"All is written". And "We choose our path".

How do you count these things?
We figure he could have lived another 15 years,
if he had just behaved.

If he had just quit smoking,
stayed put,
not wandered off into the hot sun
alone.

If he had had devoted children
waiting on him at all times
making sure he didn't fall.

If we encircled him constantly
as on that Tu B'Shvat night
When all of us surrounded him
and sang.

But if he were someone
who just behaved,
would he have,
at age 16 in 1941,
like our ancestor Abraham,
left his father's house,
his home,
his land,
and walked on foot
to a place he did not know,
a place where some voice told him
he would be a blessing?

If he were someone
who stayed put
would our people
have a modern day home
in Israel?

Arriving secretly in Israel
years before the state was declared ours,
he worked long hot hot hours
under sweltering sun
to build up this land.
And he, with other tireless youth,
after the working
would not go to sleep.
After the day's hot work,
late into the night
they would sing,
dance.

Yosef fought
to liberate Eilat,
the south of Israel.
He defended
the Galil,
served in the Golan.

If Yosef stayed put,
let hot sun keep him down,
who would he be?

Being alive, for Yosef
involved making strong sweet Turkish coffee
for other people,
not waiting to be served coffee
without sugar because it's no good for his health.

We offered him coffee
in the nursing home.
"No thanks. I can't drink coffee
without a cigarette".

Give me one cigarette.
What's the worst that could happen?
Come on,
one cigarette.
Whatever will happen will happen.
Give me a cigarette.
The hell with it.
This is living, for me.
Ah!

Rachel told me once
that all that we will become
is written at or birth
on the inside of our skull
in small writing
that we cannot read:
the squiggle of synapses,
the imprint of convolutions,
veins,
neural connections,
the configuration of cells,
the mapwork of thought patterns.

If they had not simply wrapped
Yosef's whole body in a white tallit,
and buried him gently beside Rachel,
if they had looked,
what would they have found written
on the inside of his skull?

He died as he lived,
did his last walk
as he did his 1941 walk to Israel,
defying hot sun,
choosing freedom.

The Direction of the Gift

A little girl was losing her motivation for the hugely arduous task of working on her speech. Of course I always try to make it fun with games and rewards, and by keeping the focus on her news, her interests, her specialness, her self esteem. Etcetera etcetera etcetera. Suddenly a few weeks ago, she started drawing a chart. She was making a daily schedule sheet for me, so I could see in colour all of my therapy sessions. What generous, focused, eager work she was doing, asking questions as clearly as she possibly could, repeating and rephrasing, working on her sounds with conviction so she get this gift right and useful for me. At the next session I told her I was packing for a trip to the Kibbutz, and needed to decide what to wear for swimming at the Sachneh, for supper, for the special Shavuot ceremony, for the drive. Well, she worked and she gave and she helped me decide on the yellow bathing suit with the turquoise and yellow coverup and flipflops, all the while practicing her speech sounds with vigour. And of course, this week, she helped me plan a trip to Israel for a niece of mine, complete with a two night stay at Herod's, the most expensive hotel in Eilat. I found out what I've often found out, that high motivation comes from the drive to be helpful and giving. That, as Rabbi Greiniman once said, the direction of the gift is not always the direction that the object passes. That the giver receives something priceless.

A Biography of Murray Enkin

That in high school or university, I could write a paper with the professor's eyes in mind, and bring it to a certain level. Or I could write it with the notion that I would let Daddy read it. Just that thought made me write more thoughtfully, follow a train of logic, go deeper, question the givens. This last was the main one: question the givens.
Every teaching from Daddy always has the J stroke. You know what I mean: when you paddle a canoe, any large sweeping paddlestroke is followed by a little switchback stroke to correct for oversteering in a certain direction, to keep the canoe on a straight course, to say, "Maybe there's truth in what I said, but take it with a grain of salt, because at one level it's real and at another level, like all teachings, it's nonsense. Question the givens."
I remember in the elevator after a prenatal class where Daddy was the priest of a new religion, psychoprophylaxis, prepared childbirth, I talked about his mention of effleurage, the stroking of the outside of the tummy, to comfort the inside. The idea that we can keep nerve endings busy on the skin, and take away receptor activity internally, where the discomfort is happening. "Don't take it too seriously", Daddy said.
Once a boy asked me to travel. Daddy said no. But then he said, "You're allowed to question me. You're allowed to give me your point of view". Oh. He's not going to do the deciding for me in this life..
Later, when he entitled a talk, "From Cradle to Credo", I wrote, "What Cradle? What Credo?" I had a laundry basket, not a cradle. And no credo was clear. My response to the writing pro mpt, "I grew up in a house filled with......", was "I grew up in a house filled with love and contradictions".
"You are what you pretend to be", Daddy reminds me. Expect inconsistency. Embrace uncertainty. Stand, at once, inside, and outside, seeing the absurdity of all things. All things except canoe trips, where motivations are real and the looncalls over the morning lake are what living is really about, where a J stroke really does keep the canoe steady on its course, keeps you from veering too far in any direction.
A biography of Murray Enkin. We paddled a canoe, my Mommy in the bow, calling out the rocks and the clear passage through the rapids, me in the middle, feeling loved, and my Daddy in the stern, paddling J strokes.

