The H Word -- appeared in Binah

I tend not to do things very quietly, which is probably why when I chose to lose my balance and fall, it was right on the corner of Kikar Shabbos, on Erev Sukkos. That morning, I had realized that I was actually ahead of schedule and decided to run up to Geula to purchase a few presents for the einiklach. (Which was really dumb. No one in their right mind runs up to Geula on Erev Yom Tov, but bubbies have been known to do crazy things to get their grandchildren to smile! And besides, in my last column, I did point out that despite the wrinkles, we still have lots to learn.) And then, smack in the middle of the Erev Yom Tov rush, I crashed to the ground and succeeded in spraining my knee, finger, and elbow, as well as twisting a few ligaments.

It was not a pretty sight.

Two weeks after Simchos Torah, I was scheduled to travel to the United States to visit family and friends. It is a long trip, with a two-hour layover in Boston, and although I was looking forward to seeing my family, I was dreading getting there, especially the hassle at the airport. My leg still throbbed. Walking, or standing in one place, was very difficult, and  I knew that between security and customs, I'd have to do a lot of that!

My husband suggested that I request a wheelchair and disabled priority seating.

I was aghast. Me? A wheelchair? Disabled? No way!

But I listened to reason, and what can say? It was an amazing experience!

Instead of standing in multiple lines while juggling purse, hand luggage, and papers (and often resorting to using my teeth as a third hand!), not to mention removing my shoes and maneuvering my belongings onto a conveyer belt while somehow keeping my balance, I was treated like a queen. In Tel Aviv, my escort swiftly pushed me through the first class priority line, and within minutes, I was seated at the gate, awaiting my flight.

The same scene repeated itself in Boston. When my escort, a young man named Mohammed, spent over half an hour pushing me through what seemed like endless airport corridors, and across a busy street to get to the proper terminal, I realized that I could have never done it alone.

Well, actually, I probably could have, but I would have ended up exhausted and frazzled. And it would have taken me a week, if not more, to recover, and by then it would be time to return home.
It is humbling to ask for help. It means that we’re not invincible, that as we get older we are no longer that incredibly capable superwoman that we aspired to be (but really never were). But at the same time, it's even more humiliating to have the contents of your hand luggage come tumbling to the floor while trying to open it and place that tiny bottle of hand cream into the Ziploc bag that you can't possibly unzip with one hand, or trip over your shoe laces since you knew it would be impossible to balance on one foot to tie them, or watch the security officer try to hide his disgust as you remove the passport from between your teeth and hand it to him, slightly damp… Shall I go on?

I participate in a monthly telephone support group for women dealing with Parkinson's disease. In our last meeting, we talked about how difficult it can be to have to rely on other people and how we tend to push ourselves beyond our limitations, and then end up collapsing. It's easy to ask for help. We are used to being the nurturers, the quintessential Yiddishe mamas.. 

But, like most people, I still have a lot to learn, and one of them is to accept help graciously. Yes, it's true, I could have traveled around the world without assistance, but would it have been worth the price? Cleaning help, paper dishes, ready-made food (believe me, no one will ever mention in your eulogy that you actually bought most of Shabbos!); they are all there to make life easier. 

Grandchildren and friendly neighborhood teens who come to help with the shopping or tidying up are a gift in disguise, but the question is, who is the recipient? Perhaps through accepting help graciously, and with dignity, we are providing the next generation with an example to look up to and emulate. 

Shared Secrets (mishpacha magaziine)

The pain was unbearable. Excruciating. It was impossible to hide from it. It encroached on every fiber of her being and left her exhausted, a shadow of herself.

                              

Quiet. She wanted silence. Instead, the machine, the little blue monster, constantly beeped (it sounded like a scream) as it monitored the amount of medicine entering her bloodstream. And then, whenever she succeeded in ignoring the constant beeping and, after taking a pill to calm the pain, fall into a restless sleep, a doctor or a nurse, or a technician would appear, and with a forced smile say, "Good morning (or good evening, or good afternoon) Mrs. Kohn. We're here to check your pulse (or take your blood, or bring you to another test. There was no limit to their creativity)."

Batya Kohn would open her eyes, take a deep breath, choke on her own lack of lung capacity and try to smile. She had to smile. It was her tenuous hold on normalcy, to the world that had once been.

