I thought I was talking to Miss Compassion. Told her about the latest tsures in my life (tsures is an old Japanese word), our 49^th day service for Dantika, my student, how the house feels without Henry. I thought I was having a conversation with the Great Lady, but then I looked across the yard and realized: No, I’m having a conversation with beauty.

The garden has never been so lush. The flowers have never been so gorgeous, the grass positively radiant, the trees wearing their heavy August greenery, the apple tree sagging under the weight of its apples without dropping too many on the ground.

Look at us, they’re begging, watch! We’ll be like this for a little longer, followed by two months of change that grows more perceptible with time. Then will come the first freeze alert and you’ll cover the plants that are still outdoors, giving them a few days’ more time in the sun, then another freeze alert, and finally you’ll give up and take them into their appointed winter positions indoors.

Like Persephone doing 6 months in the underworld and two months in the – what? Overworld? Is that what we call above-ground? Hard to believe now how much will die in October, even as some call October the most beautiful month in New England. So many people pay top dollar to fly and stay here, watch the slow die-off and exclaim over the colors and beauty.

My friend, poet Peter Levitt, said that when he writes poetry he’s not concerned with beauty. “I try to write the truth, and trust that beauty comes with it.”

I think about how true that is in how we speak, how we write, how we use words. How carelessly I can gush forth, as if denying every word its pregnancy, its potential for giving life. Then I come home, as I came home last night from the 49^thday ceremony, sit in back, and look up at the dark sky half concealed by our arboreal overhang, and consider how often I miss the mark. Not obsessively, just noticing.

Because truth is so simple. All you have to do is give it time, give it attention, and at some point the right words will come to your mouth or pen, and you’ll know that that was it and it was beautiful. But first, we must be self-effacing, quiet and humble. Patience is respect for the present, to paraphrase a poet. She could have added: slowness, too.

Even as I believe that, even as I’ve always disliked small, wasteful talk, I see that there is another language that is just as important. I’ve told this story of how my father was raised so many years ago in a Rumanian shtetl right on the border with Russia, but it was a while ago, so let me repeat it here:

His father, my grandfather, was the local rabbi who didn’t permit his young son to play football (soccer), even as my father remained a great fan throughout his life and even died while watching a game on television. He was demanding, strict, even ascetic, and believed in raising children according to a method called Silence, which required parents not to speak to their children except when directing them. I’m not kidding, that was its name, and I assume that other parents did that, too. To give an example:

In the early, dark hours of an icy winter morning, when even the embers of the wood-burning stove had turned black, leaving their small house freezing cold, he woke up his two young boys: “Get dressed.” They did, notwithstanding their mother in the background scolding her husband that it was too early and cold, leave them alone, let them sleep. When they were dressed, he opened the door where a horse and cart awaited and ushered them out.

He took them to a forest where wooden logs had been cut down and sawed: “Load the cart.” Their hands quickly froze and they could hardly see. They loaded the logs and climbed up onto the seat alongside their father, who drove to the outskirts of their town to a small, isolated cabin where lived a poor family. “Stack the logs there,” he told the boys. They did so. Nobody spoke. It was silent inside the cabin, everyone was asleep, and they did their work in silence. When they were done, he said: “Get back on the cart.”

He drove them home. It was still not dawn. When they came inside, their mother rushed over with cups of hot tea and berated her husband for taking them out. He didn’t answer her, just pointed to the dining table covered with books and said: “Now open up this volume of the Talmud and see what the rabbis have said about the importance of helping the poor.”

This story took up a big room in my memory since hearing it as a young girl. Looking back now, I find it ironic that I pursued a spiritual path that involves a great deal of silence. (You can also say that I pursued a path that involved helping the poor, too.) I was attracted to the elegance of silence, to people of few words. Where could you go wrong with silence? It’s subtle, it’s graceful, it includes the world.

I didn’t care much for how my grandmother tootled around, talking nonstop about food, cooking, and what makes you healthy, while her husband sat at the head of the table and shook his head: “The grandmother talks too much.” He said this as she fiddled all around him, concerned about his health, whether he’s eating enough and was warm enough. I don’t want to be like her, I thought to myself, I want to be like him. At least, with words.

But how much I love small talking with my sister and close friends! How much I like her teasing me over coffee, what she made for the family’s Shabbat dinner on Friday evening, what was the latest movie we’d seen, the books we read, comparing dog stories, family stories, and is this color on my nails the right color and why does it come off after just two days, what the latest research has to say about vitamins or the Keto diet, gossip about family, etc.

Small talk can be harmful, granted. Backstabbing, rants about Donald Trump (yes, I think that’s harmful), obsessive criticism of someone or other. But what we call small talk is also the anguage of caring. “Did you eat?” my mother would ask me repeatedly when I saw her, followed by: “What did you eat?” Talk about the job, money, health, where are we going for vacation, how high electric bills are during winter, and is the house warm or cold enough, and whatever happened to that friend or neighbor, what do you feed your dog, etc. If we’re lucky, we’ve participated in that swirl of small talk that so often is about caring for you or caring for others.

My grandfather couldn’t understand that language of caring. Many men of my generation couldn’t. The most Bernie could say about that was: “If I’m sick, just let me crawl under a rock.”

Small talk is the talk of connection, little daubs of color we add verbally to the barebones events of our daily life. Why? Because we need to color them. We need to make anecdotes of them, to laugh, cry, and shake our heads over them. We need to connect the dots with the help of others, listen and be listened to, see and be seen by others.

After Bernie died, I couldn’t bear small talk for a long time. His absence loomed so large and dark in my mind, I couldn’t devote an iota of space for anything like: where we get the best ice cream or corn in summer. But as the years passed, small talk made a comeback. Life went on in its maddening, circuitous way, and if I shook my head at it, I had to shake my head with others, and if I continued to embrace it, I needed to do that with others, too. So yes, there was my blog, there was teaching, there was other writing—and there was small talk.

It’s now how I start every morning after sitting: “Lori, how did you sleep? What are your plans? Are you doing laundry today? Are you going to the supermarket? I heard from the people about our damaged driveway,” and on and on. Not the kind of thing I take up in my talk—or in my silence—with Miss Compassion, but pretty important nevertheless.

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Montague Reporter

Date unknown, 8:10 pm

“Caller from Second Street reports he was trying to leave the house and two squirrels attacked him. Would like an officer; states no need for medical. Officer advises it was a mother and baby squirrel who live above the house, and the baby couldn’t climb up high enough. Squirrels not injured or rabid. Officer helped caller get out of the house. He’s planning to park his car behind the house to get his mother to go to the store and avoid the squirrels.”

Parking behind the house to avoid truculent squirrels is a good idea. I could have sent Aussie to protect the man. Hell, I could have sent Henry to defend him in this life-and-death situation if the 15-pound Illegal Chihuahua hadn’t himself been killed and consumed by coyotes.

Earlier today I lit a stick of incense for Dion Drew, who died exactly two years ago. He was a supervisor at the Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, NY. My memory being what it is, I tried to refresh it by going on the Web. The second link on Safari featured one of those spy websites offering to give you information on people, and mentioned him as follows: “Dion M. Drew, 48, Yonkers, NY, Has Court/Arrest Records.”

I laughed to myself. Did he ever!

