and now you're cool

For years, ever since we made aliyah, I was considered by my kids to be so uncool.  After all, I am an immigrant, speak Hebrew with an embarrassing accent, plus my grammar is often wrong.  I like Western music, Arabs, Arabic music, health food, go to a trippy synagogue in Jerusalem, invite non-Jews for Shabbat dinner, eat in different restaurants all the time, see foreign films and often go alone.  My oldest daughter even bought me a birthday gift - a 10-movie package - at  Jerusalem's landmark  Smadar theater.  I love the Smadar.  They didn't destroy the Ottomon-era terracotta stone floors and opened up a restaurant attached to the theater.  Unlike the cinemateque, you can bring in your beer and cappucino or hot cider - even wine - into the theater.  There are others like me who sit alone in the theater.  Lately, I saw the movies Push and A Serious Man there.  Next week I'm seeing a Korean film with a friend (!). 

But now, all of a sudden, I'm cool.  My complainer daughter hardly complains anymore.  She hugs and kisses me daily.  The reason?  She has a new boyfriend.  This guy comes from a Moroccan family BUT, and here's a big BUT, he enjoys Ashkenazi (European/Western) culture more than his own. He doesn't listen to Middle Eastern music and is astounded that my daughter acts more "Moroccan" than he.  It's something he has to get used to, he says.  His brother is actually a famous Israeli singer, who still churns out Israeli hits.  This new boyfriend loves the Beatles, Doors, Stones and Fats Domino.  My daughter doesn't know the songs to any of these.  But now she's coming to me to learn this new Western culture her boyfriend is into.  She's now proud of her once-uncool mother.  I know I'm going to have to bring that photo of Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones and me together at an art gallery out of  basement storage to impress him.

"You're gonna love my mother" she coos to her boyfriend. "you might even want to marry her", she jokes, perhaps knowing a little of my Cougar fantasies.