e Ritter

Sunday, June 17, 2007

1-800-GET-INFO

I’m working the phones for an “800” help line,
and somehow a stranger’s struggle,
a stranger’s angst
seems very much my own.

I lost my cousin.
He lost his house.

We’ve been chatting for several minutes.
Or rather he’s blathering on bout the evils of big-city East Coast Democrats
and how he’d handle the Iraqi insurgents.
I’m smiling, nodding, and occasionally cooing a sympathetic “mm-hmm”.

I have nothing in common with this man.
He is a bigot, a racist, and probably an anti-Semite, too;
a conservative gun-toting boor from Oklahoma who voted for the man
who’s turning my country into something I don’t recognize.

And yet, I hear his breathing change
and know that he is afraid.

I lost my voice.
I found some emotions inside that I don’t even understand.
Can you help me find my voice, my cousin, his house?

I can’t help him find what he’s missing,
But I can give him a few minutes
of knowing that someone cares that he is lost.

shorts

a large, speckled rock,
maybe the size of a kiwi
a restaurant-pack of individual serve apple-cinnamon jelly
an old shoelace
a dozen or so individually wrapped toothpicks

Such are the contents
of the pockets
of the shorts
of an 8-year-old boy.

a dried-up bouncy ball
a red water balloon
an old kleenex,
unused of course
(that’s what sleeves are for!)
a sheet of scrumply paper with Daddy’s number at the office
just-in-case
another sheet of even scrumplier paper with some tic-tac-toe games
a green water balloon

Fortunately for the 8-year-old boy,
he has two pairs of shorts…

Friday, June 15, 2007

Prelude to the Kaddish for my Grandfather's 7th Yahrzeit

We call the time from when a person is born, til when they die, a “lifespan”. But there doesn’t seem to be a word in English for the measure of time from when a person dies until the present, though there should be. Perhaps other cultures less uncomfortable with death have such a word.

I periodically think about this concept, usually around yizkor or people’s yahrzeits, but not necessarily. For example, it was a little weird for me last year on Election Day when I realized that if my mother’s death-span were a person, she’d be old enough to vote.

This fall, my grandfather’s death will enter second grade.

That’s a little past when kids learn the alpha-bet, but it’s around when most children start to really read in earnest. If he were a child at my synagogue, he’d be entering Hebrew school in the fall, and learning his alef-bet.

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about “Oyfn Pripetchik,” a haunting melody written by Mark Warshavsky, an attorney and good friend – and travel and performing partner – of Sholem Aleichem. How fortunate that he encouraged Warshavsky to write down his songs, now so familiar, and yet almost lost to history:

Oyfn pripetshik brent a fayerl, Un in shtub iz heys;
Un der rebbe lernt kleyne kinderlech dem alef-beys;
Un der rebbe lernt kleyne kinderlech dem alef-beys.
Zet zhe, kinderlech, gedenkt zhe tayere, vos ir lernt do;
Zogt zhe noch a mol un take noch a mol: Komets alef “o”.

A little fire is burning on the hearth, And it is hot in the house,
And the rebbe is teaching the little children the Aleph Bet.
See now children, remember dear ones,
What you've learned here; repeat it again and again
Aleph with a kametz is pronounced "o"!

Shortly after I joined the Beth Am choir, we learned this song for Shavuot. I was driving my grandfather to some appointment or other, and listening to a practice tape my friend Margot made so that I could learn the music. Of course he immediately recognized the song (and, for that matter, Margot’s voice) and teared up. My Grandfather was not an especially sentimental man, so I didn’t understand this. Then he supplied the missing verses that the choir was not singing:

When you get older, children,
You will understand that this alphabet
Contains the tears and the weeping of our people.
When you grow weary, children
And burdened with exile,
You will find comfort and strength
within this Jewish alphabet.

The melancholy of the tune finally made sense to me. Formerly saccharine and sentimental, it became profoundly moving.

Now when I hear it, I hear all of the words, whether they’re sung or not, for I know what comes next. I see my son, David, maybe four years old, curled up with his “Pop-Pop”, who is singing a Yiddish lullaby from his own youth. I hear a fellow congregant Judith Klavans playing it on the flute as a prelude to the Kol Nidre service, an offering on her mother’s first yahrzeit.

