Where Have I Been Writing?

Where have I been, dear readers? Where have I been writing?

Three months ago tonight, my mother died. In the turmoil of the week that followed, I struggled with remembering her - with honoring her. In Judaism we typically do this by reciting Kaddish daily - and with an effort and support from other I live in a community where I could do that. But the first handful of times I recited Kaddish it just felt ... powerless. The words are all too familiar, the ideas in it archaic, and most of all the way we recite it - quickly and then on to announcements or wishing each other a good day - seemed to draw me away rather than connect me to my mother's memory, God, a spiritual feeling.

Even without my telling her about this, my boss and colleague suggested study in lieu of (or addition to) whatever Kaddish I could manage to recite. This sounded terrific, and I looked at my bookcases and at texts I have interest in - but nothing caught my fancy.

And then it came to me. My mother is a writer. Was. Sorry, I forgot to say "was." It's only three months, you know.

My mother was a writer, and as I considered whether I could actually finish any of her projects (jury still out, by the way), I realized that what I can do, what I am very well equipped for (not that I'm not equipped for study), is writing. 

I am a writer, and my mother was a writer. And I can write in her memory.

Now, I write every day. I journal for 18 minutes every morning, and I write creatively once a week, and I was doing a pretty good job at keeping this blog up. To honor my mother, I felt like I had to add something. So I added 18 minutes a day of writing - memories, fiction prompts, essay-like things.

I know I stopped writing the blog. I was writing, but I wasn't writing anything I felt I could share. I was in a bit of a block on that front. But I was writing.

And then, on October 26th, in response to a fantasy-like prompt from my writing friend, Sarah Mendonca, I hit upon a short story that, over the next couple of days became a long journey. And so, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, began to outline, and on November 1st began to write in earnest. More than 60,000 words later, on this last day of November, I have a complete draft of a novel and seven short stories based on the novel.

And today, I can come back to you and say, what a WILD experience. The words flowed in November - I didn't really have a plan, I didn't know at all where the story was taking me. I learned about mdy characters as I went, and I became invested in them the same way I get invested as a reader - I didn't want to stop writing the way I can't put down a book.

I won't tell you it's perfect - it's not. It needs a lot of work, now. Because I learned more and more about my characters as I wrote, I know I have to go back and correct things. 

But folks, I wrote a book. I did it on my lunch hour, and in my journal writing time, and in my writing-in-memory-of-mom time, and in my blog time, and in my spare time, and in the middle of the night.

I let go, and a book came through me. My husband said at one point - about his own non-fiction writing and my fiction - that it's like Mom is behind us, out there in Olam Haba (the world to come), urging us to write. 

Tonight, as I put the novel and short stories aside, to be revisited in January (I tell you, I can't wait to meet up with my characters again, but I know it's time to put them away), I am wondering what I will write tomorrow, when I wake up and don't write my novel. A week ago, I already returned to journaling in the morning, since the novel was done and I was working on the short stories. 

Tonight, I return to the blog. I want to tell you I will keep up with it, but I don't know that I will. I want to think you care about this post, that it is meaningful to you. It is meaningful to me - I have been on a journey with my characters, and this blog didn't know. And this blog is a part of my journey as a writer, too. Perhaps I will blog again next week. Or perhaps I will be writing something, somewhere else. I can't promise which. 

I can promise that I will be writing. I am a writer, and I am writing in memory of my mother, Julia, who was a writer.

My Mother Was A Dream Interpreter

Last night I dreamed I was sitting at a table with my mother's "Writing Sisters," a group of women she loved, with whom she workshopped writing, and especially with whom she share a passion for writing.

My mother was a dream interpreter. Like the biblical Joseph she could sometimes be blunt in her interpretations. I can't tell you whether she thought much about her interpretations first. As a mother myself, I can say that she probably didn't - she just spoke the truth that came to her in the moment, when I came to her with my dreams, often waking her from her own.

One particular dream I remember, I must have been eleven or twelve, came after one of our rabbi's rousing, demanding, terrifying sermons against nuclear proliferation (I had several dreams/nightmares after his sermons). 

