End of August

 My former writing group invited me back for an August Write-A-Thon. Write something every day. I'm sharing this one here:

End of August

Yesterday I saw an airplane, the kind of airplane I usually would have boarded by now to visit my parents across the country. 

Tonight I went for a walk on my street, the same neighborhood I’ve walked almost every day for the past six months. I heard crickets, the same kind of cricket sounds I usually hear by now when we meet up with my college roommate from out of state and go camping, a camping trip we promised ourselves annually as soon as I moved to the east.

Just now I had a hug, a hug I’m grateful for, from my husband, the only person allotted to giving them to me right now. 

Regrouping

I'm on vacation now, sitting in an airport before flying from a road trip alone with U to meet up with ND and my parents back home in Portland, OR. I just now wrote a posting from my last piece of activism and am reflecting on what a year it's been.

Last summer ND and I planned to go to Portland to regroup as we do every summer. This times are critical for me, not just to relax, but to regroup, to come back to myself after a school year in frenetic Jewish Bergen County. This last year was different than usual.
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Shock

I haven't written in some time, but I am in massive pain after this year's election day.

I was so excited... unlike the people who cynically described Clinton as a crook, I embraced the energy of changes she wanted to make (even though I knew Republicans would block all actual legislation) and was over the moon with the opportunity in front of us that the U.S. was about to finally elect the first president woman of the United States.

9 year old ND was just as excited as I was. We believed in the power of women to envision the world in ways that men don't and we knew it was impossible -- IMPOSSIBLE -- for a racist, sexist, egotistical bully who can't even formulate an educated sentence about the state of our country to win.

We stayed up together, with the radio on and U watching the numbers, recording each of the states as the vote count came in.

Gradually, it started to feel like the night would be longer than we'd hoped before we could jump up and cheer, and go to bed.

We waited... and we waited... waited while the wrong numbers went up, while the good numbers didn't come. We were just too tired to stay up much longer...

and U... the political junkie in our house told us, "It's already over."

***

I went to bed and caught short naps between envisioning children and the sick having health care taken away, financial depression, nuclear war, Holocausts and red-capped white men leering at and judging my daughter's and my bodies.

Somehow I survived the day until U and I could really sit and talk. Again, he is a political junkie and so wise when it comes to talking about actual ramifications. The conversations we have can't be summarized on a Facebook meme. They take explanation, analysis and thought.

So after I got out of my system all of my feelings and visions, he said, "OK... do you want to know what I'm really scared about now?"

That's when we talked about a day and age in which when politicians did things underhanded the news media criticized and then citizens gave push-back.

Not anymore. For whatever reason, Republicans have discovered now that they don't have to play by the rules. If they don't like a policy they can tantrum. Tantrum tactics include holding the debt ceiling hostage, refusing to consider a supreme court nominee, filibustering and the list goes on. No one stops them.

They have the presidency, the court and the congress. This is not democracy.

And the people who thought that Trump would help them, will not be helped.

One comfort in all of this is that the majority of Americans actually did make the right call. Whether they liked Clinton or not, they knew that they had a responsibility to vote for someone sane, and not to cast a vote as knee-jerk, in-your-face and irresponsible as nearly everything Trump says and does. They knew the right choice was to actually vote her into office. The final tragedy is that, once again, the electoral college silenced the popular vote. Someone has to fix this. No one who cares has the power to do it.

Bat Mitzvah Redo 2016

12 is a terrible age to have a bat mitzvah. I don't know if it's true for others, but when I was that age I felt like my skin didn't fit, I was uncomfortable in front of a group and I didn't have the slightest idea who I even was or how I fit into Judaism.

But now I'm an adult, and I feel so much better about myself, about being Jewish, about everything. Over the years I've followed my own path experimenting with becoming more and more committed, first through gravitating to very observant communities, and later by holding onto my observance but simultaneously discovering progressive and sometimes egalitarian communities in which I could actively become much more of a participant.

So a few years ago as I began to learn how to lein and lead services in my partnership minyan, Minyan Tiferet, I had the idea that maybe I would try again and have a bat mitzvah-type celebration. Doing this would give me an opportunity to actively and maturely demonstrate my relationship to Judaism and to the community by doing the sorts of rituals that are normally done in a bar or bat mitzvah service.

