The New Yorkers vs. Me*
Somehow I just couldn't keep up. When they had just the right denim skirt, I was still scrambling to find just the right clip-on fan. When I finally caught up with the skirt they were already on metallic shoes and black-on-black Keds.
It was just a built-in disadvantage to be a Clevelander in a New York world.
When I was 11 I started participating in that great tradition known as overnight camp. As a native New Yorker, my mother sent me to camp in the Catskills together with my cousins. But I don't think any of us understood what it would be like for me to adjust to that elusive je ne sais qua known as "New York." Or more specifically in my Orthodox world: Brooklyn.
I told myself I didn't need to compete but I didn't believe it in my heart. It didn't dawn on me to embrace my wholesome Midwestern appeal. It didn't dawn on me that competing was a zero-sum game. It didn't dawn on me to celebrate my uniqueness.
Those feelings of "outness" that I felt at 11 stuck with me in a very deep way. For a long time I thought there was a right way to be and a wrong way to be. New Yorkers obviously knew the right way. For the rest of us it would have to be a learned process. I was blessed that I did feel comfortable in my home, in my school, in my family. But in NY? Not a chance.
40 was the age that I began to understand that I am the best and only me who can be. I began to believe that I didn't need to compete with anyone else, in any culture, to be me. I began to come into my own style - and understood that while anybody can follow styles, not everybody gets that their own whims and whimsies are something the world needs more of.
Last night I had a dream. In my dream I was back in my old camp and I sat down at the lunch table. My old New York friends from 30 years ago begin to sit near me and one by one began to reveal their vulnerabilities of our childish camp years. One came from a difficult family background and therefore her parents bought her all the right clothes to placate her. One got a new wardrobe every year but actually hated dressing up. One simply felt bad that she wasn't athletic like her friends. And so I felt comfortable revealing to my dream-friends my vulnerabilities about trying to fit into a New York world where I never could hope to compete.
I woke up from my dream feeling both sad and restored. These are the things we must learn in our own time. The sadness, the painstaking drawings to my mom of skirts to buy, the feelings - these are childhood. The confidence, the joy, the wisdom - this is adulthood. So to my child-self I say this: hang in there. You're normal. You're ok just the way you are. Go Cleveland!
*reposted from Cleveland Jewish News
Shabbat Shalom,
Ruchi
