Mary the Bread Lady

 

 

 

I call her "the bread lady" because she used to work at a bakery, and at the end of the day she used to bring all the leftover day-old's to where I worked and give them to the staff.

Mary is 80-something years old, and my neighbor.

She's quite trim, and stands about five feet tall.  Currently she wears her hair in a fashionable page-boyish bob, so it moves when she turns her head from side-to-side or nods, both of which she does with great vehemence -- she agrees or disagrees strongly.  When she speaks she makes sharp, declarative gestures, or great swooping expansive ones -- her hands always make me think of little birds circling around a nest.  Originally from Hungary, she still has her accent --  imagine how Zsa Zsa and Eva Gabor sounded. ("Dahling!" and "Yah!" and "Sveetheart!")  She walks very quickly, smiles readily and laughs very easily.  To meet her, and chat with her for a while (there are no short chats with Mary once she catches you up in conversation), well, if you didn't know she was 80, you would think she was 60, probably, and a very healthy 60 at that.  But then you might see the tattoo and do the math and revise your original guesstimate of her age. 

Mary has a serial number tattooed on the inside of her forearm from Buchenwald, the Nazi Concentration Camp, where she was held during World War II.

Mary caught me on the street the other night -- summer evenings are beautiful and it is light quite late where I live.  I was dead tired, and I confess since there is no such thing as a short conversation with Mary, when I was walking up the street and I saw her, inwardly I sighed a little.  She was her usual chirpy, chipper self, filling me in on any of several developments in her life within the first three minutes after saying hello.  Writing this I am sure I cannot convey to you the energy of her movements or conversation.  It's as if she is powered by a miniature sun.  She had extra grocery bags in the back of her car, so I offered to carry them up to her apartment for her, knowing that, tired as I was, this would likely lead to at least a half hour conversation.

I wasn't just tired, I was exhausted actually, having gotten off a plane earlier that very evening, coming home from a cross country flight after attending a family function.  It had been a tough day, emotionally and physically (I'm not sure I'm such a great flyer anymore, and the "family function" was, in truth, a funeral Mass, so I was not wrung out from some casual business trip or family vacation, I was wiped out in every way possible, it felt like.)  But I'm crazy about Mary, and if you're the kind of guy that can walk past an 80 year old woman and let her carry her own groceries up two flights of stairs, well, we try not to be judgmental in AA but I don't think much of you.

I'm not trying to be noble here, or sound like I'm a hero or anything, I'm just trying to let you know when I say I was tired, I was dead tired.

But I sucked it up, because just being with Mary, and knowing her history, and yet watching her smile and laugh after some of the things she's been through, makes me feel good about God and the world and people in general.  I mean, if there's anyone who has a right to cop a little attitude after what she's endured -- and witnessed -- it's Mary.  If she wound up spending her life angry, or suspicious of strangers, or morose, who on earth could really blame her?  Yet she is as sunny and open as a child.  But sharp.  Oh my, she is sharp.  And devout in her faith, although she is not kosher, and thinks some elements of the Orthodox and Hasidic Jews are crazy.  As much as she loves her faith -- and suffered for it -- she looks at her religion with an intelligent and gently critical eye.  (She is my role model in that, when it comes to how I try to view Alcoholics Anonymous.  I love it, I am indebted to it, I work to "practice its principles in all my affairs" but I want to view AA like Mary views Judaism -- with an intelligent and gently critical eye).  When I once (timidly) suggested to her that perhaps those keeping kosher found some spiritual strength in the discipline of it she laughed and gave me a a scholarly discourse on the what and the why of kosher and how it is (for her) very silly to live in the modern world by rules developed to keep food safe to eat in the desert thousands of years ago.  All this while sorting through flowers at the local Trader Joe's grocery store.  It is a picture of her I will always have in my mind.

So there I am, standing in front of Mary's apartment door with all her groceries, emotionally drained and physically exhausted.

And Mary is telling me about her new speaking gig.  You see, Mary, as engaging and animated as she is, makes a natural speaker.  And as a survivor of the Camps she goes around, for free of course, whenever asked, and speaks at Universities and Churches or Synagogues or wherever, about her experiences.  Over the years that I've known her she has shared with me anecdotes here and there about these little lectures.  She has no canned pitch, just goes and says some remarks and answers questions, I believe.  And it's not as if she has an "agent".  These speaking invitations come in fits and starts, with long stretches in between where she is not asked to do this.  Privately I've always thought it is brave of her to speak with what must be her usual candor about her own personal experiences in those war years, but I've never told her that... the opportunity to bring that up never seems to present itself, and it's an odd thing to blurt out.

