6 word memoir

Shabbat can’t do it without you.

New baby

They haven’t been the same since Shabbat joined their family. They never go out anymore. We only see them when they invite their old friends over, in twos or threes, for sedate home-cooked meals.

We come and we walk on eggshells, terrified of somehow upsetting this demanding, easily displeased presence. Shabbat doesn’t even have to be in the room to be the center of attention. Shabbat has turned their lives upside-down.

After dinner, he walked me to my car and I asked him how he handled all these new restrictions and responsibilities. “It’s hard,” he admitted. “And nothing will ever be how it used to be. But I don’t think I can explain to you how—how worth it it all is. How empty the old days seem now. But who knows? Maybe it’ll happen to you some day. Then you’ll understand.”

Not likely. I said goodbye and left.

Ritual helps but isn’t necessary

She came without candles, she came without wine.
All she needed was quiet, a chance to unwind.
No blessings were uttered, but time ticked along,
Past gloaming and sunset, to twilight then dawn.

And she’ll leave without spices, when the hour’s passed away.
She’ll slip out like clockwork; don’t ask her to stay.
She’ll come again next week, a fresh new Shabbat.
To rest on your home, invited or not.

The anniversary when numbers stop mattering

I bend down to grab a bowl; Shabbat reaches over my head for a plate. At the same moment that I step forward with my left foot, Shabbat takes a mirror image step back on right. Shabbat doesn’t bother saying the things that I already know, and I bring home the same presents every week because Shabbat likes them best.

There’s no fumbling to it, no exotic mystery or unexpected discoveries. We have a schedule, and we both do our best to make it work.

We fit together, not an inch of space between us—but not because of natural serendipity. We have been shaped by years of gentle sanding, the erosion of consistency. Shabbat has heard all of my serenades before, and knows them well enough to ask for favorites.

Precision

The ball drops at midnight. The rooster crows at dawn. Every hour on the hour, and at 15-minute intervals, the bells clang. The train pulls out of the station each morning at 7:49, whether or not you’re onboard. And the library will invariably close 5 minutes before the posted time.

They will have you know that Shabbat comes in 18 minutes before sunset, a time that occurs at this latitude sometime between 4:10 PM and 8:15, depending on the season. See an almanac or chabad.org for further details.

The hands circling the face of the clock can’t tell you everything, of course. They don’t understand that sometimes Shabbat holds back, waiting until long after you’ve started the party and perhaps not even crossing the foyer until after the guests have started trickling out.

The schedule’s for your benefit. Shabbat comes and goes as it pleases.

Candle secret

Do you know why we light candles for Shabbat? I do. It’s because their fire is the same light as every person has glowing inside of them. Some people have big lights and some aren’t so bright—and some people’s lights even make everyone around them brighter! If you pay attention, you know that everyone’s the lights change through the day, or flicker or turn ugly colors when bad stuff happens. Sometimes, just because someone gets sleepy his light starts to shrink.

So that’s why there’s the candles… because if you watch, the fire goes inside the person who lights the wick. Then at least for a few minutes it makes their shine fill up the room!

Light-maker

Don’t ornament Shabbat with diamonds. Never bedeck her with perfectly faceted jewels—not a single one. Do not ask her to condescend to rubies darker than wine, to topaz that glows like orange blossom honey. No sapphires smooth as tide pools, nor emeralds bright as a utopian rainforest.

Because when light pours into these precisely cut prisms, it cracks and breaks. The perfect stream is disrupted to rainbows, stretched red to violet and scattered across the floor.

Shabbat’s wrists are bare, her long neck unadorned. Nothing weighs upon her earlobes, nor her silken fingers. Shabbat does not take in light but instead collects the divided colors, unifying the fragments. After the spectrum passes through her it emerges in full photonic splendor, pure and radiant as the sun.

Storming (Psalm 29)

Revere the Lord, all you mighty ones. You who sit on high, secure in your dominion, bow before God’s raw power.

The voice of God thunders down the mountaintops, it roars from the waves. It whirls across the prairies. The voice of God incinerates everything in its path.

The voice of God arcs across the buzzing sky. It swells above the coast. The earth trembles at God’s voice, and all who hear whisper awe to the unfathomable.

The voice of God strips the suburbs bare. It disrupts the work of mighty cities—causing metropolises to stagger and buckle.

