and jesus was his name-o

When my daughter, Serena, graduated from our neighborhood Christian preschool, I was less relieved that she was kindergarten material than I was that the number of holiday recitals would dwindle.  I had attended three years of performances by the adorable singing children.  Thirty-six-inch-tall people cannot help but look cute dressed as American flags or ears of corn, making charming hand movements and touching themselves unabashedly when they have an itch.  But I was gritting my teeth behind my smiling lips. 

On the makeshift preschool stage for three of her formative years, my daughter sang cheerful songs of Christian tragedy, many having to do with the crucifixion. To the tune of “Bingo”: “There was a man from Galilee / and Jesus was his name-o / J-e-s-u-s....” To the tune of “Sugar”: “Jesus in the morning / Jesus in the evening / Jesus at suppertime.”  To the tune of “Deck the Halls”: “Jesus hanging on the cross / fa la la—.” OK, I exaggerate, but only a little.

        

Truth is: I’m one of those people for whom Jesus is just all right. And I knew Easter was around the corner, which meant "Jesus had a little lamb" for weeks to come.  On our way to Passover Seder, Serena would sit in the back of the car and rock herself to other goofy Jesus songs, and I would feel guilty for not teaching her any of the goofy Jewish songs—and then I'd feel guiltier because I don't know any of the goofy Jewish songs—except the one about the dreidel, and I never understood why you’d make one out of clay.

        

So when Serena graduated and moved to the Catholic school, where her father was the social studies teacher, I thought we’d be spared the altered tunes.        

The week before spring break, after the first grade had been bombarded with Easter lessons, Serena sang, “Jesus loves me / yes I know,” in the car on the way home from school. Every day. I began thinking about Purim services almost as a threat rather than a spiritual remedy.

        

Then, the day before Purim, my daughter said, “Mommy?  Do you know who I miss?”

        

“No, sweetie,” said innocent Mommy. “Whom do you miss?” (I said whom.)

        

“I miss J-e-s-u-s,” she said.

        

“That's it! We're going to Purim!”  I said it as if she were punished, as if I were punished right along with her, as if this were not-so-gladly the cross-eyed bear.

        

When we got home from school, I logged on to www.judaism101, my religious cheat sheet.  I was relieved to have remembered the gist of it: Queen Esther is the hero who married King Ahasuerus without revealing that she was Jewish.  Haman, the King’s advisor (the Karl Rove of the Old Testament), was angry with Esther’s cousin, Mordecai, for not bowing down to him, so he devised a plan to exterminate the Jews.  In a plot twist that ought to have been made into a movie (but not a musical!), Esther saves her race, and Haman is hanged on the gallows meant for Mordecai.

        

The story in no way excited Serena, who’d been alive for seven years and had never even seen the outside of a synagogue. She didn’t want to go, of course, because who does? Not I, but then again, I never threatened my mother with a personal relationship with Jesus.

        

So the next night, I drove us to a strange shul out in the county—where Jewish people live. Serena perked up when she saw the swarm of children dressed for Purim: lots of tiny Queen Esthers (Cinderellas pushing the envelope), lots of pee-wee King Ahasueruses with faux facial hair, and a couple of miniature Hamans. “Next year, can I dress up?” she asked. We were off to a good start.

        

The ceremony was short and sweet and mostly in Hebrew. Once everything in the room, the world, and the universe—including fruit, wine, bosses, and armadillos—was blessed, we each grabbed a grager (noisemaker) for the story of Purim. Every time Haman's name is mentioned, the congregation spins the gragers and heckles him. This was the best part.

        

When the Purim service ended, instead of the assembled dispersing for the usual sweet treat of Hamantashen (the triangular, poppy-seed-filled cookies also known as Haman’s hats), dozens of costumed adults and teens rushed the stage behind the Rabbi.  In moments, piano music played, and those assembled on the stage began, to the tune of “All That Jazz”:  “All That Spiel.”  I looked at my program in stunned silence.  Sure enough, every song—every song!—from the musical “All That Jazz” had been rewritten to fit the story of Purim.

        

For fifteen minutes, I squirmed and wriggled, tortured by doggerel and ready to crane toward the sky and howl like a dog at a siren.  “Do you have to pee, Mommy?” my daughter asked me.  Yes! And then we escaped.  Across the hall, I spied a huge platter of Hamantashen, did a cursory scan of the area, and ran in like a bandit to snag my daughter a cherry cookie. She had blessed. She had stood. She had sat. She had stood and sat and stood and sat.  As far as I was concerned, she had earned her right to do what Jews do best: eat.  Without having to suffer through a musical.

