Tree of Life

I have never bought a menorah although I have two in my home. One was from a relative and the other came to me strictly by happenstance. Ever since my run-in with a former fellow tenants, when the Stars of David’s were craved into my walls and doors around my flat with the immortal phrase ‘Kill the Jew’, the local neighbour people have taken to calling me the Jew Lady. From time to time I would run into this older homeless woman. It was hard to tell her age under the layers of clothes and dirt. She spent practically one entire summer stalking me on the street and every time she saw me always demanded to know if I was the Jew Lady.

Every time she started hectoring me down the street I was overwhelmed by a profound sense of guilt. It was solely irrational but purely an instinctually response. I did my best to ignore her by turning up my iPod and walking fast away. One day, in the fall, I relented, turned off the iPod, and slowed down to speak to her. I asked her why she kept calling me the Jew Lady. She answered because she was tired of always being the alone.

I asked her if she was hungry and she said yes. I took her into a local coffee shop and bought her lunch. Over coffee I asked her if she would let me help her. I explained I had friends who worked for a Jewish community centre and they could probably help her – at the least - she would have a place to go where she would not have to be alone. This idea aggravated her and she fled the coffee shop.

I didn’t see her again for weeks. Then coming home late one night shortly before Chanukah I found her sitting on the steps outside my front porch. Her bags were all arranged at her feet. She told me she had something to give me and reached into one of her bags and pulled out a menorah shaped as a Tree of life. While I am not overtly familiar with Kabalah, I do understand somewhat the nature of the symbolism associated with the Tree of Life - which can represent the unique and unknowable nature of G-d. I didn’t want to take it from her and explained I wasn’t religious. It seems to be one of the few things of value she possessed. She grew impatient with me again. In frustration, she shouted out at me she has no home, no doorway or window to put the menorah in which to light it. If I would take it and light the candles for her each night she could see it, enjoy it, and know she wasn’t alone.

What could I do? So I took the menorah, and for the first time in my life I placed a menorah in my front window on Chanukah. In for a penny, out for a pound, so I called the local Chabad house and got the candle lighting times and on the first night of Chanukah, I placed the menorah in my window, and pulled my grandfather’s siddur off the bookshelf. I lit the shamash, and started to search for the blessing, and instead, found a handwritten piece of paper tucked into the prayer book with instructions and the blessings to recite for lighting the candles each night. It was like someone knew this day would come for me and so sought to prepare me.

Once I started to sound out the words, I realized I knew them and the meaning and so I sang them out. I was surprised and taken back by the comfort I got from doing this. Perhaps, it was because for a few lost souls there was finally a little light was shining in the darkness. I haven’t seen my bag lady since she gave me my menorah but every year since, I place her menorah in the window and light the candles.
If only it was so easy for the rest of us to bring in a little light into our souls.

The whole point of my menorah story is that this year I will be out of town during Chanukah and I still wanted to bring my menorah and light it. Even though my bag lady wouldn’t see it I did not want to break faith with her. I promised her and gave her my word. I would do this in memory of her.

I was afraid it would get damaged if I traveled with it in the great lot of things I will need to bring for a month’s holiday with the Tribe so I had my friend carry my menorah back out west. Apparently, it got mangled in transit so it can no longer stand on its own. The thought of having no usable menorah to light has distressed me and plagued my sleep. I am not sure what has been made bent can be straightened and rather than risk having no menorah to light I have started a search for a new menorah but nothing I found held meaning for me.

In the end, the menorah was repaired and tonight night, I will do what literally hundreds of generations have done before me on this night. But when I place my Tree of Life in the doorway, light the first candle and recite the last blessing, Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech haolam shehecheyau vekiyimanu vehigianu lizman hazeh [Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has granted us life, sustained us, and enabled us to reach this occasion.], know this - I stand in awe at the mysteries and inner workings of the universe in which a homeless woman can act as a catalyst to show me my place in the light of the universe.

What is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh

My grandfather use to always use this expression - ‘what’s bred in the bone comes out in the flesh’. I think of this often since I have had children. It has never surprised me when I see one of my children display characteristics of myself, their father, my grandparents, etc., but it’s the odd bits and pieces that set my mind to wandering

The Last Amazon left home to study neuroscience with an eye to eventually become a neurosurgeon. One of the reasons she choose to study at this university was an optional program which acts as a mentoring program for students wishing to pursue a medical career. Enrollment is very limited and she was fortunate to be accepted into the program.

