ONE of MY BIGGEST FEARS

Sherry Fishman

What rough beast its hour come round at last 

slouches toward Bethelehem to be born

W.B. Yeats

That beast is here now; it is my biggest fear; we’ve had a coup in our country, based in sheer evil greed, power, and cruelty. Democracy has been trumped, and mere dictatorship is loosed upon our country, and the world.

When I was a child, I used to have recurrent nightmares.  I was being pursued by Nazis, and they were chasing me across a frozen terrain towards a massive ditch. I was born during WWII and heard my grandmother’s sobs as she learned of what happened to all of her family. I watched the grownups lower their voices when they spoke of the entirety of Jews in their shtetl/village being forced to dig a ditch,  strip naked, then being shot. In 1945,  Bubby had received a letter from Argentina, describing the slaughter, from her niece, fighting in the resistance with her Polish husband.

As a child I listened, when when the adults thought I wasn’t. And as the stories about the Holocaust were broadcast, I learned  more about the Nazi evils. My nightmares were well-founded. I instinctively found the best coping mechanism to get beyond my terror:

I created fantasies before I fell asleep: I was a superhero named Mary ( my grandmother’s name); I could fly and save people who were sick, who needed to be reunited with their families. I found homes for orphans, brought food to those in need. 

I found strength in those fantasies and still do.Today we are again faced with the terror of  a facist regime with a President who slept with Mein Kampf by his bedside. Standing with him is a non-elected man, who has a power as great as any dictator anywhere. His Nazi salute was indicative of his alliance with nazis worldwide.The cabinet of deplorables are all the quintessential array of destroyers of our Constitutional government. They aim their destruction towards every program designed to further the health and well-being  of US people, along with countries assisted by USAID, against science and preserving our environment. Oligarchs run everything now for their own profit and steal from the people. Alliances with our true allies have been broken. Alliances with dictartorships like Russia have been formed. We need to fight to restore our Democracy!

Throught my adulthood and absolutely now, my resistance is no longer a childhood fantasy. We must stand for people in need, Today rising facism and Nazis are again very real reasons for fear. Rascism, misogyny, xenophobia, anti-trans & LBGTQ, anti-Semitism, again are fomented by a new horrific dictatorship in our country along with their willing Magga-ts. 

 

WE MUST RESIST! 

And for those of us who do, also pray.

I wrote this at the end of the first Trump presidency. Now we face it again. Covid was keeping us confined, but we struggled for what might help; we struggled to overcome a wannabe dictator. Now we must struggle to retain our Democracy. We can only do this by retaining the will and the hope. We need our resilience.

Resilience of Spirit, Mind, Body, and Life

Sherry Fishman

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

-Maya Angelou -

Am I rising or sinking? Or am I doing both? During this nightmare world in a cauldron of deceit, lies, a pandemic that takes souls  (they rise!) by the thousands daily,  miles of hungry people lining up for food, voting, unemployment claims, and still we rise! We triumphed in a presidential election. That elevated our spirits and we sang, danced, honked horns. But millions in our country didn’t.

They believed that this pandemic is a hoax, that climate change is a lie made up by Democrats, that they have a  “right” to gather in crowds with unmasked faces. They believe they have a right to carry guns, to threaten people who are trying to disseminate good science-based plans to protect others, as well as themselves from the virus, the guns, and the bigotry.

We have an underworld of dangerous deliberate obstruction, creating chaos and insecurity in every aspect of our country’s structure. Are all of us, the people, no matter which side we take, being sucked down into a widening gyre? Racism is so prevalent that black communities in key states have had to deal with voting obstructions, challenges, and lies about invalidity of ballots. So racism is rising with presidential incitement, and most in the Republican party sanctioning it, through both silence and actions. 

Nevertheless, our Constitution and our elections are a promise. We are a resilient Nation, and a resilient people. What accounts for the spirit of hope, determination and inner strength?

I find myself in these times of trouble doing many different things to bolster my striving for the sun. I will begin a list:

• I love sunrises and sunsets, moon rises and moon sets, I think of Emily in Our Town gazing at the full moon: “Isn’t the moon terrible?” I agree with her as I smile to myself. Yes it is, terrible in creating a wonderment within myself. Emily from the other world spends one day back in life as a spirit. Afterwards she observes:“Oh Life, you are too wonderful for anyone to realize.” I keep that sentence floating in my brain whenever I let the anxieties, the depression and the very good reasons for despair get me down.

• Find and take in beauty. Music, dance, poetry, art, gardens, seasonal changes, skyscapes, landscapes, seascapes, architecture, literature, nature and the diversity of beauty in our human faces and bodies. And so I dance, read, take time to view and photgraph what I love to see, listen to music, sing, recall my past directed plays, and even now help costume and create props for our Purim productions. I write. I create meals, loving the art of cooking and baking.

