Sukkot: Fragile Dwelling Place

 

“The land of Israel is not rich in water
resources. . . For this reason, a special
prayer for rain was inserted into the
[Sukkot] service. Since the rainy season
starts approximately at Sukkot, it was
the appropriate time to pray for rain.
Jews are realists. One prays for rain
during the rainy season, not during
the dry summers. One walks across
water by stepping on rocks . . .”

-- Rabbi Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way

 

I saw the full moon of Sukkot, Season of Our Joy, rising over the mesa in the east, into the white and misty clouds of hail that had just fallen over Freedom Ridge Ranch and was now falling out toward the Red Hill and Cimarron Mesa.  On the ground by the roses, on the porch, and over on the cabin and barn roofs, drifts of pellet-sized hail lay, melting slowly into the waters running off of the hills and mesas, downcutting into rills, rapids and even falls, as they sang their way down to Red Hill Draw.

 

There will be no Sukkah at Freedom Ridge Ranch tonight. Rain was still falling intermittently as Tippy and I picked our way across to check the chickens, jumping across a stream and its smaller tributary, both coming down from the dirt tank west of the barn. The other dogs were not the least bit interested in leaving the shelter of the living room. They were shell shocked from lightning, thunder, downpour and then hail. A sudden appearance of the setting sun lit up a rainbow over Freedom Ridge, and then curtains of rains covered it again, until the clouds passed to the east and the moon rose into them.

 

In the pattern of the Holy Days this year, building a Sukkah was called due to rain. The damage to the landscape, the flooding, the car bottoming out in standing water in Red Hill Draw by the shipping pens, all these things together made the typical Sukkot not only difficult, but unimaginable. Sukkot celebrates not only the Ingathering Harvest, the last of the Israeli year, but it also commemorates the years of wandering in the desert. It is a reminder of the fragility and impermanence of life.  

For so many people in New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, this impermanence is very real, as they realize what the floodwaters took, and clean up what is left, much of the stuff of their lives washed away like the stuff of our hillsides, roads and driveways. Normal life will not come for weeks or even months for friends of ours who live in Coal Creek Canyon. There house is high and soggy, but they will not see a return of drinking water and natural gas for a long while. They know the fragility of their dwelling place on real terms this Sukkot.

For us, the damage is in a bottomed out car, washed out roads and rilling and gullying in our harsh but fragile landscape. We’ve come through lightly, really. But on another level, we are also confronting impermanence without the need to build a Sukkah this year. Although this is now our permanent dwelling here at Freedom Ridge Ranch, we are in the midst of completing repairs requested by the buyers of the house up in Sedillo, the beautiful house we both thought would be our last. And we are buying a casita, a small and comparatively inexpensive house on a hill north of the Sedillo house a good ten miles by road.

The casita will be a place for the Cowboy to live while he finishes his degree and certifications in welding and metal technology. It will be a place for me to stay this fall and next spring, as I focus intensively on finishing my coursework so I can take my comprehensive exams. It will be a place for the Engineering Geek to land when he comes up to Albuquerque and Sandia Labs on business, for he has contracts that require his intermittent presence. It will not be home. But we will be back and forth between home and not-home a lot, all of us. And while this is the case, we hope to be completing the additions and renovations that will make the ranch house uniquely ours.

Our dwelling place will be most fragile and impermanent this year. Like our ancestors, who had to wander in the wilderness until they understood what freedom really requires. 

“As Jews moved into exile, they understood
what the Sukkah had always taught them: G-d
is not fixed; G-d is everywhere. After the
Exodus, Israel went into the desert to meet
its lord. Later, the favor was returned by
G-d, who went with them into exile, into
the travail of history. Jews learned that the
Shekhinah (Indwelling Presence) was with them
in times of exile and wandering.”

    --Rabbi Irving Greenberg, The Jewish Way

I miss the Sukkah already. The fragrant fall odors of Etrog and s’chach; the moonlit nights in the Sukkah, and the warm Shabbat afternoons. All the delights for the senses, the celebration of the harvest. But this year, with all of our life so impermanent, with our family scattered hither and yon, the reminder of the fragility of life, the shaky nature of shelter in the autumn wind is being delivered another way. Like so many of our friends and neighbors, undone by the Great Southwest Flood of 2013, we don’t need the Sukkah to remind us of these things. Our life is fragile enough. As Rabbi Greenberg reminds us:

“Until the world is redeemed from slavery,
Jews are on an Exodus journey; perforce
they are in, but not really of,the society
and culture they inhabit. Jews can con-
tribute without really accepting the
system. The tremendous effort to parti-
cipate led to Jewish integration into the 
host culture. Then the Sukkah reminded
them to push on. There were miles to go,
on the Exodus way . . .”