        

I realized then, much to my relief—for I am a good person, really—that it wasn't Jesus at all that gave me fits.  Sure, I prefer Judaism’s teachings and traditions—especially the fun ones, like this booing and hissing thing at Purim and the presents for eight nights at Chanukah and the food.  But I was relieved to know I wasn’t anti-Christ; I was simply against the lyrics and the score.  I hate musicals.

        

Friends who can’t bring themselves to believe this—as if I claim the ability to breathe under water—will quiz me to find the exceptions.  “What about—?” they’ll ask, with an “Aha!” prepared for when I am forced to admit that I do enjoy The Wizard of Oz and have even sung the Scarecrow’s song when I am whiling away the hours in search of my brain.

        

The genre is creepy.  On stage are raggedy souls, victims of plague, prostitutes.  And they are singing!  Instead of a last cigarette, dying characters get a finale.

        

Purim is the gateway drug to Passover.  It’s a sacred time, but, like many other religious observances around the world, it’s kind of like a musical! We have the script—The Hagaddah—with lines to be read by the leader, the participant, and the assembled; we have the choreography:  “all rise,” “be seated,” “raise cups”; and we have the songs:  “Dayanu.”  My family sings only the chorus, and we sing it as if our ship were sinking: “Day-day-anu, day-day-anu, day-day-anu, dayanu dayanu, HEY!”

        

But that year—the year that I’d sworn off songs about Jesus and Esther, my uncle brought us a song he’d written to finish off the service:

Cleaning and cooking and so many dishes

Out with the hametz, no pasta, no knishes

Fish that's gefillted, horseradish that stings

These are a few of our Passover things.

Matzoh and karpas and chopped up haroset

Shankbones and kiddish and yiddish neuroses

Tante who kvetches and uncle who sings

These are a few of our Passover things.

         

What’s next?  To the tune of “Maria”: “Elijah / I just saw the prophet Elijah”?   What about “Take me out to the Seder / Take me out with the crowd / Feed me on matzoh and chicken legs / I don’t care for the hard-boiled eggs.”

        

It’s been a long time since that Passover. My daughter has become a bat mitzvah and graduated from Catholic school (today’s Jewish dilemma is not free ham; it’s free Catholic school).  She’s now in a public high school for the arts where she plays classical, jazz, and big band saxophone.  My cousins have moved away, and both my uncle and my father have died.  The last straw? I’m fifty.  Fifty!  I turn my back for a second, and family members are dispersed and deceased, my only child practically an adult.  Oh, what a tragedy! I feel wretched.

        

Cue the music.

3. enjoy beer.

Were I a writer of odes, I’d dedicate a book of them to my beverage of choice.  O, the bitter bite of hops, the sting of bubbles on my tongue, the heady scent of yeast that fills the head with a nostalgia for a life not even lived—full of knights and castles and beer goddesses with trays (and corsets) overflowing with nectar and big tables of heavy wooden planks, a visual and aromatic palimpsest of rings of ales sweated down the stein and spilt from the tankard!  And laughter.  (“Does anybody remember laughter?”)

Ahem.  It’s been 18 days since I’ve drunk a beer. I embarked on this endeavor to eliminate mother’s hoppy helper because I wanted to deflate my beer belly, and I was certain this, along with a sugar ban, would work. 

My company’s diet plan recommends you make goals that are SMART—that is  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-based.  Specific: I gave up beer and sugar—mostly for weight loss.  Measureable: My clothes should fit better; I can count the beers I don’t drink.  Achievable: I can go a month without beer and sugar.  Realistic: People don’t have to drink beer or eat sugar.  Time-based: What the hell—it’s a month.

But does this make my goal smart? 

In the eighteen nights, the more than 400 beerless hours, I have lost at least 216 ounces—13.5 pounds.  Of beer.  My body, on the other hand, empty of sugar and wheat, deprived of beer, has lost not a sip of weight.

And I am sad—perhaps sadder than I’ve ever been.  And it’s not the alcohol.  I’ve had a couple shots of frozen cake vodka.  Not beer.  I’ve had some gin and diet tonic.  Also not beer. Could I go a month without it?  Yes.  I could go a month without playing my guitar or taking a picture.  But why would I? Why should I?

