Devotion (4 page)

On our last afternoon in Venice, Michael, Jacob, and I arrived at the Jewish ghetto just as the synagogue was closing. We had spent a few days in that magical city wandering around more typical tourist sights: San Marco, the Rialto Bridge, the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. I hadn’t really wanted to go to the ghetto—and in the past I would have left it off our itinerary. For years, I had avoided the Jewish stuff. Hadn’t I already had enough of it? But deep down, beneath layers of discomfort, there was something I wanted to know. Some powerful piece of my identity, withered like an underused muscle.

It was a raw day in March, and by the time we took the vaporetto all the way down the Grand Canal and wound our way through the narrow streets to the ghetto, it had become dark and cold.

One shop was open, though. The Judaica store. Silver menorahs gleamed in the brightly lit windows. Intricate mezuzahs were lined up on jewel-colored velvet.

“Let’s buy a mezuzah,” I said to Michael. I had come here with no such intention, but now it seemed like the thing to do. We had dozens of mezuzahs in our basement, from every home my parents had lived in, but I had never once considered digging one up and affixing it to the doorpost of our house.

We wandered into the store. An elderly woman was in back, behind the cash register. She looked like she owned the place, which we later found out she did. Her husband was the master silversmith who crafted all of the Judaica: pointers, crowns, breast-plates—everything needed to dress the Torah. As she glanced up at us, I was aware of what we looked like, as a family. With my long blond hair, I must be the shiksa wife of a Jewish man, and here was our little blond son. I had an irrational desire to announce my Jewishness.
Raised Orthodox! Grew up kosher! Two sinks, two refrigerators—no kidding!

Michael and I began examining various mezuzahs. There were big ones and small ones, modern-looking ones, and others designed with the delicate Venetian silver openwork I had seen in shops around the city.

“What is this?” Jacob asked, turning one over.

My breath caught at the fact that my son did not recognize a mezuzah. But of course he didn’t. Why would he?

“That’s a mezuzah,” I answered. “We’re supposed to put it on the doorpost of our house.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re Jewish.”

It was a lame answer, but the best I could do at the time.

“How about this one?” Michael handed me a lovely small mezuzah. I tried to picture it attached to the frame of our kitchen door. We have a stone porch, piled with wood. A bench, on which ski equipment collects during winter, baseball bats and gloves during summer. And suddenly I felt exhausted, completely overwhelmed. I stood in the store, weighing the mezuzah in my hand. I wanted to leave immediately.

“Maybe we should just forget it,” I said to Michael. “I don’t know. It’s kind of silly—I mean, we have all those mezuzahs in the basement.”

“No, let’s do this. It’s beautiful—and special that we’re buying it here. Together.”

I knew Michael didn’t care about the actual mezuzah. But he was having a rare sentimental moment, and Jacob was curious—so what was my problem? As the woman wrapped it up carefully, packing it into a special box for our journey home, I felt paralyzed. How could we buy only one? We needed to buy—here I started counting all the doorways of our house—at least fourteen. If we were going the mezuzah route, then we needed to put one on each and every doorway except for closets and bathrooms. And who would affix it to the doorpost? Did it need a special blessing? Where would I find a rabbi? Which side did it go on, anyway? This was the way it had always been for me: all or nothing, I realized, invariably led to nothing.

“Let’s go.” I tugged at Michael’s sleeve.

But he had already given the woman his credit card, and as we stepped out onto the wet cobblestone streets of the ghetto, we carried with us a plastic bag containing a single, beautiful mezuzah.

These days, when I am in the middle of my yoga practice—and if I allow it to happen—my jaw will begin to shake violently. My teeth will chatter. My throat will open up, becoming almost
hollow, as if a scream is trying to escape. In the midst of my peaceful, contented life, a wave crashes over me. As I lie on the floor, folded into child’s pose, I try to stay with the physical sensation. It’s hard, scary, completely out-of-control. Still, I try to let it come—to welcome it, even. I know it has lessons to teach me. But what if it doesn’t stop? What if the shaking and chattering go on and on, and I turn into one of those people you see on the street, talking to herself? There are stories inside of me, hardened into tight little knots. Call them anything: Sanskrit
samskaras
, disturbances in the field, sediment scraped from the depths. They are at the core of all the other stories that are easier to tell.
My father died sad. My mother died angry. The family of my childhood has become dust.

