Learning What Counts

We are, to be sure, a people who count. We count our blessings and from the
second night of Pesach, we count the omer until we reach Shavuot. Left to my own devices, I inevitably forget the whole endeavor by day three of the forty-nine-day cycle. My youngest son, however, rarely fails to turn the scroll on his omer-tracker.

Having drawn close to the foot of Mount Sinai on Shavuot, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between our desert wanderings and the antics of my children.

Eager to be where we were going, we behaved incorrigibly towards Moshe. With the insistence of a toddler, we wanted water and we wanted it now. We challenged authority like typical adolescents – remember the golden calf? -- and we broke the most sacred of rules. It felt as if we will roam the desert forever, until our circuitous route enabled us to figure out exactly who we are.

It was, in fact, those detours along the way that were so invaluable to our development. That’s why G-d kept us out there for forty years. And we did get there, rising to the occasion and agreeing to the Torah’s terms before we even knew the details.

I believe, too, that my boys will get where they are destined to go whether or not I insist that they put away their laundry. And yet, it is precisely the little annoyances, the ones that exasperate them – the requests to load the dishwasher and schlepp in the groceries, for example – that will polish them to a buff shine in time for me to hand them off, G-d willing, to their brides.

Besides, the best route isn’t always the direct line between two points. Forks in the road give us the chance to stop and think, rather than run on autopilot.

We bring children into the world, but we cannot forecast their futures, nor can we predict every leg of their individual journeys. Like most parents in our community, my husband and I always assumed that our boys would attend yeshiva, yet our youngest goes to the local public elementary school. The choice, though still fraught with anguish, was evidently clear.

I will not lie and say that there was no disappointment on our part. I will also not pretend that we were never frustrated with the yeshiva’s limitations or furious with teachers and principals who were simply not interested in trying to fit our square peg into their round schools. But at the end of the long, soul-searching day, we suspected correctly that it was in public school that he would find a smoother path to academic fulfillment.

Though we have tried to create a parallel Jewish school experience for him, he has regrettably missed opportunities along the way. For now, he learns regularly with a morah and a rebbe, and all evidence thank G-d points to him reaching the same Jewish milestones as his brothers. From his very beginnings, he has charted his own course, and we have taken the enormous leap of faith required to accept that.

When others wonder at our decision, I point them to the lessons found in the actual giving of the Torah. G-d did not have the tablets waiting in His outstretched arms when we reached the other side of the Red Sea. He first demanded proof of both our faith and our fortitude by winding us through a rigorous physical and spiritual obstacle course, one we could not initially comprehend.

Though it is primarily Jewish wisdom that guides me as we approach Shavuot, I also find myself consulting the sports philosophy imparted by my sons: Every play is the most important of the game.

Our desert meanderings were never for naught. After all, G-d gave us His Torah in an unforgettable, grand slam in the last game of the series sort of way. All of us – generations past, present and future – were there to witness it. Regardless of our background or our place in time, there could have been no doubt that we all counted in His eyes.

The Maternal Barometer

With the exception of fast days and the occasional Shabbes when, Lord help me, I forget to put up the urn, I always begin my mornings with a cup of coffee. It is a total sensory ritual. The aroma. The taste. The large ceramic cup that warms the span of both of my hands. And let’s not disregard what the punch of caffeine does to my poorly-rested brain.

A simple pleasure, yes, but very little in this world makes me happier.

Though I’m perhaps less alert before I’ve enjoyed the full cup, I’m not grumpy in the morning and need no powering up time. I go from zero to sixty, heading downstairs while everyone else is still asleep, I prepare a take-out menu that includes three breakfasts, four lunches, and one dinner, plus snacks, while my hot latte looks on. If there’s time, I’ll run down to the basement and fold some laundry, then back up to empty the dishwasher.

My maternal barometer at this point remains in a peaceful state. I’m feeling productive and am reasonably certain that the immediate future will be agita-free. I sense, I really do, that I may possibly be in control of the chaos, for the moment anyway, and I’m smiling like those suddenly regular folks in the probiotic yogurt commercials.

What comes to mind, however, is what my Hungarian co-workers used to say when I lived in Budapest: The Americans are smiling because they have no idea what is really going on. Indeed, my biggest challenges are still in bed, which means the jury is still out on what kind of day I am going to have.