I think it’s a great idea and I am not sure why more universities don’t offer a similar program considering the high drop-out rate by the second year of medical school. Far better to realize one is not suited to medicine before paying umpteen thousands of dollars in non-refundable tuition. Personally, I am hoping she opts for research rather than medicine. Not because I do not think she is not capable of being a great doctor but because I realize the pursuit of medicine often requires sacrifices and I want her to keep her options open. It’s very hard to be a doctor and both a wife and mother. I am not saying it cannot be done just that it is very hard and I don’t wish hardship on my daughter.

She applied to a brain injury clinic which turned her down due to her age - such is the joy of being only just turned 17 and in university, although she was offered a spot at the clinic for next September after she turns 18. She was eventually accepted in the Emergency department of a local hospital. Yesterday, she texted me she got the word to suit and scrub up as she was going into the OR as an observer. This wasn’t the Grey’s Anatomy observation room but a place on the floor watching the ‘action’.

I received this email from her last night:

It's hard for me to try and explain it by email. It'll be better if I talked to you about it. But I'll try anyway! I got to watch some interesting surgeries- two ileostomies, a kidney stone removal, two breast tumor removals, a hip replacement and a knee replacement. I also got a chance to talk to med students and hear the latest hospital gossip! I also talked to this anesthesiologist. I practically spent the entire day 8am-5pm on my feet observing surgeries! Oh yeah and the best part of my day was... I got to actually touch the tumors (once they were removed)!

I wasn’t even sure what an ileostomy was and had to look it up. Gross, but I suppose necessary, considering the alternatives. I can’t imagine even having the desire to touch a tumor and her father positively blanched at the sight of blood. Scraped knees, cuts, stitches, and broken bones were always my domain. All of I can think of is my poor mother (who volunteered to live with my daughter while she studies out of town) listening patiently as my daughter excitedly explains in gory detail involved of the operations she observed.

It truly has been an educational experience for my mother to live with the Last Amazon. Recently my daughter came across the term ‘coprophilia’ in her studies and did not have a clue as to what it meant. My mother volunteered to look it up and now wished she hadn’t. My mother so shocked she had to call and share it with me. All I could offer in the way of comfort was to suggest how awful to live one’s life ignorance…. I am writing this waiting for my mother’s call which I know is coming.

does age hold the key of life

There is something about the sound of a violin, which renders it the perfect musical instrument to sing the lament of the exiled. The guitar, while a powerful versatile instrument of emotional expression has come to represent, more often than not, a kind of individualism. In this modern age the guitar has also come to be a potent symbol of rebellion and while exiles can be rebellious; it not necessarily rebellion which sends them off the familiar traveled roads of home and heart.

This UK Independent article tells you more about wood density than you probably ever wanted to know but I did find it fascinating to learn what potentially gave the legendary Stradivarius violins their unique sound had more to do with the age of wood density used in their construction. Chalk it up to another hidden virtue of age.

I bet there were those who wanted Sigourney Weaver to be a host for the alien

In my other blog incarnation, I refused to weigh into the abortion debate. It always seems like such a lose-lose scenario, and rather pointless to wade in the fray - since there are no possible words to change any one’s point of view. This is one of the few issues, which can only be definitively decided on an individual basis and meditated by one’s life experience.

I was pro-choice long before there was any choice, but what a great many on the ‘pro-life’ side forget to address is this; there more than one alleged right to life they should be busy defending. Get as fetus-lish as you want in the posters, get graphic, hand out bloody dolls, coins, or whatever - but understand this - all you have accomplished is to turn any sane or reasonably minded individual against your point of view. Beating up clerks or doctors just paints you as thugs…and bombing clinics is an unforgivable act of urban terrorism and put you squarely on the same side as the Taliban.

On the other hand, it was not until I had carried a fetus to full-term and given birth that I was able to succiantly answer the question; when does life begin? Now I know, but even being able to answer it definitively, seems like a useless kind of thing to know. While I may appreciate the fact that life begins at conception whose right’s trumps whose body? Here is the thing - while I can appreciate the miracle of being - I would not willingly force or compel any female to carry a fetus to term against her will since the physical well-being of that fetus is entirely dependent on the level of physical care exercised by the host-female.