We were walking in a wasteland, along a bar of sand raised above more sand, as far as the eye could see, to the flat horizon. Only the ridge stood out, and maybe a few broken pieces of metal machinery. I was with my parents. At this point I can't remember whether my brothers were also there, but I think not.

Up over the horizon a few large missiles, blue and silver, rose, veered towards us, and landed - one nose down, tailfins jutting up in the air, very near to the ridge; the next nosecone piercing the ridge we were walking on. I was, naturally, terrified. I guess I turned to my parents for reassurance. My dad said, "it's just a test, don't worry. We are okay." My mom said nothing.

I woke from the dream terrified. I went to my parents bedroom, this time looking for reassurance in a waking state. My mom came out and sat with me, and I told her my dream.

"Oh, that just means he will be in your next life, and I won't," she said, as if it was the truest, most obvious thing about this dream.

Had I asked her why she didn't say anything in the dream? I don't remember. Either way, to this day I find her interpretation not in the least bit reassuring.

In these first few weeks since Mom's death, I have thought often of this dream - and her response. Did she really believe this? In these past years when words were absent from her mouth due to a stroke did she remember, and know how close her interpretation was?

My dad and I carry on. Mom is gone to Olam Haba, and we are here, in Olam Hazeh. For nearly three years, she was unable to speak much, and for the last year really not at all. 

My dad and I live on. We speak to each other. In some ways her loss of speech opened up pathways between him and me that somehow stayed narrow in the time that she and I developed an incredible friendship, starting right after my high school years. 

And now my mom is gone. And in some ways it is like my dad and I are forging a "next life" together. We reassure each other. Is this a test? No - this is life. Eventually we all lose close family 

I'm not sure what Mom would say about last night's dream. Still, her voice lives on in my memories of her, and in her writings - personal and professional. And I will continue to listen, to seek connection to her through those writings. Maybe, just maybe, that's what last night's dream was about - that I, as her writing daughter, am thus kin to her writing sisters. May the Sisters and I continue to write, to honor her memory, and to follow our own passion.

From Shiva A Beginning

Moshe received Torah on Sinai and passed it to Joshua.
Joshua passed it to the Elders, the Elders to the Prophets, and they to the Men of the Great Assembly. And they said, "Don't judge in haste, raise many disciples, and build a fence around Torah." (Avot 1:1)


As I sit in the week of shiva following my mother's death last Monday, I have had many recommendations, and many thoughts, about how to keep time during the process of mourning. Shiva is obvious, mostly - seven days mostly at home, letting community surround me and my family. And I must say the community, composed of people I know who knew my mother, and of people I know who didn't know my mother, and people I hardly know who did or didn't know my mother, has been incredible. I feel comforted. I feel met and honored in my place of mourning.

The custom of saying Kaddish daily is likely to be difficult, given the lack of daily minyan and the inevitable busy life I will be returning to. Someone suggested study, particularly some piece of Torah or Mishnah or other traditional text, as a daily practice. This would surely honor my mother's zest for learning.

Today, though, it came to me. My mother was a writer - and writing is for me a core part of life and living, a passion my mother passed on to me. Recently I read in one of her journals her words praising a piece I had written. Writing is a way to honor my mother's memory - and writing daily with this purpose is also the best way to avoid one of the pitfalls of grief that I could easily fall into - a sort of writer's block.

So I begin a practice today, on the 5th day of sitting shiva for my mother, in which I will write for eighteen minutes -- memories of life with her, reflections on her life and things she taught me, and, when I get stuck, finding a text to learn and reflect on in her memory. This in addition to journaling daily and any other writing I might do.

Today, I begin in reflection on Avot 1:1 (above):

My mother gave me Torah -- she and the people she surrounded herself with.
   She gave me Torah by choosing Judaism for herself and for me.
   She gave me Torah by choosing to send me to the Seattle Hebrew Academy
          for my early education.
   She gave me Torah by joining and becoming an active member of Temple Beth Am, 
         and by joining the choir and being in the synagogue for Shabbat and 
         other events throughout the week.

