Our Cleaning Lady’s Bar Mitzvah Year

I’ve heard it told that friends should never share cleaning help. But my cleaning lady came blessedly into my life on the recommendation of my friend Susan, whose own mother-in-law Anna made the initial shidduch that brought Susan’s house to order. I am forever grateful to both of them.

I’d already been through numerous cleaning people over the years, most of them lovely. The exceptions were the ones who kept breaking things and the one who cast aspersions on my housekeeping skills, which was just silly. If I had stellar housekeeping skills, I wouldn’t have needed her services in the first place.

In any case, they spoke a multitude of languages I could not understand. I then worked full-time, commuting three hours round-trip each day, and was never home when they arrived. The combined result was an entirely unproductive enterprise, since I had to leave it to them to decide what it was that I needed done.

So Susan’s recommendation was a godsend. For starters, she spoke Serbian, a sister to the Croatian language I thankfully learned to speak years ago. As she took her place in my trifecta of immigrants from the former Yugoslavia who have enabled me to manage my life (sort of, anyway), my Croatian husband had a good chuckle about my being some kind of Balkan magnet.

The first of the threesome was our babysitter, Blanka. We met in the elevator of our building when I was pregnant, returning from the hospital with bed rest orders. She kindly asked me which floor. I recognized her Croatian accent and three days later, she was keeping my older boys – then mere toddlers – busy on Shabbat mornings so my husband could go to shul. Though we now rarely need a sitter, she is still a part of our extended family.

Years later, when we moved into our fixer-upper home, I sought recommendations for contractors to render it livable. Coincidentally, two of the three were ex-Yugoslavs. We chose Zak, the one from Croatia, before we could even ask that personal of a question. He, too, has since interwoven himself into our lives, in part because he still fixes everything that breaks in our house (we have boys, so let your imagination run wild).

But it is really Jovanka, our cleaning lady from Serbia, who has steadied my universe since she first walked through the door. She always tells me that I’m “naša,” the equivalent of a landsman; that I was born in New York is irrelevant. She shares riotous tales and village wisdom as it applies – or not -- here in New Jersey. For thirteen years now, she has taken me under her wing, even if the resident elves restore the house to its former state of disorder just hours after she leaves.

Every year on my youngest son’s birthday, she recalls watching me writhe in agony while on bed rest. She was sure that I would not survive his pregnancy and worried herself into knots. Tell me, though, how many people can say that their cleaning lady prays for them?

Once I’d hung a picture above the beds in our room. I came home the night after Jovanka had been here to find it leaning against the wall. We put it back up, but the next time, sure enough, the picture was down again. It seems a woman in her village had died when the picture hanging above her bed had fallen on her. Years later, still nothing hangs on that wall in our home. I wouldn’t dare.

Jovanka loves that I cook and especially that I bake challah, like a good village woman who makes her own bread. This only proves to her that I’m really a Balkan sister. That said, she has choice words for me because I don’t iron my husband’s shirts. To placate her, I taught her how to make knaidlach. It seems to have worked.

The relationship has been wonderful, long may it reign. Still, there has been one fly in the ointment: my boys’ rooms.

For years, I’ve complained to her about their mess, about their lack of fastidiousness, about their inability – despite their athletic prowess – to get their dirty clothes in the laundry basket, not on the floor right next to it. With a wave of her hand, she would poo-poo my concerns, saying, “Aaah, decki (boys).” So I’d lock their rooms, and she’d find her way in, cleaning them anyway.

Last week, though, clear out of the blue, she declared that it is now time to teach them to clean up after themselves, put away their own things, and hang their own clothes. I nearly plotzed. Surely, she knows that I’ve been trying for fifteen years to do just that, though clearly without much success and sometimes without her complete support.

In the to-the-point yet loving way in which she states everything, she added another round of village wisdom: “They are no longer little boys.” I realized then that all along I’ve been asking them to clean for me. The time has come that they do it for themselves.