“We have an answer, and it isn’t the one we had hoped for,” the doctor said. In his cramped office, he had moved his chair around to the other side of his desk, so he could sit close to Michael and me. I registered that this wasn’t a good sign.

He laid out a long printout of an EEG on his desk, flattened it, then traced the jagged lines of its peaks and valleys with one finger, as if pointing out directions on a map. I leaned forward and studied it, like I might be able to understand. My six-month-old baby was asleep in my arms. He had cried himself to sleep during the EEG, salty rivers of tears dried on his
soft cheeks. His hair—those blond curls—was matted down and smelled of the chemical goop the technician had used to attach the electrodes.

As the doctor spoke, I scribbled down words in a notebook previously used for shopping lists.
Hypsarrhythmia, West syndrome, infantile spasms, seizure disorder. Very rare, seven out of a million babies.
I wrote down everything he said, because the words were coming too fast, a torrent. They were disintegrating, falling apart in my mind. I kept looking down at my perfect, beautiful Jacob. His tear-streaked cheek, his shell of an ear.

“We have to work on stopping the seizures immediately,” the doctor said. “There are a limited number of medications we can try—the most effective one isn’t FDA approved. But we can help you to get it from a pharmacy in Canada, or Mexico—”

“What happens?” Michael’s voice sounded like it was coming from a cave. “What happens if the seizures aren’t stopped?”

“Brain damage,” said the doctor. He didn’t blink, or hesitate. He said it softly. On his bookshelf, I noticed, there was a photograph of him with his wife and daughter, at what appeared to be his daughter’s college graduation.

The bones in Michael’s face seemed to shift. I reached over and held his hand, held it tight. What was going to happen to us?

“Every minute counts,” the doctor said. “Every seizure has an effect.”

The doctor’s receptionist knocked on his office door.

“I reached the Kramers,” she said to the doctor.

She handed us a page from a prescription pad, with an address scribbled on it.

“This family has a child who is taking the medication you need. I’ve called them—they’re expecting you. They’ll lend you some.”

We drove crosstown in our safe and solid Volvo, with Jacob strapped into his ergonomically designed, top-of-the-line infant car seat. He was dressed in his organic cotton T-shirt and baby jeans, which had been washed in natural laundry soap. We pulled up in front of a high-rise on West Ninety-sixth Street. I had passed the building a hundred times or more in the years I had lived in the city. In what seemed another life, I had speed-walked down Ninety-sixth Street on my way to the Central Park reservoir. I had dined at a nearby restaurant during a bad blind date. Now, I waited in the back of the car with my sleeping baby as my husband rode the elevator up to apartment 28F, where a stranger was waiting to give him a packet of medication—our only hope of saving our son’s life.

I didn’t believe that God had caused this to happen. Nor did I believe that, by praying to him, he would spare us. Still, every moment of every day became a prayer. The medication came in the form of a powder, delivered via FedEx from a pharmacy in Toronto. Each packet of powder—which was fine and white—had to be divided into five even doses. The ritual of chopping the powder with a razor blade into perfect lines became a prayer.

