Thank God for a normal day

Called Mom at 7:30 a.m. to make sure she was OK, after spending a couple of worried early-morning hours. She didn't pick up, so I called the front desk of her retirement apartments and the woman said "Oh, she's looking really dressy, so I imagine she's headed for church after breakfast!" REALLY nice to be able to call that front desk!

I think it was Grandma Kruse who used to say something about how lucky we are to have just NORMAL days, and I absolutely did not understand that until the last few years.

Thank heavens everything was OK with Mom, and that she'll give her doctor a call on Monday.

Grateful tonight, too, for the wonderful, warm gathering at Beth Shalom just now....a 40th anniversary dinner for the congregation. Great deli food, and warm and funny speeches from John Applegate, our president, and Rabbi Mira. So many people there that I like so much. Esther Gaber, on Jordie's urging, told some good stories about the early days. I felt so happy, with Jordie having a good time talking to everybody else at our table, and Abby comfortably next to Ruth Goldstein, a warm and generous friend from even before I actually became a Jew (my first Passover dinner ever was at her and Bob's house, the year I moved in with Jordie).

Worrying

Sunday morning, 5:45 a.m.

Last night I called Mom to say goodnight. She was already in bed. She said she'd had a bad time with her blood pressure in the afternoon, but had taken an extra blood pressure pill and felt better. Later, Lee called and said that the person on duty at the desk at mom's retirement apartment complex had called Lee to tell her about the high blood pressure. Lee had a headache and so I called the desk back. The woman told me that Mom's blood pressure had been 223/114 at one point. I just feel so helpless. So, now I'm awake and worrying and I'll call Mom at maybe 7:45 to make sure she's OK.But what can we do, since she will continue to smoke, even though she has trouble breathing and blood pressure trouble.

It occurred to me that maybe my eating cookies and not going to the Y lately is just as selfish and short-sighted as Mom's refusal to stop smoking.

Sunny Saturday

Feeling better about the cat. Two reasons: Jordie called and talked to Michelle, mom of adopting cat family. She told him stories about how the little boys were playing with the cat, how one son was thrilled because cat slept in his bed, etc. Also, told my anxieties to buddy Janice at work, whose mate is a vet, and who is a real animal-lover, and who I respect a lot...and she said "Get over it. Do you know how many cats are killed at the shelter every month?" So at that moment I felt I could move on emotionally from it. The cat needed to be out of here, and now she is in a home where they wanted her and will take care of her.

This morning I woke early, took Sadie for a walk, and decided to get over to the Y. But, I was starving,, so had coffee and a scone at the Encore Cafe first. While sitting there, a very familiar song by Glenn Miller came on and tears came to my eyes, thinking of Daddy dancing with Mom in our living room, many years ago.

Walked and walked around the outdoor track at the Y, felt great.

On the way home, drove around a neighborhood also done by Wininger/Stolberg to see what kind of fences there are, how the houses looked.

I'm really thinking a lot about Jordie and I possibily moving into town in the next few years, and this new development is the place that makes sense to me. www.renwickbloomington.com is the website.

It's "new urbanism" and I really like the sound of it.

Goals a move like that would accomplish:

--- Facilitate getting to the Y, walking to work, taking bus to work, taking bike to work, instead of having to drive everyplace
--- Possibly doing with one car shared between Jordie and me
--- Neighborhood with porches
--- Smaller, but better-designed house possible
--- Treed lots, closeness to movies, grocery store, etc.
--- Very close to several friends' houses, facilitate even more walking with friends

Problems:

--- Jordie not by woods for hikes
--- Would not want Abby to switch high schools (though good possibility she could stay at North)
--- School designation for Renwick development has not yet been determined

Feeling awful about the cat

I gave away one of our cats today. I feel as if my heart has turned to stone. Jordan had been asking me to for months. It was a total mistake for me to bring the cat home without talking to anyone in my family first.

I put an ad in the paper, and the people who called first got lost on the way to our house. So I drove, with Abby, over to theirs. And they were perfectly nice. They were pleasant and friendly. It's just that there were cigarette butts in ashtrays at their house, and it just was...well, I thought, are they going to take good care?

But the only way I would have felt good is if it had been some elderly lady who would treat Lila like a queen.

I mean, what could I say in an ad: "Must be non-smoker, have undergraduate degree, pass credit check."

