at-one-ment

My friend’s kidneys are failing.

I was supposed to go over to her house Monday night to visit her. I haven’t actually seen her very much in the last two weeks, though we only live a couple of miles apart. I talked to her on the phone a lot. I picked up and delivered an out of town visitor, arranged a calendar of visits from other local friends, co-spearheaded a 100-person healing ceremony and potluck event on Saturday, wherein I was somewhere between bridesmaid and event producer.

So I saw her that day. But I left early. I don’t really like crowds.

Thus, Monday. But Monday was Yom Kippur. Day of Atonement. I dressed up in almost all white, for purity, and my least grungy-looking “walking” shoes. Put Jonah in shorts and a t-shirt, and drove down to the lake, in order to put Jonah in the jogging stroller and take a nice 2-mile walk to temple for the preschoolers service, in what was supposed to be 74-degree weather.

The fog was low. The wind whipped, icily. I put a second t-shirt on Jonah, wrapped a thin flannel around his legs. My shoes, I should burn the shoes. I forged ahead. About a mile into the walk, I called Scott to rescue us. He set out with sweaters and better shoes, I sat on a bench and waited. Construction diversions turned a ten minute trip into twenty.

Jonah didn’t love services. A large room, a circle of chairs, a rainbow parachute and a short woman with short hair and boundless energy barking out directions, kids older than him who knew how to run under the scarf, sit, look for animals with their binoculars. For the standing silent meditation (Amidah) she handed out giant industrial coffee filters and exhorted children and adults to balance them on our heads, making a lovely instant private meditation chamber and giving a point of focus for the “meditation,” and to stand on one foot — more focus? I’m just guessing here. Jonah wanted to go back in the stroller, have another bottle. I set him up suchly, in a corner of the room, so we could still get the last ten minutes. A sing-song prayer of apologies that kids and adults might say. I’m sorry I wasn’t patient. I’m sorry I didn’t listen. Instead of the usual chest thumping that goes with the analogous prayer in the adult service, she had us pat a different body part for each lament. Head, eyes, ears, heart…

We walked home more comfortably, stopping at the store on the way for lunch. (I don’t fast.)

Jonah decided on this day he would not nap. Nothing more exhausting — for me — than that.

So out we went out again, better dressed for the weather, to a park by the bay, next to the train tracks, where we met another mom and toddler set and ran around, climbed, admired the paintings, measured each train by its noise level. “That one was too loud…. That train was NOT noisy.”

When I got home from that, I was too tired to go visit my friend. I called her. She misunderstood what I was saying at first.

“Oh, yes yes, come over!” she practically shouted in an otherwise low-volume conversation, what with the tumors and the constant pain medication.

No, I, mean I can’t tonight, I’m just too tired. I’ll come tomorrow night.

Tuesday I talked to her several times that day, organizing a Reiki practitioner to come to the house, coordinating placing an online order for her for comfy pajama pants.

I called at 7:45 to make sure it was alright to visit. Her husband answered the phone. “I’m taking her to the emergency room. Like right this second.”

to be continued…