Burning down the house

A few weeks before the kids and I left for Israel, I got a text from Paula at work.  “My building is on fire,” it read. 

“Really?” I responded, half-listening to the meeting I was in.  I was picturing someone with a few black slices of toast in their kitchen, maybe a cluster of residents outside, hands clamped over their ears while firemen made a compulsory parade through the building. 

“Let me clarify,” she continued.  “It was my place.  Well, next door, which burned my place.”

Burned?

There followed a string of photos, in case I was still envisioning a wisp of smoke coming out of the toaster oven.  The space where the bathroom used to be was a charred hole.  There was daylight coming through the neighbor’s unit into the master bedroom closet.  All of Paula's clothes, the dresser, and everything else that had been in the closet were jumbled on the bed, soaking wet, thrown aside as the firefighters tried to get at the flames inside the wall between her unit and the one next door.   The smoke was so dense it burned their eyes.  The place was trashed.  

Apparently, a plumbing contractor had been soldering pipes, and some embers left inside the wall caught the insulation on fire.  It was a stroke of luck that Paula had been working at home that day and called 911 before the entire building burned to the ground.

She and her daughter were allowed in only to get the bare necessities.  The bathroom was off limits.  They took their laptops, a bag of clothes, Taylor's two goldfish, and Leafy, a stuffed kitten that I had given Paula when she was in the hospital.  Pretty much everything else stayed, marinating in the thick chemical smoke that lingered long after the firemen left.

It's more than two months later, and all of their salvageable belongings are stacked in my garage.  The smell of smoke in the wood furniture and upholstery is still powerful.  Their unit was declared uninhabitable, and they were essentially evicted mid-lease with no compensation other than their security deposit refund and a small moving allowance. The landlord says it's the contractor's fault.  The contractor says it was the subcontractor's fault.  The subcontractor is denying responsibility under some sort of exemption or another.  Round and round they go.

Of course, we were all grateful that no one (not even the fish) was hurt in the fire.  It could have been a lot worse.  But it's hard to say "Dayenu" and really mean it when your life gets turned on its head.  You really don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.  It helped that we had room here to make for a comfortable landing, but it's not the same as having your own place.  (Paula and I had decided a while back that we preferred to maintain separate households for now, largely for the kids' sake- but also because we both appreciate our own space.)  The crappy water pressure in the shower, the colicky baby who cried all night downstairs- all the nuisances of an older building faded into the background.  Imperfect as it was, it was home.  And while there weren't any Picassos that got left in the trash heap, it was hard to let go of all the things they had to abandon.   

"I kept telling myself that whatever was gone was just stuff," Paula says.  "But that was the hardest part.  Letting go."  

What really struck me, as an observer, was how - ostensibly in the name of fairness- the system has been cleansed of all compassion.  Paula and her daughter were shell-shocked by the loss or destruction of almost all their possessions.  They lost their home.  It was an emotionally wrenching experience to literally watch their life go up in flames.  And yet, because they didn't have renters' insurance, they're left to fight for compensation - even when the damage was the result of clear negligence.   

I understand the reasons why you can't just march into your landlord's office and demand a check, the same way I understand why I have to take my shoes off every time I go through airport security.  There are people out there with bad intentions.  And over time, the laws and protocols that govern our lives have evolved to block and tackle the evildoers.  It's just heartbreaking that this is the way it has to be.  There are people in the world like Paula, who is pretty much the human equivalent of The Giving Tree, and who wouldn't dream of taking advantage of the system.  The woman gives $20 bills to panhandlers at stoplights and brings cans of tuna to stray cats.  But in the wake of a fire, her character gets no credit.

They say that community emerges in the wake of tragedy, and so it is.  A small circle of our friends took up a collection to help Paula and her daughter replace some of the basics - toiletries, clothes to wear to work.  It was unsolicited and therefore so much more striking in its generosity.  One friend's 9-year-old daughter handed Paula an envelope containing $7.  When her mother told her about the fire, she had run downstairs and emptied her piggy bank.  Paula keeps the envelope (and its contents) in a safe place.  The things left behind in the apartment will fade into distant memory, but the kindness of those who reached out their hands will leave more permanent marks.