He tells his own story in this short video, which is ostensibly about the Greyston Bakery (where I, too, worked many years ago) but is really about Dion. And not just about Dion;  many others in the Bakery had a life like his.

He started selling cocaine at age 14 after watching his mother work at two jobs and still barely able to provide for her children. He went in and out of prison, including a 4-year stint, and when he came out, of course, there were no jobs. He finally got a job through Greyston’s Open Hiring system, no questions asked (including about incarceration), started out as an apprentice in the teams baking brownies for Ben & Jerry’s Ice cream, became lead operator, then lead operator in R&D, and finally supervisor, all over a six-year period.

He got married and had a little girl. Greyston saw in him a man with charisma who spoke from a deep place that not many of us reach, and asked him to be a spokesman for the Bakery (including in a TED talk). He had no need for prep or notes; instead, he had a conviction that comes not just from hard-learned lessons but also a deep inner kindness. Seeing the effect of his words, he considered becoming a minister to more directly help people. “I’m not rich,” he said, “but I’m happy.”

He was diagnosed with a fast-spreading brain tumor and died before reaching 50.

In a photo in a condolence book from two years ago, he’s wearing a pink shirt and has little hair. His smile is not just infectious but inspiring, his eyes very kind. A fellow worker from the Bakery wrote in a book of testimonials: “Dear Dion, Thanks for your inspiration. We keep telling your story to the world.”

For some reason, I thought of the man who called the police here in our Happy Valley about squirrels. If you were black and called the Yonkers police about squirrels back then, consider yourself lucky if they just hung up on you.

In the years I lived there, it was not uncommon to walk along a quiet street in summer and say hi to a couple of African-American men sitting in front of their homes, a bottle of beer in their hands, when a police car would suddenly whip around the corner, jump the curb, and several policemen, all white, would jump the men and push them against the car, leaning spreadeagled against the doors. They’d rifle through their pockets, toss the beer aside, mutter something or other, and leave. No explanation, no presentation of ID, and certainly no apology. Just intimidation, plain and simple.

Looking back now, I ask myself why I, a white woman, didn’t say anything. OK, I was always stunned for a moment—and then? They would have been brusque, even mildly threatening—Lady, mind your own business—but not more than that.

Violence of any kind, even when not aimed at me, is scary. If it’s unexpected, it has a way of shutting me down. This is what ICE counts on when they do those very quick kidnappings of immigrants. The rule is to be in and out in less than 5 minutes, before onlookers can gather their wits and start asking questions or even ask where they’re taking the immigrants (the latter is what trainers advise you to do in such cases).

Dion Drew was a big inspiration for me. Bernie loved him like a son. We both recognized the great suffering underneath the sweetness and kindness. Maria Popova writes: “It is impossible to escape being greatly mistaken about the nature and intentions of persons you meet in the world, for in the glare of how they appear and how you imagine them to be, you cannot see their shadow.”

It’s hard to know what to do, and sometimes it’s hard to learn not to do anything.

Last night I did something I should have done a long time ago. I always sit for a short while before closing things up and going to read in bed. This time I went outside and did my meditation in the dark, under the stars. No fireflies yet, so I sat there in the soothing night and contemplated what it is to do nothing even when the moment is hard.

This house feels like a funeral home after Henry’s killing and disappearance. I still can’t open the door of the bedroom first thing in the morning without reflexively looking down at my feet, expecting the little dog to be right there. He’d rush back to his big crate of toys, find Ducky or Pink Panther, and rush back with it in his mouth, ready to play.

When there’s sadness and grief in the house, I embroider things. Like guilt: What did I do wrong, what could I have done, what should I have done? Even in the face of people telling me there was nothing to do. Then I start adding other things: What can I do for my housemate? What food can I bring, what sunflowers pick up for her?

This is not so much kindness as that it’s just so bloody hard for me to stay with what is. Because sometimes what is, is plain, honest-to-goodness sadness and grief. It’s hard to contain a broken heart without rushing to mend it, mine or other people’s.

My big koan are the words: There is nothing to do. Immediately, a voice thunders inside: There is always something to do. You can’t just leave things as they are, quick, use your brain, creativity, imagination, and come up with what you can do.

The one-word answer that’s hard for me to hear is: Nothing.

How simple are you willing to let this be, my friend Flint Sparks asks. Forget Zen, forget books and poetry, just sit there in the dark and listen to the cicadas have their glorious August parties. Just be sad. Nothing else, just be sad.

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“under the surface

of the present

exists a sea of possibility

to reach it

a person must

wade in the muddy

rivers of change

and traverse the uncertain

without sinking.”

Who the heck wants to “traverse the uncertain?” Who has faith that they won’t sink?

I just had a brief phone conversation about a 49-day service we will do next week for a leader in the zendo, Dantika Monize, who died when I was in Israel. And, of course, there’s the absence of Henry, the Illegal Chihuahua, taken by coyotes. His absence permeates our home, especially as he was always loud and demanded attention. The house is mournfully quiet now. I pass Dantika’s house several times a week, and that house seems quiet, too.

Who wants to traverse the uncertain? Who wants to listen to a silence that reminds you of what was: joyful barking, face-to-face with a beautiful student who also wrote poetry? Do we really have to lose things before we fully grasp how vital are the little things? We’re born and live, give birth and raise children, and then we die. To live, we need food, shelter, and minimal security or protection. That’s the scaffold of our life, and I take none of it for granted.

But then there’s the color. Desires, inspirations, ideas, opinions, loves, imagination, jokes, laughter, song, religion—those are the colorful blotches we lob onto the canvas, much like artist Jackson Pollock. They’ve been needed forever. Archeologists may claim that the old Lascaux Cave paintings were tied to religion, but so is the Chartres Cathedral. Whatever functional role it played in religious ceremonies and in the town, was it not art?

Due to our heavy rains (including today), everything is in flower. I have never seen our apple tree bulge so early with so much fruit. The lilies, that are usually short-lived, seem not just to open wider than ever but also to survive longer, even through heat waves and 6-7 inches of rain that fell over just a few days. The farmstands are flush with fruit and vegetables, and my favorite summer food—corn!

It’s as if they tell me: You may have contracted after that small dog’s killing, but we haven’t. You contract; we expand. True, we may be hit by lightning in the next storm, or fall because our roots have gotten so soggy they can’t hold us up any longer. We see life and death all the time, but today, watch us show off our pink petals and green apples!

Nature is generous beyond words, and so are we. Poems, paintings, and photographs, learning a new language, riding horses, dancing to music—we, too, just add and add and add to the bare necessities, we can’t stop. And even as scientists have rational justifications for nature’s extravagances (e.g., your lily opens like that to attract bees, thus ensuring its own replication), I don’t believe them. Or rather, yes, I believe them, but do they have to do it quite this gorgeously?

The lily shown in the photo above is the well-known Stargazer Lily. More than 40 years ago I spent two months in the Berkshire Mountains. One night I walked up the hill and passed a house with a cautionary sign on the road: Blind person. I heard a sound, looked aside, and saw an elderly man in the glow of dim streetlights slowly making his way down the yard path, guided by a white stick. He stopped and looked up at the sky. It was full of stars. He gazed at them so long that finally, I moved on.

What did he see? What was he, with unseeing eyes, bearing witness to?

