A Sister’s Birthday. No Candles. No Cake. Just Memories.

@

Today would’ve been my sister Marilyn’s birthday. I say would’ve . . . because she died twenty-eight years ago of melanoma. So as the one left behind, the one that cherishes and mourns her, I get the honor of paying tribute to her. Something I do every year on this day.

Mari in office

Not one big on birthdays, this, her sixty-fifth, she would have hated. Hated the idea of it, the very sound of it, the fact that nothing was the same as before, that her body parts drooped and creped, thusly acknowledging that milestone passage into true senior territory, would be the last thing in the world she’d want to do. But given that she isn’t here to argue the point, I will speak on her behalf and say: she would have gladly accepted that fate over the other.

More than likely Marilyn would have caught the last flight from New York to Florida so she wouldn’t have to act sullen in front of her friends over a celebratory lunch or dinner, feeling it okay to act sullen in front of me. We’d spend the day together doing her favorite things: shopping, eating, taking a long drive, meeting with my children, who are now grown and barely remember her face. You see Marilyn never married. She had no children. So as the years progressed with no sign of those transformative experiences happening to her and without a word of complaint, she embraced mine as her own. Heartily and with grace.

mari and jared at zoo 2

Many times over the years I’ve found myself wondering how her life would have turned out—if she had lived. I’d love to imagine that the clothing business she’d started right before she got sick became a wild success, or that her Mr. Wonderful just so happened to live next door. I’d love to imagine that everything glorious my sister wanted in her life, eventually and fortuitously landed right in her lap. You know, as her sister, I get to dream those dreams for her, simply because I can. Because that’s my job. I am still her other half . . . even though she’s no longer here to nag me religiously like she did wherever, whenever the mood struck. It was a nagging I dreaded and a nagging I now long for, beyond words.

sisters zoo 2

It’s strange to think when we lose someone close to us, all that we’re really left with are those constant reminders of what we miss and those moments we’ll never share. And I didn’t want it to be just that. I demanded there to be some purpose to all this tragedy. If not, I knew I would drown.

The answer didn’t come right away. But it did though in between the course of my life winding and lengthening, as flowers blossomed and leaves faded. Marilyn’s death beyond forcing me to adopt a healthier lifestyle, also forced me to face certain ugly realities about my life going nowhere, and make those hard decisions that require the type of backbone I didn’t honestly believe I had. Decisions, in retrospect, I now see were all for the better.

So, that is what I take away with me today as I quietly eat this imaginary slice of cake chock full of a million imaginary calories and decorated with my sister’s name on it. That life is a crummy crapshoot. But it’s all we’ve got. So live it as honestly as you can remembering that those we love are always with us, always cheering us on.

Wherever they may be.

6 Comments -Leave a Comment

Greetings From South Carolina!

@

The land of pecan trees, cotton fields, peanut farms, Hell Hole Swamp, fried green tomatoes and all those lost and forgotten sparsely populated towns where the oh-so-many “for rent” signs in the equally lost and forgotten storefront windows tell that all too familiar story of hard times. And if that shit wasn’t enough, it’s also where for the past thirty days the world of puddles and mo-squitoes has taken on a whole different meaning for me and anyone else that dares to brave it.

FEMA photo

As a FEMA Reservist, I came here as a visitor. Someone whose time and care is limited. I can look around at all that’s good and all that’s distressing with a certain detached yet observing eye because I know my stay is temporary. I don’t have to endure this life. I’m only passing through.

But in no way do I not feel impacted by it.

Trust me when I say there’s nothing quite like standing in the middle of someone’s house, seeing what used to be the entire contents stacked high in one massive moldy pile of wood and fabric, completely destroyed, while contaminated water trickles down from a shanty roof barely holding its own, to make things crystal fucking clear in your head—if they weren’t already. That and doing a job which requires ten hours a day, seven days a week of tramping across mud, plowing through thigh-high grass embedded with fire ant hills, knocking on doors, passing out flyers, talking to people faster than the speed of light for fear that if you don’t, the friggin’ mosquitos swarming around you will make their way into your mouth before you have a chance to close it.

Welcome to the life of a DSA Reservist. Glory job this isn’t. That’s for make-sure-you’re-wearing-lots-of-bug-spray damn sure.

I’ve been asked numerous times why I do this work. And, you know, the answer’s always the same. I love what I do. It keeps me grounded, gives me purpose, makes me feel as if I’m actually helping someone in some way and given all that, I honestly believe, if come the end of my deployment I’ve made a difference in just one person’s life, well then . . . I know I’ve done my job.