-- The Jewish Way

Mother Nature has completed the traditional Water-Pouring, Tevillah, that used to take place on the first night of Sukkot during the days of the Second Temple. She even through in some ice to go with the fiery lighting. And now life itself, and the way it works, is bringing us to a new understanding of impermanence.

Life is a fragile thing, and we shake like a Sukkah in the autumn winds. Yet like the Sukkah, we generally manage to remain standing. Through fire. And water. And ice.
There is a toughness to us as well. It gets us through hard times and makes us too stiff-necked to bow down to what our hands have made.

That is the point of the Exodus journey. Freedom isn’t free. It takes time and an understanding that idolatry is not compatible with our liberty. The adventure has been worth the cost, as we are reminded again each Sukkot what is important and what is not.

Our spirits have a fragile dwelling place, a body that bends and sometimes breaks. But we also have Shekhinah, reminding us that beyond all the fragility, something of us is strong and mighty.

Chag Sameach. Happy harvest!

 

Technorati Tags: Flood,Rain,Sukkot,Times and Seasons

Lie in August’s Welcome Corn!

     “Join in black December’s sadness, lie in August’s welcome corn, stir the cup that’s ever blending with the blood of all that’s born . . .”

-- Jethro Tull,  Cup of Wonder, from Songs from the Wood

                         

Pesach took me by surprise and then there was a long silence on this blog. So many things happened in April and May and then summer was upon us, and now the Monsoon and the first hints of autumn are already showing themselves here in the high country. Elul is also upon us, early this year just as Pesach was. But in order to begin looking to the year ahead, I need to look back at least a bit to see what brought me from there to here.

 

April, Come She Will:

The post-Pesach Spring Term was divided between Freedom Ridge Ranch and the house in Sedillo. Both the Cowboy and I were taking classes, he at CNM and me at UNM. In April, we drove up to Albuquerque every Monday morning and returned late Thursday night. It was a hectic busy time, make more do-able by the increasing light and warmth, although it was a cool spring in New Mexico.

In April, I:

•   Edited a dissertation for my Ruby Slipper friend, doing both APA Style formatting, grammar and spelling, and helping with writing style.
• Worked on a literature review for a class I was taking, as well as a research proposal and presentation.
•   Enjoyed down time hanging out at Barnes and Noble in Albuquerque, and began planning the summer work at the ranch.

May Days:

The term ended for the Cowboy and I at the end of April,  and he returned to the ranch and stayed. However, I was still back and forth there, and on up to Aurora, Colorado, mostly on Libertarian Business.

In May, I:

•   Helped plan and attended the LPNM annual convention, where I was termed out as Vice Chair and began a term as Secretary. There was a lot of politicking involved this time as we had a take-over threat and I really wanted our current Chair to remain Chair, although he wasn’t so sure.
•   Continued final editing on the Ruby Slipper’s dissertation, which reported a kick-ass study he did.
•   Drove up to Aurora one weekend for the Libertarian State Leadership Alliance meeting, held in conjunction with the Colorado State Convention. This was great—more relaxed than the bi-annual National Convention—there was plenty of time to talk to Libertarians. It always feels like coming home!
•    With the pressures of committee and comps preparation over for the semester, I had a chance to spend time with Excel Manufacturing friends after a long hiatus.
•   At the ranch, we welcomed our only baby calf of the spring (we had shipped some of the older cows and the bull earlier in the year). We also had water-pipe problems and had to work on the system, and install a new French drain in the irrigation system as well. We got the fencing complete for the greenhouse/garden area.

June is the Hottest Month:

June is hot and dry in New Mexico. Every living thing begins to long for water, and people slow down. We had several weeks of very hot weather, and late in June, temperatures climbed to a record 106 degrees. During late May and June, we had a number of serious wildfires in New Mexico and Arizona, and we saw some smoke at the ranch and in Albuquerque.