As I get older, life opens to more and more questions which I investigate with no expectation—no desire really—for answers. Gone is the need to resolve things, gone is the need to integrate. That will happen, or not, it doesn’t matter.

A biographer of Sr. Joan Chittister, who writes beautifully of the spiritual life, called his book: Journey from Certainty to Faith. That’s my journey, too, I thought to myself when I read the title. If not faith, then trust. And if not trust, then love. As a friend puts it: Soften the barriers to love.

My first barrier is judgmentalism. That part of my mind that weighs other people’s words and actions and finds the problem with them—too silly, too dark, too talkative, too superficial, too lazy, too eh. My strength is discernment, which then seeps over into judging people. I’m not naïve enough to think that after 76 years that will disappear, I would simply like it to soften, start yielding a little bit, let go of some of its moorings.

What do I do? Not much, just catch it in time and watch. “Do no harm,” the Buddha said. So simple, and so difficult.

And impatience. The world, with all its inhabitants and activity, is not something to get through or fend off. “Patience is respect bestowed on the present,” wrote Maria Popova, who also wrote the verse in the beginning. Have some respect for this present moment; it will unlock secrets.

Why do I feel that my time is not ending but is beginning? My friend, blogger Jon Katz, whom I hope to visit with late this month, wrote recently: “[G]etting older is not the curse of life for the damned. It’s about getting the chance for a new life.”

A small voice evokes Henry: “What if something happens to you, Senora? You could be killed by coyotes—or the equivalent—tomorrow! No, today!”

I could almost hear Aussie snort: “What does he know? He’s the Illegal Chihuahua!”

If you’ve been following my blog, you may have noticed that my posts have decreased in number. I did three a week religiously for a decade. The more often you write, the more people will follow you, say blog pundits. Several weeks ago, I decided to stop listening to them.

I wish to finish the play I’m writing about what our country is going through, and there’s no time to waste. By end of Wednesday, I estimate that I’ll be done with a decent draft, got the entire story and characters, and then it needs a brutal edit, maybe even getting rid of one or two characters. If it takes too long, things grow stale; I don’t want to lose my excitement about it.

Posting twice a week rather than thrice gives me the time and space to write longer and, hopefully, deeper. Not just dive into something and disappear, but surface and then float, give myself permission to look to the sides, see what I overlooked, and do what the blind man did that night in the Berkshires: gaze at stars.

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“Aussie, you don’t usually lie indoors like this during the day. Are you depressed?”

“Damn right I’m depressed. And you’re not doing anything about it.”

“Me? It wasn’t me who grabbed Henry, coyotes did. And everybody’s very, very sad. I miss him in all the little spaces he occupied. He loved to lick the warm froth when I made cappuccino, and I would ladle a little into his bowl; I thought of it as Henry having his coffee break with me. I miss the scratching on the door in the morning to let him in and announce that day has come, sun is shining. I miss him with us when we walk.”

“But you’re a Zen teacher, a spiritual teacher. You’re not supposed to miss anybody. You’re not supposed to be sad, you’re supposed to transcend these things.”

“Who says? Aussie, there are two different versions of what happened when the Buddha died. The first reports that the younger monks around him wept bitterly and the older monks, who’d been with him for a long time, sat calmly by his body and didn’t cry. The second version says that it was the younger monks who sat with tranquility, and the older monks who wept and sobbed. The younger monks asked them: ‘Why are you crying? The Awakened One preached anatta, no-self, no solid self, so what has died?’ And the older monks said: ‘We cry because the Buddha died.’”

“I wish you Buddhists would make up your mind.”

“Aussie, my practice is not to transcend anything.”

“What good are you if you can’t tell me how to avoid pain and suffering? What good are all of you teachers?”

“If you’re alive there’s pain and loss. Nothing I know changes that.”

“But Buddhists have always focused a lot on death, because they’re masochists. They’re the ones who say you should prepare for death even from a young age. Isn’t that why so many chaplains and people who work in care of the dying are Buddhists? You got there first. Turns out that becoming a Buddhist was a good career move.”

“I don’t believe in transcendence, Aussie, never did. I like to see things as clearly as possible and not turn away.”

“So why do you say that you don’t plan to return to the conservation area where Henry was killed?”

“For now, Aussie. Eventually, I will, just not now. The pain and hurt have to fade before I go back.”

“They will never fade for me. I wanted the illegal Chihuahua to be deported to Mexico, for God’s sake, not to a pack of coyotes. Let me tell you, ICE would have been much nicer.”

“Aussie, the three of us have been walking together for close to six years, and guess what got in the way?”

“Coyotes?”

“Nature, Aussie. Wild nature. In 24 years of walking here I saw single coyotes, but never a pack. And finally, we ran into one at a time when they have young mouths to feed back in the den, and they ambushed us and got Henry. But it’s nature we ran into, nature not just in its pretty side, with green apples dropping from the tree out front and ruby hummingbirds at feeders. Nature in its wild and terrible aspect.”

“We were in Leverett, not in the Serengeti!”

“Nature is wild and terrible here, too. How often have we been awakened by a terrible cry in the middle of the night, something taken by an owl, a hawk, a fox, a coyote? What about the small animals you’ve killed, Aussie?”

“Chipmunks are yummy!”

“Yummy to some, and a loss to others. None of us avoids that dance, Aussie. It’s the price we pay for being alive and loving a little dog.”

“If that’s all you can say after years of training and practice, then I’d get my money back if I were you. You know, Henry’s work wasn’t finished with me.”

“What work, Aussie?”

“Okay, don’t tell anyone that I’m saying this, but he was the liveliest thing around. It was so much fun having him here. It didn’t matter that he was Mexican, it didn’t matter that he was small and had a chronic illness which caused him to tremble from pain sometimes. He had so much life in such a little body! I guess there was something there for me to learn, much as I hate to say it. I mean, what would the Man say if he heard that I had something to learn from a chihuahua?”

“I think you’re wrong, Auss.”

“That’s exactly what he would say. He’s say that good American dogs have nothing to learn from illegals.”

“No, not about that. I think his work was finished with you. After all, his life, with all its forces and energy, ended.”

“No, his life was incomplete, I tell you! We still need him in this house.”

“Not him personally, Aussie, but his aliveness. You want to bring him back to life? Bring forth his qualities, his humor, his silliness.”

“And he was so gracious. No matter how I abused him and called him names, no matter how often I threatened to call ICE on him, he always seemed to forgive me. I hope he isn’t hearing me say this. Do Buddhists believe in heaven?”

“After Bernie died, Aussie—”

“Was he also devoured by animals? I mean, I know he had some trouble with certain students.”

“No, but he did die suddenly and unexpectedly. After some time passed, I wrote out a promise to myself: I will express de-light in my life and work, and help others awaken to de-light in their own lives. I didn’t promise to keep his social programs going, or even the Zen Peacemaker Order. I promised to manifest as well as I could his lightness of being, his jokiness, his refusal to take life too seriously. You could do the same with Henry. Make a commitment to keep those characteristics alive.”

“You aren’t saying anything comforting.”

“Like what, Auss?”

“That I’ll meet him at the end of some rainbow bridge, whatever that is. That he’ll be reborn in a land of illegal Chihuahuas. That he’ll bark at God and have lots of virgins. What’s a virgin?”

