About Me by Jayne Neverow

When Dona speaks, her smile betrays her reserved manner. Her eyes are warm and more than happy to tell you where she has been. She is fortunate enough to have grown up in two lands. Los Angeles, land of glamour and glitz. Israel, a place I am totally unfamiliar with- but am instantly drawn to when she says that is where she would raise her children. Her entire family still lives there. I marvel at how she relays this. Just another factoid. I would cave in without the comfort of my family close at hand. Blocks away. She is New York through and through. Resilient. So interesting to me that she moved from numbers to letters. From Morgan Stanley to here, Gotham Writers Workshop. Amid brokers and financiers one day to poets and novelists the next. Gone are the shocks from a troubled economy. Gone is the tedium of soap operas. She says this as if the slightest part of her misses that guilty pleasure at least once week. She writes. I listen. We learn. “The most difficult part is getting it out…” After that, the writing acts a salve. Healing and illustrating, painting pictures vividly from days in Israel. “It’s so free there. It felt safe.” Her eyes wander for a moment. It looks as though her two brothers and two sisters may be living in a land they are unaware of how to appreciate. No obsessions with perfect plastic surgery and swimming pools where the HOLLYWOOD sign is visible. No subway trenches or occasional sewer rat skittering by the Five Star Restaurant. No rude New Yorkers like yours truly. She appreciates the peacefulness. “They only show you what sells newspapers but the place is beautiful, really.” I can see her now with her husband. Loving this place. Knowing this place.