at least as a Jew.
My friend Eliana, an American Jew who had lived for years in Israel, had encouraged this visit, saying she could connect us with plenty of Israeli feminists who would give us an insider experience. We were planning a big trip to mark transitions for both of us: By the upcoming summer, Gloria would have completed her master’s in social work, and I would be at the end of the two-year grant that had funded my job at KPFA.
At the gate, we were surrounded by Jews of all sorts: Israelis returning home, speaking to each other emphatically in Hebrew, American Jewish tourists, Hasidic men in their long black wool coats and hats, even though it was broiling hot. Looking over at a group of Hasids, Gloria muttered, “Patriarchal bastards!”
Before we could board the plane, a uniformed security agent took us together into an enclosed booth. He stared at our tickets and then asked a long list of questions, beginning with the inevitable “Were you given any packages on the way to the airport?” and ending with “Are you Jewish?” When we nodded yes, he let us go. What if we weren’t Jewish? I wondered, What then—a body search?
It was evening when we landed. We took the bus into Tel Aviv in a jet-lagged daze, past concrete apartment buildings with solar panels on their roofs. We registered at our hotel, dropped off our luggage, and staggered out to a restaurant.
I stared at the menu, not knowing what to ask for. My stomach clenched with anxiety at feeling not in control. I looked up at my mother, head down in her menu. “Glor, would you make up your goddamn mind; otherwise we’ll be here all night!” She didn’t defend herself, and that made me even crabbier. I was embarrassed that I had regressed into a ten-year-old brat who was yelling at her mother for no good reason. But I couldn’t stop myself.
The next morning, we went downstairs in the hotel to an Israeli breakfast buffet, a spread of olives, tomatoes, yogurt, hard-boiled eggs, herring, challah, and fruit. When Gloria finished eating, she got herself more coffee, returned to our table, lit up a cigarette, and inhaled deeply. I had hated her chain-smoking my whole life. I hated the smell, and the way the smoke choked me.
A waiter rushed over to our table and exclaimed, “No smoking in public on Shabbat!” Gloria rolled her eyes at me, smashed out the cigarette, and muttered, “You finish eating. I’ll take my coffee to the room.”
Before leaving, she breezed by the buffet table, grabbed some hard-boiled eggs, and wrapped them in a napkin—provisions for our lunch. The same waiter intercepted her and yelled, “All food must be eaten here! You cannot take food!” Other patrons turned their heads to stare. Mortified, I wanted to sink under the table. My skin flared, hot and burning, as the old shame of my mom swept over my body, so familiar.
Later that day, back in our hotel room after we ventured to the beach, I complained, “I hate Tel Aviv! It’s ugly! It’s so hot! So muggy! And crowded! Jeez, the rest of Israel better not be like this!”
My mother soothed, “It’ll be all right, sweetheart, you’ll see. Let’s make our calls so we can move on.”
We called the women on our list, the friends of friends we had sent notes to in advance, hoping to be invited to stay, although no one had answered. Our primary contact, Sonia in Haifa, offered to rent us her ex-husband’s apartment on the cheap, but it wouldn’t be available for a few days yet. In the meantime, we discovered there were campgrounds throughout Israel that had cabins with cots, but only one had any openings.
Gloria and I arrived at Camp Lehman, just a few miles from the border of Lebanon, in the afternoon, patting ourselves on the back that we had navigated the local buses. The farther north we went, the more soldiers got on the bus, wearing their army green uniforms and berets, Uzi submachine guns slung over their shoulders.
We ate at the campground restaurant, a screened-in bare-bones room. Schnitzel again. How sick I was already becoming of this bland, breaded, overcooked chicken. As we left, Gloria “borrowed” two glasses from the table by sticking them in her purse. There were none in our cabin, since most Israelis arrived at camp in cars loaded with food, plates, and utensils. As we sauntered away, we were followed outside by the mâitre d’, who yelled at us in Hebrew. We kept walking, as if deaf. Then he repeated, even louder, in French, “Madame! Ou sont les tasses d’eau?”
Once again, I was mortified by my mother. Shame overshadowed my pleasure that he took us for French, not Americans. Our pursuer was now right next to my mother, holding out his hand. She turned around, faced him, and emptied her purse of the glasses, which he reached for as he glowered at us.
As we made our way back to our little wood bungalow, neither of us said a word about the incident. The heat had drained us. We rested on our can
vas cots, each glued to our paperback. A tense, resigned silence vibrated in the tiny space between our cots. During the night, we heard the boom of gunfire in the distance.