I hear it on Shavuot, the very day of my Grandfather’s yahrzeit. And I think of him as a little boy, entering school for the second time.

For my Mother, on her 14th Yahrzeit

If you’ve not yet read Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets, you’ve missed death-day parties. It seems that once you become a ghost, you celebrate the day you died with a big party, with all your ghost-y friends, much like we celebrate our Birthdays with parties in this realm. Well, sort of:

On the other side of the dungeon was a long table, also covered in black
velvet. They approached it eagerly but next moment had stopped in their
tracks, horrified. The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish were laid
on handsome silver plattersl cakes, burned charcoal-black, were heaped on salvers; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold and, in pride of place, and enormous grey cake in the shape of a tombstone, with tar-like icing forming the words,
Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington
Died 31st October 1492

My mother was a wonderful cook – when she felt like it – though she had a tendency to make weird things, like oxtails and ceviche, that other kids’ Moms did not serve for dinner, and which seemed kind of gross at the time. She was, however, a wonderful baker: pies; cookies; nut cakes; even baklavah, which she learned to make from Mrs. Menugian, our Armenian landlady who lived upstairs. It was quite some time after my Mother died that I realized that I had, indeed, learned how to make pie crust from all those years of just watching her do it.

But she wasn’t particularly connected to Jewish baking. (Well, there was the time, exiled in Germany in the early 60’s when my father was stationed in Heilbronn as a “Russian translator – read, “spook” – that she so desperately wanted a decent bagel she made a batch herself – boiling them in the bathtub – and completely freaking out her landlady. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.)

So I taught myself to bake babkas, and challahs, and hammentaschen, learning from books, and experience, and from my little-old-lady neighbor on Fort Washington Avenue.

This weekend, I’ll make hammentaschen with Tina and David. I like to think that my Mother, too, will be eating hammentaschen, at her “death day” party, which comes three days after Purim.

But if she makes them herself, she could only have learned that by watching over me.

Red Cross Thanksgiving

11/24/05

Today is Thanksgiving, and I think this is just the best one I’ve ever spent. Finally the weather here is seasonal: sunny and warm, like the 70’s, and not too humid. Last night after work I drove down to Kenner, a small town (or city?) outside of New Orleans where there’s a very large kitchen operated by the Arkansas Convention Southern Baptists and supported by the Red Cross. (We buy the food, and supply the generators, reefer trucks, pressure washers and other equipment, but the Baptists actually own all of the kitchen equipment, and do all the food prep.) The kitchen is outside, behind the church, under tents. The Baptist volunteers sleep in the church; ARC volunteers mostly are housed at a staff shelter in a rec center a couple of miles away, though some are staying in local hotels. ARC rolls a whole mess of emergency response vehicles (“ERVs”) from that kitchen to do mobile feeding every day. Apparently they make like 22,000 meals a day, although today they “only” made 11k. (Ironically the need is less today, since many community organizations do feeding on Thanksgiving.) Each ERV gets like 250-300 meals; today it was turkey, cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes, cranberries and rolls, plus a brownie and a litre of water. The operation is just unbelievable, and I hafta say the food smelled great. And how could it not be delicious when it is so lovingly prepared and with such joy. For sure people must be as nourished, in a sense, by that kavannah.

Woke up shortly after “lights on” at 6, stayed in bed and davened a bit from Sim Shalom, got up, went out to the shower truck, and finished getting dressed and neatening the area around my cot. (We have to put all our stuff on our cots, so that they can wash the floors every day.) The TV was on and they were showing film of Central Park West and the parade route, and for the first time I really missed home. It was so weird to see the areas I know so well, where I’ve sat and frozen, waiting for the parade to start! I was the only New Yorker in the place, and everyone was looking at the scenery as somehow exotic, and for me it was just… HOME! So there I was thinking about the parade, and that’s when they came in: bagpipes! One of the guys staying here plays the bagpipes, and brought his with. Y’know, it just ain’t Thanksgiving without “Amazing Grace” honking out in plaid. Truly a fantastic – and unexpected – moment!

Checked in at home, and also spoke with Wes & Tanya who happened to call in. That was nice to hear from them, and a good way to start the day, with props from the homies.

