Ben+Goldman's+Memoir+-+You+and+Me

My memoir (same as in class, revised to follow):

You and Me

I know you, but you don’t know me. You are suffocating in suitcases. The seats are of hard leather, uncomfortable, and whenever you move, a squeaky yelp rushes into the air, as if you are stepping on someone’s foot. You don’t want to move because you feel subconscious, watched, studied: What is he doing? What does his face look like? Are his eyes widening, dancing, or crying? You don’t want to move because you feel that the noise would be an insult to the gravity of the moment, as exhausted and anxious and nervous and achingly straining-your-neck-to-see-out-the-window as you are—as if the entire world would somehow crack in half if you failed to preserve this moment. Why? Because you know it’s important, it’s huge, it’s the central event inside your developing world. It’s the most significant event that has happened to you, and that might happen to you, and it will forever, interminably, inexorably, change, transform your life, forever. Words are not enough to explain, describe, illustrate the way in which this //thing// behaves**.** No reflection, rumination, contemplation will ever be able to replicate, understand, draw a lithograph of this moment. You can only have an impression, a vestige, of what was and how it is. Time will pass, memory will falter, and what you thought would be with you forever you can only realize in its product—who I am today. But you are here. You are here in this car and you cannot do anything about it. Time, for all its dry platitudes, is not on your side. Time quickens the more you want it to slow, as if you are rolling down a hill faster and faster and you cannot stop yourself. However, you are still, gliding down a road to destiny, cemented to the window, dumbfounded, watching a blurry green scenery running ahead of you, while you, motionless, note the difference in the trees. There is a fear, a heavy beat in the heart has been developing for over a month, immutable, and now it threatens to rupture your heart, blow your brains out, cause a histrionic seizure, and soon after, death.

