The Last Exile

Blogging hasn’t made it to my list of top 10 things to do recently as those who are regular readers can attest to. I have let other bloggers carry the load per say. Besides writing, reading, drawing, sewing a summer wardrobe while running a household; I opted to add a new language to list of things to do.

Learning to read, write and speak Hebrew properly is one of those things I always meant to do but for one reason or another I never gotten around to doing. I already have a vocabulary of about 150-200 words and I do, more or less, know the aleph-beyt. There aren’t really many letters or vowels and its a much more direct language than English. The real challenge is to read modern Hebrew which often doesn’t use the vowel signs and to speak it in a way that native Hebrew speakers can actually understand. I suppose I could go around blessing everyone and saying a prayers regularly but if one wanted to find the public washroom the Shema isn’t much help.

I have always had a somewhat elephantine memory but I have grown somewhat absent-minded lately – probably because I have had far too much to do and am constantly running on empty. The tribe sees this as evidence of my decline and living (or aging) around a budding neuro-scientist doesn’t help. She keeps talking about the need for me to keep re-firing my neuro-pathways and other such concepts which I don’t fully understand. I would have opted for someone else to do the laundry but instead I get the lectures without any context. She has nagged encouraged me to finally spend the time and effort to learn Hebrew as apparently one of the best way to keep the neuro-pathways firing is learning a new language. It’s like a total body workout but for the brain. It also helps that she says she will learn too – this way I have someone to regularly converse with. Although I suspect its a case of the blind leading the blind. Besides, I have decided that once the tribe all leaves home, I am opting out for at least a year and going to live in Israel and even though I know just about everyone in Israel speaks English, I want to be independant and be able to pick up a bestseller and read it easily – or go to a movie and not have to look for one with subtitles – or ask where the public washroom is without worrying whether I have accidentally insulted someone’s gentials or parentage.

So if you see me wandering the streets mumbling to myself take note – I haven’t ventured into the crazy bag lady stage of existence but am listening to my lessons on my iPod and am merely practising my Hebrew.

Shavuot starts at sunset and the holiday will run for the next 48 hours, unless your in Israel – when it only lasts a single day.

Shavuot represents the day the Jews became one nation under G-d.

Practically speaking, the real implications of today means the beginning of the ultimate Cheesefest wherein I will replace all food with cheesecake and eat as much as I want for the next 48 hour without guilt.

In fact, its my holy duty to eat cheesecake. Baruch HaShem, and some people insist there is no G-d.

There are probably a million and one important news events happening in the world this past weekend but I don’t know of a single one. I’ve been painting my kitchen – with its 20ft walls and reading novels as the world passes me by which most suits me just fine. Like a great deal of other people, I have been reading Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo series and am on Book 2 – The Girl Who Played with Fire.

For sheer escapism, it beats the Di Vinci code or anything Dan Brown wrote ever – even if Book 1 does take a great deal of reading time until you meet the ‘Dragon Tattoo’ girl. Is there an editor shortage in Sweden? Or maybe its a cultural thingy but I’m not use to major characters only being introduced after sixty odd pages – but still, I can cope – well that is until late yesterday afternoon when I got half-way through the book.

You see, Larsson has created a ‘orthodox’ Jewish character – a senior police officer who is so decidedly un-Jewish despite all of his alleged Jewish creds – like wearing a kippah, keeping the laws of kashrut, going to synagogue but he is just not believable.

I even made it past the part where Larsson’s Jewish character goes to the ’synagogue’ on the Sabbath and when services are over he goes walking around the city while his wife goes shopping. Now you could suggest the character is perhaps a reform Jew – which would make more sense except why isn’t he going to ‘Ttmple’ rather than a ’synagogue’ and why is it important enough to eat kosher but he does so using decidedly ‘unkosher’ dishes and utensils?