Years ago, a Toronto Star columnist, (I believe it was Rosie Di-Manno) wrote a column lamenting the fact a woman had 17 abortions and counting. Di-Manno is probably as pro-choice as one could get, but even for her, this woman’s actions were well over the bounds of civilized behaviour. I always thought she had it wrong. The more willingly a woman is to use abortion as a form of birth control shows absolutely her general unfitness for even being a surrogate mother to a child who would, at best, be destined to be adopted at birth.

And in the pro-life camp, I would like to ask; how far are you willing to go to restrain me from having an abortion if I deemed it is necessary? Will you bind my hands and feet to keep me from reaching for a coat hanger or a knitting needle? Does that sound too extreme? I would remind you of the time when the law of the land criminalized abortion and literally thousands of women preferred to risk jail and gamble on death rather than give birth.

Ask yourself – how far will are you really prepared to go? Will you be satisfied if you jail and make me a criminal because I refuse to become a host for another human? This is the path of the Handmaiden’s Tale and I will not let you lead me, my daughter, or even her daughter, there without a fight. Know this, I am not shy to shed much blood protecting my right to my own person or my liberty. Instead, I suggest you content yourself with imagining me and my sisteshold’s eternal damnation in the world to come.

When I first heard the Order of Canada was to be bestowed upon Dr. Henry Morgentaler, I was shocked, and thought - egad an abortionist has been awarded the Order of Canada. Why would the committee award the honour to someone who divides us??? Since then, I have a chance to read the papers and both pro & choice blogs, but mostly, it has caused me to reflect what life was like before Dr. Morgentaler fought the government and won. Well, he might divide us, but no woman in this country is driven in despair to reach for a coat-hanger or knitting needle again, and in my mind, for that fact alone, he deserves it, and my freedom demands it.

And for those of you who think, Dr. Morgentaler a common murderer and criminal, I ask you this; why does the expression and fulfillment of your value system demand a ‘woman’ give way to the despair of the coat hanger?

Out of many people, comes one nation

Goes one of my nations' mottos. If you are reading this there is a probably chance you think I am referring to either the United States or the very multi-cultural Canada but you would be wrong. Although, the motto could work with either country it is neither country’s motto and actually belongs to Jamaica – my other homeland. I have officially two, and unofficially; there is a third. Canada is where I was born and where I currently live, but Jamaica is my adopted homeland.

Jamaica is a funny kind of place and ignites passions. You either love it or you hate it, but once visited, you are never indifferent. There is a certain kind of cache about being a Jamaican. Sometimes being a Jamaican is a curse, as when others use your nationality in vain and attempt to damn you with all the evils of the world. And then there are times when it is nothing but a blessing; like when the kindness of strangers eases your way.

I can not count the times when I have went through my outside door and joined the maddening throng on the street only to catch the sounds of a fake Jamaican accent and patois used as an every day kind of voice among groups of young people. Among African teenage boys, being Jamaican has a kind of ultra coolness and a street cred, which I suppose being Somalian or Congolese in origin does not possess – yet.

Although, any Jamaican looking at these boys knows they are not Jamaican, and not just because they lack the sing song quality or the proper pitch of their accents, which Jamaicans possess, but because the heart of Africa is still etched cleanly in their faces and in their limbs. Jamaicans, on the other hand, are a homemade soup kind of place. There is no purity of blood and limb but only heart. I remember reading that Bob Marley was the most recognized black man among all Africans people and smiling to myself because Bob’s father was a white man. Jamaicans know this and think nothing of it. So stories like this one from the BBC do not even get my eye to twitch.

Most wrestling fans have never heard of the West African country, so the wrestling body decided fight fans would be more likely to embrace a wrestler from the land of Bob Marley and reggae music. And so desperate is Sarkodie-Mensah to become wrestling's next superstar, he is willing to deny who he is.

"I was actually born in Jamaica - to be honest with a name like Kofi a lot of people assume I was born in Ghana," he says with a bad Jamaican accent, but doing his best to stay in character.

But though he denies it, his mother Elizabeth - the head of a Ghanaian-American organisation in the US - confirms that he was indeed born in Ghana, and not in Jamaica. The family only moved to the US in 1982. "I told him: 'Kofi, your cousins watch you on TV in Ghana and want to know why you don't say you're from Ghana,'" she says. "He said: 'Tell them it is business.'"

It certainly is business. After he discovered his mother had revealed his secret identity to the press, Sarkodie-Mensah banned her and the rest of his family from speaking to the media, for fear of compromising his career.

One love, and all of that.