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?

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma: Elul and Death-Bed-Side Musings

Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma... *
NOTE: This entry was written Saturday, 29 August 2015. In the wee hours of Monday morning, 31 August 2015, my mother died peacefully. I am so grateful for all of the readers - friends and those who don't know us - who honor her and my family by reading this.


My mother has been one of my greatest teachers throughout my entire life. For years, since I got my first email account, twenty-five years ago as a college freshman, my mother and I had a nearly daily (and sometimes multiple times a day) email correspondence. In time, this became a sharing of struggles and mutual support. Always, she shared insights -- about her life, the lives of people we know, and life in general -- that helped me to grow and change inside. Nearly three years ago, that correspondence, and our ability to talk on the phone (we definitely needed bulk long distance in the days before cell phones), disappeared in an instant. She was in the hospital, I called to talk and comfort her, she picked up the phone, and -- with my dad and the doctor in the room there, she suddenly couldn't speak.

Since then, despite her inability to speak, my mother has continued to teach me, day in and day out, about the strength and will to continue to live, to always strive to move forward, to get back up on one's feet literally and figuratively.

And so it breaks my heart that this past Thursday my dad and I finally had to be the ones to say "it's time to let go." She knew, too. I'm sure she did. In her last conscious moments, she looked deeply at each of us gathered in the room. My dad**, my brother, my husband, me.

We continue to watch vigilantly, as her body pulses on.

"If I have done anything to harm you in the past year, please forgive me." My mother taught me to always ask these words out loud, each year in season of Awe. We have usually asked between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

"Repent one day before you die," taught Rabbi Eliezer (Avot). There is no time like the present. I don't expect my mother to live to see Rosh Hashanah, two weeks from now. Right now it is Elul, the month preceding these days -- and a time of preparation for those upcoming days of awe.

Last night I sat by my mother's bed and asked her forgiveness. This is the hardest year, yet. Did I imagine the slight raise of eyebrows, or a minute squeeze from her hand?

I sang to her from Psalms:
עשה עיני אל ההרים מעין יבוא עזרי
I will lift my eyes to the mountains from whence my help comes.
(among others)

 and also from the prayers of forgiveness:

 סלח לנו מחל לנו כפר לנו
Forgive us, pardon us, grant us atonement.
(among others)

My mother has taught me to live tradition, not just to know it, by living it herself.

Any sins I commit, by omission, by neglect, or by intent, are my own. And I have plenty.

It occurred to me last night when I returned home, and was trying to find sleep, that there is another way in which my mother has lived that I have not fully lived up to.

I have never once heard my mother say "I don't want to...."
(There is one exception, and it is only in the past year when she has been entirely dependent on other people for nearly every aspect of her life from access to food and entertainment to personal hygiene, and I do not count this as a lapse, but rather as a part of her ongoing desire to have some control and sense of safety in her fragile life during this time.)

I know that I regularly feel that "I don't want to." When I would express this as a kid, my mother would make me do things anyway -- but she always stood behind me, sometimes literally, as I did them. A silly memory of this is when I went to get my driver's permit. I was nervous, it was a new thing, I didn't know what to ask or how. She coached me, but she wouldn't go up to the desk for me and ask for the paperwork -- she made me do it. Nearly thirty years later, I still remember that moment, and am grateful for it. Her coaching from way back continues to guide me when I encounter new things.

But I can be stubborn, and sometimes it takes me a long time to go up to that desk, to step up to the plate as it were.

As my mother lies unconscious, as we watch her body wither, I cannot help but think how I have already missed in the past few years since she lost her ability to speak and write, and how greatly I will miss, her coaching, her conversation, her stamina.

In my mother's honor, I want to strive harder against the "I don't wanna" feeling in my life.

Don't forget to call, talk with, write to, connect with your loved ones. Don't forget to call your Mamma! I'll be sitting by my mother's side as long as I can. I love her more than anything in the world!



