Before the snow, Boychick got his wish and we spent the afternoon of his birthday in town, frequenting a guitar store, and the bookstore. We stopped and got a German Chocolate Cake, candles and T-bone. The Engineering Geek had to shovel the way to the grill, but we had the Boychick's favorite dinner.
To the Boychick! Here's to another great trip around the sun!
Doing the dishes went quickly as we listened.
Sixteen? Soon I am going to have to come up with another nickname for the Boychick. Manchick just doesn't do it for me, somehow.
Although there was a moment when the Engineering Geek's explanation of the fall of Weimar in Germany due to hyper-inflation began to dawn on the wife, the husband quickly pointed out that Germany was not operating in a world market. (Oy, the abyssimal failure of our public schools to teach history!)
Finally, I attempted to draw an analogy using the energy exchanges in ecosystem ecology. At this point, the husband simply said that he did not believe me because economics is not a natural thing, it is human made and therefore not subject to natural laws. Therefore he said, it is not impossible for people to continue indefinitely consuming more than they produce.
I was absolutely floored at first, not understanding how a smart and successful director of a major Albuquerque employer could possibly not understand this simple concept. (The EG said I was getting frustrated). Then I realized. My neighbors are in denial. They simply cannot imagine that a system that they depend upon, one that allows them to live the rather extravagant lifestyle they enjoy, could possibly fail. Like many of the passengers on the Titanic, they tell themselves the story that the good ship U.S. Economy is unsinkable.
According to researchers who study the psychology of disasters, many people freeze in the first minutes of a disaster because they simply cannot believe that their reality has altered so suddenly. These people are the least likely to take positive action in the first moments of the disaster, and are therefore less likely to survive. (See, for example, The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes--and Why by Amanda Ripley). Those who survive are often those who have thought about and planned for the unthinkable.
As a child growing up, I spent a lot of time reading science fiction, and a fair number of those short stories and books placed characters in the unthinkable situations of disasters ranging from nuclear war (Alas, Babylon) to an astroid impact (Lucifer's Hammer). Such books do get one thinking about the possibilities of disaster. But the book that made me realize just how quickly a situation can deteriorate from normalcy to surreal horror was John Hersey's The Wall, a novel that portrayed the history of the Warsaw ghetto. In the beginning one of the female characters is returning from the bakery in her Warsaw neighborhood, her basket full of bread. Within the first third of the novel, that same character is hungry and scrambling for food in the ghetto. By the second half of the novel, she is making her way through the sewers filled with barbed-wire in order to escape. The time portrayed in the novel, about six years, is telescoped to the main events, but for an impressionable freshman in high school, the idea that one's world can change dramatically in a short time became real to me with this book because it was about real events.
For some time, as I have watched the country I inhabited before September 2008 change before my very eyes, I have been aware of how fast something wicked this way comes. (Yes, Ray Bradbury borrowed one of his sci-fi fantasy title's from Shakespeare). Not quite believing it could get bad, I nevertheless began thinking about what we would need in case of, say a bank failure, or even civil unrest. That thinking became planning and purchasing as I watched our purported leaders scramble all over each other to deny reality through insinuation and outright lies. The more outrageous their behavior, the more planning and purchasing I did. Now, working with others, we are planning for various contigencies.
I have been called a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist, a person wedded to doom and gloom, and the other night, unpatriotic. That's okay. Call me all of those things. Because when I get called those names, I remember the Donner Party. They ignored all the signs, did not heed the warnings, took an untried "short cut" that led to a long delay, and ended up in the High Sierra completely unprepared for winter. And most of the members of that group from Illinois came to a horrific end. So call me all the names you want, but also call me "Scout" because my motto is still Be Prepared. In winter, for example, I carry an emergency kit in the car. (Such a kit should at least contain candles, water, high-energy snacks, a sleeping bag, a shovel and kitty litter).
If one is unprepared for even a mild disaster, one's chances of injury and death are increased. In the face of a serious disaster, being able to accept the unthinkable and being prepared for many challenging situations makes one's chances of surviving and even thriving much greater.
The sunshine patriot and the summer soldier will not be prepared to weather hard times. Winter soldiers are prepared for more than one kind of hard time.
