When a Tree Falls

On August ninth, a big oak tree fell on my house. It destroyed the kitchen, garage, laundry room, and a storage room, and damaged three other rooms. 

the ceiling's on the floor...
with a lot of other stuff

We were out of town at the time, which was both good and bad. The cat sitter alerted us first. The cats were fine, and taken by dear friends and neighbors to safe temporary homes. The same friends and neighbors moved things (books, art, musical instruments), without ever being asked, out of danger from further water damage.  The house was uninhabitable, but other friends immediately took us in when we returned (earlier than planned!) to Jackson. Four of us, plus one of the cats. 

We rent, so we decided to find a new place and move once instead of twice.  

We signed a new lease one week after the tree fell, but we couldn't move in right away, so the girls set out for their first day of school from our temporary home. We had stayed eleven nights by the time we moved out. Some of our stuff is still there (we've got just about everything out of our treed home), and Jeannie, co-owner and permanent resident of our temporary home, has given me an open invitation to use their laundry room anytime (we don't yet have a washer/dryer at our new place). This is a woman with a full-time professional job, a toddler and an infant, and a husband who works long hours as an elementary school principal. I am in awe.

Times like these help put things in perspective. They show the true value of community and friendship. We see this from the outside whenever disaster hits anywhere—from Katrina nine years ago to the recent earthquake in California. Experiencing it from the inside brings this awareness to a whole new level, with regard to both the hardship of displacement and the holiness of human connections. 

As we journey through these last weeks before the high holy days, I am reading Isaiah's consoling words in an entirely new light: 

I, I am the one who comforts you!

...Arise, shake off the dust,

Sit [on your throne], Jerusalem!

When life knocks us down, our faith and our friends will lift us back up, if we let them. So it is for me and my family, and we have all witnessed others (or perhaps you're one) who recovered spectacularly from much greater calamities than mine. We are all children of God, and our thrones await the time when we feel ready to resume our rightful places. May that time be coming soon.

Thank you to all who have helped, in whatever way, even if it has been as simple as keeping my family in your prayers. You have kept us afloat, body and spirit, in a time of crisis. I am so grateful for our blessings.

The final hours of Av are upon us. Here's to a safe, dry, and holy month of Elul.

Why I Am Shaving My Head

In honor memory of Sam Sommer, Shmuel Asher Uzziel ben haRav Michael Aharon v’haRav Pesach Esther, 8 November 2005-14 December 2013

Monday, December 16, 2013

Sammy’s parents, Phyllis and Michael, were my classmates all the way through rabbinic school, from our first day in Jerusalem to ordination day in Cincinnati. Michael and I met during our interview process on the HUC-JIR campus in Cincinnati. I remember Michael cracking jokes as we chatted nervously before our Hebrew language exam. That was a long time ago. Phyllis was one of the very first people from our class whom I met after arriving in Israel; she was certainly the first to invite me to her home for Shabbat dinner. I can still recall that Shabbat gathering vividly—most of our class was there, and friendships begun that night I cherish to this day.

Phyllis’s gift for convening people into meaningful community was evident from that first encounter. She’s been bringing people together ever since. It’s part of who she is, as a rabbi and a parent and a human being. Because we were classmates, and because she is a generous and virtuosic blogger, and because a handful of times over the years we have seen one another or spoken by phone, I’ve been able to learn a great deal from Phyllis: as a rabbi, a parent, and a human being.

When Sammy was born, I was pregnant with my first child. I’ve watched Phyllis's kids grow up next to mine through the stories and pictures she’s shared online. When Sammy’s cancer was diagnosed, I felt a cold shadow of what it would be like to hear that news about a child of my own. Because it could just as easily be my child, or yours, if you have one. Every day it isn’t my child is a blessing for which I give thanks, but I’m done with gambling.

It’s time to find a cure. For Sammy, who is gone and has left us breathless and broken, and for Phyllis and Michael and Sammy’s siblings and their whole family. For the college acquaintances and neighbors and friends and millions of people I’ll never know whose children have died of cancer, for the people I have known without knowing they’d lost a child to cancer. Yes, for all those, but also for me, and for my child and my parents, and for you, and for all the children and parents now living and still waiting to be born.

Save a life, and you save an entire world. We lost the world this Shabbat, Sammy. Let’s try not to do that again.  

Like the Nazirite offering her hair at the end of her vow, like the captive foreign women who must shave their heads before joining the Jewish community, so I after learning that Sammy’s cancer was incurable, and now upon his death, will make a new start, in a world I would not have chosen, a world without Sammy, a world in which I can no longer pretend that childhood cancer has no dominion over me and my loved ones. That is why I’m shaving my head, and that’s why I’m asking everyone I know to support this cause. The first miracle I was praying for is lost. The next is still within our reach.

Learn more, and donate, at http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/660886/2014