Category Archives: Jewish Interests

My Friend Marc

marc

He was easy to spot. In a room full of frail, elderly people, Marc and his motorized wheelchair loomed large. His six foot four-inch thin frame rested on the chair, his head on the headrest, and his face inches away from the straw-like device that, through his breathing, powered him around the Daughters of Sarah, a nursing home in Albany, New York.

I had come to Daughters that afternoon to visit Rose, a 99-year old friend. But she had decided to attend a lecture, and I was waiting for her in the community room. So I used my free time to strike up a conversation with the young man, a rarity among the ancient. I found out that he had lived at Daughters for eight years, he was thirty-four years old, and he maneuvered his chair around the building chatting with young staff members for companionship—the only people in the facility close to his age. I asked him if I could visit him every week before my time with Rose, and he said, “Sure!”

Maybe because he was just two months older than my son Adam. Maybe because he is just a genuinely nice person. No matter, we just clicked. Over the next few weeks, I learned more about his situation. He had become a quadriplegic in a freak motorcycle accident when he was 16—yes, he was wearing a helmet! “Since the accident,” Marc told me later, “I really feel I haven’t had much choice in anything in life other than give up or carry on.”

His parents have been there for him since they got the life-changing phone call that their son had been in a terrible accident. “It was my strong-willed father who especially pushed me to improve my situation,” Marc said. “He posted a sign on my computer that read, ‘What can I do today to make myself more independent?’

For the first ten years, Marc had lived with his parents in their home near Sacadaga Lake. Finding good home health care to meet his needs became more problematic, and he and the family decided that Daughters was a better option for him.

Marc never exhibited any bitterness about his situation, and he rarely complained even when he was uncomfortable from his kidney stones or he struggled with breathing. He loved his family and Westerns and fishing and stock car racing. I picked up 101 Things You Should Know About NASCAR from the library and studied the book so I could talk intelligently with him about the sport. To my husband Larry’s amusement, I even started following the results in the newspaper and caught some of the races on the television.

Marc also liked McDonalds, so I often stopped on my way to the nursing home in one the franchise’s restaurant a mile from Daughters. The bag of burger and fries left a tantalizing trail of non-kosher, or what Jews know as ‘treif’—aromas down the hallway. It took a few times for us to find a rhythm as I fed him: two bites of the Big Mac, two fries, and two sips of soda. Repeat. He loved chocolate, so I usually brought him brownies or chocolate chip cookies, which he saved for later.

Marc owned a fully equipped handicap accessible van, which was kept in the nursing home parking lot. It took me a while to get the courage to take him for outings. One beautiful fall day, however, I asked Marc if he wanted to go for a ride. “Sure!” he said with a huge smile. He guided me through the process of opening up the back door, pushing him up the ramp, pulling his chair back to compensate for his height, and locking the mechanism in place.

We drove up the Northway and across the Twin Bridges. We got an ice cream cone at the Country Drive-In and then sat in a small park near the Mohawk River. The autumn foliage was at its peak, and the sky was a brilliant blue. We had a little scare when the battery light on his van went on. But I managed to deliver him and his vehicle safely back to Daughters.

Over the next three years, I visited Marc on a regular basis, even after Rose passed away. Weather permitting, we would take a field trip—a Chinese restaurant, Five Guys, Wal-Mart, a local mall. Our excursions taught me much about what Marc endures. Adults watched us furtively as I fed him wonton soup; children gawked and asked their parents loud questions as the two of us browsed an aisle in the Christmas Tree Shop. When we stopped in a hair salon, the beautician first directed her questions to me until I said emphatically, “Marc is perfectly capable of telling you how he wants his hair cut.”

There were many weeks I could not visit Marc—Larry and I were traveling, either Marc or I was sick, or bad weather prevented me from driving the sixteen miles down the Northway. But no matter, I treasured each of those visits with him.

When Larry and I decided to relocate to Florida, telling Marc about our impending move was one of the hardest conversations I had during that transition. Visits from other friends and family were—to me—too few and far between, and Daughters’ staff could not drive Marc in his van due to liability issues.

