The Infiniti, and beyond

It's October 31, and much to my chagrin, the car remains uninspected. It was due in September, and now I'm 60 days over. I'm worried and trying to figure out where and how to find the time to get my baby over to the garage, but I can't seem to find a plan that will work.

For eleven years, I drove a Toyota Corolla. Blue, four-door, '89 sedan, a real workhorse. When my '83 Corolla Hatchback lost its muffler on the way home for winter break from college one December day, I didn't know what I would do. The car had been in two major accidents, and wasn't exactly reliable. I knew my parents didn't feel great about me driving back and forth more than 120 miles each way with a tempermental car, and besides, there were these big stupid buses all over campus - I probably didn't need the car after all.

But when I came downstairs one morning, a couple of days before I had to leave to go back for spring semester, my dad announced, "We're giving you the blue car." It was brand new, we'd only had it for about six months. I couldn't believe that I was getting a new car, just like that, for doing nothing. My immediate response was: "What have you done with my parents?"

I drove that car until 2001 - from the time I was 19 until I was 31. I was convinced the car had some kind of divinely-inspired autopilot, considering how many times I drove that car, completely not paying attention to the road, speedometer, or other drivers. I put more than 150,000 miles on that car and never got hurt once.

But eventually, it blew a head gasket and it had to go. We donated it to the Diabetes Foundation. I remember being really depressed about it, thinking I was completely devastated at losing this symbol of my youth. Two days later was 9/11, which kind of put things into perspective.

After that I leased my sweet little Sentra - first the gold one, which was the unfortunate recipient of the karmic blast intended for eleven years of not watching the road - within eight weeks it was totaled in a bad five-car pile up on the FDR Drive. Nissan was fabulous and let me apply the two whole payments and my deposit to a new car. I went over to the dealership one cloudy Sunday afternoon, and picked out a red one.

When my dad passed away, I agreed to buy his beloved Infiniti from my mom, even though I still had 9 months to go on my Sentra lease. The Infiniti was old, but it was paid for, and driving it felt like driving around in a living room. During the past six months before he died, I drove it more frequently as he distanced himself more and more from the things he loved, including driving. We'd go up to visit my sister in Connecticut and he'd mention that he didn't really feel up to the trip home, that I could handle the car better than he could in the dark - something he never really believed before. In retrospect, maybe we should have known there was something wrong.

Now the Infiniti is mine, and I think my dad would pretty much freak out to see it. He kept it neat as a pin - he was as meticulous about his cars as he was about everything else. Now it's got a trunk full of books and dry cleaning and china that my mom gave me but that I haven't brought upstairs yet, the backseat has boxes (again, yet to be brought upstairs) and there is a Torah, a Tanakh and a siddur on the front seat. Talk about being a wandering Jew. I could lead services in my car if I were so inclined. And you could probably get a minyan in there if you took out all the crap in the back.

But it does need to be inspected, and I need to find the time. I don't know where it is going to come from, or how I am going to explain to the Powers that Be here that I need a day where I can work from home and be without the car. This can't go on much longer. Even the Infiniti is beholden to a higher power.

Rainy Day Women #22 & #38

It's an ideal weather day here in White Plains: cold, rainy, and windy, with leaves tumbling down all over the roads. My favorite kind of day. Yeah, I know I'm not exactly in the majority on this opinion.

But it's a good day to be exhausted, and not feeling 100%, and if I didn't have to be in the office today I'd be curled up with my friend Sally's book, with a pot of chili bubbling on the stove and maybe even a challah in the oven. One of my ambitions this year is to learn how to bake my own, even though technically, I suppose, I shouldn't be eating it.

As much as I'd love to cocoon up and forget about the world, I know it's not a realistic expectation. I can only be grateful for my easy job and the fact that it's insanely busy here - which brings great hope for surviving the recession. Sure, I'm not making nearly enough money, and every month is a struggle in spite of the two new dresses bought on sale, and the new shoes I have to occasionally buy for more than I've ever spent on shoes before, because they are really good for people with RA. Right now I'm grateful for my job, and for the apartment I can curl up in even though it's a freaking mess, and for the fact that I was never smart enough to go into the financial world.

When I graduated from college in '92, the economy sucked - not quite as badly as it does now - but it wasn't a good market for new graduates. On the strength of my summer job as a bank teller (which my dad arranged for me), I was accepted into a management training program at a small bank in Fleetwood, about a 20 minute drive from my parents' house.

That was an easy job too, but I hated it. I hated the branded uniformity of the environment, the stupid stock photos on the walls, the sense of confinement in the tiny branch, the strict 30 minute lunch break, having to wear a suit and stockings and heels every day, and the rotten attitudes of the veterans who thought all of the young people were idiots. Not to mention that the manager, a Mariah Carey fanatic, insisted on Muzak renditions of all her greatest hits, played incessantly over the branch sound system, all day. But above all, I hated the sense that this was it - this was the future - surrounded by people who cared about nothing but money. I had spent four years studying the literature of the Holocaust. My boyfriend was 2 hours away, in Philadelphia, cheating on me with anyone he could find. It was not a good time. But as people kept telling me, I had a job, and that was the important thing. I was miserable, but my parents explained it away - that was what the working world was all about - I would have to learn how to deal with it.