God in the flooding streets, God in the raging flames. God in the gray ash descending, in the gathering darkness and the searing flash.

And in the preternatural early morning stillness, it is the voice of God that silently whispers peace.

Distinction, המבדיל

First he washed and shaved and trimmed his nails. Then he pulled on a simple cotton robe, and his loved ones spread a prayer shawl above his head. Everything was prepared, because she had arrived.

She approached—also dressed in white. So beautiful that the rest of us had to turn away. She surrounded him, circled him and became his everything. With each step she took, he forgot a little more of the world beyond her embrace.

When she finally stopped before him, he placed all that he valued into her open hand. She scattered worldly concerns beneath his feet, where they lay motionless—brittle and fleeting. In the end she led him away. The rest of us remained behind, in bittersweet abandonment.

Fruit of the tree

The branches of the pomegranate tree sagged for six days while their yield ripened. By the final evening the murky red skin split, unable to stretch farther across the bulging fruit. The goldenrod sunset flickered through the branches, reflecting off the glistening amber-red seeds.

I did not pick the pomegranate. I left it where it had bloomed, though I did cup it in my hands. I pressed my lips to its edge and the skin trembled between my mouth and the fruit within. The seeds were still warm with the heat of the sun, not sweet as honey but tasting instead of themselves, tart and light and complex.

The evening dusk obscured my red mouth, my dripping chin. The fruit remained on the bough, still thick with promise but spread wide, open and depleted.

Eshet hayil

Have you ever seen anyone like her? She’s worth her weight in gold. By 5:30 she’s up, doing a load of laundry. She gets the kids off to school, and she studies with them after dinner. Late into the night she’s on the phone with clients, and her accounts are always up to date. She directs her employees with competence, and charitable foundations contact her daily. She is the first person her friends call when trouble strikes. (Does she ever sleep?) Though she provides luxuriously for her family, she never fails to put money aside for retirement and college tuitions. Her children are clean and well-behaved, and her husband is highly respected.

Her skills are unmatched, and no one else could take on all of her roles. And yet it is her open heart, her love and purity of purpose, that leads me to praise her valor.

Meeting the parents

It’s always awkward bringing someone home for the weekend. With Shabbat it doesn’t help that my parents don’t approve of how serious things have gotten. They tolerate her at least, and they do admit that they like her cooking. She’s doing the charming routine. I asked her not to be judgy—and I can tell she’s trying. At least Mom and Dad are talking to her.

Late at night Shabbat sneaks into my childhood room. I blush when she looks at the photos from high school taped to the walls, at the action figures prominently displayed in their original packaging. “Everyone was into them,” I whisper defensively when she starts giggling at my old CDs.

Having her here is awkward, but somehow—when she slides between polyester sheets and hugs her body against mine in the narrow twin bed—she seems to belong, even here.

Stopping by the bookstore on a snowy evening

Stopping by the bookstore on a snowy evening

(Just to browse for a while, because I’m already keeping one of the most important promises I’ve ever made, and I don’t have far to walk before I get to curl up under my comforter and sleep uninterrupted through the cold, still night.)

Pearl diver

The first time she saw Shabbat she stared, long and hard, but stayed at a careful distance.

Later, she poked her toes in. Stepped forward. Went up to her hips, to her neck, learned to float and sluice through Shabbat for hours at a time.

Eventually, she dove in. She may have been surprised at first at how easily she dipped below the surface of Shabbat. The skills she had acquired while she treaded above helped her go deeper, stay longer, explore.

How did she respond to the magical world below? To the colors, to the wholly different varieties of life? To the treasures she found deep below, obscured from the air-dried roads?

She still lives above (most of the time), but if you see her now you can’t miss the ropes of pearls she wears, gathered from the recesses of Shabbat during long years of exploration.

Off the runners

There are weeks when, even before you arrive, I feel the universe click into place and I know everything will go smoothly. We will be in step, like professional dancers or chess masters. Each subtle shift you make, every variation I try, is accommodated for and incorporated into our flawless but dynamic duet. We dip into each other.

This was not one of those weeks.

This was the kind of week when some grease drips in the oven and fills the kitchen with smoke. When everyone brings salad to the potluck. When I spend twenty minutes waiting for you while you stand on the porch, fuming and pressing the broken doorbell.

So we look at each other and shrug, because what else can we do? We both know the other one meant well. Our relationship is stronger than these minor debacles.

We’ll try for better next week.