Denial of reality can lead to serious consequences. So now, in order to "brace for impact", the Engineering Geek is working with others who think logistically on contingencies for a group of us, so that we can provide ourselves with the mutual aid and comfort of community in the coming hard times. Because hard times are predictable. When enough people in power in a society evade reality, hard times become inevitable as that same reality comes back to bite us in the butt.
Denial. It ain't just a river in Egypt.
And speaking of movies, that is one-half of the traditional American Jewish solution to what to do on Christmas: A Movie and Chinese, which harks back to the place and/or time when the only restaurants open were Chinese ones, and the movies seem to always be open. When we lived in town, we usually managed the 'movie' part--especially the three years running when segments of the Lord of the Rings were released--but alas, the Chinese restaurants in Albuquerque tend to close on Christmas. Then for a few years, our synagogue ran a fundraiser on December 25 where you could come and pay to watch a subtitled Israeli movie and eat catered Chinese food purchased from a Chinese place at the close of business on December 24th. 
Also, in New Mexico, the evening of December 24 is the last night of Posadas, and Old Town and other neighborhoods begin to glow with the warm glow of the luminarias when the sun goes down. When we lived in town, we used to go down to Old Town or to the old Ridgecrest neighborhood to walk in the cold air, listen to the mariachi, and the carolers in the square, and enjoy the light. We'd either start or end the evening with a traditional but pork-free New Mexican dinner at one of the New Mexican food places--posole, tamales enchiladas--done "christmas" with both red and green chile, refried beans and Spanish rice, and of course, biscachitos--the enchanting New Mexican Christmas cookies made with anise. I have wonderful childhood memories of Vince Guaraldi's Linus and Lucy.
The Uprising! from PuppetGov on Vimeo.
Hanukkah began last Friday night with the lighting of the first candle and the singing of Maoz Tzur--Rock of Ages. And busy though we were, trying to get out of the house for the Boychick's guitar class concert, we paused to remember Judah the Maccabee, who led Jewish guerilla warriors against the army of the the Tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes--who called himself god--and won. (The Maccabees called him Antiochus Epimanes--the fool, because only a fool would claim to be a god). 
A river of gold in Tijeras Canyon: 46. Populus tremuloides (Aspen) and Rio Grande Cottonwood light up the folded and fractured rock of Tijeras Fault.
A curious mix of gree, gold, orange and brown on the scrub oak in the back yard against the backdrop of the Pinyon-Juniper woodland, punctuated by patches of orange oak. Fall in Sedillo.
Tremulous gold of a young Aspen, leaves shimmering in the wind, unmatched as yet by the nearby cottonwood in Tijeras Canyon, just outside the old Tijeras Land Grant.
No matter how busy, as we go to and from our duties, we are momentarily transfixed by the technicolor brilliance of the mountain trees against stark rock, the soft greens of the predominantly evergreen forests, and the deep blue of a New Mexico October sky.
But each turning leaf and tree reminds us that "nothing gold can stay." Winter is coming hard upon the heels of this year's fall glory. It is expected to be early and snowy here in the high country. Today the Engineering Geek and I enjoyed the colors on the way to the purchase of a woodburning fireplace insert to replace our propane fueled fireplace. Winter is coming seasonally and saecularly. With hard times ahead, we want to be as self-sufficient as possible.
This Sukkot has also been cold and windy, foggy and even rainy! We did not get any snow, though, like we did last year. Between the retreat last week and the weather last week, we have not had much chance to enjoy our Sukkah this year.
This morning, the last day of the Festival (Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah), dawned foggy and very cool, and the Engineering Geek and I stayed in bed until after 7 AM for the first time in weeks and weeks. We took a long leisurely walk in the meadow and the woods. I took along my camera, and got some pictures: above is upper Sedillo Canyon in fog, and below, the EG with Lily and Shayna. (Shayna thought I wanted to play as she does when I aim the camera in her direction).
But this afternoon, it was finally calm enough to take some pictures of the EG following the actual waving ritual. Today being Simchat Torah, we sang "Adonenu, Hoshianah" as well as about the Torah. We missed dancing with the Torah at the synagogue because of the Boychick's illness. So we made our own rejoicing here.
It does not perfectly match my original set, but in the picture you can see it next to a dining room chair. It blends more beautifully than I had even imagined when I saw it at the store.
