Earlier this week, I went back home to South Brooklyn to spend the Yom Kippur “holiday” with my family. I put holiday in quotes because every Jewish person knows that it’s not so much a holiday as it is a holy day. Very big difference. I happened to be in the city for work, so I got on the B-train at Herald Square and took it all the way south, to the very last stop, Brighton Beach.
While I’ve been back to my old neighborhood, it’s been a long time since I commuted home on the subway from Midtown to Manhattan Beach, where I grew up. During my college years, I used to do it six days a week. Monday through Thursday were dedicated to classes at NYU and internships after school. From Thursday nights onwards, I socialized in the city as much as humanly possible. On a normal Friday, I’d come home from school around 3 or 4PM, eat, nap, and then start to get ready to go out around 9 or 10PM. The whole timing of this schedule makes my eyes roll to the back of my head as a toddler mom, but I digress.
I would gloss my lips and blow out my hair, find an outfit that said “cool and sexy” but wouldn’t jeopardize my safety on the subway, and phone a friend to commute to the Village with. Most of my classmates lived on campus, so we’d meet up with them at someone’s apartment or loft or who knows where. To prepare for our trek, we would fill Poland Spring water bottles with some combination of stolen vodka (from our parents) and flavored powder to make it go down silky smooth. Crystal Light pink lemonade was always a crowd pleaser, and my personal favorite. Somehow it turned the cold, sterile vodka into everything it wasn’t: colorful, cute, sickly sweet and sour. We packed our too-small bags to the brim with this elixir, plus flats for when our feet would inevitably hurt, changes of clothes, makeup wipes and a hairbrush. Everything we needed in case the night went somewhere unknown. In case the night went where we hoped it would go; on an adventure.
As I rode the rickety subway back to Brighton Beach 10+ years later, the memories descended upon me. We whooshed by all of the familiar stops, and I remembered how much of my time was spent on this express train, worrying about what direction my life was headed in. I remembered the feeling of getting to Prospect Park, the first stop aboveground upon arrival in Brooklyn. I would pull out my phone and check it over and over again, waiting to see what texts came in while I was riding. I remember so badly wishing that this boy or that boy had sent me a message. We passed Kings Highway, and the giant sign for the kosher pizzeria. I always craved an oily, fat, cheesy slice when I saw that sign. We passed Sheepshead Bay, with the Planet Fitness and the infamous Anatolian Gyro. Finally, we arrived at Brighton Beach. I remembered the exhale that always came after a long commute after school or work. Ah, I’m almost home. I walked off the train, feeling like I’d just done some form of psychedelic and I was entering into my youth again.
I walked down the stairs onto the bustling street, packed with people speaking Russian. The main stretch of Brighton Beach is littered with fruit markets, and the summer stench was unavoidable. It was a familiar scent, although an unpleasant one. Crates upon crates of over-ripe fruit softening on the hot concrete, mixed with a salty breeze from the ocean air, just one block away. I straddled the feeling of being a local and a foreigner, all at the same time. I was a North Brooklyn girl now, a Park Slope girl, and yet. My parents had fought tooth and nail to give me a future bright with opportunities, with the ability to assimilate and belong in any neighborhood I should choose, and yet I felt oddly at home on this smelly street.
My family immigrated to American in 1989 and I am a first generation American, so this particular brand of not belonging was familiar to me. I have always felt somewhere between two ferns. American, since I was born and grew up here in NYC. Soviet, since my family and all the people around me growing up were. Being Jewish was also a big part of my identity, reiterated constantly by my parents who weren’t allowed to be. I did my best to fit in, but there was always some teeny, tiny sliver of the pie that was missing. The summer camp experience, the college abroad, the bagels and lox for a Yom Kippur break fast. We always did things a little bit differently, the immigrant way, our own way.
My mom asked me to pick up challah for our “last supper,” so I wandered into Tashkent Market nearby, which felt like a world of its own. Rows upon rows of buffet-style prepared foods lined the fluorescent lit aisles. Vats of plov with a thick blanket of crispy rice covering the kazan, sold by the pound. For only $7.99 you could have chicken, beef, or lamb, take your pick. Unglamorous but authentic white plastic buckets of pickled cabbage, watermelon, and tomatoes stretched before me. I asked a lady working at the bread counter for some challah in Russian, she directed me to a cluttered corner in the front of the store. It was only sold prepackaged, she explained. I chose a round egg challah with raisins, the best kind. The woman behind me ordered her bread in a foreign language, Uzbeki I guessed. Aside from packaged products, English was nowhere to be seen or heard.
I walked a block over to the ocean, I was hoping to do tashlich: a Jewish tradition to cast away your sins (via bread) in a moving body of water between the days of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. No surprise, I had left it to the last minute. I stepped onto the Brighton Beach boardwalk. It was sunny and the briny ocean air whipped me across the face. I remembered the many walks I took on this boardwalk, desperately in search of my place in the world. I decided I would walk to the start of the boardwalk, my best chance for finding a quiet spot to throw my old bread into the water. As I turned onto the sand, I spotted a familiar cluster of jagged rocks.
I thought back to a particular time in high school when I was 16 years old and I decided to throw a house party. I was not the chill girl who could pull off a secret house party without my parents permission, and yet… I so badly wanted to be cool, to be loved, to be popular, I did it anyways. Before our group of 10 or so congregated at my house, we climbed onto these rocks. We gripped hands until we found our footing, stepping on the mossy, wet rocks. We settled into the privacy of the vast ocean before us. We drank from those same Poland Spring bottles, probably more than we should have. We felt invincible. I worried about this rebellious party that was on the horizon. I faded in and out of the conversation, concerned about what I was doing and why, never really belonging in or out of the group.
Finally we decided to head back to my house. The rocks were slippery, of course they were. My friend slipped, she gashed her hand. I panicked. Thank God it wasn’t her head, I thought to myself. The heat of the alcohol and the commitment of a 16 year old girl on her way to a party kept her going. “I’m fine” she said, “I’m totally fine.” The sight of the blood dripping down her arm and the whiplash of the moment had sobered me right up.
I go to my spot in front of the ocean, the pointed rocks beside me. I am 13 years older, 13 years wiser, or so I think. I thank God again, only this time as a mother. I feel thankful that nothing serious happened to me or her that night, or any other night for that matter. I recognize how my perspective has changed now that I have a daughter, who one day, will want to feel the salty air across her face too. She too will want to climb the rocks, not feeling the risks that come with hasty, teenage decisions. I rip my stale bread into tiny pieces, conscious of the older men in their Speedos, watching me do my strange ritual. I think about clearing my slate for next year, and apologize to the ocean and to the universe for any wrong doing. I mull on how much has changed since my long days of commuting home on the B train. On how much better my life became when I started to fill my own shell, instead of trying to fill the shell of those around me.
I throw my bread bits in the ocean and immediately the seagulls come squawking. They circle me, being loud and aggressive, communicating with one another. I back away quickly, scared that one might peck at me. I read somewhere that goose are vicious and I wonder if that trait applies to seagulls too? It’s the maternal instinct in me, now I don’t take unnecessary risks. I don’t entertain the birds, I don’t climb the rocks. I walk away from the water, a little disappointed that I didn’t get to think through everything. I had more that I wanted to say.
Nevertheless, I walk back barefoot through the sand and up onto the boardwalk, heading home to Manhattan Beach. I’ll sip my mother’s chicken soup and eat my store-bought raisin challah slathered in honey. The reflection has only just begun.