Jewish Musings, Monday, September 12, 2016

[peachymom1]

What’s on your mind – how to make kugel? This week’s Torah reading? Life goals? Prayer? We are all engaged in weight loss/weight maintenance journeys and we are all Jewish or at least interested in Judaism. We like to eat, we like to discuss. It is our goal here to provide each other support on our journeys, to share experiences, to call on our rich cultural heritage and texts, and to help each other grow spiritually.

Some of us take weekly turns starting the thread:

Angelika
Beryl
Holly
Lee
Louise
Lynne
Peachy

[peachymom1]

Good morning! I’d like to spend the rest of the week talking about ages and different aspects of the life cycle.

Come with me first through an exercise in imagination: Think back to your 13-year-old self. What were you like? What did you dream about, what were you afraid of, how did you get along with your family and your peers? What challenges did you face? I chose this age because it’s the age of Jewish adulthood. In what ways were you mature, and in what ways were you still very much a child?

I was a month away from 13 when I had my first boyfriend. He was 16, and I couldn’t imagine what he saw in me, but I loved the attention. It only lasted a few weeks, because when my sister snitched on me to Mom, she punished me severely and screamed at me to never see him again. I wasn’t really ready for a boyfriend, and it was scary in a way, but nobody had ever made me feel beautiful before.

[gazelle18]

It's hard for me to remember myself at 13, but as best I can recall I was a serious student who did ballet in the afternoons and I took myself VERY seriously. I was a mass of insecurities, and yet at the same time I felt I was destined to become a great author or actress!

[louise]

I don't really remember much. I know I was always self-conscious about my weight (although I wasn't all THAT heavy at the time). I always knew I was smart but also always felt in some like "damaged goods" - those wouldn't have been my words at the time, but that was the feeling. I also lived in an upper middle class neighborhood and was very aware that I didn't have as much clothing, etc as many of my peers (in reality though I had a huge amount of stuff). Pretty superficial I know but teens commonly get caught up in all kinds of things like that, judging themselves as they think they are being judged by others.

[hollygail]

[font faceForgive me, ladies, but I'm really upset. If you look at the top of the list when you arrive at this message board, there's a "name pole" [sic: should be "poll"] and people are suggesting all kinds of alternate names. Several people suggested sexual terms, including "dicks" and "shlongs" and I don't remember the third one I saw this morning. I got royally ticked off and wrote a nasty post. I'd very much like for Jewish Musings to MOVE THE HELL OUTTA HERE. I suggest "Spiritual Space"
spiritualspace.freeforums.net
although I won't leave Jewish Musings if you all want to stay on US-GDT(general daily thread)-ExPats (people who choose to live outside the country of which they're citizens, like an American who chooses to reside in Europe, for instance).

Nu? Wadda yall think?"arial"][/font]

[savtele]

Boker Tov All! When I was 13 we were living in San Francisco. Right across the street from Candlestick Park & just a block or 2 from Golden Gate Park. I also had my 1st boyfriend - he built model trains with his dad in the attic of their house. The trains were really impressive! I also wasn't ready to have a boyfriend - it was more just us hanging out together, and in short order it just kind of drifted apart. His sister and I are friends to this day.

I think I was starting to move into my "mildly goth" period - lots of black clothes, I was letting my hair grow, parted down the middle by the time I was 15 - long & straight. At that time, I was still a rebel without a cause.

[lee058]

Good morning everybody. Hope you are all well today. When I was 13, I was already very politically-oriented, had long hair and octagon wire-framed glasses, went to demonstrations with my older sister, had a boyfriend, and was also struggling with the clash of realities of my family, school, suburbia, NYC, what was going on around the world, etc. etc. etc. It was 1971. It was very confusing. It got much more confusing the next year, when my dad got Parkinson's disease and his company went bankrupt and he lost his job. We had a rough time.

Anyway, today I am feeling pretty good although I am concerned about Holly and our group. I want to stay with the GDT board. I posted to the "pole" thread and will be interested to see if I get any comments.

Have a peaceful day, Lee

[hollygail]

Seventh grade. In my school (Marie Curie Junior High) class, I had a crush on Barry. In Sunday School, I was already in mittel shuleh (Yiddish, not Hebrew) with the same kids who’d been in my class for a few years. I had a special relationship with Ken (he may have still be Kenny at that age), but I don’t think it started going anywhere until I was 14… I know we went bike riding together when I was probably 12, and he took me to a soda shop afterwards and bought me a 7-Up, so it sort of qualified as a "date." I still got along with my family and school friends (and certainly my Sunday School friends).

Challenges? I don’t remember much about challenges… There must have a some. My mind's a blank.

There were a lot of bar mitzvah parties I went to (I have zero recollection of going to synagogues; it’s possible I did, I just do NOT remember) (and it’s possible going to bar mitzvahs may have spilled over into 8th grade…).

Dreams? Again, I don’t remember, probably about boys. I was already wearing a bra, and probably got my first period during 6th or 7th grade. And I was still serious about taking piano lessons.

We moved between 7th and 8th grade, so I changed schools.

I remember at the beginning of 7th grade, my maternal grandfather died, and that was a real biggie, a real change in my life. In June of that year, my maternal grandmother died. Somehow, that was less of a biggie for me. I remember that my mother sat shiva at my aunt’s house (DGF and DGM lived upstairs from that aunt), although I have no memory of whether DM sat for the full 7 days or fewer, nor do I remember my visiting during shiva for either grandparent (although I must have).

I too was already political. I joined the Student Peace Union probably during 7th grade. I was aware that the "advisors" in Vietnam probably weren't "only" advising but fighting. I was aware of the Geneva Accords. I was boycotting Five & Dimes in New York (and walking picket lines, when they started in front of Woolworth's in Flushing, Queens).

[louise]

Not sure when it happened, but I soon rebelled against the very materialistic culture I was raised in and started wearing simple dark turtle necks with tights and a skirt.

[happysavta]

That would have been June 1961 for me. You would have caught me in eye shadow, trying to stick to a diet (couldn't), mortified by pimples, periods, small boobs, fashionable clothes that didn't look at all fashionable on me, settling for frumpy, chasing after a boy I liked a lot completely oblivious to the fact that he wanted a boyfriend, not a girlfriend. Mostly I buried myself in reading and in school achievement and singing. I tried not to think about not being pretty or popular or thin. Eating and reading were quite helpful in chasing away those anxious and depressing thoughts. I remember the excitement of the time when John F. Kennedy ran for President and there was a palpable aura of renewal and hope in his inaugural address, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." I resolved to learn to ride horses, like Caroline Kennedy. Since there were no stables readily available in inner
city Chicago, I settled for reading every horse related book in the public library and petting every Mounted Police horse I encountered.