The nightmare began four weeks ago, on a Friday afternoon. Well actually, it began even months before that, but Batya had just thought that she was under the weather, or, that at the ripe old age of twenty nine she was beginning to feel the first pangs of middle age. The doctors kept on telling her that it was nothing; that she was under too much stress and much too lonely, that she needed to be married, that being a single mother was overwhelming her and that she desperately needed a vacation.

Everyone pitied her. One of the local tzedaka ladies had arranged for Batya to spend a week at a fancy hotel in the North. Meanwhile, another local tzedaka lady arranged for families to take care of Batya's children while she was away "getting her strength back." So to keep everyone but herself happy, Batya had spent a week trying to rest, eating more than she should and gabbing about absolutely nothing with the other ladies, all the while worrying about her children – after all, they were all she had -- and wishing that she was strong enough to be home, taking care of them, instead of pretending to enjoy herself at a hotel.

But when Batya returned home, she was still as exhausted, as totally drained as she had been before the vacation. She was unable to cope with anything – absolutely nothing. She could barely prepare herself a cup of coffee, let alone take care of her family.

Batya spent that Friday morning lounging in her apartment, wondering how she would possibly manage to get Shabbos together. Actually, there wasn't very much to do. The neighbors were sending in the meals, and a local seminary girl had come that morning to tidy the apartment (Oh, she could feel the pity in their eyes). Still, she had to organize the children's clothes – iron the boys' white shirts, make sure they had matching socks, and mend her daughter's white stockings. And the shoes – oh yes, the shoes! --had to be polished.

At three o'clock, Batya she realized that she had better start doing something. After all, how long could a healthy woman (at least that's what everyone said she was) remain in bed? She quickly donned a robe and threw a white table cloth on the dining room table. She set up the Shabbos candles and started organizing the children's clothes. For the first time in a week, she was moving around instead of lying in bed staring at a book that she was incapable of reading.

It happened when she was in the middle of ironing her younger son's Shabbos shirt. Her head exploded, shattering into a million, billion pieces of agony. Her entire body went into spasms as every muscle contracted. She felt as if her entire being was in the very last stage of labor. And then she started vomiting. She couldn't stop. She vomited until there was nothing left, and then she continued vomiting ugly specks of putrid green bile, over and over and over again.

Batya somehow managed to fling herself onto the sofa. She saw everything in triplicate. Tables and chairs and toys, they were floating everywhere, intermingled with overwhelming waves of pain and a deep abyss of fear that threatened to engulf with its wide tentacles, like the enormous mad monster with its many slides at the playground on the other side of the city; the one she took the children to when she wanted to take them on a special outings. Batya lifted her hand and brought it up to her face. She saw three hands -- fifteen perfectly formed fingers -- dancing grotesquely in front of her eyes. Her hand went limp as she closed her eyes and vomited, again and again and again – and again.

When the neighbor came in half an hour later, she found Batya curled up on the sofa, her eyes closed, a puddle of vomit on the floor. "Are you all right?" she asked, ("Boy, the stress of raising those children alone is really getting to her," she thought.)

Batya gasped, "Everything hurts," and then vomited, again.

Batya was in so much pain that she could not lift her head off the pillow, so the neighbor lit the Shabbos candles for her. Se was too weak to even say thank you. She felt as if a million hammers – no heavy iron anvils – were whipping relentlessly at her brain. Every time she opened her eyes and saw the world spinning around her -- in triplicate -- she gagged and vomited, again.

The neighborhood doctor came that evening on his way to shul. "A bad case of the stomach flu" was his diagnosis, at least that's what he told her. To the neighbors he quietly clucked his tongue and said that he didn't see anything wrong, and that the stress and loneliness must be getting to her.

While the children ate their  Shabbos seudah with the neighbors that evening, Batya managed to crawl (on all fours, vomiting the entire way) to the bathroom. When the neighbor appeared a few hours later to see how Batya was feeling, she found her lying in a pool of vomit and blood. She was still vomiting.

Batya spent the next four days in the hospital. After endless tests (which although abnormal but did not point to anything definite), the hospital staff was unable to come up with a diagnosis. They concluded that Batya's symptoms were psychosomatic; she was under much too much stress.

Batya returned home to piece her life together. But she couldn't. She wanted to, she really did. But she was just too exhausted. Problems that she had always viewed as challenges to be dealt with were now impossible tzuros that threatened to overwhelm and engulf her. So she returned to her and bed in a vain attempt to get her strength back, until it was erev Shabbos – again -- and the house had to be readied and the children's clothes ironed.

