Letter from my Father (13 page)

My fears were not unfounded. Soon after being appointed to a senior lectureship, I ran a workshop for people in my department. Its theme was the pros and cons of being a member of the dominant majority group in society, the ingroup, versus the minority group, the out-group. One of my colleagues, a personal friend whose background was an oldestablished Anglo-Australian family, unexpectedly showed her resentment. She seemed jealous of my promotion and bristled at the fact that I had met the new Vice-Chancellor socially, prior to his appointment. It appeared it was acceptable for her to be nice, in fact most hospitable to the little Polish woman while that little woman was in an inferior position but not when she moved up to one that rightly belonged to my friend, apparently by divine right of birth.

I delved into the area of prejudice and racism and came to understand that what was holding me back was within me, a type of internalised oppression. But I was no longer that little helpless child dependent on others' approval and care. I was a resourceful adult who could live with anxiety. I kept putting myself to the test. At a conference dealing with strategies for combating racism, I listened with great interest to the insightful comments of a woman of non-Jewish Polish
background. At the end of the session I approached her and introduced myself as Ester. I added that Ester was not, of course, a Polish name and that I was a
Zydowka
, the Polish word for Jewess. She replied that she knew that and we cordially made a time to meet the next day to talk about our work. As she left, I turned to my friend Lorna, who was with me, and said
I feel awful
. I was shaking. I had broken into a sweat and felt quite giddy. We sat down on a bench and she held me while I calmed myself down with deep slow breathing. I told her that I had never before uttered the word Zydowka, a word that in my childhood was associated with death. I was stunned by my physiological reaction. We went on to discuss the sheer power of the word.

The following day when I met my Polish colleague, I told her about my reaction and asked whether Zydowka had frightening connotations for her.
Yes
, she replied,
there is no worse word in the Polish language.

The profound shift in my academic work carried over into my personal life. After twenty years of marriage, with my sons on the threshold of adulthood, I rebelled. I was fed up with being so hard-working and responsible and dutiful, and striving to do everything well: motherhood, work, friendship. I had entertained with style, planning menus, decorating tables and even devising topics of conversation to fill awkward pauses. Nicole, my friend and colleague once burst out:
For heaven's sake, Ester, can't you have any junk in your life? Does it all have to be worthwhile? Go and eat a fat hamburger from MacDonald's. It will do you good.

For the first time, I understood her. I was overcome with a great lust for life. I dreamed of passion and lightness. I learned to sail on Sydney's beautiful Harbour and to ski. I wanted to climb mountains. But every time I said to Richard:
Let's go dancing
or
We could go skiing
, he would reply:
You know I hate parties
or
Skiing is far too expensive
. He seemed to prefer sitting at home, doing as little as possible. Compared with
his peers, he showed little drive to improve his business and our income. He was a discouraged man.

At this time, my mother Gita was becoming increasingly sad after her long years of widowhood. She leaned heavily on me and made constant demands to do with what she expected of a dutiful daughter. She also continually predicted her own death. I phoned her most days to ask how she was and tell her about my day. If I either forgot or was unable to talk to her, she would explode with
You are not a good daughter. Every one of my friends has a daughter better than you. You think only of yourself
.

When I told her I had been to a great party and had come home late because we had enjoyed ourselves so much, she would respond in her most mournful tones, telling me how unwell she was and suggesting that it was inappropriate for me to have fun. I felt trapped by the heaviness of both my husband and my mother.

Although I made space for myself by taking overseas work trips, what I really wanted was the freedom to breathe and to play. I kept asking myself: Who is going to be my partner in a joyous life?

In 1976, I took a month-long study leave at the University of Houston, Texas, and combined it with a three-week organised adventure trip through Mexico. The professor, who was assigned to host me and another three visitors from overseas, took us out to dinner and then drove me back to my hotel. His name was Jay. We sat in his car and talked for a long while, about our work, our passions, about everything. I think both of us felt a natural affinity or perhaps a mutual attraction, as if we had known one another all our lives. The next day I had a meeting with him to discuss my proposed PhD thesis. I may have talked then about my restlessness within my marriage, for on returning home I received a letter from him. He said that when he met me he knew that I was a woman he could have loved, but that he had recently
divorced a good woman, one with whom he no longer wanted to live for the rest of his life, and married a woman who was his soul-mate. He quoted a poem by a man who had been a prisoner and then went through a number of experiences which he found equally constraining, until at last he found a place he could feel free. But he recognised that it too could be viewed as a prison, even though he had chosen it. I reread Jay's letter many times.

My travelling companions on the Mexican adventure were mainly teachers from Canada, Britain and Australia. One evening at an outdoor restaurant at Oaxaca, at which I drank perhaps one Margarita too many, I put a scarf around my head and approached the Spanish-speaking men and women parading up and down the square with offers to read their palms. I do not remember their reaction, but I was in my element.

I returned home, of course, but within a year, that terrible year 1977-78, the year of my 39th birthday, Richard and I separated. During that year I had felt increasingly distant from my husband and spent a great deal of time on the phone talking to friends and going out with them. I was in the grip of an overwhelming impulse to grab anything that gave me joy. At no stage did I actually think rationally about my actions, each of which undermined our marriage, nor of their likely repercussions.

Richard's response was
I want a woman who puts me at the centre of her life. I am how I am and
–
you must accept that.
But I didn't accept it! Richard tried his best to rally by turning to various self-esteem-building encounter groups. I suffered from frequent heart palpitations and my doctor told me that I must change my life, otherwise they would become chronic and damaging.

Richard took the initiative. He told me that we could not go on like this. We decided on a trial separation. There was to be no trial coming together.

