Chaos, Kindness & The Flood of Garlic.

To write this, I wrote it five times -- and then a sixth.  It was still a mess.    

I printed it out and with my green pen I scratched out everything.   

Well, almost everything -- so I could start again.

I haven’t been able to think straight – too much on my mind.  I needed a little something.   

Then I woke this morning thinking of garlic.

If you use a little garlic it is amazing.  It adds that special something to everything you eat.  It is almost magical the way it transforms a dish.    

For some, garlic is their favorite thing.    Like water, they can't live without it.  It gives our food – depth.  It makes things interesting.  

But too much – indigestible.   It keeps vampires, friends and even lovers at a distance.

(although, I read once that it’s okay if you both have it….)

If you use too much garlic it masks the flavors of everything else.  It tastes like chaos.    Your senses became flooded – they are only aware of the garlic.

I haven’t been able to write because my brain is flooded.   I have a lot of worries – like my father and his mother before him, I am a worrier.  

There, I said it. 

You will probably tell me that I am irrational -- 

-- but it is my birthright.

I could make a list.  

In no particular order…

my broken pipe 

my patients.

the coming winter.

The Middle East

School shootings.

I have a bathtub in my doorway.  Don’t ask.

I worry that my house will not be organized.

That my house will not be clean.

That I won’t have time and energy to do it all.

  That I will forget my Italian

  That I will forget Hebrew.

That I will forget what I just said.

That I will forget what I just said.

Er...that I will forget what I just said.

  That I will use too much garlic.

   Strangely, I am not worried about the upcoming election.

   But I worry that I am eating too much salt -- too much sugar.

   I worry about gluten.

   I worry that I will say something to offend someone.

   Yes, it seems that I am very self-involved.   In fact, I worry that I am too self-involved.

   But I do worry about hunger.

   I worry about homelessness.   

I worry that I am worrying too much.  

Sometimes it is all – too much.    

I used to be a super straight thinker.   Now, it’s all a mess.

I am too much garlic.   Chaos.

I need whiskey.

There was another time when everything became a bit too much.    

God told Noah – build an ark.    Something big is coming.    A flood – a Mabul – is coming.

Mabul – chaos, confusion, cataclysm.  Deluge.  

Mess.

Way Back when God created the world, everything was in chaos.

When it was time to start to make a world, God made a list –   

(God was awesome at creating --  lists.)

one:    separate order from chaos.

two:    separate dark from light.

three:  more garlic.

Now, Chaos is returning.  

Winter is coming.

Back In the time of Noah,  God gave blessings freely. 

Blessings come down from heaven – in the same way that water is a blessing because it rains down from heaven. 

    

Oh how the blessings flowed!:    kosher dill pickles, pesto, hummus, moussaka, baba ganoush, chicken with 40 cloves of...garlic.)    

The blessings gave life depth.  Made life good.

But people took advantage.   They became selfish.  They gorged themselves.

They became violent – fighting over the pastrami.

And they didn’t even bother brushing their teeth.   

God was horrified at their behavior.

You like my blessings?  You like my garlic?  You like depth?

Sure, I’ll give you depth.   Go ahead and drown in it.

When it began, it was too much,    Flooding, chaos, confusion. 

DELUGE.  

The very same thing which had nourished us was now killing us.

Like the dish of an overambitious cook, everything was too much.

The world was drowning. 

  

It was as though God took out a big green pen and scratched out everything -- well, almost everything – to start again.

Chaos,  Noah.   There will be Chaos.    

And before those fragrant cloves begin to fall from the sky,   

Come into the ark.  Bring the animals, bring your family.

Bring Tums.

Build me this ark,  Noah, this teyva – this boat, this box.

It will be,  God says,  almost magical in the way it will transform you.  It will protect you.   I will protect you.   I will give you a taste of The World To Come.  

I will give you whiskey.

You will see how a lamb will be safe from a lion…

Where there will be no predators.

Where even people will not prey on each other -- for a corned beef sandwich –

Or even if only for the pickle.  

When there is chaos, when there is deluge, when there is too much worry, when things fall apart, when it is all much too much and when you are drowning -- it can house your souls and keep you safe.

When the world falls apart I will keep you safe.  

I will keep you safe.

Chaos and flood are not just about marinara sauce.

   It feels like chaos and flood when the waves of trouble in your life are rising – when you lose your job, your health, your safety and your home.

Grace, shelter, the ark are about saving us from the storm that will always come – no matter who you are and your place in life.

There is too much out there.   

There is too much to taste.  

Too much to stomach,

There is too much to feel.   

Man, we are under water.

Our senses are flooded.   Our hearts are flooded.   

We have too much to think about.

Too much to do.   

Too much to feel.

   

Too much worry.   

I could make a list!

You know what I need?   

I need an ark. 

  

I need a place which can shield me from the chaos.   

I need protection from confusion.   

I need protection from myself.

I need a place where I can begin again. 

  I need a place where I can think straight.

I need a place where I can be with my family.

Where no one fights over the food.

Into every life a little rain will fall.    

Most of the time a lot more than a little rain.