Like a stealth warrior, I gingerly climb the steps and proceed to door number one. At this precise moment, I don’t yet know if the prize is a dud or a dream kitchen. So I pause and breathe deeply, using the Lamaze techniques that did me no good during the birth of any of my children. I enter and head towards my eldest, tripping over piles of laundry and shin guards and who knows what else along the way. After all, it is still dark at this hour.

Quietly, I announce that it is time to wake up. And then I wait. A peaceful response from my eldest – even a short, soft grunt -- bodes well. Next I turn to awaken my middle son, who might offer a gentle “I’m up.” I exit the room feeling good, confident in my parenting and grateful for my loving relationship with my children. I giddily hand off lunches and sometimes even get a hug. I now feel like a gazillion dollars. I’m so happy that heck, I don’t even need to finish the coffee.

It only gets better when my youngest, who sleeps like a burrito tightly wrapped in blankets and sheets atop a large stuffed dog I purchased years ago during a fit of working mother guilt, wakes up on his own. When he shuffles downstairs already dressed – I mean in school clothes and shoes, not his boxers – then I know it’s going to be a great day. The stars have aligned and Mashiach is imminent and world peace is on its way. I take a sip of coffee just to be certain I’m not dreaming.

Now the morning can go the other way, too. If, when I head upstairs, the teenagers grunt loudly (Leave me alone) or rattle off a list of frustrating requests (I need an obscurely-colored, rarely available item for school – today -- and what do you mean you don’t have one handy my bus leaves in fifteen minutes?), well, honestly, it spells trouble. These disagreeable encounters cause tension, which foment a quarrel between boys who would rather be sleeping and their mom, who would prefer to be sipping her hot latte.

Suddenly, everyone is in a huff and the sun has not yet come up. I am by now entirely unhinged. All of the lattes in the world -- with the exception perhaps of one I might drink with my husband in Florence – cannot wash this away. I feel icky and sad, flagellating myself for not saying the right thing or for endeavoring to talk to them at all.

If on top of this excitement, the youngest refuses to emerge from the burrito and then cannot find his shoes because he’s tossed them somewhere, the tension intensifies. I suggest gently that one shoe is likely in his laundry basket and the other on the book shelf, and I’m often correct, but he is also determined to be right. We disagree and I’m derailed another rung.

And the guilt! Oy! Surely, if I did not work at all and devoted myself entirely to keeping house, perhaps his room wouldn’t be in a condition conducive to shoes gone missing in the first place and I’d be back to a state of calm.

Soon enough, though, everyone has gone about their day. The house is suddenly, eerily quiet, if not quite ready for its close-up. I sit down to work, first considering whether this morning was the worst of our lives, whether a spat over missing yarmulkas or forgotten permission slips will set our relationships off course. If we argue over such silliness, will they care for me when I’m old and infirm?

On cue, my phone dings. It’s a text, one of the older boys asking for something – money or permission to go a friend’s house – but I see that it begins with “Mommy please.” Suddenly, it doesn’t matter what the request is for. That “Mommy” has straightened me back up and put a smile on my face. They’ve forgotten the morning’s blip, if they thought of it at all. I struggle to do the same, to reign in my innate sense of drama.

Time passes quickly and I make it through as much of my agenda as I can before heading out for school pick-ups. Like a film scene rolled in reverse, here we go again. The last out is the first home, and I test the waters as I do in the morning, gauging what kind of afternoon I’m going to have. As the rest file in, everything from the reaction to what I’ve made for dinner to the way they’ve answered my “hello” can set me off again. They are either teenagers or nearly so, and I’m a walking barometer, a too sensitive one I think my boys will say.

Before long, it is already past my bedtime. The evening’s success or failure – read: my mood -- depends entirely on the boys’ suppression or expression of sibling rivalry. As I weigh their impact on my daily life, I catch a glimpse of my morning coffee, still there, forlorn on the kitchen counter. It is cold and undrinkable at this point. Still, it is a reminder that hope will brew anew tomorrow morning. And perhaps, just possibly, I will get to drink it while it’s still hot.

Our Cleaning Lady’s Bar Mitzvah Year

I’ve heard it told that friends should never share cleaning help. But my cleaning lady came blessedly into my life on the recommendation of my friend Susan, whose own mother-in-law Anna made the initial shidduch that brought Susan’s house to order. I am forever grateful to both of them.