This time, Batya managed to call a friend the moment she felt the explosion as her world turned black. "I'm dying," she gasped, before dropping the phone on the table and collapsing on the sofa.

Batya has no memory of how she managed to get to her friend's house. She thinks that she was carried to the car. She does have vague memories of lying on the sofa during the Shabbos meal, wishing that everyone would be silent –- her head felt as if it was on fire -- and that she would stop vomiting. She bit her lips to stop herself from screaming.

"Batya," her friend's husband gently told her, "Sometimes when we are overwhelmed by emotions and unable to cope, our bodies react this way. You must start giving yourself positive messages. If you think positive, you'll feel better."

Batya wanted to explain that although she really, truly, with all her might wanted to think positive, it was impossible for her to think. The pain engulfed her, leaving no room for such a luxury. Instead, she was overwhelmed by another wave of nausea and shut her eyes to escape the dizzying triple visions spinning around her.

When Batya started coughing up blood several days later, she didn't even bother to tell anyone. She was positive that it must just be another figment of her imagination, and that she had not yet succeeded in attaining the fine art of positive thinking. Everyone insisted that she was perfectly healthy.

When Batya went to see a specialist a few days later, everyone was positive the doctor would confirm their suspicions that Batya was having a nervous breakdown. "I'll park the car, and meet you in his office," Batya's friend had said as they pulled up in front of the hospital. Using  strength that she never knew she possessed, Batya managed to get out of the car. She was learning to see reality through the thick haze of growing blackness and to know which of the three things dancing in front of her were real, and which were nothing more than figments of her imagination, psychosomatic signs of stress and a lack of positive thinking.

When the doctor asked Batya to describe what was bothering her, all she could answer was, "Everything." She was afraid of listing all her complaints, and besides, it took all her energy to just continue breathing. "Why bother talking when no one believes me?" she wondered.

So she handed him the hospital report instead. The doctor spent a few minutes reading it. "Mrs. Kohn," he said, "you are a very healthy young woman."

"Baruch Hashem," she managed to gasp. She certainly didn't feel like one.

But within seconds of starting the examination, the doctor put down his stethoscope and, with a very serious expression on his face said, "Mrs. Kohn, you are an extremely sick young woman. We're hospitalizing you immediately."

"How wonderful," was all Batya could answer. Finally, someone believed her. She felt like dancing for joy that she was sick, and not insane.

That was two weeks ago. For two weeks, Batya had felt herself fading in and out of reality. The world around her seemed to dance grotesquely, in perfectly choreographed triplicate, turning light, and then dark, and then light again. The doctors told her that her situation was extremely precarious. Blood clots were pulsating throughout her body. Some had gone into her brain, others had paralyzed an eye muscle, while several hundred had lodged in her lungs. According to statistics, she should go into heart failure. If she was very, very lucky, she wouldn't.

*  *  *

The miracle began a few days before Chanuka -- Batya was lying perfectly motionless -- so as not to place any additional stress on the heart -- while wiggling her toes to prevent additional clots from forming in her legs, and staring into soupy blackness. A man entered the room, playing a Chanuka melody on his violin.

"Chanuka?"  Batya turned to her friend who had come to visit. The nightmare had started before Rosh Hashana.

"It's the twentieth of Kislev. Chanuka begins in another few days," the friend answered.

"The twentieth of Kislev," Batya repeated. "Next year, on the twentieth of Kislev, I'm going to celebrate! I'll make a seudos hodaya to rejoice that I'm still alive, and that I'm healthy to boot!" Batya predicted. 

When Batya left the hospital two weeks later, she was forty pounds thinner. She barely had the strength to walk from the taxi to her apartment. The next few months were in some ways even more challenging than the weeks she had spent fading in and out of consciousness. She wanted (oh, how much she wanted…) to return to normal life, but the doctors warned her that she must rest. Neighbors and Seminary students took turns helping with the children while cleaning ladies took over the housework. But Batya was happy; people believed her. She was not insane, and she couldn't wait to return to her former, vibrant self.

Whenever Batya saw the friend, the one who had been visiting her when the musician entered the room playing a Chanuka melody, she would smile and whisper, "We're going to make that seudos hodaya. Remember? The twentieth of Kislev."