My husband would argue that I should because it's good discipline.  He once stopped drinking beer for a year.  The following year, he gave up ice cream.  To what end?  Some people climb mountains because mountains are there.  Others climb them to get to the top and experience the breathtaking view.  That's me.  I want the cherry on top.  (Not only because I enjoy tying the stem in a knot with my tongue and teeth.)

Every day, just like most other people I know—happy or unhappy—I go to work.  I have a long commute and a nine-hour day.  It’s dark when I wake up, and it’s dark when I get home.  And life, as the death of my 75-year-old father proved, is just too short.  In half of the time I’ve already lived, I’ll be his age.  Twenty-five years.  That’s 9,125 beers.  Of course, I don’t have to drink one every day.  But unless my physical and emotional health and those of my family and friends are impinged by my 12-ounce golden-brown liquid in my special snifter, the goal to go even another day without a can of joy, a bottle of pleasure, is stupid.

Why live without the things that bring delight to your life and cause others no displeasure?  Put a beer in my hand, and a smile will light up my face.  And you will be happier, too. 

So tonight, all ale (well, one) will break loose.  In the words of a band whose very name is something I’d banned this month:  “Stick around for joy.”  

2. call bullshit

I call bullshit where I see it, and I’m not going to stop, despite the letters from a motivational speaker disguised as The Universe, despite Internet memes that spread like a plague of Airwick flowers, despite those who let go and let karma, and despite the conscious breathing I’m doing in the new year.  Bullshit needs its callers.

Every day, someone I like passes on one of those misattributed stories or partial truths or total hoaxes.  Once, when I Snopes’d someone (yes, I just verbed a proper noun—is that bullshit?), she wanted to know who made me the Internet police.  Ouch.  But take the five seconds to enter that thing you’re sharing into a search engine to check the veracity, or the bullshit callers will be on you like flies.  It's not just a lie, and it does more than stink.  If you don’t believe me, try becoming the victim of a rumor or admiring the emperor’s threads in front of people who know he’s naked. Smart people. People you want to impress.

This photo is making the rounds (complete with extra comma and comma splice):

It’s tough to argue with the good advice that warns us away from the drama of others and steers us toward people who love us.  So by all means: weed out the folks you don't need in your life.  A regular weeding is good for the friend garden. 

drawing by Kurt Vonnegut

But if your friend is an asshole, please supply a swift verbal kicking before you pluck him.  Because a prayer only sends that asshole out to leave his bullshit in a bag at someone else’s front door.

It may surprise you to learn that even assholes have feelings. In fact, all but the sociopaths and narcissists among us really don’t want to be thought of as assholes; some don’t even know their behavior is asshole-ish.  But it’s not enough to tell someone his behavior sucks if you continue to reward him with the pleasure of your company or an action that says it doesn’t really matter to you. 

“You know, you come over and eat all my food and drink all my beer, and you never contribute anything.”

  Sorry.

 “That’s OK.  Can I pour you a beer?”

Will your complaint and its consequences precipitate a change in your friend? Depending on the friend, probably—but at least possibly.  And if it isn’t worth the effort to save the friendship (some relationships aren’t healthy for a host of reasons), at least send a mean person off with a performance review.  Praying for a meanie doesn’t heal the meanie or your heart, and it doesn’t make you a better person.  What does?  The favor of telling him why it didn’t work out.  After all, when you get fired from your job, don’t you want to know how to prevent the same fate with the next one?

Yes, life is too short to surround yourself with assholes (regardless of the validity of having happiness as a goal).  

Last year, my motto was ask for what you want.  I still live by that, and it works.  I don’t mean you always get it; I mean you learn to stop wishing in silence and act toward a goal.  If you don’t get what you want or need, you move on—sometimes just to a slightly altered goal or a step closer to it or to a workable compromise. 

Asking for what you want works with friendships, too.  If your friend is an asshole, it might be simply that you didn’t ask him to stop being one, which is like asking him to continue being one.

Here’s a second message co-opted from the Book of Face.

I had a friend who let everyone borrow money, and no one ever repaid her.  When they needed more, she reminded them, gently, about their prior debts, then she forked over more cash. She asked me why so many people took advantage of her, and I said: Because you let them.

Those people who create drama in your lives create it because you let them, and simply cutting them loose might not help you.  (It sure doesn’t help the rest of us!)

