Closing Time

It was closing time at the bookstore.
I had just finished a long day and was eager to go home for the night.
I was closing out the cash register and had knelt down behind the counter to put
the day’s receipts away when suddenly I heard the bell ring as the shop door opened.
“Why hadn’t I locked the door first?!  I should have known better!, I thought with a groan.
This was Brooklyn, New York for heaven’s sakes…and it was well after dark.
I should’ve locked the door!  But it was too late now!  I tensed and waited.
I heard a man’s voice calling out. “Is anybody in here?”
I called back, “We’re closed for the night!”
Completely ignoring my remark, he yelled back, “Where do you keep the men’s wallets?”
What kind of a question was that?  Couldn’t he see that he was in a bookstore?
“We don’t sell wallets here! “
“ Please! I need a man’s wallet!”
“ I told you, we don’t have any wallets!”   I couldn’t believe this guy!
He persisted. “ I gotta have a wallet! “

“I can't help you!  I just told you we don’t have wallets and we’re closed!”

 What was the deal with this character?!

I finally scrambled to my feet and confronted the man.
I held out my arms gesturing around the length and breadth of the store.
“This", I explained with mock patience, "is a bookstore. We sell books here! Not men’s wallets.”
"But I saw all the leather covered books… “
I cut him off... “These are bibles, sir, not wallets.”
“Well,"  he stammered, " I just thought you might have a man’s wal…. “
I stood to full height and gave him the look that said I was getting ready to reach for the phone
and call the cops.

But then he stopped in midsentence and looked at me in a curious way.
“Wait a minute…don’t I know you?”
I looked closely at him and said  “No, I don’t think so.”
The man standing in front of me looked like any other New Yorker.
Dark wavy hair, pale skinned with a faint olive tone, all nervous energy…most likely Jewish.
He persisted. “I really do think I know you!”
Not likely I thought.

“What do you do for living,” I asked.

“Well, it depends… My last job was teaching English.”
There was something in the way that he pronounced the word 'English' that caught my ear.
What was that accent? It was exotic, earthy. “Israeli,” I thought.
It stirred a faint memory...something  from long ago.

He continued to study me.  I remained at a loss. “We’ve met before… I know it.”
Then we started asking each other random questions…stream of consciousness…
“Where did you live before this?   Have you traveled?   Where were you born?”
He pressed on in his, by now, characteristic way... “Yes, I’m sure of it!  I know you!”
I was as sure as he was that I didn’t know him.
He persisted and we had a little rapid fire exchange of our histories.
How long we’d been in New York…that yielded no clues.
Our travels to various places…still nothing.
We started going back in time, tracing our various routes…all misses.
But though it seemed hopeless, he still didn’t let it go.
I then thought back to my Cape Breton days when I had run a youth hostel

from an old farmhouse nestled between the mountains and the ocean.

It had been a refuge for many.  It had been a refuge for me, too in the beginning.
Backpackers from all around the world, as many as 40 a night, had stayed in my home.

So many people had passed through my life back then....

Then suddenly, as if the Fates smiled on us, we stumbled onto something..

It was his faint Israeli accent...

A memory came flooding in....   Oh, but it was impossible!    
Could it be him after all these years?! 

I asked an improbable question… “ Have you ever been to Cape Breton Island?”
In the same moment he made the connection, as well.

His eyes lit up and he grinned broadly….”Are you sure you don’t remember me?”
I am Avi !!   Do you remember me now!?   The soldier…”

I drew in a sharp breath.    Impossible!    This was completely surreal… Could it be?    It was…

“Yes! I remember you!”  Tears sprang to my eyes.  My heart skipped several beats.
The memory emerged full blown.  It had been more than 10 years.
“You stayed at my hostel!”
“Yes! Yes! You saved my life…. Did you know that?”
“Oh my gosh! I always wondered what happened to you!
Wha..what are you doing here?”  I stammered.
“Where have you been all these years?  What have you been doing with yourself?”
I was overjoyed at seeing him!
“After I left your place, I travelled around America for awhile and then I came here to live.