As Larry and I packed up our house, we needed to find a home for four photo collages that we had created from our trips. We brought them to Marc, and he had them hung up on the wall next to his family pictures and a digital photo album we had gotten him the previous Christmas.

On the last visit before we left, Marc and I decided to keep in touch through e-mails. I also promised him that I would mail him a postcard every Monday. On my last visit, I gave him a hug and cried as I made my way across the parking lot past his big blue van to my car.

When Larry and I came back the Albany for Thanksgiving five months later, our second stop with our rental car was Daughters. The first was a stop at Panera Bread for a brownie to bring to Marc. “We were in the neighborhood and thought you could use some chocolate,” I said, as we surprised him in his room. On the wall were the photo collages and all the the postcards that I had sent him from Florida and Colorado and California.

Marc continues to reside in Daughters of Sarah. He has had a couple of surgeries and more than a few health scares. His postcard collection grows, some I purchased during our travels and some given to me by friends and members of our community’s travel club.

In February, Marc celebrated his thirty-ninth birthday. He continues to carry on, to remain positive.

“I have some bad days when I am in pain or can’t breathe,” Marc told me. “But every day I get up and put a smile on my face. I try to make the best out of each day because I believe that someone always has it worse than I do.”

And every day, I am grateful that Marc is my friend.

Colorado Jewish High

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Larry and I pose outside the synagogue, now a museum in Leadville, Colorado

Rocky Mountain High: The Synagogue at 10,200 feet

While in Colorado for the summer, my husband Larry and I visited the town of Leadville, Colorado, during its Boom Day Festival, a celebration of the Old West. Gunslingers, burro races, mining skill contests, and over 100 food and craft booths filled the streets. We got ice cream cones and wandered down West Fourth Street, past a mining skills contest, where brawny men and women competed to see how many pounds of rock one could pile into a truck. And just down the street, we found the Temple Israel Foundation, a museum dedicated to a thriving Jewish community that existed in this Rocky Mountain city over one hundred and twenty years ago and the former site of a thriving synagogue.

Perched at 10,200 feet above sea level, Leadville is the highest incorporated city and the second highest incorporated municipality in the United States. It boomed in the late 1870s with the discovery of silver, resulting in an influx of migrants to this small mountain town. At its peak, the population of Leadville grew to approximately 30,000 residents.

Among the many groups of people attracted to the minefields in the high Rockies was a group of recent Jewish immigrants who migrated to the West and Colorado. Representing only 1% of Leadville’s population, the three to four hundred Jews came to Leadville for the same reasons as their non-Jewish counterparts: to improve their social and economic status, to find adventure, even to reinvent themselves. In 1879, the local opera house hosted Rosh Hashanah services, and in 1880, the Hebrew Benevolent Society purchased a cemetery for Leadville’s Jewish community. Soon after, the Jewish community built a synagogue and held its first service on September 19, 1884, the first day of Rosh Hashanah 5645.

For the next thirty-eight years, Temple Israel served a surprisingly large and active Jewish community. As a booming mining town, Leadville’s residents had amble opportunities to spend their earning on clothing and household goods, liquor, sex, and gambling. Leadville Jews provided services including dry goods stores, wholesale liquor and tobacco businesses, saloons, gambling houses, opera houses, and even brothels.

More well-known members of Temple Israel included two German immigrants, David May, the founder of May department stores; and Leopold H. Guldman, philanthropist and founder of Denver’s Golden Eagle Dry Goods Company. Benjamin Guggenheim, a first generation American and heir to the famous family’s fortune made in Colorado mines, was better known for his chivalry and death aboard the ill-fated Titanic.

Despite its remote location, Leadville was a modern industrial city. Jewish dry goods merchants offered the latest European fashions to the ladies. The better off gentlemen often sported diamond studs to accent their wardrobe.

By the first decade of the twentieth century, the boom was over, and the town’s Jewish population declined. In 1912, the last recorded event, a wedding, took place.

