Jiya Backup

I always thought of Grandpa Morris as tender hearted. But that impression changed when Adolf Eichmann was captured by Israeli agents and brought back to Jerusalem to stand trail. "If it were up to me," Grandpa Morris said to me, "there would be no trial.  I would cut a square inch of skin off his body each day and watch him rot to death." I was in my early teens and had been sleeping over at my Grandparents' home for the weekend. I was shocked. Grandpa Morris' entire family had been murdered by the Nazi's - his parents, those of his brothers and sisters who had not made it to America, his cousins, everyone except for one niece, Fransiska, who had survived Auschwitz. Grandpa's devotion to his family was part of family myth.  He would patch his sweaters at the elbow and send every bit of extra money back home. I'd watch him fold a sheet of carbon paper over the dollar bills so that the cash would go undetected by censors. There was another story ab...

     You may be wondering why Bobby always wore a baseball cap.  Even now,  I can see Bobby sitting in the "Camp", a tiny room between the bedroom and the bathroom, a space, nothing more than a cubby hole. Wearing his tortoise shelled round glasses and his baseball cap, he is thumbing through a stack of his beloved "Weekly Readers" which he has compiled into a book between two cardboard covers. He's laced them all together with the help of a long shoe lace. There he sits at age seven looking professorial.      But why the baseball cap, you ask? Well here's the story.  To save money, my Dad would cart the three boys off to Mr. Kahn's for a haircut - Mr. Kahn was an old Jewish barber who lived in the Hill District, the Black part of town in Pittsburgh. His haircuts were fifty cents a cut.       Problem was Mr. Kahn used an electric clipper and would shave the boys almost bald. This way they wouldn't have to come back too soon. ...

I was twenty and my sister was fourteen when we traveled to Israel on our own for the summer. We worked on a kibbutz in the heat of those dry days. When it came time, to go back home, I told my sister that I was staying. When she reached the front door of our family home, my parents said, "Where's your sister?"  She told them that I'd stayed in Israel. That October, I was wandering the streets of Jerusalem, when I spotted a sign on the window of a flower shop.  It announced a two week yoga class that was to meet for an hour each morning in the gym of a nearby elementary school. Then and there, I determined to attend. At the gym, I was greeted by a thin dark man from India, now living in Mauritias, an island off the coast of Africa. He traveled and taught. Before you knew it, he had taught us many yoga poses, the most challenging being the headstand. He taught us to lean against the wall for support, so that we wouldn't topple over. Back in my dorm in Kiriat Yovel,...

Chasing and chasing in the whirling wind, the songbird can not remember her song, the willow weeps, the running waters waver. Everything that was once lush, languishes. Hunters and gatherers, our longing hearts desire, ravage, and hunt,though some days, we stay close to the fire gathering what comes.     "I will somehow welcome what comes," I whisper. Hardly are these words out, when the songbird begins to hum her tune, the willow wipes her tears, and the wondrous waters flow merrily on their way.

After Chemo, surgery, and radiation, my hair returning, like a silver glaze, I'm once more on the open road, traveling home from Boston. From Harvard Square to South Station, then up the twenty concrete steps to the Amtrak area - no escalator this time. I'm clumping up the concrete steps, hoisting my copper-colored suitcase, struggling with each few steps when, right on cue, as if from Central Casting, a Sikh man in lavender turban gently wafts my luggage to the landing. At the landing, I thank him with "Sat Nam." At this, his eyes brighten to a golden glow. As I move on, I feel his gaze following me. Our angels, where do they come from, and how do they know when exactly to appear?

Dear Mummy lay dying in the jungle amidst fronds, primordials, birds of paradise in robes of orange and red, flowering jasmine, hibiscus, tuberose, the waving leaves of banana trees. Dear Mummy lay dying not far from my brother, but in her own space. On the morn of her death, I tried to feed her, but she swallowed only a spoon of applesauce. A peacock slept outside her room, always on the same branch of the same tree. That morn, he strode across the threshold of her room spreading feathers of indigo and turquoise. Circling, he screeched his song and was gone. When the hospice nurse arrived, she bathed Mummy; then sweeping her back and forth in the sheets, alerted me that her last breaths were drawing near. I perched on the bed, holding Mummy, At that indelible moment, my brother appeared, grief wrinkled onto his face. For all the fury of her life, Mummy left with radiance. "Goodbye my sweetheart, my friend," I said. The peacock had also managed to say his goodbye.