Notes:
* Don't Forget to Call Your Mamma...I Wish I Could Call Mine is the title of a book by Lewis Grizzard.I once had all of Grizzard's books, collections of his syndicated newspaper humor column. I laughed heartily through my late teens and my twenties to his work. This is the only book I have kept through the years, though I haven't reread it in at least a dozen.
** For family, and others who wonder or know, he is my step-dad. See my father's day post from this year.

Wake Up, Elul is Here! -- with Writing Prompts

רבי אליעזר אומר, יהי כבוד חברך חביב עליך כשלך, ואל תהי נוח לכעוס, ושוב יום אחד לפני מיתתך

Rabbi Eliezer would say: The honor of your fellow should be as precious to you as your own, and do not be easy to anger. Repent one day before your death. (Sayings of the Fathers (Avot) ch.2)

Asked his disciples: Does a man know on which day he will die? Said he to them: So being the case, he should repent today, for perhaps tomorrow he will die; hence, all his days are passed in a state of repentance. (bShabbat 153a)

Mindfulness is a hot ticket word in contemporary American culture. It goes along with meditation, yoga, contemplative practices. Some of us may roll our eyes at the term, others may say, "yeah, I do that!" and still others — perhaps most of us — have a desire to increase our mindfulness.

In the ancient wisdom of Rabbi Eliezer we find the call to be first of all mindful in our relationships. Hold the honor of our fellows high, and try not to get angry. And, knowing we will err, as surely all humans do, Rabbi Eliezer offers a way out: repent. Now.

But don't we all get caught up in the rush of daily life? Don't we sometimes rush to grumble about the person in front of us on the road, or in a grocery store? Don't we sometimes yell at our children out of exasperation even when we know it won't help anything (I did that the other day at the park, and I'm still thinking how ridiculous I must have looked to all those — one of my less pretty parenting moments)? Aren't we all sometimes selfish, sometimes abrupt, sometimes hot, sometimes judgmental? Haven't we all acted before thinking?

The blasts of the shofar, from this first day of Elul into the coming new year, call us to wake up, to check in with ourselves and see, just how mindful are we? Just how aware are we in our daily lives? 

Even if we have a daily practice of self-reflection and self-improvement — even if that practice has us turning to those we have been angry at, or have judged poorly, in the process of our daily lives — even so, very few of us don't need a reminder.

Elul gives us a month to reflect on the last year and to renew our mindfulness in preparation for the new year, and another ten days to seek forgiveness before we rehearse our death at Yom Kippur. 

Wake Up! shouts the shofar. Pay attention. How are you being in the world?

One of my spiritual teachers regularly asks the question How be you? Sometimes this sets my inner grammar police wriggling uncomfortably. But just now, I'm hearing it differently. "How are you feeling" is not the question she is asking me. Rather, I am sure, she is asking How are you being in the world? How be you?


And this is the question I offer to you. How are you being in the world?


WRITING PROMPT: If you don't have a journal, find some blank paper. Write down the question, How am I being in the world? How was I in my interactions with people today? Now spend 18 minutes (my timer is set there, but chose your amount of time) reflecting on one or more encounters you had with other people today. Focus on how you were in those interactions; let go of how they were, only judging them with honor. 

Repeat this exercise throughout the week. If there are days when you feel like you don't have much to say, reflect backward; is there an experience from the last week, month, year that you are still thinking about, that is still bothering you in some way? Reflect!

Re'eh: Reaping Blessing Through Letting Go

When you do set [your slave] free, do not feel aggrieved; for in the six years s/he has given you double the service of a hired man. Moreover, the Lord your God will bless you in all you do. 
(Deut. 15:18)

I don't keep human slaves, and I don't believe in such keeping, but I do keep material slaves. Beyond the things I have in my life that I put to good use on a daily, weekly, or even annual basis, I keep things far beyond their function to me.

When we moved across the country last summer, I gave away an incredible amount of what my mother taught me to call "junque" when I was a kid, a term she placed on the box of things that didn't fit in any good category but which I refused to part with. Apparently, I have accumulated a lot of junque. Last year I finally got rid of piles of books about topics I have no longer study or work with, furniture and clothing that I rarely or never used, tchatchkes (trinkets - pick your word) that my inner child had forced me to hold onto, and many broken things I kept promising myself I would fix.