It has been a time of tremendous adjustment as we have become (at least for now) a household of five, and there hasn't been much time to write as we all adjust to the new cadence of life.  But if I've taken anything away from this experience, it's a renewed sense of how important it is for all of us as individuals to care for each other.  Shit happens, and it happens when you least expect it.  There but for the grace...

I'm renewing my commitment to live compassionately and with a generous spirit.  And I'm looking around at all I have- in my physical, emotional and spiritual life - with tremendous appreciation.

An Unforgettable Shabbat

The girls and I are back from our two weeks in Israel.  I spent most of those two weeks at the office, relishing my limited time to work face-to-face with a team that I am mostly relegated to engaging over Skype and email.  There is no substitute for time spent in the same room.  Anyone who has worked with a team overseas will relate to the precious value of eye contact... even when those eyes are bleary with jetlag.

Meanwhile, my mother was busy orchestrating a kid-centric itinerary that only a Virgo could pull off.  You have to understand that my mother is not your average grandma.  At 65, she owns multiple businesses, was serving on four different boards at last count, and has more stamps in her passport from 2012 than most people will accrue in a lifetime.  She has been coming to Israel since she was a teenager.  She carries an iPhone, a Kindle, and a laptop.  She can sniff a trail to the closest source of espresso from anywhere on earth.  For 43 years, she has been making me look like a total slacker (something most would say is not easy to do).

So the kids had an incredible trip.  They boogie boarded and made castles in the sand, dug up bones and pottery shards at the Archaeological Seminars Institute in Beit Guvrin, pet kangaroos at Gan Garoo, took a drive-through safari among lions and hippos at the Ramat Gan zoo, shopped at the bustling open-air Carmel Market, wandered among the ruins of Caesarea, and had ice cream an average of twice a day.  (Their favorite: Anita Gelato on Shabazi in Neve Tzedek.)  In short, they experienced Israel as kids.  I was able to join them for a remarkable evening at the Children's Museum in Holon, where Rebecca and I participated in the Dialogue in the Dark while Leah and Grandma went paddleboating.  Suffice to say that it is revealing to experience the world without sight for 75 minutes, even if it is in the safest and most guided way.  (I almost said it was eye-opening...but caught myself.) 

In the middle of the trip, all of us took off for a three-day weekend.  We left Thursday night for Jerusalem, then drove out to the desert Saturday morning and spent the weekend at the Ein Gedi hotel.  We took the cable car up to the ancient remains of Herod's temples at Masada, slathered mud on each other at the Dead Sea, and swam under the waterfalls of the Ein Gedi Nature Reserve, with ibex staring at us from their posts along the cliffs.  It was hot enough to make you wonder why anyone ever decided the area was fit for human habitation - but despite a lot of dramatic groaning as we wove in and out of the maze of structures atop Masada, the collective experience was unforgettable and wonderful.

For me, the highlight of the trip came just before we headed for the desert.  We had dragged the kids unwillingly through the old city of Jerusalem on Friday, where they were unmoved by the remarkable history around them and spent most of the time complaining of boredom and blistering heat.  (But even they were swept into a moment of reverence at the Western Wall, where Rebecca added her prayer to the millions already lodged in the cracks.) We retreated to the air conditioning and stunning sculpture garden of the Israel Museum before relenting and hitting the pool in the middle of the afternoon.

That evening, we drove to a suburb of Jerusalem to join my mother's friend Dalia Landau for Shabbat dinner.  I was unprepared for what an exceptional evening this would be.  Dalia has a remarkable story, one that is only remarkable because of who she is.  It is documented in Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East.  The Levantine Cultural Center's site includes this brief:

The protagonists are Bashir Khairi and Dalia Eshkenazi {Landau}, each embodying the hopes, dreams and disappointments of the Palestinian and Israeli people. Tolan recounts how the Khairi family was forced, in July 1948, to flee to Ramallah, because the fighting in al-Ramla endangered Ahmad and Zakia Khairi and their children. They expected to stay only a few days until things quieted down, before returning to the beautiful home Ahmad had built in al-Ramla in 1936. Meanwhile, Bulgarian immigrants Moshe and Solia Eshkenazi arrived as refugees off the coast of the newly-forming state of Israel, their nine-month-old daughter Dalia in tow. They were instructed to walk through al-Ramla, which had been freshly cleared of its Arab inhabitants, and choose a place to live. They came upon the seemingly abandoned Khairi home and settled there. 