From 1914 through 1937, the synagogue sat shuttered and unused. The synagogue was converted into a single family residence, and the building took on several other non-religious functions, the last as four rental apartments.

In 1983, Bill Korn, a New York City native, relocated from Boulder to Leadville to take advantage of low real estate prices and proximity to great skiing. He purchased and was in the process of renovating several properties when he learned of the former synagogue and its overgrown cemetery. Motivated by his own German Reform Judaism roots and his belief in Martin Buber’s command, “If not you then who? If not now then when?” he explored ways to obtain both properties.

In 1987, the Temple Israel Foundation was incorporated “to acquire, historically rehabilitate, and maintain” the building. Korn purchased the synagogue in 1992.

For the next several years, Korn used the four apartment rental incomes to pay off the mortgage. The Foundation obtained a grant from the Colorado Historic Fund. Finally, ninety years after the temple shut its doors, renovations to bring the building to its former glory began. The Denver chapter of B’nai Brith led volunteer efforts each June to maintain the cemetery grounds and replace markers. In 2001, the cemetery was reconsecrated, allowing Jewish burials to resume. In 2012, a permanent exhibition opened that documents pioneer Jewish life with a collection of artifacts about Leadville, its resident Jews, Temple Israel as a synagogue, and life in a mining town in the 1880s and 1890s.

While not providing regular services, the building, with its Torah and bima, is now open for special events. Today, there are, according to Korn, approximately 80 to 100 Jewish people in the entire county. Bill Korn oversees the museum, and from May through October, two full-time staff members work as both guides and researchers.

Over 3200 people visit the museum each year, said Korn. They come not only from surrounding Colorado towns but also from all over the United States and even Israel. Korn said his most special guest was the granddaughter of Leopold H. Guldman, whose emotional response to the museum brought tears to Korn’s eyes.

Larry and I celebrate Rosh Hashanah each year in Kissimmee, Florida, elevation 49 feet above sea level. During the High Holy Days, however, we pass to reflect on the lovely synagogue in the highest incorporated city in America. We will think about Bill Korn and his generous efforts to bring Temple Israel to life for future generations. And we think about the long-ago Jewish congregation in Leadville celebrating Jewish life high in the Rocky Mountains.

Originally published September 29, 2016. Updated May 26, 2025.

What Makes Us the Same? Trip to Shoah Museum Inspires Writer to Find Commonality

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On a recent visit to Portland, Oregon, Larry and I visited the Holocaust Memorial. A pathway strewn with bronze sculptures of unfinished lives—a violin, a teddy bear, a torn prayer book, —brought us to a curved wall. Two columns were engraved with the brief history of the events that led to Hitler’s rise and its unfathomable consequences on Europe and the world. Plaques etched with memories from survivors are placed on a wall representing barbed wire. One read “As I looked back, my mother turned her face to avoid mine and my little sister gave me a frail and knowing wave;” another, “The fear has never left me.”On the back of wall were carved the names of family members of Oregonians who were lost in the Shoah. Below the names was the following statement:

Our precious life rests not on our ability to see what makes us different, one from another, but rather on our ability to recognize what makes us the same. What ultimately defines us is the moral strength to believe in our common humanity, and to act on this belief.

These words struck me especially hard on that beautiful June afternoon. Larry and I had flown out of Florida just days after the Orlando Pulse tragedy. As I stood in front of the memorial, I was overwhelmed with grief for all those lost in the Shoah. I also thought of those innocent lives lost to another madman who could only focus on differences and destroy so many lives with another act of senseless violence. I began to reflect on my own live and question as to whether I had done enough to focus on “what makes us the same.”

As a child, I knew I was different from most of the people in our small upstate New York town. Along with one other family, we were eleven Jews in a Christian town, an overwhelming .5% of the population. There were a few anti-Semitic instances: A teenage boy yelling “Heil Hitler!” and giving me the Nazi salute as the six-year-old me played innocently on my front yard; “lost” invitations to parties by those my parents tagged as anti-Semites; whispered jokes about my Jewish nose that went unnoticed by my teachers. For the most part, however, the people Keeseville embraced us, shared their Christmas trimming with us; came over for matzoh brie around our formica covered kitchen table. We focused on what we have in common.

