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Home

I am home.
I flew home on Air France flight 332 yesterday. I ran into a good friend at Charles DeGaulle airport in Paris and that gave me a fun way to break up the long flight: meeting Marco to share a little bottle of wine back in the flight attendant’s station.

There was a Federal Agent beagle sniffing luggage at Logan Airport, which made me excessively happy. The beagle sniffed my bag a lot, causing the agent to interrogate me about whether or not I had any food in it. No, I told him, beaming at the dog. The agent persisted, kindly: had I recently had any food in that bag, perhaps? Oh sure, I said. I’ve been using this bag for five weeks. I’m sure I’ve had all kinds of food in it. Thank you, said the agent, leading the beagle away. “Good boy!” I called after him (the dog). “That’s a GOOD boy!” He was wearing a darling little vest!

Rali found me easily and we drove into Boston’s green springtime beauty chatting away.

The church bells of First Parish are ringing 9:00 now — ten minutes too soon. We have an eccentric bell. I like that.

Max is snoozing in the next room. I feel so good having him back home again but he is definitely depressed, pining for his friends Milliemoss and Goodwin. Poor Max. I retrieve Ermengarde tomorrow; hopefully she will put some spring in his step again. He does wag his tail when I approach but we are a small pack here and he needs adjustment time. I am so incredibly grateful for my friends Amy and Tim who are his honorary doggie parents. Maxfield loves me very much but he loves them, too, and I worry that he has a better life with them and their menagerie. All those four-legged friends and delicious horse and sheep manure in the bargain. Paradise!
Well, life’s not too rough for him here, either. Either way he’s got it made. I told him about the doggies in Greece and Romania who don’t even know where their next meal is coming from and he sighed and snuggled into me. He knows.

I dyed my hair a pomegranate red this morning. It looks dreadful but it has great symbolic value to me and I like it for that reason. No one else needs to like it.

I am home. Someone asked me on this blog recently what home means to me. Thank you for asking that. On July 5, 1984, I recorded this quote in a book of quotes I was keeping at the time. It’s from “The Wiz,” and is spoken by Glinda the Good Witch:

Home is a place we all have to find, child.
But it’s not a place where we eat or sleep…
Home is knowing.
Knowing your mind, knowing your heart, your courage.
If we know ourselves, then we’re always home. Anywhere.

More on this later. Right now I’m still on France time and need to hit le hay.

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At the Musee D’Orsay.

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Paris

For a few years I have had recurring dreams/nightmares about trying to get to Paris and not being able to, or being in Paris and having trouble getting through to Genie (my dear friend who lives here), or being in Paris and having it be the wrong city. I have wondered what this means. I love Paris, and I love Genie. But there is obviously more. I wonder if her name is a play on “genie” or “genius,” and that dreams where I can’t “get in touch with her” are dreams about needing to be in touch with my daimon or genius. Genie’s last name is… wait for it… GODULA. So there’s an obvious pun there, too, and my unconscious mind loves to send me messages through pun-names. So I suspect that my frustration dreams of not being able to get to Paris, and the heartache I feel in those dreams, are always about feeling an aching inability to “get to” my soul and my God.

“Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee…”

So it seems symbolically powerful to end my sabbatical in Paris, in Genie’s home. She is a treasure of a friend and it is a glory of a city that pleases my every sensibility. I am here, I am telling myself. We are in Paris, my soul. We are in close, loving contact with Genie Godula and with genie and with God. C’est bien.
This has been a stupendous journey, this sabbatical, and I end it happy, overwhelmed with gratitude, soaked in the fascination of new experiences and memories I will savor for years, and deeply re-affirmed in my vocation.

I love that my sabbatical officially ends at Pentecost, when God worked a miracle of fire and language, of understanding and passion. On Sunday, I will attend a free organ recital at the Cathedral of Notre Dame and then, I hope, a Chopin piano recital later in the evening. I want to remember the end of this adventure as beautiful music, humankind’s response to the miracle of being alive and partaking, by constant, emphatic invitation, of the Divine Essence.

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May 28, 2009, on the Rive Gauche.

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“You Are Always Welcome Here” An Encounter In Iasi

As you may recall, I went looking for my grandfather’s village, Iasi, a little over a week ago. I took the train from Bucharest (where I was robbed) to Fagaras. There I made the acquaintance of Gabriel Gulu, my angel who drove me around and served as my interpreter to the Romanian villagers in Iasi.

Did they know the family Bacal?
Did they remember the family Weinstein or Bacal?
No. No.
Let us take you to the oldest man in the village.
“I have lived here all my life. I am the third generation of my family to live here. This is not a name that I know.”

They were Jewish. Evray.
Uncomprehending looks. Some people look down at the dirt.
No. No Jews here. Some confusion.

Please to inquire at the office of records.
Gabriel and I eventually do so, only to learn that the office has records going back to 1908, and my grandfather was born a year or two before that. Who knows, anyway? The Communists destroyed so many records.

Evray. Jews. Iasi was once a Jewish shtetl, according to a friend’s online research. I believe it. The Jews had to live somewhere, didn’t they? Before they were deported, murdered, or decided to emigrate?

Romania is a country of trauma and secrets, and great hatred of minorities. It was painful to be there as a daughter of Jewish Romanian heritage and of Unitarian Hungarian spiritual heritage. Complicated.

We stood in the street in Iasi, Gabriel and I, attracting a lot of attention for two reasons: first, a car in the village! There aren’t many, and those that are there are known. Second, a car with an American woman in it!

A baba (my word for grandmother) rushed up to me without warning and embraced me. She stood all of 4’11”.
“God bless you. You are always welcome here,” she said as she stroked my arms, my face, my hair. I crouched down to her, looking into her eyes. “You are always welcome. Welcome here.” Gabriel was embarrassed and uncomfortable as he translated for us, but we were not. I blessed her, too. “Bless you, grandmother. Thank you.”
“You’re so fat and beautiful,” she said. “Thank you,” I said, laughing. I knew that it was meant as a compliment. I was wealthy enough to eat well. A very Old Country mentality. We didn’t want to let go of each other. We kissed goodbye after long minutes of just embracing. I told her that she was beautiful. Beautiful.

Later, after I visited the Registry of Records, she came by the car again. This time I grabbed my camera and asked her for a photo. This is a face I couldn’t forget, but I’m glad you’ll be able to see her now, too. What did she know? She wasn’t just crazy. I swear that on my life. She wasn’t just crazy.

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