A story about Ron Thiemann my teacher

One of my favorite memories about Ron Thiemann goes like this:

I think I was in my senior year, maybe even my last semester of college.  I was a TA in Ron's Religion 102 class, the class where I had met him my freshman year.

He was looking for someone to drive him to the airport early one morning and was offering to pay.  I was happy to volunteer.

I think he picked me up at my house, in a white sports car.  I don't know what it was - probably not a Mazda Miata (remember them?) but maybe an old Triumph or something, stick shift.  We drove (he drove) to the airport on Cobbs Creek Parkway.  Maybe it was even a Saturday, or else it was just very early in the morning.  There was no traffic at all.

Then the best part - I got to drive this sports car back to his house!

And for this he paid me $10!!!

And then, because this was the kind of guy he was, I think he even wrote about it on a recommendation for me, about how helpful I was, or else he took the trouble to write me a note of thanks. 

So let's see - I got like 30 minutes alone with my advisor, whom I greatly admired.  I got $10.  And I got to drive a cool white sports car.  And then I got an additional thank you!

What I love about this memory is how different things seem when you are 20 and when you are 36 or so (that was his age then) and when you are 50.  Those little joys like driving a car that mean so much when you don't own one.  What $10 meant to me then and what it means to me now.  And the joy of driving down an empty, beautiful road, where I had never been before. 

Who Made Me the Teacher I am?

This is my undergraduate advisor, Ron Thiemann, z"l, as I knew him 30 years ago.  He passed away on November 29, 2012, at the age of 66.  His passing reminds me of that quote that goes around - people will forget what you say and forget what you do, but they won't forget how you made them feel.

It's hard for me to believe that Ron has died without my having a chance to say goodbye to him.  I would like to think that I told him enough times how much he meant to me, but of course we never tell anyone that enough. 

Ron was a very charismatic teacher.  He was energetic, so smart, and pushed us all the time to think.  My friend Bill from college wrote that Ron taught him to think, to analyze, to really understand someone else's argument before disagreeing.  His classroom was charged, full of excitement and of the joy of learning.  He was tough on us - quick to tell me on my papers when he thought I'd missed the mark or failed to understand the material.  A 3.7 from him meant something.  A 4.0 was an extremely happy day - one I did not see frequently!

I took my first class with him in the spring of 1979.  It was not an easy semester for me - a lot fell apart for me then - but in his class I felt whole and happy.  He cared about us and he cared about what he was teaching.  I fell in love - with a TA, with the material we were learning, with learning itself.  And somehow that love stayed with me beyond that semester and into my religion major.

I took my questions and my challenges to Ron.  He was never diminished by a student's challenges.  He supported me through my learning and through the years that followed.  We stayed in touch.  I don't know if he recommended me for rabbinical school but I know he knew I was there, and later in my congregation, and later here in Israel. 

He had a turbulent career at Harvard and some challenges.  He and my mother became Deans in the same year - 1986.  I remember going out to lunch with him somewhere and talking about it - he was in orbit, as my mother says, very busy, very challenged.  I'm not sure if I saw him after that, but we talked in 1990 I'm sure, and later when I was here in Israel. 

I got from him that wonderful teachers love what they are learning, love their students and love seeing students grow.  I got from him that religion matters, greatly, in our world. 

One of the courses I never took from him was one he always taught - Religion and the Third Reich.  He was a big fan of Dietrich Bonhoffer, and he deeply believed that what we think and how we live matters. 

I'm so grateful that at age 17-20 I had such a caring, committed teacher.  If you are reading this, thank one of your teachers! 

Chocolaty Cookies

At long last a recipe!

We doubled this from the cookbook and it made about 40 cookies.  You can half it if you don't want so many.

2 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1 cup sugar (you could use less)
1 tsp vanilla

Mix all this together until smooth.  Add:

1 1/2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp salt

Mix it all together, then add 1/2 cup chocolate chips, and 1/2 cup chopped nuts if you want (we didn't).

Now cover the batter with plastic wrap and put in the freezer for one hour.