The Family Kipa

There is a quality of light called, "The Wolbromski beauty". You see it shine in eyes and cheeks, a calm, laughing reverence for togetherness and life. Last night saw it surrounding the chupa made of grapevines in the Judean Hills, a weddingplace steeped in biblical tradition and historical longing. The laughing reverence sparkled lovingly from under the chupa, as Lavi, a young grandson of Mommy's sweet uncle Abchu stood, his cheeks, his eyes, glowing the Wolbromski beauty with a special chen, with his bride Yael, the two surrounded by delighted family. The rabbi instructed all the guests, gathered in the grass around the chupa, that our biggest wedding gift to the new couple is our hearty "Amen" to all the traditional blessings, to launch them into a life of gila, rina, ditza, chedva, ahava, achva, shalom v'reut. Love in all of its forms, joylove, delightlove, respectlove, lovelove, friendlove, peacelove, lovelovelove. Amen. Amen. Each blessing was given by a different uncle, (with of course Mommy's Chagall forms floating above the chupa, Zaidie's mother Aidl, may her memory shower blessings on these sparkling children who carry forward the Wolbromski beauty, Zaidie's sisters and brothers, Golda, Ruchele, Abchu and Shimon, all of whom had children and grandchildren present at the wedding, and Zaidie's other sisters and brothers, who didn't live to see children and grandchildren.) When it was the turn of Yossi Bar to make a blessing, a quick scurried search for a kipa led him to borrow the kipa of his brother Dani, father of the chatan. Yossi made the blessing, then smilingly placed Dani's kipa back on his head, all with the Wolbromski beauty, the laughing reverence for family togetherness and Israel and life. Mazal Tov to beautiful Lavi and Yael. June 2 is a good day to be married.

Not with a bang but a giggle

I don't imagine the world is going to end today. Though I saw it in all the papers. You can't believe everything you read, I suppose. Tempting as it may be. The believing I mean. Daddy and I used to shout over Niagara Falls from above, watching that changing, constant scape of frightening volumes of water falling over the edge, our glasses dotted with spray, our voices a whisper over the water's furor, a heady, tempting pull to be two of the water droplets, joining the many in the heady, headless adventure. To be pulled in. Bernouilli's principle pulls you in. The herd instinct. The sound of two hands clapping. Your own two hands in a vast concerthall audience, though you didn't cortically will the clapping. Your hands resonated with the crowd's rhythm, and clapped without you. No, I don't imagine the world will end on May 21, even if enough people believe it. But they say we should live our life as if this day is the last, and also live our life as if this day is the first. Look in awe and wonder at sun over waves (I do! I do! Arriving at the sea's edge is everyday a first, an awe, an awakening for these surprised eyes). That sun disappears, that darkness comes, actually surprises me, each time we stay down at the beach too long, jump the nighttime waves by ear, and fall, our ear confused by the complexity of waverhythms in the roaring black darkness. Let me live each moment as if it's the first. And savour each precious day as if, as if, as if this dear, tumultuous, beautiful physical world of ours is just one of those tiny droplets of Niagara's River, ready for the escarpment of a lifetime.

To Jayda on May 14

That she would travel all the way to Victoria just for my 50th birthday party, do my toes and my fingernails and dress in minis with me, photographing the whole thing at angles that made us look good..... That's a friend.
That she would travel all the way to Netanya when she detected a small note of sadness amongst all my happy words.....That's a true friend. (How we dance the waves, wear each other's dresses and each love it when the other looks even better than she does in this or that outfit. How we match at times, contrast at others, always bringing out the best in each other.)
That the very friend who arranges nature so that every photo is picture perfect and happy, would be the one who sees all the facets of me, reads me between the lines, knows when my smile is mixed, my happiness complicated, my questions unformed and unaskable. And that she would ask the sensible questions that untangle my tangles, dance me towards clarity.....That's a soulfriend.
Happy Birthday Jayda. You are so very beautiful. Love Nomi

We Find Each Other

A poignant melody line in Anne Michaels' "Fugitive Pieces" weeps through the novel, appearing again and again like a strain from the Moonlight Sonata. The young protagonist lives his life with a recurring tender memory, his sister Bella's fingers as she played the Moonlight Sonata. As a child, he had hidden in a closet and watched the Nazi's kill his parents and carry off his sister Bella. Did she survive? Would he ever find her again? He lives this question into his adulthood. The novel ends and we never find out. The game of Jewish Geography, that enchants and compels us all, is our search for Bella: the sister that may or may not have survived, the relatives we never reconnected with, when one branch of the family went to Toronto, one branch to Uruguay, one to Israel, and the rest hid in forests or were sheltered by The Righteous of the Nations. (We say Righteous Gentiles in English, but the Hebrew expression is this, Chassiday Umot HaOlam, the righteous of the nations. We are now on facebook with the family that sheltered our relatives during the war.) This past Sunday we had a delightful visit with the always inspiring Frania Goldhar, who survived Auschwitz and and then raised lambs in Yokneam, Israel. She still lives today on the same land where she first settled in 1948. We were having one of those familiar conversations about all the crazy coincidental meetings of people who turn out to be long lost relatives. In our family we have an incredible talent for finding each other, or a recurrent streak of improbable luck, or a heaping spoonful of morphic resonance. I commented that I think we have a sense that detects relatives. "A nose", my cousin Yossi clarified. Much later, over dessert, lovely 88 year old Frania was talking about the 300 sheep they were raising. All of the ewes gave birth at the same time, and when they would come back from pasture to their baby lambs, each mother found her own baby. Frania remembered marvelling at the mothers' ability to find their own babies. Suddenly we all saw the connection. We do find family. It is a sense, like so many, that we cover over with intellect, but never lose. *************************************************************************************