tradition

Last night we celebrated the Passover seder. I had been carefully prepping Ari for a few weeks. We had a few books we read and a soft seder set, complete with springy matzah and a purple kiddish cup that Ari loved to have me "fill" and then glug down the wine--after the brucha, of course. He kept saying, "More wine, mama!" He learned some of the Four Questions, filling me with parental pride, and also learned "Eliyahu" and "Dayenu." I was thrilled and couldn't wait to show him off.

The day of the seder came and Ari had been sick for several days--with fevers of over 104. He was better, of course, but he was tired and not at his best. He refused to wear a kippah, wrestled with me and with Andi at the table, several times whacked our hosts and drowned out the seder leader during the seder. In other words, he acted like a 2 year old. Okay. Fine. Eventually we took him away from the table, bringing him in every now and again to listen to the songs. He wouldn't participate at all, except to raise his soggy stuffed kiddish up and say, "A'hayim" ("L'chayim!")

Our hosts seemed to be charmed.

Today was going to be a day off for me, to go to services. But since Ari had been sick, I had mounds of work to catch up on--I still do. Taxes and papers and job applications. I have been getting emails from peers asking me what I am up to next year. As if I know!--I seethe with silent mortification and do not answer.

I took a little break during the writing of one paper to peruse a book that I had pulled out for Ari for Passover but that he shunned--it was a little long for him, anyway. It was called "Make a Wish, Molly" and it was about a little girl who emigrates to the U.S. around the turn of the century and whose parents only speak Yiddish. She is only accepted by one girl at her school and when she is invited to this girl's birthday party during Passover she has to wrestle with her decision whether or not to eat beautiful American birthday cake--and what the consequences will be, either way. It is a lovely little story and as I read it I mused over Molly's point in time. We Jews have a tendency to locate ourselves in the past--in our heritage of remembrance. We keep a compact with our ancestors to remember them and what they went through. We ask our children to remember too. It means everything to us--to pass along these memories.

I thought about how, for many American Jews, there is a clinging to the point in time that Molly inhabits. The time when everyone spoke Yiddish and when to be a Jew was a clear cut thing. Americans may have hated and feared us, but we had each other and our own eternal wisdom to guide us. We were a people. Now American Jews aren't quite sure what we are. Many go to services and don't know the words of the Hebrew prayers. We are an isolated people.

Molly is remembering the more distant past, her ancestors who left Egypt. We remember her, our ancestors who left Russia. Yet we dignify that history with a glossy nostalgia. We forget how hard and sad and tormenting it was to be different then, to be alone, to struggle on. We are only proud that we did, that we maintained ourselves, that we are still Jews.

I realized as I looked through that book that there is a part of me living in and in service of the past. Not just my Jewish past but my Armenian past. I am trying to serve my ancestors, trying to remember them, trying to make certain that they live on in me. And I want Ari to do the same thing.

That isn't so bad. But what happens when in living for the past--or for the future--we forget about the present moment?

Here I am, a Jew blogging on Passover. Is that so bad?

This is the present day truth and where we are in time. I feel so blessed to have reached this moment. I'll take my son anyway he is--cranky, rude, and oblivious to his heritage, drinking pretend wine from a pretend cup.

Let's start a new Jewish tradition--of being in this present moment, exactly how it is. It does not mean we are absolved from our responsibilities in this world. But neither must we cling to a reality that is not our own. Somewhere, we can forge ahead, inhabiting things as they are.

L'chayim.

reactivity

So the little mind goes around and around on its personal wheel of topics it revisits. Right now--as I do all sorts of other things, like take care of a cranky and sick little boy, and struggle through statistics in social work school, write papers for my other classes, rant about budget cuts and dwell rhapsodic on stimulus packages and worry about the international crises in the Middle East and elsewhere, and in the middle of all that try to look for a job and continue to become a halfway decent therapist--I am musing and muddling around the issue of reactivity. Reactivity--when we are responding without any pause to what is at hand, when we are kneejerk in our responses, when we are caught up without even knowing it. That's what I am thinking about.

Last night, in the middle of the night, Ari felt as though he was getting a little warmer. He sleeps with me, in case you didn't know that, and he had had a temperature of 103.7 the night before last. Andi had kindly gotten the ibuprofin ready for me in case Ari did develop a temperature in the night, so when, in my sleep, I felt Ari's little feet and they seemed warmed, I whispered to him that he would have to get some medicine and turned on the light. He immediately responded with tears and protests, but they availed him none--I jammed the syringe with the ibuprofin right into his mouth and pushed the plunger, giving him half of the medicine. He sobbed and then he vomited. Poor little guy. He threw up all over himself and me and I thought, geez, I don't even know if he had a temperature to start with and here I am, making him sick.

OK, I am not being hard on myself. But it was interesting, after we were all cleaned up again, to think about what it means to react so swiftly--with an anxiety that it MUST be done, and right away, or else--what? This was an extreme example, but it is reminiscent of many times throughout the day when I just leap to something--with such desire to prevent harm--and perhaps create a problem without even realizing it.

I guess all I am saying is that it reminds me, over and over, of why we practice, or why I practice any way. Why I must. Because otherwise, this mindless reactivity just nibbles away at me. My life because food, fodder and pray for its noiseless little jaws. I want to learn how to take a breath, take a pause, and respond. Oh, and I learning. It just takes so much time.

Gaza

How could this subject not be on my mind? How could it not be on yours? Well, I understand why it might not be on yours. You are thinking about a hundred other things, and they don't all have to be personal. But they might be. Personal could range from your family, your job (will you still have it?) your money, your friends, your nosehairs, for G-d's sake. Adam Smith once said (I am going to mangle this quote) that we care more about our little pinkie than we do about 10,000 people dying in China (this assuming we don't live in China or don't have loved ones who do). But the gist being, if we lost our little pinky in an accident one day, and there is an earthquake in China the next that kills 10,000 people, our little pinky is going to loom larger to us--of course. I do think that's human nature.

But say it isn't your little pinky. Say you are thinking about other things. The Congo, perhaps, or Mogadishu, or Obama's inaugeration, or New Orleans, or your own local town council. Perhaps you are thinking about global warming or global economic collapse. There are many reasons that Gaza may not be always on your mind.