To make the cookies, take small balls of the dough and roll them in powdered sugar.  The kids made the balls about the diameter of a quarter - I made them a little bigger.  Put them on a greased cookie sheet or on greaseproof paper on the tray.  Put them back in the freezer for 10 minutes, then straight to a 350 degree/170 degree oven.  Bake for 12 minutes or more or less.  The sugar on top gets cracks and looks fun.  I found them a bit soft at 12 minutes, but your mileage may vary.  Personally, I would skip the sugar coating, but the kids enjoyed doing it!

Enjoy!

Top 10 things I learned from my mother in law

October 24 is here again.  It's been 9 years since Sylvia died suddenly from malaria.

Here are top 10 things I learned from her:

1.  Live in a beautiful place
2.  See every part of the world you can
3.  Get into a swimming pool whenever possible
4.  Stop the car if you think you see a monkey
5.  You can open a can of tuna or sardines and eat anywhere
6.  A dinner mint will solve any nausea you get from eating a tuna sandwich while driving down a winding road.
7.  Comparison shop
8.  It's not a depression mentality, it's "good Yorkshire sense"
9.  Visit your mother whenever you can
10.  And as true today as the day she said it in 1996 "Gail is kind of high strung".

We miss you Sylvia.

What I'm here for

It's that time of year - unbelieveably nine years have passed, and I'm of course thinking about Sylvia Kacal, z"l, my mother in law, whom I knew for too short a time and who will always be with us.

And I'm thinking about connections and about a piece a friend posted on facebook, about unfriending someone before facebook.  Many people found this funny, but I found it sad. 

I feel like the greatest blessing in my life is that I continue to have people from all parts of my life and all kinds of connections with me.  That I can quote something I said 25 years ago in my status and have my friend say "I remember that moment."  I want every day to be worthy of this blessing, so I work to stay in the game when things get difficult with friends, or when I'm going against what is easy to build connections with my Israeli relatives.  When I realized my 3rd cousin was living here in this town, and when my kids' 4th cousin was born here, I felt like G-d was somehow bringing things back together again.

It's my lifetime wish to find out where my Uncle Jack is buried and to be able to go to his grave and say I'm sorry for the break in our family.  And when I connect on facebook with my young cousin Jake or my cousin Andrew who brought us so much information about our family tree, I feel like all my ancestors are smiling on me.  It is such a huge privilege to be part of this world where we can be reconnected and where people don't have to disappear. 

As hard as it may be sometimes to stay in the game - with family, friends and community - I don't want one more disconnect.  I want this whole life to be about connecting the dots, about keeping the strands woven.  I can see the past - quite a few miles back - and I am grateful for this present.

About the verse - Eleh Toldot Shamayim VaAretz - these are the generations of heaven and earth - I said last week that these are the people who are in heaven, who are always with us, and the people who are here on earth.  Let us always be connected.

Grief again?

I got up in the morning and opened facebook.  Sasha saw that Auntie Lisa had a photo of Lucas, and he asked to see it, and then the next time I saw he had a huge page of photos of Lucas up on the screen.  I'm thinking, this really sucks.  First thing in the morning my 6 year old is looking at photos of his cousin who died.  Why am I waking up in this kind of world?

We went to visit the kids other cousins.  I somehow made my way through watching Sasha so want the approval and attention of his 13 year old boy cousin.  How many 13 year olds want to play with 6 year olds?  The whole interaction made me want to cry.  I didn't figure out why I felt so strongly until we were on our way out the door and Gabi said something about "I have four and a half cousins." Her aunt tried to say she has five cousins, but it's not really true, because one of them isn't alive.

I've tried to soften my words here.

Then I read on Lisa's facebook that she just went to church for the first time since Lucas's funeral, which was almost 18 months ago.  That said it all.

Once upon a time...

I've spent the past week in a kind of culture shock feeling of weirdness, triggered by spending the weekend with an LGBT birthright group.  We were invited to bring our family and be kind of Israeli gay role models of sorts.  Expecting to find ourselves somehow mirrored by this group of 20 somethings, we were instead confronted by how the world we came out into has disappeared.  Nearly all the women in the group had long hair.  Anyone who looked much like Alen had transitioned to being male.  We saw scars from "top surgery" for the first time (at the pool).  Rather than finding ourselves mirrored, I found myself fighting to understand what I saw, searching in vain for the world I came out into in 1987, the community I thought I belonged to.

