Feb 2009 Rosh Chodesh Adar
She tells me children and grandchildren will grow parents
will die and we are left alone. Steel yourself, ahed of time
cut the emotional bonds to prevent worse pain. I say, I
want bot the heaven and the hell rather than no feeling at all.
She says in the aloneness is the redemption there is no
one to rely on in this world but the self such resilience and
fortitude I am in awe. I was always the weaker twin, from
birth losing weight the very first year of life until Nanaʼs
arrival and that divine potion known as chicken soup as
substitute for the nausiating warm milk.
I feel like a tumbleweed, washed up on the shore, in
someone elseʼs home, alone, she says. Tumbleweed,
swept ashore by the wind, disconnected from its roots.
But I prefer the Eskimo who says goodbye to his family
and leaves the warm igloo never to be seen again or the
wealthy Indian who gives up all and along with his begging
bowl leaves village to join a band of wandering beggars.
We are so numb, after so many years of abuse,
incredulous how she survived. She does so need the time
to heal and organize and move on. so long without the
basic human need for intimacy.
I am not alone. In my darkest hour I never felt alone. There
is a Higher Power in my life call it what you might, and I
am in continuous gratitude for life itself. I ask her about
grandchildren, thinking this will turn her around, for I could
not imagine living without them, now that I have been
granted this ultimate gift of these three beautiful creatures.
I cannot imagine life without the joy of them running into
my arms and tumbling with them on the carpet. But she
has a response. They too will grow and it is important to
detach early.
I too am a tumbleweed of sorts. We are twins after all! My
journey has been detaching from those objects and items
and addictions out there in the world that gave me comfort
during the years of abuse as a child and isolation as an
adult. The goal now is also to become as detached as a
tumbleweed, allowing the Lord to blow me daily wherever
He wishes. and to receive and be grateful for each day I
am alive and merit to see my children and grandchildren,
my parents and friends, my patients and colleagues, my
teachers and students and above all my life partner who
has had to suffer my transformation.
My roots must also be mobile however I am connected to
others in deep ways that mostly go unacknowledged.
I pray she heals soon to make such connections of
intimacy.
“ Lord, let me see You in all... even in my loneliness and
desolation, in my isolation and despair, in my rigid ironclad
armor, cut off even from myself”
“Grant me the vision to see You even in my sickness and
despair, to see Your hand omnipresent as much as in the
delights and the love of my kids
“To see the suffering around me and yet believe in You to
see the inability for me to change significantly with all my
charcter defects ever present and bearing down on me
each day and unable to correct, even You in that
obstinancy.
“To see that all this is still Your desire at that moment prior
to creation when You had the desire and foresaw it all.
“I reamin inadequate and fall short of ever carrying You
suffering. “That this struggle too is Your desire”