Although exposed to diversity on our family’s visits to New York City , as a student at University at Albany, and through—as always— countries and cultures explored through reading, my everyday encounters rarely took me far from my white, Judeo-Christian environment. This changed, however, when I took a teaching position with the Capital District Educational Opportunity Center

The EOC, a division of Hudson Valley Community College, offers tuition-free academic and workforce development opportunities to disadvantaged and educationally under-prepared New York State residents sixteen years and older. Through my interactions with staff and students, I learned to appreciate many different cultures and backgrounds and their personal struggles. A Muslim pharmacist, after being imprisoned in her native country for giving medicine to a Christian, disguised herself as a Bedouin to flee to Egypt then to Albany. A young man had escaped with his family as one of the Vietnamese boat people. Both completed our GED and College Preparation Program and then graduated from Hudson Valley Community College. One of my fellow instructors had overcome a troubled background in Schenectady’s inner city to graduate from the cosmetology program, open his own salon, and then come back to the EOC to instruct hundreds of cosmetology students in the technical and life skills to succeed in his chosen field. I may have taught my students essay writing and grammar and study skills, but the people I encountered at the EOC taught me about courage and dignity and overcoming incredible obstacles. Our differences were secondary to our common goal of creating a better life for ourselves and our families. We all believed in our common humanity and acted on those beliefs. Even when I moved out of the classroom and into an administrative position, my greatest joy was meeting with students, having them share their stories with me, and promote the EOC through its many different success stories.

In the past few weeks, our country has experienced numerous tragedies that resulted from actions by those who failed to believe in the common humanity. Orlando, Florida. St. Paul, Minnesota. Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Dallas,Texas. The list of cities where incidents of senseless violence continues to grow.

“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice,” wrote the late Elie Wiesel, “but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” My protests may not take me to the streets, but it will take me to the written word, where I hope I can make a difference.

But maybe, it must start with children. When we lived in Clifton Park, our next door neighbors were an interracial couple—he a Caucasian from Massachusetts and she a Whitney Houston look-alike from Jamaica. We shared our yards and our lives with them and their four children who had inherited their mother’s brown eyes, mocha skin, and curly hair. One day, Julie and Katie, who were the same age, were shopping for matching lockets. When we brought the jewelry up to the counter, Julie, my blue eyed, blonde haired daughter, announced to the sales clerk, “I know we look like twin sisters. We’re not. We’re just best friends.”

Best friends. Or just friends or neighbors or fellow citizens. Whatever it takes, let us all strive to recognize what makes us the same, to prevent injustice, to repair the world. Tikkun Olam. Amen.

Originally published July 22, 2016. Revised April 2025.

Photo of Oregon Holocaust Memorial courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Where Was Freud When She Needed Him??

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Some people don’t remember their dreams. Mine are so vivid that they have become at times their own reality, creating some very embarrassing moments.

When Larry and I first moved to Clifton Park in 1976, we didn’t know anyone. At the urging of Larry’s mom, a lifetime member of Hadassah, I joined the fairly new but very active Clifton Park chapter. The very first meeting I attended, I sat with a group of women who were also newcomers to the community. We became friends, and several of us became pregnant the same year. We attended Lamaze classes together, went to each other’s son’s bris, and attended La Leche League meetings together. Yes, 1978 was a bumper year for Clifton Park Hadassah babies.

When my son Adam was around eighteen months old, that core of Hadassah mothers, along with a few other friends, formed a playgroup for our children. Each week, we would take turns dropping off our child with the designated mother at ten o’clock in the morning. Seven of us would go off on our merry way, free from toddler responsibilities for two blissful hours. The assigned mother would organize activities for the day’s playgroup. During the winter months, the children played with toys, participated in an arts and crafts project, or enjoyed a story time. In the summer, the children went outside and played on the swing sets or in sandboxes. The mom-in-charge fed the children lunch—usually peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, fruit juice and cookies. By twelve noon, the playgroup mom was more than ready to hand the visiting children back to their own mothers.

