Yes, we can - as appeared in the Binah

The entire family was rushing frantically to finish getting dressed and close the suitcases. The van was scheduled to arrive in less than 15 minutes, the kugel still had to be removed from the oven and put in some type of a container, and the baby’s diaper had to be changed – again.

In the midst of what can only be described as a whirlwind of activity, my 10-year-old granddaughter Fraidy (not her real name) sat on the sofa, looking miserable and doing nothing. My daughter noticed some funny-looking spots on Fraidy’s face. A closer look revealed that the spots were also spots on her arms, and her legs, and, well, everywhere. And they looked like (drumroll) CHICKEN POX!

My daughter called the car service and asked them to come later. Then she called the doctor. As expected, the receptionist told her that there were no appointments available. “The doctor will try to fit you between the other patients,” she said. “But you’ll have to have patience. It might be a very long wait.”

But this was not an ordinary Erev Shabbos. My granddaughter, sister of the “poxing” (how’s that for a new word?) 10-year-old was getting married on Sunday, so this Shabbos was her chassan’s aufruf. If the as-yet-unidentified spots really were what my daughter thought they were, then (OH NO!) a lot of well thought-out plans would have to be changed. Quickly.

My daughter explained the situation to the receptionist. The receptionist giggled at the absurdity of chicken pox erev aufruf and told her that she would get her in immediately.

My daughter’s diagnosis was correct. Fraidy really did have chicken pox. Which is how I ended up having, in addition to my granddaughter, the Kallah, chicken-poxing Fraidy and her mother for Shabbos.

Several times during that Shabbos (as well as throughout the hectic few weeks prior to the wedding), my daughter asked me, “You know, Mom, I really don’t understand how you did it. How did you manage to take care of all the details involved in making a wedding and setting up a new apartment without family to help you?”

Truth is, I don’t know. It was hard, really hard, especially since all my Israeli neighbors had large, extended families, but somehow, we — by that, I mean all of us Americans who were living in Israel without our families — managed. And I’m glad that today, my offspring don’t have to go through what we went through.

I’m glad that my children have it easier than I did, but at the same time, I know that overcoming those challenges built me as a person. It strengthened my spiritual muscles — bitachon, emunah, being happy with what I have.

Every Monday night, I attend a middos workshop in my neighborhood. (Well, I TRY to go every Monday night, but I’m not always successful.) It’s a great group of women, from newly married to great grandmothers, yet, despite the vast age difference, we share a common denominator: we love to laugh and to talk, and we are serious about our self-growth. The women are hysterically funny as they honestly talk about their challenges, and triumphs. It seems that that no matter what middah we are working on, the path to attain it includes a realization that whatever we are going through is exactly what we need for our optimal growth. In other words, what we have, is exactly what we need.

The challenges I face are the ones I need to grow and strengthen my spiritual muscles. When I was marrying off my children, I needed the challenge of living in Israel sans mishpachah for my personal development, and my daughter needed the challenge of chicken pox erev chasunah for her personal development. And yes, I survived my challenge, and even came out stronger for it, and my daughter survived hers. My granddaughter got married (yes! MAZEL TOV!), and if it wasn’t for the wedding pictures (a 10-year-old with premature acne!), the story would most probably have been forgotten by the last sheva brachos.

Last Shabbos, when I was walking home with a couple of friends from my Shabbos shiur, one of the ladies shared a “bubby story.” “Bubby,” her 6-year-old grandson had said, “you’re so lucky. You’re so old that you don’t have a yetzer hara anymore.” Although he was right on one account (no, not that his bubby is old, but that she is one very lucky woman), he didn’t realize that no matter how old a person may be, he still has plenty of challenges. We all have a yetzer hara, and we all have work to do. We all have it within ourselves to use those challenges as stepping stones to growth.

We can do it. Yes, we can.   

Savor the Moment - as appeared in the Binah

A few days ago, I was rushing out the door, late for an appointment, when my cellphone rang. It was an old (both literally and figuratively) friend.

“I really don’t have time to talk now,” I said as I tried (without success) to fly down the stairs. “Can it wait until the afternoon?”

“Debbie, this is really, really important.”

“Okay, shoot.” I really was in a rush, and I did have a lot to do, but a friend is a friend, so I stopped to give her my full attention.

“How did you manage to lose the weight? Tell me what exercise to do. No matter how hard I try, I can’t manage to get it off. Tell me your secret!” she begged. I could hear the urgency in her voice.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But since I really was in a rush, I didn’t even bother trying to be diplomatic. “At this point in my life, I couldn’t care less about my weight. I’m just doing what I need to do to stay healthy.”

Later that evening, thinking back to that short conversation, it suddenly dawned on me: I had spent the last I don’t even know how many years of my life worrying about my weight, and trying desperately to attain the perfect weight (and secretly wishing that the clock would turn back a few centuries, and fat would once again become fashionable), while at the same time feeling like a failure at my inability to do so. But now, and I have no idea when or how it happened, my entire outlook has changed.

Yes, of course, I know that it’s important to look mechubadik, and I take care to dress in a becoming manner, but as far as I know, a perfect weight has never been a prerequisite for being a true bas Yisrael. In other words, I’ve stopped trying to be something I’m not. I don’t feel like a failure for not accomplishing the impossible and am (finally) happy in my own skin.

I wonder if this change of how I view myself is a result of growing older, a realization that the outer trappings are temporary (yes, we all know that, but that knowledge becomes much more real with the march of time), and that it just doesn’t pay to waste so much energy trying to do something that I can’t. 

Twenty years ago (yup, it was after the wedding of one of my sons, and his oldest is now nineteen) I wrote an article that appeared in Horizons, one of the first English-language magazines for the religious public, about how each of my many wrinkles has its own story. One was earned for the many nights I sat on the porch, wrapped in a multitude of heavy quilts, trying to help an asthmatic child breathe; another, for the moments of dread until I finally succeeded in accounting for all my family members after each bus bomb.

I laughingly commented that perhaps I should call myself a summer chicken, since spring has already passed. Today, I marvel at how I wrote that when, in fact, I was really so young.

But then again, age is relative; when I was a teenager, I viewed anyone over forty as being very old, and of course my grandchildren think I must be at least a hundred, or even, as I overheard one whisper to her sister, “Bubby must be at least a thousand years old.”   

Last week, I gave a talk at one of the seminaries in London. One of the girls asked me how I manage to stay so positive while living with a degenerative, incurable condition. I responded that every person has challenges. It just so happens that people are aware of this particular challenge because Binah requested that I do not use a pseudonym when I wrote my “Living with Parkinson's” series. Although we cannot choose our challenges, we can choose how we decide to face them, what we do with them. That’s our nisayon in life.

When I told my husband about the girl’s question, he commented that for a young person on the threshold of life, my challenge sounds horrific. But part of being older is the realization that life itself is a “degenerative, incurable condition”! Few of us escape the infirmities associated with old age, and all of us eventually succumb.

Or as my friend Tova who lives in a nursing home often points out when she hears the other women bemoan their fate, “What did they think? That they’ll stay young forever?” 

So I’ll enjoy the freedom of not being young, of not having to worry about the far-from-perfect figure, or what people think of me. Instead, I’ll rejoice in every moment, savor the simple things in life and count my (many) blessings.

Ice cream, anyone?