The Catskill Chronicle

By Janet Waterston

 

We met the summer of 1969. That was the summer man first walked on the  moon; when 400,000 music and peace lovers gathered on Yasgur’s farm and camped out in the mud and rain for the three-day long concert known as Woodstock. It was the summer I traveled half-way across the world to Israel to be one of six American teens working on a kibbutz.

I was sixteen. Ofra was seventeen and just a year away from going into the army. I wrote home to my family: “I have to tell you about a wonderful friend I’ve made. She’s a Sabra — and in the real sense of the word — tough on the outside and sweet inside. Everybody loves her…. She’s so great. She’s bright and talented and kind to everyone.”

Kibbutz Ein Gev, where Ofra had lived her entire life, was situated on the beautiful Sea of Galilee. Foreigners regularly passed through, either to eat at the restaurant; camp on the shores of the lake; learn to speak Hebrew in the Ulpan; or, like me, came as volunteers to pick grapes or bananas, milk the cows, or cut out the eyes of potatoes for the hundreds of members and visitors who ate communally in the dining hall.

I participated in a special program, Experiment in Kibbutz Living, geared to teens. I was placed with five other Americans of disparate backgrounds: Richard from Texas who was petrified of spiders; Mike from Arizona who was my frequent grape-picking partner; Nancy, whose family was making “aliyah,” moving to Israel at the end of the summer; Sue who fancied herself an opera singer as she warbled in the fields; and Yigal, born in Israel but living in the States and full of himself because he, too, was a Sabra. The teenaged kibbutzniks were wary of making friends with us. They welcomed us into their clubhouse for evenings of music and ice cream but were shy about using their English or unwilling to make friends with one more set of kids just passing through.

Ofra was different. We met on our first work assignment in the garden, clearing land and seeding grass. She spoke fluent English as well as French, Spanish, and of course, Hebrew. That first day, she pulled up on the tractor in front of our meeting spot and surveyed us, a cigarette dangling off her bottom lip. Her eyes crinkled with warmth. “Come on Americans,” she called, and we fell in line behind her and under her mercurial spell. She directed us to tools kept in a fallout shelter and demonstrated how to hoe the rocky earth and place seeds at regular intervals. While we worked, she turned on a radio and sang loudly, sometimes pantomiming the words. She shinnied up a tree to pick figs and presented them, like a bouquet, for our culinary enjoyment. “You remind me of Peter Pan,” I told her. Her eyes opened wide. Had I insulted her? Did she even know who Peter Pan was? “And you’re Tinkerbell,” was her immediate comeback.

While the other Israeli teens stayed to themselves, Ofra spent her spare time with us, often sitting cross-legged on a bed in the room I shared with Nancy and Sue. Mike and Richard joined us. One sweltering night, we pulled our mattresses and sheets out onto the dried and caked lawn in front of our rooms and whispered under the stars, too hot to contemplate sleep. Ofra told us about days spent in the bomb shelters when the kibbutz, situated just under the Golan Heights, was bombarded with artillery. “It was boring,” she said, “And I wanted to be with my parents, not in a shelter with other kids.” We talked about love. Ofra explained that most kibbutzniks meet their life mates in the army. “We’re like brothers and sisters on the kibbutz. You can’t feel romantic about your brother.” “And if you don’t meet someone in the army?” we asked. “Then the kibbutz sends you to work in the city, maybe at the Kibbutz Aliyah desk or at the central kibbutz office.”

Gradually, we tired and one by one, began to doze. That is, until Ofra placed a frog under my pillow. I jumped up, and we all had a good laugh. Better to put the frog under my pillow than Richard’s. If he was afraid of spiders, who knew what a frog would do to him. Mike dropped blades of grass under Sue’s nose to watch it blown by her wheezing breath. I put my head down and, again, jumped up. Peter Pan had put the frog back under my pillow. “Okay, I really want to get some sleep if I have to be in the grape fields by 4,” I told her. Frog again. And again. And again. Very funny. Very immature, I thought.

Ofra continued to laugh and I was furious. I walked away, close to tears. She followed me, waving the frog. From early childhood, I had perfected the stare that turns teachers and parents into pillars of salt. I focused my humorless face on her. “You’re really mad,” she half stated and half asked. “Don’t be mad. Please. Really, I would never want to make you mad.” We sat until sunrise, talking. I didn’t make it to the grapes that day.