The Great Pesach Heist

I’ve been robbed.

Oh, it came as no surprise, though I did not exactly court the trouble myself. My son arrived in this world when he did, six weeks early of his own volition, right on the cusp of Pesach. I returned from the hospital following a C-section and immediately set to kashering my kitchen, a fact I look back upon still today with utter fascination. From whence came the strength, I do not know.

But a fleeting thought came to mind even then: his bar mitzvah would fall out on Shabbat Hagadol. For years, it was something to speculate about with a bit of a nervous chuckle. Eventually, however, the nervous chuckle transformed into full-blown panic when we realized that the first seder would begin that year on a Monday night.

Not exactly perfect timing if you aren’t the sort to spend the holiday in a resort hotel on the beach. And I am not.

Friends and family gently suggested that I consider moving the date, but that wouldn’t have been easy either given conflicts with other bar mitzvahs already on the calendar. Ultimately, G-d had the deciding vote. I’m simply not one to play games with His scheduling. If Shabbat Hagadol is when He wanted the bar mitzvah to take place, that’s when it would take place.

So we proceeded accordingly, and it all looked so doable from far from away. Distance has that remarkable ability to calm our nerves, to convince us that there’s plenty of time to get it all done, to reassure us in the way Israelis say, “yehiye tov.” It will be good.

And yet, the confluence of events suddenly struck me like a ton of bricks once the year of his bar mitzvah arrived. Then the countdown – months, weeks, now days -- began, and I immediately found myself split in two. One half lurched towards Pesach, the other half towards the bar mitzvah. A sliver of me stayed in the center lane, trying to hold down the rest of the work-life-laundry fort. I soon took to using a large piece of paper to manage it all, folding my shopping and to-do lists into three columns.

Now, with less than a week to go until the bar mitzvah and one extra day left until Pesach, I feel much like my fifth grader, whose gym curriculum includes a circus unit. They juggle. They balance plates on sticks. But as my fifth grader -- who has mastered keeping three balls aloft -- will tell you, mismatched objects cannot travel easily in a continuous round. Likewise, a fragile stick cannot keep a heavy plate in the air.

With the pressure on to do too much at once, my frustration has made me into one of those snapping turtles in the aquarium. I need a coffee I.V. to function and I can hardly eke out a smile. I barely recognize myself and Lord knows I don’t admire myself in this state.

Generally, I love this time of year. I enter Pesach cleaning season like a kid in a candy shop. All of the organizing and cleaning and sorting and clearing out set my heart beating as if I’m falling in love with my husband all over again. Almost nothing makes me as happy as lining up bags to donate or pass along to friends. I don’t even mind the smell of Windex and Comet seeping into my skin because the end result – appliances that look brand-spanking new – is so worth it.

But on another level, nothing matches the conversations I have with G-d while I’m cleaning as I get ready for seder at a slow and steady pace. We talk about everything. While wiping down the cabinets, I am wiping my slate clean, too. I apologize for my impatience with my children and my slothfulness when I do not make it to shul, hoping my fastidiousness in preparations for the holiday will somehow make amends.

This year, however, I’ve been denied that lengthy preparation time, rushed as I am with all sorts of distractions. Instead of self-reflection, I’m simply ticking things off lists. Forget about prayer. I’m lucky I’m awake! And so, what has long been a meaningful period of spiritual focus has been stolen right out from under me by thieves who snuck in under the cover of chaos.

This morning, however, I awoke annoyed with myself. Shame on me, I said, for failing to see the wonder of all that is happening around me. I decided to slam on the brakes and take a detour away from the traffic in order to find a way to be genuinely happy – right now. It is unfair, I realized, to allow all of this stress to mute my son’s simcha. Likewise, poor Pesach is awash in the tumult, too. At this rate, nothing is getting the attention it deserves.

