First Review of Crooked Lines

 

I've been away this week visiting family and celebrating my birthday - and honestly, that's taken up all of my head space so I didn't have time to write very much, and I'm sorry. I had all kinds of ideas and then I was so excited to see everyone, every thought I had floated away.

What I WOULD like to share is my first review of Crooked Lines: a Single Mom's Jewish Journey. It was published four days ago in the American Jewish World:

https://www.ajwnews.com/writer-jewish-questions/

"... A reader needn’t be divorced or even Jewish to connect with Zark’s thoughts and experiences; many are universal.

For example: “For the first year of my son’s life, I was done wanting to be an award-winning playwright or write novels or musicals. All I wanted to do was to sleep. I did not succeed.”

Nor need one live in the Twin Cities area, although that adds enjoyment.

“It was late August and I was packing up everything I own to move across town to the bottom half of a duplex,” Zark says. “My son, age 4, would live there part of the time with me and part of the time with his dad in our old house,” she says.

“I was moving to St. Anthony Park, hardly known for its Jewish traditions.” But she brought two sets of dishes to continue keeping kosher and confronted the new experience of buying a mezuza.

Single, “my invitations dried up. … I discovered that Jewish Minnesota can be a notoriously close-knit community.” (Amen.) She writes movingly about efforts to get invited to a seder. 

The pieces in Crooked Lines are brief, insightful and easy to read...

Zark is surprisingly revealing about the difficulties of being a working single mother; needing to learn more about Jewish traditions; deciding which to observe and how; and choosing a second husband."

--American Jewish World writer Neal Gendler

Crooked Lines will be published September 5, 2022. You can preorder at jennazark.com. And if you're a single mom - or dealing with intermarriage - or losing your parents -- I'd love to hear your story, too.

Start of the Story

It wasn't like Dorothy, dancing down the yellow brick road to Oz. In fact, it was anything but a fairy tale. Crooked Lines: a Single Mom's Journey began with a divorce and the overwhelming feeling of being alone.

It began with a friendship, two souls tossed overboard and trying to survive.

It began with a young son, who was depending on me to soldier through. And a raft of Jewish holidays that I'd always celebrated with family, and now had to navigate alone.

If you are divorced, you know what I'm talking about.

If you are a single parent; losing your own parents to Alzheimer's and eventually death--

You understand.

Or maybe you just know someone going through this and want to be there for a friend.

I can only say those curve balls keep coming. But friends and rituals and holidays can give us insights that help us deal with them.

I can also say that sometimes, when you least expect it, better things come your way. It could be something cool with your career; or a new relationship that brings it's own transitions to navigate.

What I discovered is what a friend told me: God paints in crooked lines to lead us to the people we are meant to meet.

You can meet that friend (and a lot of others) in this story, as of September 5.

Doing and Don'ting in a Pandemic Year

This is not a manners thing, or any kind of a thing--it's just a do and don't list I made up after seven months of living in Pandemic Land. 

DO:

1. Keep cleaning, even though you hate it. Otherwise you'll hate being home even more.

2. Save your shekels for takeout (every other week)? I just hate to cook, is all.

3. Try not to let your paperwork pile up endlessly -- see number one for reason why.

4. Invest in better coats and scarves so you can talk to friends or neighbors when it gets cold. Try to talk to real people instead of imagining them (which I have been known to do).

5. If you have an exercise bike and winter is coming, plunk it in front of the TV and watch the trashiest shows you can. It will make you feel better about exercising.

6. If you have a happy marriage/relationship, let the other person know it. 

7. Read all the books you avoided for years because of binge watching all your favorite shows.

8. Keep binge-watching. (What else is there to do?)

9. Start a project, no matter how long you think it will take to finish. It may be the only thing that keeps you sane.

10. Stay away from sugar if at all possible. Except once a month -- I think that's fair.

11. If you miss your parents, kids, sibs and others because you're way the hell across the country, start thinking about what it would take to see them and make a plan. Seriously. I haven't seen my son and family--let alone some of my dearest friends--since last Thanksgiving.

12. Vote. Please.

DON'T:

1. Stay with anyone who's hurting you, physically, emotionally or otherwise.

2. Argue politics on Facebook or Twitter - it's just not worth it.

3. Overindulge in drinking/drugging/eating (I kind of said that already, didn't I)?

4. Isolate even more than you already are. Zoom, FaceTime, call, write, whatever. 

5.  Let anxiety eat your life.

6. Kill your cat.

7. Pick fights with friends or colleagues.

8. Lose hope.

9. Stop eating pickles.

Have a list of your recommendations? Let me know - I'd love to see them.