• Celebrating holidays with loved ones is big. Ironically, there are several Jewish holidays based on former attempts to destroy us Jews .Humans have harmed each other in heinous ways. The Holiday of Chanukah is a few weeks away. That story of a triumphant battle against Assyrian oppression, resulted in the destruction of the eternal flame symbolizing the Holy One’s spirit . It’s metaphoric. Here’s why:

The Jewish people have been resilient after the destruction of two Temples, countless attempts to end our very existence as a people, countless expulsions, pogroms, and slaughters. Somehow, perhaps through sheer obstinacy,  we continue as a people. We light the Hanukah candles to recall a miracle, not to celebrate the violence of a battle, then triumph. Instead we celebrate that the one day’s worth sacred oil, which took 8 days to become consecrated, miraculously lasted for 8 days.  

The candles burn low quickly. We humans are ephemeral, but our peoplehood continues. The rituals add a structure to our lives as we celebrate with prayers, customs, and traditions. They keep us remembering who we are.  We have the miracle of continuence even after a Holocaust. That’s a resilience of peoplehood.

• We humans try to continue through strife and troubles by trying to make sense of what is causing traumas, pain, and loss. “When everything was taken from us there was one thing left. The choice of how to respond to any given circumstance.” That was Elie Wiesel’s conclusion, as he explored the  reasons some people lived on through the horror of their lives in the Nazi concentration camps. His book’s thesis is that people who survive and then transcend even the worst of experiences find meaning and purpose for what they want to live for. Many of us who love our country and want to preserve our democratic principles are donating, writing letters or post cards, making phone calls, texting to elect people who uphold what we think of as the ethical approach to being a Nation. We have joined protests, supported non-profits with both involvement and actions to assist those who are hungry, houseless, suffering illnesses, the losses of fires, floods and hurricanes. Helping others gives our own existence a deeply profound meaning.

These Are a Few Of My Favorite Quotes

These Are a Few of My Favorite Quotes 

“What a drag it is getting older,” Mick Jagger

© Sherry Fishman

I agree with Mick Jagger. Monday, June 10, I turned 81. I’ve lost, or am losing much of my energy and strength, so I often drag myself to do chores.  My right forefinger is permanently “asleep” and fairly useless. I  need to rest much more, and plan much less to do for my days, or evenings. 

Neither Paul, nor I drive at night anymore, so we’ve joined the other grey heads at theater matinées. We use Uber or Lyft when we go to evening dinners. I’ve always loved dancing, and although the music still moves me, I move less.  I  collapse into bed at 9ish.

I still love to cook and bake, but have found I simplify what and how many things I am making or baking. I no longer want to drive to the beach and back on the same day, or go to the Gorge for a hike. I love travel, but not traveling. Our oveseas  air trips are exhausting, even when we use mileage for business class. We still are going to Europe  with our kids (our favorite travel companions ); also, it’s nice not to have to rely only on ourselves to do all the schlepping. 

“Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you.” —Aldous Huxley (March 1956) 

My experiences are filled with love and meaning.  I married my best friend. We had two sons who are marvelous human beings. They married women and gave us daughters-in-love (not law) I’ve lived long enough to have adult grandchildren, whose careers are well-launched. Two of my grandsons are now living with women they and we love, so now I have one blood granddaughter and two almost grandaughter, along with 3 grandsons.  We’re also very close with extended family and now we’ve babes to hold. So much love keeps life fulfilling. 

John Lennon sang: “Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

Living brings pain too.The longer we’ve lived, the more people we’ve lost. Today Paul’s brother Larry would have been 74. He committed suicide in 1999 by gun. His was not the only suicide of someone we loved. I also still grieve students I taught, or counseled, who took their own lives. 

 More and more of our friends & family are affected by illnesses, including dementia. And more is to be expected with aging. Cancer has hit six close family members and taken the life of one. Covid hit all of us numerous times; thanks to medical science and care, we’re ok.

The old and infirm is too true now. So for me, all the grief means I must cherish every moment of living.There is a joy in sorrow; I had the people to love.

“The great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other ages you’ve been.”—That’s right: Every year of our lives brings us to who we are now. I love living. I love that I'm alive to love my age.Madeline L’Engle

There are many people who went to bed just as I did yesterday evening and didn't wake this morning. I love and feel very blessed that I did. I love, too, that I know a little more today than I did yesterday, or I simply know it more profoundly.”  Maya Angelou

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”  Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

‘If I am not for me, who will be? If I am not for others, what amI? Rabbi Israel (Lipkin)Salanter* 

Every moment I have been in my life is filled with meaning and the joy of my family and friends, the experiences and opportunities I’ve had, the blessings of being able to give love, assist others, which has always given my life meaning, as have our years of social activism. I have had a wealth of professional experiences: teaching all age levels, counseling, directing, writing, working in Human Resources for Paul. Being a daughter,wife, mother, grandmother, & friend has made me rich with living..

And as Bob Dylan sang: “May you be Forever Young.” 

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” G.B. Shaw

I still play!

___________________________________________

*Rabbi  Isaak (Lipkin) Salanter was my great-great grandfather. He founded a school based in ethics, Mussar. I am grateful to be his descendant.