So around October of last year I finally began learning to lein this past week's parsha Be'ha'ah'lotkha.
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Welcome To Our Sukkah!

These first two days of Sukkot were packed and I want to write about two things that happened. In this post I'll tell about the sukkah hop. I'll use another post for the other thing.

So in our shul there is an annual sukkah hop. It used to consist of hoards of children bombarding one sukkah after another, swooping up candy, and leaders pleading with them to say thank you and try not to break anything. At least, that's what I hear.

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Missing writing

I admit it. I'm jealous. A friend from my writer's group, Writer Granny posted a few days ago that she hit blog post number 1,521 after having started her blog in 2009. This blog that you're looking at was started in November of 2004 and this post is number 912.


The result? I'm writing a blog post that doesn't say a whole lot of anything.

A few hours ago we took a break from some household chores and watched Spellbound, a documentary about 8 kids competing for the world championship in a spelling bee. Talk about over-achievement! My takeaway (especially after my last post): When you set goals that are really really high, there will always be a little disappointment, even if you really do the very best you can. To be in the moment without qualifiers, without "but" or "if only," but just to be and do what's possible with a little bit of discipline, that's my new goal. It's not easy to keep a goal like that under pressure. However, it's a goal that I can be proud of achieving again and again in small victories.



So why I'm writing this blog post. Well, yeah, I wish I had more blog posts. Am I aiming for 1,521? No, not right now. I do think I'd like to post a little more often though, and then maybe I'll throw a party when I discover I've actually reached 1000.

Another small victory.

Israel, 2015 -- Part 5, End of the Journey

 
By Friday we were so tired that that day and Shabbat are somewhat blurred.

We packed up our hotel and prepared to meet friends of ours later in the day. Just one more restaurant, we said, and walked to one I'd read about a few days before but hadn't located. I'm so glad we did. Te'enim is the kind of restaurant we always wish we could go to when traveling, but usually can't because it isn't Kosher. It was quiet, decorative and had beautiful classical guitar music playing. We sat by an open balcony window and looked out on the old city. Opening the menu we sort of gritted our teeth because so far we had spent so much on food. The breakfast menu had a price with a long list of dishes after.

"So we have to choose one of these," we confirmed with the waiter.

This was not the whole meal. We also had buttered bread, juice and tea.

No. You got all of them for that one price. It was healthy delicious, beautiful.

This is just for decoration, a little spice swirled in the center of the plate.

Sigh. Wish we could have taken it home with us.

After that we met up with our friends, as planned. These Israeli friends of ours lived near us for three years and were our regular Shabbat park and seudah shlishit playdates. The mother of the family had relatives in Jerusalem that we would all stay with to enjoy the day together.

"Where do you want to go?" she asked.

"I'm so spent at this point," I told her, "it no longer makes much difference."

"Really, you don't want to see everything?"

I shook my head. "I've done just about all I can do."

So we just went to two places. One was the Israel Museum. It wasn't terribly child friendly. We did see the giant installation they have of ancient Jerusalem, but the real highlight was Big Bambu. This was an art installation you could climb up in, a towering bumble of bamboo. Those of us who did it enjoyed sitting at the top (holding on for fear of any sudden wind bursts) and marveling at our bravery and at how secure it actually felt.

Lunch came and we got yet one last restaurant meal. This one was in a mall and on an outdoor deck. Such a treat when we knew soon we'd be returning to snow.

By now I didn't even care what I ate anymore. We enjoyed our meal and watched as the staff hurried to close up in time for Shabbat. We rushed through our meal and headed for the family.

That Shabbat was lovely and ended with a walk on a promenade overlooking Jerusalem.

After Havdalah we had our final slice of Israeli-made pizza and followed our friends to their apartment in Shoham. There we showered and slept about 3 hours before shaking ourselves awake and driving to the airport.

We departed Israel during Sunday's early hours and stopped over in Vienna. There we exited the plane on a tarmac with snow coming down and gradually became used to being surrounded by fewer and fewer Israelis. I enjoyed speaking a few words of German with the flight attendants, but it certainly wasn't the same.

I can't say that I want to live all my life always around other Jews, for so many reasons, but there was a distinct feeling as we left Israel of leaving behind a place that really matters to us in so many ways, much more than a tourist destination.