The group went well, and the children, for the most part, played well together. Yes, there were the expected outbursts and tantrums and fights.But this arrangement worked well for both the children and the mothers.

The eight of us became good friends, so I was saddened to hear that Fern, her husband Steve, and their son Marshall were moving to Chicago. I shared the news with my friend Diane during a phone call on a non-playgroup day.

Diane immediately questioned my information. “Are you sure?” she said. “I spoke to Fern yesterday, and she didn’t mention a thing about a move.”

“No,” I insisted. “Steve got a promotion with his company. Fern feels bad about leaving all her friends here, but she said this is an excellent opportunity for Steve. They are moving in two months.”

Diane was still doubtful. “Look, I have three-way calling on my phone. Let me get hold of Fern right now and the three of us can talk.”

I agreed and heard a few clicks and buzzes as Diane set up the conference call. We soon heard Fern’s hello.

“Hi Fern!” said Diane. “Marilyn was telling me that you are moving to Chicago!”

“I’m not moving to Chicago,” Fern immediately responded. “Where did you hear that, Marilyn?”

“We talked yesterday, I responded. “You told me all about Steve’s promotion and his transfer.”

“What promotion?” Fern said. “As far as I know, we are staying put in Clifton Park.”

It was just at that moment that the circumstances of my “conversation” with Fern fell into place. Horrified, I realized that this entire episode had taken place in a dream I had experienced the night before. Every moment of that dream came rushing back to me.

“Oh my G-d!”I exclaimed. “I am so very sorry! This whole conversation took place in my sleep!”

I was totally embarrassed. I stuttered my way through apologies to both Fern and Diane. They understood—as much as they could understand that this crazy lady couldn’t distinguish dreams from reality. And what if Fern thought it was ‘wishful thinking’?

All of the mothers in that playgroup remained friends through our children’s nursery school years that followed. Three years later, some of us mothers, who all delivered younger siblings in 1981, formed another playgroup with the same positive results.

Many of us joined the same synagogue. Even after some moved out of the area, we continued to stay in touch. We attended each other’s children’s bar and bat mitzvahs, rejoiced in their successes in high school and college, comforted each other during the sad times, and shared each other’s joy in our former toddlers’ marriages and the births of each other’s grandchildren. Obviously, Fern and her family didn’t move to Chicago. She and Steve still live in the same house that housed our sons’ playgroup over thirty-five years ago. She is currently president of Sisterhood and is stepping up to the plate to become the next president of Congregation Beth Shalom.

I still clearly remember the “conversation” I had with Fern. After that incident, I was a little more careful after waking up from a vivid dream. I have checked myself several times over the years, realizing that I was about to pull another “Fern Moment.” But I also remember our playgroup and the friendships that grew from those once-a-week get-togethers.

Never Forget

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How does one comprehend the unfathomable? How does one grasp how six million Jewish lives were snuffed out by a world gone mad? For me, it was through the lives of Anne and Elie and Sophie and Pavel and many others. Thanks to brilliant writers, I have experienced the Holocaust through literature.

Neither of my parents spoke of lost relatives as their families had emigrated from Russia by the early 1900s. My first in-depth exposure to the Shoah came from reading The Diary of a Young Girl. I was thirteen years old, the same age as Anne Frank when she started her journal. While I was worrying about acne and first crushes while living in a small, upstate town, Anne was worried about having enough food and not being caught by the Nazis while hiding in an Amsterdam attic. Her words were prominently displayed on a poster on my bedroom wall throughout high school and college: “I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Her journal, found after she perished in Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, remains one of my most beloved books

As a first year high school English teacher, I was assigned to teach Police State in Literature. It was a challenging course, made even more difficult for me as I was replacing a well-loved teacher who purportedly made Brave New World fun.