Well, I didn't and now it's done.

Our house will be quieter and Jordie will feel better. And I won't have to worry about the cat being up on the counter (our other two don't do that) and won't have to worry about the cat messing up the oriental sand garden that Jordan made in our dining room.

I did tell them that if it didn't work out, they could always reach me at my newspaper office, and that I would find the cat another home if necessary.

But I feel just awful. I'm going to drink some wine and try to sleep.

Werewolves of London

OK. Werewolves of Bloomington!

Let me explain: Remember that old song "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon? I love that song. And when Warren Zevon knew that he was going to die from cancer, he was visiting on the David Letterman Show. And Dave asked him something like "So, Warren, you have any words of wisdom?" And Zevon said "Enjoy every sandwich."

In my innermost self, I know that enjoying every moment of life would be a great thing. And appreciating everything good in my life. So why, last night, did I find myself arguing furiously (in hissing whispers, so Abby wouldn't be disturbed while doing her homework) with Jordie over what to do about the living room floor?

It was the moon.

It was full.

Actually, TODAY may be the full moon, but it was close enough.

I always have a fight at the time of the full moon. I find myself arguing and look outside and there it is, full.

That may be crazy, but it's true.

And why argue over the floor?

I want to have a beautiful, clean wooden floor put in to replace the at-least-15-years-old carpet in there. Jordie thinks he may not want to do it, since I'm talking about moving into town in the next few years. But whether we do or don't move, the floor would be a really good thing for our house, and (my argument) would increase the price we would get for the house eventually when we do sell.

I'm going to keep howling till I get that floor!

Sleazy Paris and Robert Novak

Seriously, I cannot figure out why this woman is a celebrity. Her show is mind-bendingly stupid and insulting (and I have ONLY seen it when one of my kids turned it on) and it seems that she is mainly famous for being famous. Oh, that and having her old boyfriend sell a sex video of them together. Whatever happened to shame? And now ... what a scandal ... her electronic organizer has been hacked into and all the private emails and phone numbers posted on the net. The thing is...so what if somebody got a famous person's phone number? What kind of a loser would call up some famous person they didn't even know? Show how much you admire somebody by making his/her life miserable?

And on the NEWS IS BIZARRE theme....I'm trying to figure out what to do to find out why Robert Novak is not included in the court case where Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper are being prosecuted for not revealing their source on the Valerie Plame story. And Novak is the ONLY one of the three who actually published the information revealing Plame's identity and that she was a CIA agent.

I'm supportive of journalists who won't reveal their sources, but in the case of Novak...isn't it a felony to "out" a CIA agent and didn't he do that with his column? SO WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON THERE!

There's an interesting little article on the "Nieman Watchdog -- Questions the press should ask" Web site. (Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University). A law professor asks some good questions. Here's the url for the site:

http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=ask_this.view&askthisid=0094&forumaction=post

On the domestic front, we're having new carpet put down in our family room and Abby's room, which fills my heart with joy. Now if we can only do the living room, whether wood floor or carpet, then I won't be ashamed for people to see the house!

Abby has been painting all evening, copying a little photograph of a scene from when we were in Maine. Her painting absolutely blows me away -- it is that good. It's so much fun to watch the kids grow up and do things that I never even dreamed of doing.

My mom told me yesterday that she agreed with a little joke I tell sometimes....I always would tell Oved that our three children are a genetic miracle...two average-looking parents produce three beautiful children!

Actually not feeling too great, so I'm getting some tea and hoping that helps. I've been having chills all night tonight and just feeling generally miserable physically.

Shalom, Lynne

No political opinions here!

Seriously, of course I HAVE political opinions, but I work in the newsroom of The Herald-TImes here in Bloomington, Indiana. It's newsroom policy for employees NOT to go around giving out their personal political views, because that could compromise open communication with all segments of the population....I respect that and if you choose to comment on this blog, I hope that you respect that, too.

Thanks!

Approaching Abby's bat mitzvah

I picked Abby up from her Torah tutoring session today. If Amy, Abby's tutor, weren't such an incredibly kind person, I would be embarrassed that I started to cry when I listened to Abby finish her reading. I said "If only your Saba and Sapta had lived long enough to hear you do this...." and Amy said "They will." And somehow, I do believe that they will know.

Abby's bat mitzvah is not until June 11, and Amy says Abby is doing really well with the cantillation and the chanting....not that I would know! I'm just the driver to the lessons!