In truth, most people are damaged.  If we love them, we help them mend the cracks as best we can, and they help us mend ours.  But people who don’t treat us right don’t need our prayers.  They need a bullshit caller.  And maybe so do we.

1. breathe

The nail that holds my kitchen calendar is in the side of a bookcase, and it's pretty tight despite the hundred times we lean on the pages hanging from it each year.  So my 2013 calendar goes up unceremoniously.  I don't tap the nail with a hammer for good measure, a gavel bang to say that it starts right here, right now.

I'm a sunrise person.  I like the promise of a fresh start each day, a way to do good, make amends, create a thing.  So Rosh Hashanah and New Year's Day and my birthday are favorite holidays because they are the beginning of something, unfolding like a flower, lush with promise.  

And pressure: to be better, skinnier, smarter, funner, livelier, fitter, fancier.  To be -er right now and every day.

So at 12:01 a.m., I wished the world joy, pretty hair, and loose pants—with a typo.  It was an unintentional-but-deliberate Freudian slip of a typo.  I began my wish with "My 2013," instead of "May 2013."  I cringed a little as I hit Enter anyway.  With that, the pressure to be perfect was off, and I simultaneously declared 2013 my bitch.

This past week, bloggers have been posting their wisdom about how to handle the coming year.  They've shared aphorisms and quotes by famous people.  They've given advice on making manageable goals.  They've compiled unconventional resolutions and even non-resolutions.  Someone even suggested goals that have you working out less and eating more carbs.  Skinny people suck.

For 15 years, I have battled severe insomnia.  It began with some early waking and accelerated into a complete inability to sleep.  I was on anti-anxiety meds, anti-depressants, and sleeping pills, and I still slept only half the nights.  It wasn't until I gave up sugar that I started sleeping normally again and got off all meds.  I went from relying on lots of pills to needing none.  Before last night, my last sleeping pill was in July, while I was crying in a hotel bed during a work convention after my father died.  For the last bunch of years, I mostly need sleeping pills when I travel.

Last night, though, I was frustrated by the four teenagers awake too late in my attic, and I succumbed to the little blue pill at 3:00 a.m.

It ruined the entire year.  Unlucky '13.  Right?  As day one goes, so goes the year? 

I took that sleeping pill, and I hugged a stuffed monkey until I drifted into unconsciousness for six blissful hours, missing the first sunrise of the year.

But I saw the sun set last night, and it was beautiful.  And I said goodbye to 2012, the year my husband lost his job, the year my father died.  A sleeping pill at the end of a very bad year is understandable.  But a sleeping pill at the end of a very nice day—one that included a good movie with my husband, my favorite sushi and beer with my best friend, and cocktails at a favorite restaurant—just is.

I have things to do this year—a novel I want to write, some work goals to tackle, some health improvements to make.  But most of the work is going to have to be done in my mind, the place where everyone's real work gets done, sort of like that Silver Linings Playbook in the movie. 

This morning, the crows greeted me at the back window.  My husband rubbed my shoulders.  And I'm about to walk down to greet my friends and neighbors at the annual block party pig roast.  The only thing that I absolutely must do each and every day is breathe.  That's tough to do right.  Breathing is automatic, but good breathing must be practiced.  My own breath catches.  I inhale, and then I hold, expelling an inaudible gust of air in a thrust.  Breath should flow in and out smoothly.

I figure if I work on the breathing, the rest of what I need—whether it's sleep or exercise or relaxation or concentration or strength to renew, get fit, rest, write, or just get through life's tragedies, old and new, great and small—will come much easier.

I have everything I need right here: air, airways, beating heart, and 365 fresh, new days in 2013.

love bedes

On the oak bookshelf in Jim Hill’s treatment room—or torture chamber, if you’re me—sits a stone bust of Quan Yin (Kwan Yin, Kuanyin, Guanyin), Chinese goddess of mercy.  If you’re me, she’s an ironic figure, considering that my cries during his weekly shiatsu-acupressure treatments do not temper the intensity of Jim’s elbow jabs or finger pokes.  Then again, Quan Yin lives in the suffering. 

Quan Yin means one who sees and hears the cry from the human world.¹  She hears prayers and observes sounds.  And this is Jim, who, during treatment, will often stop what he’s doing to fix a pain in me that he can feel within himself. 

If you’re me, you don’t believe in any of that mumbo jumbo until it happens to you.  And it happens every week.

