Friday, July 10, 2020

This Is A True Story



A very long time ago I held the baby in my arms in a brown and cream-checked easy chair, rocking back and forth while she screamed. Breathing in I calm myself, breathing out I smile, I said in my mind over and over back and forth. I got in a black car with a driver who took me to a nursing home in the Bronx where an Orthodox Jewish rabbi a supposed holy man recovered from a stroke. I walked down a hallway with the baby in my arms behind a small group of men in beards in black they turned left into a room there were no other women. The rabbi sat in a wheelchair his head on his shoulder his eyes looking straight at me and the baby and his eyes were clear and I had to look away look down not to escape but to absorb I guess (it's been 25 years). He said some things some things I won't repeat here although I've said these things before some things about eyes and evil eyes the whole time he spoke his head lay on his shoulder (the stroke) his beard lay on his chest he stroked the baby's head and said she'll be okay. He gave me a small medal with a sign on it that I pinned on the inside of her clothes for months, maybe years, taking it off each small shirt, dress, onesie, for months until it turned black it was cheap and magical. Years go by went by are going and as she seized seizes I say you're okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay and for a while I thought it would be okay and then I thought (with rue) when? and then with dark humor I forgot to ask when? and now it's all okay, it's really okay. 



May we be well, happy and peaceful.
May no harm come to us.
May no difficulties come to us
May no burdens weigh us down
May we always meet with success.
May we have strength, resilience and courage to meet the inevitable failures and disappointments in life.
May we be held.
May we be transformed.

12 comments:

  1. Amen to all of it. Amen and love.

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  2. You have done what any mother would have done. And then you have done more and more and that is why Sophie is absolutely okay.
    A beautiful post full of miracles.

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  3. LOVE! I guess it's not that things become OK, it's that our ability to cope makes them OK. It's an entirely internal process.

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  4. Sophie has your unconditional Love, which is something every human being needs, regardless of their state of Being. It is how it becomes okay to just Be, however we just Are. Us Mothers of Children and Grandchildren with extreme Parenting Needs that will last a Lifetime have to get past the When and just focus on the Now. My Mantra was saying Everything Is As It Should Be... even tho' it wasn't as I'd want for it to be in a 'perfect world' of Parenting, Living, Loving. It is Enough, however.

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  5. Dammit! I didn’t want to cry today
    (Also, thank you...maybe I needed to cry today)
    💙

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  6. Virtually holding you and your family

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  7. This so hard and yet so beautiful. You and your Sophie continue to move me so much.

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  8. She'll be ok...

    Great love dear Sophie and Elizabeth

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  9. I've chanted the it's okay chant. I've whispered the it's okay whisper. I've planted the it's okay seed. I can't let myself believe otherwise.

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