It isn't always on my mind either. Far from it. I think more about Ari, about my other loved ones, about my placement, about school, about money, about the cold weather, about what kind of job I might be getting in this wretched economy and how I'll pay back my student loans if my job is more wretched than I ever thought it would be. And I think about you. But behind so many of those things, I think about Gaza. It is always sort of trembling there, hauntingly. This is most definitely because I am Jewish. Because I love Israel. Because I am teaching Ari Hebrew, because I love my heritage. (I love all parts of it, the WASP and the Armenian parts too.) As some of you know, I've started a (relatively new) facebook account and through that, I have reconnected with people I never get a chance to hear from otherwise. I have friends who are so pro Israel that during this conflict they are featuring an Israeli flag as their profile picture and are posting videos of the rockets falling on Sderot as to counter what they consider to be anti-Israeli propaganda in the media. And I have friends who feature "Boycott Israeli products" with a picture of an orange bleeding as their profile photo, to indicate that Israelis have blood on their hands. I have friends who pass around photos of gory victims in Gaza with comments underneath them saying "God will soon kill all Israelis" as some of the mild comments. I am always amazed at the progressive people in my community who hate Bush but who seem to feel comfortable with organizations (if one can use that term) like Hamas, many of whose members would gladly line them up against a wall and shoot them if they could for being Americans or queer or whatever.

At times like these, I feel like a character in a Dykes to Watch Out for Strip at the outset of the U.S. intervention in Kosovo. I'll try to post that link, if I can get to it. In the strip, the main character Mo starts off by reading the news and saying, of course, we've got to go in and stop Milosevic, the man is a maniac. Her partner says, "That's what the media wants you to think. Makes you wonder what you are not seeing." During the course of the day she talks to her friends, each of whom has a different take on the conflict, until by the end she comes home saying she is back to her pacifist roots. By that time, her partner is watching T.V. footage of the refugees and is saying of Milosevic, "Someone's gotta take this man out!"

I am obviously an insane Alison Bechdel fan that I have this strip memorized, but I feel so jerked around by my own feelings and perceptions of this conflict. I really know nothing about this situation. I know enough to know I know NOTHING and I feel my ignorance profoundly. I've been to Israel, obviously, but I've never been to Gaza. I have been to the West Bank, more than once, and seen bombed out houses and held the hands of Palestinian mothers who had lost so much and with whom I could not communicate any other way except to look into their eyes and just see the endless grief there. If I was inside Israel right now I'd know a little more about what was happening but probably just enough to feel hopelessly, helplessly uninformed.

You see, I really hate Hamas. I think they are yucky. Not evil, I won't go there. (For so many reasons.) I'll stick with yucky. If it isn't too patronizing, I hate them on behalf of the Palestinian people. I hate that they have taking the people hostage, but that is like saying Putin has taken the Russians hostage. Some Palestinians feel very loyal to Hamas, and one can easily see why: Hamas provides the services that no one else does, as limited as they are.

There are so many things to say here, and I am not the person to say them: about the lack of aid given to Palestinians by their own people who use them as bargaining chips, about the way Hamas uses innocent civilians, including children, as protection to ensure that they can keep doing whatever they want. One can go on and on and other people already have. But all of that isn't really the point.

The point is that this conflict is on my mind every day and every night. I think about those mothers and those children. I think about it because I am a Jew and as a Jew I feel complicit and responsible. I think about it because I am an Armenian and as an Armenian I still remember, as if it happened to me, in my bones, how it felt to be slaughtered, to be trapped, to be burned in my own home or in a church. And that happened over 100 years ago. And still I remember.

Even more, though, it is because I love my son. I love him so much. You know how much, because you love yours that much too, or will love one someday, or love another little one who is partly yours through some other means. It is pervasive and frightening, this love. It hurts to see him hurt in even the smallest ways. And this is a very robust child--healthy in every sense. He falls down and bonks his head, and half of the time he just gets up and says cheerfully, "Bonk!" He gets a cold, he plows right through it so happily you forget to take his temperature. Yet I fret if gets even the smallest scratch or bruise.

How then can I not be thinking about how mothers in the Gaza strip, crowded together already under the most miserable circumstances, in poverty, in desperation, who are facing these bombs and cannot get away. Cannot go anywhere. Are totally trapped, with their babies in their arms. And are getting killed and wounded not only by mainstream weaponry but by weaponry we could easily characterize as torture: phosperus weaponry, which burns and burns sometimes right into the bone, so that mothers are watching their children writhe and shriek and sometimes lose a limb and sometimes die, and when the wounds are dressed sometimes they are still smoking and doctors can do nothing about it. That's not Hamas propaganda. It's true.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/17/world/middleeast/17israel.html?hp

And even if the doctors could do something about it, there might not be enough supplies and medicine to do anything, so that even for more conventional wounds sometimes doctors have to sit back helplessly and watch someone die who they might have otherwise saved. And despite all of this, there are Palestinians in Gaza who are practicing mindfulness, who are trying to calm each other, and children, and mothers, and find something that we could call happiness and freedom.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/13/health/views/13case.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=hope%20amid%20despair%20gaza&st=cse

Every night, I sing Ari the Sh'ma. I sing, "Sh'ma, Yisrael, Yah Eloheinu, Yah Ehad." And then I translate that into English, my own unique interpretation: "We all on this earth are connected to each other. Listen, we are one."

And I think about Gaza, about the other mothers, and what they are singing to their children as they put them to sleep. And I think, G-d, if I did believe that, that we were all one, what would I do? Wouldn't I protect those children and mothers--those parents--everyone--the way I would my own child, my beloved boy?

Why not? What on this earth stops me?

सौन्ड्स एंड signs

I am sitting in the library at BU, listening to students rattle away on the keyboard, typing.

Noticing sounds has been my latest practice--which is to say, it is always my practice, but I am noticing them more these days since I don't get a chance or take the time to sit formally these days. So I am practicing by listening.

You hear amazing things in the city. Walking over the BU bridge today (no geese, though there were hundreds of pigeons, swirling over and landing on the bridge like hunched little gobbley-eyed unappreciated old men) I heard an unfathomable sound of metal screeching across pavement, fast. I turned and looked--as did other pedestrians--and it was a woman driving a Volvo on a tire rim (it might have been two tire rims). Not just a flat tire--absolutely NO tire. And being me, words came out of my mouth immediately--something like, "How insane!" or something equally judgmental. Then I stopped; paused in my flight toward my class. I wondered why this woman was driving on her rims. What kind of panic--emotional, financial, circumstancial--was compromising her judgement? Was it, indeed, a bad decision? How do I know?