And sometimes a lot more than a little garlic. 

  

Sometimes there will be heartburn.

Sometimes there will be fire.   

There will always be illness & there will always be death.   

But it is ok – not to be ok.

We will need shelter.

  

We will need alka-seltzer. 

  

We will need an ark.  

We may need the Divine….

  

We will need a little whiskey.   

We may also need a green pen to scratch things out and start again.

We will need kindness.

And we will need each other.

(as delivered at Temple Beth El in Madison, Wisconsin on Friday, October 24, 2014)

Fishing & The Hospital Bed

Yesterday they brought a hospital bed into my father's house

.   .

​Of course, in the past few weeks he has been declining and now he doesn’t have the strength to get up. But he did try, anyway.

And of course, he fell.

​Dad has always been so independent…wanted to do things his way….so now he is being offered containment.   With high rails on the sides, it is his worst nightmare:: a hospital bed.

​The guys from hospice took apart his own bed–the same one that I crawled into when I was

young and had nightmares. The same bed where I slept with my mom when he was on a trip.  That very same bed that contained a marriage….two marriages.

​That very same bed was disassembled and put into the garage, next to the forty years’ worth of

dusty immunological journals and bales of bubble wrap, broken fishing poles and my grandfather’s tools and thousands of pounds of beautiful, precious rocks…some for cutting and polishing and some just to have.

​

​Releasing forty years of medical journals or a few rocks, after all, requires that we open up that hole and make ourselves a bit vulnerable. It requires that we relinquish complete control. But is there anything that could make you feel a greater loss of control than you 'd feel when total strangers disassemble your bed and carry it into the garage, piece by piece, and put something else in your room: something with rails to contain you?

​A few days ago a young woman I know suddenly died. At home, just after her children went to school. She didn’t have a hospital bed. No bed. No hospice. No hospital.

​Just gone.

​The way I see it, a hospital bed means hope. It means that you are privileged to live at least one more day.

​When I was five years old I used to go fishing with my father. I was his pal. We would leave very, very early in the morning with a car full of gear, his thermos full of coffee, and a bucket full of worms– or minnows or cheese balls or wheaties balls or whatever folks said was working to entice fish in those days. We would arrive at the lake, the channel, the river, the pond…any and all of them…in the dark, unload some gear and traipse, hand-in-hand, through the chill and the misty morning marsh mud, settling on a spot from which to cast our lines. We would arrive before the light and walk together until we found just the right spot.

​Just…the…right…spot.

​I never noticed the chill.

​Dad cast out the lines. I watched the bobbers: little red heads going up and down, and

again…and time to pull in the lines…a silver flash. Sunfish! Bluegill! Perch!

​I was a great fisherman – for a little girl..

​The first time dad was hospitalized he wanted to walk from the car to the hospital together. So I parked and we walked hand in hand towards Admissions. To both of us, at the same time, came the memory of the fishing trips.  (We mentioned it to each other just after they took Dad’s blood pressure.)  So funny -- because to me, once again I was five, with my hair in pigtails and my father with poles and bucket in one hand and his little daughter in the other. But that time we walked together.

​Into the hospital.

​When you are fishing, you know, you cannot really tell a fish that it is time to bite the line.

As much as you try…you close your eyes and hope. You call to them in your mind: “C’mon little fishie…c’mon big fishie...come find my line…bite my hook….c’mon…” and if I were a really good little fishie I would swim really really fast -- in the other direction.  And yet, we try to get the fish to bite...that is why we devise such ingenious inventions as Velveeta cheese balls and Wheaties balls and multicolored lures…

​Somehow we delude ourselves into thinking that we can control the fish.  

​That we can control the outcome.

​But what is the thing that we really love so much about fishing? Is it the reminder that we are not in control? Is it the understanding that you are there, still as the earth, part of the wind? You and your line in the early light, in the morning sun…quiet, quiet.

​And if the fish comes, then it comes.​

​It is the beautiful reminder that it is not anything that we really do. It just happens.

​So yesterday my Dad got this hospital bed. Last night, during the night, he got out of bed, against strict orders. To do this, he had to climb over the railings. He climbed the railings, this time in the dark.

He really doesn’t like to be contained.

​My father had someone dial my number. He said, “It will be soon now. I know. I have been called.” Everything is clear now. I am not afraid.”

​

​If you have ever fished, then you know that sometimes you wait and wait and wait in the early dawn, when the fish are hungry and jumping but none come to your hook.  Not one.   So you leave, you pack up your things, you trudge back with no fish in the net.   And a bit of a hollow feeling of loss.  Or perhaps no feeling of loss.

​Sometimes you really do need to accept that it is not all in your control.

​To my father, needing palliative care, having the hospital bed arrive, these were all losses to him because it meant that dad could not heal himself…the thing that he wanted to do most.  To dad, the hospital bed meant total loss of control…. It meant failure.

​But when it was time…when there was no more time...there was only pain and fear.

​In order to actually die, though, you need to be able to wait with your line in the water…wait with your eyes closed in the morning light…still to the chill…waiting.

