Personal Narrative

It was a big year.

42 was the year I made the decision to leave my job. A dream job in a lot of ways (not so much in other ways). At 42 I made the choice to leave steady employment in order to reconnect with my life outside of work; as much a leap as it was a decision. I was without a plan (something I’d often advised others not to do) and uncertain about what was waiting for me on the other side. All I knew was that I wasn’t accessing the better parts of myself, wasn’t actualizing my potential, and wasn’t all that happy.

42 would be the year I set out to reclaim all of that.

I leapt like it was a mosh pit.

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Sirens blared throughout Israel today for National Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Its rise is not subtle, no foreplay. Within a second flat, there is no space between my ears for anything else.

A flash flood of feelings storm in me with the siren’s ring  – it doesn’t ask permission: it gives notice.

It pierces.

My soul knows this sound; a Klezmer band of sadness, entire chord progressions frozen in one single, sharp note. Twisted and impossible in its strength.

Snapshots of grainy, black and white men and women I’ve never met, but still know deeply, flash in my mind. I see their faces, their shaved heads, their sunken eyes. I see pillars of dark smoke. I feel it as deep as my body will allow.  My head is bowed for the first half of the siren. The pull of its weight feels appropriate.

And then, that thick minute passes – it just shifts and space opens for something else.

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Have an awesome kid. Raise her right. Instill good values. Sweeten her Torah. Show her what is Ahavat Israel really means. Allow her plenty of opportunities to see herself the way that you, her loving parents, see her.

Ask bat mitzvah girl what she wants to do.

Do that.

Collect good friends.

Invite them.

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I’m on my way to get an ultrasound.

Of my boobs.

I am trying to stay cool and collected, and remember the doc’s emphasis about this being a “precautionary measure just to confirm that everything is fine,” but my heart has gone rogue and abandoned rationale in favor of palpitation and shortness of breath.

I believe this is what the experts call anxiety.

My heart feels thin – like it’s been pressed between two slabs of steel. I’m jumpy and edgy, and I have a constant, high pitched ringing in my ears.

I’m like a she-wolf on all-night security detail; hyper-acute, tingling with anticipation and readiness. Ready for what exactly, I’m not totally sure. But, to be certain, I am ready to move from the place I have been for the last six days since the general surgeon felt me up in his office.

I strive to keep stress and anxiety to a minimum in my life. It ain’t easy, but I practice a lot. I eat pretty well, try to smile enough, sweat enough, and sleep enough. I love and am loved by a lot of wonderful people, ever-ready to talk me down from whatever mental ledge I may be straddling.

And, when I need to bring in the Big Guns, I call my Mom.

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Today is a fortunate day for people like me who chose this life and this land from outside of her soil. I have lost neither son nor spouse in the field or on a bus ride home. I am a new-comer to this land, 16 years this June, my children have not yet served, my husband, battle-woundless. But the lives of my nuclear family, is not why I feel fortune on Yom Hazikaron.

The bitter-kindness of this day of Remembrance is the willingness of Israel and her people to share their history (both distant and present) with an uninitiated immigrant like me. That’s what bangs the gong for me; the unified mission to make me and you a “part-of” through song and siren; tale and tear.

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I learned early on that prayer is primarily about communication. l learned this first from watching Harold and Maude, then years later in a Torah class. For the most part, my M.O. as far as prayer is concerned has been to simply talk to G-d, kind of like I would to a girlfriend – only slightly more reverent. Also, with a bunch of tots in tow, it has been way more convenient to dial up wireless than to show up in a house of prayer for a word.

I’m big on the shoot-from-the-hip, “G-d, please let them make the bus,” “Bring her fever down now,” and “Wow, thanks for that” kind of prayer. Kind of Rabbi Nachman-style, only shorter and not in a forest.

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It’s been several months since my first attempt at running and finally, I don’t feel as if I’m going to die each time.

That’s progress people. Major progress.

I am currently running 3.25 K (or 25 mins straight), a bit past the half way mark to my goal of “couch to  5 K.”

For the first 7/8 weeks or so, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that I was running on an outdoor treadmill. My pounding heart and limited lung capacity felt wholly incommensurate with the nominal ground I was covering. Every run was hard, like really hard – and I seriously doubted that would ever change.

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She is a beggar with red strings and century-old eyes.
She is techina dripping down a sun kissed forearm.
She is an entrepreneur in pressed Armani at lunch break; double latte two sugars please.
She is chess in the park, Arak and cigarettes. Hard hugs, long smiles, short tempers.
She hides nothing.
She is the sunrise over Judean hills,
Stone, fire, wind, and sea.

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