I’d already been through numerous cleaning people over the years, most of them lovely. The exceptions were the ones who kept breaking things and the one who cast aspersions on my housekeeping skills, which was just silly. If I had stellar housekeeping skills, I wouldn’t have needed her services in the first place.

In any case, they spoke a multitude of languages I could not understand. I then worked full-time, commuting three hours round-trip each day, and was never home when they arrived. The combined result was an entirely unproductive enterprise, since I had to leave it to them to decide what it was that I needed done.

So Susan’s recommendation was a godsend. For starters, she spoke Serbian, a sister to the Croatian language I thankfully learned to speak years ago. As she took her place in my trifecta of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who have enabled me to manage my life (sort of, anyway), my Croatian husband had a good chuckle about my being some kind of Balkan magnet.

The first of the threesome was our babysitter, Blanka. We met in the elevator of our building when I was pregnant, returning from the hospital with bed rest orders. She kindly asked me which floor. I recognized her Croatian accent and three days later, she was keeping my older boys – then mere toddlers – busy on Shabbat mornings so my husband could go to shul. Though we now rarely need a sitter, she is still a part of our extended family.

Years later, when we moved into our fixer-upper home, I sought recommendations for contractors to render it livable. Coincidentally, two of the three were ex-Yugoslavs. We chose Zak, the one from Croatia, before we could even ask that personal of a question. He, too, has since interwoven himself into our lives, in part because he still fixes everything that breaks in our house (we have boys, so let your imagination run wild).

But it is really Jovanka, our cleaning lady from Serbia, who has steadied my universe since she first walked through the door. She always tells me that I’m “naša,” the equivalent of a landsman; that I was born in New York is irrelevant. She shares riotous tales and village wisdom as it applies – or not -- here in New Jersey. For thirteen years now, she has taken me under her wing, even if the resident elves restore the house to its former state of disorder just hours after she leaves.

Every year on my youngest son’s birthday, she recalls watching me writhe in agony while on bed rest. She was sure that I would not survive his pregnancy and worried herself into knots. Tell me, though, how many people can say that their cleaning lady prays for them?

Once I’d hung a picture above the beds in our room. I came home the night after Jovanka had been here to find it leaning against the wall. We put it back up, but the next time, sure enough, the picture was down again. It seems a woman in her village had died when the picture hanging above her bed had fallen on her. Years later, still nothing hangs on that wall in our home. I wouldn’t dare.

Jovanka loves that I cook and especially that I bake challah, like a good village woman who makes her own bread. This only proves to her that I’m really a Balkan sister. That said, she has choice words for me because I don’t iron my husband’s shirts. To placate her, I taught her how to make knaidlach. It seems to have worked.

The relationship has been wonderful, long may it reign. Still, there has been one fly in the ointment: my boys’ rooms.

For years, I’ve complained to her about their mess, about their lack of fastidiousness, about their inability – despite their athletic prowess – to get their dirty clothes in the laundry basket, not on the floor right next to it. With a wave of her hand, she would poo-poo my concerns, saying, “Aaah, decki (boys).” So I’d lock their rooms, and she’d find her way in, cleaning them anyway.

Last week, though, clear out of the blue, she declared that it is now time to teach them to clean up after themselves, put away their own things, and hang their own clothes. I nearly plotzed. Surely, she knows that I’ve been trying for fifteen years to do just that, though clearly without much success and sometimes without her complete support.

In the to-the-point yet loving way in which she states everything, she added another round of village wisdom: “They are no longer little boys.” I realized then that all along I’ve been asking them to clean for me. The time has come that they do it for themselves.

The Great Pesach Heist

I’ve been robbed.

Oh, it came as no surprise, though I did not exactly court the trouble myself. My son arrived in this world when he did, six weeks early of his own volition, right on the cusp of Pesach. I returned from the hospital following a C-section and immediately set to kashering my kitchen, a fact I look back upon still today with utter fascination. From whence came the strength, I do not know.

But a fleeting thought came to mind even then: his bar mitzvah would fall out on Shabbat Hagadol. For years, it was something to speculate about with a bit of a nervous chuckle. Eventually, however, the nervous chuckle transformed into full-blown panic when we realized that the first seder would begin that year on a Monday night.

Not exactly perfect timing if you aren’t the sort to spend the holiday in a resort hotel on the beach. And I am not.