We rolled from the shelter at *exactly* 9:00am, all three “companies”: Alpha, Bravo & Charlie. There must’ve been like 35-40 ERVs – all in a convoy, with a few “chase cars” (including mine) sandwiched within. We had a police car stopping traffic so we could stay together, and as we left there were other volunteers cheering and clapping. All that was missing was “Die Valküre”! As we drove, people honked and waved, and as we entered the church lot, there were more people cheering and waving. (There also had been a “Good Morning America” crew at the kitchen, filming the meal prep, including none other than the Rev. Al Sharpton. Geeze, Louise: I come all the way to Louisiana and I *still* can’t get away from that man!!) I bought some CDs for the ride down from Baton Rouge, since my radio antenna is busted; as we entered I had the Youngbloods blasting, right at the “C’mon people, now: smile on your brother; everybody get together, try to love one another right now…” part. Perfect.

When we all got out of our trucks to start loading the food, we were greeted by 50 smiling, happy Baptists, who, being from Arkansas on this, the day before the big Arkansas-LSU homecoming game, well of course they greeted us with a rousing “WOOOO, PIG, SOOOO-EEEEEEEEEEEY!” Fantastic!!

Driving to the site, Lafayette HS, we went east on The 10 – that’s what they call it here: “The 10,”kinda like “The Bronx”, not “10” or “I-10” or “the Interstate” – periodically getting random beeps and waves from passing drivers. Exiting at Loyola and driving on South Carrolton there was utter destruction. Lots of debris and flotsam; abandoned cars; destroyed homes and businesses; huge, hundred-and-fifty-year-old oaks on their sides, with their roots in the air, like bugs on their backs. And still no traffic lights, just lots of STOP signs at each intersection. This is America, for Crissakes, and there’s no electricity! It really looked like pix I’ve seen of Tikrit.

We set up at the high school and started putting together plates of food on lidded styrofoam sectional plates. Pretty soon people were showing up in ones and twos, some taking just a meal for themselves, but many taking two or three or four or more, for other family members or neighbors. Over the morning some day laborers – mostly Mexican, but some from Peru and Honduras – came through; some were supervisors who brought back five or six meals for their crews. People were so grateful and gracious, wishing us a happy Thanksgiving, and blessing us. It was really amazing. I was able to speak Spanish with some of the clients, and that really surprised them, but I think comforted them, too. Seems not-so-many ARC volunteers down here speak Spanish. We also had this really sweet, cute boy, maybe David’s age, who juggled three meals (for himself and his parents) on a bicycle. That one almost made me cry. But the most remarkable was an older woman with what was obviously a German accent. I asked her where she was from and when she said “Choimunnee” and was talking about the war and then said she was “a survivor”, I knew that my colleagues on the ERV didn’t quite realize what she meant by that: she wasn’t talking about being a tough ole’ bird who lived through a lot of suffering in a general sense. How remarkable that I found probably the only Holocaust survivor in Southeast Louisiana, and that she found the rare ERV with a Jew. Is that bashert, or what? During a lull after she left, I pointed out what had happened; everyone stopped to appreciate the moment, noting their own Catholic or Methodist origins, and the Baptist pedigree of the food. Hmmm, religious pluralism on this day of giving Thanks to God: what a concept!!

Came back and unloaded the truck at the church, where I gave a donation for their amazing work, and then back to the shelter to wash and squeegie the truck (including a brief-but-playful episode of “hose the newbie”) and reload it with bottled water. I was keeping rhythm on the human chain by singing Sweet Honey & the Rock’s “(Bring me a Little Water,) Sylvie”. Also helped unload a truckload of “corrupted” water (Eeewww: brown algae floaties. It’s just amazing what some companies will donate. Gross!) and offload a generator from a truck.

