For My Boys, I love you to infinity and beyond
Today marks 30 years since my parents packed up their lives into several suitcases and moved across the Atlantic - to New York. It's hard to imagine for me the hardships that they had to go through in order to make this journey; it will be even harder for my children to understand. They didn't just leave jobs or apartments or friends - they left their whole lives. They came to this country with no language, no transferable skills, a few hundred dollars for a family of 4 and a loan to HIAS.
Through a LOT of hard work, all kinds of work - cleaning houses, delivering business cards, removing asbestos, they managed to put food on the table, buy an apartment and raise me, all the while my mom was battling stage 4 cancer. As a cancer survivor myself, I can confidently say that treatment and taboos surrounding it have come a very long way in 30 years, but I digress. My parents' support system here in the states was limited - all of their closest friends either immigrated to Israel or elsewhere. Others remained in the now former USSR. They worked so much with my mom's treatments sprinkled in between that it was hard to make friends, but my mom did anyway. She made friends in Chemo and with her doctors. She made friends in her NYANA English class and with the owner of the Russian (speaking) store where we shopped. Long distance calling was expensive, so she would always find some deals on calling cards to call her friends all around the globe. She always called. She remembered not only birthdays of her friends, but of their children and later their grandchildren. The weekend before she passed, she literally called everyone. This August, it will be 14 years, and I don't think I've fully forgiven her for not saying goodbye to me.
In a goodbye to my mom, one of the closest friends wrote an article commemorating their friendship and the unique person that Lera, Lilya, Leonora was. Every so often I reread it and find some interesting tidbit, some new discovery. Sometimes the discoveries come from other places like discovering an artist who's the daughter of my mom's friend - and later finding a book of the artist's work with the inscription -
Удивительной Лере, которая не забывает старых друзей.
To extraordinary Lera, who never forgets old friends.
I have a collection of mom's books that I don't know what to do with, but I'm certain that they contain many secrets that maybe someday, with some luck I can uncover. Today, I've uncovered a friendship from 50 years ago. It was Emiliya's birthday yesterday and somehow her article floated up on Facebook (one of the reasons I love the platform) and I was granted with the most flattering comment -
"It was a remarkable time, remarkable place, remarkable group of young people, having crazy courage and unbelievable fun. You looking alike Lera. Hope you inherited her spirit, energy and sincerity. My best regards to you."
What do you do with a message like that from someone whose name you've never heard? How does one react? I cried and then I sent him a message. Today, we spoke for an hour and while much of what he shared with me is much too personal to share here, he described my mom as the fountain of ideas and proceeded to tell me a story that took place on the Volga river in 1978. He described her as full of life and a whole person - the embodiment between the intellectual and the spiritual, something that I myself often find in conflict. She, in her 20s at the time, understood the deeper and inner meaning of things. It is no coincidence that one of the inscriptions on her monument reads, "She did more than exist, she lived. She did more than listen, she understood." He asked me to put a stone down the next time I go. I will put two - one for him and one for all the others in the photos that carry this in their hearts. They last spoke some 40 years ago as life (for Jews specifically in the USSR) took everyone scrambling across the globe. It took 40 years to recount a story of youth with the fondest of memories. The story gave me fuel to hold me over until the next such story appears. However, I'm lucky.
I had two friends call me this week to praise me on some of the volunteer work that I do. An older friend reminded me of who I am. Last month, a friend got me a cake for connecting certain people in their lives. Those types of little things aren't little. They give us fire beneath our wings, they allow us to fly. My firm recently brought in Brene Brown to talk about leadership and one of the things she mentioned was that vulnerability is something that we admire most in others and have the hardest time displaying ourselves - "Vulnerability is not weakness; it's our greatest measure of courage." It took me as much courage to write this as the speech in front of 100 people I promised to give next week. I often wear my heart on my sleeve. I try to tell show people what they mean to me. I don't always succeed, but as much of my spiritual training has taught me - you can only meet people where they are. Maybe in 40 years time, they will find my kids on FB (or some other kind of platform) and tell them what I meant to them then.
This is my resolution, not to wait - to tell people what they mean to me - unknowingly I started to this week. This blog used to be called "Random Thoughts," and today I no longer believe in coincidences. I believe in the serendipitous ebbs and flows of life - life that often gets in the way and takes us all in different directions. There are “friends for a time and friends for a lifetime” and if you're still reading this, thank you for being a part of it - your love, friendship and kindness do more than I could ever put into words. Here's to the next 30 years in the "land of the free", with peaceful skies, simchas to celebrate, laughter, good company and stories to tell all of our descendants.
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