Friends and family gently suggested that I consider moving the date, but that wouldn’t have been easy either given conflicts with other bar mitzvahs already on the calendar. Ultimately, G-d had the deciding vote. I’m simply not one to play games with His scheduling. If Shabbat Hagadol is when He wanted the bar mitzvah to take place, that’s when it would take place.

So we proceeded accordingly, and it all looked so doable from far from away. Distance has that remarkable ability to calm our nerves, to convince us that there’s plenty of time to get it all done, to reassure us in the way Israelis say, “yehiye tov.” It will be good.

And yet, the confluence of events suddenly struck me like a ton of bricks once the year of his bar mitzvah arrived. Then the countdown – months, weeks, now days -- began, and I immediately found myself split in two. One half lurched towards Pesach, the other half towards the bar mitzvah. A sliver of me stayed in the center lane, trying to hold down the rest of the work-life-laundry fort. I soon took to using a large piece of paper to manage it all, folding my shopping and to-do lists into three columns.

Now, with less than a week to go until the bar mitzvah and one extra day left until Pesach, I feel much like my fifth grader, whose gym curriculum includes a circus unit. They juggle. They balance plates on sticks. But as my fifth grader -- who has mastered keeping three balls aloft -- will tell you, mismatched objects cannot travel easily in a continuous round. Likewise, a fragile stick cannot keep a heavy plate in the air.

With the pressure on to do too much at once, my frustration has made me into one of those snapping turtles in the aquarium. I need a coffee I.V. to function and I can hardly eke out a smile. I barely recognize myself and Lord knows I don’t admire myself in this state.

Generally, I love this time of year. I enter Pesach cleaning season like a kid in a candy shop. All of the organizing and cleaning and sorting and clearing out set my heart beating as if I’m falling in love with my husband all over again. Almost nothing makes me as happy as lining up bags to donate or pass along to friends. I don’t even mind the smell of Windex and Comet seeping into my skin because the end result – appliances that look brand-spanking new – is so worth it.

But on another level, nothing matches the conversations I have with G-d while I’m cleaning as I get ready for seder at a slow and steady pace. We talk about everything. While wiping down the cabinets, I am wiping my slate clean, too. I apologize for my impatience with my children and my slothfulness when I do not make it to shul, hoping my fastidiousness in preparations for the holiday will somehow make amends.

This year, however, I’ve been denied that lengthy preparation time, rushed as I am with all sorts of distractions. Instead of self-reflection, I’m simply ticking things off lists. Forget about prayer. I’m lucky I’m awake! And so, what has long been a meaningful period of spiritual focus has been stolen right out from under me by thieves who snuck in under the cover of chaos.

This morning, however, I awoke annoyed with myself. Shame on me, I said, for failing to see the wonder of all that is happening around me. I decided to slam on the brakes and take a detour away from the traffic in order to find a way to be genuinely happy – right now. It is unfair, I realized, to allow all of this stress to mute my son’s simcha. Likewise, poor Pesach is awash in the tumult, too. At this rate, nothing is getting the attention it deserves.

And you know what else I realized? I’m entitled to my time with G-d as well. I have scheduled a shorter conversation with Him for later this evening when I’m cleaning the freezer.

So friends, there’s the rub! The burglars may have pocketed a few things, but they left behind the gift of focus.

Gone, for this year at least, are my Pesach-induced neuroses. There’s simply no time for spring cleaning. I will pay close attention to the blessings that nullify whatever chametz I missed in my swoop through the house. As it always is, the kitchen will be kashered and thank G-d, no one will go hungry. The important thing is that we will be together for the holiday.

As for the bar mitzvah, my sons are my greatest blessings, and I’m glad to have had the reminder this year. I promise myself to be present in the moment when my middle man stands to read from the torah. As Grandma Sadye liked to say, I will stick out my chest in pride and be grateful with a full heart.

And once the bar mitzvah is over and Pesach has begun, I will remember to send the burglars a thank you note.

We Have Guests

About a week ago, our older sons made an astute observation. While walking through the yard, they noticed that the vent covering the attic fan had been pried open. This, we knew, could not be good. On the other hand, we were amazed that two individuals constitutionally incapable of noticing dirt could be so observant.

At first, we attributed the damage to Hurricane Sandy. Perhaps a tree branch had flown through the air, bending the metal as it slammed into the side of the house. But we quickly eliminated that possibility from the running since we’d done a thorough post-storm inspection of the exterior months ago.