Al-Ramla before the conflictTwenty years later, Bashir Khairi and two of his cousins knock on the door of Bashir’s former home, and meet Dalia Eshkenazi. Thus begins a life-long relationship, filled with curiosity, affection and ambivalence, for Bashir and Dalia each embrace their right to the land that has been the source of dispute since 1948.






Dalia later went on to establish Open House, a community center dedicated to fostering better relations between Israeli Arabs and Jews.  It is housed in her and the Khairi's shared former home.

In the course of our evening, Dalia treated us to a ceremonious, uplifting and reverent welcoming of the Shabbat bride, replete with song, colorful stories from the bible that held the children captive (including an explanation of the double portion of challah traditionally served on Shabbat), ritual hand-washing, and candle-lighting.  It was impossible not to feel the beauty of Shabbat, to want it as part of our lives, as re-gifted to us that night by Dalia.

Joining us as her guests were two American teachers visiting Israel on a research grant.  One of them teaches The Lemon Tree in his Middle East Studies class.  Over dinner, the two teachers, who had met earlier that day with several leaders of the Palestinian community, expressed optimism for a one-state solution and the economic benefits it would bring.  For the next hour, Dalia led us through a narrow passageway into her experience of Israel - a complex, emotional, difficult story that left us all silent in renewed awareness of our own ignorance.  In her mind, there is no single-state solution that would be accepted by the majority of Israelis because it would, flatly, mean the end of a Jewish state - an affirmative action that has meant refuge for so many persecuted communities.  There are deeply-rooted histories of pain and suffering on both sides of the fence, and there is no simple way to heal them.  And there are acts of terror being committed in both Arab and Jewish communities.  The latter was hard to swallow.  It is much easier to sit on this side of the pond and believe that the Jewish people are uniformly noble, making their lives into blessings and living out the values of gratitude and Tikkun Olam. But to do so would be foolish and ignorant.

I came away from that evening aware that spending time in the startup nation of Tel Aviv, with its global cuisine, stunning shoreline and world-class gay pride parade, is like visiting San Francisco and claiming that you've seen the United States.  In the past year, I've spent six weeks in Israel.  With the exception of a stop to have my girls photographed on a camel, and a quick lemonade fix in the Arab Quarter, I have had no interactions with an Arab Israeli.  Conversations with my colleagues center more on the threat of Jewish extremism within Israel, and the threat of the Arab world beyond its borders.  There is so much I have yet to understand, and so much that I never will.

In January 1988, during the early days of the first Palestinian intifada, Dalia (who was in a maternity hospital awaiting the birth of her son) learned that Bashir was facing deportation by the Israeli authorities.  With no other way to contact him, she wrote an open letter that was published in the Jerusalem Post and brought international attention to her story.  I hope you'll read the full Letter to a Deportee.  In it, she describes the complicated origin of their friendship, denounces his deportation as a counterproductive violation of civil rights, and makes an open plea to him as a leader in his community:

It is a natural reaction to hate those who have made us suffer. It is also a natural reaction to inflict pain because one has suffered pain, and to justify it ideologically. In this small land, both our peoples are stuck in a fateful embrace. I believe that our finding each other here is potentially for the greater unfolding of life. In order to fulfill this potential, we all need to become more fully human, which to me, means activating our capacity to understand the suffering of others through our own, and to transform pain into healing...

It seems to me, Bashir, that you will now have a new opportunity to assume a leadership role. By its intention to deport you, Israel is actually empowering you. I appeal to you to demonstrate the kind of leadership that uses nonviolent means of struggle for your rights;a leadership based on education for the recognition of your enemy and his relative justice.

I appeal to both Palestinians and Israelis to understand that the use of force will not resolve this conflict on its fundamental level. This is the kind of war that no one can win, and either both peoples will achieve liberation or neither will.

