After the bestseller: Sheri Alfie-Nissan returns with a new book

Parts of the public may still remember her as the daughter of Yossi, the sister of Guri, and the star of the telenovela 'The Champion' from 20 years ago - but today Sheri Alfie-Nissan is also a creator, musician, writer, PhD in sociology, and a post-doctoral fellow at Oxford University. Her first book, 'You Should Sit', became a bestseller. The coming-of-age novel 'Only in Joy' is her second book.

Staring at a white page. A white page. There are people who see it as a clean start. An opportunity. The place where all possibilities exist. These people, in my estimation, are on drugs. Every beginning drains my strength like childbirth. Only, giving birth to myself becomes harder day by day. And yet, I wait every time anew with bated breath for this moment: I am sweating as if I just finished a triathlon, my hair is disheveled, my cheeks are swollen, and on my face is a smile of true happiness. Even my black eyes smile when the chubby nurse with hair dyed red announces to me with pride: 'Congratulations! You were born! A woman of 40, 1.57m, 54 kilos!'

At this stage, a pat on the butt from the doctor would be considered sexual harassment. But it will take time until we reach this moment. Now, where do we start? I remember the moment I made the decision that was destined to change my life from one end to the other. The thought had been festering in me for a long time, but I reached an unequivocal decision on Tuesday. A week before my fortieth birthday.

Tuesday is the day I teach three undergraduate courses in a row. A day of reality check and the realization that I am old, even though I am always complimented that I look younger than my age, at least by a decade. Perhaps it is my height, the black and cheeky curls cut into a long bob that would suit any twelve-year-old girl, or the wrinkle-free facial skin I inherited from Grandma Masuda. Perhaps it is the All-Star shoes that I find hard to give up in favor of silly high heels that would cause me to stumble and break my front teeth.

Even if I look like an undergraduate student, the meetings with the students prove to me again and again how far I am from their age. 'Yo, what a trip that you're like a lecturer and stuff. Like you look so young, like. A trip. Really,' the blonde student with the eyebrow piercing who had already missed three classes in a row told me.

'Flattery won't get you anywhere,' I said while packing my things after the class.

'The most real, like,' she replied. So many contradictions in one sentence.

'I have to enter a failing grade for you. You will have to repeat the course next year,' I maintained relative composure. I almost believed myself that I was capable of being so assertive.

'Stop! What's the trip, like?'

'A trip from reality.'

'I was sure you were cool, Meirav.' She twisted her nose in a way that raised her upper lip only on the right side, waved her flowing hair defiantly, and turned to the door. After that, she turned her head to me, let out another loud puff, and flared her nostrils.

And then it hit me. I'm not cool. I'm really not cool. I'm tense, I'm restless, I'm on edge about every submitted paper as if my life depended on it, despite the clear knowledge that about three people including me will read this shit. Am I trying to impress a twenty-two-year-old girl? What do I have over her? Except for almost a PhD in sociology and unlimited knowledge in a very, very specific field that occupies mainly me and my PhD advisor, and the truth is that I bore her a little too. I'm almost forty, for heaven's sake.

I would consider getting an eyebrow piercing to give my youth a little more air, if I weren't afraid of needles and knew how much it would annoy my father. Yes, I'm still occupied with what my father thinks. Not growing up. Not moving forward. And alone. I don't like to think about it, to talk about it, to acknowledge it, but that's the truth. And I can continue to live inside this 'most real, like' that I built for myself or I can wake up and realize that something here is missing. A child. Or a girl. Or genderfluid. Whatever she/he/they choose to be.

I waited with the exciting news for a whole week. I wanted to give my declaration a dramatic touch with a birthday setting. The setting included a side table in the outdated cafeteria of the eastern wing of the university that has required renovation since it was built in the seventies, and two uncomfortable seats with crumbling fabric cover in bright orange, which reveal the original fabric of the chair, velvet-like in green. The only drama that stood in the air is the fact that the orange soup ran out for today and some disappointed students had to choose a tuna sandwich instead.

Opposite me sat Rani, the kindest and smartest guy I have ever met, and between us a vegan banana muffin he baked himself with a lit candle in its center. I extinguished the candle quickly for fear that one of my students would see me. He, for his part, clapped his hands and smiled that smile of his that raises both his cheeks up and narrows his honey eyes that always comforted me.

'I have to share something with you.'

'Well, who's the guy?' A look at his chiseled, tanned face would never reveal that sometimes he sounds really like a nagging, old woman.

'I made a decision.'