I keep seeing all sorts of signs that things are amiss in the economy; little signs, because I am also struck by how much things are just going along and all seems normal. Normal signs: students still lining up for capuccinos, coworkers still bringing in $9 sandwiches for lunch, people still getting new cell phones, braces, and Christmas presents, other people still going to Disney World. These are the signs that make me wonder if the Northeast has been as hard hit as other parts of the world. It is confusing. You read in the paper that the publishing industry is going under, but everyone still seems to be going forward here as if they expect to get jobs when they graduate, etc. (From where? I wonder to myself. Or sometimes out loud. You know me.) Fundraisers continue and people still ask for money, albeit with a pinched note in their voice, at times recognizing that it is going to be very hard for anyone to help out anyone else very soon. Then there are the other signs--the signs that things are unravelling, even out here. Things like that woman driving on her rims, the cars parked under the shadows of the BU bridge--as if they have been dumped there until someone tows them away. The shrinking lists of jobs in the classified section. Things like that.

I have a feeling that we are not going to see the real signs of collapse in this area until after January. Budgets will be rewritten; people will be out of jobs. I only hope that when it happens we can figure out some way to connect, reconnect, and help each other. That is up to us, of course.

****
Today, Ari spelled his name. I was sitting in the other room when he did it. He was sitting in his high chair and eating smoothie and toast with Andi. He was asking Andi to draw in the bottom of his smoothie cup (actually hers, he hijacked it) even though there was still far too much smoothie left to do that. And then he said, "A R I, Ari!" To say that we kvelled is, well, an understatement. Actually, Andi kvelled. I felt a little shocked. I think with all of these development milestones, I am too shocked to pay much attention. I am simply dazed by the change. What happened to that tiny tot who merely breathed and giggled and drooled? When did he learn to count in several languages? Hey, speaking of which, please weigh in with counting in other languages. Ari can count in English, Spanish, and Hebrew and soon will have French down too (his new favorite). Andi will teach him German, but then we are all tapped out. Anyone know how to count in another language? Can you tell me what it is and then write it out phonetically? My wish list: Armenian, Japanese, and Mandarian. But I'll take all comers. Ari is counting on you.

Create

By the way, if you are wondering why I am now only including one word title lines, it is because if I include more than one, the browers or whatever this is converts the words into question marks. So I might have Love ??? ????? in a title line.

It is amazing how little I understand the mechanism I am using here.

I am off to pick up Ari soon from daycare & he and I will head down to RI tonight or tomorrow for Thanksgiving. I am sad we won't be with Rachel & Robbie & Adam & Aiko & Sarah & Stewart and the pack o' chillen that will be celebrating in Manhattan. I'll miss them, but we at least saw each other over Daddy's 80th birthday, so I at least laid eyes on the kids and held them in my arms (except O & E of course).

It was amazing to be staying in the Big House. There is something about opening up the curtains to THAT view--it is heart-piercing. And yet and yet--all of my yearning and longing, these days, seems to be wrapped up in that little person who I write about. It is as if all the rest merely dances around me--terribly important but not penetrating in the way it once did.

Today a former student brought her son and her 6 month old into the place where I intern now. The children were gorgeous, of course, and her little baby girl just nestled right up to me--quite literally a bundle of joy as she batted at my face and chuckled, pleased with herself for being able to grab my hair. Ai, yi, that feeling of baby-ness in my arms. And she so petite, too, unlike the huge hunk of baby that was Ari at that age. There is a feeling of gratification in holding a baby that is unlike any other sensation on the planet, may I live a hundred years and do all sorts of sensational, unlikely things.

I remember when my cousin's Dad, of blessed memory, saw me holding her sister's gorgeous first born. I was just holding him, relishing his weight on my chest, refusing to relinquish him to any of his other worshippers. And he said to me, "You need one of those for your own." It was one of those comments that hurts a little and yet lodges somewhere. I thought, yes, I do need one of those for me own. No matter what it takes.

I don't even want to outdo that rapture. And I do have one of my own now. Thank you, Walter.

Doubt

I have had people ask me lately what is the hardest part of this whole social work school/single parenting gig. Thinking about it on my drive back and forth to the nursing home I visit in Everett today, I want to say that what feels the hardest right now is doubt. It is the sense of not knowing and being so unsure. Of course, that is developmentally appropriate for me as a neophyte psychotherapist. I should feel unsure and uncertain. I don't know yet how to respond appropriately to any number of different types of concerns I will be facing. I have an awful lot to learn.

So that's one type of doubt--the doubt engendered by a lack of confidence. And while that doubt is very uncomfortable, I hope I can trust to time to cure it. Knowing me, there likely will be some point in time when I will have entirely forgotten that I felt this type of doubt at all. I will at some point feel confident I know how to handle most issues and feel I can compensate for what I don't know--access the resources I need to help me.

Okay. I can imagine that future. I don't know how long it will take to get there, but I can imagine it. Then there's another type of doubt--the doubt of not knowing about what to think and believe--theoretically and historically.

This is such a conundrum for all of us post-modernists--and by this I mean all of us raised in a post-modern era. All of those duly influenced, like it or not, by post-modernism. We know how caught we are in conditioning, in the social influences of our time--but we have no idea how to escape that sticky web. Most of us feel comfortable with the fact that we are products of our culture. We just are, okay? That's fine, until you encounter the kind of conundrum I am facing now.

Our culture is one in which medication plays an increasingly intimate role with psychotherapy. I underestimated the role that it plays in social work, but it is a very intimate one. Social workers are considered incompetent and even unethical unless they encourage clients to go on medication. If they fail that mandated role, they are letting their clients down.

Given that we are now increasingly suspicious of the role of commerce in the medical world--it is hard to know for me what is truly therapeutic for clients or if, in the words of one of my roommates, all we therapists are merely whores for the pharmaceutical industry. This really is not as rhetorical as it sounds. He has a lot of data to back up this stance; and though it isn't the way he would phrase it in public, it is basically what he means. So I agonize about our sociological conditioning and what I can do about it. I guess that's all I can say at present--I have to run off and get the babe. This post probably makes no sense at all. Ah well. Doubt really has a life of its own, and its own rhyme. And its own reason.