It took quite a few emails with a young friend in Boston, and a conversation today with a gay man my age to get back my sense of humor and to remember that Romanovsky and Phillips already described this phenomenon in their song, "Once upon a time..."

Best of all, my old brain remembers all the lyrics (more or less):

Once upon a time when life was simple and serene
My roommate was a lesbian and I a happy queen
I lived to go out dancing in my tightest fitting jeans
While she read the well of loneliness and lexus magazine

But now I go to pot lucks where the food is rather bleak
And I've joined a new support group that meets every other week
While she lives to go out dancing with her hair done up in curls
It's getting hard to tell the boys from the girls

Once upon a time when life was easy to predict
Sex was something I could get and I could get it quick
I'd look at all the men and know that I could take my pick
While she frowned upon my lifestyle with each and every trick

But now my sex adventures while still fun are rather tame
While she's discovered Joann Loulan and she'll never be the same
Cuz she dates a lot of women and she buys erotic toys
It's getting hard to tell the girls from the boys

Once upon a time when life was crystal clear
Each of us had favorite music that we loved to hear
I'd go dancing to sylvester down in key west every year
While she went to music festivals and worshipped holly near

But now our taste in music has completely turned around
And instead of going to michigan she goes to provincetown
While I play alix dobkin on my walkman now and then
It's getting hard to tell the women from the men

Times they change, fashions rearrange themselves
If you don't stay on top, you find yourself
Parked on a shelf

Once upon a time when life was black and white
I used to do the drag shows to be famous for a night
While she drank her beer without a glass and shopped for Mrs. Right
I'd cruise the local customers just asking for a light

But now she is the only one who steps out in a dress
While I've been wearing all her flannel shirts and sandals I confess
Now she smokes Virginia Slims instead of lucky strikes
It's getting hard to tell the boys from girls, hard to tell the men from women, hard to tell the faggots from the dykes.

Now if all of this should seem to show that everyone's gone mad
It's only part and parcel of a somewhat larger fad
Look no further than the glint of gold in many a straight boys ear
It's getting hard to tell the breeders from the queers.

Thanks to Romanovsky and Phillips and to my friends for reminding me I'm just getting old, and this happens every few years.  I don't know if I'm parked on a shelf yet, but I apparently need to heed their advice to "stay on top".

Fresh Grief

A wave of events has brought fresh grief about Lucas.

It started innocuously (sp?) - almost in a way I felt good about.  In the first of three visits with friends from overseas and their kids, we talked and laughed and the kids played and then almost as they were getting ready to go, we realized they did not know.  They had not seen us in a year and a half, aren't facebook friends, don't interact with us daily.  At first there was an almost giddy shock - here we had spent two hours together without mentioning it - how life had changed in a year - one year ago it would have been the very first thing we mentioned.

But then the grief came back.  Suddenly the photos jumped off the shelves - at least figuratively - and I saw Lucas everywhere.

A few days later Sasha had a really scary asthma attack.  The next day I felt like I had post traumatic stress - it still has not completely dissipated.  That came a couple of days after Gabi and I thought we had lost him in the woods (he was playing with friends in a safe place).  It was just a few minutes, but enough to shake me up and to really scare Gabi.  At night she told me, "I'm afraid I'm going to lose him, afraid that poof, he just won't be here." 

Then we made plans to see some more friends we have not seen since before Gabi was born, with their kids.  So I tried to pre-empt it by telling them on the phone.  But she was horrified and I had forgotten how to tell.  Last year I knew to start, "we had a tragedy in our family" and then to tell.  I had forgotten how to do that.

Then yesterday Gabi and I went with an old friend of mine to see other old friends of ours and their kids.  I felt so heavy on the way there and on the way back.  I had a lovely time.  It was right after the final party for Sasha of kindergarten.  I could be in all this when it was happening, but before and after I felt like I was carrying a weight.

It's of course a joy to watch other people's kids grow - a marvel, one of the greatest miracles in life.  Our kids also are growing so incredibly - easy to see why these are called the wonder years.