And you know what else I realized? I’m entitled to my time with G-d as well. I have scheduled a shorter conversation with Him for later this evening when I’m cleaning the freezer.

So friends, there’s the rub! The burglars may have pocketed a few things, but they left behind the gift of focus.

Gone, for this year at least, are my Pesach-induced neuroses. There’s simply no time for spring cleaning. I will pay close attention to the blessings that nullify whatever chametz I missed in my swoop through the house. As it always is, the kitchen will be kashered and thank G-d, no one will go hungry. The important thing is that we will be together for the holiday.

As for the bar mitzvah, my sons are my greatest blessings, and I’m glad to have had the reminder this year. I promise myself to be present in the moment when my middle man stands to read from the torah. As Grandma Sadye liked to say, I will stick out my chest in pride and be grateful with a full heart.

And once the bar mitzvah is over and Pesach has begun, I will remember to send the burglars a thank you note.

We Have Guests

About a week ago, our older sons made an astute observation. While walking through the yard, they noticed that the vent covering the attic fan had been pried open. This, we knew, could not be good. On the other hand, we were amazed that two individuals constitutionally incapable of noticing dirt could be so observant.

At first, we attributed the damage to Hurricane Sandy. Perhaps a tree branch had flown through the air, bending the metal as it slammed into the side of the house. But we quickly eliminated that possibility from the running since we’d done a thorough post-storm inspection of the exterior months ago.

After a brief moment of panic about what might be the actual culprit -– something had surely come to roost -- I made a mental note to have the vent tended to posthaste. Then the thought slipped from my sleep-deprived, caffeine-addled brain as if it had never been there.

You see, I’ve been busy making a bar mitzvah for our middle son, who first arrived into this world on the eve of Pesach, which means of course that he becomes a man at the very same time thirteen years later. The scheduling isn’t wonderful, but there’s nothing I can do about it.

Although we could not switch when he will first be called up to the torah, we did decide to keep our sanity intact and book his party a month earlier. With centerpieces to construct out of assorted Nerf balls, I only vaguely recalled the open vent issue. And then that most awkward of jobs -- table arranging, which requires stealth tracking of who is not speaking to whom right up to the last moment before the event – completely flushed it from my mind.

We had guests coming from far and wide to celebrate, to laugh at my son’s jokes and to partake of a carefully selected brunch buffet. Who was thinking about silly things like vent covers and Animal Planet?

Well, shame on me, because the afternoon following the party, which was lovely by the way, I finally collapsed from complete exhaustion onto the living room couch. And then I heard it, moving its hairy little self across the floorboards in the unfinished attic. These were not the footsteps of a clomping teenager on the prowl for food. These belonged to a member of the rodent family on the prowl for food.

Moments later, the same teenager who does not hear me call him to take out the garbage heard the padding of the beast’s paws in transit and shouted as if I’d stolen his Mac.

We clearly had company.

I called the exterminator’s emergency hotline, but it was Presidents’ Day weekend and no one was available. I could not believe the company’s level of irresponsibility. What was the point of the emergency hot line? Was there no on-call doctor, I mean exterminator? This was, after all, a crisis.

Over the phone, the operator tried to reassure me: “It is very unlikely that whatever is up there will find its way into your house.” I was not reassured. It was already IN our house!

On edge, we all slept with one eye open, except my husband – G-d bless him – who can sleep through more or less anything. Our youngest, however, was so excited about the prospect of meeting whatever was up there that he stayed completely awake, afraid to miss the yet unidentified animal as it burst through a soffit.

The next morning, as promised, Brian the exterminator came to lay traps. I greeted him as if he’d arrived to redeem a city under siege, my checkbook in hand. His initial inspection hinted at nothing specific, but he has a sixth sense for this kind of thing. This, after all, is what he does.

“You’ve either got a raccoon or a flying squirrel,” he told me, as if he’d announced a school closing on the morning of a snow day.

Flying squirrels and raccoons? You could have knocked me over with a feather.