Still, I managed to to keep reading until I got to this part and I quote:

“On his way home to Katarina Bangata, Bublanski felt an urge to talk with God about the case, but instead of going to the synagogue he went to the Catholic church on Folkungagatan. He sat in one of the pews at the back and did not move for over an hour. As a Jew he had no business being in a church, but it was a peaceful place that he regularly visited when he felt the need to sort out his thoughts, and he knew that God did not mind. There was a difference, besides, between Catholicism and Judaism. He went to the synagogue when he needed company and fellowship with other people. Catholics went to church to seek peace in the presence of God. The church invited silence and visitors would always be left to themselves.”

All of which makes me think there is not just a lack of editors in Sweden but a decidedly lack of Jewish editors in Sweden as well. I realize Christian readers wouldn’t find this anything to ponder. Christians are so ‘use’ to Jews and often do think of Jews as a kind of ‘quasi’-Christian without the ‘Jesus’ part, and if I had a nickel for every time a Christian suggested we all worship the same G-d I’d have been in retirement twenty years ago. While that is definitely a Christian sentiment it is not really an authentically Jewish one.

A kippah wearing, kosher keeping, synagogue going Jew wouldn’t enter into a Catholic church with its statues and its life sized crucifixes of Jesus laid out bleeding on the cross to seek peace with G-d and at no time or age would a religiously observance Jew ever presume to think G-d wouldn’t mind – unless suddenly all 613 mitzvot laws are suddenly irrelevant. It isn’t going to happen unless pigs sprout wings and start flying. So in the interest of inter-faith understanding I am going to illustrate this principle with a story about the origins of the name Sender which my youngest son carries.

Sender is a name from the Pale settlements in Eastern Europe and its a Yiddish name for Alexander. Back when Alexander the Great entered Egypt the Jews in the city now known as Alexandria were faced with an existential conundrum. You see, Alexander was rather fair-minded about the people he conquered and didn’t want to impose his personal religious beliefs but he did have one requirement for this policy of religious tolerance. He required that all places of worship, regardless of religious faiths or creeds, must erect at least one statute of him in their place of worship so they would be forever cognizant of the magnanimosity and tolerance of his rule.

For all the other religions of the time, this wasn’t a problem except for the… Jews. Go figure. There are strict rules which demand no statutes depicting the form of a human be placed in their place of worship. The elders of the synagogue met, prayed and debated among themselves various ways they could possibly get around placing a statute of Alexander the Great in their synagogue. Finally, after much debate a course of action was agreed to.

The eldest Rabbi went to seek an private audience with Alexander the Great and after much embarrassed hemming and hawing the rabbi told Alexander the Great he had a confession to make and he had to violate one of the secret tenants of his faith to share this with him. He explained in no uncertain terms even sharing this secret ritual guaranteed his personal damnation in the World to Come but the Rabbi felt it was extreme importance for Alexander to understand this secret knowledge. Alexander was intrigued and gave his promise to keep secret whatever the Rabbi was to tell him.

The rabbi explained it was one of the particulars of the Hebrew faith, that in the midst of their most reverent ritual, it is required for all males to throw human excrement around inside the synagogue in an effort to underscore how insignificant all are before the King of Universe which is also why the ritual bath was also kept in the synagogue. Yes, Jews had to pelt each other with shit. There are so many levels of irony to this that I cannot know where to even begin to explain this to a non-Jewish audience.

The Rabbi played to the great hubris and vanity of Alexander and suggested this treatment would desecrate his majesty’s form and he could not in good faith allow the dignity and majesty of a ruler like Alexander to be desecrated – even inadvertently by the community on a regular basis. Alexander was duly repelled by the strange practices of the Hebrews and accepted the Rabbi’s proposed alternative solution which was to name at least one male child ‘Alexander’ to honour the ruler.

Now you can begin to understand why a people who are prepared to go to any outrageous lengths to keep their faith and have duly kept and continued to name their children ‘Sender’ thousands of years later; wouldn’t seek peace with G-d in a Catholic church filled with statutes in the images of men or women.