“It’s true, Auss, I don’t say those nice things. In fact, facing somebody’s deep pain, like Lori’s now, or facing my own, I don’t have anything to say, nice or otherwise. I just ask Lori if she wants me to make her a cappuccino. At night I offer to make her corn.”

“Why aren’t you offering to make me something special? A second marrow bone? Steak? Do you promise that this sadness will finally fade?”

“Usually it does, but I can’t make promises. I can’t say that we will live happily ever after—or die happily, for that matter.”

“In that case, I’m calling it quits for religion. I’m calling it quits for God, for the Buddha, for Jesus, everybody. Leave me alone, I want to be depressed in peace.”

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Henry is gone. The Illegal Chihuahua is gone.

I can’t write too much about this now, but here it is:

Last Friday I had company for morning coffee, people from afar whom I’ve known for close to 25 years. Like all of us, they have their ups and downs, but perhaps because we originally met and lived together in Santa Barbara, they seem to bring with them that perpetual sun, the glittering, surfer-ridden Pacific waves, and the cactuses and flowers. We laughed and shared memories, all while Henry, the Illegal Chihuahua who just loved company, ran around bringing his Teddy, Ducky, and the Pink Panther for someone to throw.

When they left, I packed both dogs up for their daily walk before getting down to work (in the summers I take them out in the morning), drove to the adjoining town, and stopped in a lay-about that leads down to the woods and an assortment of trails. I knew just what trail to take, the one in the western part of that conservation land that would take us to pools. In the summers I always think of shade and water for the dogs.

Three of us climbed up north, Aussie leading the way, as usual, the little dog by my feet. Suddenly, perhaps 10 minutes from the pools, we heard a rustle. I paused, Henry turned and ran back, then up a western slope, Aussie after him. It’s usually Aussie who runs first and he follows on his shorter legs, but this time he led the way.

I yelled immediately for them to come back, then ran after them. The slope was wooded, lots of trees and tree stumps, branches in my face. And then I heard loud, strangled mewls. Aussie’s going after a fawn, I thought with horror. I ran as hard as I could, nettles scratching my left arm, brambles at my face. I looked up and there was Aussie, looking down at me.

It’s not Aussie, I realized, it’s Henry. I had no idea what happened, just urged those strong, 76-year-old legs on, and when I reached the top, I stood by her and stared straight into the eyes of two coyotes. One stood behind the other, both less than 10 feet away from us. I noticed a movement on the right and saw a third sidle away.

My heart stopped beating. Where’s Henry?

We both stared at the two coyotes, and they stared back.  I always thought that coyotes were afraid of human beings, but while I’d run into singles, I’d never run into a pack in the 24 years I’d been walking these forests. These two were not running. Perhaps they were sizing Aussie up, wondering how to get to her.

I shouted at them. Slowly, almost thoughtfully, they retreated and went up the slope. That’s when I saw a fourth coyote looking down at us.

Henry was gone.

I stayed atop that hill for an hour, looking everywhere for his body. Aussie sniffed and sniffed, but there was nothing there, not even a drop of blood. The fourth coyote came down somewhat north of us and I hurried towards where it was headed, wondering if somehow the little dog had been thrown or left there and the coyote was coming to retrieve it, but there was nothing there, either, and the coyote soon disappeared.

After this I found my way slowly to the trail, turned back to where I’d left the car, and found our way home, Aussie never leaving my side. Drove home and told my housemate about this. Won’t describe this scene, just that she hurried into her car to go back there and I followed. She rushed into the conservation land, we lost her, and I did what she had begged me to do, go back there and find him.

I found where the dogs had left the trail and climbed my way up again, re-living that scene of running up and up as fast and hard as I could, hearing those terrible mewling gasps, wishing for the only time in my life that I had a gun, and dismayed by how those legs couldn’t carry me fast enough. There was no one up there. Not a trace of Henry.

When I finally came back down to the trail and tried to find my way to the car, I got lost. I walked in the wrong direction down trails I’d known for a long time, made the wrong turns, checked maps, then rechecked them. Finally, I stopped. It hit me that I was in shock, my brain wasn’t working.

Just then, a policeman called me. He’d arrived to help find my housemate. He’d found her and asked how I was doing. I thanked him and said that I would find my way. He hesitated, agreed, and added that he’d be back in two hours to check if the car was still there. If it was, he’d call for reinforcements.

“Yes, if my car is still there, you can get a search party,” I told him gratefully. Breathed deeply, paused some more, and then, slowly and carefully, found the way out of the conservation land and to my car, and came home.

I can write a lot more about this—thoughts and impressions are swirling in my mind—but not right away. I was warned not to do it, not to trap an experience in words where they remain solid and unchanged. Just now I recall how Aussie wanted to get rid of the Illegal Chihuahua, as she called him, and get him deported. Every minute something new comes to mind.

Let it all swirl. Let it make no sense, a hodge-podge of mental pictures, emotions, and deep bursts of grief. Let it do what it does, don’t summarize it, and for heaven’s sake don’t give any Zen platitudes about life and death. Let it be for a while longer. What had Flint Sparks shared with me a few weeks ago: How willing are you to let this be as simple as possible?

And it hurts.

It only occurred to me later that this was one of the ambushes coyotes are famous for.  Coyotes are as silent as could be and that rustle was no accident. The pack had sent down a scout that purposely made some noise, got everyone’s attention, Henry ran after it, Aussie after Henry, and I last of all. He brought both dogs up to the pack.

But none of those things were in my mind when it happened. You run and run, yell and shout, hear those horrific sounds and realize you won’t make it in time.

Late that night, totally exhausted, I tried to sleep. Suddenly, my upper legs, both right and left, started throbbing. I’ve had cramps in my lower legs and know what to do to lessen the pain, but this was different, I’d never suffered this in the upper legs before. The only thing that helped, slowly and painfully, was to get myself up to a seated position, carefully reach for a second pillow, and sit rather than lie.

I understood that this was probably in reaction to five hours of walking and climbing, but a voice inside reminded me: You cursed your legs for not running and climbing fast enough, and in return they’re hurting you back.

After that night the legs didn’t hurt again, but my housemate says that she can hear me in her own separate room, across two closed doors, having nightmares during the nights.

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I’m reading the novel called John of John, by Douglas Stuart, whose first novel, Shuggie Bain, won the Booker Prize several years ago. I read it slowly because the characters, Scottish weavers, are so well drawn that, like all great literary characters, I see myself in them, or them in me, and their family encounters remind me of my own even as we’re nowhere near those Scots living on an island west of the Isle of Skye.

In one of their celebrations, accompanied by plenty of booze, a character nicknamed Hoggy (he works with a butcher), after being teased about a stupid risk he took which ended up burning his butt, all for the sake of one more drink, says: “What is the point of being alive if you don’t try to kill yourself now and again?”

I hooted out loud when I read those words. But a moment later, I recalled a conversation I recently had with a friend, Zen teacher and psychotherapist Flint Sparks. Flint told me that he gives the same guideline at the beginning of every Zen retreat that he leads: “How simple are you willing to let this be?”

Hoggy wasn’t ready to let life be that simple, he was going to add all kinds of things to it, including things that hurt, and I reflected that this guideline can also serve my life: How simple am I willing to let this be?