This is not promised to us, it is not "muvan me'elav".

So we're starting another summer, I'm about to welcome another wave of students, Alen is somewhat back on her feet after breaking her leg but still not driving, I'm very tired, I'm still parenting a testosterone enhanced version of myself, still feeling so strongly the fear that I call the dark underbelly of parenting.  Taking lots of joy in their changes and trying each day to hold it all lightly and be grateful.

What is the Torah we will receive this year?

I've been feeling like my head is going to explode. 

Last night before I went to sleep, I could see Africa, Africans all around.  I am distressed beyond belief at the recent anti-refugee, anti-immigrant violence in Tel Aviv.  At the same time, this is the first year we've had a number of applicants from Africa who want to come learn at my work.  So I've had pause to think about the continent and how close it is, to talk to staff at the Israeli consulate in Nigeria, to come closer to knowing Africans personally.  When I saw Africa last night I felt that my mother in law z"l, who died in Malawi in 2003, was close to us.  I woke up at night scared.

This week when the police harassed women rabbinical students I know for wearing their tallitot at the Kotel, I thought, "yes, a government that will treat its citizens the way it does will treat anyone that way when they choose."  And non-citizens?  Our government helps them not at all.  Don't they remember "we were strangers"???

Through the fall and winter, watching everything about women in Israel going on around me, I felt for the first time a feeling of not wanting to be here.  Yesterday I sat with four North American young Jewish women here on a social justice fellowship.  We deconstructed much of what is going on around us regarding gender.  I tried to place it in a larger context.  I mentioned Mordecai Kaplan and found out one of the women is distantly related to him.  We studied Talmud and commentaries.  They loved the session.  I did not emerge feeling safer or reassured.

This morning, I was down at the school for the Shavuot tekes for Kitah Aleph.  I could not help being moved despite my grave concerns about our country and where we are going.  But the music was about "the land you gave us" - quoting from Torah.  It's not the verse I think we need to hear most right now.

Alen has taken to watching Rachel Maddow on TV.  I feel no desire to connect with US politics.  I feel mostly scared and insecure.  Like I'm trembling at the foot of a trembling mountain.

What is the Torah we will receive this year? What is the Torah we will teach?

Please explain this song!

מדורת השבט

מילים ולחן: שי דקל

לא יודע מה יהיה. הולך ברחוב ומשתהה.
באמצע היום לחות וחום.
נעצר בתחנת האוטובוס באותו מקום.
רואה חבר בגלגל הזמן חולפות תמונות בעיני
מרחוב קטן בניו יורק ובן יהודה כאן
קצת געגוע וסיפור ישן.

איפה הם אומרים שבט אחים גם יחד
מדורת השבט נעלמה נשאר הפחד
לא משעמם בארץ המובטחת
ורק הצחוק מתגלגל עם הכאב ביחד
ורק הצחוק מתגלגל עם הכאב ביחד

ריקוד ההורה כבר נדם. מהשרשרת מה נשאר.
החיבוק נעלם כמו לא קיים.
אולי נשאל את הזקן ודרומה ניסע לשם.
חוזר מהר למציאות ומחר עוד יום של תחרות
כמו שתיל נטוע כאן איך שחולף לו הזמן
כי עוד נשאר חלום חלום קטן


Let me know if you have any ideas what this song is about. Now that I'm reading the actual lyrics, I'm not sure if it's an Israeli writing from being away, or someone who is here. People in the know, please advise. Meanwhile, I greatly enjoyed the Lag B'Omer Tekes where Gabi's class sang this!

Mikvah, Safety and more

A visit from Aliza Kline of the Mayyim Hayyim community mikvah brought up a kind of intense and weird nostalgia and homesickness in me today.

When Aliza arrived at my work, she called to ask about parking. I said I'd meet her outside and when I got there, the driveway was blocked by a van. After I yelled and got the van moved, the driveway was still made very difficult by cars parked on either side. Then she had to take her car down the steep, curved incline to our parking, while I was simultaneously berating the man who was blocking easy entrance (he said he wasn't) and talking to a student who wanted to talk to me.

