Different Slants

When the senior doctor (and the fourth person) finally had the opportunity to read my x-ray results and came in to discuss things with me, he informed me that I had two broken ribs.  He seemed incredulous, having heard from the earlier doctors how much pain I was experiencing, and no sleep, and then he asked me, with that exasperated tone people reserve especially for idiots, 

“Why did you wait a week to come to the hospital?  You might have had a punctured lung, or worse.” 

I thought to myself about how much work I still had remaining to do, those last three days I had to empty out my store.  I had deliberately left the hardest task for last, because I didn’t want to do it at all.  Disassembling a ten foot wide, eight foot tall rack, that only used ten square feet of floor space but held, incredibly, four thousand copies of Life Magazine from the Sixties.  I was proud of how well I’d used the limited storage space, and how durable the rack was, but never dreamed that one day I’d have to remove it.    

But to make that storage capability possible, I used two inch thick shelves, many steel brackets and a bracing buttress to keep the whole wall of Lifes from falling on the steel shelving two feet away from it.  It was very hard to build and, even if I felt fine, it still would have been very strenuous to take apart.  But I didn’t feel anywhere near “fine” and it took me two hours to salvage all that wood, instead of about thirty minutes.  I ended up drenched and exhausted. 

I thought about the thousands of pounds of lumber I had to load into trucks those last days, aided by several people who volunteered to help me do what I couldn’t do alone.  One of them, interestingly, was the president of my synagogue, evidently a hands-on guy, Mike Rosen, who spent long hours sliding the twelve to sixteen foot long shelves into the truck while I did my best to stack and sort them for unloading while staying inside of the truck. This was the morning after the accident.  It hurt to stand and it hurt to breathe.  But I had so much hard work to do.

I was still unaware of my broken ribs, but Mike could see how much difficulty I was having carrying the long planks to the truck, so he suggested that he do that part while I sort the planks by size, and not have to lift so much.  I looked at the guy, an executive who travels the world for a national company, and whom I assumed lifted nothing heavier than a laptop and a cup of coffee while flying over the continent.  He was only a bit younger than I was, so I told him my concern was that he might have a heart attack from the sudden increase in work, and I wasn’t kidding.  People do what they do, and I didn’t want someone to die while helping me. 

(Read on …)

The ceremony, falling off the ladder, and the hospital incident, but not in that order   

Part Six 

The actual religious ceremony, which Sarah shared with another boy, went perfectly. 

The temple’s longtime rabbi, Jonathan Magidovitch, provided a comfortable setting that made the event both special for the two participants and less tense for them as well.  Although he has done this probably hundreds of times, he nevertheless makes it seems fresh each time he addresses the child and blesses them.  I know he set Sarah at ease, to the limited extent that can be done as one hundred people were watching her, with half of them Christian relatives who couldn’t read Hebrew, nor were they familiar with the temple’s patterns and customs. 

Sarah was also assisted in her chanting the ancient melodies of the Hebrew prayers by the temple’s beautiful cantor, Lynda Dresher, who has a soaring voice and, initially, was a major reason I joined the temple in the first place.  When I was a child, there were no female cantors or rabbis either, so this, to me, is real progress in both equality and the quality of a religious experience.  With three daughters, I want no barriers to them. 

Sarah’s speech was an important part of the event, where she thanks people who have helped her to get to where she was, at the podium, but also to make a declaration of faith and how Judaism mattered in her life.  Not so easy to write at thirteen, but her speech was flawless and flawlessly delivered.  Many people said so to Joyce and me later on at the party. 

While our synagogue has many interfaith marriages, this was the first joint Bar/Bat Mitzvah I’d ever been to where BOTH of the children were blondes.  The concept of somebody supposedly”looking Jewish” may soon have no meaning.  Still, there was a degree of culture shock for me, being the grandchild of exclusively dark brown-eyed, dark brown-haired Yiddish-speaking Eastern European immigrants. 

 But I thought Sarah’s Bat Mitzvah in particular rather pushed the envelope on interfaith family events. 

Without too much elaboration, this is who participated: Besides Joy and I, and her sisters, Rachel and Lisa, and later David, all Jewish, Sarah’s grandmother Helen Bishop was there (her actual father’s mother) and she’s proudly Lutheran.  Joy or I drive her to her church on Sundays.  Her grandfather, Robert Coffin (her actual mother’s father), is Swedenborgian, people who follow the teachings of Emanuel Swedenborgen (1688-1772) Swedish founder of the Church of the New Jerusalem.  This is a rare case where there are less of his followers in the United States than there are Jews, not that it’s a contest or anything.  

Her (other) handsome older brothers were part of the ceremony, too.  William Nelson, 17 and Robert Nelson, 15, both Catholic, were there with their adoptive mother, Judy, whom Joy and I view as a sister to us and Sarah sees as an aunt.  Actually, it’s not all that confusing to any of us.  Religion has never seemed to be an obstacle to love, in any of our families.  Sarah had also been to Will and Robert’s Communions and nobody tries to convert anyone to anything else.  It’s confusing enough as it is. 

Lastly, and frankly, the most fascinating to me, was (Aunt) Sarah’s new baby niece, Natalia.  This beautiful child, with dark brown eyes and dark brown hair, is the seemingly unique combination of the following countries and peoples: English, German, Lithuanian, Polish, Byelorussian,  Native American (Ottawa, Ohio and Ojibwa Tribes) Mexican and best of all, Basque!  And Jewish. 

I can’t wait until someday, someone says to her, on a playground:  

“Hey, Talia!  So…where’s your family from…?” 

All of these wonderful moments occurred on Saturday afternoon, September 12^th 2009. 

(Read on …)