Zen retreats are known for their simplicity anyway. There’s a bell or auditory cue for everything: Get up, sit in meditation, do walking meditation, back to sitting … service, breakfast, clean-up, back to sitting, walking, sitting, you get the picture. No phones, no computer, no books, and you do this for one day or thirty. I will do it for one day this coming Saturday. Nevertheless, Flint has felt it necessary to challenge his students: How simple are you willing to let this be?

Because, as anyone who has sat these sesshins knows, the mind doesn’t leave you alone. It comes up with hundreds of What ifs and What abouts. It insists on reviewing every detail of your marriage or old relationships with parents. You suddenly can think of a dozen people you don’t like (including a few in your sangha), you wonder what the cook added to the salad that made it so yummy, when are you going to renovate the kitchen, and it’s suddenly time to make plans for the summer though it’s only December.

A Zen sesshin is the perfect place to discover how you’re not in control of your mind, it’s in control of you. But if you’re lucky, you’ll hear the echo of that first guideline: How simple are you willing to let this be? The big question for me is how simple am I willing to let this life be. Another way of looking at it is: What am I unnecessarily adding all the time?

I bear witness to a life full of additions, or as I think of them, ands. There’s waking up, sitting, feeding Aussie, and maybe it’s time to get new sheets, and the New York Times reports this about Iran but maybe I should check Politico, and tune in to a local radio program someone recommended, and call this person or that because I haven’t checked in with them in a while, and check what Claude has to say about Keto, and is the laundry detergent I’m using really free of odors and unnecessary chemicals?

Our ands are highly subjective. For me, daily meditation has been part of my life for many years, for others it might be an and. Walking the dogs is a regular habit, and that may be an and for others. But if you really pay attention, you notice that for each of us, there’s an unmistakable natural rhythm to life. In my case, waking up leads to meditation to feeding dog to opening up newspapers online as well as emails, getting dressed, making the bed, getting to work. Simple, basic, and familiar.

Maybe too familiar, so I start adding things to it: Is the farm on Turners Falls Road selling corn, and if so, is it better than J&J Farms? I should read up on the reviews of the Mary Oliver documentary and then look up when it’s playing in Amherst. There’s too much dog hair in the car!  I must go to the YMCA for weight training. I have to ring up this student and ask how he’s doing with his health. And did I check what Dave Hayes said about our local weather? I checked temperatures on weather.com, but it’s not like our local meteorologist who gives crucial tidbits of information concerning surface pressure coming from the Great Lakes and upper and lower troughs tracking east from Canada.

My ands become really visible in the dead of summer and the dead of winter, seasons with fewer external demands. People are up in Maine or at the Cape in summer, and in Florida in winter. I proclaim to all that I can hardly wait for those quieter weeks, and when they finally arrive, I search avidly for distractions. Should I start worrying about trees coming down on the house during storms? Why am I gaining weight? Wouldn’t it be nice to get real Chinese food—I know just where to go. And by the way, I need a couple of pajama bottoms.

Again, my ands may be your imperatives, but if I really pay attention, if I strip away the fuss and tangle (my hairdresser told me to get an Aveda post-shampoo wash that would be perfect for my hair!), I can discern a path, even a routine, that’s innate to my life. It progresses without too much thinking or planning on my part, as if my feet know just where to go and my legs know just where to walk. A voice whispers: Stop trying to live it. Let it live you.

And since I must have my distractions, here’s a pet peeve that somehow connects with what I’ve written: I went to the local library which I usually use to pick up books through our fantastic inter-library system. This time I decided to work quietly on my computer there because I would have to return to that street in two hours.

It’s a lovely small library with a nice space for children’s activities, so I go to the other end to sit in one of their comfortable chairs and work. Five minutes later a tall woman sits at a table 3 feet away, is soon joined by a young man, and they’re having a meeting. The gallant librarian at the desk shows me to a separate room for Tweens that at first seems quiet, but it’s right behind the reception desk with people coming in and out all the time, asking about books and videos, and socializing. The children’s area at the other end gets louder, then quieter, then louder again.

The town has recently approved the building of an expanded library in Turners Falls, with big meeting, play, and video spaces, not to mention conference rooms. In all the hoopla around it (it was controversial due to its high cost), I couldn’t help but notice that there was no mention of quiet spaces where folks could read, study, or work quietly. As if, if you want quiet, stay home.

But I think of my time working in the old Greenfield library (since replaced by a newer, bigger facility), where I worked quietly at a corner. Others read, hovering over a newspaper or magazine. I remember Latino men settling down over Spanish-language newspapers, or else using the WIFI to WhatsApp messages to their families back home.

Am I a grumpy old woman who doesn’t like modern libraries? I definitely get the sense that libraries are seen here as places to connect, talk, and learn about certain topics from professionals. The latter used to take place in the evenings, but now it can be smack in the middle of the day. I certainly have no issues with children’s spaces for storytelling and play acting. Perhaps I’m one of the older generation who liked it when libraries weren’t places in which to create community, but rather were places to encourage study, reflection, and a solitude with others.

That’s how I feel in the zendo. I don’t have to go there for meditation, I can do that at home, but I love the solitude with others, or as one book’s title called it: Alone with Others.

It’s not easy to hear your own heartbeat, much less other people’s. It’s not easy to hear the heartbeat of the world, but I think it’s possible. When you’re in congruence with that heartbeat, you feel most alive. If you feel dead, it may be because you’re not listening. And then, like Hoggy in the book, you sit on a hot stove and burn up your butt just to feel alive.

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“Night deepens

with the sound

of a calling deer,

and I hear

my own one-sided love.”

These lines were written by Ono no Komachi, a Japanese woman poet who lived around the 9th century. It appeared in a book of love poems translated by Jane Hirshfield with Mariko Aratani, sent me as a gift.

I wrote about this poem, which mourns a lost or unrequited love, over two years ago. I had read it lying in bed, listening to the trees shake in the wind. Looking out the window that night, it hit me that life—or God—always loved me, loved me deeply and reliably, and that I was the recalcitrant lover, the one who sometimes showed up and sometimes did not.

When did I show up? When did my eyes light up? When did I scan the lawn behind my house and feel grateful for every single blade of grass? When did I bend over the gorgeous red lily in the photo above, whose name, believe it or not, is Pardon Me Day Lily, and tell it that it had nothing to apologize for, that it was beautiful? When did I feel happy and loved life back? When I myself felt loved.

And that’s the conundrum.

Last Friday evening I streamed a play, End, produced by England’s National Theater (we don’t have much good theater here in the Valley), about a couple in their late 50s, married for years. The husband has cancer and has begun the active process of dying. He sees things ending, has little curiosity and energy for life, and wishes to stop medical treatments and be left alone.

His healthy wife, however, is very much in the middle of living. She’s thinking of her books and of their daughter, who’s soon to be a mother, and wants him to take that same lively interest. She tries to coax him out of his misery by constantly offering to make him a pot of tea.

Each in his or her own way loves the other—passionately—and they repeat the words I love you again and again. But there’s still the rub: They love each other in his or her own way.

Hospital chaplains know a lot about dying patients who wish to go, while their families hold on and on. But that’s not what hit me here. Instead, I thought of the game we call love.