After a brief moment of panic about what might be the actual culprit -– something had surely come to roost -- I made a mental note to have the vent tended to posthaste. Then the thought slipped from my sleep-deprived, caffeine-addled brain as if it had never been there.

You see, I’ve been busy making a bar mitzvah for our middle son, who first arrived into this world on the eve of Pesach, which means of course that he becomes a man at the very same time thirteen years later. The scheduling isn’t wonderful, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

Although we could not switch when he will first be called up to the torah, we did decide to keep our sanity intact and book his party a month earlier. With centerpieces to construct out of assorted Nerf balls, I only vaguely recalled the open vent issue. And then that most awkward of jobs -- table arranging, which requires stealth tracking of who is not speaking to whom right up to the last moment before the event – completely flushed it from my mind.

We had guests coming from far and wide to celebrate, to laugh at my son’s jokes and to partake of a carefully selected brunch buffet. Who was thinking about silly things like vent covers and Animal Planet?

Well, shame on me, because the afternoon following the party, which was lovely by the way, I finally collapsed from complete exhaustion onto the living room couch. And then I heard it, moving its hairy little self across the floorboards in the unfinished attic. These were not the footsteps of a clomping teenager on the prowl for food. These belonged to a member of the rodent family on the prowl for food.

Moments later, the same teenager who does not hear me call him to take out the garbage heard the padding of the beast’s paws in transit and shouted as if I’d stolen his Mac.

We clearly had company.

I called the exterminator’s emergency hotline, but it was Presidents’ Day weekend and no one was available. I could not believe the company’s level of irresponsibility. What was the point of the emergency hot line? Was there no on-call doctor, I mean exterminator? This was, after all, a crisis.

Over the phone, the operator tried to reassure me: “It is very unlikely that whatever is up there will find its way into your house.” I was not reassured. It was already IN our house!

On edge, we all slept with one eye open, except my husband – G-d bless him – who can sleep through more or less anything. Our youngest, however, was so excited about the prospect of meeting whatever was up there that he stayed completely awake, afraid to miss the yet unidentified animal as it burst through a soffit.

The next morning, as promised, Brian the exterminator came to lay traps. I greeted him as if he’d arrived to redeem a city under siege, my checkbook in hand. His initial inspection hinted at nothing specific, but he has a sixth sense for this kind of thing. This, after all, is what he does.

“You’ve either got a raccoon or a flying squirrel,” he told me, as if he’d announced a school closing on the morning of a snow day.

Flying squirrels and raccoons? You could have knocked me over with a feather.

One day later, Brian – whose visits I began to treat with enormous trepidation – crawled out of the attic to report evidence that proved his raccoon theory. There were prints in the dust. At first, I got defensive about my housekeeping skills, but it’s not like I was expecting guests to stay up there.

The traps in place, the bait set (cat food on day one, tuna on day two), we went on with our lives and waited for the raccoon to find his hungry way into the cage. Brian warned us how that would sound, but I’ll spare you the details. Throughout the day, I heard things – walking, thumping—until suddenly, it went silent. Brian quickly sealed two of the vents with screen and said the raccoon had probably hidden in the insulation.

Yet another night went by with nothing doing in the traps. Brian told me not to worry, assuring me that “we” would take care of the problem. I assured him that “we” would be doing nothing of the sort. “He” would be taking care of it and “I” would be paying for it (and a pretty penny, too).

Certain that it was up there, lying low, our youngest refused to go to school. He didn’t want to miss seeing the raccoon in the cage being carted off for a road trip at least fifteen miles from here (that’s the required distance according to whatever authorities determine such things). But we employ a kind and understanding exterminator, who promised to do his daily inspection after 3:30 p.m. instead of first thing in the morning.

The week nearly over, Brian arrived on Friday and noticed that the one unsealed vent had been pried open. Apparently, our raccoon had seen the writing on the wall and fled. We were the underdogs, but we’d won this round.

While reveling in that short-lived window of victory, I suddenly recalled the ground hog that burrowed a country home under the bay window last year. And there is the family of deer – all seven of them – who take their breakfast under the swing set in the yard and the squirrels who hang out in the garbage cans.

I don’t live in the suburbs. I live on a wildlife preserve.

Meanwhile, Brian strolled off onto the horizon, empty metal cages in hand. Though I wished it weren’t so, I knew in my heart I’d not seen the last of him.