And well.

Giving without any sense of expectation is so much more joyfully rewarding. I didn’t always understand that. I didn’t always realize the true prize was in the small miracle of a smile, of a simple thank you. But now I do. And like most things, there are those learning curves you either take or throw away by choice and as I ease into humility mode in the face of nature’s destructive force in South Carolina I carry with me my bucket of life tools hearing the echo of my FEMA brothers’ and sisters’ words ring in my ears: “whether it’s one disaster or a hundred, the goal is always the same. Go in, do your best, reach out any way you can, to as many as you can. And you’ll see, the people you encounter will change your life far more radically than you’ll ever change theirs.”

Hurricane Sandy brought that message home to me. It tore me up, then consumed with the kind of gut-wrenching emotions I’d once felt myself incapable of. And when I walked away, I was forever transformed in a way I’m not sure how to explain other than to say it was illuminatingly profound. There would never be any going back to whoever I was before that step into the light. And while my deployment here has been an altogether different experience for me, the people are not any less needy, or the mayhem surrounding them any less jarring.

So I know when my time is up here, I will once again leave renewed by it. By the absoluteness of its reminder just how thankful I am for all that I have. There are no regrets (well not anymore), no looking back wondering about all the decisions I didn’t make, along with the should haves and the could haves, because to wish upon all that pointless stuff, would simply negate the beautiful blessings that happened to me somewhere in between.

A friend recently told me: “There are no wrong decisions.” And, of course, he’s right. But, this too, isn’t something one readily wraps their brain around since it’s the kind of knowing that comes with falling and peeling your face off the floor one too many mornings before it hits you over the head. Granted some of us might not need to go off the deep end to figure these things out, while others do for the simple reason it’s in their genetic make-up. My younger hippy self free-floating aimlessly like tumbleweed, would never have listened then as she felt turning on and tuning out was the cool thing to do before being forced to join that much-dreaded establishment she knew awaited her. Therefore she missed the boat on so many things. Many critical choices that went hand-in-hand to a future landscape she couldn’t possibly envision. Not then. Not stoned or straight. She simply never saw them.

So all we can do is push on. Accept ourselves and all our perfect imperfections with loving grace. And after a lifetime of much soul-searching I feel I finally have done that. Well, at least enough to say out loud: I like who I am (wobbly bits and all). I like my life and this thrilling place I’ve finally arrived at. That I have been fortunate to live long enough to see my children grow, to hold a granddaughter, to travel to all those magnificent places I’ve dreamed about, to write a book, to stand up and be counted.

What more can any of us really ask for, then that?

They say when you reach a certain age you come to realize that despite all the crazy twists and turns you take along the journey of life, that all roads still lead you to exactly where you are now.

cotton fields of south carolina

Well, if that’s true . . . then I guess I’m right where I’m supposed to be. Here. Traveling on my road, one both rural and favored by God’s green earth that I can easily imagine someone like Woody Guthrie singing about or Jack Kerouac writing about (on a new roll of toilet paper, hopefully) at some point. But should Woody or Jack not step up to the plate to do their stuff, no worries, I will. I’m told I can’t carry a tune worth a shit, but I do have some potential with a pen.

We shall see.

2 Comments -Leave a Comment

Split to the Core

@

As a young girl growing up in New York, I was required to attend Hebrew School. My parents, following in the tradition of their parents, their upbringing, felt that this was where I belonged every Sunday morning, and as I got older, every Wednesday evening as well. They must have imagined I’d miraculously absorb the sense of God somewhere within those walls. Had they known then that I would turn into such a doubting Thomas and forsake the idea of any God, I absolutely believe they would have put their time and money to much better use.

In those early years before I hit the age of twelve, I admit I was a believer in all things magical. My young mind hadn’t yet the wings to think for itself. So, I listened in awe to the telling of all those magnificent Bible stories. Joshua and the Battle of Jericho. The Maccabees and Chanukkah. Noah and his Ark (scratch that Russell Crowe version from the brain. K?). David and Goliath. Bathsheba. I loved them all because they were the seeds from which I sprang.

Holidays were celebrated with the appropriate pomp and ritual. Family and friends would gather around the table on Passover with my father at the head reading through the prayer book, and us kids at the other end wanting the whole shebang over with as quickly as possible so that we could run off in search of the afikoman (matzo) and the dollar bill to whoever found it first.

