7 Stages of Grieving

I am now in the final days of my work at the ice cream store and I’m sure you, the reader, are just as excited as I am, because after next Tuesday you won’t need to hear about it anymore.

Even though I have a couple more days to go, I feel I have already been blessed with a little bit of hindsight and can already look back on the experience from a week and a half from now: I think I would describe my ebb and flow relationship with work as similar to that of the 7 Stages of Grieving.

I started work with the idea that I wanted to practice my Hebrew, make friends and learn a little bit about  the ‘minimum wage’ culture of Israeli society.

The first Stage was ‘Shock and Denial’:

I was definitely in a numbed state disbelief that I had in fact got a job in Israel, “how exciting!” I thought with wide-eyed naivety.

Then the ‘Pain and Guilt’ set in:

I was struck with insufferable pain and guilt of my decision to work there, both physical and emotional.

The physical was just the other week when the carpometacarpal join in my left hand was sprained from scooping the Dark Chocolate ice cream. My thumbs were also swollen from overuse (mainly from texting out of boredom), so I had to learn to scoop with my right hand.

 

The Third Stage is ‘Anger and Bargaining’:

I started bargaining with my boss as to how many shifts a week I had to do; he wanted 7 double shifts, I wanted two. I started saying “why me?” and muttering profanities as the ice cream behind the sneeze protecting glass.

Then the ‘Depression’ sunk in. I pictured my corpse frozen in the ice cream display and the other workers scooping my body into sugared covered cones.

When I reached the 5^th stage, “The Upward Turn”, I decided to give my notice of retirement from the gelataria business and pull myself out of that half dug grave.

‘Reconstruction and Working Through’ came next, I now can look to the future, and become a more productive member of society.

The final stage is ‘Acceptance and Hope’ – I’ve accepted the experience and decided to bottle and repress it in the back of my mind, to later seep out in forms of physical abuse to small kittens.

As they say in Israel “היה טוב, אבל טוב שהיה” “It was good, but good that it was” (rough translation).

In reality it wasn’t as bad as I thought I was while I was in it.

Ice Cream

Finding a job and a place to live has been great, I move in in a week and I’ve already been working for a week. I really enjoy being a part of the Ben Yehuda back drop. Seeing Birthright groups come and go and satisfying pregnant women’s craving for Snickers ice cream and Coconut sorbet. I have to admit I have started to find the work a bit mind numbing.

Two days ago I did an 11 hour shift. Which means I probably wiped sticky ice cream of the tables 55 times, scooped 123 ice cream cones (give or take) which is about 356 balls of ice cream (give or take), made 14 waffles, 12 milkshakes, 5 take away tubs of ice cream, and 4 lattés (they were for me).

Now after you’ve tasted the 26 different types of ice cream three times, you already feel a little sick, so you need a latte for some savoury. Then your mind starts playing tricks on you. You forget who ordered what ice cream and end up giving whisky flavour to a 3 year old (which is fine, they’ll just sleep well). You forget what language you meant to be speaking to the customer (Hebrew, English or French). You even forget what languages you speak. It ends up sounding like this:

  Customer: Shalom

Me: Errr…

Customer: Can I try the Twix ice cream

Me: Errr…. Weh

Customer: That’s delicious

Me: Tu vous gutey encoure?

Customer: What?

Me: Oh, סליחה, רוצה לטעום, I mean, ah, what?

<then I blame my confusion on the noise>

Me: Sorry the music’s so loud, what can I get you?

Customer: What music?

Me: … (I don’t have an answer) …We don’t have that flavour.

Customer: … (silence) Can I try the mint chocolate chip…

You get the point

I was worried that my mind was going to melt like a little boys ice cream in the Middle Eastern sun, I was worried my mind was going to get smeared all over some hungry kid’s face.

I decided to start playing mind exercises to make sure I don’t lose mine.

When I whipped down the tables I estimated how long the ice cream had been smeared over the table for. There are a lot of factors; temperature, humidity, sun/shade, thickness of the blob, even the sugar content of the flavour.

As I used my finger nails, brute elbow grease, and a thousand sprays from the Windex equivalent I turned physical labour into actuary.

It gets a little worse.

Yesterday I found myself speaking to the ice cream. “C’mon Ferrero Rocher, get in the cone, I’m always so good to you, whenever people ask me for my recommendation you’re my go to guy, why are you being difficult”.

I looked up at the confused customer, and fade out surreptitiously and faded back in with the words of the song playing in the background pretending I was singing it all along…

Besides the worry that I’m losing my mind, I also worry that I might have lost my bandaid in a scoop of strawberry sorbet.