When we love someone, we might say it openly. We might get up from bed and walk quietly not to wake them too early, smile brightly when they do get up and much later prepare a dinner they really like. We might urge them to come for a walk or go to the movies, we might look at their work and give an opinion when asked, we might put an arm around them and squeeze, we might volunteer to get out of bed at night and fetch a late-night ice cream treat. We might do all kinds of things to show the person that he or she is loved, but can they see or hear it? Is that how they wish to be loved?

They may do all kinds of things right back. They’ll encourage us to buy a new computer because ours is old and help us choose the one that’s right. They may ask us if we’d like a cappuccino and even make it for us. They might take us to dinner or drive us to the train, they might be kind to our family and even feed the dog when we’re too busy. But is that how we want to be loved?

So often the ups and downs of love are not about whether we’re loved or not, but about the gap between how it’s expressed and how we hear, see, feel, and experience it. Is fixing my computer an act of love? For one person it may be exactly that, but the other person wants something else, like words and tenderness.

Someone said to me: “Men want sex, women want foreplay.” Yes, there are the gender differences, but it’s way deeper and more specific than that. How open am I to seeing forms of affection that are different from my own? Can I ease my expectations of a loving marriage enough to see how much is coming my way that doesn’t meet my private criterion of love?

I remember going to the zendo one fine Saturday morning, and by the time we ended temperatures had plummeted and the roads and sidewalks were coated by close to an inch of ice. I’d promised a former student to meet him for coffee 5 miles away, but was forced to drive very slowly and when I got to the café, he was already gone.

I turned around for the long drive home, and the nightmare began. Every road was covered with black ice and many cars had fallen off, a few completely overturned. I drove north with my heart pounding, the wheel shaking in my hands and the tires developing free wheel, swerving to the right and sometimes to the left right in front of oncoming cars, threatening to leave the road and overturn.

I perspired as though it was a hot summer day, my hands wet, my face flushed. Finally, I made it to our street, with an uphill climb halfway up, and panicked. The car made it, but just as the road leveled and turned, right above our house, I lost control, it swerved hard to the right and got stuck among the tree roots. It could have crashed down the precipice below.

I called Bernie, who was in our home right beneath the road. I poured it all out, told him what happened, expressed the terror of driving a car that went every which way but straight, and most important, how scared I was of getting hurt and even dying.

“You should have come straight home from the zendo,” was his reply.

I lost it. I didn’t want advice on what I should or could have done, I wanted some acknowledgment of how scared I’d been, of the horror of driving on the road back to our town and seeing so many overturned cars, the strain of feeling on the edge of a serious accident all that time. I told him he wasn’t listening, didn’t understand, didn’t love.

I opened the car and started walking downhill on the black ice, slipping and sliding. I looked down below to the right and there he was, in his black winter coat, boots, and with his red beret, making his way up the driveway. When he reached me he gave me his arm and together we walked on the ice down to the driveway, and then down the driveway, together.

But I didn’t thank him, didn’t forgive him. He’d done the practical thing to do, but what I needed to feel loved and protected was a reflection of my own fear and careening heartbeat, some verbal assurance that he was sorry I’d gone through this, which he hadn’t given. Neither of us were great players in the game of love.

Now, years after he’s gone, this game of love continues—not with a man, but with all of life. Life loves me how it loves me, not how I wish it to love me. Today is gorgeous, tomorrow we’ll get thunderstorms, which the dogs and I dislike. I feel loved today, but will I feel loved tomorrow? I see a neurologist in the morning. Will I feel loved regardless of what he tells me? In the face of aging, in the face of death, even in the face of Trump—tell me, do I feel loved?

How easy it is to feel cynical at my 76-year love affair with life: I got this but I didn’t get that! All these years—for what? To die? It’s easy to shake one’s fists at heaven and say: If only! If only!

And yet, deep in my heart, I fully trust that I am always loved back. In a way familiar to me? In a way that meets my expectations? Sometimes, and sometimes not. I can continue to be the recalcitrant lover of the poem, someone who loves back and sometimes not, who skips a night here and there in search of someone or something better, or else I can light a lantern and peer carefully at the darkest, most opaque situations, and find the love that’s there.

Because it’s there, it’s always there. And at 76, it’s time to be the lover that shows up consistently, again and again and again.

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“Where have you been all this time? I’ve been waiting and waiting!”

“Oh Aussie, I got lost.”

“Again?”

“I got to the solar installation instead.”

“Again?”

“The trail in the woods was nice, but when it was time to go to the car I got lost and ended up among hundreds of solar panels.”

“The same thing happened the last time we walked here.”

“Every time we walk in this conservation area and I try to get back to the car, wIend up at the solar panel installation. There were lines and lines of fences with panels inside and I was dying from the heat and the smoke we’re getting from Canada. You, on the other hand, found the right path right away and here you are.”

“Solar panels! Who in his right mind plants an array of solar panels in a perfectly fine meadow? Climate change is a hoax, I keep on telling you! If those solar panels weren’t there, you’d have found your way to the car a long time ago. And now, please take me to the vet.”

“You want to go to the vet, Aussie? The V-E-T veterinarian? You, who fights me tooth and nail in their parking lot, and who I have to pull hard in order to get into the building?”

“The very same.”

“Why, Auss?”

“Because I need to get a shot of testosterone. Pete Hegseth says that this is what this country needs, so I’m volunteering.”

“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous, Auss. You’re going to be nine years old in September. You’re not in the army—”

“I’m a Founder of the Proud Pooches!”

“You’re not a combat dog, in fact, you’re a dog, period. Why do you need extra testosterone?”

“Because I’m too nice. I’m too compassionate. Worst of all—I can’t even say it.”

“Say what, Aussie?”

“Bend down and I’ll whisper it in your ear: I’m too loving.”

“You are not, Aussie. You knew the way home and left me to wander around the solar array under the hot sun while you waited up here in the shade.”

“That’s because of my new practice.”

“Which is?”

“The practice of not loving. Not being merciful. Not caring about you, Henry, Lori, or anyone else. And once I get my shot of testosterone, I’ll be a champion.”

“Champion what, Aussie?”

“A champion ball-breaker, that’s what. None of this loving kindness bullshit anymore. None of this gentleness. Most important, none of this femininity I’m so famous for.”

“Ha!”

“I’m tired of being sweet and caring. It’s time to grow up and be a man!”

“Excuse me? What does that say about me?”

“You’re old, not grown up. If our army had more testosterone, we’d have destroyed Iran by now.”

“Aussie, what are we doing in Iran to begin with?”

“You see, you ask that question because you lack testosterone. If you got a boost of big T, you’d be jumping into a nuclear submarine right now and pushing off to the Hormuz Straits to bomb the bastards. Talk talk talk, that’s all you do.”

“What about our negotiations, Aussie?”

“Only wimps go for negotiations. So wimpy. So soft. So female. Real men go for deals.”

“Aussie, if you want more testosterone, why don’t you just transition into being a male?”

“Are you crazy? I’d be run out of town. Of course, if I was a male, you wouldn’t call me Aussie, you’d call me something else.”

“Like what?”

“Flint. Granite. Grit. I kinda like Grit. Call me Grit Bodhisattva.”

“You know, Aussie, testosterone does help with incontinence.”

“Incontinence? Me? Never. I’m fit as a fiddle and always in control. Ignore the yellow puddle by the driver’s door. And by the way, once I get the big T booster, no more vaccines. Government overreach, I call it.”

“And demanding that soldiers get testosterone isn’t government overreach?”