Embracing My Tfoo-Tfooing Heritage

It should come as no surprise that someone as compelled by kaparot as I am would also spend a great deal of time dodging the evil eye. But I’ve often wondered about this avoidance aspect of Judaism that requires SWAT-like tactics to maneuver around the sheydim lurking in every corner.

This tfoo-tfooing habit of mine, ingrained in me by my mother and grandmother, has not been plucked out of thin air. It is rooted in Jewish ritual and Talmudic tradition and arrived from Europe with my great-grandparents. I presume that Old World habits initially cushioned their adjustment to America’s newness, but they died hard, sticking with my predecessors -- and by extension, our family -- for generations.

My first experience with the evil eye occurred beyond my range of memory, when I was a mere infant swaddled in my crib. With my mother out of sight, my paternal grandmother stuck a knife beneath my pillow to ward off the approach of the other-worldly villains waiting to snatch me. You can imagine what the knife’s discovery did for mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relations. Today, though, the pillow would be considered just as deadly, but that’s neither here nor there.

The tfoo-tfooing came later, when I was old enough to realize that relatives were not exactly spitting at me, but instead aiming to create a force field that would shield me from all shades of invisible doom. The expectoration followed something that sounded like keninahurrah to my young ears, a pronouncement preceded by shaynaponim and an often violent pinch of my cheeks.

While trying on a new dress that needed altering, I was required to chew on a piece of thread, a trick meant to send the Angel of Death walking. This always flummoxed me. I simply could not fathom how my mother would allow me to place in my mouth something that had been at the bottom of her sewing box, yet she forced me to throw out a cookie that had been on the spotless kitchen floor for mere seconds.

But there was more, all designed to keep us one step ahead of the bad guys – the ones ready to snatch our souls, our money, our belongings, our good luck, our future. There were every day proscriptions, too, like not walking around the house in socks, especially white ones, taking care not to trim our toenails in order, and never, ever, ever sitting on a table.

And G-d bless the pregnant, for there was an entire orchestra of tfoo-tfooing composed for that nine-month period alone. But my favorite, the one to which I adhered to the letter of the law when my turn came, was the prohibition against entering a zoo, for if my sons had been born hairy and funny-looking, I would have had no one to blame but myself.

I know from discussions with friends that I am not altogether unique in this way, that many of us, in fact, have a shared history in this business. I find it remarkably comforting to know that I have compatriots in the fight to scare off the ayin harah, the sheydim, and the dark angels. In the spirit of camaraderie, I have even incorporated friends’ techniques into my own already extensive repertoire. So I no longer leave water uncovered overnight and always take care to line up pairs of shoes in the correct position.

Genetically predisposed in this way, I worry about even the slightest of missteps. And I wonder, too, whether this approach is, at its core, a healthy way to live in an otherwise fragile world or if, perhaps, it is nothing more than shtetl-minded superstition best dropped in the spirit of modernity.

In the end, the arrival of the daily paper convinces me to keep at it. It offers reports of endless tragedy and suffering, natural disaster, man-made disaster, economic decline, and celebrity dysfunction, with only an occasional feel-good story about an adorable rescue dog in Montana. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind a force field that keeps the scary world out, even if I appear to be a bit of a superstitious ninny.

Long-term, though, these traditions, whatever their authentic origins, seem to have found their end with my children. The boys walk around in white socks all the time and toss their shoes haphazardly about. When asked, they will tell you the reasons I’ve asked them not to: Socks get dirty. Shoes get lost. There will be no mention of the evil eye or ghosts or the satan. That part slipped unnoticed through their memories, the genetic trait through a generation.

I presume they will eventually find their own way to ward off the unwanted and to protect what is dear to them. Or maybe, just maybe, when they have children of their own, they will need the comfort that a little knocking on the kitchen table and some hearty tfoo-tfooing can provide. I may yet, one day, hear them mumble an incantation they recall from their childhood, and perhaps thoughts of their superstitious mother – their fellow soldier in arms -- will bring a smile to their faces.

Leaks, Locks and Other Kaparot

Though we are closer to Pesach than we are to the Days of Awe, the idea of kaparah in all its incarnations has been a hot topic for me the past few weeks. I figured I’d first sort through the thoughts swirling around in my head before putting them in writing, hence the longer than usual gap between postings.

Well, that, and we’ve been quite busy with repairs. More about that later.