Our childhood memories, yours and mine, are intertwined in a tragic way. If we can not find means to transform that tragedy into a shared blessing, our clinging to the past will destroy our future. We will then rob another generation of a joy-filled childhood and turn them into martyrs for an unholy cause. I pray that with your cooperation and God's help, our children will delight in the beauty and bounties of this holy land.

Allah ma'ak - May God be with you.

And also with you, Dalia.  May your radiance inspire us all.

Tel Aviv: the Sequel

We arrived Tel Aviv 3:30 AM on Saturday, after what you might call a Swiss sandwich: two red-eyes with a thin slice of Zurich in the middle.  “We” in this case are the girls, myself, and my mom, who joined us at the Zurich airport.  I was very proud of myself for actually getting the girls to leave the airport, take a train into Zurich, and walk down to the lake – no small feat given that Rebecca has 17 new Kindle books on the iPad, and Leah was perfectly content to go around the airport putting stickers on other people’s hand luggage for six hours.  Neither of them particularly wanted an excursion, but I won, and they earned the stamps in their passports. 

It is a core part of my travel ritual to leave something important on the airplane, usually a coat, but this time I disembarked in Israel with all of our possessions.  To make up for it, I forgot the car seat at baggage claim and didn’t realize it until we were in line for a taxi.  This may not seem like such a big deal if the word “airport” brings to mind a place like SFO , but just try getting back into baggage claim after passing through customs in Tel Aviv.  It would take a diplomatic escort, a solid foundation in black ops, and the ability to dig a tunnel without anybody noticing.  So we convinced ourselves that Leah would be OK for the 20-minute ride to Tel Aviv and got in a cab.  She was fine. We’re still trying to retrieve the car seat.  It’s Tuesday.

Other than that, it’s been a great trip so far.  We’re all struggling with the jetlag – it’s hard to convince a four-year-old that you should try to go to sleep, even if you don’t feel sleepy – and by the time I’ve cajoled her into bed at 2 AM, my own body clock is not so cooperative.  But the apartment rental is working out great, the kids love the beach, and they’ve started to explore beyond Tel Aviv with my mother (who, while perhaps out of practice with things like forcing a trip to the bathroom before you are nowhere near one, seems to be enjoying this).  Yesterday, the girls were tearing around the hippodrome at Caesarea, pretending to be horses in an ancient chariot race; today, they’re doing the Dig for a Day program at the Beit Guvrin Archaeological Seminars Institute.  Everyone who has done this program tells me that it’s an experience they will never forget.  They’re having fun, and I’m trying to retain my position that just being here is an adventure.  Coming home to them at the end of the workday is admittedly more exhausting than flopping down with room service, but the ache of maternal separation that I usually feel when I’m overseas, waking up every day just after their bedtime, is blessedly absent.  

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fit in running, but I made it out yesterday morning, petting cats and gazing out at paddleboarders along the way to Old Jaffa.  At the top of the hill, I stood on the Wishing Bridge.  According to the sign (and Wikitravel), legend holds that if you grasp the statue of your zodiac sign, face the sea, and make a wish, it will come true.  It sounds like a legend that the Ministry of Tourism conjured up, but who am I to pass up an opportunity to pause connect with what I wish for?  I cycled through all the usual suspects, recalling the scene in Groundhog Day where Andie MacDowell says “I always drink to world peace” – but I decided to wish for my kids to have a good time on this trip.  I care about this more than whether they learn anything, deepen their appreciation for other cultures, or eat something other than toast in the next two weeks.  It’s somewhat related to world peace, as there is a tiny voice in the back of my head reminding me that I’m in a volatile part of the world – but mostly, I just want them to look back on this trip and say, “That was fun.”  

So far, it seems as if my wish could come true.

Everything you need

Last weekend, we had a housewarming party.  It was the confluence of all the rivulets of love in our life: friends and family, neighbors and classmates, colleagues and former colleagues, softball teammates and book club members. From three generations of Paula's family to Rebecca's best friend since birth, we were swimming in a sea of joy.

As throwing a party is not something I often do, and as I love to cook for a crowd, I approached the date with great anticipation.  I spent weeks planning.  I stayed up late at night, pulling recipes from Cooks Illustrated and Martha Stewart, creating shopping lists in Excel (with a "category" column for Type A shopping), making a schedule of what was to be done each night leading up to the party.  Buy avocados; shred cheese; juice limes; make pie crust.  The little cells in my spreadsheet swelled with a sense of purpose.