Nothing then made me want to challenge the universe in which I lived. A universe which as I transitioned from blissfully ignorant childhood to painfully awkward pre-teen hood, had me too distracted and grappling with the uncertainty of my place and who I was in this perky-nosed, skinny, straight-haired world where you were only as good as the body you lived in, to be bothered with anything else.

Perhaps it wasn’t the most religious of upbringings. Even though my father came from Orthodox roots and my mother’s side kept a Kosher home. I imagine that this second-generation from which both my parents stemmed were so caught up in the aftermath of a war, digging their heels into Middle America and keeping up with the Smiths and not so much the Cohens, that they didn’t deem it quite so necessary to be as religious as their parents. So I grew up following a minimal Judaic practice. Which entailed only celebrating and observing the most significant holidays (Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Passover, Chanukkah); going to Temple on only two of them; and lastly being Bat Mitzvahed. (Not sure if that’s a word here folks, so just go it. Thanks!)

And while it seemed all my Jewish peers were doing pretty much the same thing, following this quasi Jew for a day routine, the closer I got toward that pinnacle point of standing in front of a whole congregation of faces I did and didn’t know, reciting a portion of the Haftorah, pledging my commitment to God on my thirteenth birthday, somewhere in between my direction of heart changed. Changed in a way that came as swiftly as learning the Easter Bunny didn’t exist, and as profoundly with its unspeakable dawning that I found myself pivoting away from all that I had known, to search out something more, something impactful that made sense to me. I mean “real” sense.

As you can imagine this upset my parents terribly. While they might have been tourists in their own faith, they still saw themselves as Jews and couldn’t understand my growing need that now led me down a different path toward Buddhism. A path that didn’t materialize right away, rather manifested itself over time after dabbling in numerous abstract schools of philosophy way above my mental pay grade, first. They were horrified to see me kneel before an “alter,” which in reality was the Gohonzon. An encasement that symbolically “reflects the state of Buddhahood inherent in life.” They couldn’t possibly know what it felt like to be welcomed into this world of thinking disciples, who like myself were also seeking an alternate road to that “something more” that didn’t require a belief in a mystical being—only a belief in myself.

That I remained a practicing Buddhist for many years in my OCD world where it’s impossible for me to stay true to anything longer than a minute, was a major feat. When I walked away though, I didn’t walk away empty-handed. I carried a deeper understanding of who I was and would always be. A Jew. Those are my roots right down to my core, an inescapable fact of my being.

In truth, people search their whole lives for all sorts of reasons. For justifications on why things happen the way they do? What does it all mean? What’s our purpose here? It’s simply part of the process. And because asking those questions for which there are no right answers, will only drive you bonkers. I learned that one the hard way. On my sister’s deathbed. So, I simply don’t go there anymore.

How do any of us figure things out, if it isn’t the hard way?

Many times when we view life in retrospect, it’s pretty damn easy to all be bloody geniuses with crystal balls the size of Texas. And for me, it seems almost comical, ironic even and yet not, that I had to travel so far to learn what had been there all along. My mother used to constantly shake her head at my “pigheadedness,” she called it. Always fearing that late night call from the police that I’d be lying in a ditch somewhere. I just don’t know how to do things any other way. Taking the easy route means nothing, sweating out the victories means everything. Even if the conclusion is the same.

Because you see . . . it’s all about the road trip getting there. I had to determine for myself what those defining parts were in order to come to this particular place I’m now standing. A place of bittersweet understanding of my role and my own concept of what it truly means to be a Jew. A person who’s only real job is to carry the cherished stories of my heritage with me wherever I go. And should I somehow pass this sense of embodiment onto my children . . . well, then . . . two points for me!

Look, I realize the sensitivity of this topic. And believe me when I say, “to each his own,” that they are words spoken with the utmost of sincerity. This is what makes this wonderfully, crazy, ridiculous world of ours so great. Or should be great, that we can feel okay about expressing our opinions free of fear and recrimination. When you look at the kaleidoscopic landscape of our society, seeing how different all these moving parts are—all shapes, sizes and flavors—you know, you just gotta love the beauty of it.

In any case, today is Rosh Hashanah. And I will celebrate it. Celebrate the small part I play in this remarkable tribe of people, the beginning of our New Year, the anniversary marking Adam and Eve’s creation. And regardless of your race, religion and slant on reality, from the bottom of my heart I wish to all of you 365 days of health, of prosperity, peace, love and happiness.

L’shanah tovah!

8 Comments -Leave a Comment