The six weeks on the kibbutz flew by and Ofra, a few other of the Israeli teens, and several of the older volunteers came to see us off for the last leg of our Experiment in Kibbutz Living. A bus was already half full with other American teens who’d spent a similar six week period working on different kibbutzim. We compared notes and sang Israeli songs, and mostly I missed being with the friend I thought I might never see again. We were taken to a hostel for a boring program on Zionism. My mind wandered and so did my eyes. They lit on Ofra who had convinced a slightly older kibbutznik to drive her to see us one more time. Back we went to the kibbutz for one last night. And having to say goodbye a final time. I wrote in my travel journal, “It was horrible.”

It was not, however, the last time I would see Ofra. Today, when I drive home from visiting clients in Brooklyn, I feel a tug when I pull off the Jackie Robinson Expressway. If I turned left, I would be only a few blocks from where Ofra stayed with other Israelis upon the completion of her army stint. The tug I feel is less of nostalgia and more of regret. Ofra was in my country, and it was my turn to make her feel welcome and loved, and I’m afraid I failed.

I was home from college for the summer. Our first tension, and certainly not the last, was Ofra’s decision not to stay with my family. I was hurt; she was adamant. In retrospect, I can understand she felt more comfortable with people from her native land than settling into someone’s family constellation, a far cry from the kibbutz experience where children didn’t live with their parents. She wanted me to spend my free time with her; I was working to defray some of my college costs and resented the demands on my time. She whined that she had nothing to do. I suggested she take a bus into Manhattan. “I’ve been there,” she informed me. I was indignant.

In 1975, after graduating college, I decided to return to Israel to participate in a six-month Ulpan to learn to speak Hebrew. I traveled with Nina, my college suite mate, and we chose a kibbutz Ulpan equidistant between her relatives in Jerusalem and my desire to be near, if not with, Ofra. Nina’s cousins were waiting for us when we landed. I felt a twinge of disappointment that Ofra hadn’t been able to meet me. I’d have to go with Nina and her cousins to Jerusalem. But after we passed through customs, there was Ofra and Tito, her father. Ofra had just gotten her driver’s license and Tito allowed her to do the bulk of the driving back to the kibbutz. With great pride, Ofra showed me to her “room” which was more like an efficiency apartment assigned to single kibbutzniks upon their completion of the army. Ofra and Tito had put in all their free time to complete the building of shelves and setting up of a stereo she had made herself, all to make me feel at home when I arrived. I looked at the twin bed and my stomach did a bit of a flip flop. She wouldn’t stay with my family but she expected me to share a twin bed? No way.

In reality, I’d jumped to a conclusion, and Ofra’s bed had a smaller cot that was stored underneath and could be pulled out to provide a second sleeping option. Perfect, until we started arguing over who should take the real bed versus the cot. Ofra insisted, and I became more stubborn, remembering how she wouldn’t stay at my home in the States. We were not off to the most auspicious start.

Our next stop was to meet Ofra’s dearest new friend, Clara (at left in photo), who hailed from Mexico and had made Aliyah. Together with Ofra, they came to be my family away from family. We’d spend evenings together, and Clara often insisted that we have tea with Ofra’s mother rather than regularly going for tea at Tito’s (where “tea” more often consisted of whiskey).

My first few days on the kibbutz, Ofra arranged to take off from work to be with me. I wrote home, “It’s getting a little difficult being with Ofra for 24 hours upon 24 hours. Many times she’ll be talking with someone in Hebrew and keep staring at me to get a reaction (while I haven’t the slightest idea what they’re saying). Or many times she asks what I’m thinking when I’m only thinking I can’t understand what’s being said. She constantly wants to know everything—really getting into my head and seems annoyed if I say I’m not thinking of anything. Or—the best of all—she tells me what I’m thinking.”

I eventually realized that hosting me was not easy on Ofra since I spoke no Hebrew and knew no one but those to whom she introduced me. While I was feeling irritated by her staring and questions, she probably felt trapped. This became evident one evening when we went Israeli dancing, and Clara and I returned early to our rooms. Ofra said she’d continue dancing but the next day sheepishly said she’d lied; she’d gone to Clara’s room to hang out. And probably to feel free to speak Hebrew without translating or worrying that I would feel left out. She volunteered an explanation of why she stared and asked what I was thinking. She said that I was her idea of the type of person with whom she’d like to populate a “good” world. This thought made her want to know all my motivations. How could one be angry at such a compliment? After that, when she’d drill me with her eyes or ask to know what was in my mind, I’d just give her a blank look and she’d say, “I know. I’m a pain in zee ass.”