All those clients, frozen in decaying and malfunctioning bodies and terribly psychotic minds. All that suffering. It is tempting to think that a pill is indeed doing the trick; but the science would tend to tell us otherwise.

Pride

You get caught up in the excitement. I said to Ari this morning, "Let's go find out who our new president is!" With all the expectation that it would be, in fact, President Obama. President Obama. It does sound pretty good. I do feel patriotic this morning. I feel as though Obama fulfills Lincoln's promise. And while the New York Times proclaims on its cover--a great cover--that it is an historic day because Obama is African-American, I think what makes it even more historic is Obama's metoric rise--the power of the man himself, as a campaigner. He is a phenomenon, and I don't think anyone can now gainsay that. Let's see how he manages as President tomorrow. Today, let's gloat.

And no on Question 1. Phew.

Ari is dressed all in blue today.

death

So there's a great blog I follow about mindful parenting.

http://committedparent.wordpress.com/

Check it out. I know you all are more fixated on the election right now. It's not just Obama, here in Massachusetts it is Question One, and out there in California it is Proposition 8, and in Connecticut it is about the constitutional amendment--big topics everywhere you go.

So Dr. Brady's post--not even his most recent post--about death probably isn't where most of you are at.

He quotes Tagore, which kind of hit a nerve for me since my Grandma left behind a quote from Tagore to be found by all of us when she died. This post--and the comments left by readers--really bolstered me because I have been amazed how much I have thought about death since Ari was born--and a little worried about it. It didn't feel normal. (And it still may not be normal, but at least it doesn't feel wrong.)

I brought him into this world, after all. I am responsible for the fact that he is alive. Unlike someone who chose to do this with a partner, I took the responsibility wholly upon myself to bring this life into this strange and somewhat desolate existence. Who knows what will befall him? But I do know that someday he will die. And there are times when I find that knowledge to be almost unbearable. Strange words from a yogi.

This issue goes to the heart of everything for me, and has every since I can nearly recall. I was told when I was too young to understand it that “death is a dreamless sleep.” I remember being so confounded by death and the limits of it. I remember long late night car rides when I would look into the steamy car window and think about Laura Ingalls Wilder being dead; about her body decomposing somewhere and her suchness–where was it?

It never stopped plaguing me–the fear of death. Not only losing this self, but all the other selves I love and have loved and in fact the loss of all the people who were already dead when I came to love them (great-grandparents, authors, artists, etc.) I hated hearing about tombs being broken open, etc. I hated the idea that anyone’s carefully crafted protection was being sundered. Even if I did not believe that those rites offered them any protection at all from the neurons simply shutting down as part of the body decaying and dissolving–even if I in no way could really believe in any Eternal–-I hated the idea that someone else’s faith was challenged in such a fundamental way.

It has been one of the hardest things about becoming a mother. I have attached so fiercely to the aliveness of my son. I have moments when I can’t bear the idea of him dying–-ever. (Much, much worse if he died before I did.) I also can’t bear global warming. That is too much impermanence for me. I have friends who are able to face the possible extinction of the human species with equanimity, even joy. Not so me.

One of the times I felt fully free of this (almost always nascent) brooding was when I was on retreat at IMS. I was walking and glanced up through the window and saw (imagined) an image of children climbing up a play structure to go down a slide. (This was before Ari was born.) And I thought, so peacefully, “Ah, yes, it will be their turn.” I felt myself relinquishing the me-ness of death, for myself and for others as well. I just felt myself take my place in the order of things, and death along with it. And I felt a great contentment that I would be able to go along with all these other beauties--these people I have loved–-into the unknown.

It still torments me, death, along with other things, like starvation, and children suffering in unspeakable ways. I always feel these things so keenly; perhaps I am unwilling to relinquish the sadness in this anguish. We do suffer; we will die. It is not “okay” how some people must live. And I can still love this reality that we are all of us helpless before. This moment, typing on the keys. Right now, I surrender to it.

I love the idea of living a life where death seemed truly like a friend, nothing to be afraid of. Any of you feel like that?

Mine

On the other side of the Ari news, he woke up this morning and looked at my book on the bed and said, "This book not Mama's. This book my book." He then took the book and looked at me.

I said, "Oh, this book is not Mama's book, it's Ari's book?"

He nodded and opened up the book to "read" it. "Oh, uh huh," he said, in his "very interesting" voice.

This was repeated throughout the day with increasing ferocity. Suddenly everything was Ari's, to the point that he was snatching things up and saying, "Mine mine mine!" in a shrill voice. It was funny for me because it reminded me of a game Auntie Papaya and I have played for a long time. In loving mimicry of a client of hers who used to go around saying "Mine mine mine!" over every object, she and I used to pick certain objects--usually beds, couches and pillows, and declaim in the same way over them. When we were young and vigorous we used to also shove each other off of said objects. Anyway, Ari's clutching at objects in this way was pretty funny but also developmentally interesting. Anyone know what's going on in that little noggin of his?

A few other funny Ari comments. I'm not sure if they'll translate here or not: a few nights ago I was saying good night to Andi and Ari was asleep. He drowsily roused himself as I whispered, "good night," and added, "moon."

And just tonight he spooned up his cereal and dribbled it from a great height on his high chair tray. Gravely surveying the results he said, "Fun." For some reason we found that comment hysterical.

He is increasingly social, which is hard to imagine but true. He goes and greets the neighbors and on a playground will just walk up to other children and say hello.

Oh, I like to hug him myself and whisper inside, "mine, mine, mine." Lucky me.

Ari says please and thank you now.

I can't tell you how that makes me feel.