I covet that bust.  I want to cover it with shards of pottery.  Sometimes, when I’m in the thick of it during a two-hour treatment, I’ll meditate on Quan Yin, who, until today, I thought was a skinny, female Buddha.  I close my eyes and breathe and think about her beauty and watchfulness and all the broken teacups I would glue to the flat bridge of her nose.  I think about her mosaic head and about spring.  I think about a strand of beads, too.

Jim and his wife Karen make jewelry—glass beads and whatever can be made from them.  Some are Klimt-like, ornamental for ornament’s sake.  Juxtapose Jim—he of the comfortable sandals and chokers and new-age spirit (he even teaches t’ai chi) with glitzy, decadent beads and flashy, hand-made findings, golden curlicues sprouting from necklaces like tentacles. 

I first met the Hills at the Out of Hand craft fair at the Knights of Columbus Hall in Homeland probably 15 years ago.  My mom had bought something from them—it might have had a Klimt painting as the center medallion—from the ACC Craft Fair.  Out of Hand is held each year on the first Sunday in December, and it’s an annual tradition for me, my mother, and my sister. 

Though it’s a small space with only about 20 vendors, many of them the same year after year, it’s choice stuff.  Potter Elaine Ozol was there most years, with her wonderful pumpkin pots and moon mugs.  I went to college with her son and always enjoyed catching up.  My commercial-art teacher from high school, Ed Smith, sold his wicked cool clocks before he died.  He thought I was a weirdo, but I think he was weirder, and I loved that about him. Sandy Magsamen is there every year; she painted a cover of Joe, my coffee magazine; it's hanging in my kitchen. The year before last, the Masking Tape Guy was there, and my mom commissioned my favorite present ever—a masking-tape portrait of me surrounded by crows.

But she couldn’t make it this year; Mom was on Long Island at a bar mitzvah or something.  My sister was taking her boards so she could give Novocain needles.  I took my friend Kim, who’d never been—and who was a good sport when I made her traipse around the graveyard next door in the foggy cold.  When we got there, I checked in with the button lady on behalf of my mom.  She had a knowing look in her eye when she asked if everyone was OK.  I told her that my father had died, and we both cried a little.  She came out of the booth to hug me and tell me that she is now driving my uncle’s car after having answered an ad for it on Craigslist.

I bought a pair of earrings from Mary DeMarco, as usual, ogled some silver jewelry with birds on it, and got a WORD onesie for one of my dearest friends (who had her baby today!).  And then I visited the Hills.

Karen’s jewelry is more my mom’s style.  But last year, I fell in love with some single-strand love bead necklaces.  They were pricey, or I’d have bought one on the spot.  I have thought about it all year—always meant to ask about getting one at a because-I’m-a-weekly-shiatsu-customer discount.  Nearly every visit, I’d meditate on one of those necklaces, and I’d forget to ask.  There they were, still nearly $200 because of all the antique, 100+-year trade beads on them.  Maybe after Christmas, I said.  I couldn’t justify it right now.

I walked around a bit more and poked my head in the food area.  My mom and sister and I would usually get a snack there—a muffin or a cookie or some savory pie.  Those lunches were made by the former owners of Puffins, a vegetarian restaurant with some of the best food anywhere.  They and the Hills are best friends.  Their daughter was married to my father’s business partner until recently.

I introduced Kim to “my shiatsu guy” and Karen, and she went off to look for gifts.  Karen called me over with an offer.  “I want to trade you,” she said.  “One of these necklaces for one of your calendars.”  I laughed.  Ten calendars, she meant.  No.  She just wanted a new calendar, like the one I gave them last year. 

I left with the necklace and plans to ritualize it.  I dunno—maybe I’ll wave some sage over it and say a prayer.  Jim tells me that the word for bead and the word for prayer are the same. (So prayer bead is redundant.)

I had a shiatsu treatment today, instead of my usual Thursday.  I asked Jim if I could take a picture of the Buddha head, and he finally corrected me: “Actually, she is Quan Yin, goddess of beauty and mercy.” Maybe he'd told me before, but I was too busy meditating on Buddha.

I took off my necklace and hung it on her, saying, “Maybe after they hang here for two hours, they’ll be infused with her mercy.  I’ll put the necklace back on, and my wrinkles will disappear.”

After the treatment, I put the necklace back on, and I smiled.

Now if that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.