One day later, Brian – whose visits I began to treat with enormous trepidation – crawled out of the attic to report evidence that proved his raccoon theory. There were prints in the dust. At first, I got defensive about my housekeeping skills, but it’s not like I was expecting guests to stay up there.

The traps in place, the bait set (cat food on day one, tuna on day two), we went on with our lives and waited for the raccoon to find his hungry way into the cage. Brian warned us how that would sound, but I’ll spare you the details. Throughout the day, I heard things – walking, thumping—until suddenly, it went silent. Brian quickly sealed two of the vents with screen and said the raccoon had probably hidden in the insulation.

Yet another night went by with nothing doing in the traps. Brian told me not to worry, assuring me that “we” would take care of the problem. I assured him that “we” would be doing nothing of the sort. “He” would be taking care of it and “I” would be paying for it (and a pretty penny, too).

Certain that it was up there, lying low, our youngest refused to go to school. He didn’t want to miss seeing the raccoon in the cage being carted off for a road trip at least fifteen miles from here (that’s the required distance according to whatever authorities determine such things). But we employ a kind and understanding exterminator, who promised to do his daily inspection after 3:30 p.m. instead of first thing in the morning.

The week nearly over, Brian arrived on Friday and noticed that the one unsealed vent had been pried open. Apparently, our raccoon had seen the writing on the wall and fled. We were the underdogs, but we’d won this round.

While reveling in that short-lived window of victory, I suddenly recalled the ground hog that burrowed a country home under the bay window last year. And there is the family of deer – all seven of them – who take their breakfast under the swing set in the yard and the squirrels who hang out in the garbage cans.

I don’t live in the suburbs. I live on a wildlife preserve.

Meanwhile, Brian strolled off onto the horizon, empty metal cages in hand. Though I wished it weren’t so, I knew in my heart I’d not seen the last of him.

Embracing My Tfoo-Tfooing Heritage

It should come as no surprise that someone as compelled by kaparot as I am would also spend a great deal of time dodging the evil eye. But I’ve often wondered about this avoidance aspect of Judaism that requires SWAT-like tactics to maneuver around the sheydim lurking in every corner.

This tfoo-tfooing habit of mine, ingrained in me by my mother and grandmother, has not been plucked out of thin air. It is rooted in Jewish ritual and Talmudic tradition and arrived from Europe with my great-grandparents. I presume that Old World habits initially cushioned their adjustment to America’s newness, but they died hard, sticking with my predecessors -- and by extension, our family -- for generations.

My first experience with the evil eye occurred beyond my range of memory, when I was a mere infant swaddled in my crib. With my mother out of sight, my paternal grandmother stuck a knife beneath my pillow to ward off the approach of the other-worldly villains waiting to snatch me. You can imagine what the knife’s discovery did for mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relations. Today, though, the pillow would be considered just as deadly, but that’s neither here nor there.

The tfoo-tfooing came later, when I was old enough to realize that relatives were not exactly spitting at me, but instead aiming to create a force field that would shield me from all shades of invisible doom. The expectoration followed something that sounded like keninahurrah to my young ears, a pronouncement preceded by shaynaponim and an often violent pinch of my cheeks.

While trying on a new dress that needed altering, I was required to chew on a piece of thread, a trick meant to send the Angel of Death walking. This always flummoxed me. I simply could not fathom how my mother would allow me to place in my mouth something that had been at the bottom of her sewing box, yet she forced me to throw out a cookie that had been on the spotless kitchen floor for mere seconds.

But there was more, all designed to keep us one step ahead of the bad guys – the ones ready to snatch our souls, our money, our belongings, our good luck, our future. There were every day proscriptions, too, like not walking around the house in socks, especially white ones, taking care not to trim our toenails in order, and never, ever, ever sitting on a table.