You know, I could not bring myself to go back to Israel for a long time.

I’ve been living in New York for several years.

Actually this is my last night in New York… and my last night in America.

I return to Israel in the morning… to begin my life again."

“I can’t believe we found each other!”

We didn’t have much time and there was so much to tell.

He had been living as a poorly paid social worker and had been volunteering
in his spare time teaching English to inner city kids.

He had been staying with a family all this time and he had wanted to give a small gift

to the father before going away...a wallet.

I had thought of him so often through the years and here he was, standing in my store
at closing time…
10 years and more than a thousand miles from where we first met! 
How could it be?!
Like finding the proverbial needle in no ordinary haystack…

The man that stood before me was so changed.

When we first met, he had been recently discharged from the Israeli army.

He was hard-edged, terse, abrasive.

I remembered him dressed in camouflage fatigues and his tough, lean look.
He was impenetrable, silent and remote.
There was a dangerous air about him...

This night he was softer...still intense, yet his eyes were alive and he seemed even joyful.

The change that had come over Avi over the years was profound.

I still remembered the solitary figure at the time of our first meeting.

He arrived by motorcycle just before sunset on a late summer evening.

I could tell he had done some hard traveling.

I offered him a place in the bunkhouse, but he wanted to know if there was a quieter place

to pitch a tent.  I offered him a spot near the house and another one at the far edge of the farm.
He chose the far spot that offered privacy and solitude.
He paid for several nights and then walked away without a word. Just a simple nod of the head.
He seemed so terribly serious.
Whatever he was, he was not your ordinary tourist.

He stayed for a week… and then another...and then another.
We never spoke.   He didn’t have breakfast with us in the mornings

and he never joined the other travelers around the campfires at night.

He kept strictly to himself...an enigma.

He appeared to be a little older than the others, but he seemed far more spent.
So serious.  Deadly serious, it seemed...
Little did I know at the time how true that was.


*For those of you who might not know what a hostel is…

a hostel is an inexpensive bed and breakfast for backpackers.  
At my hostel, 50¢ got you both.

Hostels had a 3 night limit and then you had to move on.
 
I made exceptions from time to time.    I did for this one....

He was on a very personal mission.  He stayed on without a word.

Each day he just sat gazing at the ocean for hours.

I understood on some level.   This place had been a similar kind of refuge for me.

I made sure that no one intruded on him.

His time was spent between the ocean, the mountains, and the wild sky.
Several weeks passed this way.

Then, one morning I saw him packing up his tent.   He was moving on.
My heart caught for some reason.  I had sensed his great pain but he was unreachable.
I turned away, blinking back tears, wishing there had been more contact...a chance to know him. 

A little while later there was a knock at my door. The stranger named Avi was standing there.
He had brought a small gift of homemade jam… a token of his thanks.
I invited him to come in and sit down.
“Have a cup of tea before you go.  I just baked bread .”
I poured tea, grateful to have a few moments with him before he left.

He was ready to talk... 

He thanked me for giving him the space and the time to rest.

His had been a long and difficult journey.

He had been serving in the Israeli army through several conflicts.

At first he was idealistic and loyal to his nation’s cause

but as time went on and he experienced the horrors of war,
he began to realize what he was caught up in.

He saw and participated in things that no one should ever experience.

Things that threatened to destroy his soul.

He poured out his heart and emptied his mind finally of many of those horrific scenes.

The one I remember most clearly was the one where he had been ordered to bulldoze
the bodies of wounded and dying people into mass graves.
When he tried to resist, his own life was threatened.
His face twisted in pain as he confessed his actions...
He could not believe that his own army would engage in such inhuman acts.
It was more than he could bear. There was no escaping the guilt.

After his discharge he was unable to face his loved ones or to resume a normal life.
He called off his wedding engagement, refused to see family or friends.
He sought counseling but it seemed that nothing could touch the depth of his pain and guilt.

He was so deeply tormented.   He left Israel, vowing never to return.

