one of cristina's most iconic moments: "i'm a jew, we know food and death." bless. anyway here's some thoughts on jewish cristina and what that means to her, a scientist who is not especially a spiritual person.
last day of ktavnukkah folks! it's been a great ride and i look forward to doing eight more fics next year.
Cristina's first completely clear day off in three weeks comes at the end of a several day stretch of the nagging feeling there's something she's forgetting. It's only standing in her kitchen, finally turning the calendar to the new month, that she realizes what she was trying to remember. In her chicken scratch handwriting, the sharpie she had used when she first bought it to mark her holidays, which didn't come printed in the dollar store calendar she bought when she'd gone on her 'apartments should have things in them, right' shopping spree, is the answer. Somehow, in the mad scramble of life, with the hospital and… everything else, the season has snuck up on her.
Today, this one empty, workless, floating day, is Rosh HaShanah.
After a couple moments of just standing there, staring at the calendar, Cristina says aloud to herself and her empty apartment, "Shit."
For all that she can't claim to be an especially observant, religious person, Cristina still can't believe Rosh HaShanah snuck up on her like that. After all, even Catholics who never go to mass know when Christmas is. Maybe it's because she's a creature of habit, wearing routine like a sweater from college, comfortable through the hours spent breaking it in, but Cristina has always observed the the holidays, even if just by seeing the day on the calendar and calling her mother and stepfather, or actually buying food from a grocery store rather than a take-out place for once.
By the time the initial ice water realization of what day it is has passed, Cristina has been standing silently in her kitchen for a couple of minutes. Feeling suddenly grateful that she lives alone, Cristina shakes herself and walks into the living room. A newfound purpose guides her steps and she rifles through stacks of magazines and unopened mail, looking for a pamphlet she knows is around here somewhere. She finds it sandwiched between the carcass of the envelope for February's electricity bill and an invitation to a high school reunion she hadn't even considered going to.
Temple Beth Shalom is six blocks away from where she lives, and Cristina has been there all of twice. Once, the first night she got to Seattle, abandoning the daunting piles of unopened boxes and the yawning maw of her empty apartment. Putting off moving in completely had been so tempting, and with the justification of getting at least a brief feel for the local Jewish community, it was a good distraction. Plus, it had conveniently been a Friday night. The second time was during a particularly difficult week, both personally and professionally. Cristina's head had felt so full it might split open, leave her hollow, grey matter on the floor. She had gone for the sense of stillness, for the way Hebrew still worked on her like sedation, emptying her not with a crack and a gutting but a gentle exhale, a calm clarity. It had worked, and she had gone back to work the next day, with a strengthened resolve and the words of the Hashkiveinu echoing in her mind.
It's not easy to explain, why she does it. She's been asked, a couple of times, if she's religious. The answer ranges from 'no' to 'I don't know you well enough to have this conversation', depending on who asked and how irritated Cristina happened to be at that particular moment. She doesn't light candles for Hanukkah, or carefully examine grocery packaging for pork derivatives, and she doesn't pray with the clockwork rhythm of her stepfather's sister, a woman who exists only in the memory of a rainbow, the words 'zocher habrit'.
And yet here she is, walking down the chilled fall sidewalk in a nice shirt and slacks, because Beth Shalom has a Rosh HaShanah service in fifteen minutes, and, well, what else was she going to do with herself today? Maybe this is just what she needs right now. A fresh start. A new year. A clean slate and a new beginning from which new mistakes will be made, but hopefully better ones, with the wisdom of experience to backdrop them.
In a lot of ways, Cristina supposes as she sits in the back of the synagogue, the first song beginning, Judaism has a lot in common with surgery. The Torah is read over and over again every year, and it's mastery, not redundancy. A running whip stitch takes hours to incorporate into your being, hours upon hours. So does Hebrew.
Cristina sits alone through the first of the High Holy Days services, knowing full well she won't be back for the others. She's busy, and what's more, a realist. As she leaves though, the woman at the door smiling and wishing her "l'shana tovah" as she exits, Cristina feels good about having gone in the first place. She can imagine what her friends might say, the weird looks she might get, the way Burke would surely turn this into some exercise in mutual discovery, but she doesn't plan on mentioning it.
No, this was just for her. This crisp, bright day, the Rabbi's sermon on choices and new pages, turning to a clean sheet but remembering how the book began, it's just for her.
On the way home she stops in a corner mart, an impulse sending her in and leaving her walking out with a Gala apple in one hand, a honey stick in the other. The honey is sweet and almost flavorless in her mouth, and she walks slowly, savoring the rare moment of quiet. It's almost like she can still feel the vibrations of the sounding of the shofar horn, deep in her bones, though she knows that's medically impossible.
When she gets home, Cristina eats the apple in absentminded bites amongst takeout Chinese food born of years of memories of her stepfather, grinning at her and her mother over a box of orange chicken on Christmas. Holidays meant takeout Chinese, it was one of the most important parts of Jewish culture that Saul had passed on to her, and she held onto that one particularly tightly.
It had meant something a little different to her than it had to Meredith, when they sat on Meredith's couch over chow mein and fried rice last December and tried to ignore the holiday going on around them. The sharing of traditions changes with the shape of a family, she supposed, as she watched George and Izzie lie with their heads beneath the tree, Alex relegated to folding laundry after he lost at cards.
The next morning, as she heads on her way out the door to work, her earlier breakfast of a protein bar and a slammed mug of coffee mostly forgotten, Cristina snags a bagel as an afterthought. She stands on the ferry and doesn't feel very hungry, staring down at the bagel in her hands and at the churning water far below it. A distant memory crops up in her mind, a tashlich walk with her mother when she was fifteen. Saul's voice comes back dimly in her ear explaining how his younger brother had once turned, horrified, to their mother, announcing to her, "mama, the fish are eating my sins!" Cristina has never put much stock in symbolism. She prefers Latin to metaphor, and is pretty sure bread is a pretty poor metaphor for sins anyway.
As she crumbles the bagel in her hand, tossing it bit by bit down into the thrashing waves battering the side of the ferry, Cristina thinks about mistakes. There have been a lot of them. There are going to be more. That is the way it has always been, and it would be foolish and short sighted to think otherwise. But maybe there's something to be said for trying again anyway.