You'll have to guess.

literacy

So it's been one of those days, I have been amazed by it. One of those convergence days. First, at work there were two stories forwarded to me that were very interesting. For those of you who read this who are also look at my FB page, I'll upload them there. One was a story about the other guy--there is always an Other Guy; we have one in my family. (Actually, come to think of it, we have many in my family, but that's another story.) This is the Other Guy who did NOT get the Nobel Prize. In my Research class we were actually discussing this guy who won the prize due to his jellyfish research. The story, told there, was a "persistence pays off" message. Well, according to this sad story in the Times, Dr. Prasher actually discovered the glowing jellyfish protein that led to the Nobel prize. But he didn't get any recognition for it. Why? Because he had lost his funding prior to the prize; because he did not aggressively self-market himself, and perhaps because he may have suffered from depression, which limited his ability to self-market in a world that, contrary to everything we are taught and still believe despite ourselves, does not reward raw intelligence or native ability. It rewards--to a large degree anyway--shameless self-promotion and greed. (Woven as a sub-text to this story is the convulsions of the market and Alan Greenspan saying to the public--essentially, "Mea culpa, I had no idea people would be this greedy." ???)

Okay, so Dr. Prasher now drives a courtesy car for a Toyota dealership--a man whiskers away from winning the Nobel prize. That's one thing; and I think all of us who have ever felt fragile or vulnerable or as though for whatever reason we don't fit into the more ambitious, hard-angled world we felt we were born into, can identify, in a sad and fearful way, with his experience. I sure could. I felt as though I was him, minus the near-massive accomplishment. I also appreciated his seeming humility and wisdom in the face of his experience. Check out the article; it is in the Well section.

Next, there was a beautiful article (again in the Times, again, I think in the Well section) about doctors relying increasingly on the literature to humanize their work and their patients. The doctors in this article believe that literary training--called narrative medicine--can strengthen a young doctor's compassionate instinct, the article said. (I'll upload this too.) I am writing in a hurry because of Ari, but I think you can all imagine how beautiful I found this idea and how important. And personally, how I connected with it--how much literature--reading and writing--has transformed me and my yearnings and my sense of meaning. Don't you miss it? Don't I? I do. So deeply.

Last, I went today to a training on health literacy for older adults. I was appalled to learn that over 40% of the U.S. population is not literate enough to read their medication bottle; to truly sign a consent form; to understand a bus map. Words (and I do not underestimate the irony of this phrase, even while writing in haste) do not express how deeply and profoundly I felt this; felt how impotent and terrified and self-loathing and angry people in that situation must feel. How helpless. It is a public health crisis and a shame upon us as a people. How on earth can we consider ourselves part of a democratic nation? How on earth can we allow people to blame themselves as individuals for something that we all need to change?

Grappling with that on the heels of the article about narrative medicine made me feel so keenly how life's injustices wound us in our most tender and primitive places. The very places someone should kiss and croon over and cuddle. The places in our heart that need the deepest reassurance.

Sometimes I think I don't want to be a therapist. I want to just cuddle up that person and say, "It's O.K." And mean it. And know it is true.

I want it to be true. And I want to be able to make it true.

Thank you for reading this. I am so glad that you can. And that you do.

Ari

--Ari splashed around so much while drinking his blueberry-mango-strawberry-banana smoothie that it seemed as though he had purple freckles. It is difficult to describe how ineffably cute it is to see your child with purple freckles, though I imagine I wouldn't feel that way if they were permanent.

--He managed to pet the cat so that the cat wanted to stay near him--this is a big accomplishment and made him very happy.

--He relished his broccoli and ate lots of it while saying "Brocly, Brocly!" (It was loaded up with olive oil, salt, and nutritional yeast.)

--He said "Hiya papaya" with all 3 syllables (up until now he has called Auntie Papaya "Paya."

--He had his first phone conversation--with Grandpa. True, Ari's part of the conversation was, as my father said, merely, "Hello," some silence, and "Bye," but still a milestone.

--He called Grandpa "Danpa" when he got off the phone. (Up until now Grandpa has been "Dadi," which, of course, is what I call him.

--When asked what eyes were for, he said, "seeing." Ears are for "hearing." Mouth is for "eating." Legs are for "shoes."

Gratitude

Walking today through the golden scuffling leaves on the ground and the tearful skies overhead I had to stop over the BU bridge and watch as a throng of birds swooped and flew low, altogether, in unison, black against the blue-gray sky. I was late for class but I still couldn't help myself. They joined together and dove low then swirled up, and then slashed down again, a timeless pattern. Other people kept walking by and I would try to catch their eyes and gesture up--it was so beautiful--but they kept going, lost in their ipods, ignoring the sky and the water and the birds all joined in wild harmony.

Moments like this--moments too when I look at my friend skillfully and artfully assembling a salad, the beets raw and bright against the chevre, the carrots orange and the lettuce so very green--or when a solitary fire-red Maple leaf comes to pause as if posturing like a dancer on a stage, fluttering to the pavement with the others reposing there--I feel suffused with a recognition that this is it. This is my life. I am 40 years old, and so is my cousin Sarah. (It was her birthday yesterday; I have adored her for half of my life.) Half my life is over; these moments are it. It doesn't get any better than this. I don't mean this in a groovy, mealy-mouthed mindfulness way. I sometimes feel as though I get very preachy on those points, as if I have some special knowledge, and I don't mean to do that. It is just that awareness floods up at the strangest times. You all know those times yourself. It happened again today when the tea kettle shrilled and I poured myself hot water over a tea bag. And the tea bag sort of sizzled as the water went over it. And I thought, "G-d, thank you!"--in the deepest and most primal way. Those alive moments. I don't know why they happen when they do.

I was walking from the library this morning and was sort of muttering in my mind--as I continually do--about all the things I have to get done. So many things. And I was adding job search to that list. And mentally bemoaning that I will be making so little money and facing so much stress for at least the short run--and that's if I'm lucky enough in this economy to find a job. And will I be able to pay off my loans? Etcetera.

As I walked along and noticed this, I decided to direct my attention to my feet. And as soon as I did, as I felt the pavement and slowed my walking I realized: Next year is still going to be busy and stressful. It is always going to be busy and stressful. Hey, kiddo. It doesn't get any better than this.

Just thinking that, it felt as though everything changed. I was still walking, still feeling my feet against their sneakers on the pavement. Still noticing the sneakers squeaking as they have ever since they went through the wash. Still feeling that tired little ache in my heels. Still feeling some sadness and fear and resentment that life isn't different than it is. But everything was different. My whole chest and body opened up--tingly--and I felt so grateful for all the goodness in my life. The people I love, who have done so much for me. My parents. My papaya. Andi and the roommates. My brother and sister in law. Ari and all the children I adore. I am so lucky. I want you to know I do know it. Thank G-d, I really do.

no news is....