The Chem Geek Princess has always been good shopping Karma, but this is the best yet. I am really, really glad she is living in town and will still be there when she and her new husband move into their new home in December. I am glad for many reasons greater than the shopping Karma, but as you can see, yesterday was a lucky day for me!
All in all, this was one of the strangest High Holy day seasons I have ever had. But it was good, in a very different way. It's all good, as one of my friends likes to remind me. I need to be reminded. So I'll say it again. It is all good.
As we turned to go down the hill, we could see all of Cedar glowing in the gentle autumn sunrise, the Jemez mountains a blue shadow in the background. In the foreground, aspens are well on the way to turning.
The winterfat is fluffy and white, below the ridge; the grasses have taken on that autumnal frosty silver in the meadow.
Winter is coming. And it will be early.
Rosh Hashanah 5770 began Friday at sundown.
This year the High Holy Days seemed to sneak up on me, and yet, as I have come to expect, they are still a roller coaster ride of events and emotions.
This year the New Year was bittersweet, our first without the Chemistry Geek Princess. I have not written of it, or of her upcoming wedding, because mixed in with my joy at seeing her coming up in the world is also the personal heartbreak of watching her choose to leave Judaism behind her. For me, being a Jew has a light side and a dark side and binds my personal universe together. Like all loves, it is exciting, frustrating, challenging, comforting, fulfilling. It is so inextricably part of who I am that I would be unrecognizeable to myself were I to wake up tomorrow not a Jew.
And yet somehow, in our topsy-turvy lives, I did not convey this to my daughter. She did not find it compelling. It is, we say, hard to be a Jew. And in this day and age, each person must choose Judaism for herself.
Perhaps there is a moment in the life of every mother when her eyes are opened and she wonders: How did this one grow beneath my heart, how did this child come forth from my body, and yet become so inexplicably foreign to me? How is my own child more unrecognizable to me than the child of a stranger, the young woman who stood to chant B'reshit (Creation), on this the second day of Rosh Hashanah, at the service in the mountains?
As Jews, we share the mythos that all of us stood at Sinai amidst the fire, the smoke, the awe and the blasts of the Shofar. Everyone who has the soul a Jew, whether she comes to it early or late; whether he comes to it through struggle, or by slipping into it as one slips into the world between one moment and the next at birth; everyone who is a Jew stood at Sinai, and in that moment out of time, accepted the covenant as an individual. This is our shared Ur-story, our shared myth and shared remembrance.
And today, as I sat under the Ponderosa Pines listening to our rabbi sing of remembering Sinai, and as I felt the heat and tasted the smoke, I understood that the Chemistry Geek Princess did not stand there with us in that time outside of time. In that mythic time she was elsewhere, partaking of a different story, choosing another way. For it is hard to be a Jew.
Since learning, during the week of Pesach, that the Chemistry Geek Princess was no longer crossing over the boundaries with us, I have not gone to a single Shabbat service until Erev Rosh Hashannah, Friday. For reasons that are complicated and inchoate, even now, I kept myself apart from the synagogue.
At the Erev Rosh Hashanah service I had an almost unmanagable desire to stand for Kaddish with those mourning a recent death. But the Chem Greek Princess is, thank goodness, very much alive. Every moment of life is a moment in which to rejoice.
Yesterday Rosh Hashanah morning services were good. Together we remembered the birth of the world, of life. We remembered Abraham's moment of insanity when he almost murdered Isaac, the child of laughter, and we remembered the urgent call to reason at the last moment. We stood for the wild wailing of the Shofar, calling us to majesty, to remembrance and to redemption. But the sermon, of which I will write more later, jarred that momentary sense of remembering, and by Kaddish, I was no longer there in that place.
This morning was different.
Joy greeting the light of day--Or Zaruach l'tzaddik . . . light is sown for the righteous.
Women dancing to the sound of drum and cymbals . . . kol han'shamah . . . the voice of everything that breathes . . . echoed the blue of the sky, the deep green of the pines.
A primal moment of Jewish soul.
The second Aliyah--the going up to make the blessing for the reading of Torah--called those who stood in need of healing; of the body, or of a breech, or of some great internal struggle in need of a tikkun, a repair, a return to shalem, to wholeness. I went up with others whose bodies or minds or spirits called them to go up. And, beside myself, I said the blessing. And as I stood there listening to a young woman chanting Torah, I saw the mirror of my daughter. What might have been, in a different universe. And I stood, tears running silently down my face as I listened to her proclaim in her sweet and confident voice of the goodness of the earth and those that dwell on it.