During this period, the one steady point in my life remained my commitment to my sons. This kept me grounded. I will never know how my absences from home really affected the boys, though I imagined them busy with their own lives. At least I hoped so. Richard moved out on a Sunday morning in December 1978, a couple of months after our 21st wedding anniversary. Early that afternoon I went off to Manly Sailing Club to have my first lesson in sailing small boats, including setting a spinnaker. A few weeks later Richard wrote me a beautiful letter, expressing his gratitude for the happiness of the first seventeen years of our marriage. We divorced in early 1980.

A few months later we agreed to a
get
, a divorce document which, according to Jewish law, must be presented by a husband to his wife as a first step towards their divorce. It was necessary if either of us ever wanted to marry again under Jewish law. I had heard that the procedure of the
get
is humiliating for the woman but I had no idea how true that was. On a late summer's day we presented ourselves at the Beth Din, a Jewish ecclesiastical court, where five bearded rabbis sat on a raised platform. The
get
had been prepared by a professional religious scribe, on the explicit instructions and with the approval of my husband. Some questions were asked of Richard regarding his intent to divorce me and the document was handed to him. He then had to drop it into a funnel formed by my loosely cupping each hand and holding one on top of the other. My role was to catch the
get
as it fell from his hands. Its physical receipt into my hands as the wife was required to complete and validate the divorce process.

The essential text of the
get
was quite short:
You are hereby permitted to all men
, meaning the husband acknowledged that he no longer had rights over his wife and that the laws of adultery no longer applied. Though at the time I did not know the exact wording of the
get
, I did feel as if I had stepped back into an ancient patriarchal society where
the woman
was
a chattel. My insides churned. Once outside, Richard and I sat in the car, embraced and sobbed. For what? I suppose for the death of a dream, a commitment and a family life.

Our sons reacted differently to our decision. Simon was relieved. He had been so affected by the tension at home that he had been thinking of moving out himself. Jonathan, seventeen years old, was deeply distressed. He kept telling his friends that it was only a trial separation. He retreated into his room and spent his time making lists about what he wanted from life, planning how he would go about achieving his goals, and reflecting on the meaning of it all. I merely observed his actions, unable to save him from the reality and – yes – the pain of our situation.

X

A Single Woman

W
hen Richard and I separated, I knew that I was escaping from the melancholy and heaviness of our marriage, but I had no idea where I was heading. I had not anticipated the full impact of leaving a man I had loved, with whom I had brought up children and shared twenty years of family life with all its entrenched habits. I found the experience of being without a husband in a world of couples, unprotected by the status of marriage, if not the actual strength of a partner, quite devastating.

I feel no grief, no joy. Just pushing on, confused, tired, fed up with living alone and carrying all the burdens
, I wrote in my diary. I tried hard not to let my mother see my misery. She had warned me against divorce, such a shameful action in her eyes since
there has not been a divorce in our family since the time of King David
. Her critical attitude did not help me.

During this period I participated in a psychodrama workshop with an experienced psychotherapist, which had a dramatic outcome. At one point I had to pick a person from the group to represent my mother. When I turned towards
her
during the psychodrama, I did not see my mother but a figure representing the power of oppressive authority. There stood religion, tradition and judgmental society, making demands, setting rules and conditions for acceptance and love, and threatening punishment. The authority figure, the epitome of a punitive God, kept on stating what her rules were in a chillingly cold voice. I maintained my role as a reasonable supplicant, pleading for understanding. The
authority figure did not reciprocate. Then something in me boiled over. I threw myself at her, beating with my fists and crying in rage. I was screaming:
Enough!
It was lucky for her that she was protected from me by a mattress she held up.

The following day I wrote and hand-delivered to my mother a letter in which I told her that I was an adult and needed to lead my own life, making decisions and mistakes regardless of her approval. I can still recall the terror I felt as I walked up the passage towards her front door. But I did it. She did not speak to me for weeks and when we met again at the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, she cold-shouldered me and told me that I was a
very confused girl.
She could never be wrong. Did she care about Ester, the person I was, or just the person who filled the role of her daughter?

Our friends really did not know what to do with us, since we were one of the first to go through the ‘shame' of divorce. Richard and I were still being invited together to various formal functions, such as weddings and Bar Mitzvahs and were often seated together. At one such function, three months after we had separated, Richard whispered in my ear that he had found a good woman who loved him and that our marriage was definitely over. Our friends observed the ‘intimate' whispering and assumed that we were getting together again. I was stunned, but managed to whisper back:
I am happy for you.
I went home and sat for hours in the living room in the dark, in deepest despair. I had been abandoned again. I felt quite sick. I went to bed for twenty-four hours and sobbed, just as I did a year later, the day of Richard's remarriage.

I had an acute sense of walking on a razor's edge between carrying on and falling into an abyss. But there was something in me that would not allow myself to fall. It was the thought of my boys who were living with me.

I needed to borrow money for a new home, since my share of the money from the sale of our house was not sufficient
for a suitable place for me, Simon and Jonathan. At the bank, I explained my financial situation to the manager, listing my assets and my rising salary as a university lecturer. This was the bank where my parents and I had done business since our arrival in Australia thirty years before.
So you are a single lady?
remarked the manager. I was furious. What had this to do with my ability to repay a loan? I walked out, marched across the street to another bank, told them what I wanted and asked about the best interest rate they could offer. I got a loan at a much better rate.

Over the following weeks and months, I became aware of my growing sense of competence. I
could
make a life for myself and provide a good home for my sons. I learned to manage my own finances, not to rely on a husband to change light-bulbs, to negotiate with real estate agents and prepare tax returns. I was not going to be beaten by the prevailing gender bias.