It's been so long since I last posted that certain people have been prodding me to post again--which I must say is flattering. So here I am. Looking back, I said I'd write about being a mother of a toddler, social work, and politics. Didn't I? And so here's the basic update on all of those things. Politics: we live by tenterhooks, or at least I do, feeling as though the entire world has become labile (there's the social work) as we try to understand what is happening to us. Every day we hear about a new economic meltdown that seems to have--right now--eclipsed the environmental meltdowns that previously occupied us. I was late to work this morning and so got to listen to the BBC and heard how England and Ireland and Spain have been rocked by unemployment rates. In Spain the unemployment rate is 13% and expected to climb. It makes sense following on the heels of unprecedented economic and housing expansion in Spain... some people were really objecting to that, as I recall. So we can't really be surprised by all this.

Nonetheless we are still gaping at the headlines and croaking to one another, "Can it really be?" People are beginning to say this won't be as bad as the Great Depression only insofar as it won't resemble the Great Depression--it will look like something altogether different. And yet McCain is still talking about capital gain cuts for the wealthy and trickle down economics.

Meanwhile, Kofi Anan is talking about how pathetic we are here in the so called "first world" countries, moaning on and on about our recessions or depressions or whatever we call them.  "Wake up!" he seems to want to tell us.  "There are thousands of children starving to death every day.  Your problems are really not that bad.  Really."  It helps to take another look at these things. 

There is such a split in this country in how the red and the blue folks see things, it makes the credit crisis look like nothing. It's more like the Great Schism. It's a credibility crisis. And ironically, both sides seem to feel as though the other is lazy and unwilling to be responsible and buck up to help others and do what it right. Both sides see despicable immorality seething around them and both sides draw back, repulsed from the other. At least that's how it seems to me.

I've been having a situation at work lately that has been really uncomfortable--almost repugnant--to me. As it arises, I keep noticing that I have such a strong desire to demonize this person with whom I feel increasingly locked in a passive-aggressive, smiling, subtle combat. You know the type. The type that social workers engage in. As I drive from one place to another, eat, take a shower, take a walk, all the time I find myself reviewing this conflict and coming up with new smiling, subtle things to say to make my point with this person who is, by now, not with me. Except of course this person is with me, since I'm chatting angrily with this person silently and frequently. Defending myself, trying not to defend myself, etc. When I notice this, I try to slow down and sit with it. I notice it in my body as a throbbing sensation and an constriction--my breathing becomes more shallow and restricted. I just notice that. I notice that at times I attack the other person in my mind, and when I notice that, I send that person metta (lovingkindness) if I can.

The thing is, it isn't about me.

If I can only relax into that--my own basic irrelevance--it is so much easier to get up and go on and just fall more elegantly into my life and the challenges of it and even--sometimes--get myself to listen to John McCain and even Sarah Palin rather than simply pretending they don't exist.

Generally, though, I pretend they don't exist.  I admit it. 



****
Oh, and the mama thing: Ari now knows almost all the letters of the alphabet! And he regularly recognizes the letters of his name as meaning "Ari."  I'm going to start him on Hebrew soon.  We try to count in as many languages as I can think up--English, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, French.  I have to get Grandma to teach him Armenian. I relish almost every moment I spend with him, except when he wakes me up at night. Last weekend there was one night he kept me up all night and nearly the whole time I imagined blogging about it the next day in excruciating detail but you will be glad to find out that I did not have the time to do that. Oh, and over the long weekend Ari asked for his teachers at Tot Lot several times. So he has reached the point now where he feels as if they exist, even when they are not in front of him. So much I learn from him.  Every day. 

the nature of names

This morning when Ari woke up, I wrote his name in the moisture on the window, and he looked at it and said, confidently, "Ari!"

It probably was a good guess but I still thought it was exciting.

He knows certain letters pretty well and others sort of well. For example, he knows "O" fairly reliably if you say, "What letter is this?" and point to O. He will answer glibly and happily, "Oh!" (It is very cute for the doting one.) But if you give him the alphabet and say, "Find the O" he will only find it half the time.

It is so interesting. You can almost watch those neural networks forming. The receptors lighting up and lighting up again, trying to form stable pathways. At least I think that's what's going on. I keep trying to get the Roommates to explain it to me, and they try, but my neural networks just slog along sluggishly, refusing to fire when I ask them to, so my understanding of our neural chemistry is, uh, limited. But I'm trying! It's tricky starting all over again and again, and once again, at 40, but I am indeed trying.

Rosh Hashannah services were so soothing for so many reasons. One, which may not sound good, is that I didn't take Ari the first day. It was wonderful to do something spiritual for a whole day. I took him the second day, and that was pretty relaxed too, not as I thought it might be. We left after the Shofar blowing and then we got to see a little of Auntie Papaya and Yona. Which reminded me of the old days, before we had four boys between us, when Auntie Papaya and I went and did tashlich at the duck pond. (I don't think that counts, but oh well. We didn't know or care about that then.)

The first day actually started out hard. I don't know if you could tell when you read my last post, but my knickers were kinda in a twist over this whole bailout thing and, well, the panic that is setting in cross the nation among all of those who read the papers and who aren't just following the news about the Rockefeller phony kidnapping guy. I sat in services on the first day and for the first hour or so I spent a fair amount of time fretting. First, I worried about how we could go on with these things when the world was coming apart. Then I thought, well, is there something better we could be doing than praying? Sure, some sarcastic parts of me replied. But the repetition of the familiar Hebrew songs and chants was irresistibly soothing. I found myself thinking that Jews have survived so many calamities. Surely we can survive economic meltdown and global warming.

I didn't bring Ari on the first day and I wondered if perhaps I should have. Other people paraded around with their babies in their arms--waiting for the shofar blowing. I knew that if I had Ari there would be no quiet dandling on the knee and eventually--slowly--I found myself making peace with that. A recognition not unlike what happens after sitting on a retreat. A unclenching, a retrenching from doubt. Acceptance, is what I think they call it. Earlier, I had also found myself cycling through the liturgy, breaking it all apart, deriding that which I didn't think was true, etc. I was thinking how religion was getting into all these messes, to start with, and how I didn't want to be party with all of that confusion and pain. But then, as I started to relax, I just melted into the recognition that humans are religious animals--at least many of us. We just are. So we can, in a William James sense, just accept our own religious psychology and have a progressive understanding of what it means to be spiritual beings having a human experience, rather than clinging to a rather idolatrous fundamentalist view. I don't need to exclude myself from my fellow humans. I really don't. I can let myself belong.