Israel 2015, part 4 -- Rehovot

6 AM and a horrible beeping woke us up. At first we thought it a raid siren, but then I remembered the sign that had explained a siren like that would have a rising and falling sound. We pulled on shoes and jackets over our pajamas and went outside. No one was in the front office. The alarm stopped in our building then started in another. Then it did it again. Gradually we came to understand it was a malfunction and that no one really cared much about it. So much for sleeping in.

Our one reservation that day was for Leket. Leket is a nonprofit that used to be called table to table and was begun by a Bergen County ex-pat. The organization rescues unused food from restaurants, catering services etc., as well as from farms, and delivers them to Israel's hungry population. ND and I have both heard the founders speak at different venues and were eager to come glean for them.

Before we would go there though, we decided to hit one more destination in Ein Gedi, Wadi David. In fact, we didn't realize it until now, but the hostel where we were staying was actually next door to the park filled with trails. I wish we had had more time to explore, but even the easiest trail was a bit precarious in spots. Advertised as one of the easier family hikes, it climbs up to a lovely water fall. However, along the way there are a whole lot of rocks, a warning about potential falling rocks pushed down by ibexes and a few single file slippery spots where water washed over the rocky path. This was actually just about the level of adventure I like... do-able, but at least with a little feeling of risk. Signage for other trails warned to stay away unless you were a very fit hiker. So we were in and out in the hour we had budgeted and on our way to the fields in Rehovot.

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Israel 2015, part 3 -- Ein Gedi

Tuesday was, for better or worse, another very long afternoon of driving. Along the way we made a quick stop in the neighborhood where U.’s mother had been raised and found a couple of family landmarks. However, time was short and we had to keep moving. The last hour or so of our drive came during a beautiful sunset, but then we had to drive on narrows roads around hills in a black night. We couldn’t even see The Dead Sea on our left because buildings or street lights of any kind were few and far between.

At last we arrived at a hostel which, honestly, was not the friendliest place we had ever stayed, but we were relieved to have two whole nights in the place. In addition, we were grateful to find a full buffet dining hall awaiting us. 

While in the dining hall we spotted an interesting group sitting at another table. There were two women. One had dark hair like mine and a little girl with curly hair. The second woman had long red hair, a young daughter and a baby boy in a high chair. The group reminded ND and me both of ourselves and our camping friend emarcy who has a little girl and was (at the time of this encounter) very very pregnant. The group we saw was disheveled too, so like us when we go camping each summer.

We emailed emarcy about the little party and she responded that we very well may have seen our camping “doubles.” We couldn’t know for sure yet as they had not yet learned the gender of the baby, but we might know very soon because her contractions seemed to be starting!

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Israel 2015, Part 2 -- Safed

Monday morning we awoke in our hotel and had our first delicious hotel breakfast including shakshuka (love saying that word), potatoes, salads, pastries, yogurt, cereal... yum. So much delicious Kosher food to choose from.

Then, grateful at last to not have a deadline to meet, we took a quick walk to the Artists' Colony where saw some puzzle piece shabbat/Channukah candlesticks I was really tempted to buy. Then we hit the road to Safed.

Our drive North was very very slow due to construction and we were caught behind a series of trucks carrying tanks. Funny to be a tourist and not quite know what those tanks are up to, but have that all be normal routine in a country and small and with a military as active as that in Israel.

As a result we didn’t get there until close to nightfall and gave up the opportunity to "swing by" the Kinneret which beckoned temptingly on the map.

With so many reservations in so many places, I had failed to read the details on some of the confirmation emails. So we were a little nervous when Waze took us to an alleyway. We parked the car on the street and called the Guesthouse where a very warm, American voice answered and gave us lengthy details of how to walk to the Guesthouse. “You don’t have a ton of luggage, do you?” Not knowing how to respond I just left most of my stuff in the car and we dragged a few essentials single file down a narrow curb of a sidewalk, then down a flight of steps to a garbage-ridden alleyway.
Fortunately, we were hopeful that we were in the right place and had better to look forward to with the beautiful signs that pointed our way.

Our room's domed ceiling

Sure enough, at the end of the alleyway was a richly painted blue door which opened into a beautiful courtyard with geodes, crystals, an olive tree and herb garden. Several rooms looked out into the courtyard and we found our way to the hosts’ door. The hostess, Joy, came out to greet us, hugged me as if we were old friends and said she’d been waiting for us.

