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…and you shall see your children’s children

June 6, 2005 by

Today is Matan and Lilach’s birthday. Nine years ago today I stood just a few feet away from my daughter as the first twin emerged. “It’s a boy!” But the doctors were concerned. The second baby’s heartbeat was slow and so they took my daughter to the operating room to perhaps do a Caesarian section to get the other baby out. Fortunately, the C-section was not needed and 14 minutes later, Lilach emerged. And suddenly, we became a family that had twins, a boy and a girl! I would never have guessed then that by now, there would be two more sets of boy/girl twins!

So today is their birthday, and it coming on Jerusalem Day this year, we thought it would be a good idea to take the children to Jerusalem last night to see the parade and perhaps the fireworks.

However, Matan was tired after soccer practice and his 11 year old sister, Hadas, really wanted to go, and so we ended up with the two girls making our way to Jerusalem.

The traffic in the city was almost at a standstill as street after street was closed. When finally we parked and walked to Jaffa Road, the parade was still going on and we watched as group after group of children and adults from all over the country paraded in uniforms and costumes, on floats and on foot, driving motorcycles and ambulances, to salute Jerusalem.

Suddenly I was transported to my first trip to Jerusalem. It was in 1965 when I came on a youth tour. I stood at that very spot on Jaffa Road, but back then, the Old City was closed to us. We could not visit. We were taken to Abu Tor to look out over to the Temple Mount. We went to Mount Zion and tried to see what we could of the holy city. I was in Jerusalem longing for Jerusalem.

And then I thought about June 1967. I was in Philadelphia, seven months pregnant, sitting in my parents’ family room, embroidering a challah cover, the one we still use, when the news came onto the TV, “the Temple Mount is in our hands!”

I can’t describe the joy. I remember thinking that the baby inside me will never know that longing that the Jews had felt for so long. I remember seeing TV reports about the first Shavuot after the reunification—people streaming into the gates of the Old City.

It took us many years to return to Israel, but finally, in 1978, we took all of the children. On our first day, we went to visit to the Old City of Jerusalem. I still remember the awe I felt when I first saw the Western Wall standing there, golden in the sunlight.

My experience of Jerusalem has not changed, not after having visited there, not after having lived there. Jerusalem is holy and special from the very stones to the special fragrant smell of the air. Going to Jerusalem is returning to the place where I belong.

So we watched last night’s parade, we sang along with the music that was playing beautiful songs of Jerusalem, we ate dinner, we walked through the downtown walking area that was filled with people, and on our way home we were treated to fireworks that were best seen from our car as it descended down Betzalel Street to Sacher Park.

And I felt grateful for my husband, my children, my grandchildren, and for my city, Jerusalem.

Filed Under: Family life, Israel, Spirituality

A drawer marked “Tomorrow Afternoon”

June 5, 2005 by

When my husband delivered the eulogy for my mother, he termed her “a word-class worrier,” and it was true. My mother had a tremendous capacity for worrying. She did it better than almost anyone I knew. My father was five minutes late coming home from work? “He could have been in a car accident,” “his store could have been robbed,” “he could be lying dead in a pool of blood.” And she worried. My mother would stand by the window, willing him to arrive. We couldn’t use the phone because he or the police might be trying to reach us. Then, she would pick up the phone and call the store. The phone would ring a couple of times and he would pick it up and tell her that he was with a customer who had come in just before closing. She would ask him to call before he left (I assume so she would know at what point to begin worrying again) and if too much time went by, she would call to check if he had left yet.

This was a pattern of our lives. Our days were filled with drama because who knew what tragedy could befall any of us at any moment.

It served some positive purposes: my sister and I are perhaps the most cautious people I know. We simply did not take chances. We knew that any misstep could invite disaster.

But my mother’s worrying was not an aberration. It was an exaggeration. All of us worry to some extent. And in many cases, worry is good—if it causes us to be prepared or to be cautious of real danger.

For example, recently there was a tragic accident on a school trip in the northern part of Israel where three children, who had been instructed not to enter the cold water of a stream, either willingly jumped in or fell in. One child died as a result of entering the very cold water and having limited swimming ability despite the immediate response of the people accompanying him. In this case, the investigation showed that the adults had acted responsibly and the outcome was still tragic. School trips to the area continue, but I imagine that the worry that the chaperones now harbor inspires extra caution and extra warning to the children.

But worry can be destructive as well. Today it is a beautiful sunlit day. The temperature is about 75 F/23 C. Our garden is sweet smelling with the scents of lemongrass, rosemary, lavender, and sage. Our trees are growing clementines and lemons, and our decorative plum tree has yielded the world’s sweetest plums.