'Oh, no. This is one of those moments of yours. Meiravi, I know it's your birthday and I'm forced to cooperate. But I don't have the energy for life-altering decisions like 'I started Pilates'.'

'I'm bringing a child. That is, or a girl. Whatever she wants to be, that is.' In my head, the declaration sounded much more elegant.

'You're bringing a child? From where? From the supermarket? Bring me some rice cakes too if you're already there.'

'I'm serious, Rani, this is a real, honest, authentic decision.' I looked for more words that would give validity to the seriousness of the declaration, 'and you are the first I am sharing it with, so please don't ruin it with cynicism and rice cakes.'

'Okay,' he said, nodded, and provided the most empathetic and serious look he has, with his lips held in a locked jaw so they wouldn't open by mistake and tell me what he really thinks.

'Well, say it.'

'What?'

'Say it, say it.'

'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Well, give your psychological spin on this whole story.'

Rani is a PhD student in psychology who is not a psychologist. He is always required to explain this a moment before people lay out their life story before him and expect comfort. Rani can tell about the twin studies in which he took part in Professor Sudri's lab, proving links between personality traits and genetics. He can say a sentence like 'Everything will be fine, you are just genetically unbearable, it's not your fault,' if it comforts someone. And although professionally he ran as far as he could from sitting in the psychologist's chair on the opinionated and clicking side of the therapeutic dialogue, he never gave up a psychological interpretation of everything that happened around him, and especially everything that happens around me.

'Meirav.' Rani loved to say my name and then put a period to spice it up with drama. 'Don't give up so quickly.'

'Sorry? What exactly am I giving up on? And quickly? I'm forty years old. Yay. Happy birthday to me.'

'I'm a year older than you.'

'It's different for you guys.'

'For you guys?!' His thick eyebrows rose and threatened to create wrinkles on a forehead that showed no signs of being a year older than me. As the son of an experienced politician, Rani knew without any difficulty how to start a nagging speech on behalf of all sorts of groups, some of which he did not belong to at all, and some of which he belonged to only when he felt like it. When he wanted, he was a condescending Frenchman from the city of scientists, and when he wanted, he was a Mizrahi from the periphery.

'Yes, men. Those with the extra chromosome, I want to say? I missed that lesson,' I replied and added just before he burst into an explanation that would be accompanied by an opportunity to educate me: 'Rani. I also know how to put a period after a name, but it was evident that it was less natural for me. Understand. It's not about signs of giving up, despair, or losing one's mind. I am very serious about this and feel completely whole with being single.'

The thick eyebrows judged me and threatened to rise with a condescending look. There is nothing Rani hates more than when I pretend to speak high-brow.

'Really,' I concluded and provided evidence, 'I learned yesterday on YouTube how to do the Heimlich on myself.'

'Giving up is not the choice to be alone,' he put on the expression of the psychologist he refused to be, touched the tip of his chin exactly where a dimple is revealed. 'Singlehood is a legitimate choice. Who knows like me.' And he knew, when he chose after ten years of a long relationship with Irit to leave the shared apartment adjacent to his parents' house in Rehovot and move to Jerusalem, to the surprise of all the family and friends. 'The giving up is on the path you take with yourself. I feel like you're running away.'

'On the contrary,' I said in a clear and sober voice that I had never heard coming from me, and surprised us both, 'I am stopping running away. Stopping with the doubts and wonderings and endless questions, stopping with the dramas.'

Rani let out a chuckle that caused him to almost choke in the middle of a sip of the herbal tea he brought with him in a thermos every morning.

'There is nothing more dramatic than this,' he said and looked at me with his two honey eyes without blinking. 'You know that, right?'

'I can think of a few things more dramatic. Rabin's murder. The Twin Towers disaster. The breakup of Static and Ben-El.'

'What exactly is the plan, Meirav? I'm sure you have one. Right now I'm imagining you walking around campus like Spike from Degrassi.'

'Right?! And how stunning will I look with spikes?'

'Who is the desired father?' Rani asked and his thick eyebrows contracted into themselves, 'Please tell me you didn't count on me. If so, I'm sorry I got up early this morning to make this muffin. If only I could turn back time.'

'We'll talk about everything in detail when you realize that I'm serious and this is not one of my fleeting decisions that last three minutes. And the muffin is really excellent. It's lucky you got up this morning.'

'It's lucky you were born.'

'Yay. Happy birthday to me!'

'Only in Joy', Sheri Alfie-Nissan | Kinneret-Zmora Publishing | 312 pages