And G-d bless the pregnant, for there was an entire orchestra of tfoo-tfooing composed for that nine-month period alone. But my favorite, the one to which I adhered to the letter of the law when my turn came, was the prohibition against entering a zoo, for if my sons had been born hairy and funny-looking, I would have had no one to blame but myself.

I know from discussions with friends that I am not altogether unique in this way, that many of us, in fact, have a shared history in this business. I find it remarkably comforting to know that I have compatriots in the fight to scare off the ayin harah, the sheydim, and the dark angels. In the spirit of camaraderie, I have even incorporated friends’ techniques into my own already extensive repertoire. So I no longer leave water uncovered overnight and always take care to line up pairs of shoes in the correct position.

Genetically predisposed in this way, I worry about even the slightest of missteps. And I wonder, too, whether this approach is, at its core, a healthy way to live in an otherwise fragile world or if, perhaps, it is nothing more than shtetl-minded superstition best dropped in the spirit of modernity.

In the end, the arrival of the daily paper convinces me to keep at it. It offers reports of endless tragedy and suffering, natural disaster, man-made disaster, economic decline, and celebrity dysfunction, with only an occasional feel-good story about an adorable rescue dog in Montana. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind a force field that keeps the scary world out, even if I appear to be a bit of a superstitious ninny.

Long-term, though, these traditions, whatever their authentic origins, seem to have found their end with my children. The boys walk around in white socks all the time and toss their shoes haphazardly about. When asked, they will tell you the reasons I’ve asked them not to: Socks get dirty. Shoes get lost. There will be no mention of the evil eye or ghosts or the satan. That part slipped unnoticed through their memories, the genetic trait through a generation.

I presume they will eventually find their own way to ward off the unwanted and to protect what is dear to them. Or maybe, just maybe, when they have children of their own, they will need the comfort that a little knocking on the kitchen table and some hearty tfoo-tfooing can provide. I may yet, one day, hear them mumble an incantation they recall from their childhood, and perhaps thoughts of their superstitious mother – their fellow soldier in arms -- will bring a smile to their faces.

Leaks, Locks and Other Kaparot

Though we are closer to Pesach than we are to the Days of Awe, the idea of kaparah in all its incarnations has been a hot topic for me the past few weeks. I figured I’d first sort through the thoughts swirling around in my head before putting them in writing, hence the longer than usual gap between postings.

Well, that, and we’ve been quite busy with repairs. More about that later.

Foremost on my mind has been the ritual side of things, but fear not. Though I have nine deer walking through my yard each morning, I have no intention of taking up the sacrificing of wild beasts as a hobby. On the other hand, it might up the ante on the gossip at the kosher butcher were someone to see me swinging a live animal around my head in the yard.

As for that sort of kapores, I have fond memories of my grandfather’s quirky interpretation of the rite on the eve of Yom Kippur. He would take money in his hand and encircle his balding pate three times, check that no one was down below, and toss the coins out the window of the apartment building onto the sidewalk. He assured me that it was always gone by the time he left for shul.

Personally, I’ve never gone for the swinging chicken thing either, mostly because of the aroma. I also feel awful about taking it all out on a bird, even if I’m not a vegetarian. Like my grandfather, I put a few dollar coins in my hand instead and designate them the new owner of my misbegotten infractions. I swing them around for G-d to see and recite a prayer that certifies the exchange. By the time I’ve put the funds in the pushka, I can breathe easier.

This symbolic shoving of my sins out of the way and the transfer of responsibility to something that will never make me feel guilty about it gives me goose bumps. It’s a beautiful thing, all that letting go.

The other sort of kaparot, though, the ones G-d sends us year round when we least expect them, are an entirely different story. They throw me for a loop, even as we pronounce assuredly, “It’s a kaparah!” when they occur. Although it is possible that I’m just noticing them more often, it seems that they are more plentiful around here lately.