Instead, the students faced a young, idealist Jewish teacher who had been told to include in the curriculum. Night, Elie Wiesel’s memoir of his life in the Nazi concentration camps The following June, two of my students handed me their yearbook to sign. They had drawn swastikas on my picture. Refusing to sign them, I sadly realized Wiesel’s shattering tale had not impacted them as it had me.

Anne and Elie showed me the Holocaust through teenage eyes. Sophie’s Choice forced me to see it through the eyes as a grieving parent. William Styron’s novel depicted the story of a young mother who was forced by a camp doctor to make a heart-wrenching decision as she entered Auschwitz: She must choose which of her two children would die immediately in the gas chamber and which one would be allowed to live, albeit as a prisoner. Hoping her blue-eyed, blond-haired son had a better chance at survival, she sacrificed her daughter. I read the book when I myself was a mother of two young children. Reading about the grief and guilt that haunted Sophie for the rest of her short, tragic life broke my heart. Shortly after finishing the book, I woke up in the middle of the night screaming, “Don’t take Julie! Don’t take my daughter!”

Reviews of the subsequent movie were outstanding, and Meryl Streep won an academy award for her performance as Sophie. I myself have never seen the film. It was hard enough to read the book.

In 1994, a collection of art and poetry provided a way for me to revisit the Holocaust through the art and poetry by Jewish children who lived—and perished— in Theresienstadt concentration camp. A line in a poem by Pavel Friedman (1921-1944) provided the book’s name. “For seven weeks I’ve lived here/Penned up inside this ghetto/But I have found my people here./The dandelions call to me/And the white chestnut candles in the court,/Only I never saw another butterfly.”

The butterfly became my symbol of the Holocaust.Even today, each time I see a butterfly, I am reminded me of that young man standing behind a barbed wire fence wishing for freedom. In honor of Paval and the six million, I wear a chain on my neck with two gold charms: a Jewish star and a butterfly.

In recent years, literature helped me explore the Holocaust from the perspective of those on the other side of those camp fences: people who eked out their lives in war-torn Europe during Hitler’s reign Kristin Hannah’s novel The Nightingale followed the story of two sisters in Nazi-occupied France. The older sister Vianne desperately struggled to do whatever she could to keep herself, her daughter, and her friends—including a Jewish woman and her child—alive. The younger sister Isabelle risked her life to work for the Resistance. The description of physical and emotional deprivation experienced by those living through the four years of Nazi oppression gave me appreciation for the brutal,often deadly, conditions that were a fact of life for everyone—Jews and non-Jews— under Nazi rule.

Through a novel written by the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, I came to understand how experiences encountered in death camps often haunted not only the survivors but also their children. The Speed of Light, a novel by Schenectady native Elizabeth Rosner, tells the story of two adult children whose lives were shaped by their father’s time in Auschwitz. While Paula tried to bring her father joy through her globe-trotting career as an opera singer. Julian a scientist, lived as secluded, highly structured recluse. ‘My father …carried his sadness with him, under his skin, Julien states.”It was mine now.” How the siblings moved past their father’s demons and redeem themselves was a fascinating read.

I am grateful that despite all that has already been written about the Holocaust, the topic still generates literature that gives us new ways of examining one the darkest periods in civilization. “Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it,” wrote George Santayana. I will never fully understand the horrors endured by so many. But at least through the extensive amount of quality of literature available, I can at least hope we can learn ways to assure “Never again.”

Dayanu

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Browsing recently at a Denver airport store on my way home to Orlando, I was greeted by the clerk. Exchanging pleasantries, I asked him how his day was going. “Counting the hours, ma’am. Just counting the hours.” “It can’t be that bad,” I replied. “I am working a fifteen hour shift in a newspaper stand in an airport, “ he said. “And this with a college degree. As I said, ‘Just counting the hours.”

Okay, so this young man was not living his dream. But all I could think of is that the clerk appeared to be the same age as a friend of mine who became a quadriplegic twenty years earlier as a result of a freak accident. “Be grateful for what you have,” I wanted to say to this total stranger. “Don’t count the hours; count your blessings.”