In moments of quiet stillness and noisy movement, what goes through a head? One hundred questions, and zero answers. Question number one: What will happen? Number two: Will you be okay? Number three (a question you will soon develop): How/why am I here? Fate? Is it better here than there? Hello? Is anybody listening? And there will be the ridiculous questions people ask you, or those that you simply do not want to answer: Do you like it better here or there? Do you speak Israeli? Does school let out when it rains in Israel? Is Israel in Africa? Did you ever witness a suicide bomb? Questions linger, endure, and are only answered with difficulty. They let you ponder when you’re awake, and they let you dream when you’re not, and they sit in your head for, oh, I don’t know, at least six years? Six and a half, to be accurate. You are stuck in September 2nd, 2002, a date you will drill in your head, along with the few days before and after. For example, Julie’s bat mitzvah, was August 31st, and not-so-coincidentally, her 12th birthday. It was a Bat Mitzvah, but not the kind you have where you’re going. You’ll learn about that later. You had to watch everyone leave, all of them in their nice dresses, after taking pictures, and saying goodbye (forever?). You watched out the front window of the restaurant, morosely, solemnly. It was almost a ceremony, the way they departed one-by-one, like waves widening away, uncatchable, until the room was empty and it was only you and your family (a replica of my family—they’ve changed now) and the busboys, cleaning up, an ostensibly appropriate end, them mopping the floor, setting up for tomorrow: another day, another world. Who in the world does all the packing of furniture, clothes, dishes, linen, games, books, china, files, (memories), in one day? September 1st. The men inside, all five or six of them, standing with their company logoed shirts and permanent markers (quite permanent—I checked), were given special instructions to find a book you borrowed from a friend, lest they pack it and you have to take a plane back just to return it. The truck outside looked unnatural and too large for the bricked street (our street! – why didn’t we spend more time on it?). My mom bargained for a bigger truck: the man didn’t think we need it, but we did, because there were so many pieces of (our) house to carry with us. I still have some of the boxes, in the basement, if you want to know. And for the things that we couldn’t take—that striped couch (no!) the soft blue armchair on which your parents told you you’re moving to America (why can’t we take it?!)—we must leave. And the artwork you toiled over, you couldn’t keep, had to throw out or give away, so you took a picture. A poor consolation prize. You’re standing there, smiling. Doofus. //Don’t. You. Realize?// And that picture with your friend, holding hands, wearing Harry Potter shirts (do you have them in your suitcase?), blowing in the light breeze. The picture doesn’t //show// the wind. //I //know it was there. For now. Maybe in a year I’ll forget. These pictures—preservation in its poorest state—are deprived of movement: they don’t breathe, sleep, dream, hope—they only remember their immediate surroundings—not even smell, or sound. What the lens failed to capture, even one hand-shaking centimeter away, is lost in time’s atomic bomb. My house—my dear house (can I still claim it as mine?)—I came back to it. Yes, you do come back. But you’re not happy. Horrified. Your childhood home, my //home// is now overgrown by uncut trees, the ones you planted every Tu B’Shvat. The neighbors bought the house, but didn’t take much care of it. We should have sold it to someone else, but who had the time? The mailbox is filled with junk mail. Everything that was in disrepair before you left is in the empty driveway, rusting. Your favorite tree, that pomegranate tree, the one planted in memory of the grandfather we never met, something that cannot grow here—twisted into unrecognizable oblivion. The palm tree in the back, there, but uncomforting. We thought it would fall on the house, but it never did. And the rosebushes, the ones Safta gave us (remember how they sat on her stairs of her apartment—and how you will miss that apartment!), have flowers, but are so large and swarming they look menacing, like snakes barring a gateway: Don’t come here. You will bemoan that awful site of the bird on the sill of your parent’s open bathroom window: it guarding its nest and destroying your own. September 2nd. Ten suitcases. Two “personal items” each. I am ashamed to say I cannot clearly remember that day. I’m sure you do. Why can’t I remember it? Why? Why! Yes, there was a flight, I recall, and I remember looking down at Israel, in all its orange glory, passing over the places that have been marked by my footsteps, your footsteps, our footsteps. We, however different, are united by these footsteps—me having just a few more. The map of my life has a spot right there. And there. And there. It was there I dropped a water balloon down a fourteen story building and watched is splatter. It was there that I biked with my dad through the orange groves. It was there that I learned to swim, and watched the lightening hit the night’s horizon, and buried the dead mouse because we had seen it give a brave fight against that bird, and felt pity for it. And it is sad to say, but in time’s measure, you are closer to ‘there’ than I am. I am already far removed, I now have other ‘theres’; I have other ‘heres’. //I //have been replaced by //you//. I used to be you. It was nice. Treasure it. And then the airport. The confusion. The people. You realized that these are your people now. They now, forever, have something in common with you. “Welcome to the United States of America: International visitors on the left, citizens on the right.” And now the car. This is where we are. You are still trying not to move. Your family is chatting in the front, excitedly, trying to build it up. “We’re almost there!” You watch foreign images which will soon become common sites. And after a slight confusion, you arrive at your house. Rather, the one you’re renting. Not cement. Not white. Bricked. With a garage. You are a little frightened. Is this what you imagined? You can’t remember. Shouldn’t the shingles be red? Aren’t they red everywhere? Your father, mother, sister, brother, driver, suitcases, all exit the car. Your parents rush you into the house. “Look, isn’t it //great//.” “We could have a little model car track running here.” “I //love// the backyard!” You run through the house, to your room. It has a wooden floor. There is nothing else there. A blow up bed. Window? Does that count? The house is full of furniture that was donated by family members. These are not yours. They don’t feel like yours. They’re borrowed memories, borrowed pieces—oh look! –a chair! It will take months for the furniture to arrive. They’re travelling by boat. Familiarity is taking a while to settle in. The furniture is like the original immigrants in America; you, however, are not. You’re supposed to get seasick and puke overboard, get your limbs embarrassedly poked and examined on Ellis Island. You’re the new class of “American Dream-seekers”. Refined. It is a cloudy day, and when night comes, you will ask to please, please, please, sleep by your brother in the same room, one last time, for old time’s sake, even though you hated it when it was forced. You’ll have regrets. Don’t think of what you should have done one last time, even though it’s stupid to say that because you didn’t, you missed something. And don’t think of your empty room, with the bed in pieces, in boxes, duct taped, labeled, without life. Sorry to say, that bed is gone and the remnants my dad is using to build a plane in the basement—can you imagine? //Do// remember how you came back from vacation that year and found it in your room, replacing the crib. //Do //remember the way you used to run around the middle wall, from the living room, to the dining room, to the kitchen. And please, find any photo that records your (now old) house, because your memory is faulty, believe it or not, and you will forgot the nuances of the house, as if the door handle or the drawer or the table has disappeared, replaced by empty space. You will realize, eventually, that this car ride marks a dividing line between your two lives. Yes, your life in Israel is ten years long; you cannot grow older there. That’s why you are you and I am me. The rest will be post-Israel. That’s me. You will become me, one day, and one day you will try to understand how that happened. So you will calculate. You will recount memories repeatedly. (Have I missed something? Why can’t I remember this? I should write this down.) You will revisit these memories, commit them in your head, trying to understand the development of a soul. You will develop new ideas, memories, insights. You are not at all like me. No way. Not even close. You are naïve, “too nice”, always (if fallaciously) optimistic. Yet, I want to assure you that everything will be okay. The house you see now? You’ll be leaving. You’ll find it too dark, too dusty, too full with everything that is not yours and that is borrowed. You’ll find it maddening that the bathroom is as large as your room, that the house has a chimney but no fireplace, that the railing on the stairs sticks out and that at least once a week you will stub your toe. But then you will move, again. And you’ll be happy. And the house will be full of light, and the carpets will be white and clean. Things will work out all right for you. You’ll realize that, for better or for worse, you are who you are because of the move. And one day there will be him. He is distant, far away, unrecognizable, and at the moment, unimportant. He will come. I will meet him first, but he’s there, developing now. The bricks are lain slowly; it is a project so slow that I cannot see it happening. And then he will have to try to remember me the way I have to try to remember you. So we are back to you. There you are, standing in front of the house, it towering over you, the future unknown, your bag in hand, the sky grey, and you’re walking slowly, deliberately, scared and excited, a wide, ebullient smile on your face, and you walk in, and the door closes.