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El Capitan under the clouds

The night before Dar and I were to leave for Yosemite was a dark and stormy night. Well, dark except for the flashes of lightening which slashed the cloudy sky, illuminating the trembling white faces of the oak trees in our yard. At five a.m., as rain fell violently from the heavens, the three chihuahuas decided it was time for a bathroom break. They were willing to relieve themselves in the living room, but I felt strongly against, and so we all went outside.

As we came back in, unrelieved but wet, my phone chimed. A text message. “It’s really stormy out there,” my friend wrote. “Maybe postpone?” I was touched. She has two teenagers to worry about, and yet she thinks about me in the middle of the night! I texted her to go back to sleep. We’re planning to leave at noon. Let’s see then.

We left at noon. The sun shone feebly through massive clouds. A dramatic sky stretched before us as we made our way to Toyota to buy the extremely difficult to find snow chains for my car. Dar watched the movie explaining how to use the chains. Just in case, I watched from over his shoulder. After all, better make sure he does not forget any critical detail.

Rain overtook us as we crossed the great valley. Lightening chased the thunder, like a movie playing on the cloud-shrouded horizon. Inside the car I stayed warm and carefree. As we climbed the Sierra Foothills Dar kept watch over the temperature display and the altitude. “I think we’ll be good,” he said once in a while. Of course we’ll be good! I thought to myself and petted his shoulder. We’re going to be just fine.

We stopped for gas at Oakhurst. “You need chains seven miles up the hill,” three men loitering inside the store advised us. Eight miles later Dar breathed out a sigh of relief. “I think there must have been an accident earlier,” he speculated, “and they saw cars stopped. We won’t need the cha…” and before he could finish his sentence, there was chain control before us, waving us off the road. May I just say with pride: it took my man less than five minutes to put those chains on, wearing my purple gloves!

“That was easy,” Dar commented as we began to rattle up the hill. It was certainly easy for me. I didn’t need to do a thing! And suddenly the realization hit me. I sat in the car as we drove for three hours through rain and lightening and now snow feeling utterly protected, and why? Because I trusted Dar to drive us safely to Yosemite. I trusted him to know how to put the chains on (well, I did need to remind him about putting the tensioner on the right way, but I’m sure he would have eventually figured it out). In short, I had faith in Dar to take me to Yosemite and back home safe and sound. And he did. Trust.

Yesterday I found myself having political debate for lunch. It was all my father’s fault, or maybe, if we go far enough, it was mine. I had asked him that morning if he was free for lunch, but he already had an engagement with people from the New Israeli Fund. Rejection is never easy, even if it’s just for lunch, but I recovered quickly.

At one, my father called and asked if I wanted to join them. I answered (hopefully politely, but probably not) that I would not be caught dead having a business lunch with anyone from a fund. I thought he was talking about the Jewish National Fund, an organization I am only interested in because they plant trees — if I had known it was a political organization I might have been even less excited about the prospect. My father, however, persevered. “His wife is a writer,” he said, and I assumed he meant the wife of the JNF guy, “She has six children’s books published with Random House.” I turned the car around and came to meet this guy and his fabulously interesting wife.

The fabulously interesting wife was not there at all. Instead, a man and a woman sat across the table from my parents, all four engaged in discussion about the future of Israel, behaving as though they were going to make some difference in the world. The sides were even: my father, the so-called realist, claiming that Israel has no future and springing on his opponent reasons why peace could never come to the Middle East, and NIF man, a starry-eyed optimist, stating that since the US now has a black president, which no one would have believed fifty years ago, anything could happen.

I explained to NIF man that I have heard my father’s diatribe before and suggested, still under the mistaken idea that he was from the JNF, that we fast-forward to hearing his plans about planting trees. Sadly, NIF man had no interest in planting trees and was convinced that he could change my father into an enthusiastic supporter of the future of the Zionist state. I chewed quickly, looking at the pictures on the walls, at my mother (who listened enraptured, but I knew it was all a mask — she dislikes my father’s pessimistic outlook), and at the door, trying to calculate the speed by which I could reach it.

As I sat there, suffering intensely, it occurred to me that we need ultra-optimistic people like that NIF guy with his single-minded idealistic passion. Arguably, we also need pessimists like my father to fan the flames of their idealistic fire. But I had rather not be there when they meet. As soon as I could I excused myself, explaining that I live in a bubble, safe from political debate. And then, as politely as I could, trying not to show too much relief at my approaching escape, I got up and fled.

