In the fine drizzle that is peculiar to the British Isles
one can walk in it and be refreshed,
without getting drenched
and memories sift through the mist
as I walk down Golders Green Road.
So many moons ago
a young teenager
walking in the morning of Shavuot
back to Finchley
from a night of learning in Munk's Shul
then, the only show in town,
the fatigue wearing me down the 3 mile hike.
So many years-
I recognize nobody now
only the buildings
are my lost friends
my bearings
the North Circular Road, then the Quadrant, then The
Great North Way
each a milestone
from the past.
I do not like it here now
I feel like on a movie set with the same buildings but a
cast of Haredi black-hatted characters replacing the old
familiar stars.
So, London went the way of other cities!
in its inevitable move to the right.
But the drizzle warms me
it remains so gentle
as if to beckon me
to those places where Jeremy and Eve and I
climbed in North Wales in similar mist,
or when I took the kids on the Penine Way
in our anaraks, crossing fords and streams as a team.
And facing Nana and Dada yet again
their tombstone weathered by such constant moisture
I bring my life to them
as always,
a moment of deep reflection
and self-judgment
as to what they might be thinking
a yardstick of measuring my worth in their eyes.
Here I too want to be buried
near them overlooking the green belt of London
among the Sefardim who remain innocent and pure.
My father (now 90) recites the kaddish
for his surrogate parents (Dad would be 120 now)
and I (now 60) realize what attracted him to the purity
of the Sargons...
that ability to remain unspoiled despite
everything...
that exotic other-worldly purity in the eyes...
that innocence of being.
And as I gaze at the table of Sargon women
at the birthday party
lined up like in old days...
that special innocence
melts me too, like my father,
and I am comforted that that unique spiritual gene is seen
in my daughters.
In the misty drizzle we walk back from the party
to the hotel where Mum and Dad look at his album
90 years of a life
celebrated tonight
with 65 family members from the four corners of the globe
flown in,
in the drizzle,
to be with him,
a patriarch now,
doing homage,
like members of a tribe.
Family is a matrix, a web we usually live without or ignore
in our heady lives
but here, tonight
we all feel its density
its hierarchy
based solely on seniority,
of having lived a life
with no judgments,
no qualifications other than
the desire to participate in this matrix
to saturate oneself in it and become absorbed
before we all return to our
other lives wherever.
Yes the drizzle and rain and moisture
that decayed the tombstones
reflect well how we are engulfed
by the moisture of love
that so rarely manifests itself
in our lives and through us.
In the drizzle
I am comforted
knowing my sons and daughters (now around 30)
and grandchildren (now around 3)
are part of this family
and this matrix
that I adore.