In June:

• I picked up my nephew, the Illinois Boy, at the airport as his parents moved to Texas and he came to try out life at the ranch. Once he adjusted to the altitude, he took to it very well.
• The day I picked up the IB, I had a long talk with my realtor, and we brought the price down for the Sedillo house, my beautiful Hobbit Hole. It was a painful decision, but important. We knew we needed to sell the house.
• On the second Friday in June, I thought I saw lightning as I was setting the Shabbat table. Dry lightning is common in June, so I thought nothing of it. The next morning, I woke up with a floater in my eye. I called Eye-Doc Randi that afternoon, and the short of it is that I had a vitreous detachment, requiring numerous trips to Albuquerque and UNM Eye Clinic for monitoring.
• We started fencing for a new horse pasture, and the Cowboy was really happy to have the IB’s help. The IB also learned to ride a horse, drive cattle and drive the tractor. We will make a cowboy of him yet!
• I went riding every week with a friend, JL, another Jew in the Republic of Catron. She was a wrangler for years in Arizona, and passed on some of her riding expertise to me.
• The Cowboy broke his hand while driving cows, and spent five weeks in a cast. Or he was supposed to, anyway!

 

 

Glorious July: 

July was truly a wonderful month, because the Monsoon  came right on the Glorious Fourth and stayed through the month. We got 3.53 inches of precipitation for the month, several of them in cloudbursts that re-arranged the landscape.

In July:

• We celebrated the Glorious 4th small-town style, with a parade and BBQ. Yours truly was honored to read the Declaration of Independence right after the choral presentation of patriotic music.
• The IB settled in, helping me dig retention basins around the trees, and we started a garden.
• The Cowboy spend several weeks working cattle at the York Ranch, but that ended in mid-July because the Monsoon had not yet hit the Continental Divide Country, and they shipped their cattle to a ranch in Texas for better grass.
• I qualified for my Concealed Carry Weapon license, shooting the EG’s Glock .40!
• The Cowboy removed his cast prematurely at the York Ranch, cutting it off himself, because it was getting gnarly. He’s definitely a Cowboy.
• The IB had to return to Illinois to take care of some business late in July and we weren’t sure if he was coming back.
• In the same week, Eye-Doc Randi found a small tear in the retina of my right eye—the one with the vitreous detachment—and I had a week in Albuquerque, playing appointment tag with an over-worked retina specialist.
• In the same week, the IB decided to come back—with resome gentle pushing and bribery from his mother and grandparents, and I arranged the flight.
• In the same week, we had a real gully-washer and frog-strangler, that washed away half the county. We have a new micro-topography here at the Ranch.

 

Lie in August’s Welcome Corn: 

And here we are at the end of the first full week of August. Time speeds when there is so much to accomplish and so many things happening.

The country looks like spring does elsewhere, all green and gold with water falling from the sky, running, trickling and making mud for the dogs to play in and trucks to get stuck in. The IB, gone barely two weeks, did not recognize the place.

And the day I picked him up at the airport, we got an offer on the house. Monday, that was. We dickered Monday evening to Tuesday afternoon. We came to agreement just after I had a good interview for a part-time staff position at CNM, a position I applied for in the Disability Center.

Whoo-hoo! The house is under contract. And, sniffle, we must now say good-bye to that era in our lives.

And just in time for Elul—the season of our turning . . .

But that’s another blog.

Technorati Tags: Meanwhile Back at the Ranch,Summertime,Times and Seasons,Family Life

Like Losing My Religion

Technorati Tags: Change,Judaism,Times and Seasons,Values

That was just a dream . . .
That’s me in the corner, that’s me in the spot. light. I’m losing my religion . . .

REM, Low(Bootleg) Album            

A few days ago, I awoke from a dream to find myself here at the ranch, sun pouring across the mesa outside my window and finch traffic at the birdbath. The dream was one of those weird ones that signal the changes of seasons and even deeper changes in me. And as I sat up in bed, feeling not quite awake yet, I thought: It must be Elul. I have these numinous dreams rarely, and when I do it is at this time and this season.

In this dream, there were no transitions, just sudden change of scenes, as if I had been dropped into the middle of filming an ongoing movie. There are two parts I remember quite vividly, and the rest is a blur of impressions that faded immediately upon my awakening.