Guest House courtyard, daytime

She showed us our room which was dome-shaped and very homey, explained how everything worked, walked us through a map of the area, and then left us to go see if we could fit in anything that night. Our goals for Safed were to see a few of the shuls and to see and maybe purchase some art. By this time of evening, though, it was also to find some food. Alas, almost everything was closed including a Yemenite vegetarian restaurant where we could have sat on cushions and tried new foods.

There were a few galleries still open at least. ND and U. came really close to buying a few paintings, but I was too distracted by looking at all the tree shaped necklaces and finally bargaining down for one I really liked. (I’m saving it for a shechechiyanu at Pesach.) We also gave into having pizza, not for the first time at all on this trip, but enjoyed eating it in a little hole in the wall with lovely decorations, and Safed right outside.

I started off the next morning with Joy giving me a glorious massage. Then rejoined my family in the room where we ate breakfast together in our room with enormous pancakes and a plate full of fruit.

Mezuzah made by the glass blower who is making my yad

Back to the artist quarter then where I had a beautiful and moving experience of ordering a glass yad to be made for me for reading Torah. Hopefully it will be ready before Purim in time for the the women’s megillah reading that I organize. (Stayed tuned. Later I'll be posting an article about that. Below in this blog see a video of the glassblower.)

We also bought Kiddush cups, admired paintings, ran into Naomi’s first grade teacher who was also touring Israel, visited a few of the shuls and walked up the tall staircase back to our car and on our way to the next adventure.

Glass door to our room

Israel 2015, Part 1 -- Modi'in and Jerusalem

For Yeshiva Break this year we went to Israel. This was my first time since 1994, U.'s first time since about then and ND's first time PERIOD. Why did we go now? It was time to do so. ND felt (though not quite accurately) that she was the only one in her class who had never been. Likewise, we just wanted to go and to have a nice trip there together. Why during such a short vacation? The summer is hot and more expensive, so this is what we've been planning since last summer when we realized we just couldn't pull off a last-minute summer trip.

The last day of school was Wednesday, January 14. We left school at lunchtime. At the airport we saw two Noam families whose children I'd taught, all of us heading out on the same flight. In stereotypical Israeli fashion, instead of just calmly waiting in seats as I usually do on a flight out, we had extra security and then all crammed forwards in a mob as if it we didn't fight to the front we wouldn't get onto the plane at all.

The flight was mostly uneventful. ND and I watched Bears and then tried to go to sleep as it was already nighttime in Israel. Alas, very little luck. It was just too early to sleep. So we pretended to sleep, tried to sleep and dozed about an hour or two before arriving after 10 hours of flying at 9:25 AM on the 15th in Tel Aviv.

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Welcome, 2015!

So it's the secular New Year, a time when lots of people make resolutions. I don't have any new resolutions to share right now. Rather, I find myself checking in with my intentions as of Rosh Hashanah/2014-2015 school year.

This year has been designated as a scaling-back year. The biggest part of that was taking a hiatus from my writing group and, hence, my novel as well. I've done very little volunteering and am taking stock of some questions about my work.

Instead, what I find is I'm settling into inhabiting my life. This has become a major phrase for me. It means
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11th Remission Anniversary

A very special one this has been so far.

I didn't know how to mark it really. Last year I sort of gave myself permission to stop finding enormous meaning in it. The chagim have just finished so I barely have had time to prepare in any way, and then I got this horrendous cold Friday night, right after Simchat Torah. I thought at first it was from all of the singing, but I was short of breath during some of the dancing in a way that meant more than just overexertion. ND and I were both up much of the night. As much as I rested through the weekend, I had fever Sunday night which is so odd for me! So I missed Monday and Tuesday of work.

Here's where this starts to turn. I spoke to my meditation teacher on Tuesday at 11:30 and as we spoke I went deep deep deep into my vulnerability again. I haven't touched this place much recently as I've been trying to be calmer about feeling illness. I remembered too that I often get sick at this time. I cried a lot. We had a very special conversation that I'm going to keep mostly to myself now.

But beautifully, when I got off the phone, I felt so much more energy! So good that today when I returned to work one of my other dearest friends said I just didn't look sick and said, "Your body always remembers, doesn't it? Now you know though that you can heal."