A bruised funny bone, a raw egg fallen to the floor, or a flat tire -- they arrive like packages tied up in ribbon, little gifts with deeper meanings that leave me mystified. I am left to wonder whether they have wiped the slate clean, atoning on my behalf for something I have already done wrong. Or, perhaps, they have spared me from a worse fate – a broken arm, salmonella, or an accident.

Unlike the ritual kapores in which I must take the lead, in these instances it is G-d who takes the bull by the horns. Through them He offers me a cautionary tale, warning me to watch my every step, pulling me out of my stupor, and reminding me to pay more attention to His master plan. Though He had bigger, more ominous things in store for me, He’s compassionately and lovingly allowed my washing machine to overflow into my basement instead.

I take notice, but rather than think too much about what the flood replaced in the cosmic order, I simply say thank you.

Then, two days after the laundry incident, a rush of leakage-themed kaparot – small, wet, messy things – began to greet me at every turn: spilled milk on the kitchen floor, red horseradish dripping from top to bottom of the refrigerator, sour apple beverage mix seeping out of the bottle onto the carpet in my van.

Soon after that, we turned a corner, straight into a string of lock- and door-related kaparot.

First, the storm door handle broke, after which the front door deadbolt jammed. Just hours later, the spring on the adjacent coat closet flew out of position, making it impossible to close. And then came the final knell, when the handle on my van’s trunk door went limp.

We repaired and replaced, bemoaning both cost and aggravation. We pronounced the usual platitudes about houses being bottomless pits and rubbed our brows while standing in line at Lowe’s (again). We expressed amazement at how quickly ten years have passed since we moved into this house, and how many blessings – and vast, irreplaceable losses -- we have counted in that time.

But what, really, were all of these kaparot telling us? All of that water, all of those locks. Was there a kabalistic explanation? We worried we were veering off the right path or making the wrong decisions. But how were we to know?

Soon enough, we realized that we cannot know – will likely never know for certain – but the kaparot had surely gotten us thinking and praying. In the end, we resolved to take them at face value, to faithfully accept them as our package and as a sign that we were loved.

With gratitude and some peace of mind, I lit candles this past Friday night, knowing that my car and refrigerator had been restored to order and that the basement was clean and dry. I locked the repaired deadbolt on the front door as my husband left for shul and rested my weary feet on the ottoman.

Picking up a new book, I suddenly felt a chill that pointed to an expired thermostat battery. By the end of Shabbes, we realized the heating unit, too, had issues that required serious medical attention, as did the spreading pool of water beneath the humidifier.

My husband and I just looked at one another and shrugged, unsure whether to laugh or to cry, but thankful for our flannel sheets, for our plumber Bill, for our faith in G-d’s plan, and for one another.

As I drifted off to sleep, I considered that all of these year-round kaparot were possibly sending me a message that my kapores on erev Yom Kippur need a little shaking up.

Maybe this time around I will toss the dollar coins out the window, or I will give more serious consideration to the chicken.

The Winning Ticket

In the hours leading up to last week’s mind-blowing Powerball drawing, my boys were busy spending their winnings. Each devised his own specific game plan, but the essentials were more or less the same.

First, we would tithe (our yeshiva tuition dollars at work!).

Then we would head to the mall, where we would be allowed to drop an insane yet pre-determined amount of cash on items we’ve longed desired. For the boys, this would translate almost exclusively into Apple products.

From there, my husband would set off for a party at Brooks Brothers. The boys would stock up on American Eagle, then Game Stop, and finally, Brookstone.

I would get a stack of iTunes gift cards for all of them, a tool chest to organize my husband’s gadgets in the garage, and for myself, a vast quantity of socks in very feminine colors. You see, someone keeps making off with mine. They are never in my drawer when I need them.

Giddy with consumerism, we would leave the mall and head to the bank, where we would establish trust funds for the boys to cover their education. On the way home, we would stop at Starbuck’s. You only live once, so we would splurge on Ventis for everyone. After all, we would be celebrating our winning ticket.