So her new speaking gig is in front of high school students here in the city.  She was quite excited to describe how the kids react to her -- all slouchy and bored when she starts, but then more and more interested -- most of them.  Others remain aloof during her whole speech but this does not phase her.  And Mary was very proud to share with me how she's come up with some clever ways to try to engage the kids.  When she describes the Jewish faith as she was raised in it, she talks about how doing anything to the body was not allowed (my paraphrase, not her words), so when her head was shaved and the number tattooed on her forearm she explains about how it was not just dehumanizing, but a violation of her faith -- "It wasn't like when your Britney Spears decided to shave her head for a new look" -- she knows that she sounds funny saying that -- remember that's with a Hungarian accent, too -- and when the kids laugh a little she gets a huge kick out of it.

Seeing her delight as she described all this was worth standing there, tired and emotional after a long tough day.  Something about the goodness of what she was doing, sharing her story with a generation of kids, loving the care she put into trying to convey a message to them, really warmed and comforted me.  And that night I surely needed a little extra warmth and comfort.

And the kids write her letters.  Letters!  In the 21st Century!  Not like some assignment where all the kids in the classroom have to dutifully write a thank you note, but actual letters to her about what she said and how it made them think about things.  Some letters she gets from parents now, too.  Delighted and moved, that's what she was when she told me this.

"I want to ask your opinion on something." She said, standing there before her apartment door.

"Of course, Mary."

"The last time I spoke, one of the girls, during the question-and-answer, asked me a question, and I want your opinion."

I sat down on the stairs, and Mary did too, with considerably more ease and flexibility than I felt I had.  All her grocery bags were sort of piled on the landing a step above us. The steps are painted forest green, kept clean as a whistle by Mary herself.  Sitting knee-to-knee I felt like we were kids in a brown construction paper tree fort.

"She asked me, when I was in the Camp, and I could see the smoke, and I knew that it was the bodies of people, and it could also be me, did I ever get angry with God?  Did I ever doubt He even existed?"

I want you to know that in the moment she was describing this girl's question to me I felt like a lightning bolt zipped up my spine.  I flashed on all of the shares I'd heard in AA meetings over the years, all the dramatic (and melodramatic) railing against an unfair Universe and the questioning of how there could be a loving God when there were massacres and genocides and kids with cancer and Nazis.  It feels like people always, understandably, bring up the Nazis.  And here I was, knee to knee with a Camp survivor, a woman of faith, who had seen the very, very worst the world has to offer us, asked by a teenage girl the very thing I've heard countless AA's ask.

AA suggests I seek God as I understand God.  Religion, be it Judaism or Jehovah's Witness, offers me a view of how God is, specific to their faith -- but by either route one must ask, at some point, whether rebellious or devout, the same question that has plagued every thinking person of faith -- Why in this world is there Evil, if God is all powerful and God is Love?  In some organized religions the concept of sin explains a lot of the Evil, and of course, Satan makes an excellent patsy too.

But if I'm seeking God as I understand God, and I'm not really in the whole "sin and Satan" school... how can one not consider this question?  How can one not come back to it over the years of seeking, as you change and develop in your spiritual life, as sobriety and the world hand you your lumps and miracles.

You can imagine, in my exhausted state, how I felt like God had orchestrated this scene on Mary's stoop, just to give me the inside scoop.  "What did you say?" I leaned forward, and I think I might have whispered it, I was so exhausted, so overwrought, so focused on this moment.

"Well, I really thought about it." Mary answered.  "And I told them that I struggled with it then, and I still struggle with it now.  In my struggle is how I continue to seek God.  Then and now."  Suddenly she was kind of shy.  "Do you think that was okay to say?"

I remember my eyes were burning -- fatigue? emotion? I'm not sure and I was there -- I leaned back against the stair rail and closed them for a moment.  "Yes, Mary.  I think that was okay to say."

We stood up and I gave her a hug, and she patted my cheek like she always does and gathered up her groceries and went inside, while I slowly walked down the stairs and headed home.

I was right.  Sure, maybe I was exhausted and overwrought, but I was right.  God, the Universe or whatever, really did orchestrate that scene on Mary's stoop, just to give me the inside scoop.

 

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There are more reflections like this one in "Mr. SponsorPants: Adventures in Sobriety and The 12 Steps for AA's and Others."  Available as an eBook on Kindle via Amazon.  Download a Kindle reader for free on any device or platform.

 

Comments

[Hope]

In my struggle is how I continue to seek God.
Now I'm a blubbering mess.
Hugs to you across the miles today.

[Davy]

Alcoholics Anonymous teaches the "higher power" could be a doorknob, a spirit, a fruit salad, the universe, the Dallas Cowboys (when they are winning), a new age version of Jesus, or anything else. Like the Masons, it doesn't matter what god you believe in-only that you believe in something.

It seems that someone as allegedly devout and well versed in the Bible as Dr. Bob would stay far away from spiritualism and the Masonic organization.