I kept a desk. It's a perfectly good desk - a solid top over four sturdy legs, with a single small drawer big enough for a few pencils, a small stapler, and a packet of stamps.

I acquired this desk one summer when someone paid me to clean out and paint their basement. "Get rid of the desk." I brought it home. After all, I was a poor college student, applying at the time for graduate school, and sure to both be poverty stricken and in need of a desk for years to come. 

The irony -- which came to me as an epiphany the other day when I read Stephen King's words On Writing, "It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn't in the middle of the room" -- is that I don't use a desk.  King uses a desk, and his belongs in the corner, not the middle or the room (he also had an epiphany). My writing space, my working space, is a chair or a couch or often enough sitting up in bed. I use a desk when I have to - at work - but not on my own time.

I didn't know this, though, and I moved the desk from my Ohio undergraduate apartment to my Indiana grad student house, then on to Pennsylvania for rabbinical school. I cannot remember where the desk was in our Philly apartment -- it's possible I stored it those years, because there I acquired an IKEA desk with more drawer space. I took both desks with me to New Hampshire, and the old one had an honored spot in our sunroom, where it rarely accumulated too many stacks, and where my husband frequently sat. I sat next to it in the chaise, as I had the other desk in Philly. And then I moved both desks to Connecticut, where the newer one became a desk I sat at a handful of times, and the old one became my son's changing table. When we moved to Seattle, the IKEA desk went to the curb in the great purge, but this old desk came with, still sturdy and, I thought, functional.

Currently, this desk sits in my living room gathering stacks of things. I have sat at it maybe twice in the year we have been here. At Hanukkah it held our various menorahs. But mostly it has stacks of things that get put there, then buried, deeper and deeper until I am forced into an archaeological dig either by avalanche or by a need to find something.

Still, I haven't decided if or how to get it out of my house. We don't have storage space, and besides, storing it for some theoretical use in some unknown time in the future feels absurd. I know if I put it out on the curb or put a note up on my local "buy-nothing" page, it will be gone in short order, and to someone who will surely put it to good use.

Why is it so hard? This week's Parasha reminds us that the difficulty of letting go is common, but that to do so honors the place that thing, idea, or yes, person, has had in our lives. I am also convinced that letting go makes room in our lives for things, ideas, and people we can't anticipate. 

Yep, the desk I have held onto for more than twenty years, still with names and phone numbers penned on it by the previous owner, is all but gone.

Devarim: Shaking Up Routines

וַנֵּפֶן וַנִּסַּע הַמִּדְבָּרָה
"And we turned and journeyed to the wilderness"
(Deut. 2:1)

This morning I parked in a different place, took the wrong elevator up, then a different (but right) elevator down, got off at the wrong floor, walked back up, used a different restroom, then missed my usual turn. All of which led me to a hug from my dad. And in the end I needed to sit and process, so I stopped at a favorite coffee house I don't ordinarily pass.

In this week's Parashah, Devarim, Moses begins to recount for the Israelites where they have been and what they have done. They have arrived at the border of the Promised Land a second time, nearly 40 years after the first time, and in truth the people who were there, and the actions Moses is referring to, all occurred when those present were either children or not yet born - all except Caleb, Joshua, and Moses himself.

What strikes me here is not so much the place or the people, or even the history lecture from Moses, but the quick recount of the wandering itself. A map of the wandering looks a little like a maze that crosses in and over itself. And the return to the edge of promise comes not after a relatively direct journey from Mitzrayim by way of Sinai, but rather from this loopy roundabout journey.

Just as I have seen my day differently, my mind jogged by my unusual morning route, I am sure this new generation of Israelite adults must have seen their approach to the promise of what lay beyond the Jordan differently than their parents and grandparents had.