On Passover, we Jews celebrate the physical and spiritual redemption from slavery. Each year, we sing Dayanu, a song which lists the steps leading to our freedom. In it, we are reminded of our need—our responsibility—to be grateful for all G-d has given to us.

Yes, it is sometimes difficult to be grateful. College degrees and sometimes lead to menial job. Cars break down; toilet overflow; a bite into a hard candy results in a $3000 dollar dental bill. But as a dear friend said to me after I complained about a costly home repair, these are all First World problems.

In addition, in our highly commercial, secular world, it is sometimes difficult to be happy with just enough. We are bombarded with advertisements promising us happiness if only we purchase a new car, a new home, even a new brand of soap. We are exposed to all this noise on television, on billboards, on ever-targeted ads on the internet between our Facebook posts.

I am sure the Jews who escaped Egyptian slavery complained. Some of the kvetching is recorded in the Torah, but I can only imagine the grumblings that were not written down. “Manna that tastes like coconut cream pie again? For one night, can’t it taste like my mother’s matzoh ball soup?” Or: “Who put Moses in charge? We’ve been wandering this desert for forty years. The man can’t find his way out of a paper bag!”

The child of parents who were on different ends of the “cup half full”/cup half empty” continuum, I struggled as to whether my father’s rose colored view of the world was a better way to go than my mother’s practical but less than optimistic outlook. Whereas my father was content with his life, my mother often compared herself and our lives to others, and she saw the grass as greener in the other’s yard. “Comparison is the thief of joy,” said Theodore Roosevelt. And also, in my eyes, the thief of gratitude.

When looking for property in Florida, Larry and I made the conscious decision to downsize. We chose a smaller home that, in line with most houses in the Sunshine State, had no basement and a fairly inaccessible, extremely hot attic. We purchased the home with all its furnishings in a community whose home owner’s association that took care of our lawn and shrubbery. As a result, we were able to divest ourselves of much of our belongings and start over. Once we unpacked—and gave another load of unneeded items to a local charity–we assured ourselves that we were never going back to having so much.

Despite my best intentions, however, I began to fall into my old habit of acquiring more than we needed. The search for that one last item to complete our new home—a new outdoor seating set, a water softener, updated lighting fixtures— was taking me away from where I wanted to be: grateful for what I had.

One day, while at a salon getting my hair cut, I saw a poster with the following affirmation: “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.” And somehow that quote from Melody Beattie was the kick in the pants I needed.

Researching studies in positive psychology, I learned that those who are habitually grateful are significantly happier—and even healthier— than those who are not. One recommended method to enhance these feelings is by maintaining a gratitude diary in which one records on a regular basis three to five things for which one is grateful.

Using a beautiful floral-covered journal a dear friend had given me as a going away gift, I started ‘counting my blessings’ each night before I went to bed. Some entries were major milestones: “I saw my granddaughter crawl for the first time!” Other day’s reflections were more mundane: “Larry and I laughed our way through a great ‘Big Bang Theory’ episode.” No matter what the magnitude, I was ending my day focusing on the positive.

In the process, I have turned the focus from how many material possessions I have to how much goodness I have in my life. “Collect moments, not things” says a Hindu expression. The journal gives me the opportunity to capture those moments: savoring an Upstate New York apple, reading a book to my granddaughter, sitting on our lanai and viewing the wildlife in our pond, appreciating one more day of good health.

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was thank you,” wrote Meister Eckhart, “that would suffice.” Or, in the word of the Passover seder, ‘Dayanu.’ Chag Sameah!

Mother’s Day

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Julie and me with family.

When our daughter Julie was expecting our first grandchild, she called me to tell me about the children of her friends, both around eighteen months old. She commented that the little boy is a little fussy and needy, with frequent meltdowns. Her other friend’s child is easy, calm and sweet; her name “Grace” says it all. Julie said that she hopes her child like Grace. My comment? “So you want a Grace, not a Julie, huh?” Not surprisingly, she wasn’t appreciative of my observation.