First, I am suddenly inside our synagogue, in the social hall, floating among people, and I realize that I don’t know a single soul among them, and then I see that their faces are all the same.
Later, I am in the parking lot, down on the level of the pavement, and I  was looking at  two outdated jeeps parked against the wall, one listing away from the other, and both sitting on their frames, no tires. The plates are tagged with dates in the 5750’s. I reach out to touch the jeep on the right, and instead find myself placing my open hand on a pile of clothes. I know that I need to pick them up, take them inside, because somebody there has need of them. As I lift each article, I notice that one item belonged to me once, a red skirt I wore at my Bat Mitzvah, and I fold it up because it doesn’t fit me anymore. . .

That morning as we had our morning coffee in bed, I turned to the Engineering Geek and told him that it was the first of Elul and that we had to think seriously about the upcoming Holy Days, and make some decisions. He nodded. He knew. We’ve been putting it off for a long time. I said that there are two issues, and I think need to be considered separately. The easiest is the issue of dues. The hardest is whether we should end our membership altogether and what we should do for the Holy Days.

The EG nodded. He said that we cannot afford the dues we are expected to pay. This is a problem we had thought we resolved in March of last year, three months after the EG retired from Sandia. We made a personal visit with administrator there to put our dues in abeyance until we could see how long it would take us to begin bringing in money with our businesses, and what it would be like to live on the pension and our investments out here at Freedom Ridge. But despite the arrangement, the synagogue kept sending bills for the amount we paid before, and at membership renewal, they continued our membership at the old rate. They have a policy, I have been told, that if members do not renew and do not formally resign, we are continued at the previous rate. I don’t know what happened to our arrangements in labyrinthine depths of the computers where such transactions are preserved,  but I think it would be fairly easy to get this resolved.

Before we resolve it, though, we have to decide the hard question: should we continue membership? Even to consider this is almost like losing my religion, like relinquishing that which reconnects me again and again to my own past, our past and that of the people Israel who gather, learn and pray in that place.

All of my adult life I have been a member of this synagogue. My children had all of their life-cycle ceremonies there:  her naming, his brit milah,  their consecrations, bat and bar mitzvah, and confirmations. At that bimah, I was called to Torah for the first time as an adult bat mitzvah. Under the chuppah there, I was married to the Engineering Geek. From that sanctuary, I had expected to be taken to my final rest in the Congregation Albert Cemetery. There, I have celebrated the festivals, observed the fasts, heard the sound of the Shofar, welcomed the Sabbath Bride.

And yet, much of the connection has been slipping away of itself, as the Reform movement has become less about religion—the reconnection of people with the longings of their souls—and more about politics. When did Reform Judaism lose the prophetic voice of ethical monotheism for ritual without reason? When did it substitute “social justice” for G-d’s demand to choose life and reject death, made directly from the Mountain alive with smoke and fire, the Bat Kol resonating down through the centuries and into each of us, penetrating to our very bones? When did it replace the call of our Rabbis* to learn and understand and choose what is good with dictates from the Religious Action Center, replacing the majesty of Law with social-democratic political policy?

*The capital “R” denotes the Tanaim and Amoraim, the founders of Rabbinic Judaism whose discussions and arguments became the Talmud, the teaching and conversation across time that kept the flame alive throughout all the years and centuries of exile and pogrom, crusades and holocaust.

For a long while, beginning with our dissatisfaction with our last rabbi and his use of a Yom Kippur Sermon to stump for Obamacare, we have wondered if we were losing our religion. We also recognized that giving our hard-earned money to a Jewish institution that idolizes a president, and advocates spending our children’s inheritance to institute a collectivist utopia in place of our liberty is immoral, and is tantamount to funding our own destruction.

Part of the purpose of putting our dues in abeyance was also to wait and see. At the time, we had an interim rabbi whom we found to be a spiritual leader; one who respected the difference and the boundary between Jewish law and transient political policy, and who understood that his job was to provide guidance for walking the Jewish way to all of us. But we knew that we were getting a new rabbi and we had no idea how he would be.

We have now met the new rabbi and we find him distant and not terribly interested in talking to us. Perhaps this is unfair, because with our move to Freedom Ridge, we aren’t there often, although we have made an effort to be present when we are in Albuquerque. I do not expect hugs or effusive greetings, but warmth and small talk would be nice. Even a friendly wave and greeting would be welcome. But the man seems cold toward us, and I cannot help but take it personally. I was hoping that the man who takes responsibility for our Jewish needs and ceremonies would be, well, at least a bit simpatico.

