a ten year confessional - marriage, divorce and everything in between

The endless needs of the world are always knocking on the doors of a women's creative time - it seems there is always something more important to do. 

The fridge is empty because they never stop eating - baruch Hashem. I have to get to the shops because tomorrow begins the Jewish festival of Sukkot which means the supermarkets will be either packed or closed over the next few days. 

I return from the supermarket and unpack the shopping, hiding the Oreos high up on the top shelf. I leave most of the vegetables out in a straw basket on the counter because the fridge is permanently set to eventually freeze everything to death, which is partly why it's empty. I water the neglected flowers on the window sill and the pineapple I am trying to grow. I drag a load of tangled clothes out of the washing machine and dump it on the dining room table. Before I can hang them I’ll have to clear some space on the line which stands in the hallway - a sobering reminder of the infinite and holy nature of housework. 

I shove another load into the machine using the last of the detergent, I should have bought more. I put the kettle on knowing I won’t get back to it till after I’ve hung out the washing. I’ll eat later, I say to myself, thinking about the tittle of this, my new blog. 

It’s been ten years since I left my husband. Actually that’s a lie. It’s been nine. But it's been ten since we left our home and family and dragged our children half way across the world to make a new life for ourselves in Israel. This is how I will start my blog I think to myself as I shake out the last piece of washing firmly like my mother used to do so it wouldn't crease, and I hang it between two stiff dishtowels I’m too lazy to fold and put away. 

Rose walks in unexpectedly. I return from my thoughts to my body with a thud which only I hear. Hi mum, she says, where were you this morning? I explain that I had to get to the shops. She tells me she will not be around for the holidays. She is leaving for Australia in a few weeks and wants to spend the little time she has left with her boyfriend, who is back from the army. You don’t have to fill the fridge she says, trying to ease my load. Well, Max will be around and Emily will be back from camp and then nothing will be open till after the weekend I explain. Oh yea, she says casually walking into her room letting her door slam behind her. 

I re-boil the kettle and make a cup of tea. These days I’m taking it with a teaspoon of condensed milk. I take it to my room, excited finally to sit down and write. I open my computer and check my phone, Emily has called, four times. I call her back. Hi mum, listen, we’re gonna be back at the school in ten minutes. D’you think you could pick us up and give Eli and another girl who lives in Karkur a lift home?

Sure. 

This is why I can never get a job, I think to myself. Who would pick Emily up in the middle of the day after being at camp for a week? This is why I can never write another book, and this is why my first book took me six years to finish when it should have taken no more than six weeks - you can read the whole damn thing in less than an hour. But such is the path of motherhood - a path of endless surrender.

Sukkoth used to be one of my favorite festivals. 

When we got married, my cousin Larry gave us a magnificent purple throw with a tribal gold motif hand-printed in the centre which we hung between the house and the neighbors back fence to make one of the sukkah walls. For the other we hung a large rustic black and white striped piece of cotton cloth which looked like a talit - a Jewish prayer shawl, and which we had bought from the Bangalow markets with our last hundred and twenty dollars. We dragged Ricks parents old Persian carpet into the dwelling which Miles covered with date palm leaves and we brought in some pillows and the old chess table my parents bought in Mykonos. We invited friends and family over during the week and spent the cool evenings discussing the perils and the benefits of Judaism over Buddhism, Sufism and Hinduism, and the innate Woody Allen-ness of being Jewish while rolling joints and drinking hot pumpkin soup and eating toasted cheese Brevilles. 

I thought those days would never end... 

The month I left Miles the thermostat began to die and the fridge  leaked a trail of water all over the kitchen floor. My parents were visiting and when I told them I was leaving him, my mother said she understood, because she had seen me struggle for so many years. The last time being that week before Sukkot when I begged Miles to fix the fridge before the holidays began. My father asked if I had met someone, and I told him that I had. I was so embarrassed. I'm still so embarrassed. I live with this sinister shame which leaks into my conscience daily and I don’t really know what to do about it other than to confess, which is really what my book was - a confessional. It should have been called Confessions of a Jewish Housewife. George Vithoulkas says, the sickness is in the secrets.

Miles couldn’t find anyone to fix the leaking fridge before or after the holiday and eventually I left. For the past nine years I've managed with the old thing turning her power on and off, defrosting her when things got too cold and ignoring her beeps in the middle of the night, but this Summer, she started freezing everything in her belly. Now the apple juice ices over, the pickles freeze and the eggs have been ostracized to the counter. Does this mean something? I don't know. Maybe it's just time to buy a new fridge.

But for weeks now I've been asking the man I left my husband for  to please find someone to fix the fridge, and everyday he says tomorrow. 

Remembering those days back in Bondi when we sat in our sukkah sharing fables and festive foods, I feel so sad for what I sacrificed. I asked my man if he would take the plastic sleeves off the balcony roof so we can cover the crossbeams with palm leaves and build ourselves a sukkah so that I might sit outside for just a few moments and feel what I felt once before. Perhaps God will have mercy on me and forgive me my terrible sins. He will get to it if I nag him long enough. But if I really want a sukkah, I’m going to have to imagine the rest myself and if I really want forgiveness I'm going to have to give that to myself too. 

As for the fridge, the irony is not lost on me, nothing ever really changes.  

Quote - based on the writings of Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Baruch Hashem - Thank God
Breville is Australian for toasted cheese sandwich