I soon moved to Kibbutz Ein Dor for my Ulpan and visiting with Ofra was difficult because of our work schedules and lack of public transportation. Despite this, we managed to visit on occasion, and Ofra, often with Clara, looked after my needs, as well as that of Nina, my traveling companion. I wrote home, “I had a wonderful surprise today while I was working in the kitchen. I looked up and there stood Ofra and Clara (photo right). They were supposed to be taking an army course and thought it began today. Turned out the class starts tomorrow so they hitched to Ein Dor. They only stayed a couple of hours, but it was wonderful, and Nina and I are going there this coming weekend (so Clara is making Ofra bake us a cake).” The next letter read, “As for the weekend, it was like going home. Ofra and Clara were as warm as ever, as were Ofra’s parents.”

Another time, Nina and I made a surprise visit to Ein Gev, and the bigger surprise was that Ofra was leaving for Greece. Friends had sent her a ticket, and, with only $80 to her name, Ofra planned to travel on through Europe, then to Mexico where she’d meet up with Clara, and finally back to the States where she promised to visit with me, saying it was only fair that she return a second time to the States since I’d been to Israel twice. I don’t think most of this adventure occurred, but I know that ultimately I resented her leaving the country when I was there for only six months. I must have held onto that “hurt” for a couple of years and whipped it out after receiving an accusatory letter from Ofra because I hadn’t responded to her most recent correspondence. Back in the seventies, phone calls between the States and other countries were reserved for life-changing news and e-mail was not yet available. Instead, each country had its version of a blue aerogram. These took a week or more to arrive and sometimes went astray. I wrote a stinging letter, setting her straight that no letters had arrived. She sent back two aerograms explaining and apologizing, including why she’d gone to Greece.

And so our crazy friendship transpired until I received one of those momentous phone calls from Ofra in the spring of 1979. “What are you doing this summer?” she asked. True to kibbutz practice, Ofra, still single, had been sent to work in the city and, presumably, find a husband. She was running the Experiment in Kibbutz Living program on which we’d met, 10 years before. I had lined up a social work position in a school starting September and happily gave notice to my current employer to be the counselor to a group of high school teenagers.

Ofra, with our Experiment in Kibbutz Living tour guide and bus driver, met me and the teens when we arrived at the airport in Israel. The tour guide either heard Ofra call me Jannie, my family’s nickname for me, or perhaps thought that was my given name. From that first day, he called me Jannie. “Who does he think he is?” Ofra said, indicating that only special people had the right to use my family nickname. Thus began our summer of continuous tension. I was once again living in Ofra’s room, and we frequently traveled together so I could check in with the teens under my charge. Of my relationship with the tour guide, Ofra said, “Don’t think you’re special. All the tour guides and bus drivers hit on the counselor.” Thank you very much. The summer, which should have been another chance at Never Never Land, was fraught with misunderstandings and hurt feelings.

We managed to stay in touch for another 15 or so more years, but my hypersensitivity eventually crushed the friendship. The last letter I still have from Ofra was dated December 27, 1994: “You must have made such a deep impression on my soul, as every now and then when we seem to almost forget one another, something awakens in me (or in you) that makes me write and share with you a memory … There are all these questions in my head that always come up when I think of you and me. I truly have not found the definitive answer to the riddle of Peter Pan and Tinkerbell. (Did anyone?) You are a riddle to me still, and always you will be. Your riddle combines for me emotions that include: love and sadness, joyfulness and pain. Why do we bring one another to such extremes? Can’t we make true peace? Could we become innocence and pure in heart as children?”

She went on to say, “I think you may have lost yourself for several years and therefore lost that innocence, that child-likeness and purity of love which I adored and admired in you when I first met you. I hope you can re-awaken it.”

Now when I read this letter, I can imagine that rather than taking in Ofra’s words, I undoubtedly took umbrage. Who was she to tell me I’d changed, that I’d lost my special qualities? Can we go back? Can we right wrongs? Can we grow and change?

Never Never Land is forever, and the gift of real friendship must include forgiveness and acceptance. Twenty years after that letter, the editor of The  Catskill Chronicle alerted me to a posted comment on my most recent article about mothers. “Shalom my dear old friend.” Ofra wrote, “…looking at YOU dear Janet, I always knew that your parents must have been special as they did such a great job raising someone like you…you are always in my heart, even after so many years.”

Her e-mail address was at the bottom of her comment and I immediately wrote, “Dearest Peter Pan…”

We have been in touch ever since, sending e-mails and pictures, catching up and moving on. Each night, in our dreams and in our hearts, we fly to Never Never Land. I thank Ofra for her grace in forgiving my loss of innocence and child-likeness, and I thank her for bringing it back to me.