2023-10-18 18:05:11
In 2014, I wrote the column “They See You Are Israeli” for Yedioth Ahronoth:
“It is a well-known fact that stress directly affects health, the appearance of the skin and the shine of the hair, but now it is more clear to me than ever that 42 years of stress is something that also affects your wardrobe,” is what I wrote there.
“Each of us adopts a dressing agenda over the years: there are those who look for the clothes that will emphasize or blur, there are those for whom fashion is a game and there are those, like me, who adapt the clothes to their anxieties. The onlooker might mistakenly think that I like comfortable clothes because I have a sensory regulation problem or just because I’m one of those spiritual girls who like to be comfortable. It’s a reasonable mistake, you can’t really expect people to understand that you wear comfortable clothes because you have third generation traumas. Like the elderly Polish women who make sure to have underwear that matches their bra in case they accidentally get into a car accident and have to reveal their underwear to the ambulance crew, so every morning I choose shoes that will be suitable for a long walk in case I get caught in the apocalypse even before lunch.” (This is from the dress according to your anxieties column).
What I didn’t write there is that beyond collecting a wardrobe that consists of clothes that will suit both a meeting in a cafe and the death march, we – and when I say “we” I mean “me” – also collect habits (you can call it Israeli Math):
01 Did you go into the room, any room? No one sees you, but you have an exit plan.
02 In a cafe, you prefer to sit in front of the entrance.
03 Your bed is located in front of the door (you say it’s for feng shui reasons).
04 In every apartment or house you lived in, you knew exactly where you might hide when *they* came (*they* – vary by year).
05 When the family chooses rooms in a new house, you try to make the children’s rooms far from the entrance.
06 Before every family vacation, you wonder for a moment if it is better to fly on separate flights (and then decide to fly together, because the second option is worse).
07 In tense times you drive with the windows open and when you walk down the street you only use one earbud.
08 All women in the world have a collection of period underwear, you also have a collection of sleep bras for period alarms.
09 You are convinced that the plane takes off and lands safely only thanks to the fact that you said in the heart of Israel.
10 You don’t open the door.
11 Do you know what picture you want to appear in the papers just in case.
12 When you see blond children with small noses you think “they would have been saved”.
13 When your kids won’t eat the schnitzel because it touched the salad you worry regarding their chances of survival in the ghetto.
14 You only gave birth to two children (one for each hand).
15 You gave birth to four children, because we saw what happened to small families.
>>>
“There are evil spirits on the surface of the sea, and in the mountains
There is still a long way to go, and the people
Oh, hard.
Let’s go over the years
Come and skip the days
Come and enter cold caves
not to see.’
Reminds that there is a place where you don’t go alone either.
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#Israeli #collection #dresser