Koboreader.com

Last Sunday in the World’s Biggest Book store I held the future of reading in my hands. It’s called a Kobo e-reader and it retails for $149.00 Cdn. It’s a simple e-reader and it doesn’t have much in the way of bells and whistles but it does what you expect an e-reader to do.

It’s extremely light and weighs less than the current paperback I am reading and it’s so slim; it can fit safely into my purse without having to conduct a overhaul of what I currently carry around in my purse. The battery life is decent and it syncs to either your phone or your computer. The font changes which means I can comfortably read anything without my faithful ‘readers’ perched on my nose – and so can anyone else.

Sony’s, Kindles and even iPads are great and do a great deal more than the humble Kobo, but Kobo will get e-reader’s into the hands of the great unwashed and it won’t take setting up a savings plan or budget to purchase one – a teenager with a basic after school job can easily afford to purchase it in a single pay cycle.

Look, I love books and have been collecting first editions for years. I love the smell and the feel of crisp paper under my hands. A well-bound book is a treasure for the ages and it is my opinion that, there are very few things in life as beautiful as a treasured book. People like me, who currently buy hard cover first editions, will continue to buy hard cover first editions and that won’t change, but what will change is the paperback market. Paperback books were originally produced for mass consumption and that’s the market the e-readers will eventually conquer – all it took was for a company to come out with an e-reader for the masses. The Toronto based Kobo team has done that….now if only I could get a ‘black’ one….

I was hanging out with the Butcher of Prague after work last night for a little ‘minor’ (his words – not mine) dental surgery. Considering the way my mouth feels this morning ‘minor’ is obviously a relative term. When I left his office, I actually didn’t feel too bad, and I took his advice and scarfed down a couple of codeine tablets before I went to bed. So the full effect of the ‘minor’ surgery was only felt this morning.

I refer to my dentist as the Butcher but the truth is that it’s a testament to his great skill that I still have teeth left – and ‘hollywood’ quality teeth at that. Although, I do remind him he is the only man in my life who regularly and routinely makes me cry. I walked out of the office chatting with his dental assistant who stayed extraordinary late just to accommodate my schedule. She’s a young mother and a recent immigrant to Canada from Iran. The only family or friends she has in this country is her young son and husband. I admire their courage in leaving everything behind to come to a new place to start over. We are a lucky country to still attract these kinds of people to our shores.

We chatted all the way to the line-up in the local coffee shop where I insisted on buying her coffee for her long trek back to the outer-edges of Scarborough. She actually tried to insist on buying my coffee and it was quite humorous engaging in the whole – ‘no, let me buy it – oh, no let me’ elaborate exchange. I only won because she allowed me to and she only allowed me to because it meant more to me than her.

Actually, I am always touched by the ritual kindness which so often characterizes anyone from the region. It reminds me that the kind of hospitality and generosity towards others that I was raised with is still not entirely dead in this country. It was important to me because I wanted her to know that I did appreciate the fact she stayed late to accommodate my needs. I recognize the Butcher paid her for her time and services but money isn’t the great balm for everything, nor does it adequately replace a mother’s time with her child or husband.

The woman who left the office strained and tired after standing on her feet all day walked into the subway with a smile on her face which was well worth the price of a coffee in my book. My whole point in writing this is to remind everyone who reads this that there are a million little inconsequential acts of kindness we can perform for the people who routinely cross our paths, and if we are lucky enough to be able to commit one act of kindness for another, it shouldn’t be an opportunity we allow to slip out of our hands.

I was going to write about this but before I typed a single word I saw this report at the Toronto Star.

A Grade 10 student at Marshall McLuhan High School was rushed to hospital with critical head injuries after a school rugby game Thursday at Pope John Paul II High School in Toronto’s east end.
The 16-year-old, identified by friends as “Wesley,” was playing when he came into contact with another player and was injured, according to some witnesses.