Two weeks ago I sat on the rug at the Cambodian Buddhist Temple in Rochester and watched Dar being turned into a monk: his head shaved, his clothes set aside for orange robes. At the corner of the room a huge TV screen hung next to large golden statues of the Buddha. A computer, printer, and large stacks of printing paper sat on shelves. One of the monks checked his iphone, sent a quick text. Incense burned, filling the room with its sweet scent. Dar knelt in the middle of the row with his brother, brother in law, nephew and a cousin. The monks chanted the guttural sounds of Sanskrit, instructing the five new monks when to bow down and touch their foreheads to the floor.

Safe home earlier this week, I sat over coffee with a friend and found myself expounding yet again how difficult not touching Dar for twenty-something hours had been for me. I handed a spoon to my friend to demonstrate how I resorted to tricks in order to feel that Dar and I are at least touching the same object. My friend laughed and returned the spoon. “In orthodox Judaism,” she commented, “you couldn’t do that.”

I’ve always known that orthodox Jews do not touch women other than their wives, and that they do not touch their wives around the time of menstruation. But touching the same object? How can that be a sin? My friend had grown up in an orthodox family, however, and her authority seemed indisputable. A quick internet check revealed much more about the prohibition of touch: Orthodox men and women indeed cannot touch or handle the same object. Nor can they eat from the same plate, serve each other food, or sleep together. I don’t think I could survive that. I believe in Gretchen Rubin’s “hug more, kiss more, touch more” rule of happiness, and in my relationship with Dar (and with my family and friends) I religiously follow it.

The spoon was all his sister’s idea. At luncheon on the second day of the funeral weekend, we waited for the eight monks (the three real monks and the five monks for a day) to finish eating first, as required by tradition. From where I sat at our table I could not see Dar and vehemently complained about the injustice. “You can have him hold one side of a spoon while you hold the other,” Mouly slyly suggested.

I was tired and irrationally mad at Dar. I was angry with him for agreeing to be a monk, for feeling bound by those rules, for leaving me by myself at night and sleeping at the temple, and for looking so incredibly cute in his bald head and monk’s robes. As he came by our table, I thrust the spoon at him, and he instinctively took hold of the other side. We were both holding the same spoon. And according to the Jewish law, there was touch.

And let me tell you, it was not enough.

I will always remember the first time my daughter watched Disney’s Cinderella. She was sitting on our couch at home, her eyes glued to the TV screen, and on her face stretched an expression of deep longing. She might have been no more than two. I looked on in dismay. I admit I am often appalled by the mistakes I make as a parent, some of which I had no idea would be a mistake until I see the results. As I gaped at Eden’s wide-eyed admiration of Cinderella marrying Prince Charming, I could not believe I had been guilty of such a horrifying mistake. Here I was, teaching my daughter at the tender and impressionable age of two, that nothing in life matters more than catching a man.

Feminism is defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary as “the theory of the political, social and economic equality of the sexes” as well as “organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.” Though I might not call myself a feminist — I do not actively pursue women’s rights, nor do I feel particularly discriminated against as a woman — there is one aspect of traditional literature which I dislike: that the girl almost always gets together with a guy by the end of the story. Why, oh why do so many novels, whether it be romance, adventure, dystopia or fairy tale, have to have a love story as part of their plots?

Young adult literature today abounds with strong heroines: Calla of the Nightshade Trilogy, Katsa of Graceling, Elisa of Girl of Fire and Thorns. I might not be crazy about The Hunger Games, but Katniss is a strong, capable woman, a born leader. All these young heroines are upstanding examples of the strong woman. Gone are the damsels in distress, weak and fragile maidens. Instead we find girls who are leaders, warriors, hunters, all of whom are intelligent and physically strong.

But despite the independence of each of these literary girls, their respective novels include love plots which are nearly as important as the main action, and — spoiler alert — other than Elisa who at least at the end of book one finds herself standing alone at the head of her nation — each of these female leads ultimately attaches herself to a boy. I wonder, do our novels still send a message to young female readers that no matter how many achievements they attain, still none is more important than that of catching a man?

To come back to my two-year old daughter, gazing starry-eyed as Cinderella marries her prince, perhaps I could argue that it is in our blood, in our nature as women, to yearn for love. Perhaps no matter how many Elisas triumph over their enemies alone, our wish as women is also to establish a family and a home? And I wonder, is it that bad to teach our children the importance of connection, love and intimacy? In Hebrew we say, “It is not good for man to be alone.” There is little doubt in my mind that being alone is also not that great for a woman. In the end, I do believe, love conquers all.