He most emphatically did not. Equally perplexing is Dr. Bob's enthusiasm for Emmet Fox's sweet-sounding but heretical book, 'The Sermon on the Mount.'[7]

This is no minor point, since this book denies that Jesus Christ is Savior. The book was used as a teaching tool by Alcoholics Anonymous before the Big Book was written.

In 'The Sermon on the Mount,' author Emmet Fox states there is no such thing as original sin; that the account of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden is not intended as literal history; that Jesus never walked on the water.

He writes, "The 'Plan of Salvation' which figured so prominently in the evangelical sermons of a past generation is as completely unknown to the Bible as it is to the Koran."[8]

[G. RabAnon]

MSP,

I have been reading your back issues since I was directed to your blog by a Twitter recovery friend about a month ago. I always save a number of unread entries in my iPod to read on the subway. I always find wisdom and strength in your writing.

The questions of evil and suffering are, for obvious reasons, ones which the Jewish people have struggled with for millennia. The psychological stages of and reactions to trauma can be observed in the history and literature of our people... self-blame, self-pity, self-righteousness, remorse, depression, anger, hopelessness, aggression, paranoia...

and a lot of us, a LOT of us, are terrified of talking about God. I am a rabbinical student in a liberal Jewish institution. I am unusual among my cohort in that I have been trying to talk about God almost my whole life. When I tried to bring up theology with my classmates this past year, I found that nearly everyone was extremely reluctant to engage in discourse. Some admitted to not believing in God at all.

If you engage with the idea of God, then you have to address the question of human suffering... of Jewish suffering. For intelligent, modern-minded, liberal Jews, that is a terrifying prospect. For aspiring clergy, it is perhaps even more difficult. We will one day be out there in the world, in a pulpit, or in a classroom, or in a hospital, and we will face people looking to us for answers, for the "inside scoop" as it were. It is so much easier, I suppose, to sidestep the issue of God, and to focus instead on psychology, on the workings of Jewish law, on the sociological elements of religion and its healing powers, and to carefully avoid questions of The Divine.

Since I found Program, I have finally found an arena where I am truly encouraged to find a working concept of Higher Power to turn to through my own suffering which, though nothing to compare to Mary's experience, is I would venture to say, deeper than average.

I have recently spoken to two other friends, both classmates from a Yeshiva I attended in Israel, one of them currently also a Rabbinical student in another school, about how one can understand a loving God. Both of these friends are also people who have experienced, and continue to experience not insignificant suffering in their lives. What I have come up with at this point, after years (albeit not that many put in perspective... I'm still rather young) of struggling with anger and questions for a God Who never seemed to respond, defining and redefining my idea of the divine to fit the reality I knew, from the impersonal to the intimate, from the benevolent to the wrathful to the indifferent... after going through all of that and more and back again, this is my understanding:

The world cannot be perfect. It cannot be free of suffering. If it were, nothing would move, and we could not exist as the beautiful complicated storytelling beings that we are, that God loves. God doesn't desire our suffering, God desires our lives, our presence, our existence. That is why God created us... out of Love of What We Are... imperfect, and driven by our imperfection.

The role of God in our lives is not to eliminate the source of our suffering. That simply wouldn't work. Why? Because then The World wouldn't be The World. What God can and does do for us, is to hold us through our suffering, to comfort us like a parent hugging the child who has just received a vaccine and cannot understand why she was just stuck with a needle. God can inspire us to bravery in the face of suffering. God can inspire us to strive never to cause suffering, our own or anyone else's.

These words may sound trite in the face of a camp survivor's experience. Put me in a concentration camp and see if I hold on to my faith and inspiration, you might be saying. But, I have spoken to others of my experience... of growing up with an angry and abusive father and an alcoholic mother, of the things I endured as a child and that still haunt me today, of deep lifelong depression, bulimia, an inability to form healthy relationships... and they have marveled at my survival, even in my worst states of depression.

And now, having found my loving and benevolent Higher Power, having a daily reprieve from my addictive illness, I find that I have found reprieve and relief from the tortures of depression and self-loathing that have plagued me literally for as long as I can remember... that is since around the age of four.

It is my sincere wish that I may be able to bring this idea to my Rabbinate, and to my people, to my classmates and colleagues, congregants, co-religionists, and not to have it viewed as uncritical, Pollyanna-ish, unintelligent, or worst of all, un-Jewish.

For a good portion of my life, the meat of my relationship with God was an angry confused struggle. And at the time, that was what it needed to be. But it is not a simpleton's act to realize which struggles are valuable, and which are just habit.

And incidentally, Mary's feelings about the laws of kashrut are common, especially among the Reform, but my studies suggest that they are too arbitrary to have just been about health concerns... your intuition about discipline was right on the mark for me :)

As always, thank you for your writing.