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