This time of life, approaching Abby's -- the last of our kids -- bat mitzvah is emotionally loaded for me, and not in a bad way. In a good way! These big occasions are a chance to look back.

I remember, all the time, Amalia's bat mitzvah, back when we didn't yet belong to synagogue. Three huge tents covered our front yard. So many friends and family sat through the hot morning -- the air was shimmering with heat and joy. When we look at the videotape, there are my dad, Jordie's mom and dad, Daniel's mom Sylvia -- all gone now. A man who used to work at Harmony School -- I've forgotten his name -- loaned me a little Macintosh computer so I could do the book for the ceremony at home.

At Adam's bar mitzvah, we had a telephone on the bima, and Jordie's mom and dad dressed up in their best to sit at the dining room table in New Jersey and listen to the whole service. (Jordie had earlier flown to New Jersey with Adam so that Adam could do his Torah reading for Shoshana and Oved. Shoshana was already sick enough that she could not travel.)

At Amalia's bat mitzvah, none of my non-Jewish relatives, except of course my parents and my sister and her family, came to the service. We realized that we had not really communicated that a bat mitzvah is as important as a wedding in Jewish life.

So when Adam's bar mitzvah came around, Aunt Matilda and Uncle Ray, along with my mom and dad, not only came to the service, but showed up EARLY to see what they could do to help. That memory is especially sweet now that my dad and Uncle Ray are gone. And my sister making a bunch of food for after the service, and her husband Eric running errands for us that afternoon...

I am so grateful, now that the kids are grown, that we gave them the gift of a Jewish community, Jewish ritual, and the gift of wonderful occasions with so many people helping, and being glad for them. I'm grateful for all the times lately when I hear Jordie teaching Abby about Judaism and so much else.

So these months, approaching Abby's bat mitzvah, are like wrapping myself in a tallit made of memories.

Thank you, God, for giving me life and sustaining me and letting me live until this time.

A story about Lynne

This is a profile I wrote about myself for my synagogue bulletin.

It’s very early Sunday morning as I sit at my desk, listening to the hummingbirds outside, already hovering around the feeder on our porch a few feet away. I have already been outside to admire my red geraniums and see if the deer have feasted on any flowers during the night -- and to sit in our hammock and think. I realized, just yesterday, that I had not written a profile for the upcoming Beth Shalom bulletin, and as Libby Katz Hogan reminded me, it would be due Monday. If my husband or children were awake, perhaps one of them would be the victim, er, subject, of this profile, but it will have to be me.

If I weren’t such a last-minute kind of person, I wouldn’t be so comfortable working in a newsroom, where the name of the game is producing under pressure. But more about that later.

I grew up on the south side of Indianapolis, and have one sister, Lee. My parents, Bob and Pat, were high school graduates, but there was never a question, as far back as I can remember, but that my sister and I would be attending college.

My dad’s parents had dreamed, back in the ’20s, of their son and daughters going to college, and bought a farm close enough to Franklin College to bike there. But those plans were put aside when my dad’s father died suddenly in 1931, leaving a widow with a farm and children aged six weeks to 14. My dad dreamed of being a pilot and watched his older brothers go off to World War II, but his eyesight was not adequate. Though he served in the Air Force, he came back to Indiana and after marrying my mom, worked in Indianapolis for many years as a manager for the Coffman brothers out of South Bend. Their Indianapolis properties included six parking lots and a garage downtown.

My mom, Pat, worked for L.S. Ayres for several years before her good buddy there, Matilda, invited her to a baseball game in her hometown, Franklin. My dad met mom that evening (he was playing on a VFW team, as he had served in the Air Force in Alaska, not then a state) and quickly took home the other girl who was his date.

My parents were Lutherans, though we did not go to church much as I was growing up (my parents later found much comfort and community, especially in my dad’s last months, with a warm, open-minded Lutheran church in Greenwood.)

As a child, I read a series of books by Sydney Taylor, called All-of-a-Kind Family. They were about a Jewish family on the Lower East Side in the early 1900s. I was captivated by them, and by the Jewish rituals I learned about.

