Mother's Season

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Not Just Mother's Day

The Peonies are in bloom again. Nearly a year later.

One of the only blog-posts I ever read aloud to my mom (z"l), who didn't have her own computer, was one with pictures of peonies from May 18, 2014. It was about loss.

Just over a year later, I'm bursting from loss, or wish I were. Nearly a year ago, while trying to comfort me over my mother's (z"l) death, a rabbinical student asked me, "What do you want to ask God?" I posted this here already:

"When do I get to fall apart?"

"And how would God respond?"

"Never," I said because what would my falling apart serve?

Serving others is the antidote to self-pity, yet I want to wallow a little.

Pat's on her annual golf trip in Tennessee with her friends from her days at NIU and I must do all of the daily chores she'd be doing if she were here, since she's retired: filling and re-filling the pitcher from the rain-barrel, watering the plants, feeding the birds and local wildlife along with the kitties (I do feed the kitties daily already -- that's my job), making dinner, taking out the garbage and the recycling, dealing with the guy who needed to waterproof the front steps and walkway....These chores, it turns out, are a pretty nice way to connect with the world right around me.

And I've been doing more connecting than usual this past week, in part to distract myself from imminent, first yahrzeit of my mom's (z"l) death along with our impending trip to Green Bay to unveil my mother-in-law Bev's (z"l) headstone; she died unexpectedly of complications from a fall last month, exactly 10 months after my mom. I loved Bev (z"l), too, and also miss her. When we come back, we'll have my mom's (z"l) unveiling on the 31st of May.

My mom (z"l) is so present in her absence:

On Wednesday last week, she (z"l) was there among the caravan of Stamford [Connecticut -- my hometown, where my mom (z"l) lived for 50 years --] Tents trucks at Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn last Wednesday as I was departing from World of Watson, but she was not there to call when I wanted to debrief on the coolness of the experience of seeing a positive future for the world, augmented and aided by artificial intelligence.

My mom (z"l) was there at the Art of the 1990s show at the Montclair Art Museum on Thursday evening as I was telling a new friend how she and my dad (z"l) practically chose to move from the Village to Montclair because it had an art museum, but then chose Stamford, which had one, too, but was not there when I wanted to talk about the couple of interesting installations I saw as part of the exhibit.

My ever-present and shatteringly-absent mom (z"l) was there at the Agudath Shalom Cemetery when we visited her not-yet engraved joint-plot prior to the mezuzah posting ceremony in her memory, held at the Stamford Jewish Community Center Library, and was there at the Senior Lunch afterwards as Mr. Soifer, our Bi-Cultural Day School music teacher, smiled at me as he saw me moving my lips accurately while he sang the extended Kiddush over the Shabbat wine and gone when I wanted to tell her that one of her friends there had said, "Your mother was so valuable to me."

Rabbi Cohen, reciting blessings

Rabbi Cohen, my sisters Kayla and Deb, and me outside of the Stamford JCC Library, where our mom (z"l) volunteered.

L

The mezuzah was created by Chaya Magal and the roses remind us of our mom (z"l); her middle name was Rose.

She (z"l) was there at the Brookdale Park Conservancy-sponsored *Heaven is a Garden* book talk and signing at Watchung Booksellers on Friday evening, even though I should have been at Shabbat services instead, but gone after our dinner out with two new friends at a restaurant in Montclair that she liked, too.

Author Jan Johnsen, discussing her marvelous book,*Heaven is a Garden*

My mom (z"l) was there when Noga and Hilla, a gorgeous couple of Israeli friends with four kids, two of whom were with them, visited us in our newly renovated home, and there when I brought my giant case of Lego over to their four-year-old Shaked, and there when Uri, the baby, smiled winningly and there when we talked about *Fun Home* as a masterpiece. But she was gone when I wanted to call her the next day to wish her a Happy Mother's Day.

My still-here mother (z"l) was ultra-present when I picked up the tray she gave us some years ago that read, "Smart women crave good company" and which featured only a '50s-era, stylized illustration of women drinking coffee on it and tried to determine how to display it visibly in our newly renovated kitchen/dining room and living room.

My mom (z"l) said she thought of Pat & me when she saw this platter and got it for us; she had a good sense of humor.

And she was proud of the rest of how we re-assembled our home and of its major freshening. But she (z"l) was gone when it came time to eat dinner and then take a rest in the living room.

Our new kitchen/dining room/library

Our refreshed living room

If I Had an Artificial Leg...

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Thank You, God, for Not Giving Me That Challenge, K'ayn Eyeen Harah

Last night during a walk beyond my neighborhood, I saw a little boy or little girl -- big curls, striped T-shirt, shorts, no more than six years old, running around in the family's driveway, playing catch with a big rubber ball, throwing it back and forth, perhaps, to her mother and grandmother. They spoke French and wouldn't return my smile and eye-contact. They were intent on one another.

As I walked by, I saw the child's left leg, glinting in the pre-twighlight sun. The leg was made up of silver-colored rods. Before I saw the child, running around with an artificial limb, just being a kid, I wondered whether I could muster the mood to take a walk....

On my walk, I listened to my mom tell me her sorrow at one of her dear friend's recent heart-attack. I've never before spoken on a cell-phone during exercise, but it was so beautiful out and I wanted to share what I was seeing with someone, since Pat wasn't with me.