​

​You cannot call a fish to the line and neither can you call death to your door.

Death arrives when she arrives.

​She whispers to you, “All is okay. No need to be afraid. All is clear. It is almost time.” And when she comes, you don’t notice the chill.

​You walk with her, hand in hand…towards the lightening sky.

The Way of the Pencil

Next to my grandparents' telephone was a little silver can of little sharp pencils.

Very little pencils.   As would be a full-sized pencil, now used up and sharpened, all the way down to the eraser.  Every part of that pencil used except for the very end...sharpened and ready to begin...just before the end.

My grandfather lived during the depression.  

For him as for many, to cast away anything so precious as a pencil stub was to waste money on another pencil -- that could have been used for an apple, a sandwich....a coffee...or flour to make bread for a family.

To cast away a pencil was folly.

To dispose of a pencil was to waste a resource.

My grandfather came to this country at the age of fourteen.   

He was sent here by his mother, all by himself, alone...to begin a life.

To start again.

I cannot forget those pencils.

They were so characteristic of who he was:

keep going and don't quit -- stay sharp until the end.

Now, for me, it is pencils that are wearing me down.

As part of one-of-those-things-that-parents-have-to-do-these-days, I have had to take on a volunteer job.    

After almost twenty years doing PTA and the like, I really, at this point (yes, pun intended) I want to do the minimum.   But alas, I was required to take a job.

Instead of being a concert parent or a trip chaperone or shlepping snacks I decided that I would be the parent who would sharpen pencils.

How hard could that be? -- I thought.

I sent a note to the director of this program, saying -- hey, everyone has to be good at something in life.  

I might actually be good at sharpening pencils.

<cough>

And truly -- I thought -- how could anyone be bad at this?  Further, I thought that the job would take an hour or two and I would have fulfilled my commitment for the year.

Woohoo! -- I thought.

Wrong.  Again, I judged prematurely.  

I seem to do this a lot.

I went to collect the pencils and was handed an electric pencil-sharpener ("trust us, you will need this, Leslie") and 576 pencils.

FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX PENCILS.

Now I am home, sitting at the kitchen table, sharpening pencils.   After every fifty or so, the sharpener overheats and just stops working, at which point I am sharpening by hand.   

The electric sharpener takes at least an hour to cool off before it works again.

I am getting calluses. 

So I take a break to make lunch.

Cook dinner.   Walk the dog.

Read something, talk to someone, clean something.

Start again.

So now one, two, three hours of work -- I have maybe done sixty or seventy...now it's five hours, six hours -- eleven o'clock at night I am sneaking into the kitchen to do another fifty-seven pencils before bed.

I dream that night that I am drowning in pencils.

I dream that I am lying on a bed of nails -- er, pencils.

And oh, they have been freshly sharpened.  Ouch.

Somehow it seems that I have chosen the most difficult job.

Yet I can't quit -- I have to carry on.

Four days later I deliver four-hundred-something pencils.   Still almost two hundred sitting my table.

I am thinking I should make t-shirts:

Keep Calm and Sharpen On.

This has happened to me, though, about a million times.     Something crosses my path -- some path I have to travel -- that seems as though it is no biggie -- 

Seems easy.

But then my world overheats.   It breaks down.

I have to somehow keep going in spite of the fact that the part of my life

that made everything easy no longer works.

Things are not going the way they should.

Not only do I have to sharpen those pencils but now, in order to continue, I have to find a way to sharpen myself.    And you know, that is the most painful part.   Sharpening myself means honing the part of me that has felt most useful -- that part of me that everyone sees -- so that me, as my pencil self -- can be sharper and clearer in the world.

It is painful, in fact, to be sharpened.    All those wood shavings, all those parts of me -- always get everywhere.  

What a mess.

To write with a newly sharpened pencil there is precision, there is clarity.  

There is hope.

After awhile it becomes worn down and needs to be taken to tool.

After awhile I become worn down and also need to be taken to tool.

For myself as well, newly sharpened and fresh and hopeful looks quite a bit different than worn down and waiting for renewal.

And so we renew.

And so we sharpen.

Our mother takes us to the border and sends us to America because we need to begin again.

And so we do.

Just like my grandfather did.

It becomes a never-ending cycle, it seems.    Live our lives, wear down, sharpen.    Use the lead to write simple arithmetic.    Wear down the point writing the quadratic equation.    Wear it down writing a story.    Wear it down writing your story.

Draw a tree.    Draw a house.    Design a house.

Design a life.

If you don't like what you have written, if you make errors in your math....you can always erase.   

You can always begin again.

But you always have to keep sharpening.

You always do.

When everything overheats and breaks down, when it does...it always does --

then make lunch.

Read something. Talk to someone.  

Walk the dog.

Start again.

Keep sharpening until you are down to the stub.

Keep sharpening until you are down to the eraser.

Stay sharp until the end.

Remember that in a little cup next to the telephone -- or on the kitchen table -- there are five hundred and seventy-six reminders to stop volunteering for stuff.

No.

There are five hundred and seventy-six reminders of renewal.