As I grew up, I searched for the right “spiritual home.” I was not impressed by the Christian churches I saw. My best friend in high school went to a church where the members were in a quandary about how to handle a black family who had started coming. Their solution was to let them attend, but not invite them to be members. In college, I tried out Quaker meeting and Episcopalianism. I liked the people at church in Bloomington very much, but after I graduated and moved home to Indianapolis, found the people at my Indianapolis church very much into how much money people made and who they knew....and, I took an adult education class and just didn’t get it. I really wanted ritual and a spiritual community, but I just didn’t feel comfortable with Christian beliefs. They did not make sense to me, inside.

In my mid-20s, I had moved back to Bloomington to live and I met the director of Harmony School at an anti-nuclear protest. I mentioned that I was looking for a new job and he said that he had a teacher who was going to run a camp that summer and needed to hire people. I called Jordan Shifriss to set up an interview. It took him about two minutes before he told me that I was totally unqualified to teach kids art at his camp. (I tried to persaude him that I was a nice person and that I could “wing it,” but he didn’t buy that.) Howver, some time down the road, he did marry me.

Jordan was Jewish, but his primary spiritual focus at the time was living in an ashram. As many young people did at that time, Jordan found a teacher, Rudi, and studied and lived in his ashram in upstate New York. After Rudi’s death, Jordan moved to Indaina to live in the ashram in Bloomington. A good friend of mine had begun to attend meditation classes at the ashram, and found them very beneficial. I decided to try it out, and eventually moved into the ashram to live with Jordan. There were several Jews in the ashram, and there did not seem to be any conflict with practicing Jewish ritual and doing the meditation. Potato pancakes were served at Chanukah time, and we invited friends from the ashram to share Jewish rituals with us.

At the time, we had good friends, the Olenicks, whose home was kind of a Jewish renewal center here in Bloomington. Reb Zalman Schacter came to stay at their home several times and we celebrated wonderful Shabbat evenings there, with lots of singing and joy. I asked Reb Zalman whether I should convert officially, and of course he said “Oh, you don’t have to do that.” And I thought inside “I’ll decide if I have to or not, and I think I have to!” Later I learned that his response was a traditional Jewish one, and he was encouraging and kind to me. Reb Zalman had been a friend of Rudi’s, the meditation teacher, and he came to visit the ashram and say kaddish for Rudi. (The ashram, which did lots of multi-cultural programming back then, also sponsored a Bloomington appearance of Reb Schlomo Carlebach.) But when we thought that we would have a wedding ceremony that included both our meditation teacher and Reb Zalman, our families were very uncomfortable with the idea. We ended up having a wedding ceremony one morning performed by our meditation teacher, and a big Jewish ceremony later that day in Brown County State Park, which was attended by most of the ashram and most of Harmony School.

We moved to Boston with the ashram, and Jordan got his master’s in education down the street at Harvard, while I got used to being the mom of small Amalia. Later, he taught for several years at The Park School in Brookline and I was very happy working for three geology professors at MIT. (When I interviewed with my future supervisor at MIT, Judith Stein, and we discovered that we were both Jewish feminists and had both graduated from IU-Bloomington, we decided it was meant to be.)

Over the years, I had another child, Adam, and Jordan and I realized that in Boston, we would never be able to own a home. We would emphatically never be able to own a home in Brookline anywhere near where Jordan worked. And we looked at each other one day and said “Let’s get out of here!” As the demands of daily life had increased with becoming parents, I had stopped attending class at the ashram. I had also come to feel that, while I loved being part of a community, that the ashram was not really meant for families. We sublet our Watertown apartment for the summer and took our tent and the kids and traveled to several areas to consider moving there. Jordan really wanted Chapel Hill, N.C., and I really wanted Colorado. As we traveled back home, we stopped in Bloomington to stay with our good friends Daniel and Donna Baron. As we sat in their home, surrounded by friends, we realized that Bloomington had everything we were looking for as a place to raise our family. And so we returned, and Jordan taught at Harmony School for many years (he now works doing conflict resolution classes).

We had another daughter, Abby, and eventually I came to work at The Herald-Times in 1995. In 2004 I was promoted to being assistant to the editor. My favorite part of the job is paginating the editorial pages. “Paginating” means that I take the material that Bob Zaltsberg, the editor, has chosen for the next day’s editorial page, and use a program called Quark to put it on the page and make it fit (and there are lots of fun little tricks to accomplish that).