A moment I remember. Rain drizzling. Mud swirling round my feet. We are dragging many parcels out of the Roatan vacation rental and into a taxi van. I squeeze in the back with the children, waiting for Dar to hurry in from the rain. Instead, he turns to the driver and introduces himself, finds out the driver’s name, his son’s name, shakes both their hands, explains where we want to go.

A moment of courtesy. So simple and real, and yet a revelation to me. In my eyes, the taxi driver was a means to an end. I wanted to get out of that resort, and he was literally the vehicle taking me away. To Dar, however, the taxi driver was a fellow human being with whom he was going to spend some part of morning and who he therefore wanted to get to know.

A moment of insight. My heart told me that I wanted to go through life meeting people in the same way, reaching out to each individual as equal in importance: a stewardess taking my ticket to scan, a waiter serving me a meal, a friend I meet for a gossip-laden lunch. Catching a person’s eyes, asking a meaningful “how are you?” and really pausing for an answer have gained me feelings of closeness and appreciation from a seat mate on the plane, a fellow writer in a conference, and the checkout lady at the grocery store.

A moment of contact. I follow my path in life, meet other people, and my bubble of life touches theirs and then separates, departs. The longer I linger with every encounter, the more I am part of the myriad puzzle of life. Each contact opens an opportunity for knowledge, for growth. I ask myself, “is there something I can learn from this meeting, from this homeless man on the street or the old lady who began talking, clearly in need of some loneliness relief? Was there a point to the irritating girl who tried to convince me to donate to Greenpeace and wouldn’t let me go?”

A moment of gratitude. Sometimes that’s all, and everything, I can reap from this touching of life bubbles. A feeling of well-being, of inter-connectedness with others on this world. An awareness that kindness exists, generosity, good humor. The realization that I am not so different from the mother of the little boy who is screaming and crying and kicking his legs on the floor of the department store, from the frustrated little boy himself, or from the saleswoman behind the counter who pretends not to see the chaos unfurling right there before her eyes.

Amazing how we are all one and we are all unique. All interesting and worth getting to know. All worthy of being loved and listened to. The garbage collector, the mortuary manager, the dog walker and policewoman, the president of the USA, the bus driver, the computer guy in the next cube. Me and you.

Ten days ago, Dar’s father passed away in Rochester, New York, and last Thursday I flew up there to participate in his funeral. The trip caused me a lot of anxiety. I worried that instead of supporting Dar I’ll end up a burden for him, and, since I am not naturally very social, I worried about spending so much time with little known family and friends.

Most of all, I dreaded the twenty four hours in which Dar was going to have to be a Buddhist monk to honor his father. This pretend-monk business included fasting, sleeping at the temple, and a required shaving of his head. On Friday, after the shaving and donning of orange robes ceremony, all I could think of was how handsome my man looked as a monk. But then it hit me. For nearly twenty-four hours I was not allowed to touch him or really talk to him. He was taboo, this handsome orange-clothed monk.

Thank the Buddha for Dar’s sister, who took me in hand and dragged me with her from temple to hotel to funeral home to restaurant to hotel to funeral home to crematory to restaurant and to hotel again over the next twenty four hours. Ever practical, brimming with an incorrigible sense of humor and an ability to make the best of everything, Mouly cheered me up and made fun of my separation anxiety from Dar at the same time. If we weren’t at a funeral, I’d be tempted to say that I had a good time.

I almost burst out crying when my monk came in for the morning service and sat two rows in front and across from me in the funeral home chapel. I barely kept my seat at the restaurant reception a few hours later when he came in and sat with the other monks (his brother, brother-in-law, nephew and cousin were all pretend monks, and there were three real Buddhist monks). When he finally came back in his regular clothes on Sunday afternoon, the dam burst. I missed him so.

Today I’m back home and eternally amazed by how easily I bounce back, no matter how weary, depressed or overwhelmed I am. Food, sleep, a good shower, and I’m back to my normal self. And now I’m free to appreciate just how well I got along this weekend, how despite my antisocial nature I talked to everyone and feel very attached to Dar’s family and many of their friends. I discovered this weekend that I can be much more social than I thought.

A life-changing weekend, highly affecting, that brought into my life many new people to love. Dar and Mouly both said that their father valued family first and foremost over everything else in his life, and so I feel sure he would have approved and appreciated all this love.

A week ago I finished reading Sarah MacLean’s Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, and I’ve been raving about the novel to everyone. Most of my friends refuse to listen after my first sentence identifies this book as a romance, but see, this novel — though a romance — is one of those really great books which I don’t just read, I live.

