Coming home to roost

I have spent a lifetime moving around, trying to find my place, that I am afraid I have become comfortable with not belonging.

Hi all, my name is Ari. Born in Fontana California to a Professor of history, (R.I.P dad) and one of his students. Somewhere around my birth, my mom, who’s dad was Jewish and her mom a gentile catholic woman, decided to convert to Judaism, and my dad followed in her footsteps. Leaving behind a comfortable life, my parents, along with my older half-brother and myself, a six-month-old baby at the time, moved to the holy land. Zion. Israel. Palestine. The most hotly contested piece of real estate in history.

Not knowing the language made life hard for everyone. My half-brother, my siblings and I picked up Hebrew readily enough, while my parents struggled. My mother tried to insist we speak Hebrew at home. Thankfully, we insisted on speaking English. I tried to fit in. Do my best. Make my mother happy.

For kindergarten and first grade I was sent to a secular school. My mother insisted on Jewish garb, yarmulke (skull cap) and tassels, for which I was teased relentlessly. It got so bad I refused to go back to school while wearing them. So, after a few weeks, my mother found a religious school in a nearby town, and I finished the reminder of the year at the secular school.

The new, religious school would prove no better. I would still be mocked and teased, mostly about my accent. The fights would escalate to throwing classroom desks and chairs, punching and kicking, and older schoolmates in particular bullying me verbally and physically. I complained once, nothing happened, I never complained again. But I would explode when teased or bullied, the consequences be damned. There were never any consequences.

Around this time, my mother become unsatisfied with our level of religiosity, mostly due to influence from a local Chabad missionary, and we had to adopt more stringent tenets of Judaism. I was no longer allowed to spend time at friends’ houses, in case they served food that was not kosher enough or god forbid played the wrong TV shows. And once more, I was driven apart from the kids at school and in the neighborhood. And so, off to a stricter school, that was even farther away, driven there and back by a drunk Russian, who, like my dad, had no prospects in the country to which they immigrated.

At this point my parents started drifting apart. My dad no longer willing to keep up with my mother’s antics, and being unemployed, started losing himself at the bottom of bottles. A situation which escalated to my mother pulling a knife out on my dad, and my older half-brother drawing his sidearm and pointing it at my dad while sending me to one of our neighbors who was an off-duty cop.

This of course ended with my parents’ divorce. And we were torn between an overbearing and manipulative mother and an alcoholic.

At 15, I “graduated” and was sent to find a school even farther away from our town, to live in a dormitory and we were allowed home once a month. Now I was essentially locked up with new bullies. My favorite time at this point in life were the four hours on the bus rides which gave me freedom from home and school.

At this point I had enough. No matter what I did it was not enough for my mother, it got me no more recognition from the community.

I refused to go back to school. I refused to participate in prayers or religious activities. I refused to observe the Sabbath. And so, my mother, fearing I suppose that I would corrupt my younger siblings and bring shame to her in a community that despised single mothers, kicked me out of the house, with nothing but the clothes on my back.

I was more alone that I had ever been before, but I was more at peace than I had ever been before.

I could finally be myself. Or more importantly, find out who I am.

I would discover that I would remain the outsider.

A city council member in charge of delinquents, arrange a place for me in a local college dormitory that housed exclusively members of the Ethiopian community. Very nice people, but we had nothing in common.

I would hang out with the rest of the delinquents, drinking, hanging out all night, clubbing.

But I did not belong.

Eventually, I would stumble upon a martial art I had been in search of since Childhood. Here, I was accepted. And more importantly, I found a father figure in the instructor. A hard ass, ex-military, judge, who took in a scrawny, asthmatic teenager, and transformed him into an acrobatic fighter, fit to join the military.

But I did not belong.

My plan was to enlist and move even further away from my family and community. Become more independent. Maybe even pick up a trade. They stationed me in the same dreary town I was living in, surrounded by the same people and community. Adding insult to injury, they assigned me to three dreary years of guard duty.

After the military, I had no one. I went online looking for companionship. After a few disappointing dates, I found a girl that I guess was as desperate as I was. We shared some interests, and for some reason decided to move in and get married. We got jobs, decided she get her degree first and I would get mine later. Had some kids.

But I did not belong.

She got it into her head that she needed another degree and could not pursue it in Israel. I did not want to stay in Israel. She did not want to move back to the United States. So, we compromised. We moved to Italy! We closed lose ends, she signed a contract for the first apartment she saw over there, and we somehow managed to get a toddler, two infants and eight suitcases from our apartment to the airport, and to our new home in Italy.

I definitely did not belong.

After three years of dealing with Italian bureaucracy, which makes American bureaucracy seem like a highly organized walk in the park, managing to speak passable Italian, and working as a self-employed instructor and at an Amazon warehouse, I called it quits. Mostly because my wife lied, cheated and spent most of our money on herself, to the point where the kids’ daycare provided us with bags of clothes, since they did not seem to have enough.

We signed the papers. My work permit was ending. My Amazon contract was not being renewed. I booked a flight to the states.

Finally, I am home.

Dear readers,

Thank you for making it this far.

If you be parents, far be it from me to preach about parenthood.

I will pass on one piece of good advice.

Do not interrupt kids when they are skateboarding.

For the younger generation, learn from your parents, but do not go to great lengths to try and avoid their mistakes. You may end up repeating them.