"It's okay to cry; that's why God gave us tears."

Mom

I'm a Chameleon

There was a girl that rode the bus my brother Barry and I took home from high school. She was a mother hen that ruled her flock of rowdy roosters like a tyrant until we got off at the bus stop where we transferred to northeast Portland. She was argumentative, contrary and critical; so naturally I was attracted to her.

All in all, I was a pretty good kid, a square, but she treated me like a drug dealing pervert; she knew how to make me feel good about myself. She had this thing about "character". Character, by her definition, is what we were and what she had. Of course I gave her a hard time all the way home and she scolded me, but deep in my heart I was eating it up. I can only recall one thing she ever said that got under my skin. She called me a chameleon.

I didn't know much about chameleons because there aren't very many in Oregon. I knew that they are ugly and bug eyed, but she was referring to their ability to change color to match their environment. She was saying that I was a fake, a phony that changed my appearance and behavior according to the people around me. I think the reason that chameleon label stung while otherwise I enjoyed her abuse, was that it was true. I would be the bad boy to impress her and be the good boy when it suited me, but she saw through me and knew that none of these were my true colors.

Barry was here in Israel for Hanukkah with his daughter Brianna. He tagged along with me and remarked that everywhere we went, people liked me. I don't know why he thinks that's so remarkable, but maybe it's because I mix with a lot of different kinds of people. Right-wing settlers and Arabs, the ladies of the English staff and the rough crowd in the teachers' smoking room, native born Israelis and Russian immigrants, you name it. I'm not like all of the people I hang with, but I like them all and they like me. It's true; no matter where I go or who I am with, I fit in. I'm a chameleon.

We have chameleons here. A chameleon can be as yellow as straw or as brown as turned over earth, but most of the time they are green and live in trees and bushes. They climb the branches slowly and when the wind blows the leaves they sway along. They are barely visible to the untrained eye, protected from predators and invisible to the bugs they prey on. They look like just another leaf. Chameleons are very observant. They have bug eyes that swivel around independently of each other like security cameras detecting threats.
I think that if you were to ask the leaves, they would tell you that they like chameleons. In fact, they would be very surprised to find out that chameleons are reptiles. The leaves think that the chameleon is just another leaf. In a way, it's good that chameleons don't try to really be a leaf. Leaves don't see the bugs and certainly can't gobble them up. It's okay to be a chameleon.

I think the reason people like me is that when they look at me, they see one of themselves, the way leaves look at a chameleon and see a leaf. I sway in the wind with them, but because I'm not really a leaf, I'm me, I can see them. Even though I can mix in with the people around me, I'm an outsider and can observe. I don't have bug eyes, but I can see their bugs even if they can't see them for themselves. I'm a chameleon; that's what I do.

I didn't stay in touch with very many of my high school friends, not even that self righteous little goodie two shoes that ruled the bus home from school. I would like to tell her that she was right, but that she was wrong about me. Just because someone is a chameleon doesn't mean that he doesn't have character. Chameleons aren't phonies; they are chameleons. It's their job to mix in and observe. They don't harm the leaves and those around them. In fact, it's good to have someone in the tree that can see the bugs and catch them with their lightning quick tongue.

It isn't so bad being a chameleon. I guess I can live with that, bug eyes and all.

Shakespeare on Education

Since Shakespeare's day either love has changed a lot, or kids haven't changed at all….

"Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books;
But love from love, toward school with heavy looks."
Romeo and Juliet

Morning

I open my eyes, and where and when and who materialize as the mist clears. Memories of dreams haven’t faded yet and tempt me to linger, but the day awaits me, beckoning like a new playmate, and I hasten to meet him.

Last night I woke from a bad dream, covered in sweat and confusion. For the longest time I lie there dazed; too tired to rise and wander off into the darkness, too disoriented to discern past from present, nor tell shadow from shape. Finding no harbor for my thoughts in the night, I pushed off and drifted back into the silent stream of slumber.

Morning. The first day of the rest of my life is waiting for me like an unopened gift and my spirit is impatient to unwrap today's surprises. Rested and rising, I wade ashore as the the dreams slip off away into the depths of last night until they disappear.

Desperately Seeking Koby

For me, like many English speakers in Israel, Sherri Mandell was a familiar name by the turn of the millennium. She was a kind of Israeli Erma Bombeck that wrote short and light stories for the Jerusalem Post, spinning well written tales of children and life, and always wrapping it up with a cheerful moral.

One story in particular caught my eye. It is an account of how her son's canary escapes and just when all is lost, Ibrahim, an Arab construction worker that is barely literate but with good hearing, helps them find the canary. She ended with, "Maybe this is how peace will come, I thought. Slowly. People learning to listen. One bird at a time."

Sherri wrote that shortly after the Palestinian Authority had declared war on Israeli commuters, school children and innocent bystanders; so I didn't buy her optimism. But I liked the story. I cut it out of the newspaper and saved it because it was written well and pleasant to the ear.

One spring morning Sherri's oldest son Koby cut school with his best friend and hiked down into the wadi near their settlement that is halfway between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea. Search parties found the boys at dawn the following morning. They had been stoned to death in one of the caves in the canyon walls.

The Blessing Of A Broken Heart is Sherri's journey after her son's murder. We follow her as she chooses to enter that land of shadows parents fear the most, a cave so dark that "you can't even see your own hand, but have to trust that when you step, the ground will still be under you."

I say she made a choice because she could have collapsed, paralyzed by grief; but instead she decides that if Koby has been taken into the darkness, then she will follow, regardless of the pain.

"I want to feel the pain – for if I go into my pain and truly experience it, swim in it, there is a chance I will emerge on the other shore of my loss, still pained and struggling, but with a different vision. I will always be living in the land of suffering. One who enters this pain understands that death is part of life, and is here, always. Death now is something that will release me and allow me to see Koby again. Death no longer scares me."

Writing during an unparalleled period of violence and hatred, Sherri doesn't settle accounts with her son's murderers or voice her opinions. She doesn't seek revenge; she seeks one thing and one thing only – Koby. She finds faith along her way and emerges with hope; "…many of us live with broken hearts. But when you touch broken hearts together, a new heart emerges, one that is more open and compassionate, able to touch others, a heart that seeks God. That is the blessing of a broken heart."

She has gained hope, and she has been transformed from a woman that wrote well, into a writer, perhaps a great one. You can find an excerpt, "Koby's Death", on the Jerusalem Post's website. It is one of the most powerful pieces of prose I have ever encountered. Before, she wrote things that sounded nice, but didn't ring true. In The Blessing Of A Broken Heart there is sincerity, truth and meaning. That too is a blessing, but at what a price.