But what am I thinking about? My daughter’s new (less than one-year old) refrigerator has stopped cooling and the repairman can’t come until tomorrow afternoon. My worry, that has no purpose, has distracted me from the wonder of life, the beauty that abounds, the joy of friendship and the love of family.

Sometimes I tell my clients to metaphorically take the worry, define it, compress it, wrap it up in a package (preferably brown paper) and put it away. I am filing mine in a drawer marked “tomorrow afternoon.”

Filed Under: Emotional health, Spirituality

Lighting candles with Grandmom

May 25, 2005 by

Recently I have been thinking about the impact that one generation makes on another. Someone once quipped that grandparents and grandchildren get along well because they have a common enemy. In my case, my grandparents had a large influence because of their unqualified love for me. I wrote this several years ago as a tribute to my maternal grandmother, Rose Tizer. It takes place in 1949.

My name is Rona. I am 4 years old. I live in Philadelphia. I have green eyes and rosy cheeks and dark brown hair. When my mother washed it this morning, she twisted it, piece by piece, and told me to hold it so that when it dried, I had curls like Shirley Temple. I feel pretty and I feel special because tonight, when my parents are home, I will stay here with my grandmom and grandpop and I know they will spoil me.

I think about what it will be like to stay here tonight. When it’s time to go to sleep, I will walk up the stairs that are at the back of the living room. When I get to the top of the steps, I will turn left and walk through Uncle Albert’s room to the spare room where I sleep. In the room there is a big bed with a bedspread on it. I love the bedspread. It has raised parts that are fluffy when I touch them and they make a design. I think about letting my fingers glide along the fluffy parts and following them all over the bedspread. I can do it even in the dark. But it doesn’t really get dark because in order to get to the bathroom, my grandparents and Uncle Albert have to walk through the spare room and so as not to wake me, they leave the light on in the bathroom. Being here is exciting and the light being on makes me want to stay up.

There is another reason that it is not easy to sleep here. Behind the row of stores in which my grandparents live, there is a brewery. The whole neighborhood smells of beer all the time. When we drive down Second Street I always get excited just smelling the beer and knowing that soon we will be at Grandmom and Grandpop’s. Because the train transports the cases of bottles of beer, there are railroad tracks right outside the window and all night long when the train sits on the tracks, the warning bells ring.

It is a cold winter day. It is a Friday and my grandmother is getting ready for shabbos. I can smell the chicken and I know that there will be soup. She puts very thin noodles in the soup and she calls them “luckshen” but I know they are just noodles. I like fishing around in the soup for the noodles and, to tell the truth, they are the only reason I eat the soup at all. Well, really, there is one other reason. I don’t know why, but whenever I finish everything on my plate or in my bowl, my grandmother gets very very happy. It’s like by just eating, I do something that she’s very proud of.

Now I see her sitting at the table in the kitchen. The table is still not set and it is getting to be late afternoon. She is sitting with a big stack of money in her hands and she is laying it out in piles, counting strangely. I try to count like her sometimes: one-tzik, two-tzik, three-tzik, but everyone starts laughing and I realize I don’t have it right yet, so I listen harder the next time, but she just counts too fast.

Soon the men who work in grandpop’s store come in. One by one, she gives them the piles of money, counting them again as she hands them to the workers. Then she puts the tablecloth on the table and sets it for dinner. Now comes the magical time.

Grandmom goes over to the stove. On the flat part next to the burners she sets up two big candlesticks and two little ones. She puts a scarf over her head and says, “Come, Rona; it’s time to bench licht.” I go to her and she covers her eyes and says something that I cannot hear, but I know it is a prayer. I too cover my eyes and all I can think of is how special it is to be Grandmom’s girl and to light these candles with her. It’s something I can always count on. The kitchen feels warm, and full of candlelight and Grandmom’s love, and the cold, darkening sky is not so cold or dark anymore.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Spirituality

Independence Day

May 12, 2005 by

Living in Israel is an intense experience, and living in Israel this past week has been an extremely intense experience. We all have been dealing with Remembrance Day for Israel’s soldiers and terror victims this past Tuesday night and Wednesday and with Independence Day that followed it on Wednesday night and Thursday.

I suppose Israel can be compared to one of my children. This was a child who was never indifferent about anything. His anger was anger and his joy was joy and no one could cry more bitterly nor laugh more heartily. I used to say about him that his nerve endings seemed to be closer to his skin surface than others. I called him my passionate child.