G-d have mercy on this child and his parents. This hits way to close to home. I have a son who plays rugby and this is exactly the kind of thing I worry about. Why does my son play rugby? Simply because there is no football team at his secondary school. He would rather play football and thinks rugby is a ‘wussy’ game. Why is there no football team at his high school? Well, because football is expensive to suit up the players in all kinds of protective things like helmets, shoulder and knee pads, etc. – so the pencil pushers have decided it’s much better to play rugby where all a player needs to bring are cleats and the school provides the socks, shorts and team shirt.

I’d rather he play football and so would he but it’s a no go. That poor young man was playing with no protection and possibly against young men the size of my son who at 17 stands 5′ll and well over two hundred pounds. Run fast into my son and its like knocking against a brick wall with nothing to protect your head, neck, shoulders. My son runs into your son and I will guarantee; it’s going to be ugly. I suspect this sick feeling in my stomach will follow me around for all day and come visit every time he has a game until the season ends. If there are any grandparents out there – tell me does the fear every go away? Or does it just intensify as more children join the family? G-d have mercy on parents everywhere.

Folks, I had a teenager stay out late last night – on a school night which means I was staying up late until the wayward son came home. I am exhausted but he’s fine. And not only is he fine, he doesn’t have a class until hours after I have left work today. I got nothin’ – maybe later.

There’s a room in my mind I call my attic. No light ever comes into that room and the walls are shelved from floor to ceiling. There is no furniture there or a hook to hang my coat of many sorrows but there are shelves and on the shelves are neatly stacked boxes, some big, some small. All are clearly labelled to mark which grief, dream and heartache lies inside each box. It’s a place where only I can go and rarely do. Mostly I keep that door locked shut but every so often a storm blows in and batters down that door. When that happens, there is no cure but to mount the stairs to that room and stand alone in the midst of my heartbreak. One by one, all the hurt and pain of a lifetime of grieving comes crashing down on my head. I never know what ill wind will blow down that door but it always happens when its least expected.

Yesterday, I finally took delivery of one of the biggest boxes of all. So far I have cleared two shelves by rearranging the other boxes and stacking some on top of others but still this box will not fit. I’m not surprised as I have been ducking delivery for a long time. It’s just that yesterday I learned definitively what my mind refused to acknowledge was even a possibility.

My best friend has died. No, that’s wrong. She wasn’t my best friend, we were sisters, the sister neither of us had growing up. She died a few years ago and I didn’t know. It may not be sound like much of a friendship if your best friend has been dead for years and you didn’t know but you wouldn’t be more wrong in your life if you think that. It was a friendship to envy and spanned nearly 30 years of living and outlasted careers, pets, boyfriends, husbands, and all the life alternating changes a life can bring. I fully expected our friendship to outlast time itself. I never imagined a world without my friend and yesterday I learned this was my reality and I would never see her again.

I have been waiting for a call, a knock on the door, a card which never came. Every year as the end of January approached; I wonder if this year would be the year she’d forgive me and come seek me out on her birthday. I let her down. The last time I spoke to her she called me just after the tribe and arrived home with the children at the end of the day. It was chaos and mayhem with the children cranky and demanding their dinner and a bath. She was in her car and driving out to Barrie. She had made the decision to move out of the city and in with her latest boyfriend. It was so recent a change that she hadn’t even given me the telephone number.

He was really new in her life. I had met him the month before and she just sort of sprung him on me without warning. I admit I was deeply startled by the sight of him. He looked liked an aged munchkin out of the Wizard of Oz. He seemed nice enough but he was such an odd choice for her that I couldn’t be bothered to commit his name to memory. I fully expected he wouldn’t be around long. We never even really discussed him. I suspect because she was afraid of what I would say and I would only say what she was already thinking but refusing to admit to herself. But you know, I only wanted her to be happy. I knew she was lonely. Her second marriage had collapsed and the divorce was finalized. She was in a really tight spot for money due to another family crisis. She had decided to commenced the great internet search for a man to call her own. I have to admit if I drew an aged munchkin from Oz I would have lost all faith in modern technology.