I searched for reasons—a way of understanding being on the
wrong side of such a statistic.
Seven out of a million babies.
Somebody had to be one of the seven, didn’t they? Why us? Why
not
us? I blamed the environment: maybe it was the pesticide we had used to get rid of the yellow-jacket nest outside Jacob’s window. I blamed modern medicine: maybe it was the DPT vaccination he had received at his six-month checkup. But mostly, I blamed myself. I was the mother. It had to be my fault, somehow. Maybe it was the raw tuna I ate before I knew I was pregnant. Or the stress of my last book tour. If I were a devout Jew, there would be a blessing and a petitioning:
Blessed art Thou, O Lord, our God, King of the Universe, the True Judge
. If I were a practicing Christian:
Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Never once did it occur to me to blame God—nor to ask him for any special favors. Yet my prayers continued. Watching my baby’s face for signs of his eyes flickering upward, his hands and legs making involuntary motions, I held my breath as if my breath itself were a prayer. Each night, I rocked Jacob to sleep—as I had since the day he was born—and I sang him a lullaby. Now that lullaby was as long and meditative and devotional as the Amidah. I sang “Hush, Little Baby” three times. If I missed even a single word, I had to start all over again. Next—even if he was fast asleep—came two rounds of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” Then I closed my eyes until all was darkness. I counted backward from fifty in silence.
Please watch over my baby and keep him safe. Please keep him safe
, I whispered over and over again.
Please
. Never once did I wonder who—if anyone—might be listening.

I sat on a meditation cushion near the back of a vast semicircle of meditation cushions, as close to the door as possible. A couple of hundred people filled the great hall: old, young, thin, fat, in torn sweatshirts and trendy velour. Lots of tattoos—mandalas, oms, colorful birds, indecipherable Sanskrit words inscribed on biceps, ankles, sacrums. Bare feet with overgrown, yellowed toenails, or perfect bright pink pedicures. Most of the crowd looked like they had been to Kripalu—or to places like Kripalu—many times before. I could spot the regulars, the ones who were familiar with the floor plans of Esalen and Spirit Rock, for whom
retreat
was more a noun than a verb. They were settled in, comfortable; water bottles by their sides, special pens and pads for taking notes.

And what about me?
Breathe
. I felt like I had taken a wrong turn, gotten off at the wrong exit. I should have been at the Canyon Ranch resort down the road, getting a hot stone massage. I needed to relax—and spa treatments seemed a lot more relaxing than sitting erect on a meditation cushion with hundreds of strangers. But I wasn’t here to relax—at least not in that way. I needed some space in my head. I was practically hyperventilating, taking in sips of air as I waited for the morning program to start. Instead of the world opening up to me, it had grown increasingly constricted. The walls closing in.

The morning program was about to begin. Two upholstered chairs were set up at the front of the great hall, a table with two
glasses and a bottle of water between them. An easel stood next to the chairs, supporting a large dry-erase board, upon which a list was written.

I studied the list. Couldn’t argue with any of that, really. I needed greater doses of all of the above, but perhaps equanimity most of all. It seemed, after eleven years of marriage, that I had forgotten how to be on my own. I watched as Steve Cope—the only reason I had made this trip—approached the front of the great hall and settled into one of the chairs, then crossed his legs in lotus position. He was joined by his co-leader of this three-day workshop, Sylvia Boorstein, a well-respected Buddhist teacher whose books, with titles like
Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There
and
It’s Easier Than You Think
, were featured downstairs in the Kripalu bookstore.

Sylvia began by slowly gazing around the entire semicircle. She seemed to make eye contact with every single person in the room. She was a diminutive woman, perhaps in her early seventies, with short gray hair and an impish, dare I say Buddha-like, face.

“The whole world is a lesson in what’s true,” she said. “Everyone is struggling. Life is difficult for everybody. Once you’re in, there’s no way out. You have to go forward. And we all die in the end. So how to deal with it?”

The words sliced through everything: through my racing mind, my rapid pulse, my general state of agitation. That was it, wasn’t it? In a few simple sentences she had addressed the essence of what I felt. She knew about the roller coaster, the slow ascent, the rapid downward plunge. I was here. I had reached my life. I had built it by decision and by accident—and there would be no other.
So how to deal with it?
I fixed all of my attention on Sylvia Boorstein. I had come to Kripalu because of Steve Cope, but here was a surprise in the form of this little Jewish grandmother. If she could articulate the questions so succinctly, maybe she had some answers.