Foremost on my mind has been the ritual side of things, but fear not. Though I have nine deer walking through my yard each morning, I have no intention of taking up the sacrificing of wild beasts as a hobby. On the other hand, it might up the ante on the gossip at the kosher butcher were someone to see me swinging a live animal around my head in the yard.

As for that sort of kapores, I have fond memories of my grandfather’s quirky interpretation of the rite on the eve of Yom Kippur. He would take money in his hand and encircle his balding pate three times, check that no one was down below, and toss the coins out the window of the apartment building onto the sidewalk. He assured me that it was always gone by the time he left for shul.

Personally, I’ve never gone for the swinging chicken thing either, mostly because of the aroma. I also feel awful about taking it all out on a bird, even if I’m not a vegetarian. Like my grandfather, I put a few dollar coins in my hand instead and designate them the new owner of my misbegotten infractions. I swing them around for G-d to see and recite a prayer that certifies the exchange. By the time I’ve put the funds in the pushka, I can breathe easier.

This symbolic shoving of my sins out of the way and the transfer of responsibility to something that will never make me feel guilty about it gives me goose bumps. It’s a beautiful thing, all that letting go.

The other sort of kaparot, though, the ones G-d sends us year round when we least expect them, are an entirely different story. They throw me for a loop, even as we pronounce assuredly, “It’s a kaparah!” when they occur. Although it is possible that I’m just noticing them more often, it seems that they are more plentiful around here lately.

A bruised funny bone, a raw egg fallen to the floor, or a flat tire -- they arrive like packages tied up in ribbon, little gifts with deeper meanings that leave me mystified. I am left to wonder whether they have wiped the slate clean, atoning on my behalf for something I have already done wrong. Or, perhaps, they have spared me from a worse fate – a broken arm, salmonella, or an accident.

Unlike the ritual kapores in which I must take the lead, in these instances it is G-d who takes the bull by the horns. Through them He offers me a cautionary tale, warning me to watch my every step, pulling me out of my stupor, and reminding me to pay more attention to His master plan. Though He had bigger, more ominous things in store for me, He’s compassionately and lovingly allowed my washing machine to overflow into my basement instead.

I take notice, but rather than think too much about what the flood replaced in the cosmic order, I simply say thank you.

Then, two days after the laundry incident, a rush of leakage-themed kaparot – small, wet, messy things – began to greet me at every turn: spilled milk on the kitchen floor, red horseradish dripping from top to bottom of the refrigerator, sour apple beverage mix seeping out of the bottle onto the carpet in my van.

Soon after that, we turned a corner, straight into a string of lock- and door-related kaparot.

First, the storm door handle broke, after which the front door deadbolt jammed. Just hours later, the spring on the adjacent coat closet flew out of position, making it impossible to close. And then came the final knell, when the handle on my van’s trunk door went limp.

We repaired and replaced, bemoaning both cost and aggravation. We pronounced the usual platitudes about houses being bottomless pits and rubbed our brows while standing in line at Lowe’s (again). We expressed amazement at how quickly ten years have passed since we moved into this house, and how many blessings – and vast, irreplaceable losses -- we have counted in that time.

But what, really, were all of these kaparot telling us? All of that water, all of those locks. Was there a kabalistic explanation? We worried we were veering off the right path or making the wrong decisions. But how were we to know?

Soon enough, we realized that we cannot know – will likely never know for certain – but the kaparot had surely gotten us thinking and praying. In the end, we resolved to take them at face value, to faithfully accept them as our package and as a sign that we were loved.

With gratitude and some peace of mind, I lit candles this past Friday night, knowing that my car and refrigerator had been restored to order and that the basement was clean and dry. I locked the repaired deadbolt on the front door as my husband left for shul and rested my weary feet on the ottoman.

Picking up a new book, I suddenly felt a chill that pointed to an expired thermostat battery. By the end of Shabbes, we realized the heating unit, too, had issues that required serious medical attention, as did the spreading pool of water beneath the humidifier.

My husband and I just looked at one another and shrugged, unsure whether to laugh or to cry, but thankful for our flannel sheets, for our plumber Bill, for our faith in G-d’s plan, and for one another.

As I drifted off to sleep, I considered that all of these year-round kaparot were possibly sending me a message that my kapores on erev Yom Kippur need a little shaking up.

Maybe this time around I will toss the dollar coins out the window, or I will give more serious consideration to the chicken.