It has been several months since I have put my thoughts into words- to be exact- seven long months of avoiding the blank page. As I begin to write this, it is a cold winter morning although a brilliant sparkling sun illuminates the pale blue sky this first day of 2015. It is so bright and persistent; I didn’t even have to turn on the kitchen lights this morning. It was my alarm clock at the break of dawn; even though I tried to go back to sleep, I just couldn’t.
Lately, every year, every month, every day seems to speed by since I became a grandmother. Often, I feel compelled to just grab time and slow it down, but it has its own agenda and its own pace just like our sweet and equally energetic Lexi Grace. She was an early walker at 10 months old and now at 19 months, she has one speed- unstoppable. Sometimes her feet barely touch the ground as she flits from one place to another.
Lexi calls me “Mimi” now (a derivative of “Grandma” in French) and every time she does, which is mostly over and over again, my cup runneth over. She also calls Mark “Papa” –the closest she could get to “Grandpa” and my mom “Nanny”. She knows where I keep the cookies in my kitchen drawer and opens it to ask for them when she’s here. She caught on faster to using my iPhone and iPad than I did- scrolling through it with her thumb like a pro, until she can't give in to her desire to hurl it across the room. Her favorite things are Elmo and Minnie and she also loves to sing and dance. She is my “peckel of brochehs”. Lord knows this past year I’ve had my share of a “peckels of tsores”.
Peckel of Tsores
Flashback to the summer of 2014- actually the very first day of summer. I had a unique day planned for my mom and me. I had met this very interesting lady, who happened to be at my high school reunion, though I didn’t meet her at the reunion. I met her somewhere else. She was a healer and she invited me to a special Summer Solstice Crystal Celebration in Brooklyn. I wanted to do something interesting with my mom and we hadn’t seen my cousin, Jane, who lives in Brooklyn, for a while. So we planned a visit, first at my cousin Jane’s apartment, to have lunch and afterwards, we’d either go to the Crystal Celebration, or maybe not.
It was a beautiful day- warm, sunny- a perfect beginning for summer. We arrived at my cousin’s house early in the afternoon. I remember her being really nervous about my mom falling on her buckling wooden floor, which was damaged in a recent water leak from the apartment above. We decided to sit on the terrace because the day was so nice. We were there maybe a half hour. Then, we went inside leaving my mom outside while Jane began to make lunch. I recall her preparing a salad and slicing avocados. Mom was less than 2 feet away from us. Jane became concerned that the sun was beating on mom’s head and she wanted her to come in. I told mom to wait until I helped her down from the doorway leading from the terrace into the apartment. She did not hear me, of course, because she has about 80% hearing loss and decided to come in by herself. My back was to her for about a second as I saw the look of horror on Jane’s face and then everything went into slow motion. That’s the way I remember it to this day as if time did slow down- the times that you wish you could stop or alter in some way…my cousin’s eyes and mouth wide open, my head turning and my mom toppling in a dragged out sequence of events to that final inevitable moment of the floor and her frail body colliding. She could not get up and naturally, being my mom- was extremely apologetic. What a way to end a perfectly planned day.
My mom ended up in the emergency room, in Brooklyn, of course. She had broken her hip and needed surgery. She went through it like a trooper. Every nurse, every doctor, every aide loved her. She got a lot of attention. The day she was discharged, the Rabbi from the hospital came to visit her and they talked. That’s where I got the words in my title. When my mom asked why did this have to happen to me now, he replied, God gives us a peckel of tsores and a peckel of brochehs. He then translated a peckel of tsores= a package of troubles and a peckel of brochehs= a package of blessings.
Well the peckel of tsores kept growing. Mom went into a rehab facility. In the middle of July Mark had the long-needed surgery for his shoulder that had dislocated nine times since 2012, including the day Lindsay went into labor with Lexi. Mom returned home a little after Mark’s surgery, so I had two patients to look after. And then one morning when I went to walk Sonny (my dog), I found that he could not move because he was paralyzed in his hind legs. We found out that he had vertebrae disk disease and needed emergency surgery, which cost us $6000- not the best time for that because Mark was on disability and not due to return to work until after the summer.
So Sonny became my third patient. He had to be isolated in a pen in the middle of my living room and every time he had to be walked, it was with a sling to hold up his hind legs. This was an added task, amidst driving Mark back and forth to the doctor or therapy and managing the caregivers coming in and out to take care of my mom. Of course, both my sisters and brother came to pitch in and help, along with Lindsay and Kim. But still, I could not enjoy the summer at all because I was so busy taking care of my three patients. At one point during the summer, I mistook a pulled muscle in my chest (from lifting Sonny in and out of the pen) for a heart attack and went by ambulance to the hospital myself. My heart was fine. The doctors asked me if I was feeling a little stressed. I wanted to throw something at them.
I was looking forward to the fall, thinking the change of season would change our luck. Finally it came and shortly after that, out of the blue, Mark, who had returned to work started to have terrible stomach cramps, which he initially thought was a 24-hour bug. I was away on a business trip. When I returned, he said he still wasn’t feeling well and showed me where the pain was- on the lower right side of his stomach. I had a sinking feeling I knew what it was. We went straight to the emergency room and a few hours later, my sinking feeling was confirmed– Mark needed an emergency appendectomy. I wanted to have a conversation with God at that point- and ask him if he could find someone else to pick on, that surely we had reached our quota for tsores for this year.
Peckel of Broches-
It’s all in the way you look at things. As hard as the summer was, everyone made a recovery. My mom is walking again, with a walker; she can dress herself and she even dances just as well as before. Mark’s shoulder is getting stronger and Sonny is walking and running again- a little lopsided, but he doesn’t seem to mind. Actually, Mark’s shoulders are a bit lopsided, as well. We were lucky that they caught his appendix before it burst and he recovered within a week. So even when you get a package of troubles, blessings can be inside as well.
Our Lexi is getting bigger, smarter and prettier every day- with her remarkable blue eyes and a head full of blonde curls. She's still a little pipsqueak- all 20 pounds of her- and a tenacious bundle of exuberance. Sometimes, she seems like she's in training to be a trapeze artist. She continues to fill our hearts with joy and our days with laughter, even with her occasional temper tantrums, for which she earned my nicknames for her- “Sarah Heartburn or Miss Melodramatic”. She adores her parents and reminds me of how clingy Lindsay used to be with me when she was her age. She is as loving as she is loveable.
At the end of the long and memorable summer, when we were celebrating Lindsay and Scott's fourth wedding anniversary just at he start of September, we were equally thrilled and surprised from the best news we got in 2014 when Lindsay and Scott announced that Lexi is going to be a big sister. A few weeks later, when we did the “reveal”, with balloons this time, we were ecstatic to find out that it is a BOY!
Lexi’s baby brother is due in April (or maybe late March) of 2015. There will be challenges- two children under two in a very small house that is stretching to its limits with piles of Lexi’s things all over as it is. But every child brings its own blessings along with it. And we are eagerly awaiting this package in the spring.
My grandma journey continues. I had a long New Year’s Day lounging in my pajamas all day with mom, Kim and Mark. I spent over an hour talking to one of my oldest and dearest friends, Michele. Later on, Lindsay, her belly full with my grandson, and Lexi came over. Scott joined us all for dinner. It seemed as if time did slow down just for today, at least.
So, 2014, I bid you a fond farewell- and thanks for the packages- good or bad- I handled them all. As Charles Swindoll says, I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it.
As I finish this piece, the one I have avoided writing for so long, it is almost midnight – the sky is dark and the air outside is cold. Nevertheless my heart is warm and full and looking forward to all my “peckels” in 2015.
Happy New Year.