And Israel is very much like him; it is a place where emotions are high and contrasting emotions occur simultaneously.

So this week, people were buying memorial candles to light either in memory of their family members who had been killed in military service or terror attacks or in memory of all of our lost soldiers and innocent victims of terror At the same time, people were placing Israeli flags on their homes and their vehicles until the country was plastered with blue and while

All over the newspapers, airwaves, and posters appeared information about the memorial services that took place in cemeteries throughout the country. There was also information about all of the Independence Day concerts, ceremonies, street performances, military fly-bys, and fireworks displays that occurred in cities all over Israel.

Each year, Remembrance Day begins with a siren sounded at eight in the evening for one minute during which everyone and everything falls silent. No vehicles move on the road. No one speaks. After the siren there is a ceremony at the Western Wall that is televised throughout the country. By eight o’clock, all of the stores and restaurants and places of entertainment have closed.

There are memorial events throughout the country. The one we attended was a large gathering at the Jerusalem Convention Center at which family members and friends spoke about their lost loved ones interspersed with appropriate music. Most heartbreaking was listening to David Hatuel whose pregnant wife and four daughters were murdered by Arab terrorists last year. He spoke about them and about missing them, of course, but he also spoke of retaining his faith in G-d.

On Remembrance Day itself, stores are open. Children go to school and commemorate the day with ceremonies there, but the atmosphere is restrained. People seem to talk more quietly and have more patience with one another. Throughout the day, all that is shown on television are stories of those we have lost. One after another child appears in the screen as a baby in mother’s arms, a toddler, a schoolchild, a Bar Mitzvah boy, a few pictures of the teen years and then the terrible news that the family received. Sometimes there are stories of how the person died, his last words, his last video, the one that he was taking at the time of his death. Sometimes there are pictures of the scene—and always, the viewer is left with the feeling of loss and emptiness. One after another the precious lives that were lost become part of our consciousness. This year, musicians found poems written by some of the deceased soldiers and set them to music. Then Israeli artists performed these songs as a tribute to those who wrote the words.

Remembrance Day ends at Mount Herzl, in the area around Herzl’s tomb. There Independence Day is declared and the festivities begin. Just as restrained and solemn as Remembrance Day is, that is how exuberant and enthusiastic Independence Day is.

One of the most beautiful parts of the opening ceremonies is the lighting of the twelve torches, one for each tribe of Israel. People are chosen on the basis of their contribution to the society to light each torch. Each one has a story that inspires. One can’t help but be impressed with the people we live amongst, their myriad origins, cultures, religions, races, languages—that all have been woven into this wonderful crazy tapestry that is Israel.

We spent the later part of the evening in the woods not far from our home with about 50 other people, sitting around a campfire and singing songs to the accompaniment of an accordion and listening to their stories of growing up in Israel or arriving as immigrants in the early days of the state. The air was electric as we heard from afar other people singing too and listened to the booms of the fireworks from several nearby communities.

This morning we ate breakfast on our front patio, sitting in our garden, the sun warming us and our flag waving, and we toasted the next year, praying that that our leaders will make wise decisions and that the country will remain strong.

And then, this afternoon, like just about every other Israeli family, we all got together for a traditional cookout! Our son and daughter-in-law host his family and hers each year and this year the weather was pleasant and the children were cooperative and it was hard to believe that there were over 30 children in the house.

On our way home we heard on the news that all of the parks in the center of the country were completely filled- so much so that people were barbequing on the roadsides. Similarly, all of the beaches between Ashkelon and Herzliya were completely filled. There were traffic jams throughout the country and people were asked to have patience…

The downs and the ups, the sadness and the joy, the loss and the completeness, it’s enough to make one confused and upset. However, I think that this emotional shifting of gears is just one more example of the strength that has helped us as a people survive.

The theme this year for Holocaust Remembrance Day, just a week ago, was the difficulty of liberation. How does one go on after the pain? Yet people did it and formed new families and achieved and prospered. So each year, Israel gets to exercise its emotional muscles and we learn once again that after sadness there can be joy.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Israel, Spirituality

To my father

May 9, 2005 by

My father was an artist. His hands were capable of drawing, sculpting, painting, building wonderful creations. He loved creating things. He loved the beautiful things in life. He loved sunsets and rainstorms and the sweet smell of fresh-cut grass. He loved wisteria and roses and the poplar tree he planted when it was a stick he rescued from the woods.

He taught me and my sister to love and cherish beauty. He found beauty wherever he looked. It was as if he had special sensors that led him to the delicate, the fragile, the sweet, and the precious.

