The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
10 — Wednesday, April 7, 2021
statement
Love everlasting: the relationships
that color my identity
W
hen I left home for col-
lege, my Bubbie — the Yid-
dish term for grandmother
— gifted me with a thin red bracelet
to protect me from the harm of the
evil eye. The tradition is rooted in the
spiritual Jewish practice called Kab-
balah, though the reasoning behind it
is widely debated.
Some believe that a single woman
should wear the red string around her
wrist until it falls off naturally, indi-
cating that she will soon be married.
Others suggest that the red symbol-
izes fertility or protection against the
bloodshed of war. All my Bubbie told
me was that her mother had done the
same for her and that the bracelet
would be a talisman of good luck as I
entered this next stage of my life.
My family is Jewish, but we’re not
that Jewish. We belong to a reform
congregation, and at least for me, my
Jewish identity is more about heritage
than religion. I wasn’t surprised that
my Bubbie chose to evoke this Jew-
ish tradition when I was preparing to
leave home; just a few years earlier I
received a slew of Jewish jewelry for
my bat mitzvah celebration. But I had
my suspicions that Bubbie’s gift had
more to do with the color than the su-
perstition.
My Bubbie has always been a bright
red woman. She regards ladybugs as
a symbol of hope and taught me from
a young age that if some accessory or
article of clothing is red and sparkly,
we have to buy it. This affinity for red
tracks with Bubbie’s overall person-
ality: She is a formidable presence
with a compassionate soul, loud and
loyal with a social circle that extends
across the world. That being said,
Bubbie’s love for red is certainly di-
rected, at least in part, by her super-
stitious nature.
Bubbie will be the first one to knock
on wood if someone jinxes them-
selves. Instead of saying “bless you,”
she will proclaim that your sneeze
was an omen of truth, confirming the
last thing you said in conversation.
When I talked to her for this story,
Bubbie shared with me a number of
other superstitions that her family
and friends adhered to over the years
— if your nose itches, you’re about
to kiss a fool. If you drop something,
someone is talking about you. “Hope
it’s good,” her mother would say in
reply.
Now, I can’t confirm the empirical
basis of these superstitions. I can’t
even tell you that I really believe
they’re true. What I can tell you is
that every time someone jinxes them-
selves in conversation, a little piece of
my Bubbie appears in the back of my
mind and possesses me to knock on
the nearest wood. If there’s no wood
around, I’ll knock on my head. Des-
perate times call for desperate mea-
sures.
Earlier this year, I bought my first
car: a firetruck-red Fiat 500. Did I
choose the color because of Bubbie?
Not consciously. Did I think about
Bubbie as I was making the purchase?
Of course. I had to call her the minute
I drove off the lot and relay the good
news. I’ve spent so much time with
my Bubbie over the course of my life
that I’ve borrowed these little pieces
of her identity and woven them into
mine. It’s a blessing to be reminded of
her at every possible opportunity, and
the frequency with which it occurs is
a testament to the strength and value
of our relationship.
***
I
’ve been a perfectionist since I
was just a little kid, especially
when it came to school — a qual-
ity which I likely learned from my
genius mother. However, this perfec-
tionism did not always serve me well.
For example, one day my fourth-
grade class was informed that we
would be quizzed on the 50 states and
their respective capitals. I’ve never
been very good at geography, so I was
frustrated when I couldn’t seem to
commit the elusive pairings to mem-
ory. Time was ticking, so I needed to
get out the big guns — I had to ask my
parents for help.
To this day, I maintain that this was
a written test, so there was no need
for me to know the pronunciation of
each city. However, my nine-year-old
self was positively certain that Tope-
kah, Kan., was pronounced “toe-peck-
ah” (while it’s actually pronounced
“toe-pee-kah”). After arguing with
my father for what felt like forever,
he finally Googled it. I was devastat-
ed. I stormed off in true nine-year-old
fashion and didn’t even finish study-
ing for the quiz.
Now, whenever my parents and I
quibble over some unimportant, in-
disputable fact, we cry out “toe-peck-
ah” as a shorthand of saying, “I know
I’m right, and I’ll prove it.” Some-
times I call “toe-peck-ah” on myself
when I find that I’m digging my heels
in too deep on something rather irrel-
evant. It’s a reminder of that lesson
I learned from my parents over a de-
cade ago: just calm down and Google
it.
Perhaps the only reason I needed to
learn this laissez-faire attitude from
my parents is that they also taught me
to be logical, precise and firm. Those
traits again derive from my mother’s
side of the family.
Her father, my Grandpa, is always
pointing out grammatical errors. He
hates when people swap the noun
“invitation” out for the verb “invite”
and insists that everyone around him
understands that you stand behind
a lectern but upon a podium. One
Thanksgiving, that entire side of the
family had a debate over dinner re-
garding whether or not a girl’s hair
must be braided for her to technically
be wearing “pig-tails.” Eventually, we
brought out the dictionary, and yes,
the braids are a linguistic prerequi-
site.
Thinking through all of these expe-
riences, it becomes increasingly clear
that almost all of my niche interests
and habits can be traced back to the
interests and habits of the people
I love. It’s nice to know that I carry
those pieces of them with me wher-
ever I go and that they crop up when
I least expect it.
***
T
here are also the habits I
picked up from all the people
who are no longer in my life —
that advice I got from my camp coun-
selors in 2013, that phrase my friend
group could not stop saying our se-
nior year of high school, that sweater
I bought because it fit with my fresh-
man year roommate’s aesthetic. Each
and every part of me was inspired by
the world I choose to live in, even if
only for a moment.
Maybe it’s because I’m a Gemini,
or maybe it’s just because I’m human,
but I am constantly taking inspiration
from the people around me. With ev-
ery new adaptation, I am constructing
my own personal culture. After two
decades of curation, it has become a
beautiful amalgamation of all my fa-
vorite experiences to date.
The general concept of culture ex-
ists on a gradient, meaning that there
will be overlapping cultures within
a town, a region, a country, etc. Just
as how large communities develop a
culture over time, our little worlds
will effectively develop a culture of
their own. We pull from and adapt to
what’s around us, forging a new and
unique identity as a mosaic of all our
experiences.
Lots of things in life follow this
template. Internet trends ebb and
flow, emulating and influencing larg-
er cultural shifts. Even within a sin-
gle classroom, a culture can develop
over the course of the semester which
leads to the development of certain
tendencies and inside jokes, distinc-
tive to that group of 20 to 30 people
who knew each other for just six
short months. Each insular culture in
which an individual participates has
the propensity to stick with them for
their whole lifetime.
For me, that manifests through my
participation in many overlapping
cultures: that of my hometown, my
workplace, The Daily, my house. Each
of those environments offers unique
opportunities for identity-shaping
which I take in stride each and every
day.
It’s comforting to know that all my
past relationships live on as a sliver of
who I am. Even ephemeral experienc-
es are commemorated. Even seem-
ingly insignificant experiences create
their own meaning. And when com-
bined together, they all create me.
ILLUSTRATION BY KATHERINE LEE
BY MELANIE TAYLOR, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT