10 year closure

October 29, 2006

Make a note of it - This is an important historical date. It’s not going to show up in any textbooks. But history was made that day. Though when I think about it, its probably more like 15 year closure.

Mom and I had “The Talk” tonight. The subject was one that we skirt around, try to ignore, pretend it didn’t happen, and harbor all kinds of pain, anger and resentment about.

Our “break-up”.

Though in my case, I’d say, “My Disowning and Subsequent Expulsion From the Family”. I can’t speak for my mom, so I don’t know what pet name she’d refer to it by, but I can imagine it would be something along the lines of “That Time When My Heart Broke and I Lost My Daughter”. Or something. Dunno.

But she brought it up. She needed closure, and as I move on with my life, there will be less opportunities to discuss these things without other people around, etc. So she’d like me to tell her my side of the story - what happened. I resisted at first, because I felt like it would destroy the rapport we’ve worked so hard to build by going into that deep, dark pit of madness. I didn’t want to argue, assign blame and go back there. But she said she’d listen, not invalidate my feelings or thoughts, and not argue or deny, but listen and accept. So I plunged in and without embellishment, told her about That Time. The Dark Ages. The Expulsion. The loss of Trust. The Betrayal...the whole 9 yards. And I didn’t soften it, but I didn’t dwell in it either.

And she listened. Accepted. Heard me out. And apologized.

Apologized!

Those of you who know me and what I have been through could scoff and say that an apology does not even begin to repair the damage...but I disagree. More than anything, I always wanted someone to understand what I was saying, thinking, explaining. It’s ok if we didn’t agree, but the most frustrating part of my life is when people don’t understand me and I feel like I am talking to the walls. Her apology meant to me that she understood the pain she caused, the letdown, the failure as a parent to truly get to know me and meet my needs. And she said as much, which I was tremendously proud of her for, and also very, very touched.

I can’t really express the emotions we barreled through - fear, sadness, grief, pain, compassion, elation, love, nostalgia. It was a good talk, and healed so much for both of us, and it was less scary than I was expecting, which was nice. Though just as emotionally draining, which is ok.

I’m telling you this, so you can bear witness to the historical date of October 29, 2006.

Earthshattering moments should be shared.

Bible Mishaps - (be very afraid)

A friend of a friend is working as a proofreader for a company that publishes Bibles (New Testament). She has compiled a list of some of the funniest typos she's found, which I am posting here...

"And yo, you are worth much more than the birds."
"This glorifies God's power to flee his people"
"God's renown, character, immorality, and perfection all make him uniquely great."
"God's presence was the only guarantee that his people would be safe from their enemas."
"Home is where inhabitants are neutered without suffocation for who they are."
"God has total power over Stan and his evil forces."
"God explained the Day of Stonement to his people."
"This chapter records what might be the saddest event in the history of Israel, surpissed only by the crucifixion of Jesus."
"For more information on this topic, visit sickipedia.org. "
"When a time lapse complicates your emotions about what God promised, he sends reminders, grits, and encouragement to bolster your faith."
"Moses could have set the scene for God to get all the attention once water flowered from the rock."
"This was still the case when God chose Mary to beat the Son of God."
"...The Who truly respected the Lord."
"God's chosen people were gifted with sound, quality advice from their Marker."
"But ladies like Abigail, Samuel and Esther used their beauty for good."
"With loose change and gently used donations, you can support thrift stores, food panties, child sponsorships, refugee services, or countless other ministries."
"God loves seeing his people use the talents he gave them for his horror."
"The people had evidently accepted the outpouring of God's blessing and fellowship as aight, not a privilege."
"Like an ox gorged with fog, they were lazy, stubborn, and unwilling to serve God."
"My lover skips upon the mountains... "
"The listeners described in our text respond to the Worm of God with their emotions."
"People react to God's promises on many elves."
"The Weed must permeate the foundations of our lives."
"Otherwise the same superficial excitement of a swift decision will poot the truth to the side." "He had to provide leadership for his own fearful and complaining pole."
"Try meditating on the Weird of God."
"This behavior molds our character nerd guides our footsteps."

Whirling Dervishes

I love that phrase. Say it ten times, fast.

But that's really what the past few weeks have felt like. I keep thinking of tornadoes, waterspouts, hurricanes, tumbleweed.... Things that the wind whips up and makes move around at a dizzying pace and then abruptly sets down in chaos and disarrray.

Yup, that pretty much describes the past few weeks. (You know, it occurs to me that I have no idea if it has literally BEEN a few weeks or it just feels interminable that way.)

Here's the list - since I don't know that I have enough time to actually get into it all:
1) Travel to Ohio to visit a sick friend (I hate Detroit Airport!!!)
2) Endure her determined efforts to recruit me to Rabbinical School (No, I'm not interested)
3) Sick boyfriend which scares and panics me (a whole 'nother post I'm sure, to figure out the roots of that reaction to his relatively common, though painful pinched nerve)
4) Fun wedding last night where ghosts of my past manifest themselves in people at the wedding who I haven't seen or heard from in upwards of 13 years.
5) Re-discovery of another old friend popping out of the woodwork - which is cool.
6) Work sucks.
7) Have to finish making scarves to sell at Holiday Boutiques (Chanukkah)
8) Needs Assessment in Zambia - don't ask, it's like the big white elephant I am pretending I can't see in front of me.
9) One friends' break-up. One friends' miracle pregnancy (we are at 7 weeks!)
10) Wanting to go to Israel. Ireland. Zambia. Madagascar. Australia. The Moon.

I feel kind of overwhelmed actually. I havent been sleeping and so that makes me achy, tired and a little cranky, to be honest. I have some life choices I need to take care of (like finding a JOB) and I dont have the energy for it. I'd love to actually go away and relax, as opposed to the traveling I have been doing recently which is always to DO something or SEE someone. It's not over yet, Thanksgiving I have to go to Indy for a family Bar Mitzvah. And I have to leave Chewbacca behind which makes me annoyed and anxious.

I think it would be nice to breathe. Don't you?

Sometimes I look at my calendar and am amazed and appalled at how much I take on. I can't even find one stupid weekend to go away to DC to visit friends and hang out.

I think that what I really need, is a hot toddy and a good night's sleep, a calm weekend with no overbooking of activities, some hot cocoa and Chewy, hanging out in pajamas all day, and time.

Anyone willing to take bets on how much of that I can actually do?

Almost Less Homeless

Yesterday I did something totally compulsive, and as I did I felt really adult, and really REAL, but also kind of silly and what-the-hell-am-I-doing. I went to see an apartment - though it turned out not to be an apartment, but the entire ground floor of a sweet little house, on a quiet dead end street.

I'll back up. I've been feeling that restless need-my-own-space thing again. It's been a year and change and I need to move on, get my own space going, nest in it, decorate and cook and be in MY bat-cave. So I halfheartedly have been surfing around classifieds and realtors and stuff, looking at what rents are about. And yesterday I got a hit.

So - on a whim, I called the realtor and made up to go see the place during lunch. Which was about 15 minutes later.

I go to their office, which is a little hole in the wall tucked away between a bank and a gas station. The place stinks like stale cigarette smoke and the sign in the window lists the Licensed Realtor as a man. But when I go in, there are 2 women there, a mother/daughter team I later figure out, who share the last name as that licensed realtor, but are not men. So I dont really know if they are licensed. Weird. So I file that observation away. And they are both smoking in my face when I come in, which I found rude and lazy.

Now, I had spoken on the phone with a woman whose voice is so ruined by cigarettes that her age is completely unable to be determined. She also lacks people skills, phone skills, and when I met her, fashion skills - except the lugged out Infiniti she drives which I found interesting, and gaudy. The agreement was that if I were to rent through them I needed to pay a fee of 10% of one year's rent to them. That was about $1680. Explains the infiniti...

We drive to the house. (After she got lost, asked for directions, and then got lost again before finding it - this after she was gushing all about it and how it looks, when it became quickly obvious she'd never ever been there - Third Strike) Ok - so now that I have set you up to understand how much I instantly didn't like or trust this Realtor - we get to the house.

It is airy, bright, lots of windows, nice paint job with nice colors, a private back porch, large backyard, driveway and private side entrance, and storage in half the basement, gorgeous wooden flooring in the dining/room area, washer and dryer hookup, a nice eat-in kitchen with wonderful amounts of cabinets and counterspace and a large king-sized bedroom with an odd little alcove/room off to the side of it to be used as a nursery, or computer room. The weird parts were the location of the only bathroom (near the back door off the kitchen) and the closets (in the hall near the front door), and the fact that I had to bring my own fridge (?).

I truly loved the space. I loved the yard, the large kitchen, the feeling of Homeyness that you don't quite get in an apartment, the owner was a nice older woman who seemed very sweet.

But I really didn't like the Realtor, and when it came down to it, the layout was really odd, and I haven't really gotten a handle on what I can afford in terms of rent + utilities + Life. And in the end, I balked. But for a little while, I was almost less homeless. And that was a nice feeling.

Yom Kippur Blues

Boston is a really cool town. In some ways it’s so pretentious. In others, it's so totally laid back.

Forget politics. I don’t care about that. The history, the harbor, the frou-frou colleges, the squashed together townhouses in old brick that manage to look statesmanlike instead of hunched over and old. I really like Boston. It resonates somewhere in my American Soul, which I find totally strange because I didn’t think I really HAD an American Soul. But there’s something in the architecture, history and aura there that really touches me somewhere deep.

Yesterday was Yom Kippur. I spent my Day of Awe/Day of Atonement not really in a state Awe or Atonement, but it was still a profound experience. And I was in Boston. (Hence, the connection to the previous paragraph). My friend and I were leading services for upwards of 300 people. In my naivete, I somehow decided that there would only be 10 people there so it was ok if I messed up or anything. Boy was I wrong. 370 people filed in for the Kol Nidre service - which is the single most well-known Jewish prayer in the world. Actually, if you look at the words, its a legal formula that annuls any oaths and vows one may have made to God over the year. But the tune, which has been around since before the 8th century, is so stirring, and so solemn, with a gravity that belies my flippant way of describing the soul-quivering sounds of a good cantor singing the prayer.

Growing up, Yom Kippur was frightening to me, in an awe-inspiring way. I somehow believed that God was specifically paying attention to ME and MY SINS this one day, and that I was truly on trial for my choices and actions of the previous year. Not only that, there was the added stress of knowing that how well I prayed in this 27 hour period would determine how successful/happy/accomplished/healthy/etc my upcoming year would then be. Talk about pressure. But by the end of the fast, if I hadn’t fainted, I did feel cleansed, purer, more attuned to God, ethereal.

My belief systems have changed since I was 12, 13, 14 and I do not view the day with the same trepidation/excitement as I did then. To be honest, fasting is a bitch. But besides that, I get restless. Not all of the prayers really move me in any way, and the repetitions make me want to bash my head against a wall. I like the singing though.

So this year, to change it up a little (and due to some residual trauma from last year in the ‘hood) I joined a friend in this venture of leading services. And I have to tell you that though it was really interesting and different, and the day flew by, well, fast, (sorry) there was really something missing for me. It is different praying in a group of people who know when to respond, what the tunes are, and the whole choreography of the services. There is a kind of melding, oneness of purpose when everyone in the room is so on the same wavelength. It’s hard to create that sense of community in a group of strangers who are thrown together for a night and a day, with little or no prior experience.

The cool part was that the synagogue we were in had not had services for Yom Kipper in 24 years. And this was the first in over 2 decades. So that was significant. And added kind of a nice karmic touch to it all, I felt. But I left feeling a little dissatisfied. Something was missing.

As I said before, I wasn’t really in an Awe And Atoning place. I was restless. My spirit was restless, seeking some other expression of closeness to God on this, the holiest of days. I think the half hour I sat at Boston Harbor did more for my spiritual psyche then 27 hours of fasting and over a thousand pages of prayer. Sad, really. And I am left a little adrift in my belief system again regarding Judaism. It seems that I don’t fit into the place I had carved for myself, after all. Which leaves me kind of nowhere when it comes to Jewish Ritual practice.

Maybe these formalized rituals are just not for me. Maybe my free-expression has more connection for me than formulaic verse and choreographed prayer to the Being known as Deity. Maybe all this stuff and nonsense - is just, well, Stuff and Nonsense.

Interesting...and a little disturbing.