Larry and I were ecstatic the prospect of becoming grandparents. Julie and Sam had been married eight years prior to her pregnancy, and I wasn’t sure if they wanted to have children. Over Thanksgiving, 2014, however, we learned they were expecting a baby on a walk along the Mohawk bike path. Sam pointedly asked me how we were enjoying our hot tub. I told him how much we loved going in on cold November days, “A day like today!” I offered them towels, robes, a bottle of wine, and privacy.

“I can’t go into the hot tub, Mom,” piped up Julie. “And I can’t have a glass of wine.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because [—pregnant pause—] I am carrying your grandchild.”

Once I stopped jumping up and down, and once we promised we would not share the news with ANYONE until at least mid-January, I began reflecting on words of advice I could give to the new parents. On Mother’s Day 2015, in honor of her impending motherhood, I gave Julie the following advice:

Nothing will prepare you for the moment you hold your baby for the first time. Throughout my first pregnancy, Larry and I were thrilled about becoming parents. However, Larry and I had several discussions as to how our life would not change that drastically once s/he was born. We would bring our child everywhere, and we would continue to travel and work and socialize as we had done before. Once we each had held Adam in our arms for less than a minute, however, we knew that our lives were never going to be the same. The reality of taking care of a tiny, dependent being who needed every ounce of our physical and emotional attention to survive put any ideas of “business as usual” out the window. In fact, we didn’t mind turning our lives upside down. We would move mountains to make sure our son was well fed, dry, content, and especially safe. Three years later, I harbored similar thoughts regarding status quo while awaiting the birth of our second child. During my pregnancy, I thought to myself, “Okay baby, I will love you, but just know that we already have a child, and he will come first.” Again, I was proven wrong. The bonding was immediate and powerful, and our arms and hearts were more than big enough to accommodate another child.

Children don’t grow like lettuce. Whenever I encountered a bump in the road while raising our children, whether it was braces or a bad track meet or a broken heart, my mother would offer her favorite expression. Unlike lettuce, she would remind me, which you just put in the ground as a bunch of seeds and harvests thirty days later, children are work intensive. Things don’t always go smoothly, and you don’t sail through the eighteen years until they head off for college. It took me a while to realize raising children was more like growing prized orchids. And I have no green thumb.

Give your child roots to grow and wings to fly While raising these “delicate orchids,” Larry and I tried provide Adam and Julie with a supportive nurturing environment throughout their formative years. We tried to give them moral values, a strong sense of community and personal responsibility. It was not until Julie packed up her life in my used Toyota and moved to Colorado and Adam headed to the West Coast for law school and life in San Francisco that the Dalai Lama’s words wholeheartedly hit me. Oh, how I envy my friends who have children ten minutes away! I would even settle for three hundred miles. But this was not to be. They have forged a life a long plane ride—or two!—away. They both have put down their own roots far from where we live but are happy, settled, content, and doing what they need to do. We hope the root system we gave them will guide them in their journeys.

You ultimately know what is best for your child.

When Adam was six weeks old, I drove him to a local mall, put him in a red umbrella stroller, and pushed him through the stores, my first time shopping since he was born. A woman stopped me and said, “Oh my goodness! Your baby is all crunched up in that stroller, pale as a ghost! He looks dead!” I immediately pulled Adam out from carriage. He began howling with rage because I had jarred him awake. As she walked away, the “baby expert” commented, “Oh! I guess he was okay!” I learned quickly that I knew what I was doing, not some stranger. Remember those roots your parents gave you? Trust that they will help you grow as a parent.

Ironically, during Julie’s pregnancy, friends gave us advice about grand-parenting. We were told repeatedly that the moment we held our granddaughter in our arms for the first time, our life would never be the same. “It’s different with a grandchild,” a friend said. “It is as if you are holding your future.” We even got advice about when, where, and how to give advice to Julie and Sam. Until then, I hoped that the “mommilies” I gave Julie that Mother’s Day would be taken in the spirit in which they are given —with much joy and love

There Goes My Heart

The stories on "There Goes My Heart " capture special moments in a lifetime spent in Upstate New York, Florida, Colorado, and beyond.