A child with a metal leg; two octogenarians -- one with a damaged heart and the other, heart-broken over her friend's new infirmity; and me, in the middle, witnessing the:

• Eager beagle, running alongside, behind his picket-fence as I passed
  
• Pink-white rose-bush with enough blooms to bury my face in them without risking thorn-pricks
  
• Lithe, high-school girl who nearly smiled at me as she ran by, her blond hair darker on her neck with sweat
  
• Shiny, black, Saturn convertible, rounding the corner and piloted by a balding guy older than I, who seemed to enjoy the breeze through the hair he still had
  
• Hyperactive Pekingese dog straining at me on his leash and his lovely Indian female walker, younger than I, smiling broadly at me for smiling at the cute dog
  
• Professionally-maintained garden of the property next to the also-gorgeous garden maintained by the Master Gardener who lives in the home behind it -- one of Pat's friends
  
• Tiny grass-seed, shaped like thin rice, dotting new dirt on the little boulevard above our street
  
• Beautiful yard of our property, more visibly so as I approached it on foot than when I typically drove toward it, focused on entering the garage....
  

Culture Mashups...

The postings on this site are my own and don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

...Make Life More Special

Culture mashups can be so powerful, I'm reminded by the rock band, Toto's, and R&B star, Cheryl Lynn,'s Georgy Porgy." And by the biracial son of a friend who has his choice of Yale or Harvard for college next year; both of his parents could have been brilliant and of the same race, but they were brilliant and not, and I think that contributed to my friend's son, being a special and extraordinarily brilliant person. And by a heterosexual wakeboarding enthusiast, who is among my colleagues and who is close to his two gay brothers -- and a visible ally of the gay, lesbian, bi and trans community, just by his active love for his brothers. For all I know, my colleague's gay brothers could be wakeboarding enthusiasts as well, but the sexual orientation aspect of my colleague's and his brothers' cultural backgrounds will always be divergent, and yet they love one another in all their humanity.

I've said this before, probably here, too: As amazing a city as I found Shanghai to be during my relatively brief visit in 2005, I was less compelled by it than by New York City, since the streets were filled with people who appeared to be mostly of a common cultural background; NYC is filled with so many people from so many different cultures and I think that's the secret to its vibrancy.

When I get together with my mother and her friend Harriet, it's another sort of culture mashup: a cross-generational one. I'm amazed by our different experiences, and how interesting it seems for all of us to be together -- more interesting than it is, often, for me to be with contemporaries.

Same goes for talking with my 17-year-old nephew, in the other direction; I'm always the beneficiary of his native wisdom. The other day, we were discussing small-group dynamics for school-projects. We agreed that we're always among the ones who do most of the work in the group. I said, "Usually, instead of confronting the shirkers, I just go ahead and do the work."

"Well, since I'm doing so much of the project already," Zach said, "I figure I have the right to do some delegating, and so usually, I'll say, 'I'll do this and this.' And then I'll turn to the other person and say, 'And what will you do?'"

Probably among the biggest culture-mashups from which I've learned the most has been our adopting and co-parenting two tabby-cat sisters. We will never learn each other's spoken language, and yet we can communicate with one another, and I love them deeply, and feel affection from them sometimes, too....

My human nature, though, leads me -- initially -- to seek people and places that seem familiar. The paradox is that often, the people/creatures and places that are most remote from my experience end up feeling most comforting to me; for example, our home is finally a fully-sweet home, since we invited the cats into it two years ago. Fortunately, while I naturally seek sameness, God puts difference in my path continually.

Frenzied Serenity

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

Enjoying Our Home for About 50 More Hours

"Come here. I want to show you something special." I follow Pat out our front door.

It is the robins' nest. When I left to swim this morning, I thought I saw it lying on the driveway next to the blue, plastic-covered "New York Times," but I kept going, praying that the swim would pep me up, as I under-slept again; it did.

"She made all of that with her beak," says Pat, "How did she get all that mud up there into the tree?"

"And did she just abandon the empty nest --" I ask.

"Or did a squirrel knock it out of the tree?" Pat wonders.

Are we abandoning our home for six months? Or are we being propelled by external forces, along with our choice, to live somewhere new for half a year?

Today, it's purely hot outside and I'm wearing whatever's not packed -- a gray IBM sweatshirt and a pair of dark-raspberry golf shorts.

"Let's see what's blooming in the garden on the side of the house," Pat invites. There's a burgundy dahlia, a stalk of orange-, and a stalk of yellow lillies and an early delicate variety of gladiola -- red and cream.

Ah, how nice to walk back into the air conditioning. And to sit at this quiet desk in a room I use exclusively as my home-office when I'm not in Armonk.

Friendship Refreshment

This morning, I speak with two friends. The first is heterosexual and works in a Jewish day school. When we discuss the woman I met briefly at the Pride Parade, my friend says, "That's why I love [Rabbi] Gordon Tucker's thinking because he understands that religion is supposed to be redemptive and if it's not, then...?"

The second friend, Marni, who I ask permission to name, and I talk about the miracle of our having met and become friends as freshmen in college, during a period of suffering and struggle for each of us.

"I was *such* a diamond in the rough then, Marni."

"Our friendship is an object lesson in the soul," she says, "Our beings recognized each other and that we were going through different versions of the same kinds of things....Besides, our tsores (sorrow/trouble) was and is part of our path."

How lucky am I -- to have such thinking-feeling friends?

Everything is swirling around in the last-minute mania of getting ready for the journey, and then I enjoy these pockets of calm. Thank God.