Kate, the driver of the ERV on which I served, asked me to buzz her down the street to her hotel. I asked at the desk if they knew anywhere open to do laundry as I am running out of clean socks and underwear, and my jeans were getting a little gross. (One-too-many splatters of yam juice and turkey gravy.) She said they have washers/dryers in the hotel which I could use even though I’m not a guest here. Bless her! (And, thankfully, I had my stuff in the trunk.) Hopefully it’ll be dry in another 15-20 minutes…
_____________________________

Still waiting for the dryer. Called Becca and Oma and Dad. Becca is having some peace-and-quiet-and-sleep time while Jerome has Thanksgiving with his Mom. Oma just got back from her church community supper, and I told her God Bless those church ladies. Barbara is at Mary’s, so Dad is with friends at his place. I was telling him about my ERV adventures and he said he’s proud of me. That’s a first. It felt really good. Lump in my throat and everything.

_____________________________

Well, I finished my laundry and went back to the shelter, and had “a Thanksgiving dinner that couldn’t be beat!” Tons of dressing and sweet potatoes from the Baptists; turkey and gravy, too, but I didn’t eat that because the gravy looked totally treyf. There were two deep-fried Cajun-rubbed turkeys – YUM! – succulent meat and very crispy skin – and also deep-fried hams which I didn’t eat. Weird-but-delicious broccoli and cauliflower salad with onions, raisins and carrots and a sweet-and-savory mayo-based dressing. Rolls, corn, three-bean salad, olive, gratineéd corn, mashed potatoes. For dessert several home-made fruit pies, and some good store-bought ones and a bunch of Costco cakes. Sean, a street minister from Burlington who is in the cot next to mine, gave a terrific benediction: about people not being their religion or ethnicity or looks or IQ or whatever, but their deeds. He went on to say that each body is the perfect house for its respective soul. What a great thought. And he thanked God and blessed this, our spontaneous family of co-workers on this mission of mercy: just as legitimate a family constellation as the spouses and children and parents and neighbors and whomever else we left behind to come here.

But really the best part of the meal was going into the kitchen afterwards and nibbling the carcass. Wouldn’t you know I found Jill, the only other Jew in the place, who – not coincidentally – was the only other person interested in gnawing bones. I mean, isn’t that the whole point of a turkey?! I hadn’t thought of that as a particularly “Jewish” thing – I thought everybody liked to chew on bones. Guess not. Anyway, it was a delightful interlude that added to an already outstanding day.

After dinner and moving the chairs and tables onto a truck to go back to the church that had last-minute lent them, I had a massage. There’s a local masseur who’s been coming to the shelter every evening and giving massages to any/all who sign up. His usual rate is $1/minute, but he takes whatever, including just a hug if that’s all people can afford. I got some deep work on my shoulders which, after all that water and furniture, were pretty tight. Best $40 I’ve spent in a long while!

Next morning I headed back to HQ, leaving Kenner a couple of minutes before 8, and arriving at BR HQ a little after 9. Not bad for a 70-mile trip! I’d’ve made it in under an hour, but there was wicked traffic on Airline Drive, as usual, like almost 20 minutes to go the last two miles! The traffic in BR is just unreal. The population has basically doubled since the storm, with no concomitant increase in municipal services. And of course the roads can’t possibly change in mere months to accommodate all the new folks and their cars, anyway. That so many of the new people are commuting to jobs in NO, Kenner, Metairie, etc., really adds to the traffic, too, and also to the difficulty of their daily lives: seems like everything is just one big hassle after another for these folks. “Big Easy,” my eye: ain’t nothing easy down here anymore.

Elizabeth Lorris Ritter
© 2005
1916 words

One Road, Two Paths

Robert Frost saw two roads diverge and had a lone traveler pick from between them. But more often two travelers eke different paths out of the same road. While Manhattan’s 9A certainly isn’t a “road less traveled” – even on a quiet Sunday there are hundreds of cars in six lanes whizzing in either direction each minute – one’s choice still can make “all the difference”.

So it was that on Mother’s Day I found myself crossing the Henry Hudson Parkway, darting into a break in the northbound traffic and waiting on the grassy island in the middle for a southbound break so I could cross that, too. And why does a middle aged housewife do this foolish thing? Why, to retrieve a lost soccer ball, of course! I have to say it’s exactly the sort of thing that I’d tell my kids not to do if they asked, and would yell at them for doing it without stopping to consider that indeed this was a stupid idea. But, in that way of grown-ups, a bad idea is never really quite so bad if you think that you can do it because you are paying attention as you break the law or totally violate the dictates of common sense.