Being fully aware sometimes requires a little interruption of routine. My routine this one morning a week has been quite comfortable, in its way, for nearly a year, now - I leave the house early, drive in usually quiet traffic, park in the garage, have breakfast with my mother, read out loud to her, then leave to go to work. Never mind that I have changed jobs, and maybe twice have had to skip a breakfast, it has been very regular routine. This morning, I got a hug from my dad, whom I don't ordinarily see on these early mornings. This morning, I learned a couple of things I didn't know, and I am now thinking of possible support for something. This morning, my transition from breakfast to work was more mindful.

Whether or not the Israelites that stood on the precipice in Deuteronomy were literally a new generation, I can only imagine that they stood there with new eyes, with a new perspective, because of their circuitous journey through the wilderness. Perhaps more than that they would no longer remember slavery personally, which might be a valuable difference, their journey had given them something valuable - had set them up for positive interactions with their neighbors by giving them a tour of the area as a free people.

I am grateful for the periodic diversion from the direct route, for the jog to my mindfulness that comes from shaking up--or being shaken from--my routines. Although I admit - forty years of such diversions might have me throwing up my hands and begging to set down roots. Indeed, while I have traveled across our country, lived in many states, and journeyed internationally - I am so very ready to stay in one place for a very long time. And the timing of this could not be more apt, as we near the first anniversary of my having returned to my "homeland," the city in which I was born and raised, after 24 years of wandering.

Matot-Masei: On Vows and Vowing

Oh, how we try to wriggle out of vows.

I do it as a parent: "If you don't stop, I'm going to take away x." And then I feel guilty, or like it was a harsh punishment, and I find myself backing off. Another parent recently reminded me, "the trick is never to promise or threaten anything you don't intend to follow through on."

I do it as a partner: "I promise I will be better about a." And then I try to narrow the circumstances where a actually applies.

I do it to myself: "I promise to give my body the chance at a full night's sleep." And here I am staying up past my bedtime to write a blog post.

This week's Parashah, the combined Matot-Masei, opens with "If a man makes a vow to God...he shall not break his pledge." (Never mind that it then diminishes a woman's vow, saying her father or husband can negate it, or allow it to stand. I'm going to assume we all agree that men and women are equal, and thus nobody owns the vow of another.)

Torah has plenty to say about vows. Indeed, it is pretty serious about them, especially those in which we obligate ourselves to actions directed at God or in God's name, but also those in which we obligate ourselves to our neighbors, our planet, even ourselves.

Later Jewish custom wriggles, just like we (I) do in everyday life.

Kol nidre (All Vows) - the title prayer of the service that kicks off Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) - asks that our vows be annulled, that every serious oath we have taken be wiped out, that we not be held accountable.

No, Judaism doesn't say we can get out of our obligations so simply. Indeed, there were early concerns about the notion of annulling vows. The Jewish Encyclopedia discusses a medieval change in the prayer:

"An important alteration in the wording of the "Kol Nidre" was made by Rashi's son-in-law, Meïr ben Samuel, who changed the original phrase "from the last Day of Atonement until this one" to "from this Day of Atonement until the next." 

The implication in this change is that we shouldn't be making vows to God in the first place, because we are sure to falter. But while this might be a relief (since we might make vows in the heat of a situation), it does effectively wriggle us out ahead of any actual vow-making. And we might therefore think that we can go ahead and make those heat-of-the-moment vows, and other vows, and not really worry about the consequences.

What I fear (and I am not alone in this fear) is that we lose the meaning of vows, and even smaller promises - to God and to people - when we assume we are free because of a prayer recited months ago.

I see this diminishing vow-lue -- in the person who goes into a marriage saying, "well, if it doesn't work out, we can always get a divorce," and in my own practices of self-care, be it what I feed myself or my lack of exercise. 

The Kol Nidre prayer does not, in fact, ensure us freedom from our vows. Even with the prayer, we must still be careful with our promises, and we must nonetheless atone for our failures before we can expect forgiveness.

A vow is a weighty thing - and it should be. Whether we are promising something to a friend or to God, we should feel the obligation of the relationship. We should not enter in expecting that we can simply wriggle out from under that weight easily, lightly. Still, it's nice to know that, if we make a promise and cannot fulfill it, we can be forgiven, even if it takes some emotional, spiritual, even physical work on our part to get there.