You might remember that a while back I decided to set out a trail of treats for Tzipporah, to encourage her to spend more time in my room. Well now, multiple times during the day and night, Tzipporah sneaks into my room like a phantom, ignoring me completely, looking for her trail of treats; even after she’s eaten all of the treats I’ve carefully placed around the room, she comes back again and again, hoping, expecting, that new treats will have sprouted from the floor. But even though she had a traumatic early life in the puppy mill, I’m pretty sure she’s not living a double life as a murderous phantom taking out her trauma on unsuspecting victims, though one can never be sure.
I wish I could convince her that I am friendly and harmless, but I’m also the one who insists on cleaning her tushy when she has an accident, and combs through her hair when she has knots, so she has legitimate reasons for doubt. But even though she doesn’t play with me, or sing at me, like she does with her grandma, she does watch me carefully and sit by my side at the computer, so even if I’m scary, I seem to be fascinating too, which is nice.
She sat with me this summer while I sent out my query letters to potential agents, and while I collected the rejections; and she sat with me as I watched The Rachel Maddow Show each Monday night, and tried to believe her when she said that we can survive the current situation in the United States; and Tzippy was with me when I found out that The Late Show with Stephen Colbert got cancelled (though the show isn’t over until next May, so there’s still some comfort left); and she was with me while I watched the news of the Catholic school shooting in Minnesota, which felt dangerously close to home because I teach in a synagogue that has been under threat for years now, with ever increasing security measures as antisemitism and violence in general have continued to grow.
I’ve been overwhelmed with anxiety this summer, from every direction, but the biggest anxiety seems to come up around planning and packing for my trip to Israel in November. Somehow, I’ve become obsessed with the fear that I’m going to overpack and have my suitcases taken away at the airport, or that I’ll forget to pack something essential that can’t be bought in Israel, though I have no idea what that might be. But my automatic response, when it feels like there are too many things outside of my control, is to try to control the little things, like making sure I have everything I could possibly need for the trip, which means I’ve been spending a lot of time scrolling through Amazon, looking for things I definitely need but have never heard of before.
Now that September has arrived, I’m going to have less time to spend on Amazon, and focus more of my energy on my students, and trying to come up with ways to make my classroom fun and welcoming, so we can keep the world at bay for a couple of hours at a time. I wish I could bring Tzipporah with me to class, but her anxiety skyrockets as soon as she leaves the apartment.
When I think about it, I’m not sure if Tzipporah is the Phantom of the apartment, or if I am, or if there’s some invisible threat that we both feel radiating from the world around us. I’m not even sure if I’m really more anxious than usual, or if there are just so many more echoes of my anxiety in the world around me that it all seems louder and more pervasive.
There was one nice break from the anxiety last week. The weather was nice enough that I was able to take Tzipporah outside to socialize with the neighbors, and Kevin the mini-Goldendoodle did his best to reassure her that he’s a nice boy and only wanted to sniff her nose and invite her to play. She wasn’t any more convinced by him than by me, at the beginning, but by the end of the visit she had relaxed on my lap, and stopped shaking, and she was able to watch Kevin run across the lawn chasing his favorite ball. It was only a few moments, but it was progress, though I’m pretty sure Tzippy’s favorite part of the outing was when we returned to the apartment, and she ran straight to her bed, and, magically, found a chicken treat sitting there waiting for her. That apartment phantom knows my little girl very well.
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 