I spoke just long enough to know she was in trouble. Big trouble and she needed to talk to me and I couldn’t talk. I promised to call her back and she warned me her cell wouldn’t work once she got to near Barrie nor did she know how long she’d have the cell. I tried to call her back but the only answer I got was some nonsense of the cellular customer you are calling is out of range. Sometimes not even that. I hesitated to call her at work since she was in trouble. Finally, I called her work number and got told she didn’t work there anymore. The woman on the other end of the phone was quite hostile about that fact. I kept trying her cell but within the span of days it was out of service. Everything happened so quickly.

There was nothing to do but wait and so I waited for her to call back. I knew she was angry at me. She had a right to expect I would make her troubles fully mine and when it appeared I didn’t give her the time and attention she had every right to expect from me she choose silence – to punish me. And I get that and I deserved it. If our roles were reversed she would have stayed on the line to listen to me and let the children pummel each other senseless. You have no idea how many times over the years I have replayed that last conversation over in my mind and wished I had done just that. But no, for once in my life I made the ‘mature’ decision, the reasonable, the logical, the sane, the wise decision rather than the right decision. She’d have done it for me and did it a million times over. And when she needed me I let her down.

All these years I have been waiting for her to forgive me. So many times I have wanted to just pick up the phone to hear her voice. I had so many things to tell and show her. I have have been saving all kinds of little things as mementos for the moment when she forgives me so I could show her and she would know there was always a place for her in my life and in this way she would not have missed anything.

When I first met my Colleen she was a deeply unhappy woman. Perhaps, one of the most unhappy people I have ever met. She was 12 years older than me but I was the big sister. She had two little girls, the sweetest little girls. One was all fire and spice and the other quiet and still like a woodland pond. She was stuck in a rut and didn’t know how to break free. She had spent a lifetime trying to be whatever anyone wanted her to be and with me she finally found someone she was free to be whoever she wanted to be. She didn’t even have to be perfect or stay the same from moment to moment.

Since she was so deeply discontented with being the Colleen everyone expected her I didn’t join her world but took her into mine. I even use to take her home regularly to my crazy family. Her mind would reel from the way they lived their life. I’d be lying if I said any of my family were thrilled with my relationship with the gagja woman but I knew how to get my way so a place was made for her at the table although she brought no skills or nothing to the family table but herself.

She was there when I finally made the decision to leave home and without her help I would never have moved out from my grandmother’s home. The night before I moved my grandmother called out the big guns and even had my beloved uncle come from North Carolina to try and stop me. The night before I was to move into my first flat he called me every name in the book. He chose his words to hurt and wound me. His words found their mark but I had Colleen to help through the bitterness of bile. Women like me didn’t leave home except to marry – and sometimes, not even then. My uncle and I never spoke again till 15 years later when we were brought together to bury our father, my grandfather.

Colleen and I had enlisted our friend Richard, and her current man of the moment who I had nicknamed Big, Bad and Ugly to move me. He wasn’t as much ugly as intimidating with the aura of menace and barely suppressed violence about him. I figured we’d need it. I remember when we finally got the last box into my flat and we all were celebrating with drinks.

Colleen found it the most surrealist experience of her life to date and the guys congratulated each other for surviving the experience. My grandmother and other relatives formed a long line running from my room on the second floor, down the stairs, through the hall right up to the front door. At points we had to squeeze and edge by them as none would move. No one offered to help and none offered a word of acknowledgement or even uttered a blessing as I was leaving. They kept vigil silent but the hostility was so thick that it seemed to suck all the air from around them. All of us laughed when we discovered we each made the private decision to hold our breath as we picked up a box and ran the gauntlet from my room to the car. I never told anyone but I wasn’t even sure they wouldn’t have killed me for leaving if not for the presence of Colleen. She knew our ways.