I think that part of that gift that he had came from a serenity that he carried within him. He grew up in a home that was not perfect. He was unable to finish high school because he needed to earn money for his family. He married my mother, not the easiest woman to live with, and he worked hard for everything we had.

Yet, I don’t remember my father being upset, angry, bitter, or ever anything but even tempered and optimistic. He loved the people who came into his store. One after the other, they became his friends and came back to him whenever they needed the merchandise he sold. There was an inner serenity that he possessed that I only began to appreciate as I became an adult.

Through the years when our children were growing, life was very busy, sometimes frenetic. But I always had my father’s example to follow– of a man who knew that in the end, things would work out and that anything that did not threaten a person’s health or well-being was not really a problem.

So now the children are grown and we are finally settled in our own home and I enjoy life more each day. I love the varied calls of the birds. I love the perfumes of my garden—sage and rosemary and jasmine and honeysuckle. I love watching the trees bloom each year and then form lemons and pomegranates and clementines and olives. This year, for the first time there are plums too. And the flowers lift my heart—the bougainvillea in fuschia and purple and orange and pink and white. I watch the sun flicker in the shadows as a gentle breeze rustles the leaves of the grapevine, already blooming with clusters of grapes that will be full-grown in August.

I thank G-d for the beauty in the world, for the miracles of life and family and children’s laughter and sloppy kisses and the love of a spouse. And I thank my father for teaching me to appreciate all of the beauty in the world.

Filed Under: Spirituality

Mother’s Day

May 8, 2005 by

So it was Mother’s Day. Funny, something that had been a given since my birth is foreign to my experience these days. In Israel, Mother’s Day which has been transformed into Family Day, is observed in February. Most people who were brought up in the US completely forget about US Mother’s Day after their first year or two here.

I flash back to memories of my childhood in Philadelphia when my sister and I would walk to Castor Avenue and go from shop to shop looking for something special to give to our mother. How difficult the choice was! Nothing was good enough, pretty enough. What would she like? One year there was a small pink marble bowl on a pedestal that looked like a birdbath. Sitting astride the smooth shiny marble edges were two rough white marble birds. I loved it. We had it wrapped up and brought it to our mother. So intense was our anticipation of her joy at this quintessentially perfect gift that I have no memory of her actual reaction. I do know that it sat on the windowsill in the living room for many years.

Mother’s day was all about pleasing our mother, something that wasn’t such an easy task. I always wondered what it would be like to be the mother.

Well, what I can remember of my days as a mother of young children is some priceless gifts made of wood and tissue and glue and cardboard. I remember a plaster cast of someone’s hand and a fingerpaint print of someone else’s. But more than that, I remember the bright smiles and the exchanging of secret glances. I remember hugs and picnics and lots of laughing.

This morning, my older daughter called and asked if we would like a visit. She brought over her little girl, not yet 2 months old. Abigail looks so much like her mother did on a Mother’s day some years ago when she was one day old and her grandmothers came to visit me in the hospital. Then as now, I felt a sense of wonder and awe at being a mother, at being able to continue the line from the past into the future. Then as now, I am grateful to G-d for the privilege of being a mother.

Filed Under: Family life, Ramblings, Relationships, Spirituality

Connections

May 1, 2005 by

This is a pretty lonely world. We are born into families who are there to love us and to nurture us, and if we are lucky, we learn to feel secure when we are with our parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. They provide a safety net for us and help us learn which behaviors are acceptable and which are not. Their responses are the cues that help us to develop social skills.

Later in life, we are not held in the family in the same protective way. If our parents have been able to acknowledge our emerging maturity, then we are more and more on our own to make decisions, to figure things out, to plan, and to work at what we value. The freedom to choose is good and natural, but it removes us from the childhood cocoon.

However, we never really leave our parents and those we are close to. Their ideas, adages, and phrases remain with us for our entire lives. Karl Tomm, a well-respected family therapist has posited that the notion of an individual as a closed, self-contained unit, is an illusion. In fact, he believes that we incorporate into ourselves bits and pieces of all of the people in our lives who have been significant to us. He calls those parts of other people that become parts of us too the internalized other. When we remember what our mother would have said in a current situation or what our father might have quipped, we are hearing in ourselves that internalized other.

Likewise, we spread ourselves around to all of the people with whom we have significant relationships. They may say, “I remember your saying…” Or “when I am upset, I think about what you would tell me to do.”  This he calls “the distributed self.”

