That's Life 2-26-2010

There is some irony in the fact that my yoga studio looks out across the parking lot to a popular kosher supermarket. Anyone who has battled for a spot in the parking lot on a Thursday or Friday may understand the quandary of a kosher yoga practitioner at the end of the week. You get to the parking lot with lots of extra time to find a spot so you can avoid some stress. After circling around for precious minutes, dealing with cars driving the wrong way and shopping carts abandoned in parking spots, you finally find a good spot, pray that the parking meter is working, then race to get to class on time.

Whether you take a vigorous or slow paced yoga class, the last 5 or 10 minutes are for winding down and letting your body absorb the poses you’ve completed and relaxing all your muscles. You float out of the class smiling and enjoying a sense of serenity, or calmly energized, feeling ready and able to accomplish the tasks of the day... until the spell is abruptly broken by an obnoxious car siren, the earsplitting blast from the firehouse or impatient honking by a driver eager to get away. Or if you’re lucky, you experience peace and relative quiet until you enter the store to tackle your Shabbat shopping list. Immediately, yoga is but a distant memory as you fight your way around abandoned carts blocking the aisles, loud personal cell phone conversations and long cashier lines.

Don’t get me wrong: I am grateful to live in a town with grocery stores that cater to my needs. I am thankful for the luxury of wonderful yoga teachers. But here’s the dilemma: is it better to do Shabbos errands first and then do yoga to relieve the stress, or do the yoga first to prepare for the shopping stress? I don’t know, but this is what I’m learning: take a deep breath in, then let it out slowly and repeat, until your smile returns and it won’t matter.

Miriam Bradman Abrahams

Woodmere

Dear That’s Life,

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

— Alfred Lord Tennyson

I struck up a conversation with a tailor who was altering my dress. An ‘old world’ man with a thick accent, he was one I could imagine coming over on a boat, suitcase and cap in hand, with only his skills and a dream.

I told him that I had recently given birth, at which point he asked how many children I had wanted to have when I first got married. “As many children as G-d would give me,” I answered him, which was in fact the truth. I never had a ‘set’ number like many people do. “I wanted three children and my wife wanted two,” he replied. Figuring there was something ironic in the storyline, I said, “So I guess you had five or six children then, right?”

“No,” he answered, as his tone softened. “My wife got sick with ovarian cancer when she had first become pregnant,” he said and slowly lowered his eyes to the floor. “We lost the baby and she died three years later.” He then began to cry and I was completely stunned.

“I am so sorry,” I said to him. I was taken aback both by the turn the story had taken and the depth of his sadness — a man I did not know.

He began to apologize, with tears streaming down his cheeks. Although he was an older man and the events of which he just spoken had occurred many years before, it was clear the wound had not completely healed. The bandage that covered the cut somehow had ripped right off.

“I remarried,” he continued, now a little more composed, “and we had eight children — five were hers and three were ours.” I smiled, very relieved that the story had not ended there.

“That’s wonderful,” I said. “You are very lucky; you are blessed.”

He nodded in agreement. “But I am blessed,” he said, “because I was not only able to find love once in my life, but twice.”

He told me how his wives were so different, one a sharp businesswoman, the other someone who rather enjoyed being home. Yet, he continued, he was incredibly happy and knows he is lacking nothing. He apologized again for becoming emotional and I patted his arm and told him to stop.

“I find it refreshing,” I said, “that in a world filled with anger and destruction, someone can still be so open and emotional.” Somehow, it revived my faith in this world just a bit.

My paternal grandfather was married twice; my step-grandmother was the only grandmother I knew on that side. I was named for my paternal grandmother, his first wife, and my daughter was named for my step-grandmother, who would turn out to be the love of my grandfather’s life. I saw him cry only once, with the face of a man whose heart was broken, as we buried her. My step-grandmother had never been married before she met him and barely kept Shabbos, but at the age of 50-plus she changed her life for the man with whom she fell in love. When he proposed, she responded,

“How could I say no to a rabbi?” and, with that, she became a rebbetzin for over 25 years, sitting in shul each Shabbos, taking in the davening and listening to my grandfather lain, though she could never read a word.

As a person who is blessed and met the love of her life at a young age, it is a bracha (blessing) I have never taken for granted. And we were lucky enough to have been present (along with hundreds of other people) for the moment that my adored niece was proposed to by the boy who adores her, too, and who knew, in the words of Jerry Maguire, that ‘she completed him’. It brought to a close a week in which I learned a lot about life, love and living in the moment. In fact, it was perfect.

To Rachel and Yonatan: ad meah v’esrim shanah.

With love,

MLW