I thought perhaps I ought to make the first reach, so I “friended” him on Facebook. And there I discovered that we had gotten another “social action” rabbi. I have seen very slanted posts there, ones that demonstrated the less than tolerant and charitable “Vision of the Anointed”  of the left. The first one condemned the Susan G. Komen Foundation in lockstep with the leftist attack on that private charity because of an innocent decision about the best use of funds by its founder and board. The second accused the people of Colorado Springs of hypocrisy because many of them are conservative and support cutting the federal budget and taxes and yet their local and state governments requested federal disaster funds for them.

There are political arguments for why the good rabbi is wrong in both cases, but I did not use them. I  did make comments expressing my concern that these posts betrayed a one-sided view that was uncharitable in the extreme, and that placed ideology over individuals. I remain dismayed at this rabbi’s lack of discernment, jumping on two leftist propaganda bandwagons as he did, without apparent thought and with some malice. This makes me uncomfortable at the thought that this man is the one I am paying to be on call for me should we have a family tragedy or even a simcha, in order to provide us with the Jewish rites and comfort that accompany such events. It is not that we disagree with one another politically, so much as the way in which he has made blanket condemnations without much depth about people whom he does not even know, because of his attachment to his political ideology. I would be one of those people.

There are other issues and events, things that have happened very recently and over a longer period of time that make me feel that we may be formally members, but we really don’t belong at this synagogue. Ten years ago, I leyned Torah several times a year, something I love to do. I have not leyned once since Cantor Jacquie left, and we have not been honored with a call to Torah either, even this year, when we celebrated our 10th anniversary. Recently, my brother-in-law and my son’s uncle died suddenly and tragically, and although we informed the synagogue, and we drove almost two hundred miles to say kaddish, his name was omitted from the list.

I have written before about my discomfort with some of the ways in which our ways of thinking and being do not mesh with the prevailing climate of this synagogue, and I suppose that sooner or later it had to come to a decision point. And yet it is not an easy one, as obvious as the misfit of our square pegs and their round holes may be.

We have talked about it, the Engineering Geek and I, and although he feels it less deeply, he is much more vocal about the immorality of continuing to support a synagogue where he has to walk out of the political sermons year after year. He tends to joke about it, but as money becomes more scarce—like most ranchers our wealth is not liquid—he says he doesn’t want to throw away the good after the “socialist” bad money.

We have made no final decisions. But we have given ourselves two options for the Holy Days, neither of which will be to attend services at Congregation Albert. We may pray at home for one or both of the High Holy Days. We may visit a small, egalitarian synagogue in Flagstaff. Although it is affiliated with the Reform Movement, its size and location mean that it draws Jews from many different Jewish backgrounds. Also, the rabbi did not study at Hebrew Union College (the seminary of the Reform movement), and therefore may be less indoctrinated in the current political “religion” ideology that seems to emanate from it. We would like to find out. Although neither of us are particularly touchy-feely types, we can tolerate that so long as the focus is Judaism in all its history and grandeur, and is not wasted in the weeds of ephemeral political dogmas and doctrines.

I know that if I never belong to or never darken the doors of another synagogue, I will remain a Jew in culture and commitment. I will never bow down to idols, be they made of stone or ideology. I will always see the world through the Jewish eyes I developed through all these years at Congregation Albert. But even the small steps that we have made away from a congregation in which I have experienced all of the joys, sorrows and frustrations of being a Jew cause me to feel like I am losing my religion. 

Yule: A Week Out of Time

Yule, that's what this week is. Since we don't celebrate Christmas, I had not thought of it this way before. But in the days of the Old Religions of Europe, people took this whole week surrounding the Solstice out of their calendar completely. The days were not part of any month, and they had no number except Yule 1, Yule 2, and so forth. It was literally a week out of time. And peculiarly, this week feels much like a week that has been yanked out of the normal flow of time for us, because we are non-celebrators. All of our normal routines and interactions are blown to the wind, and we have no special rituals to replace them.

This year, the sense of dislocation is even greater. The Engineering Geek retired from his employment at Sandia National Labs on December 23, and we are starting a new adventure in independent employment, Going Galt, as it were, and moving down to our ranch in Catron County. And the move is coming soon, as the Catron Kid (a.k.a. the Rasta Jew) will start his new school on January 5.