And so through the second blessing: . . . Blessed . . . for implanting life within us . . .
And so through the Mishebeyrach: . . . May the one who blessed our mothers and fathers bless these ones also with life and great wholeness and completeness.
And so through the reading of the Haftarah (Prophets): " . . . you shall go out in joy and be led forth in peace. The mountains and hills shall burst out in song before you . . . They stand as an everlasting sign that all shall not perish."
A wedding. A simcha--a time of rejoicing. A commitment. A new family. A chance at more life. It should be, it is a time of joy.
And yet, here a breech, a loss. A daughter's choice, a mother's grief.
How to find the balance? The sense of shalem--of wholeness, of completeness, of peace?
"I remember you,
As we stood at the foot
of that mountain,
covered with soot
from all the fire and the smoky cloud . . ."*
And I remember watching you,
through the ashes and the flame,
I remember you . . . turning and walking away.
Was the sound and the heat too intense?
Did I not teach you your name?
Or was it all just too much,
And you turned away?**
A mother's work is to guide each child, to teach and to uphold her. But a child's work is to grow and becoming someone new and different. And the child will go where the parent wishes she would not. And that is the way of life.
And so I grieve. My crown is broken. A precious jewel is gone. There is a loss, a tear in the garment, a breech in the circle. I cannot know how this will become. And there is distance made by her, and made by me. Perhaps only the coming of the messiah can span it.
And still, she should go out in joy.
*Rabbi Joe Black, "I Remember You", from the album Sabbatical.
** Elisheva Levin, You, Walking Away.
In the desert mountains, the storms are fierce; lighting dances on the mountain front, tearing winds howl through the canyons.
But the rains of autumn also bring life-giving water to the soil, and the first frosts work it deeper into the ground, shifting it, covering the falling seeds, preparing it for new life to come.
And the sun, not so fierce as in the summer, shines again, a blessing of light and a promise of warmth even as the cold season approaches.
"V'hinei Adonai ohver . . . and, behold, Adonai passed by, and a strong wind rent the mountains; and broke in pieces the rock before Adonai, but Adonai was not in the wind.
And after the wind an earthquake, but Adonai was not in the earthquake; And after the earthquake, a fire, but Adonai was not in the fire.
And after the fire, kol ramamah dakach . . . a still, small voice.
And it was so . . . "
--Malchim Alef (I Kings: 11-12)
"Freeze this moment a little bit longer . . ."
Of course I am powerless to do so. But the moment was so present to me and I to it. Relaxing. Singing with friends.
And in my head I heard the words of Jacob at Beth El: "Surely the presence of the Eternal is in this place, and I, I did not know it. This is the House of G-d and the Gate of Heaven."
For Jews, it is time, not space, that is holy. And I want this time. The Boychick will be driving next spring, and he will accelerate his journey out of our lives and into his own. And my firsborn, my baby, soon a wife!
So I decided to start the month of Elul by making arrangements to take a semester off. I need a Sabbatical.
I thought I would have second thoughts, but I do not.
As we walked the dogs the past few evenings, the sky has been perfectly clear. The remnants of the Perseids streak through the Milky Way, arching across the sky at zenith at midnight.
Ah, the beauty of it.
Time will not stand still for me. But I can take the time to stand still in this holy place as the nexxus points of my life, and the generational saeculum whirl and converge around me.
"Experience slips away. . ."
Picture credits: The first two pictures above are mine. The Perseid meteor against the Milky Way is by Mila, from Wikki Commons, shared under the GNU Free Copy License. (My view of our Galaxy these past evenings is more spectacular than any picture, but Mila's is close).
We do so live in G-d's Country!
The sorting hat says that I belong in Ravenclaw!
Said Ravenclaw, "We'll teach those whose intelligence is surest."
Ravenclaw students tend to be clever, witty, intelligent, and knowledgeable.
Notable residents include Cho Chang and Padma Patil (objects of Harry and Ron's affections), and Luna Lovegood (daughter of The Quibbler magazine's editor).