“Pete’s the Man. You look at that glowering face and you know, you positively know, that he’s a real man. Same with Todd Blanche. They don’t smile in front of the cameras, they snarl! You just know that back home they smoke Camels. I love them.”

“Aussie, you don’t like cigarette smoke. Most important, you don’t like men. Ever since we got you from the shelter, you never liked men, especially big ones. Devin came to replace our hot water tank and you ran the other way. The only men you like are those who go down to your level, stretch out their hands and talk softly to you. You’ve always liked gentle men, not big, tough ones.”

“Testosterone will fix all that up. No more tail-wagging or mewling when the postman comes. No more dancing when your friends and students arrive, in fact, no more dancing period. Real men don’t dance.”

“Aussie, many people lead hard lives. We don’t need to add more hardness to this world.”

“There you go again, spineless and wishy-washy. Where’s your nerve? Where’s your courage? Where’s your backbone? What a nebbish. You’re a lamb and I’m a wolf—or I will be after we stop at the vet for a shot of testosterone.”

“You know, Aussie, army research has shown that females have greater social intelligence and endurance, and are less likely to pick unnecessary fights. Iran, for example, is an unnecessary fight.”

“No more talk. I’m off to the vet, and then to Iran to fight!”

“Aussie, do you know who you’ll meet there?”

“The Ayatollah?”

“No. The Sage Mazandarani.”

“Who dat?”

“A big Iranian mastiff, goes against wolves and bears to protect the sheep. When was the last time you went against a bear, Auss?”

“I take the Fifth..”

“And after you get through with the Sage Mazandarani, there’s Sarabi, another big mastiff. And after you’ve vanquished Sarabi, there’s the Sage Koochee, a shepherd in both Iran and Afghanistan. You know how many wars Koochees have seen? Anyway, go get your shot and off you go to play koocheekoo with Koochee. Well? What are you waiting for? Any second thoughts?”

“Hmmm. What’s for dinner?”

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“The only corner at home that I could call my own was under my bed. I would study in the mornings and spend my free time playing with my siblings and friends in our large backyard, much to our neighbors’ dismay. We stayed inside the crowded house only during the cold winter days.

In 1933, on one of those cold, wintry days, we had electricity installed. We were as noisy as a group of active children can be and disturbed the electricians. ‘Settle down already!’ Mamme exclaimed again and again, in vain. ‘If you don’t quiet down, I’ll throw you out!’ She glared at us once or twice.

I had an idea. ‘Wait, Mamme. You don’t need to send us outside. We’ll go ourselves!’

I asked my sister Shoshana to help the little ones put on their coats, and we hurried out with my siblings to put my plan into action. I was almost six, and my siblings – Shoshana, Chava, and Alex – were younger than I, so we could all ride the bus for free. It was warm and comfortable on the bus, and my younger siblings fell asleep on the ride.

Time passed quickly. Mamme was worried, certain that we were walking around in the cold. She felt bad about sending us out in the cold, but when we returned, she was surprised to see her rosy-cheeked children in good spirits … ‘Where have you been all this time?’ she asked. The little ones joyfully shared tales about our excursion. Mamme thanked me for giving her peace of mind by treating me to bread slathered with jam instead of margarine for dinner. I felt that I had shown true leadership.”

This excerpt is from an English translation of a book written by my cousin about her father, Simcha Singer, my uncle, who saved his family (and others) in the Holocaust, thus indirectly making my own life possible. The narrative describes the poverty of the family in Bratislava, Slovakia, and how a 6-year-old boy takes his younger siblings on a bus to get them out of the house one freezing day, something any harried mother of 11 can appreciate.

Consulted about the English translation, it hit me that the writer had omitted, or just didn’t know, a piece of the story that my own mother (the Shoshana referred to above, 4-5 years old at the time) had told me long ago. Here it is, written in my mother’s voice. Keep in mind that these are four little kids cocooned from the rest of the world by penury and orthodox religion:

“When the bus reached the main square, we got off. It was early but there wasn’t much sun in the middle of the winter. Elegant women in fur coats and hats shopped at the stores, holiday decorations lined the square, lights, colors and the sounds of people having a good time were everywhere. We’d never been here. We must have looked bedraggled to the others, but nobody looked at us.

And then we came to a shop window, a chocolate shop window, and our mouths dropped open. The window showed all kinds of chocolate, from the lightest brown to the darkest black, in all shapes and sizes: squares and ovals, spirals and crescents. The small signs told us that they had fillings: nuts and fruit, strawberry, raspberry and lemon, as well as liqueurs.

We’d never seen anything like it. Once or twice a year an uncle would arrive from Vienna, a 90-minute ride away, and bring one piece of chocolate for each of us. But people walked in and out of the store and, through the glass, we could see them pointing to various chocolates that were then carefully put into boxes, wrapped and ribboned. My mouth watered.

‘Look at all the chocolate they’re buying,’ I whispered to my brother, Simcha.

He turned to me, an earnest look on his face, and said: “But do you understand what goes into buying chocolate? You can’t just buy chocolate. First, you must pay rent for the apartment. Then you have to pay for electricity. Then you have to pay for wood (heat) and water. Then you must pay for food, and then for school and some books—and after that, after you’ve paid for all that, only then you could buy chocolate.’”

Perhaps that accounts for why, throughout my life, I’ve loved chocolate. And I’m fortunate enough to buy it without checking the list my uncle itemized so many years ago. He, too, became wealthy enough over the years to afford chocolate—and lots more—without having to check whether the roof was falling over his head or how much money he had in the bank.

I thought of this story on Sunday, a gorgeous day before the return of a nasty heat wave. I felt neither here nor there, somewhat dull and listless, a little stale. The hell with this, I decided, looking at the computer screen and the desk that never empties. I got up and drove off to Unity Park in Turners Falls, which featured a summer picnic and get-together for the entire community.

Many immigrant families, usually anxious about leaving their homes, were there. We’ve sent 15 of their children to camp while the parents work on the farms in this unusually hot and humid summer. I found Jimena, who was womaning the Bingo table, and sat down with a few others for bingo. The prize (which I didn’t win) was a Boston Celtics blanket. There was face-painting, balloons, and raffle tickets, along with hamburgers and hot dogs, potato chips, water bottles, and ice cream.

Instantly I cheered up. So much life, so much fun and spirit, so many bright white teeth flashing happy smiles. The sheer abandon and recklessness were intoxicating. I’m sure that at other times, in other areas, they must do their version of the math my uncle described above almost 100 years ago: Do we have the rent? Can we cover the electricity and water? Do we have food? Will we have money to get what the kids need when schools reopen? Only then, maybe, we could go to get hamburgers and ice cream, only then play games

On Sunday they didn’t have to do that arithmetic, it had been done for them. All they had to do was sit at picnic tables, hover occasionally over their babies in carriages, and laugh and clap while the teenagers played sports and the men went on line for the food.

So, so simple. No one left out. No fancy store windows with children perpetually on the outside, looking with bewilderment and a teaspoonful of envy at what was happening inside. Everyone was there, rich and poor, white, black, brown, English and other-speaking. Jimena read the Bingo numbers in her loud, no-nonsense tone, changing from one language to another. I didn’t win the Celtics blanket. The only drama took place when a little boy, John-Pablo, ran into the volleyball clearing among the teenage boys and girls and they had to stop the game to make sure he didn’t get hurt.