Later, after the presentation, her entrance seemed like a metaphor to me about my life in Israel. There was one moment during it when I thought "wait, she's not an olah, she may not be able to handle this".

Aliza started her presentation talking about what makes a ritual work. In 11 years in Israel, I feel I have not heard people ask this kind of question. I had trouble understanding it - rituals work and don't work - it's rarely one or the other to me. She asked the students what a ritual was and they had answers - I could not remember what a ritual is. I was trying to figure out which parts of my life are ritual and which are not, and did not feel sure I could distinguish.

But I should back up. That was after another conversation on our way over to the Beit Midrash. My boss had mentioned the old mikvah in Brighton, and I said I had been there before my wedding, and then started on thinking about that and about what it has meant to me to pass at the mikvah - pass for straight that is, because I've never been to the mikvah when I was not a lesbian, and I've never been out at a mikvah, whatever that would mean.

Aliza talked a lot about safe space and what it means to create a space where people are going to feel safe taking off their clothes. I didn't even feel safe talking about it. I noticed most faculty were not there, and I noticed the relative ease with which the students participated, and I thought about how much more restrained a culture Israel is when it comes to talking about sexuality.

I thought about my kids, and about how I went to the mikvah before I got pregnant, for a period of months each time, and about how I was always passing as a straight person. I thought, and almost said something, about how the mikvah lady told me "livriut" and about how I prayed to get pregnant each time. I thought of the Reform rabbi who married us and who had recommended mikvah to me when I was trying to get pregnant, and I thought of the ultrasound technician who, the day after the first time I went to the mikvah in that process, asked me, "did you go to the mikvah?" Could she see it on my face? It was the one and only time in the fertility process that I was asked. I didn't think of, but think of now, the kavannah a friend gave me for mikvah, and how I prayed for everyone who was trying to get pregnant, and how until this day I have a track record - all the people I have prayed for, there and elsewhere, that they be blessed to become parents, have received that blessing.

I listened to Aliza talk about making mikvah in Massachusetts safe and accessible space for everyone. It kind of reminded me of how I feel when I daven with a Reconstructionist siddur - like, oh, my spirituality used to be like that - open, full of possibilities. Aliza had asked for an example of what doesn't work and when I said, "when you can't bring your whole self there" she said, "like maybe when a mechitza isn't done in a way that can work for you," and I thought of the many Shabbat mornings I spend in a mechitza shul where I daven and what it means to try to bring my whole self there to a space that doesn't reflect my values and what it means to pray or be part of any ritual moment and not be all of me but still feel transformed and uplifted. And what it means to sit with contradictions and discomfort and not knowing.

I thought of the parking lot entrance, and how much that feels like my ritual life here. I wondered if I will one day experience some reclamation of mikvah. Alen said maybe we shouldn't be planning a trip to disney world and instead should be thinking of going back to Massachusetts for a trip to Mayyim Hayyim. Then I think of my very real moments in the mikvah, and my very real kids, and thank G-d.

Don't make these fish cakes at 6 pm

I made a big mistake tonight when I started thinking about making dinner around 6 pm. We sat down close to 8 pm. However, since I sort of made this Passover recipe up myself, I figured I would share it.

A bunch of left over tilapia from last night occasioned these parve Pesach fish cakes:

Mash up a bunch of left over fish.
Peel, boil and mash about 3-4 potatoes.
Add salt, pepper, about 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley, 1 tablespoon matzo meal, a teaspoon of mayonnaise, 1/2 teaspoon of mustard if you eat kitniyot, juice of 1/2 a lemon. Taste to correct seasonings. Then add one egg. Mix it all up.

To fry, make balls and roll them in matzo meal, then flatten them in the frying pan in hot olive oil. Cook it in a better frying pan than I have. Put the ones that are done in the oven until they are all cooked.

Serve with lemon, mayo, or whatever else you think will be good, and a big salad.

For chocolate toffee matzo to serve after, see this

For more Pesach recipes from me, see here

Hag sameach to all!

Coming out again!

Those of you who know me or read this blog regularly probably know that to get lots of medical services I drive about 5 km to an ultra-orthodox west bank settlement.