It is such a peaceful thing. To take my place in the nature of things. Like Ari, when I see my name, and recognize my place, it gives me joy.

House rejects bailout--good thing for the new year?

More on don't know mind. So the House has rejected a bailout deal, possibly because Republicans wanted to gouge out of this situation tax relief for the wealthy and refused to accept this deal as a result. I can't decide if I am grateful someone finally grew a pair and decided to allow the markets to be free markets and not to throw billions of dollars at the corrupt bunglers who got us into this mess. Or if I am so scared I want them just to go ahead and pass the thing. Does this remind anyone of the days after September 11th and the Patriot Act, or what? And only one person had the courage to just say, "It isn't acceptable to give the government sweeping powers just because we're scared." Yet here we are, doing something just as bad, just as sweeping, just as fundamental. I don't know enough to know what's the right and wrong move here--and I am afraid that no one does, no matter how sure they like to sound. The whole thing boggles the mind--with an awful awe, not the sort one wants to be cultivating going into the Days of Awe. I am utterly confused and sad about it all--and scared too. Ari and I have very little money to start with, so watching what little savings we have shrivel up is scary and means saying goodbye to having an apartment of our own, or a feeling of freedom in our future. All those dreams feel so far away now.

But we keep forging ahead because, really, what else can we do?

Last night, my mother stayed over so that she could go to the birthday party of a friend she has known for nearly 70 years, which is pretty amazing in and of itself. After, she sat around the table with me and one of the Roommates, sipping wine while I made inane suggestions about how to deal with the crisis. I still can't understand why we can't bring people to justice who started this shell game and walked away with millions in profits while the rest of us pay the price. Everyone kept patiently trying to explain this to me and telling me there was nothing we can do, while I said, "Yes we can! Break their windows! Get some rope!" OK, I do not think those are very mindful suggestions. I do not like even reflecting on those ugly and shrill suggestions. Yet I am curious why no one else is making them, perhaps some people who don't have such a commitment to peace and equanimity and compassion as myself.

I have been thinking about Winnicott often these days. Mostly in the context of the "good enough" mother. His idea--one that has permeated much of the psych world, I believe--is that the infant has a natural urge to be at one with his or her mother, and seeks to annihilate a mother's separateness. It is wondrous to know about that idea and then to watch it unfold. Ari delights in stepping on me, to knock me down, to in every loving and adorable way possible try to shred me and pretend there is "no mama there," and then a moment later pushes the hair from my face, presses his brow against mine, looks me deep in my eyes and kisses me. This is both cute and distressing, especially when you notice your own powerful drives and urges at work. Winnicott's idea of the "good enough" mother is one who can survive that assault without withdrawing in horror or retaliating. I certainly do withdraw, I know that--partly because I am not always up for the battle. And sometimes I over-react. Most of the time I strive for some "good enough" balance while I figure out how to do this mama thing.

It's like that being a therapist, too. You don't respond or react right away to what someone is telling you. You wait, you pay attention, you see what is needed. You don't have to do or say the perfect thing. You don' t have to solve or fix. You wait and balance yourself in that delicate flutter of silence and connection.

I feel we all are trying to figure it out--how to be a good enough citizen, leader, grandparent, partner, professional or worker--whatever it is that we do and how we are, however life's circumstances and our own hearts and minds devour us. We sit it out, wait it through, and then notice that however strange the world may seem to us, however perplexing the change may be, we can survive it. It will be good enough. Someday we will make a world for ourselves that will be good enough, as human beings, for us to live in without guilt and without fear. Or at least not too much of it.

We wait and think and wonder in these next few days--those of us who do observe the Days of Awe. We take a breath and then another and consider what it means to be a human, to bump up against other humans and to know--somehow--that for you this life is just as important as it is to me. I walk down the street, feel my feet on the pavement, pass a smoker in a doorway and people unloading goods from a truck and a woman with her baby and a sling and I try to notice that they matter as much as I do. I read the news, I feel myself being devoured by other people's fear and rage and sometimes I want to fight back. Sometimes I do fight back. Sometimes I wait, hovering, to see where the change is coming and sometimes I deliberately set myself in change's path. I worry and fret and wonder. And then brave people say brave things and change happens--look at Olmert reversing himself after 30 years. It can happen. Faith is a verb and moments like this are the times we choose it. However we choose it.

Don't know mind

There are times when I start feeling that the stress of all the hats I'm wearing is becoming, well, stressful.  There are moments when I don't, such as last night, when Andi & I went to go here this group called the Revels celebrate the fall solstice on the Charles River last night.  We took Ari, who did indeed revel in the music, while we watched the flickering display of a boat that was the sun and a boat that was the moon converge upon the bridge, as the group sang an atonal chant about walking in beauty, "Beauty is before me, beauty is above me," that reminded me of the blessing we Jews say on Shabbat about the schechinah.  It was gorgeous and relaxing and we strolled home feeling as though Beauty had really lit on us for a little while--that is, until Ari started to holler.

The stressful moments come when I can't seem to adjudicate between the different parts of me that have different roles to perform.  The part that does errands, for example, splinters into so many parts--the part that makes food, orders tupperware for Ari's lunch (didja realize how expensive that stuff it?), does laundry, gets the headlight fixed on the car, etc.  I find all those things incredibly difficult to do and even more difficult to plan.  (Which is more important?  Which tupperware should I buy?  How much time should I spend looking?  I researched tupperware for an insanely long time, trying to find some that is ecological and not dangerous in terms of BPA, and ordered a bunch of pretty stuff that arrived today... without lids).  It is NOT my bailiwick.  Fortunately there's Andi, but there's only so much of Andi to go around and she has her own life too.  And then there's all the other hats--being a mom (the hardest part is still the weaning, which I now feel may go on until Ari hits first grade), being a student, having all the different courses to decide about, doing my placement, getting my clothes ready for said placements, doing Little Buddhas, etc.  I don't know if it really is a lot, or if I am just being whiny.  I just feel tired today.