Chapter One finds Callie sitting on the shelf: at 28, she’s an old, plump maid and nobody asks her to dance anymore. She sits with the other unmarried ladies and suffers their comments, like this one from her Aunt Beatrice: “Have you considered a diet of boiled eggs and cabbage? I hear it works wonders. Then you would be less… well, more.”

I don’t think Aunt Beatrice would have appreciated the direction in which Callie takes her suggestion to be “well, more.” Callie makes a list of projects which she would like to try: kiss someone passionately, watch a duel, learn to fence, smoke a cherut and drink whiskey among others. And she sets out to accomplish her list, finding an unexpected ally in confirmed rake Gabriel whom she had always loved from a distance. As you can imagine, Gabriel assists her with the fulfillment of her dreams while punctuating each of their adventures with a lot of excitement of the bedroom kind.

The kissing scenes in this novel are fabulous, each different from the one before. I got swept off my feet, left swooning, lost in the atmosphere of the book. The ballroom, the secret corners, Gabriel’s bedroom with the piano inside where he secretly plays to himself. I could see Callie and Gabriel from across the room, partially hidden by dancing couples, kissing passionately in an alcove. Blush. Swoon.

I always loved a rake. William Blake commented on Paradise Lost that “Milton was on Satan’s side and didn’t know it?” I loved Satan! And the devil’s in a rake, right? Rakes are dangerous and sexually thrilling. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century British Lit is teeming with libertines: Lovelace in Richardson’s Pamela, Don Juan, Willoughby of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility. The poet Lord Byron was a well-known playboy.

But in Nine Rules I fell in love with Callie. Gabriel is mysterious and desirable. He understands Callie and though he sometimes complains, does not prevent her from trying to fulfill her list. But he is just a sidekick, important to the novel only in as much as he supports Callie’s bid for adventure. Throughout the novel Callie shines, like a bright light that leads the way, freeing up herself and the other characters from the one-sided norms that rule their society, gently, kindly, peacefully without unnecessary noise, declarations or speeches.

So yes, I know this is a romance, and you, my dear reader, might be thinking that romance equals junk. But this one romance features the inner diamond of a woman in a way many novels try to and fail. And it is worth the time.

Outside my window, rain drizzles onto the wood of the deck. The sky today is grey, overcast with wet clouds. The world is reclaiming its greenness after a long bout of sunshine. Today feels like the beginning of winter, but the date is March 13th. Daylight savings time has began. Passover, the Holiday of Spring, is three weeks away, and the first of the Hebrew month Nissan, traditionally considered the first day of spring, will be bursting upon us in eleven  days.

The weather forecast calls for rain for the next week, and I am glad. I’ve seen the reservoirs drain not so slowly over these dry few months. We need the rain. We need the water sipping into our soil, feeding bulbs and seeds, bringing new growth to life. And this year, not just because of the shortage of water, I’ve decided that I love winter. I will no longer sing songs that ask the rain to come back another day.

Israelis, living in a country often beset by long periods of drought, sing a welcoming tune to the rain:

Rain, rain from the sky
Voice of many water droplets
Pitter patter, pitter patter
Clap your hands!

I love the grey air and the promise of rain. I love how clean everything smells. I love the green grasses and shrubs that pop up around my trees and the new leaves that decorate even the oldest and most bent oak in the yard. I love how my creek, ever dry during summer, fills up and begins to flow, and the banana slugs that slither under rotting old leaves and over slick rocks. I love staying in bed a little longer, reading a book, listening to the rhythm of drops on the sunroof in the living room.

It is music. It is life and nourishment. Such a precious gift, this rain.

It is easy to appreciate the rain now that it is scarce. I wonder what I’ll feel another year, like last year when the clouds rained and rained. A plant needs sunshine to make food for its cells, and I must have sunshine to smile, cheer up, feel well. Days after days of rain depress me. Too much grey bows me down.

My favorite are days when the sun peeks through the clouds and a rainbow spreads from one edge of the world to another, promising an end to the flood. In my heart I keep this promise, that there can be no huge spanning rainbow without rain, no pots of gold, bluebirds and dreams coming true. But for now, I can bear the dark clouds. I need no sun to brighten me up today. It is not flooding at this moment, just drizzling a slow but steady pour of water we desperately need. I want no end for it yet. I long for the gift of more rain.

Rain, rain, please stay. And come again for many days.