Today after I got home from work and dropped the kids to their sport, I ran to get a prescription filled for Alen. I didn't have her health insurance card with me.

At the pharmacy were 2 orthodox or ultra-orthodox women behind the counter, the pharmacist whom I don't know and the well-baby/child nurse whom I do know but have not seen for awhile.

So I asked the pharmacist could she put the charge on my card (it goes direct to my bank account) and she said, but who is Anne (Alen)? Who is she to you? So I said, she's my partner (bat-zug) and she says, she's your friend? Where's her card? What's her ID number?

So I said, it's here on the prescription and she's my partner. And she says, they will want to know, who is she to you, and I say again, as if I'm talking to a 2 year old, she's my partner. And I see her writing in the computer "haverot" (friends). And I said, "what, is it forbidden for you to write partner?"

She's flustered and I'm getting pissed off and the well baby nurse says, "Oh hi, how are your kids, your son is Alex right?" And the pharmacist says, "one pill four times a day." And me and the nurse say, "these are eye drops". Then the pharmacist goes off to answer the phone and the nurse and I continue talking about Sasha and whether he gets another appointment and I give her my phone number to call me.

This nurse really saved me from myself and from feeling bad. I try not to make waves in Beitar, but at the same time, if someone asks me directly, I'm going to say and stand up for my family. The nurse gave me a very positive message, "I know you, I see your family, I recognize you. This community may be homophobic but I'm not - I know you and I like you."

Enough coming out for today.

Thoughts after one year - in memory of Lucas

Today is Ash Wednesday. Yesterday was Mardi Gras - Carnival Tuesday - the day that Lucas died.

I can't believe it has been one year. My heart is with Sophie, Eddie & Kayleigh and all the family.

Thank you to everyone who has helped Alen & me and our kids during this year.

Two books I read this summer and fall helped a lot. One was "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" - a book of interviews by Studs Terkel. It's lots of different perspectives on death, loss and faith. The other is "Does the Soul Survive" by Rabbi Elie Spitz.

I spent almost two weeks in California at the end of January and beginning of February. I had not been there in 30 years. Everywhere I went I was welcomed by people I know from all parts of my life - from grade school, from my college days, from my first year in Israel in '83-'84, from rabbinical school and from these past 11 years in Israel. I also met new people - including my 3rd cousin and 3rd cousin once removed and his wife.

My cousin Andrew the genealogist gave me a gift - the marriage certificate of my great uncle Jack. It turns out my uncle Jack married his wife Edith exactly two weeks after my grandparents got married, on Sunday, April 28, 1929. (Or maybe it's the 23rd - the date is hard to read - the 23rd would make more sense if it was a civil wedding at an office not open on Sundays.)

My grandparents were married April 14, 1929 in Sharon, MA. In California I saw several people who are connected to Sharon and decided that all roads lead to Sharon - the place where my grandparents married and are buried.

I also saw and felt many other things connected to the past - to the Holocaust especially.

I came back feeling that if I can go 9000 miles away to a place where I have not been for 30 years and experience so many amazing connections from so many times, then there really is no time and no space and no distance.

When Lucas died the song that kept coming to me was the Sweet Honey In the Rock song, Listen More Often. You can find it on this blog if you search the Lucas tag - it's the first song I posted when he died. I'll probably make a new tag for loss as well. The song says "The dead are not under the earth" and it's something I believe more every day.

Sending lots of love to everyone who reads this.

Gail

Too Few & Far Between

Deirdre McCalla herself sent me the lyrics and said she'll post the song next month on www.deirdremccalla.com. Believe it or not, I had them mostly memorized, but I had forgotten the second verse.