Never have I been less prepared for an imminent move.




This year, at Erev Shabbat Shemot (Christmas Eve to much of the rest of America), we had a cake and poured Champagne to toast the Engineering Geek's retirement. And the Engineering Geek was finally entirely happy to have retired. And he has finally developed the energy to begin preparing for the move, energy previously being used to reflect on the work he has done and the disappointments of his career, as well as to do the work of actually finishing that work. Although exciting it is also an emotionally laden time.

We went to bed Friday with visions of the work ahead dancing in our heads. On Saturday, however, we woke feeling the need of a leisurely day, for Christmas for the rest of the country is truly a day out of time for us. It is our custom to go to a movie and then have a Chinese dinner. (A movie and Chinese is the American Jew's way of coping with a day in which everyone else is celebrating and almost everything is closed). This year, December 25th fell on Shabbat, so we stayed home and watched The Frisco Kid with Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford and had homemade stir-fry and egg rolls for Seudah Shlishi --the third meal of the Sabbath, usually eaten as night falls).

But this feeling of time out of time, of dislocation, and the short, winter days all mean that we have not been diligent about getting ready, about packing, about all the repairs the house needs so that we can move. Although we are all exciting about the move, there is some trepidation about the challenges of beginning a new life--at our age!--again. And there are the good-bye's to say, the inevitable sadness and sense of loss that accompany such great change.

All of this together has made the 2010 week of time-out-of-time particularly strange. We are all walking around laughing one minute and nearly in tears the next. Moments of panic are interspersed with these other emotions for me, as I look around my house and contemplate just how unready we are to make this move.

Fortunately, for me, when I come back to even keel, I realize that since the house has not yet been sold or leased, and since we want to leave most of our furniture in it while we prepare the house at the ranch for our move, I have some time to get it all going. I really can RESUME. BREATHING. NORMALLY.

Change. It is wrenching, even when it is eagerly anticipated. The adjustment will be made. What I need to do is just allow the whole month of January being about the move.

Changes

IN WHICH THE BOYCHICK FLEXES HIS WINGS

AND THE MOTHER LOOKS FOR GRACE....

Although the days are still sunny and hot,

and the afternoons feature spectacular thunderheads building over the mountains, the mornings have been cool, foggy and misty in the Sandias. The sunflowers are blooming, and will soon become heavy with seed; the first harbingers of autumn wildflowers comes to us with mid-August.




This morning, I wore my 'hoodie,' on our morning constitutional--a sure sign of the approaching seasonal shift.


And this autumn is bringing changes to Los Pecos Homeschool.


Difficult and yet joyful changes, as our once small chicks take different steps towards leaving the nest.


The Chem Geek Princess is preparing to buy a townhouse in Albuquerque. She has already started her professional life as a chemist, starting paying her own health and car insurance, and acting like a responsible adult in many ways. Now, she will take that final step of moving out on her own, well-launched, if I do say so myself!


The Boychick has decided to attend high school. This decision was a full year in the making, and we did not take this step lightly. The decision was predicated on securing him a place in the freshman class of East Mountain High School, a small community charter high school. This school has a block schedule that reduces transitions, small class sizes, and a curriculum that includes many options in the natural sciences. The Boychick has gotten a place in the class of 2012, and yesterday we registered him for his classes.


It all started last fall, when the Boychick and I sat down to discuss his options for a high school education. These were: continue with homeschooling--which I was fully prepared to do--and add Central New Mexico Community College classes as needed, or try for a place at EMHS. There was no talk of returning to regular public schools in our area. The Albuquerque high schools are too big and far away for a homeschooled boy from the mountains, and the Moriarity school--we are technically in their district--is equally distant and does not have the academic emphasis we think is necessary. During our discussions, the Boychick floated the idea of going to school. My heart was heavy--I have invested quite a bit of my identity into being a homeschooler--but I heard him out objectively.


His reasoning was that he has developed confidence in his ability to learn, that his sister is moving out soon and our lives will change, and that there are certain subjects that he wants to learn in the company of friends; his friend A., for example, was planning to attend East Mountain. "Could we consider it?" he asked.

Yes, of course we could.


This spring, we entered Boychick's name in the lottery, and we attended both a parent meeting and a student open house. The school is indeed small and there is no possibility of Boychick becoming lost in "the system." The school has a reputation for academic excellence, parent involvement, and unique methods, such as discovery learning and project-based learning. These are all good for our young maverick mind .