A week before the party, we announced some big changes at work.  I went from an individual contributor to a manager with direct reports in three countries overnight.  I promptly earned my new team's confidence and respect by coming into work for a grand total of four hours that week.  My bones ached, my throat swelled, my nose plugged itself shut.  I lay on the couch, staring at the ceiling because turning pages of Bossypants seemed too hard.  Thursday morning, I croaked my way through a 5AM all-hands meeting with the team in Israel, then curled up in a ball on the carpet with a fleece blanket over me.  The columns of my spreadsheet, each labeled with a day of the week, sat patiently waiting for me to get off my ass and chop something.  "Up and to the right", I kept saying to myself; but as the days marched to the right, I just couldn't get up.

Thursday night, my sinuses finally started to clear.  Paula came over.  "We'll get it done," she said.  I wasn't so sure.  My to-do's went from cell A1 to G23.  It wasn't possible.

So arrived the pivotal and predictable moment when it was time to redefine the "it" that would get done.  The moment of epiphany that our guests would not care whether they were having homemade key lime bars for dessert or Chips Ahoy.  The moment when the pie chart of "want" vs. "need" got refreshed and we relaxed into the realization that everything on that list, up to and including the party itself, was optional.

I am a sucker for wants masquerading as needs.  They fool me every time.  And yet the ability to distinguish the two spells the difference between a life of stress and one of equanimity.  Most of us run ourselves ragged with the list of things we "have to do", only to realize that very little of it is either necessary or all that satisfying.  Imagine if all the anger and anxiety associated with that to-do list got channeled into something positive.  What a wonderful world this would be.

Re-learning this lesson in the days leading up to the housewarming party was timely, as I am two weeks away from another two-week trip to Israel- this time with my kids and my mother in tow.   The plan is that I'll work during the day while Mom, who has been to Israel many times, explores with the girls.  We'll take a long weekend in the middle of the trip to go away together.

It's the opportunity of a lifetime - and yet traveling with kids is like the challenge round on a game show called Wheel! Of! Patience!  When people ask what we're doing this summer, I say with enthusiasm, "I'm taking the kids to Israel!" but the reality is that I'm stressed about it.  Their presence doesn't exempt me from productive days at the office, but it does mean that going running in the morning, collapsing into a chair at night, or catching up with Paula on Skype will be a lot harder.  They're good travelers, but that doesn't mean they won't be crabby, hot, jetlagged, bored, picky at the dinner table or at war with each other - and happy to let you know about it.  In other words, they're still kids.  For my mom, who doesn't live with this every day, will two weeks as their primary adult be exhausting?

So it's time to reset.  To remember that just being there constitutes an adventure.  To allow the trip to unfold organically, and to remind ourselves that whatever we see, do, or experience is perfect - even if it doesn't match the itinerary.  This isn't to say we won't set our intentions- only that we need to detach from the outcome.

Aided by a Costco-sized dispenser of what my younger daughter calls "hansitizer", we managed to pull together a glorious feast last Saturday.  I wore a new yellow dress I loved.  I baked the tamale pie I'd prepared, while Paula served up her famous chicken tacos.  I walked among our guests passing out key lime bars- feeling more like June Cleaver than like a workaholic mom for once, and loving every minute of it.  Every time another guest came through our door, I beamed.  I was reveling in the extended family that has made our life in California, thousands of miles from my own mother and sister, such a beautiful thing.

Mr. Jagger was right - you can't always get what you want - but if you try sometimes, you do.

Here's a poem for you, to close out this post.  When I'm way out of balance, I find myself repeating the first two lines.

Everything You Need


Everything you need is right before you.
You will find it in the corners when you sweep.


Take out the broom from behind the coats in the entryway.
Bring what you collect to the ocean.


There is nothing to be afraid of.
Open your robe and walk out into the water.


If you fall, you will land in the hammock
you have woven from passions and tendons


and the muscle of your heart
will pull you to your feet.


When you emerge, shivering,
take a moment to absorb it in your bones


before wrapping yourself up again.
You have a gift you can open anytime.