“
Metta
meditation,” she went on, “is a concentration practice. It’s the protection formula that the Buddha taught the monks: one of being able to depend on your own good heart. So”—she clasped her hands together—“how do we do this? By tempering one’s own heart and restoring it to balance.
Metta
is a practice of inclining the mind in the direction of good will.”

Sylvia then laid out for us her four favorite phrases—variations on the Buddha’s original phrases—to chant silently during
metta
:

The idea was to silently repeat the phrases again and again, at first focusing on ourselves, but then eventually directing the phrases to others: our closest teachers and benefactors; then our loved ones; our friends; strangers; and eventually—after much
practice—to those with whom we have difficult relationships, or as it is known in Buddhist scripture, our enemies.

Sylvia paused, glancing at the large clock hanging on the back wall, behind us. “Let’s sit for a few minutes.”

I closed my eyes. A few minutes. What was Sylvia Boorstein’s idea of a few minutes? But despite the difficulty of sitting still, I felt myself slowing down. The phrases gave my overactive mind a place to settle, a single point of concentration, a word at a time. When I felt myself becoming distracted, I pulled myself back to the repetition. Faces drifted pleasantly through my head: an old college professor, my mother-in-law, my father-in-law, Michael, Jacob, a succession of friends. As soon as I finished one round of phrases, another person seemed to rise into my consciousness, as if waiting on line. But after a little while, I became troubled by the question of prayer. Was this a prayer? Who was it directed to? Was I petitioning some almighty being? The God of my childhood asserted himself: judging, withholding, all-knowing. In turn, the phrases themselves became supplication, bargaining, appeasement. My mind was aswirl once again, and I could barely sit still. I wondered if it was okay to get up to go to the bathroom, or whether I’d disturb everyone and become the retreat pariah.

Just when I thought I couldn’t handle another second, Sylvia sounded a gong, and people opened their eyes, stretched out. I looked around from my meditation cushion. Many appeared beatific, even glowing. A middle-aged woman a few rows in front of me, with a wild mass of salt-and-pepper hair and a leather ankle bracelet, was smiling as tears poured down her cheeks.

“What did you all experience?” Sylvia asked after a long pause.
Her voice was so familiar to me: lilting, slightly hoarse, street-smart, and kind. A raised-in-Brooklyn-by-Yiddish-speaking-immigrant-parents voice. She reminded me of my mentor, the writer Grace Paley, who had recently died. No one had ever reminded me of Grace before.

I raised my hand. This was so unlike me that I looked up at my own hand as if it belonged to someone else. But I really did have a question. It had been bubbling up inside me and was banging against my rib cage, my pounding heart, demanding an answer.

“Yes.” Sylvia pointed. A cordless microphone was passed to me.

“I was raised in a very religious home,” I began, sounding shaky. “And I’m confused about God. So I found it hard—I mean…to whom are we speaking?”

Sylvia tilted her head to the side. A smile played at her lips, as if she had been expecting this question, and was delighted by it.

“I don’t think it has to be metaphysical,” she said. “It’s the expression of a
wish
, really.”

A wish.
After the morning session ended, I wandered the halls of Kripalu, lost in thought. I barely registered the lunchtime crowd of people carrying colorful trays piled high with bowls of salad and grains. Wishing was something children did—wasn’t it? I pictured Jacob’s face as he stood in front of a fountain, clutching a penny (though of course nickels or quarters were far better) in his fist. Or the way, on the banks of the Shepaug River, he had tossed his bread during
tashlich
, his expression serious, concentrated, intent.

As an adult, I had long since given up on wishing. It seemed the equivalent of sprinkling magic fairy dust. But really, what did
it mean to fervently, wholeheartedly name a desire?
May you feel protected and safe
. To speak out of a deep yearning—to set that yearning loose in the world?
May you feel contented and pleased.
Could a wish be a less fraught word for a prayer?
May your physical body support you with strength.
Maybe it wasn’t about who, if anyone, was on the other end, listening. Maybe faith had to do with holding up one end of the dialogue.
May your life unfold smoothly, with ease.