A few days before Rosh Hashana, one of the neighbors suggested a shidduch, Batya laughed. She couldn't imagine getting married again. Her children were too young, and she was much too busy living-- and enjoying -- life. She had gone through too much pain and had invested too much energy in creating a warm and loving home. "No," she firmly told the neighbor, "I'm not interested. I'm very happy with my life."

But the day after Sukkos Batya found herself carefully applying lipstick and brushing her shaitel as she got ready to meet a young widower with three small children. Although she kept on telling herself that she would politely find a reason to leave at the first opportunity, she found herself strangely excited at the prospect of going out on a date.

When, after close to two months of dating, Batya found herself beginning every second sentence with, "If I decide to marry you then…" (and blushing furiously as she said those words) she came to the conclusion that she had better decide whether or not she would marry Avraham.

And so, at two thirty-five in the morning, on the nineteenth of Kislev, Batya and Avraham decided to build their lives together. They were so wrapped up in the joy of finding their soul mates that they – or at least Batya – did not notice the date.

The following morning, Batya and Avraham informed their friends of their momentous decision. That evening, the neighbors made a small engagement party. Everyone sang, danced, and cried. In the middle of the festivities, some of the ladies began started talking about everything that Batya had gone through that year.

That was when Batya remembered – the seudos hodaya! "What's the date?" she asked one of the ladies.

"The twentieth of Kislev, a mazeldik shah," was the reply. 

Batya glanced at her friend, the one who had sat by her bed; the one who had heard the musician playing the Chanuka songs. They looked at each other and smiled -- and then broke into tears.

Some secrets are too sacred to share.

Who Me? Couldn't Be!

When I write about the various aspects of my life as a mature (ah, isn't that a great description …), frum women, I can't help but feel as if I'm in a time warp. Me? Mature? I get a thrill from turning off all the lights and sitting on the living room floor with my friends (actually, they're my grandchildren, but please don't tell) singing slow, hartzige songs before collapsing into a mound of giggles. But then, when our stomachs begin to rumble, they jump up like ripened kernels of popcorn, and I, well, to put it succinctly, don’t — or, to be more accurate, can't. And that's when I realize that — hey lady! You ain’t seventeen anymore!

Just to remind me that I am now an official member of the Golden Age Club, yesterday, I received an official government letter wishing me mazel tov on my having become a senior citizen, and another letter from the bank inviting me to an evening on the financial aspects of retirement (or how to make your non-existent assets grow, a type of yesh mei'ayin). Although more often than not I have to pinch myself to believe it, chronologically I am old enough to be considered mature, which means that I am probably old enough to write about it!

I'm sure that there are other women reading this who can relate to my feelings of disbelief. A close friend of mine, who is approaching seventy and still teaching full-time, told me that she once entered the teachers' room and was surprised to see a  group of "real old ladies" sitting there, until she realized with a start that she was the oldest of the bunch – with the wrinkles to match.

I was recently reminiscing with a close friend — our relationship goes back to our days in Bais Yaakov Yerushalayim, over 43 years ago! — about how we used to sit in the park together, oohing and aahing over our little ones. I actually thought I'd be pushing a stroller forever! With a bittersweet smile, she asked, "Debbie, do you remember that elderly lady who used to come to the park? She always told us that she felt young; that it seemed like just yesterday she was a young mother trying to cope with temper tantrums and bedtime. And then she'd wistfully sigh and say something about how those years flew by so quickly, and that she can't believe she's already a great grandmother. Back then, it sounded crazy. Bedtime often seemed like eternity! But now looking back, I feel the same way."

Yup, people might see us as wise old women, but we know the truth (but please, don't divulge this to my sweet, trusting grandchildren): yes, we do have more experience, but we're still very much works in process, with lots of growing up to do. 

This morning, I spoke with the coordinator of our local community center's Senior Citizen club about instituting new classes for the coming year. When I mentioned some of the projects I am working on, or hope to work on in the future (or as my husband wryly commented, "Someday, Debbie, you'll figure out what you want to be when you grow up!"), I overheard the very wet-behind-the-ears secretary whisper to her equally young friend, "What an adorable old lady!" OUCH! Although I definitely have more wrinkles than she does (and in case I forget, I have my darling grandchildren to ask, "Bubby, what are all those funny looking creases covering your face?”) I am not adorable, or cute, and haven't been for at least 55 years (although according to my mother, a"h, prior to that I was very cute…). Senior citizens are people, just like everyone else, and most of us, or at least a large percentage of us, are dealing with a multitude of challenges, many of them unique to our age group, and to our new, changing roles in life, like going from being the shvigger to the shvigger of the shvigger.