Karl Tomm uses those concepts (or at least did when I heard him several years ago) to help couples understand how their spouse is feeling and what motivates him or her to act. When I saw him working with the concept in a case demonstration, I was unbelievably impressed. However, what touched me even more was the spiritual aspect of his theory. It helps me to understand how we human beings interconnect, how people we love never really are gone because they reside in us, and most of all, how important it is to be careful about what we say or do to others. Our words are uttered in a moment, but their impact can last many lifetimes.

Filed Under: Parenting, Relationships, Spirituality

Passover thoughts

April 22, 2005 by

All this week I have been preparing for Passover. Cleaning is a fairly solitary activity and although I did have the TV and radio as companions for some of the work, it gave me some time to think.

I thought about all of the sdarim we have had over the years. Passover has always been a very special holiday for us. It was during my visit to my husband’s Army post on Passover in 1966 that we decided to get married.

He was the Jewish chaplain at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and that year was the first of our 40 years of sdarim. The next year, as newlyweds, we had a community seder on the first night of Passover. On the second night, we were to have had seder together and with two or three soldiers who had not been able to leave for the holiday. My husband had gone to the chapel for services. As I was waiting for him, three young soldiers knocked on the door and asked where services were. I told them, and as they began to leave, one said, “And this is where we have our seder?” I answered “Yes.” That year we had thirteen unexpected guests. Fortunately, we had plenty of food as I had cooked for the whole holiday.

As the years passed, we had our first child and then our second and then a third smiling face at the seder. One year I was very pregnant. One year I had delivered a baby two days earlier. Some years my husband conducted a community seder for one night. Some years my parents or sister joined us.

Over the years we have had guests who were close friends, guests who were professional acquaintances, and guests from foreign countries. Every year we ended the seder saying “next year in Jerusalem.”

And as I prepared this week, I felt happy and content that we had so many happy memories and that in these years, when finally we are living in Israel, we are continuing to build memories as our grandchildren now help fill our seder table.

Filed Under: Spirituality

The Pope and I

April 8, 2005 by

All week I have been preoccupied like most of the world, with the death of the Pope. Watching the ritual and ceremony, the dignity and respect that are being expressed, I am stunned. The Catholic Church has provided a beautiful tribute to the Pope. It is not a Hollywood production, but a ritual prescribed by their history. It is authentic and majestic at the same time as being restrained and respectful.

Ritual appeals to people on a deep level. It transcends words and travels directly to the soul. People crave ritual from their earliest days. A child wants to know what to expect of his world. He or she wants to know that in the morning there is getting washed and dressed and eating and then he or she is off to play or to school. Bedtime rituals allow the child to wind down from the day. Rituals provide a structure for life. They provide regularity and emotional safety. It is within the structure of ritual that a person can feel free. I like to think of ritual in the way I used to think of a playpen for my children. In the confines of the playpen, there were only safe toys and everything that happened inside that structure was safe and healthy. Likewise, in our lives we need that structure which is provided by ritual.

Families naturally create their own rituals. Family members may kiss hello and goodbye. The husband may bring coffee to his wife each morning. Children might show their parents schoolwork each evening after supper. The family might go out to eat every Sunday evening. Regularity and predictability are hard-wired needs.

Cultures and civilizations also create rituals. Holidays are ritual observances. Preparing for holidays, special table settings, linens, decorations are all part of the excitement of the holiday.

Rituals are not just actions performed on a regular basis, but on a spiritual level, they are specific symbolic actions. Immersion in a baptismal font or a mikva is not just a physical cleansing, but a spiritual cleansing. Lighting candles for mood is not the same as lighting candles for a holy day. The connection of action and meaning, the connection of past and present, the connection with others throughout the world along with regularity are all parts of what makes ritual so powerful.

Years ago, my husband and I took care of two little children, aged five and six for a couple of weeks. These were not Jewish children, but in our house, they experienced shabbat- the candle lighting, the kiddush and wine, the formal table settings, the prayers and songs. Of course they dressed up in their nicest clothes as did the rest of us. About three days later, one of the children asked, “Is tonight shabbat again?” She told me that shabbat was special. This child was not sophisticated. She had no understanding of the meaning. It was the ritual that spoke to her without words.

So often, people want to throw away things that are old and outdated. Modern, educated clients have come to me. They are successful in business, they have satisfying home-lives, but they are unsatisfied, and depressed. They feel their life is devoid of meaning. Ritual does not provide answers. It is instead, the spiritual home that helps us feel connected to other people, to the world, and to ourselves.

The Pope and I—we had that belief in common. May he rest in peace.

Filed Under: Parenting, Spirituality Tagged With: , , ,
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