God

New Year’s Hope

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I slammed my prayer book shut.

During the Selichot service, I was reciting the penitential poems and prayers leading up to Jewish high holidays. It was the time of contemplation that started a week before Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, through Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. 

Where am I?  My annual report to God revealed a steep crash.

I reflected on the past year. In a fit of misery last January. I quit my “career” as an adjunct professor. The low pay, demanding workload, and lack of respect left me feeling depressed.  I had feelings of worthlessness, as well as a life of impending poverty. It’s academia’s dirty little secret. Teaching is the new Wal-Mart for highly educated professionals cast out of corporate jobs. With the savings on tenured professors salaries, institutions of higher learning can invest in what’s truly important. Football stadiums. Do you know who’s educating your children in the hallowed halls of academia?  It’s most probably, a beleaguered adjunct living out of her car. Yet, upon leaving, I felt a loss of identity. Sadly, I started out wanting to make a difference.

Soon after, I became ill.  First severe bronchitis, and then the flu, the mega strain that’s had been floating around the country (as well as South Korea.) The dreaded Noro disease– known as the poop and puke virus. I caught it, even though hadn’t even been on a Carnival cruise. I experienced a sickness I’d never known. Migraines, stomach flu, coughing and sneezing the wracked my rib cage. Even my mind was foggy. I couldn’t walk a short block to Starbucks. No coffee and muffin for me… Most days, I lay in bed, barely able to move. And even if I could, I was highly contagious. The malaise wouldn’t leave me.

After a week, I mustered the strength to see a doctor. My internist immediately diagnosed the malady.  She instructed me not to tell a soul that I had “ the Norovirus. It would cause a panic.”

“Can’t you kill it?”

“No. Only the warm weather makes it die. But that’s only three months away. March is around the corner.”  She shrugged.

“But here must some drug!“  I pleaded. The prospect of leaving her office without a prescription terrified me.  It would be a first. Even some sugar pills in clinical trials would have allayed my fear.

“An antibiotic would make it worse.”  She grimly added, “My patients are dropping like flies. This is the death of man.”

With that cheery thought, I returned home with no antidote.  For weeks, I lay in bed listening to the drone of MSNBC —the chatter of the daily Trump show wafting by… No one was allowed to visit. I was officially infectious. I was instructed not to touch people or kitchen surfaces. A yellow HAZMAT suit was in order. My friend Dave dropped a bottle of ginger ale in front of my door and then made a run for it. The night I spiked a high fever, I called him to ask if he would take my dog should I go to the hospital. Or expire. But then I texted to say I didn’t mean it…I started sobbing.  I can go either up or down.Which is it?  Awakening isn’t for sissies.

Praying in synagogue, I had an epiphany.  The malaise went beyond a physical malady. My life didn’t feel right anymore.  Like a pair of shoes that no longer fit– attractive stilettos that suddenly cause piercing pain and blisters. My passion had slipped away. I had fallen far from who I was supposed to be.

I must have some purpose I’ve been avoiding.

Soul weariness is never sudden. I refused to heed the shrieking in my gut until it was diagnosed as reflux.

Along with the congregation, I rose and chanted an ancient prayer for forgiveness. The melody was sad and full of longing, expressing the desire to repent and change. The words cried for life’s fleetingness.  And the longing to break the cycle of our lives and change for the better.

O Lord, hear our voice in the morning; in the morning we set them before You with hopeful expectation. Hear our voice…

I pleaded, “If my soul had a GPS, where would I be?

You have fallen into a sinkhole. Shouldn’t you have “transitioned” out of it by now?  The voice inside me taunted.

I wandered into hostile foreign terrain wearing lead army boots. It felt impossible to lift my feet out of the muck.

Who’s in command? What has set me off on this fallen path?”

The answer came from my heart.  It had been ME..

Over the past year, my inner compass jabbered in Polish, or some crazy language I didn’t understand.

Divine One. Couldn’t you give me a little nudge in the right direction? Silence.

I continued standing while the rabbis changed the outfit on the Torah scrolls — from their usual taupe velvet to High Holiday white silk.  

It’s always darkest before the dawn. Next week is a new year!

Dear God,

During this period of repentance,

Help me to forgive.

Myself first.

Please restore my heart.

And return my soul.

I bear grudges.

You don’t.

Jane

P.S. Did you receive the basket of apple and honey I sent you?

 

 

 

Cupcake Mirage

~ myslipwaspink ~ 2 Comments
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Jane Ranzman Writer

One starry night a fallen New York yuppie dreamed…

I was hobbling along barefoot in a desert with the Lord, “Enough of this walking. Couldn’t you at least point me toward a Hyatt? What I wouldn’t give for a pair of those ugly biblical sandals at a time like this.” I couldn’t see anything, but I knew something divine was hovering around.