Watch what your arms and legs can do.
You are capable of so much joy.

The challenges of being a gay parent

Some of the things I struggle with most as a gay mom:

1. There are days when, for the life of me, I cannot get my younger daughter to put on her shoes.
2. When I see the things I dislike about myself in my older daughter, I react to them with a vengeance.
3. I struggle between wanting to raise fit, healthy girls and wanting to let them make choices about their food and activities.
4. Some evenings, I come home from work and let them play too long on the iPad, just so I can sneak in a few rounds of Words With Friends and collapse on the couch- only to spend hours after they are asleep going through digital photos of them on the computer.
5. Although they still both openly adore me, the days until my daughters find me utterly, embarrassingly uncool are dwindling.
6. Whether I tell them "no" or "yes" can depend as much on my mood as it does on the Family Rule.
7. My older daughter is getting to an age where girls can get mean.  I want to protect her from it, and yet I know that adolescence is itself a rite of passage.
8. No matter how many Build-a-Bears they have, they always, always want more.
9. Being a role model gets exhausting.  Sometimes I relish an evening in a hotel room because it is such a relief to have Pringles for dinner in bed with the TV on.
10. My girls are scared by what they see as a world full of problems too big for them to solve.  I struggle to keep their hope alive without sheltering them from reality.

Sound familiar?

Tikun Olam

The other day, a friend and I were talking about electric vehicles.  He asserted that electric cars actually have a larger carbon footprint than gas vehicles.  I told him he was nuts; the sheer scale of electric power generation vs. the internal combustion engine made the electric car a clear winner.   A few days later, after some Googling around, he came back to me with more information: the gasoline vehicle wins by a nose if you assume that you will, at some point during the 130,000-mile life of the average car, need to replace the battery in the electric vehicle – because there is so much carbon tied up in the production of the battery itself.  If you don’t buy that assumption, the electric vehicle is a much better choice – unless, of course, you happen to live in a state that derives so much of its power from coal that electricity is actually quite dirty.

So the choice is clear.  As mud.

This is frustrating, because the answer really matters to me.  Jewish philosophy includes the concept of Tikun Olam, or "repairing the world". It is a phrase with roots in classical rabbinic literature.  In modern Judaism, it has become associated with societal change, including environmental stewardship.  The interpretations of Tikun Olam are myriad, but what seems common is that we all have a responsibility to fix what's broken - however we define it.  To face the world's problems with resignation is just not cool with the tribe.

I want to do the right thing… I really do.  But here in downtown San Jose, most of my family's purchase decisions are at the end of a long, dark tunnel, illuminated only by advertiser-sponsored billboards.  Doing the right thing isn’t always so obvious.  Who grew our food?  Where is our electricity coming from?  Why is bamboo so much more expensive if it grows so much faster?  What chemicals were added to the “organic cotton” T-shirt I’m buying to make the dye adhere?  Where exactly do cage-free hens live?  In a world where we are so distanced from the source of most of the goods and services we consume, it’s hard to know what choice we’re really making when we pull out our wallets.  

I know I’m not alone in this struggle; so many of us set out to do the "right thing" and wind up like lost tourists, glancing nervously at our maps and forcing weak smiles.  It's enough to make you give up and just ask the barmaid to bring a pitcher. And yet, as a dear friend once said to me, all the divine can ask of us is that we try.

So we embrace the effort to make good choices.  You can see our hopeful faces everywhere, trying to be responsible consumers.  Take farmers’ markets, where urbanites flock to buy directly from growers.  According to the USDA, there were 2,863 operating farmers’ markets around the US in the year 2000; in 2011, there were 7,175.  There are also nearly 13,000 farms with community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs around the country.  And consider the burgeoning backyard chicken-farming movement and the online communities aggregating at sites like BackyardChickens.com.  We may buy our pants from an anonymous factory halfway around the world, but dammit, we know where our eggs came from.

There is a silver lining to this effort: in our quest to reconnect with the goods we buy, we reconnect with each other.  Farmers' markets gather communities. Your neighbor with the avocado tree barters with you for oranges from yours.  Schools become pickup spots not just for our kids but also for CSA programs.  And from these connections sprout relationships that enrich our lives.