One night, I was over at my friend Meg's house - her parents were away so we were hanging out, drinking Coronas and peeling peaches for pie - in despair of my future and its bleak, conformist outlook. At around 4AM, in a haze of lime-scented alcohol and a pile of pie-crust trimmings, Meg convinced me to quit. I decided to table the decision for another couple of hours.

When I woke up at 8AM, the rain was pouring down - it was a day much like this one - with a wind tossing the leaves from the trees. I reached for the phone and called my boss to let him know that I wouldn't be coming in; that in fact, I wouldn't be coming back.

Needless to say, my parents weren't too happy with me. But it wasn't the right fit for me - it would never be the right fit no matter how many chances I gave it. It was only three weeks later that I landed a new job - an editorial proofreader at the Pennysaver, where I made even less money than I had as a management trainee. But it was full of creative people - cool young people in jeans and sneakers - where we got 45 minutes for lunch, and could blast whatever music we felt like playing. Sure, we had our fair amount of suits and crazies, but at least they were real. And best of all, there wasn't a hint of Mariah Carey to be heard.

I went from there to grad school, and then on to marketing, and now here we are, sixteen years after that rainy day hangover that helped me to move to a new path. Standing at the crossroads again, I can only wonder this time what the rain will bring.

Bereshit

Tomorrow morning, my weekly Torah study group, along with thousands of b'nei mitzvah children all over the world, will begin the Torah over again. The beginning comes, in my opinion, at the exact perfect moment, when the chill in the air and the gorgeous vibrant leaves and the deep azure of the Sound all bring the beauty of G-d's handiwork into sharp focus. It's as if, no matter what troubles or joys you are facing, you simply have to notice what a beautiful world we live in. And as a writer, very few narratives intrigue me as much as our sacred story of creation. Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim v'et ha'aretz - in the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth - is one of those perfect first lines - in fact, it is THE perfect first line. And I think any writer worth their keyboard would agree.

Consider how some of the most compelling and intriguing stories begin with lines like: Scarlett O'Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. Or, Lily, the caretaker's daughter, was literally run off her feet. The perfect combination of wanting to know more about the character and the action inherent in the text. From the moment you read it, you're hooked. Face it: you can't let the story go.

When I think about "in the beginning" it always makes me wonder. The beginning, by definition, can only take place once. And yet in life, we are innundated by beginnings, second and third acts, countless chances. The old saw, "You never get a second chance to make a first impression" is a powerful statement, but I'm curious as to whether it is actually true. Our gift of teshuvah, of personal evolution, of the ability to turn and change, and the not-so-unimportant blessing of other people's short term memory gives us that second chance all the time.

Just like with Torah: every year, we begin again. We rarely read it the same way twice. In each reading cycle, we are informed by internal and external circumstances, life changes, personal experience, and the opinions and ideas that other people bring to the table. The fact that we are not supposed to study alone makes that last quality perhaps the most important. Reading about the death of Miriam one year made me consider the justifiable frustration and anger of B'nei Yisrael having been "led on" through the desert, and now facing a crisis of inadequate water and supplies for the journey. A year later, having faced incalculable loss in my own life, all I could see was a distraught and grieving Moses simultaneously struggling to lead a people and mourn for his sister. That point of view had, of course, been at the table the year before - many of those teachers of Torah with whom I share in study every Shabbat had the knowledge way before I did. But it took looking at the text through my own lens of mourning to see it clearly.

Beginning again is also the hallmark of so many aspects of my own life: by definition, the writer is always beginning, whether it is a new book, a new chapter, a new sentence. And as is the case with so many fellow Jews-by-Choice, living life in a new faith and according to a new set of lifecycles accounts for numerous beginnings throughout the learning process of becoming Jewish -- and beyond. Consider the process: taking Intro to Judaism; beginning Hebrew classes. Starting with aleph instead of the letter A. Realizing that your day now starts at sundown rather than sunrise. Even figuring out how to keep kosher (which I still haven't managed to do) or how to conduct that first Seder or bake that first Rosh HaShana apple cake calls for looking at things in a way you've never seen them before, beginning again, over and over. It is certainly no accident that many of us who have trained as URJ Outreach Fellows call our discussion group for Jews-by-Choice "New Beginnings."

As I wrote recently, sometimes being at the beginning again can be scary. It is learning how to mark time and move forward poised between old knowledge and new, between who you've been and whom you've yet to become. Perhaps still reacting to old ghosts and ideas from the past and perhaps fearing what the future holds. It's an odd place to be.

But as my dear friend Reb Marci taught me in our recent online discussion about the death of Moses, Torah does not really allow us to dwell in the past; the story's very momentum commands us to move forward. And before we know it we are back at the table, in awe as our eyes behold the heavens and the earth, the stars in the firmament and every living thing according to its type. And perhaps there is nothing more perfect to say than the Holy One's own words: Ki tov.