In the years before we were members of Beth Shalom, I thought that perhaps it would be a place where we might not be comfortable. I thought it might be a place where I could not mention having lived in an ashram. I thought it might be a place where my lack of Jewish background might be embarrassing. (Someone had said to me, soon after I converted in 1981, that I would never really have to mention to anyone that I was a convert...and my reply was “Like that’s not totally obvious!”) And, I was worried that we might dress a little too casually or be a little too loose in our practice of Judaism to be accepted there. Needless to say, for anyone who knows Beth Shalom, it was totally unnecessary to worry.

As I looked around at our congregation while listening to Greg Stone do a beautiful job chanting Torah at his bar mitzvah yesterday, I thought how lucky my family is to have found such a warm home at Beth Shalom. I remembered standing in the kitchen and becoming friends while peeling hard-boiled eggs for Passover. I remember sitting in one of the evening classes that Rabbi Mira started and laughing and learning, and getting to know more friends. I thought of how easy it is to ask Rabbi Mira anything, and of some of the good advice I’ve gotten from her. I thought of how much I have learned from participating in the Renewal minyan, and how much I value having a Jewish community where respect and affection abound between those who practice in different styles. I remembered how so many people at Beth Shalom were really kind to me and my family when Jordan’s mom died in 2000, and then my dad died in 2001 (may their memories be for a blessing.) And I looked at some of the women with whom I have shared being part of the Chevra Kadisha, and thought how deeply I value their teaching, their understanding, and sharing such a profoundly moving experience with them.

I have thought many times that my past spiritual searching had kind of a pastel feel to it, with no depth or excitement, a bland feeling. And I thought again yesterday, as I looked around our overflowing sanctuary, that Beth Shalom, and Judaism itself, feels to me like a beautiful homemade quilt, one full of colors like deep purple and blue and red and gold, one that I can wrap myself in and feel comforted and totally at home.

It's a cat's life

Anyone out there in cyberspace with an idea....our big, white, adorable cat Motek is a hunter and a wanderer. The neighbor is mad, now, because Motek (that means "sweetie" in Hebrew) climbed on top of the neighbor's car and left scratches. Of course, legally, the neighbor is RIGHT. So, for a week we've been keeping this cat totally inside. (And I know that many people do this routinely with their cats, but we DO live in a neighborhood where the smallest wooded lot is two acres and so we have just always figured the cats could wander....)

MY POINT OF VIEW: If we hadn't adopted this cat, he would probably be dead and so whatever life he has with us, even if he's inside a house and can't fulfill his kitty fantasies and leave little dead creatures on our porch for us to admire...well, that's just the WAY IT IS.

MY HUSBAND'S VIEW: We need to spend a lot of time worrying about Motek's lack of fulfillment. This has led to some odd behavior, like my husband insisting that the cat be taken outside on a LEASH.

At this moment, my daughter and her friend are outside our house, holding on to the end of the leash, while the cat has crawled under the porch and won't come out, of course!

I'm so glad I'm not at home to deal with this, because I would be laughing hysterically and being no help at all!

Just blame me

Why IS it....at work I get along fine with people, some of whom are not even remotely connected to me philosophically or by shared affection or shared memories....but I laugh and talk and do what needs to be done and it's fine. It's not like there is never pressure, but there just does not seem to be the taking-it-personally, the pushing of buttons, the verbal jabbing where it hurts.

As there is at home sometimes. With no big reason. With some of the people I love so much.

It's almost as if I feel sometimes that I am more my real self when I am NOT at my home...or at least more the the self I want to be.

No wonder moms in the middle of their lives get fat -- I KNOW that sometimes I eat something after an upsetting encounter at home, I absolutely eat something with a feeling of "I deserve this!"

But right now I'm hiding out with my laptop and MSNBC! And a low-carb yogurt!

Here's my fantasy....

I chose this "harbor" template for a blog because it fits right in with my fantasy about it. In my mind, I'm hanging out on the deck of some fabulous cottage right on the beach. There's a selection of bottles of wine sitting just out of view. Shoes off. Girlfriends sitting around, no schedule, no duties, just looking out at the water and ..... thinking out loud.

In my exercise walks at the Y with my good friend Malinda, we frequently skip from one conversational topic to another, then loop back with another thought about the first one, throw out ideas, clear our minds. And that's what I'd like to do here. No topic too trivial or too heavy, no dissing for honest discussion and opinions. Or maybe, if nobody else posts, it'll just be me letting off steam!