He traveled, trying to outrun the pain.   He travelled east to India in search of answers
and continued farther to Thailand, Indonesia, and Japan.
From there he sought to lose himself in San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest and finally, Canada.
He had traversed thousands of miles in search of relief.
He was nearly out of land when he reached the remote point on Cape Breton island
that I called home.
It was the literal end of the road for him.... He had to deal.
He could not go on living and he couldn't outrun the pain.

Then he told me that he had planned to take his life there....in my woods.

His plan was to rest there for two days and on the third he had planned to shoot himself
through the temple and forever put an end to the pain.

With a look of wonder, he told me that some 'thing'  had prevented him from taking his life. 
'It' rooted him to that spot.   'It' kept him from ending his life...more than once
Day after day, he sat.

The pain welled up and began to break beyond bounds. 
Layer by layer ALL the pain surfaced.

He wept finally for the first time in many years.
He wept.   He raged.   He despaired.    He cleared his soul.


I understood. There was something about that place… and it was enough…


Avi was not ready to go back to Israel, but he was ready to live....
and life had brought him to New York City.
He had purged his soul over time by giving back...'Working for the good side'  he said simply.
He was becoming whole again...ready to go back to rebuild his life in Israel...
and leaving for good in the morning.

And here we were on his last night in America, standing face to face by some curious design...

Spirit had arranged for us to meet one more time.


Godspeed  Avi...wherever you are now...

The Day I Became a Man... excerpt

This is an old Brooklyn story....

just another of the curious experiences I had when I first arrived in the city...

I was newly arrived in New York City from Cape Breton Island.  The year was 1987.
I was a young woman of 26, feeling adventurous and full of the right kind of naiveté .

What a city!

I soon made it my business to get up early every morning and get thoroughly lost for the day.  On foot!
No matter the direction, no matter the weather and especially no matter the warnings...
It was my whimsical way of getting to know New York.

I was especially intrigued by the ethnic neighborhoods. It was an easy trip around the world.
I  immersed myself in the little pocket worlds of Chinatown, little Italy, alphabet city, Flatbush... 
Indian, Caribbean, Puerto Rican, Korean, Thai...an endless variety.

For reasons unknown to myself, I was especially drawn to the Hasidic quarter 
just over the Williamsburg Bridge in Brooklyn ...
This was the enclave of old world Jews...the Orthodox followers most easily identified
by their long black suits and curly forelocks, their kerchiefed wives with their big families.
It was like a trip back in time...old Europe...minutely preserved.
There was something about the place that my soul craved.

Maybe it was their exclusivity that made me want to connect all the more.
There was a sense of ancient wisdom protected against the onslaught of modernity.
I come from similar stock...Germans from Russia...deeply religious, conservative and clannish.
I seemed to share many of the same values...thanks to my strict grandmother.
Their food was my food.  I even dressed similarly...head covering, long skirts,
dark stockings, modest sleeves.
I liked their intensity, the sense of seriousness mingled with a kind of hidden joy.
I fit with them in a strange way...somewhere on the 3rd subterranean level of my being. 

Their sense of separation and focus were as nearly mine as could be.
I fairly haunted the place trying to soak up the comfort that it gave me
while trying to understand why I was so drawn to this people.
I even wondered if I should convert...

As I walked through the neighborhood, they were as curious about me as I was of them.
We could sense an affinity, but on the street level of life, I was not one of them...but I could be. 
It was a bit confusing.  I was nearly identical and yet I was not.
What I lacked was the wig under my headscarf and the baby carriage with several children trailing behind.

We looked upon each other as different species might, circling, sniffing and wary.
Furtively glancing, not quite giving way to a smile, but strangely stirred.
If you got too close, there would be a quick and definitive toss of the head,
as the inner blinds were drawn tight against the outside world of strangers.
"Goyim" entered my vocabulary that year.

My growing sense of understanding brought me to the realization that I was
both attracted and repelled in nearly equal measure. 
The subtleties began to emerge.