As for the Civic hybrid in my driveway… it sure seemed like the right choice back in 2003, but how can I be sure?  Does my vehicle have a smug problem, as they say on South Park?  Maybe.  At least I tried.  That much, I can say, feels right.  It feels even better when it's sitting in the driveway because I'm biking to work or walking to the store - which is pretty often.  And if I meet a neighbor on that walk or find a riding partner in the bike car on Caltrain, then that's one more connection pulling me into community.  If I list it on RelayRides and make it available when I'm not using it, that's another.  At the end of the day, maybe that's the piece that matters most - because if we're all in this together, the odds of our making choices with our eyes wide open increases exponentially. 

I came across this quote from David Levithan about Tikun Olam, and I think it's an apt way to close this post:

Maybe that’s it. With what you were talking about before. The world being broken. Maybe it isn’t that we’re supposed to find the pieces and put them back together. Maybe we’re the pieces. Maybe, what we’re supposed to do is come together. That’s how we stop the breaking.

Why God broke our wine glasses

We have broken two wine glasses in the past two days.

Karen: I think this is God’s way of telling us not to drink so much.

Paula: I think this is God’s way of telling us to drink from the bottle.    

We were both joking, of course – but secretly, more often than I’d like to admit, I find myself trying to interpret the stream of events in my life as signs getting beamed to me from the great unknown.  Six red lights in a row on the way to the train station: I am a bad person in need of punishment.  Finding an all-day free parking spot in downtown Menlo Park: kiss my ring, world, I have been singled out for greatness.  Sunrises, hummingbird visitations, finding the silhouette of a wolf in the stucco of my bedroom ceiling… all these things make up a collective compass that is guiding me through a scripted and meaningful series of acts.  And superstitions: I love them.  Just pennies alone… I have spent countless hours wondering what the terms and conditions of “Find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck” are.  Is “all day long” 24 consecutive hours, or just until midnight, or perhaps nightfall?  Is it lucky only if you find the penny heads up?  (I find nothing in the scripture to support this, but still… I don’t touch the tails pennies.)  What if it happens to be your own penny that you find, in your own house, but in an unexpected place?  I think the equivalent of the Talmud could be written about this simple verse.

I started to wonder what makes this harvesting of signs and signals so attractive, if a little embarrassing.  Superstition has a negative connotation to most people – the stuff of simple-minded, uneducated Old Country women.  But say “I believe everything happens for a reason” in the quiet ceremony of an interpersonal dynamics T-group or a first date, and the response is likely to be a solemn and respectful nod and an appreciation of your spiritual depth.  We’re all looking for a logical trail of breadcrumbs that leads to exactly where we are today, whether there are black cats, or bad people turning into pillars of salt, or yoga retreats along the way.

If you Google “why are people superstitious”, you’ll come across a Web MD feature on the subject, based on an interview with Stuart Vyse, PhD, and the author of Believing in Magic: The Psychology of Superstition:

Wanting more control or certainty is the driving force behind most superstitions. We tend to look for some kind of a rule, or an explanation for why things happen. "Sometimes the creation of a false certainty is better than no certainty at all, and that is what much of the research suggests," says Vyse.

This sounds about right to me.  I’m good with false certainty; after all, mindset is an important element of well-being and happiness, and having an explanation for things helps me feel that the next thing that happens to me may be good, or bad, but at least it won’t be random (and therefore entirely out of my control). 

But I think there’s more to it than being a control freak.  I think we all want to get to the end of our lives and find that our autobiography is a rich and meaningful story – one that ultimately had not just a sense of purpose, but an actual purpose.  We are constantly attuned to the circumstances around us that might somehow be our cues.  And we are worried that if we wave away the oddity of two broken glasses in a week, we might be missing something: perhaps the one cue we’ve been waiting for to pivot from our current trajectory and discover our true reason for walking this earth.

Well, actually, the wine glass thing was just a really funny conversation.  We got a lot of mileage out of it on Facebook (my source for personal validation.)  But it did get me thinking about this topic, and then writing about it.  And the next time I turn a corner and come face to face with a giant, orange moon hanging just above the horizon, I will think to myself: I am destined for greatness.