THE SHRILL RING OF the phone startled me awake. It was early morning, and as I sat up in bed, it took me a moment to orient: Haifa, I’m in Haifa. After I hung up, my mother called out, “Who is it?”
“Just someone calling Sonia’s ex.”
Neither of us could get back to sleep. Instead, we lounged together in my mother’s bed. She told me about a new therapy group she was in that was an experiential training group. “The group lets the person express her upset, grief, and anger as the group witnesses it.” She gave me an example, “Like for me with your grandma,” she said. “You know how cold she can be. Always complaining about Grandpa. She never even held or kissed me. She made me feel so unlovable.”
Anger rose in my throat and was held there, suspended. The feeling was the knot of taboo. I was now sharply, fully awake. I sat up in the bed. I hesitated, then I croaked, “Um . . . Mom . . . ” the anger clotting my throat. “Look, Glor, I’ve got anger, too, anger toward you from childhood.”
Here we were, perched on the Haifa hillside, and I could not look at her. And then I did. She had sat up and turned toward me. Her soft face greeted me, her skin browned from the sun, her silver hair curling over her forehead. “Yes?” she encouraged.
“I’ve just felt terrible on this trip. I know I’ve been snapping at you. I feel so guilty. It’s like I’m a sullen twelve-year-old again, and I just can’t seem to stop myself.”
My mother said, “I can take it. Why don’t you express your anger now? I mean, the real anger.” She looked me in the eye, solemn-faced.
I clamped down. “I can’t. I feel guilty.”
“If you change ‘I feel guilty’ to ‘I resent,’ you will get to your anger,” Mom said.
My stomach contracted. I wanted to, but I was terrified. The guilt rose, riding the old beliefs: It’s not her fault. What right do I have to get angry at someone who’s sick? She can’t handle it. This could kill her.
“You really can take it?” I asked in a half whisper.
She nodded.
I gathered my breath and tried to say, “I resented . . . ” and sputtered to a stop.
My mother just sat there, looking at me.
This time, I managed, “I resented being ashamed to bring friends home.” I stopped, my breath so shallow that I felt a bit faint.
“Yes, what else?”
I glanced over at my mother, then looked away. Take a breath. Begin again. “I resented putting you to bed at night, picking you up off the floor, putting out cigarette fires, helping you to the bathroom.” Once I started, it kept coming. “I resented being scared you would die. I resented dealing with your suicide attempts. I resented being left alone.”
Gloria listened, nodding. Then she said, “You’re just speaking. You don’t sound angry.”
My stomach was a fist, held and clenched. I could not say it louder, angrier. The old terror gripped me, its singsong voice chanting—If you get angry, your mother will die. You’ll kill her. She’ll die she’ll die. I was jolted to realize that, of course, my mother knew all these things; she’d been there, after all. It was just that no one had ever once asked me how I felt.
I could do no more, but I felt an opening, a loosening of the hard knot inside me.
My mother reached for my hand.
“It was terrible for you,” she said. “I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.”
AFTER HAIFA, WE TOOK a sherut, an eight-person van, to Jerusalem, where we’d been invited to stay with Dinah and Gretta. The couple were my age, in their late twenties; Dinah was American, Gretta Dutch. They lived in a rambling old house made of golden Jerusalem stone with Gretta’s two young boys, a rabbit, and a puppy. They welcomed us warmly into their messy, chaotic household.
My mother and I visited the Old City of Jerusalem, with its car-less cobblestone streets. In the souk, Yemenite and Bedouin dresses—black with red embroidery—hung from high hooks along the narrow alley walls. Spice stores filled the air with sweet, tangy scents. Light shafts poured through openings in the overhead arches, making the stone walls glow golden, lighting the street goods in their riot of colors: crimson, orange, saffron, black. It amazed me, to be in a place so alive and so ancient.
Before we were admitted to the Western Wall, we passed a guard station, where our bags were searched. Then we entered a huge open square with Israeli flags flapping, and on one side, there it was: the Wailing Wall. We approached the women’s section, a much smaller section than the men’s. I found a spot and pressed my face and arms against the warm limestone. My mother was right next to me, her hands raised with palms flat against the wall, her body leaning into it. I closed my eyes and was filled with the smell of stone, the sounds of women praying and—was it crying?—yes, crying all around us. And then I found myself crying, too. I hadn’t expected this, hadn’t expected to feel anything. My hands felt something in the stone, a memory, a whisper: diaspora. The point of exile.