The dark sky flashed pink as rosy haze suddenly rolled across the sky, and the happiest moments of my life were projected onto the billowing clouds.

“Look there’s mom. She held a tray of pink birthday cupcakes entering my bedroom in Seaside. That was our tradition. Cupcakes for breakfast.” Six candles were a blaze as she sang “Happy Birthday.” She was so young and beautiful and her eyes were full of love. I watched them turned to hate as her dementia progressed.

“There I am! A pudgy cherub with big brown eyes and pigtails.” Mr. Pierre, our family poodle, gobbled a glob of pink icing from my tiny hand.

I marched forward on this strange pilgrimage on the burning sand, carefully, placing one foot in front of the other. I noticed two pairs of footsteps were fixed in the sand, despite the wind. “ How strange. There’s no one here but me. Maybe it’s a hallucination. Emergency need for bottled sparkling water.”

A basket of daisies flashed across the clouds. I had just gotten into Harvard College. That’s the code my mother and I had. Now the bells of Memorial Hall were chiming. I was throwing my cap high in the air as a new graduate. Now, that was a day. I recalled how the four years flew by. The images flashed at an accelerated rate.

“Hey, slow down. I can’t make out the pictures. I’m trudging along with no shoes–not even a kitten heel. Without a yak or a camel and I have no desert apparel.” I saw bits and pieces of cherished objects, but they quickly faded— the precious painting of the Impressionist beach scene in my apartment, my dog’s worn polka dot harness, foggy pink eyeglasses thrown haphazardly next to the kitchen sink, great-grandmother’s Fiegle’s tarnished Sabbath candles that I never lit, an antique cobalt blue glass box, a rhinestone evening bag in the shape of a Yorkie, mother’s old tortoise shell powder compact. I looked down at the sand and saw two sets of footsteps. Maybe I’ll run into two pairs of Prada pumps to fill them. Size 6. Only one pair would do….

Now there were flashes of people I loved. Only the outlines of faces, but I knew who they were. Fleeting glimpses of family and friends. I wanted to stay with them a moment, and hold on to the feelings they evoked. But the phantasms zoomed across the haze as I continued my arid journey. A searing pain pierced my chest. Loss. Life goes so quickly. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention.

I gasped, seeing my most horrible memory flicker through the heavens. It was lowest point in my life. I stood on the icy earch before my mother’s grave on a freezing January day holding a small prayer book. The Lord is my Shepard. I shall not want. I had the realization that my life was forever changed. How would I live through losing a part of myself? I drifted through years of acute grief, darkness, and fear. “Lord, why didn’t you at least make a cameo appearance? Now, I am left wandering.” I looked down for relief and saw a solitary pair of footsteps.

“Whatever it was, disappeared when I needed company the most. ” I felt a familiar tinge of abandonment.

I suddenly looked up and saw a Western Wall in Jerusalem against the backdrop of a pink sky. I was sobbing and praying. My hands were placed across the cool stones hoping for healing. I was at a crossroads in my life. I had gotten a pink slip from my job during the recession and had no prospects. My mother was ailing. Prince Charming’s glass slipper was cracked. I wondered how on earth did I get here? I had fallen and felt alone in the universe. I needed a sign. Was there anything or anyone or out there that heard our prayers? My heart was broken open. And there it was with perfect clarity. A pink slip was curled into a crevice above me in the Western Wall. There it was like mistletoe above me. My prayers were heard. What had been an icon of loss had become a symbol of grace.

“I must get out of this dream.” I looked down at the solitary trail of footsteps. “So Lord, when things are really tough, you take off to your vacation home.”

I heard a voice within me whisper, “Listen sweetie, YOU can only walk in in stiletto heels. Who do you think has been schlepping you?”

Messages Through The TV

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I thought about starting to write my resume.  What would I do if I were being really honest?  Travel writer.  That sounds good.  Journeying to new places and eating.  Of course, I have anxiety traveling below 70th street.  And I still haven’t figured out how to use the camera that a friend gave me for my birthday.  But new classes are coming up for the fall season at the 92nd Street Y.  Tour guide.  I’m good at meeting new people, but then there are so many of them marching around Rockefeller Center.  I’ll bet they are very territorial.  How about French Chef?  Julia Child became a phenomenon late in life.  But I’ve never even boiled water.  I just removed an entire library of recipe books from my closets and their lying on my living room couch.  This little book farm is sprawled out disabled, out of action.  They remind me of former of engagements.  I know I should get rid of them.  Donate them to a happy cooker.  It’s hard to part with past unmet expectations.  What are the new ones?  I hear the mumbling of the TV.

So, God, don’t you think it’s time that you tell me what my mission in life is?  What only I am meant to do?  As I think this, I hear a character from an old black and white film say, “Trust in God, and be yourself.  And I wondered, does God give us messages through the television set?Image