Then, in March, we heard that the Boychick had not made the lottery and that he was placed on a waiting list. Part of me was sad for my boy's high hopes, but part of me was already planning our homeschooling alternatives. However, in April, the school called and told us that a place had opened up for the Boychick, and so the round of planning and placement began.

At his interview, the Boychick wowed the committee with the reading he was doing, and there was some discussion of re-testing him for special education and gifted services. I wrote a up report about his previous IEP--which has expired. Then, there were questions about his AS and whether we needed LD services. I was not so thrilled because of the confusion engendered. I know, I know--I am a special educator--but I am also a homeschool mom, and the 'officialness' of the paperwork and labels that follow our kids is intimidating.

Until registration, there was a little part of me that wondered how this might all work out.


Yesterday, the registration was a little chaotic--I forgot to remind the Boychick's advisor (who is new) to give him a Student Planner, there were no supplies lists available, and the question of special education was brought up. More confusion, because this new special education teacher did not know that the interviewing committee thought that Boychick should be placed in gifted humanities; she was focused on remediation--which I do not believe we need. She had no paperwork, and wanted "a clear copy of his current IEP." He does not have one. The last one written for him was at the end of grade 4, and does not in any way describe the Boychick as he is now. She brought up the idea of re-testing. I demurred, but there was no time for discussion. They found the report I had written but there was no time for us to talk intelligently.


I was ready to take my son home and prepare to continue homeschooling. It just felt safer.

But then my son talked to her for a moment or two so intelligently about his strengths and weaknesses, that I thought better of it. He does not want to be tested again. He does not care to be is placed in the gifted humanities. He has very specific goals for himself. And he wants to go to East Mountain High School.

Deep. Breath. Okay.

Today, I am trying to make an appointment with his advisor, the special education teacher, to convey our goals and desires in a private, quiet setting as much unlike registration as possible.

I am trying not to panic. I am trying not to imagine the Pink Floyd Movie "Another Brick in the Wall" scene.

This is a small, alternative high school. We can work this out. I. Will. Breathe.

I have to remind myself that we made a good, reasoned decision.

That we researched this thoroughly.

That it is always hard to let them go into the big, big world with their big, big selves!

That this is hard for me. For me, and not for him. I'm a Jewish mother, I worry!

The Boychick, on the other hand, is having a marvelous time.
He is saying what he thinks.
He is being heard.


I need to change my tune from "The Wall" to John Denver:



"Its a sweet, sweet dream--

Sometimes I'm almost there,

Sometimes I fly like an eagle...

like an eagle, I go soaring high..."
---John Denver, Looking for Space



That's the Boychick. He is flexing his wings.
He is looking for space.

And I must have the grace to send him forth into the big, big world with my blessing.

She's Twenty-Two and in Las Vegas!

Today she is twenty-two.

It is a little hard to believe that twenty-two years ago today I was pacing the short distance from the bedroom ro the living room of our student apartment, trying to breath through the contractions.

I ache in different places now, and my baby girl has gone to Las Vegas with friends to celebrate her birthday.

It's funny what you remember, isn't it?

I remember that when she was newborn, she was looking around our bedroom, appraising it, as if it were somehow familiar. She didn't cry. At least not right away. Instead, she had this intent, serious look on her face. In the late afternoon sunset I could see the green-gray behind the milky infant blue in her eyes. I said to her father, "She has my mother's eye color there, just behind the blue."

I remember pacing the floor with her that fall, as she screamed her way through colic every evening between 6 and 8:30 PM. I played the Walkman with the earphones in, hoping to remain calm--as if any new mother could--through the fussing. At the time, it seemed like forever until she grew out of it, but looking back--well, what is six weeks compared to twenty-two years?

I remember when she started pre-school. On the very first Shabbat at home, she began singing: "What do you like about Shabbat!" And then she used her left arm to turn her whole arm toward her dad, and sang: "Mah-dy," (her made up word for her dad), "what do you like about Shabbat?" She was every inch the teacher leading the class.

And what about the second-night Hillel Seder when she was three. She stood up on the chair in roomful of 40 college students and adults and fearlessly sang the four questions. In tune. She was wearing a pink sailor dress, I remember, that it was almost as long as she was.