Right then and there, I made plans with Jimena and Byron to see the World Cup final at their home this coming Sunday. I don’t get sports on my TV and I love the World Cup, when some of the most glorious soccer games in the world are played. If you think the Superbowl is something, it is but the tiniest toe compared to the world body watching the World Cup. Train and plane travel come to a halt everywhere. If you’re not home, your eyes are anchored either to a phone screen or else you’re listening to the game. Poor villagers in every continent sit to watch it in front of the one screen someone may have.

And as the world watches, it’s conscious of itself as one world, you can’t miss it. For some 2-3 hours everyone is doing the same thing, yelling, cheering, cursing in all the languages under the sun, eating and drinking their local food, all brought together by this spectacle of the best players in the world passing the ball with astounding accuracy across long distances, running faster than you can  imagine. Even as we watch them, we’re aware of each other because we’re all doing the same thing. We share in a silent but instinctive, visceral understanding that we’re all one.

The politicians and FIFA will try to mess it up. Trump will intervene on behalf of the American team, other politicians will utter racist profanities, and FIFA itself is rotten to the core. But the players! The game!

It’s as if the world is saying: You think you could turn back the clock and deport everyone who’s not white or doesn’t speak English like a native. But these games, and the simple act of coming together on a gorgeous summer afternoon, are way stronger than you. One soccer ball (they’re so colorful in these games) and two nets is all it takes. Several bingo cards, a basketball court, hamburgers and dixie cups with vanilla ice cream, is all it takes. The world is dazzled.

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Henry stands on the back steps behind my office, a tiny twig at his paws.

“Henry, can’t you find something bigger for me to throw?”

“The stick, the stick!”

“How about the green ball out there? Or the sapling on the ground? Or even Pink Panther that I brought you from Israel?”

“The stick, the stick!”

“Henry, there’s a whole world of things to choose from. Our back yard has everything: bigger sticks and branches, Ducky, Turtle, half a dozen balls—an entire world.”

“The stick! The stick!”

I can barely see the damn thing, but he doesn’t care. All his attention, all his obsession is bound up in the tiny bough he found on the ground. Life has no immensity for him.

I think of icebergs. The visible crags of ice on top of the water are like nothing compared to what lies underneath, gargantuan and mysterious, and yet how often we focus and even obsess on what is visible, not seeing all the rest of it.

We’re often faced with negative reactions from people: anger, cynicism, disappointment, frustration, rigidity. It’s hard to summon much love or compassion in response. When do the latter surface? When I go underneath and see the pain and sorrow below, the feelings and experiences we hide that can only be guessed at by carefully prying under the skin and looking at the undisappearing past, the yesterdays and yesteryears that are here and now even if they occurred so many years ago.

It’s all here, but who wants to look under the water? Much easier to focus on the tiny stick rather than explore a back yard containing worms, beetles, snakes, and frogs that die midway up their climb from the Sawmill River. Not to mention the achingly transient beauty of summer.

A friend of mine, grieving the death of a beloved, writes that he has had a practice for many years of saying hello and goodbye to things as a constant reminder of impermanence. Henry has just passed by my chair and I say “Hello, Henry.” He leaves in search of a toy turtle and I say “Goodbye, Henry.” A green hummingbird just flew to the feeder to drink. “Hello, hummingbird.” Half a minute later: “Goodbye, hummingbird.”

Henry, of course, is back five minutes later and I’ll greet him again, but it’s not the same Henry. So many cells and molecules have changed. Atop the water he looks he same, but underneath? So once again: “Hello, Henry. Goodbye, Henry.”

My housemate Lori went East for several days, leaving him with me. She’ll come back soon and ask: “How’s Henry been?” and I’ll say: “Fine.” Maybe add that I wasn’t able to play with him on Thursday due to backpain and that he was rattled by a thunderstorm, but he’s fine. So much change and movement have happened in and to the little dog since Sunday when she left, but basically, he’s fine.

You can go away for a long trip, like my sojourn in Israel for 11 days in June, or go to the grocery store. Regardless, when you come back, things are fine. True, this time the hot water tank in the basement developed leaks and the water had to be shut down, but the house was there, the flowers, Kwan-yin, everything you see above water. “How was everything when you came home?” my sister asked after I landed. “Fine,” I told her.

So easy to miss the comings and goings, the constant, dizzying transformation, the volcanic flow of past, present, and future. The 50-year-old red rug in the living room is fine. Ragged and thin, but fine. “Hello, rug,” I say on my way to the stairs, followed by “Goodbye, rug.” The cushions on the living room sofa, so usually familiar, lose their familiarity for just a moment when I say: “Hello cushions,” followed by “Goodbye, cushions.” I’m afraid that if I don’t do that, they’ll just be fine.

The same for the car, the orange day lilies, the young mailman who dropped off a package, even the humid haze of a hot afternoon. The summer is fine. The scratchy, warm grass covering this infinite planet is fine.

My student Dantika is not fine. She died while I was gone. I missed bedside, I missed the memorial, not fine at all. When I drive past her house and look to my left, there is firewood on the ground ready to be stacked for winter, hanging plants over the deck, just like before. But the small, green house tells me that regardless of how it looks, things aren’t fine.

Yesterday marked my mother’s 98^th birthday, had she lived. She died at 6 am on a Saturday morning in the arms of her caregiver. Why hadn’t I been there night and day in the ten days following that big stroke? I was in Jerusalem, but not with her.

She was, like the upper part of an iceberg, self-contained and in control even as she aged, a closed vessel that didn’t let anything leak out and didn’t let anything leak in. She was so sadly cocooned, I was never sure whether she wanted to be touched or not. Bernie loved to be touched in the three years following his big stroke, but not her. Even in her very late years, her bones growing weaker and her skin mirror-like, our hugs were tentative, as if she wasn’t sure about this new practice.

In the 60 years I knew my father, we had 30 rough years and 30 good ones. Recently I discovered a new way of making him more present in my life. He loved to drive, and now, when I’m behind the wheel, I imagine him beside me cautioning me to be careful, drive a little slower, take care. I imagine him lighting a cigarette and opening the window (he stopped smoking only after lung cancer appeared in his 80s), pushing the passenger seat back, commenting on the scenery, reminding me about the black car to my left and the changing traffic light. It was his way of loving me, and lately I’ve been taking him with me whenever I drive somewhere.

I have yet to find a way of bringing my mother home. Not the closed, self-contained vessel she pretended to be, untouched and untouchable, whose constant answer to my anxious question on the telephone: “Mom, how are you?” was always “Fine.” I don’t mind diving deep to see the rest of her, not just the gorgeous silky skin with the occasional warm flush, but rather all of her, the full humanity that hid beneath the cold water. I just haven’t yet worked out how to do it.

Meantime, while Henry focuses on the tiny twig, the slight breeze causes the garden chimes to make music. The maple leaves dance and my back hurts. I want to miss less and less of it.

“Hello, chipmunk. Goodbye, chipmunk.”

“Hello, thunder. Goodbye, thunder.”

Hello, Eve. Goodbye, Eve.

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You can also send a check to: Eve Marko, POB 174, Montague, MA 01351. Please write on the memo line whether this is in support or immigrant families or of my blog. Thank you.