Other than that, I get lots of visitor which is fun, and I think I’ve mastered waffle making.

Salt

"The cure for anything is salt water - sweat, tears, or the sea."

-Isak Dinesen (Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke )

This quote really rings through for me at this point in my Aliyah because thanks to the powers on high I managed to get two jobs. The employers, without out a doubt, get a lot more than they pay for. The minimum wage here is less than the cost of a glass of beer, and I certainly sweat more than a pint during each shift.

Both of these places of work gave me much more credit than I deserved.

First was the ice cream shop. The boss within in the first hour of me working there, left me alone in the shop to scoop ice cream for hordes of tourists groups alone. It was a great first shift though. I ate ice cream till the point of ‘bloated and crying’, and what was meant to be a 4 hour shift somehow transformed into eight.

It was hard work, and on the bus to go home feeling sore sticky and smelly, I worked out that I had earned what I could have earned in Australia in 2.5 hours. Despite this I somehow felt a strange sense of catharsis.

The next job was working with a catering company which is just starting up. It was a small home based Bat Mitzvah for 101 people in Modi’in.

My given shift was from 1:30pm till 11pm, that’s fine. I got home at 3:30am.

Every muscle in my body crying to be put out to pasture and put out of their misery. I schlepped, I set up tables, I served food, I cleaned, I schlepped some more, and all with a smile.

The entire time I had Ben Gurion’s picture in my head, the one where he’s pushing a wheelbarrow at age 80-something. I thought to myself, so this is what it was like to work hard to establish the state of Israel. I’ve never worked so hard in my life. I think it was so difficult because of my complete lack of upper body strength.

It’s amazing that it wasn’t my past job experience, or my university degree which helped me through this, but rather my experience in the Youth Movement.

Packing the truck, working on getting food out in time, and serving apple crumble to kids craving more sugar even though their twitching eyes and jittering hands told me they’d already had too much.

Knowing that my Zionist youth movement actually helped me which my Aliyah gave me a real sense of satisfaction.

I’ve swam in the salty Mediterranean here, sweated like pig in heat, and cried on a strangers shoulder. I think whatever needed curing, has been cured.

The Idealism of Huge.

Last week I was fretting about several things, namely; my army draft date, work, and accommodation after Ulpan. Three important facets of life which weren’t sorted by any means. But I kept my chest in the air, and thought to myself “the early pioneers had a shit-load more to deal with, so calm down”. I let this phrase circle my head like a mantra, calming me, soothing me…

Recently everything just fit together.

It didn’t help. I sat in class quietly freaking out. I was simultaneously learning how to conjugate weak roots (which sounds a lot dirtier than it is), and facebook stalking people when I stumbled upon a friend who posted that his apartment is up for subleasing for two months in the exact dates that I needed! HOO-HA!

I pounced on that one and got to cross one worry off the old list. But how am I going to pay for this new expense? “The early settlers didn’t even have a roof over their head” I chanted.

On the way to check out this apartment I get an email from the owner of a restaurant I interview at saying: “When you memorize 80% of the attached menus in Hebrew and English you can start work”. About eight excited breaths later I get a call from an ice-cream shop on Ben Yehuda St I applied for asking if I can come in tomorrow for a trial. “Amazing!” I sung out loud while dancing and politely thrusting my hips as a sign of ‘Yay-ness’.

Now when I was at the apartment having a look around I  get a call from a private number. “Shalom, this is the army”, “Shalom Chaver!”, “Can you come in on Sunday for your final interview before we sort out your draft date?”, “YESH!”

Three strikes and my life seems sorted!

But no, my Jewish genes can’t cope with being ‘ok’. I feel the wretched worry-worm creep up my neck and start nibbling the inside of my scalp. I have everything the early pioneers didn’t… except idealism.

My mind start ticking as though it has a mind of its own, or, it’s its own mind. I’m confused. Anyway…

I start thinking about the idealism behind scooping ice-cream balls. What would Ahad Ha’Am say about it? Would Herzl approve?

I guess ice-cream can be used to help solve the conflict. Everyone’s smiling when they have ice-scream, even Abu Mazen would smile if he got an ice-cream…

And I guess you could take and ‘idealistic reading’ into being a waiter in a Charedi Italian restaurant. I mean waiters listen to people, and are easy going, which is something you could use to make Israeli society more tolerating.

There, I’ve managed to justify it to myself. It’s not making the desert bloom or promoting coexistence or helping new migrants integrate. But it’s something.