I remember reading The Hobbit aloud to her when she was three or four, and then she took the book away from me and began reading it back. And the insatiable love of books began right then and there, when we went "On Beyond Zebra!" She was going to open her own bookstore and call it Gold Medal Books. In it she would sell Newberry Award books and American Library Awards books, too.

I remember that at her little brother's birth, she was the only person who could rub my feet and make me feel better. She was thrilled about him. And not so thrilled, too. She used the phrase, "But that was before my little brother came along and ruined my life!" Alot. But when there was a fire alarm in theater, she was the first one out, pushing past other people, little brother in tow.

And the birthdays. At two, she got a tricycle, and by four, a two-wheeler. At three she came skipping home singing "Balloons for the Birthday Girl!" Barbie came somewhere in there, and her favorite Miko, who got lost one day years later. She mourned for months and searched for nearly a year. There was the year of the pinata in the courtyard, and the year of the party at the local park. There was the year she had a little brother. At twelve, we had to return a cd because it had the parental warning on it. That was also the year of teeny-bopper pop--Janet Jackson and the boy bands. At thirteen, her Bat Mitzvah overshadowed her birthday, and we had a sleepover on October 9th--a thirteen-and-a-month birthday party.

Fifteen was a really hard birthday because her cat was killed by the neighbors dog the day before it. We postponed the party until the 10th, when we brought home a new kitten. But it wasn't the same. Those teen years are hard, when the magic of special days wears off and Mom and Dad have lost their shiny virtue and have become merely human. Or worse. Sixteen and another sleepover and anger that it wasn't what we had talked about for her "Sweet Sixteen." Hard years. Little money and less time.

But at seventeen, she not only got her drivers license, but her stepfather invested in a car for her. Gertrude. It was a "grandma car." But she was happy to have it so that she could stay at her high school after we moved.

Eighteen. Was it cheesecake or ice-cream cake? But there was a shopping trip for special jewelry. Her birthstone in a necklace and earrings.

Nineteen, and we got her a rice-cooker for her dorm kitchen comfort.

Twenty. Back home, lunch and a shopping trip. And she broke up with her high-school boyfriend. Finally.

Twenty-one. That was a very good year. A birthday celebration at home with her new boyfriend--and for sure, cheesecake, her favorite. What a difference a year makes! And a trip with friends to Disney World in Orlando the weekend after Yom Kippur.

And today--twenty-two. Her first birthday away from home. She's in Las Vegas. Staying at a fancy hotel. She could be--G-d forbid--playing the slots. Certainly, she is eating well. I hope. Did I tell her not to drink too much? Well, I should have! I hope she doesn't elope today!

We'll have to schedule a time to make a party with the family and give her a gift. She might be too busy to have Rosh Hashanah dinner with us. Am I complaining? Maybe a little. But she should have fun. She's young, she's pretty, she's--twenty-two. Soon enough she will be celebrating her own babies' births! She'll be the mom. It's coming. I can see the look in her eye when a baby passes by with its mother. And I see how she looks at her boyfriend. Sigh. Well. He's a good man. But shouldn't she be older? Like maybe 40?

Today I did a bit of this and a bit of that. Nobody said to me, "Remember what it was like twenty-two years ago today?" I cleaned the new floor. I painted two more walls in the living room. One to go. I practiced giving the WAIS to Bruce. The results aren't valid and I couldn't tell him what they were--Dr. Yeo said absolutely not. It took a long time. It sort of took my mind off the fact that my baby girl is not even home on her birthday. For the first time since she came sliding into the world in our bedroom, all eight pounds, eight ounces of her. Looking around the room contemplatively. Like she knew the world and approved.

And she's taller than I am.

Sigh.

Some mothers can hardly wait for the empty nest. I thought I was one of them. But here I am. My nest is, at most, less than half-empty and I am feeling it.

I guess I should think about the grandchildren to come. Then I'll have more birthdays to celebrate. At her house. I wonder what kind of cake they'll want? Cheesecake. Gotta be.

It was just one of those days. Cloudy. Cool. Drizzly. Fall is coming. It was sunny and hot the day she was born. A Monday. "Monday's child is fair of face..."

And she's twenty-two. And in Las Vegas. And the world keeps turning. Day follows night. The stars move in their courses. Time marches on, no matter how much we want it to stand still.