TOO FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
(Deidre McCalla)

AFTER IT'S ALL SAID AND DONE WE REMEMBER
TIME WILL MOVE ON BUT THE MEMORIES REPEAT
ME IN MY SCARS MEETING YOU WITH YOUR HUNGER
TO CRY IN THE NIGHT ON A ST. THOMAS BEACH
THERE'S NO REWRITING HISTORY
BE DAMNED YOUR LUCK AT ALL
TO BE BORN INTO AN AGE WHERE
GENTLE MEN STILL FALL
TOO FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
AND IT DOESN'T MAKE A LIFETIME

PIECES OF DREAMS IN A CARELESS WIND SCATTERED
TOSSED BY THE TIDES AND THE VAGARIES OF FATE
HEARTS ONCE UNITED AND TESTED BY FIRE
STRETCH TO THEIR LIMIT AND FINALLY BREAK
INSIDE A CONSTANT STRANGER
MAKES HER PEACE WITH EACH NEW SUN
DESIRE'S ONLY PASSING
AND TRUE LOVE OFTEN COMES
TOO FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
AND IT DOESN'T MAKE A LIFETIME

THE SACRIFICE OFFERED BY EACH GENERATION
ARE THOSE WHO WILL RISE UP AND ANSWER THE CALL
CHANGE HAPPENS SLOWLY AND OUR REVOLUTION
STILL QUESTIONS THE PRICE OF EACH WARRIOR WHO FALLS
THE CHOICES ARE REFLECTED
IN THOUGHT AND WORD AND DEED
FOR CAUSES WE WOULD DIE FOR
AND REASONS TO BELIEVE
ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
AND THEY OFTEN TAKE A LIFETIME

WHEN THE TIME COMES TO COUNT UP ALL OUR BLESSINGS
IT MAY SEEM HARD TO KNOW WHERE TO BEGIN
ONE IS THE PURE CELEBRATION OF LIVING
TWO IS THE LIGHT IN THE EYE OF A FRIEND
TREASURE EVERY MOMENT
WHERE THE LAUGHTER FALLS LIKE RAIN
THERE WILL BE DAYS OF SORROW
AND THE ECHOES THAT REMAIN
ARE FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
BUT THEY OFTEN MAKE A LIFETIME

I always thought that I'd see you again

I wanted to share some songs and poems I've been thinking of in the days since I found out my beloved friend Alan Kaufmann took his own life last week.

Alan and I met in the summer of 1981 when I was 19. I don't know if we saw each other since that time. Today I went looking for the box he gave me with a scroll in it saying that I would always have a place in his heart. We were connected to each other until the day he died, and had planned to see each other February 1. Since he died I understand everything about why we will not be seeing each other, but I still grieve.

While looking for the box he gave me I came across this poem:

Should you go first and I remain
To walk to road alone
I'll live in memory's garden dear
With happy days we've known
In spring I'll watch for roses red
When fades the lilac blue
In early fall when brown leaves call
I'll catch a glimpse of you

....Should you go first and I remain
To finish with the scroll
No length'ning shadows shall creep in
To make this life seem droll
We've known so much happiness
We've had our cup of joy
And memory is one gift of G-d
That death cannot destroy

In the box where I found Alan Kaufmann's photos I also found lots of love letters from my Alen that made me smile.

I've been thinking of the Deirdre McCalla song too few and far between, but I can't find the lyrics online. Her music really speaks to me right now. Since I can't find that, I'll post this beautiful version of her song Blessings.

I owe her my life - Ellen Pence z"l

My heart is breaking because the woman I owe my life to has left this world.

There must be thousands of women who owe Ellen their lives, because she devoted her life to fighting against violence against women, and to training women who worked with battered women. You can see a video of her talking about it here

But you have to take 20 plus years off her to see Ellen as I saw her, yet lose none of the sureness and none of the humor.

Ellen was an amazing teacher, and she taught us how to teach. She talked about Paulo Friere, and about what it meant to empower women in the way we taught. Listen to the video - she is teaching about teaching by listening. Every day I get up to teach, Ellen is with me.

But the reason I owe her my life is that she was the person who told me to come out. I was working with women all the time but living a straight life, and Ellen, in a warm, joking, absolutely certain way, told me I needed to stop. She told me, with a smile, that if I got married to a man, I'd eventually be divorced, because I would meet a woman and fall in love. I said, "will she have glasses?"

That was in the fall of 1987.

The rest is history.

Ellen, you are not gone. Your inspiration lives on in me every day, as I know it does in your son, in your partner, and in all the people whose lives you touched.