My mother gave me Torah by pursuing her graduate education, 
         especially because it was in the field of Jewish Studies, 
         but also because it was the pursuit of ongoing, ever growing knowledge.
   She gave me Torah by celebrating Jewish life at home, weekly and through the year, 
         and at personal moments along the way.

My mother gave me Torah by pursuing justice, through giving to diverse organizations,
         and by being an open and gentle and generous person to whomever she encountered.
   She gave me Torah by living her life with verve and with dignity, from difficult beginnings
         as a war orphan to the very end through adversity and illness.
  
My mother gave me Torah by loving me, from the moment she gave life to me, teaching me
         to walk through fears and to face life head on.
   She gave me Torah by holding on tight to life, and by giving to her family in the moment
         she finally let go of her place in this physical world.

Mom. Ma. Ima! I have called you many names. You gave me life. You gave me Torah.
   Your memory will always be a blessing, sweet on my tongue as I share with friends
         with family, and especially with my son.


I invite my readers to write your own reflections. Think of someone who has taught you Torah - who has taught you about life. Maybe this person is deceased, like my mother, but maybe they are still alive (too often we reflect only after someone has gone). How did this person teach you? What did they teach you? What have you received?

St. Helens - I will never forget! 35 years

On top of St. Helens
All covered with ash
We lost Harry Truman
And his 800 cats.
     (sung to the tune of "On Top of Spaghetti")

Thirty five years ago today, Mount St. Helens blew her top. She puffed out ash and smoke, creating beautiful and terrifying visuals for miles to come, leaving anywhere from a dusting of ash here in Seattle and a lot of other places (apparently as far away as Minnesota) to feet of it in the immediate surrounds.

My older brother and I used to sing the little ditty above with a sort of glee, but the truth is that Harry Truman (not the president), refused to evacuate his home on St. Helens prior to the eruption. He and his sixteen cats (okay, our little folk ditty exaggerated a little) died there. One of 57 human and countless animal deaths.

Whenever May 18th rolls around, I find myself reflecting. 

We felt small tremors at our house in Settle - watched the red mushroom lamp swaying on its wire over our kitchen table.

I can still see the ash plume in my mind's eye - I don't need the photographs, though I don't think we could see it from our house (we had a good north view, but not south).

I can remember the dusting of fine ash that was impossible to clean, and stories from family and friends south and east who had a foot or more of fallen ash to contend with. I always thought, if it's so hard for me to clean one little layer, which scratched the heck out of the plexiglass in our front door beyond repair, how much harder for those who had not just the dust but the weight of piled ash.

For years, when we would drive down I-5 to Oregon, we could still see barren hills of ash, pushed off to the side of the road. Eventually, these became fertile, grasses and wildflowers covered them, and eventually trees made them essentially indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape, so that if you don't know where to look you would have no idea what you were seeing. 

Like St. Helens, who has welcomed the return of plants and animals to her reshaped landscape, I too have changed in these past 35 years. Sometimes inside I feel very much like the 9 year old child for whom the above events were so immensely important. But 35 years adds a lot of layers. For St. Helens, a mountain, those layers include the rebuilding of the inner dome and the reshaping of the outer flora and fauna. 

For me, those layers include growing up (still, every day), developing an appreciation for landscapes across our country and, indeed, our world, and learning to welcome the diverse nature of this world into my heart. For me, these 35 years have helped me to deepen the sense of human journey in the world, the way we are drawn from and to places. 

35 years later, May 18th, 2015 - and I have returned to the PNW, where the local news (see here and here, for example) is acknowledging, investigating, and commemorating this event that has been a natural marker in my life, in that "do you remember where you were when" way. In my call to return, throughout the years, I think I can understand a little of Harry Truman's refusal to leave, his willingness to stay in a place where death was almost certain. Where else would he feel so at home?


Note: I can find no reference to the little folk ditty at the top of this post. Did my brother and I make it up? Was it limited to our neighborhood? Did you, my Seattle readers, also sing this?