But as I was procrastinating and glancing through Andi's Maurice Sendak coffee table book I found this quote from after Sendak had a near-fatal heart attack in 1967.  He says that the book he undertook in the wake of his recovery was fascinating to him:  "I feel my work has permanently changed tone, color and meaning, without my yet having put pen to paper.  I am as curious about me as though I were someone else."  

That to me described so well the mindfulness experience--the point of it, if one can say there is such a thing as a point to something that is so not driven by goals and agendas.  That we are experiencing ourselves every day in a fresh way--as curious about ourselves as if we had just met some new, attractive, interesting acquaintance we were eager to get to know.   I have no idea who I will be today.  Each day I have thousands of chances to discover just who I am--who Ari is--who you are.  Isn't that exciting?  Such an openness of mind?  And even if it doesn't feel like that, just opening up the window a crack--a little bit--to let that curiosity in.  What am I feeling?  What is actually happening in this body of mine?  What am I about to create?

"I, too,"

said Ari today, as I was carrying him down the street. There was something so adult-like about this. He was eating tofu and offering a bit to Andi, a bit to me. He would say, gravely holding out the tofu, "A-di," and then Andi would take a bite, and then, "Mama," and then I would take a bite. And then he said, "I, too," and took a bite himself. It was quite sober and very cute.

He has, in the past, said, "Ari, too," but this seemed different, somehow. Andi and I marvel at the fact that he seems to grasp basic grammar concepts so well--this with the fact that he doesn't have the widest vocabulary--it is advanced, but it is not mind-boggling. But his grammar is quite, quite proper, and it amazes us. In the best of ways.

Lehman brothers, bad bets, regulation, and self-regulation of mamas and babies

Today is a sparkly sort of day, all golden and underlit and shiny. Andi looked out of the window at breakfast and remarked that the light was glittering under the leaves on the (still green) trees. A fairy day.

Ari is (gradually, I think) sleeping more at night, which is a good thing because I have just about gone crazy with lack of sleep. The challenge of not getting enough sleep coupled with the new stressors of school, Ari's school, and placement--and with Ari's own being tired--were starting to feel almost dangerous. Ari is naturally pushing limits and exploring what he can and can't do, and this was always going to be hard for me. I so hate to set the limits when he explodes with angry tears and begs to have me change my mind. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but inconsistency makes a hobgoblin of your toddler. Yikes! I don't have the natural patience of so many of the wonderful mothers that I know, so I find myself getting into petty power struggles with him and then sometimes letting him get away with something because I don't want to fight about it anymore. Especially when I'm tired. Last night, he kissed me a soft kiss goodnight and then curled up like a little puppy against me and went to sleep, and I reacted by nearly snarling. (I can't remember what I said, but I made some sort of protest that was senseless.) In the night, around 3am, he woke up screaming and kicking, and again, I responded with contraction and anger. Whoa, Mama! Finally waking up enough myself, I was able to pick him up and hold him and he dissolved and went limp against me, falling back asleep as I sang to him. I realized that he had had a nightmare, and that his waking had nothing to do with clamoring to be nursed. I know I can't help getting angry sometimes, but it just doesn't feel good when that is the first reaction toward him--especially since he is under so much stress, too.

By the way, here is my very slightly altered Buddhist-lite version of the Free to Be You and Me song that I sing to Ari when he cries in the night:
"It's all right to cry
Crying might get the mad out of you
It's all right to cry, it might make you feel better
Raindrops from your eyes
Washing some of the sad out of you
It's all right to cry, it might make you feel better

It's all right to feel things, though the feelings may feel strange
Feelings seem like real things, but they change and change and change
It's all right to know, feelings come and feelings go
It's all right to cry, it might make you feel better."


I did get a chance to hear Michael Greenberger talking on NPR about the national financial disaster that is here and that is to come. Be warned, everyone who believes their savings are safe because they are FDIC insured. The FDIC does not have enough money to bail out all the banks that will likely go into crisis because of the real estate lending mismanagement. If Greenberger is to be believed, that is, and I thought he made a very cogent argument. We may wind up bailing out the FDIC, but that will cost taxpayers billions or maybe trillions of dollars.

Here's his website. Go this and click recent media and then you can get to a podcast of his recent npr interview on here and now:

http://www.michaelgreenberger.com/

I started getting very scared about all of this, but then I realized that we are all in this together. Either we will help each other out, or we will fall into some wolfish lord of the flies decline. I can't know, so all I can do is keep going forward as if all will be well. Right? Here's another related link:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2008/09/is_it_time_to_grow_your_food.html


Change and change and change.

Israel and Iran

OK, in looking for a very scary article I read in The Nation about Israel, I found this post by Akiva Eldar of Ha'aretz, which heartened me up a little. So I include it here so that we won't all have to be terrified as I had been when I read the Eric Alterman article in this week's print issue of the Nation.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080526/eldar

This article about Israel at age 60 scared me especially because it highlighted only a few issues that I know are concerning Israelis, and it felt true to me based on my last visits 8 years ago--so I can only imagine that the worries are total terrors to Israelis now. And thus for all of us--not just we Jews, as you will see if you read it.

http://www.thenation.com/sections/israel

I'd be happy to hear what the rest of you think.

Of course, we're all occupied with the fiasco of Sarah Palin and the possibility that all of her self-serving stupidity may be exactly what gets McCain elected. And with good reason. But this article highlights the scale of the Israel/Iran nuclear war crisis that will unfold in some form in the year to come, no matter who gets elected. I don't have any faith that Obama is any better equipped to handle it than the NeoCons. This is not a lack of faith in Obama, per se, just persistent doubt because I, at least, don't have a clear idea of what is the right way to handle it. Do you? Obviously, for many people, a threat to Israel's safety is no threat to the rest of us. But for those of us who consider Israel's existence to be vital, it is deeply unclear what is the right course of action surrounding Iran. Israelis do deeply resent American Jewish intervention in their political scene, and with good reason--many pro-Israel lobbies in this country really do nothing but pour money into the Likudniks and may be responsible for getting Netanyahu back in power--ugh. But similarly, many people in the U.S. are quite rightly furious at how Israel has vested American interests with their own and thus dragged all of us into fundamentalist war-hell. Any thoughts?

Anyway, read the article. It's good.