My first granddaughter recently became a kallah – mazel tov! – and I'm still in a state of shock. When I came to the l'chayim, her younger brother raced over to me and almost yelled in my face,   "Bubby, do you realize that in another year or so, you will hopefully be an elter-bubby?" It took me more than a few seconds to catch my breath. Yes, Yiddishe nachas is wonderful, but still, as with the transition to marriage, to motherhood, to shvigger-hood and bubby-hood, every graduation means leaving something behind and learning to adapt – no, that's the wrong word, to thrive and grow – with that new reality. Hopefully with this new column, I'll be able to share with my readers some of the wisdom that I will hopefully gain along the way.

Wishing all my readers a wonderful journey.

published in Binah, Jan. 7, 2016

What Did You Say?

When my husband and I stood under the chuppah over three decades ago, it never dawned on us that we would be creating a modern-day Tower of Bavel. We entered the marriage with a total of six kids between the ages of five to nine (yes, to make things more leibedig, that number included a pair of identical twins!), and five of the children wore the same size shoe!

My husband's children spoke Yiddish with a smattering of Hebrew and a bissele French; mine, Hebrew with a smattering of English. My husband and I communicated (and still continue to communicate, baruch Hashem) in English. Our blended family was trilingual.

Everything was fine; we managed to make ourselves understood, or misunderstood, as the case may be. And then, with the birth of three more children, the fun really began.

Although I spoke to the older children in Hebrew, I spoke English to the younger ones, and they responded in either English or Hebrew.  My husband spoke to them in Yiddish. Between themselves and with friends, it was a toss-up between English and Hebrew.

When it came to figuring out which language to speak to whom, they kind of got it, but not quite. "Mommy," said my five-year-old proudly, "I g’go to the store, and I g’buy bread," inserting the Yiddish past tense into the English sentence.  Sometimes they replaced English words for Hebrew, altering them to be grammatically (in)correct, as in (I kid you not), "Hicloseti (root word: close) et hadelet. I closed the door."

It took a while until the children realized that I understand Yiddish. When my youngest daughter asked my husband, "Tatty, vos vilst du essen?" and he responded, "A shtikel broit mit kez," she immediately turned to me to explain, "Mommy, Tatty would like a slice of bread with cheese for breakfast."

At one point I decided to stop all the confusion and communicate solely in Yiddish. My daughter quickly put an end to this when she innocently declared, "Ven d'mama vilst machen freilich, ze redt Yiddish un d'gantze shtub lacht — when the mother wants to make everyone happy, she speaks Yiddish, and the entire family laughs."

Then the children got married, and I started working in an all English-speaking environment. On more than one occasion I gave an entire drashah to one of my children's spouses in English. When he finally managed to get a word in, he said, "But shvigger, I really don't understand English.” My oldest son-in-law actually knew a bissele English — exactly one word: chicken. So, one Erev Pesach, when I called out to family eating supper in our chametz corner, "I need help in the kitchen," he promptly appeared at my side and asked, "Where's the chicken?" Now it was my turn to be confused!

And then came the grandchildren.

Some of my grandchildren speak only Yiddish — they barely understand Hebrew, and of course they don't know English. The last time I tried to read a story to them (in Yiddish, of course), they listened politely and then suggested that we play a game instead. I have other grandchildren who speak only Hebrew, and when I ask if they'd like a pulke or a fliegele, they give me a blank stare.

And then there are the London grandchildren. I thought that finally I'd be able to speak my mamalashon to my progeny, but I quickly learned that Brits don't speak English, at least not the type of English that I grew up with. So between deciphering the thick English accent and figuring out the meaning of familiar-sounding words  such as dustbin lorry and third form. most of our conversations consist of, "What did you say?" 

But there is one thing that all children, and children-in-laws and grandchildren know: that when one Mommy, or Shvigger, or Bubby serves hot, straight-out-of-the-oven kokosh cake with a glass of cold, foamy milk, followed by a triple-layer ice cream cone, it's her way of saying, "I love you." And that does not need any translation!