Hopefully, after allowing for yeshiva-tuition increases over time, there would be enough money left to install a second sink (the one of my fantasy) in the kitchen.
Their plans in place, the boys slept blissfully on the night of the drawing and dreamed of their posh new lives. But they awoke to find that the newspaper listed numbers that made someone else obscenely wealthy.

Disappointed but not surprised, everyone went off to school and work and I sat down to write. Staring at the blank screen, I wondered what on earth was wrong with me. I was actually relieved. I honestly had no interest in having my numbers chosen. Life as a lottery winner seemed so complicated to me, with its deluge of attention and demands that would set us apart from real people.

This is not to say that I would mind a little bit of a jackpot, something to cushion our day-to-day existence and make some of our smaller dreams possible. But as my father-in-law used to ask my husband, then a child: What, really, is missing from our lives?

Our family was lucky in the post-Sandy aftermath. Our house was still standing and we were all of sound body. All of us -- even the boys – felt a profound sense of gratitude. But soon after, too quickly I believe, the holiday circulars began to pour into the house and the wanting – compounded by the Powerball’s promise of instant wealth – began in earnest.

Yes, my children know well the word “no,” uttered frequently for many reasons that are not limited to the financial. The boys are not particularly greedy or spoiled. Still, it is human nature to want new things, more things, better things, and sometimes that “no” is met with a turbulent response.

I am a fervent worrier, and I often fret that the clutter of “stuff” – both what the boys have and what they wish they did -- has obscured their view of what matters.

I want them to cherish the value of family, friendship, health and freedom over fancier electronics and cooler sneakers.

I long for them to shorten their wish lists and lengthen their to-do lists, the ones that include kindness to their siblings, generosity to others, and a general willingness to participate more fully in the social contract of family life.

But alas, I can only hope that the message will weave its way into the fabric of who they become as they mature, the version of themselves that will one day make a living and G-d willing, parent our grandchildren. For now, I will just have to do my best to stave the harsh current of the season from flooding the bigger picture.

The first step: The next time the Powerball jackpot hits frenzied levels, I will let the rest of my family play their own numbers, but I will not bother to do so with mine.

My contribution will be limited to bringing in the morning paper, the one that reports unsettling events from around the globe, the one posting the numbers that will give me some reassurance of life as usual.

Keeping an Eye on the Storm

It was the eve of Hurricane Sandy and I was on line at Walmart. My cart was full of bottled water, but I’d also picked up camping-strength rain ponchos, thermal underwear, and a package of little candles for my son’s birthday, which we would mark in the aftermath of the storm.

While waiting, I overheard the store manager caution his staff about security issues. This one will be worse than Irene, he said, foreseeing panicked customers rushing in as the drops began to fall. After all, who wanted to believe this would really happen until it was already upon us?

As my chest heaved with anxiety, my first thought – oddly -- was to dye my hair. I threw a box of Clairol Nice ‘n Easy Natural Black #122 into my cart, figuring it would provide the perfect distraction from the perfect storm. I could simultaneously rid myself of grey while settling my nerves before the power went out.

But its real purpose was to convince me that all predictions of meteorological doom were overshot, that normal was right around the corner from that ominous cloud hovering above us.

In the end, though, I spent the day attending to the real business of preparing for a hurricane: stashing lawn furniture in the garage, securing the shed, bringing the couches up from the basement, and hiding the plastic bins that hold my favorite mementos of the boys in the safest, driest place I could think of.

We filled the bathtub in case we needed water to flush the toilets. We positioned buckets near the sump pump and gas cans near the generator. We lined up flashlights, batteries and radios on the dining room table and a stash of crackers, peanut butter, and water bottles on the kitchen counter. Both cars had tanks full of gas and our cell phones were completely charged.

We were as ready as we could be for a futile battle against nature.

All we could do then was to wait for Sandy to hit. While my husband fielded calls from patients, the boys fixated on the news, staring with fear and disbelief at the Seaside Heights boardwalk – the one we visit every year during Pesach break – which had already disappeared beneath the tide. I gazed out the window at the gradually darkening sky.