I got so much today. So many well-wishes, sometimes in the midst of little frustrations. To have someone sincerely wish me "from strength to strength" while I'm wrestling with a copy machine makes me zoom out in perspective rapidly and forcefully.

11 years I saw the ending of a renegade part of me -- a tumor -- tried to grow so fast that it could have killed me. I loved it out of existence (I know that sounds weird, but it was a part of me) and walked into life again. And here I am.

I don't feel fear or sadness or illness, guilt or shame today. Just love.

Yahrzeit

The stone we placed last year got dirty and broken quickly. That made it clear to us what to do this year to commemorate the sad day.

Cheese

The other day ND climbed into bed with us.

U. said, "Climb between us and you can be the cheese in our sandwich."

ND: I need to put my legs on top of yours because the cheese usually sticks out of the sandwich a little.

U: OK, but you should be quiet now. Right now you're acting like chatter cheese.

Me: It would be better if you were shush cheese.

ND: But I have to make a lot of noise because I'm yell-ow cheese.

With a family like this, why would I want to escape?

Today was our second snow day from school this week and this year. U and ND had a brilliant idea.

There's an app we like to play together called Can You Escape? The goal of the game is to escape each room by finding tools and codes around a room to solve and to help you open a door out.

Imagine my surprise when I came downstairs to the dining room and heard the music from the game playing, a mostly bare room, and a few objects strategically placed around. 

A jump drive was inside the glass case.

 But I couldn't open the case without the code:

I found the code by looking through the place cards ND long ago made for us for the table, and finding a new one that had the colors in the right color.

So I could retrieve the jump drive. Then I could use it in the digital frame

which game me another code.

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Aloe

I eluded recently to being way behind because there was a post I had not yet attended to. One reason I haven't done it is that I wasn't sure where to look for a particular photo, my favorite. I've just stumbled upon it so no more procrastinating.

And here's the photo of Aloe when we were driving cross country to move here:

She died on May 7th after surviving for so long from kidney failure and possibly also cancer. She was a precious, sweet cat and I cared for her a good 5 years after her diagnosis, giving her fluids through a needle beneath the skin every night, taking her on emergency trips to the vet and spending a ridiculous amount of money on her.

Her death was not easy in any way. She was in pain. It was frightening. It was sad. I cried a lot and I stopped caring about anything else for a few days. 

It still makes me sad to write about her or the way her life ended.

My brother said it best. She was with me through many stages of my life. I adopted her when I had cancer. She moved with us to Vancouver and then to an apartment in NJ and finally to our house. She saw me in labor and put up with ND from birth to age 6 1/2. 

She had beautiful green eyes, incredibly soft fur and a gentle little soul. 

Some things are easier now. I don't have to worry about her peeing on things. I can go away now without planning for who will care for her. I have a few more minutes in each day now without having to care for her, but the house feels empty when I come downstairs in the morning to start my day and I'm the only one awake in the house.

Phone Call

I had to do parent-teacher conferences today. In the middle of a break my cell. phone rings with U's number, but it was ND on the line.

"Hi."

"Hi. How are you?"

"At Chuck E. Cheese I got a loose tooth."

Right on schedule, a bottom front tooth for a 6 year old. I kind of felt, though, that when I came home a  full-fledged adult would be waiting for me. Some of these landmarks feel huge.

Pissed

In the past few months my own life has been great, but there is plenty else wrong.

In Hurricane Sandy, children's lives were washed away.

There was a brief but terrifying war in Israel.

On my daughter's birthday, a seventh grader in the school where I work died from cancer after several long years fighting it.

And now this unfathomable school shooting in CT.

It all makes my rabbi friend's fairly young death from pancreatic cancer in September seem like a walk in the park.

When you read a siddur, prayers are carefully written out in a gentle and awe-filled way as if afraid to step on G-d's toes.

I'm past that right now.

G-d... can you please just make the bad shit stop?

Hurricane Sandy Part 15

I haven't posted since Thursday, but that does not mean that the Sandy aftermath is over for us.

I've written a draft of an article in detail about my experience teaching with minimal materials and notice on Thursday. I hope to have that revised, finished and published soon so I can link to it. I also would like to write a second article about Friday. Teaching once again with almost nothing this time was an elevating
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