This morning I had a light bulb moment (in the dark, too!) — Purim is in honor of a woman! I hadn’t noticed that before. As a child, Purim celebration centered round dressing up in a costume. At school in Israel we’d have a carnival where each classroom hosted a different booth. There would be mazes, scary houses where you’d need to crawl under blankets and ropes, and simpler fishing or bag toss booths. My mother and her best friend made our costumes together: a mushroom one year, witch in sixth grade. My sister, I remember, was queen of candy one year and my brother an egg that didn’t want to be an egg (based on a beloved Israeli picture book).

When I grew up, I read the story of Purim in the Book of Esther, a scroll which is considered part of the Scriptures. As I reached the end, I was shocked. I hadn’t realized that the celebration of Purim was in honor of the salvation of the Jews and the massacre of their enemies.

I should have known. I mean, thinking about it rationally, Jewish Holidays tend to celebrate either an agricultural event or a victory in battle. Hanukkah, the holiday of lights, commemorates Jewish victory over the Greeks. Passover celebrates a victory over the Egyptians. And both have their share of blood and gore. But somehow for Purim, a holiday of dressing up, celebrating, getting drunk (yes, it’s actually recommended in the scroll to get drunk) to be tied to this massacre of enemies! It seems so inappropriate.

But this morning I thought about Esther. An orphan, she is taken out of her uncle Mordechai’s house and chosen of all the girls in the kingdom to marry Ahashverosh, King of Persia and Media. A true Cinderella story. Except the story does not end there. An evil councillor to the king, Haman, is angry that Mordechai will not bow before him and decrees that all Jews will be killed. Mordechai, fortunately, has Esther well-placed within the king’s house and requests her help. Esther risks her life to approach the king without him asking for her, and is rewarded with his favor. She asks for the king’s help saving her people, and he agrees.

So Purim is a feminist holiday, celebrating a strong, smart and brave woman! Yes, I always loved Bar Kochva, the leader of the only successful Jewish revolt against Rome. I admired the Maccabis, Yehuda, Shimon, Yehonatan. And none is more awe-inspiring than Moses as he strikes the water of the Red Sea with his staff and the sea opens before him, letting the Jews through from slavery to freedom. But none of these holidays is led by a woman. Really, even on Purim Mordechai breathes down Esther’s back, claiming the glory. But it’s Esther, a young girl in a strange and unfamiliar palace where she clearly does not belong, who turns the tide and saves her people.

If you’re interested, I found this Haaretz article on Purim as a feminist holiday. It’s in English.

Often before writing my blog, I look for inspiration in famous quotes. But today, reading about trust, I got pretty depressed. Most said: trust no one, or trust only a few. From Stalin: “I trust no one, not even myself.” Johnny Depp: “Me, I’m dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest person to be dishonest.” It made me wonder, is trust really so rare?

Happily, I managed to find one quote that cheered me up. Golda Meir, the former Israeli prime minister, said, “Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement.” Isn’t that a beautiful image? Sparks fanned by trust turning into flames. The thing is, it’s so easy to doubt myself, to think that I’m not good enough. How can I nurture that kind of trust in myself?

In her middle-grade novel, Dogsled Dreams, Terry Lynn Johnson answers this question. Rebecca, her young protagonist, yearns to become a dogsled racer, but doubts assail her. What if she is not good enough? What if she can’t run the race? She blames herself when the dogs go missing, when she loses the sled and the dogs race on without her, and when the sled overturns as she is giving a ride to a passenger. When Rebecca confesses her fears to Heather, her father’s new wife, Heather replies: “Rebecca, when people do things even though it scares them, that’s called courage. You should be a little afraid of racing. It means you know what you’re doing.”

Rebecca doubts her abilities as a musher even more because she senses the dogs’ trust in her. The dogs trust Rebecca because she knows them and trusts them, appreciating each dog as a unique personality. Racing is important to Rebecca. She desires to do it well. But it is the dogs and their passion and joy for running which bring the race alive for her. Her doubts, that constant questioning of herself, are what make her an excellent musher.

Seems to me that doubting must be good — it bring about improvement and growth. So perhaps it is not that Rebecca lacks trust in her mushing abilities, but that her fears make it possible for her to become a better musher every day she spends with the dogs. She can trust that innate benefit of doubting. Like Heather said, being afraid means she knows what she’s doing.

I’ve always tried to instill in my children the understanding that courage can only happen by overcoming fear. After all, if I did not fear speaking before an audience or receiving a vaccination, where would be the bravery in that? Similarly, without doubts there can be no trust. What an amazing and freeing idea! What is trust if not an overcoming of the fear that somebody (whether it is me or someone else) will fail me? Trust my fears, trust my doubts, trust me. Trust.