But I was already hooked, though I thought less seriously of conversion... 
By now I had an understanding of what that would require and while some of it
may have been laudable, much of it would have been crazily regressive to my soul.
Weighing the comfort and stability of a community such as this against
the price to be paid by its female members left me in little doubt of my future direction.

And so I enjoyed what remained to me and continued to visit regularly and observe
from a distance.
I could generally be counted on to make my rounds on Fridays. 
The streets were livelier then as the Hasidic families made their preparations for the Sabbath.  
There was something special in the air.
If only I could get a glimpse into the inner experience of these people...
I yearned for an opportunity to taste that life but I knew that the chances of that
ever happening were nearly impossible.   

And yet, the impossible happened!  In the most improbable ways!  This is one story.
The other one is told in my book entitled simply "Prayer".

My last stop of the day was at my favorite bakery.
I forget the name, but I can see it in my mind's eye as though it were yesterday.
It was pretty basic and utilitarian in appearance...old and in need of sprucing up,
but that's the kind of place I like.
What counted more than the decor, of course, was the quality of the baked goods.
Judging by the crowd of customers leaving, heavy-laden with Challah loaves,
babka and rugelach, I knew this was the place for me.   I became a regular.

The woman behind the counter had taken note of me as the months went by.
She had initially been quite reserved, almost suspicious. What was I doing there?
But she had warmed up a little over time...just a little, mind you.

But one day as I was leaving her shop, she beckoned me closer and asked in her Yiddish accent  
"If I would be so kind as to do her a favor?"
I was surprised, but I said "Yes, of course". 
Her voice lowered as she asked  "Do you have a car?" "Yes...yes, , I told her.
She leaned in, suddenly conspiratorial and with a sense of urgency.
"The sun will be going down soon and the Rebbe is old now and walks with a cane.
Can you give him a ride to his building?   It's not far, I assure you...just a few blocks
from here.  Please, if you could do it for me..."

What Rebbe, I wondered?!   It was closing time and I was the only customer in the shop.
She nodded gravely to a figure seated in an unobtrusive corner.
I had never noticed him before. Apparently he had always been there...
But, as I was to learn, he was retained by the bakery to ensure that the kosher rules
were observed in minute detail.

I agreed to help.   She gave the Rebbe a nod and then rushed over to help him
as he rose with difficulty from his chair.   He was a heavyset, elderly man of about 70 years old.
He was almost too big to fit in my old volkswagen. I apologized as he maneuvered
his bulk into the front seat. I reached out to help and was immediately rebuffed
by the two of them.   It seems a woman was not to touch a man, much less a Rabbi.
I stood back as the two of them got him in and closed the car door.
The woman thanked me and rushed off to close up shop in time to get home before sundown. 

I started down the street with the old man gesturing this way and that until we arrived
in front of his apartment building. 
I opened the door for him, this time remembering not to reach out to help.
As he turned his back to go, he thanked me and murmured that, if it were possible,
could I bring him home next Friday?

The following Friday, I was there, of course. I felt both elated and a bit strange about
our arrangement. The woman behind the counter discreetly nodded as I held the door
open for him for the trip home. Nothing more was ever said.
As we drove off, the Rebbe made a little conversation.   He offered to give me a little tour
of the neighborhood. 
Reminiscing, he told me about this house or that shop replete with details on each family,
where they had immigrated from, how they had made their way in America. 
Entire family histories unfolded slowly and with care.  
I drove slowly as well so his stories would not be rushed.
I was enthralled with this living history. His narratives were so filled with insight, pathos and humor. 
As one could imagine, much of it was difficult history.  but he told it with deep humanity.
It was an intimate portrait of his people, spanning decades and oceans and generations. 

I knew that this was a momentous opportunity...one that I could never have imagined, much less arranged.
Could there have been a better guide to this place and its people?
 
We arrived at his place just before sundown. I thanked him for the tour and bid him good evening.
"Maybe next time, I can show you a little more." And then he was making his way up the walk.
I waited until he was safely inside....


And that is how our unlikely friendship began...