And for what?! I didn’t even find the errant ball. I walked maybe a quarter-mile south on the bike path, hugging the river and admiring water as it glistened in the sun which was unseasonably hot for an early-morning early-May day. And as it turns out, the ball that went over the fence into the roadway wasn’t even ours anyway. I did find several flattened soccer balls, way past retrieval, but none of them was ours; I guess they were the detritus of yesterday’s or last week’s games. There is something pretty sad about a deflated, spent ball punctured by the passing wheels of a speeding automobile, never again to be kicked through another goal. So I brought them back to the field to dispose of them properly, dodging traffic three lanes at a time, pausing once again on the grassy island, and coming to a full rest safely inside the high fence of the 107th Street fields.

A week-and-a-half later I learned that at about the same time, a friend crossed the same road a little further down, but with a different purpose, and much worse result. I do not know why he was walking the West Side Highway on a Sunday morning. Maybe he was heading for the boathouse to help out during their opening weekend of free-to-the-public kayaking. As he crossed the road, a motorcyclist swerved to miss him. She hit him anyway, falling off her bike in the process. He landed in the hospital, needing surgery on two limbs; she landed on the pavement, and then in the morgue.

I cannot fully imagine the karmic ramifications of all of this. I do not know about fault or intent or culpability or responsibility. I just know that on Mother’s Day two kids lost their mom, and on a random Sunday, a guy who likes to help, loves to bike and makes his living with his right hand lost an arm and a leg, albeit "only" for a while.

I feel the only thing I can do is pray. I can pray for my friend for a refuah sh’leimah, a complete and speedy recovery of body and mind. And I can say kaddish in the hopes that the soul of the departed may find rest, that her memory may bless those who knew her and loved her, and does not come back to haunt any of those involved in her passing. Seems like a lot to ask, but then again, kaddish really is a tall order, isn’t it. But if we can ask the One who makes peace in all the heavens to cause peace to descend upon the whole world, is it too much to ask that peace come to these two as well?

Promises for Springtime

You said that come spring
we’d sit on a bench in Central Park
Licking ice cream,
Sharing each other’s flavors.

Cookies & Cream? Dulce de Leche?
Jamoca Almond Fudge?
Maybe Raspberry Swirl.
I like how the colors go together.

Some people talk of dreaming in color.
Or not.
I met an artist once
who said she dreams in black,
because she’s afraid of color.
That’s what she said, anyway.

There are a couple of things I don’t understand about this.

I used to be afraid of color,
but now I’m not so sure.

Black used to be my favorite color,
“because it’s so cheerful,” I said.
Years before the Rolling Stones said to,
I wanted to paint my room black.
My parents thought this was weird,
so we went with pink instead.

I used to dream in that room.
I dreamt of flying,
Flying away, far above everything that ran after me,
that bothered me,
that scared me or scarred me,
that threatened me or failed to protect me.
I remembered these dreams when I awoke.

I didn’t have the flying-dream
in my room on MacArthur Boulevard –
It was a white room with white curtains.
But I had the dream again (and again!)
in my purple room on Long Island.

This was after the divorce.

I flew up Bayview Avenue,
away from the harbour,
swooping back over it.
Like the gulls, except I never landed.

I had a purple room for many years after that:
always purple or lavender,
Even in my first “adult” apartment after college:
we had a room that was purple and black.
But I didn’t have the dream anymore; maybe I didn’t need to.
I never thought about it;
didn’t even remember it
until recently.

When I really became a grown-up
– got married and had children –
I painted my whole apartment white.
Different kinds of white:
cool white, soft white, warm white,
But still: white.

A couple of years ago I switched to color.
Muted, subdued color,
but color nonetheless.

Yet the flying-dream hasn’t come back.

Frankly, I don’t understand dreaming.
If I do dream at night, I don’t remember.
So I guess that’s the same thing as not dreaming.

But who ever heard of a person who has no dreams?
Certainly I have wishes,
un-expressed thoughts, hopes, aspirations
and even fears.
If I have them only when I’m awake, does that mean they’re not dreams?
Or are my dreams buried?
Buried like my mother, my grandfather
and the children I could’ve had
but chose not to.

Or are they out there waiting,
waiting for a home,
like the souls of children
you were never able to choose to have.

1/13/06