What Do You Want to be When You Grow Up?

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" they asked me.

"A gypsy," I said assuredly.

"You can't be a gypsy."

I wanted to wear billowing skirts and gold hoops in my ears, to live in a yellow caravan and plant red poppies next to the steps leading up to my caravan. I wanted to roam and plant patches of beauty wherever I stopped. But they said I couldn't be a gypsy, so I had to find something else to be.

I was a good girl, brought up on a diet of English discipline and structure "What do you want to be when you grow up?" they asked me.

"An air hostess," I said softly.

"A glorified waitress," they snorted. "Besides, planes crash."

I wanted to fly to exotic lands, but I didn't want to die, so I had to find something else to be.

"What do you want to be when you grow up?" they asked me.

"A writer?" I asked back.

They bought me books to read.

Nairobi, where I lived as a child, was teeming with different cultures. I had a gift for languages and I learned Italian, French, German, and, of course, Swahili. So they decided I must make use of my gift and become a translator, or at least a foreign language teacher. I was a good girl, brought up on a diet of English discipline and structure, so I nodded obediently and I took my dreams of planting patches of beauty, of roaming, and of beauty and wrapped them up carefully in crinkly tissue. Then I put them in a place where the light of hope and striving for a dream never reach.

I went to university, got a degree in English and French and became a teacher.

After five years I stopped teaching. I was too busy planting red geraniums with my children. I was too busy being a glorified waitress serving oatmeal for breakfast, a well-balanced lunch with the requisite tossed salad and then peanut butter sandwiches for supper. I visited lands filled with surging joy, burning pain, and, sometimes, soft satisfaction.

One day, when my day and soul were filled with children, socks that needed darning, menus that needed planning and windows that needed washing, I crept away and unwrapped the yellowing tissue around my dream. It was still sparkling.

That was when I remembered: in the Talmud, Rabbi Yochanan tells us that from the day the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given over to fools and young children.

I remembered being a child; perhaps I was now a fool I remembered being a child; perhaps I was now a fool. I remembered my childhood dream to become a writer. Was it some sort of prophecy? And if I was now indeed a fool, and I felt the same desire mold words into ideas, to sow patches of red geraniums in readers' minds, to serve them inspiration, and to take them to spectacular plains of emotion, then maybe I could allow myself to follow the path of my prophecy and live my dream.

I asked my husband to show me the 'On' switch on the twenty-year-old computer that he had always refused to dump. A few months later, I bought a used computer with the money I earned from my first article.

I learned my lesson well and so these days, I listen closely to the little prophets that wander into my kitchen and eat the apples that I've peeled for the apple cake just as the slices hit the bowl. I listen closely, because they can still hear the voices of their souls resonating.

When Gila says she wants to play the organ, we buy her a second-hand one even though my musical talents never exceeded a slow motion rendition of 'London's Burning' on a squeaky recorder.

When Yaacov says he wants to be a rabbi, I pray for him to have teachers who will make the light of Torah shine brightly in his eyes.

When Mordechai says he wants to be a drummer, we buy him a darbuka (goblet drum). After all, we need to protect our hearing, so we can continue hearing the voice of prophecy resounding within our walls.