Something was vibrating in me, shaking itself awake. Grief swept through me, a wordless mix of the communal, my own family’s history, and what I had so recently expressed to my mother. Stories swirled in me: Grandma Katie, Dad’s mom, crying for her lost family. I was sixteen when I told my parents I was going out. I wore only my one set of clothes when I left Ukraine with your grandfather. They would never have let me leave. Oy gotenu, I never saw them again! She was weeping for her grandparents, beaten to death during the Russian Revolution.
Grandma Katie and I cried together over the mass grave of Babi Yar outside of Kiev, where, we guessed, the Nazis had slaughtered the rest of her family. I thought of Grandma Miriam, churning with unhappiness at being stuck marrying a greenhorn in America, her hatred leaving her hard and bitter, depriving my mother of love. Isidor, my mother’s dad, voicing his shame: I was an ignorant Jew from the shtetl, an uneducated peasant—we knew nothing, there is nothing to tell you. The stones accepted my grief, warm in their enduring.
Around me, women mumbled prayers and children giggled. I opened my eyes and looked around. Women, mostly old, were sitting on plastic chairs with prayer books, rocking their bodies as their lips moved, whispering the text. Others of various ages were writing their longings, wishes, and prayers on slips of paper to stick in the wall’s cracks. I thought of our oppression as women in this segregated part of the wall—the unequally small portion allotted to us women. A fantasy came to me: a group of us, heads covered with shawls, bodies pressed against the wall, wailing and rocking until the power of our keening pushed down the divider.
MY IRRITATION WITH MY mother had, for the most part, left me. There was enjoyment now, at sharing an adventure together. We spent our days in Jerusalem wandering the Old City, and our evenings hanging out with the women who congregated at Gretta and Dinah’s over long informal dinners, talking about the Israeli women’s movement, clitorectomies of Arab women, and the Egyptian women the feminists were beginning to make connections with. Gloria and I told our stories of coming out to each other, to laughter and whoops from our listeners. I loved her like this: expressive, passionate. The Israelis shared how hard it still was to be out as gay in such a small country, where everyone knows each other’s business. Gossip, they told us, is the lifeblood of Israel.
One afternoon, my mother and I were alone in the Jerusalem house. Our trip was nearing its end, and we were both feeling melancholy. We were sitting on the couch in the living room, talking. Gloria suggested we take turns doing peer counseling to help us get through our doldrums.
My mother went first. “Would you hold me?” she asked. “I feel like I need to be babied.” I scooted closer and reached my arms around her, but as soon as I did, my stomach clenched with nausea. Rage nibbled at my throat. “I just can’t do it!” I said, and dropped my arms. I couldn’t keep from blurting out, “I mothered you too many years when I shouldn’t have had to!” I was sw
eating, and my face felt hot.
“Oh!” My mother pulled away from me, averting her eyes, her mouth pursed. I thought she was about to cry. Silence ticked between us.
When she looked up, there was sadness and something else in her eyes: a look of recognition. “I’m glad you can say it. Of course. I understand,” she said.
I gazed at her, amazed. She did, she understood.
My mother moved close, took me in her arms, and began recounting her memories of mothering me: sitting in a rocking chair, singing me lullabies, building sand castles together at low tide in Atlantic City.
A painful pressure gathered in my throat. I remembered the sand castles clearly. The other images—of being rocked and sung to—floated as sensations in my body.
My mother began rocking me. The swaying loosed a sob in me that ripped itself upward from my chest. One sob followed another. We rocked and I wept. I felt the firm wrap of my mother’s arms around my back, and smelled the salt of my own tears on her neck where my head rested.
“But then,” Gloria said, “your mother got sick. I felt very guilty that I couldn’t take care of you. I wish I could make it up. I couldn’t help it. I was very sick.”
“I know, I know.” I grew quiet. On this, we agreed: Her grief and madness were not her fault. Her heart had been bludgeoned by a sexist society and homophobic psychiatry. This analysis relieved us; there was truth in it, although simplified. I could feel my mother’s sorrow over our mutual loss. I felt suspended, there in my mother’s arms, something akin to forgiveness hovering between us.
Chapter 39. T-Bone
IN THE YEAR SINCE OUR TRIP to Israel, my mother decided to move to the West Coast, to my town, finally resolving the dilemma that had been tugging on us for ten years: Were we going to spend our lives three thousand miles apart? She was coming now for her August vacation right into the whirlwind of my life.