So many memories. She was there when my daughter was born. When my daughter was handed to me for the first time I was panic-stricken and she knew it so when I handed her immediately to Colleen she held Kiki Tzipporah for hours later while I admired her in Colleen’s arms. Eventually, she had to go and knew just what to say to me to quell my fears as she placed my daughter in my arms. And when my son was born it was just me and her in the room. She held my back while I pushed and pulled him out myself. Telling me all the while I should wait for the doctors as I swore and cursed the doctors.

At first I didn’t search for her. I figured I should let some time pass so she could get over being angry with me and as the weeks turned into month I began to search for her but then my husband died. I spent a year being lost. It was all I could do just to keep the children’s lives running as normal as possible under the circumstances. Some days the best I could do was to think no further ahead than putting one foot in front of another. By the time my head cleared all our common threads had moved. I couldn’t find her, the girls or her brothers. Everything had changed. There was nothing to do but wait. Years went by but I never stopped waiting or searching for some sign of her. Yesterday, I finally found a common thread and now she’s gone and all the things I have saved for her are without meaning or purpose. I will never be forgiven nor will I ever be able to tell her just how much I have loved her.

My daughter and I went to see The Runaways early Sunday morning. It induced the worse case of nostalgia I’ve ever had. There is this great scene where manager Kim Fowley brings a group of young boys to band practice whose mission is to pelt the girls with bottles, cans and rocks while they perform. This is to teach them how to ‘rock-on’. It was at this point I really started to miss my old bad ’self’ – rather badly. I just did ‘bad girl’ so well….

The Toronto Star is carrying this article about stolen baby strollers appearing for re-sale on CraigsList. I suppose the story is worth a full read given its human interest angle but I had caught up in first four words of the first sentence which utterly fluxed and dumbfounded me.

After his $750 stroller was stolen off his front porch, Lindsay Taylor did what any web-savvy parent would do: he looked for it on Craigslist.

I admit its been years since I pushed a baby stroller but paying $750 for a baby stroller which has a limited usage and time span just boggles all pretense of sanity or intelligence. Even if I had completely lost my reason and mind after giving birth and purchased a stroller which costs more than an Xbox (nor is half as useful or long-lasting as an Xbox) I certainly wouldn’t leave that sucker unattended on my front porch. But it gets worse, apparently there are those who would pay $900 for a baby stroller.

I admit its been years since I pushed a baby stroller. The most expensive one I bought cost $150 from Sears and I got it on sale. It was a two-seater and quite frankly, it was more or less a complete waste of money for doing anything but pushing the children to the park so after a few years of collecting dust and taking up space I sold it for $100.

I lived and died by my umbrella strollers. I bought the ‘premium’ model from Zellers for $25 which came with an little push down shade and supplemented it with a one time purchase of a rain cover for $10. Since I never learned to drive it meant that the children and I were always going everywhere with the stroller – in all weather. Of course, when my children were newborns I carried them in a snuggly and by the time I couldn’t carry them comfortably; they were large enough for the umbrella stroller.

The umbrella stroller is a real G-dsend on public transit. It can be opened or folded away closed with one hand and one foot in seconds without having struggle to get the the stroller up the street car’s steps or risking my child’’s life going down the subway stairs. Not to mention no one had to nearly kill themselves to get pass the stroller on the bus nor did I put myself utterly have to rely on the unreliable kindness of strangers. I was fully mobile, independent and self-sufficient. I admit the life span wasn’t long – about a year. So in the course of my stroller years (approximately 6 years – three children) my total umbrella purchases cost me $125 plus a one time weather protector brings the total cost up to $135.

Its a time’s like this, I really miss my husband and wish he was alive to share this idiocy with. Of course, picturing his face if I came home with a $900 stroller is simply priceless. He’d have had that sucker apart in minutes trying to figure out what make it worth $900 and checking to see if it had platinum nuts and bolts – then he’d have me committed