Like clockwork, the heavens opened at 6 p.m., and in no time at all, the power clicked off. As if curtains had been drawn, the sky went Natural Black, except for periodic flashes from the arcing power lines. The winds raced around the house, howling at us angrily as we cowered together on the couch in the living room. We turned on the battery-powered lantern and began our rotating shifts to check if water was seeping into the basement.

A sudden crash shook us. Our glorious maple tree had surrendered two massive boughs that slammed against the back of the house. Our barbeque toppled onto the patio, scuttling further along as the wind blew. My husband and our eldest son ran outside to bring it indoors, fearful that it would travel and wreak damage elsewhere. Those thirty vulnerable seconds they were out in the elements left me entirely unhinged.

An emotional haze hovered above us that evening and continued well into the morning. We awoke to the eerie hush of power outages, road closures and downed trees. In the background, generators rumbled and branches snapped, but mostly we heard our own breathing in the cold.

We invited neighbors over to join us for birthday cake. Perhaps too pedantically, we reminded the birthday boy that he’d been blessed to wake up in a house still standing with all of its inhabitants unharmed. He then reminded us that as a teenager, he would like to spend his day slothfully lying about since there was little else to do anyway.
Time, in fact, took on a surreal quality for all of us. Without school or work, we dozed when we dozed and awoke when we awoke, though it was by no means relaxing. We ticked off the hours of daylight during which we could tend to tasks around the house and the days until power would be restored. Still we wonder how many weeks before we return to normal and how long -– months or years -- before the areas hardest hit once again resemble themselves.

For days, I took frequent walks around the neighborhood, gasping at the property damage, the uprooted trees and sidewalks, the broken roofs, the smashed cars, the battered siding. I stopped to chat with those I met on my outings, and we shared stories about lives interrupted. We discussed gas rationing and empty store shelves, but mostly we expressed gratitude for having been spared the worst of it.

When the landscaper arrived to remove the tree branches from our yard, he agreed with me that they represented a miracle. That they hit our house with such great force yet broke nothing – no shattered windows, no structural damage – was uncanny. The tree, too, seems like it will survive the amputation. It is host to the feeder from which we have long fed the neighborhood birds, and my husband is convinced that one kindness led directly to another. At the very least it was blessed luck.

Our youngest invited his best friends to join him in overseeing the tree removal process. They donned safety glasses and gloves, marveled at the whir of the power saw, and reveled in lugging bits of wood onto the truck. For their efforts, they each received a few rounds from the largest branch, souvenirs from the storm and a reminder that Mother Nature is a force to be reckoned with.

Meanwhile, I mourned the branches whose sudden absence spoke to our insignificance in the larger scheme of G-d’s universe.

Thank G-d and PSEG, our power returned. Family and friends who still sat in cold, dark houses came to stay. Once our lights came on, we noticed all the dirt and leaves that had made their way into our rooms, but somehow we did not mind, even in the presence of guests. We just looked around at all we have to be grateful for in this world.

At last, our boys went back to school this morning. Since the traffic lights are not all up and running, the bus will bring them home early, well before dark. Everyone we speak with is tired, in various stages of recovery, and still reeling from the storm. Winter has not yet even begun.

The weather predictions for a nor’easter this week are daunting, further exhausting us. They are telling us to stock up again, warning us to get ready for more. Most of us cannot even fathom the potential impact of another storm. We may not be so lucky this time. For those already displaced, more wind and rain are surely unimaginable.

In the tumult of preparations and the storm’s aftermath, I realized that I never got to color my hair. I remain a natural black with a very natural streak of grey, a swath now larger after the past stressful week and growing even as I write when I consider what lies ahead. It is just as well, though, for the normal I’d hoped that box of Nice n’ Easy would bring will be a long time coming.