My First Experience of an Earthquake

We had moved to California from Champaign, Illinois December 1967. Paul was in the UC Irvine marine biology program working on his doctorate. In April, 1968 I was in our Costa Mesa upstairs bathroom at the sink, and felt the swaying. The medicine cabinet door kept swinging open, and I, thinking it was my brain sort of messed up since I'd just had our 2nd baby, kept putting everything falling out back into the cabinet and closing the door! How's that for mental incongruence, or stupidity?!  I heard Paul calling my name: "Sherry, are you ok? We're having an earthquake." 

My own quaking came from realizing there is nowhere to go in a quake. During tornados we went to the basement. but where is there safety in an earthquake?

Do I think there is something "beyond" visible life on earth?

Sherry Fishman

Quotes by Carl Sagan “Cosmos”

We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

I recently read an article in The New Yorker about Spinosa and his views  that the spiritual is Nature. Sagan is saying something quite similar. But for me, it’s the spiritual that shapes my sense of a soul as part of the entirety of the Universe.

  I feel a  wondrous sense of our place in time and space when gazing up into the infinite expanse of stars and knowing we’re floating in it.; I believe Life is a continuum. I always wonder about about the finite/infinite; what happens after? Life and Death are not opposites to me;  I can’t experience the physical embodiment of a person who died, but I feel them with me. 

But how? Are we all individual souls with an  interconnected conciousness? Are we connected as souls before we enter this physical part of Life, were some of us already bound together in the nether world?

.

I remember my father who was dying of Parkinson’s disease looking at me from his bed: I’ve been talking to my father, Sherry. He died in 2000; now I talk to him and my mother, who diedin 2009. I call Paul my soul mate and sign evey card or letter to him Forever and ever.

 

I am aware that what I feel, what I believe is not based in observable evidence, and yet it is what my heart and mind feel/ know as  truth.

The Family that Plays Together Stays TogetherAn Old Essay Still Relevant

April 29, 2020

You’re only as old as you feel.  You have to think young. You need to eat right; stop smoking; keep fit; excersise; walk 10,000 steps a day; keep your weight down; take this, that and the other supplement or vitamin; get lots of fresh air and sunshine; stay out of the sun; use this product for younger looking skin; don’t let yourself go, try hair coloring; be cool with purple and organge hair streaks; sit in two claw foot tubs and watch the sunset with your partner. Lots of people are happiest in their older years because they don’t sweat the small stuff. 

Sing along with me (if you’re old enough to remember the tune): “Fairy tales can come true; they can happen to you, if you’re young at heart.”

The above clichés are written in Goudy Old Style font. Perfect for the quaintness  of such advice. But George Bernard Shaw has it down:“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

Paul and I are growing old physically, no vitamins or supplements, cosmetics, hair dyes, or exercise changes that.  I sweat lots of small stuff! I’ve noticed a crepier neck and a turkey waddle. Can’t make that go away with an attitude; maybe with plastic surgery. But I love to play. I love my toys, my little tiny R2D2, C3PO, and Dobby, complete with his book on my window ledge. I rearrange them and have them “communicate” funny things to each other.

 I love the fun Paul and I have had making silly videos, doing puppet shows, hosting costume party murder mysteries, creating skits and thematic family Thanksgiving entertainment, like conferences and lip synch rock and roll concerts. I love the goofy videos we’ve created over the years and laughing at our own corny performances.

All the funny movies and record albums have become part of Paul’s and my dialogue with each other. Firesign Theater (you had to be stoned to laugh), Monty Python, Mel Brooks movies, I Love Lucy, Nichols and May. Their lines worked their way into our every day. Every morning before one of us goes downstairs we ask the other: “More coffee, Warden? This was from a Firesign Theater album, I don’t even recall why it was funny, but we use the tone and inflection and still chuckle. 

While we play, nothing in our physical realities are what we focus on. While we play, our imaginations are free to take us to the feeling of being Forever Young (sing that one, even better than Bob Dylan!). We transcend our petty issues, our fears, our tears, of other health deteriorations and the ever threatening Covid.

 

In the past, games of Scrabble, Charades, Celebrity, & Hearts have filled family reunions.  During the summers when we used to camp with friends, we had a fabulous splashing war in a faux pirate capture game in our separate water floats. I recall that and laugh.  Old bodies and old age, and health threats happen. But oh how important it is to keep playing. I hope to literally die laughing.

Nov. 9, Anniversary of Kristallnacht, 1938

Shards of the "Night of Broken Glass" remain in our collective memory . I heard stories on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday today, & read stories in in the New Yorker and the New York Times. These stories are from survivors, historians,  and journalists. They are about both the evil then, and the rise of anti-semitism in Europe now. 

Sometimes I feel despair. But I find comfort from those who did what they could to combat evil, and those who strive to heal the world now.  I think Hans Christian Anderson's depiction in the fairy tale The Snow Queen is a good parallel. If you haven't read it take time to do so. 

There are shards of glass that have entered peoples eyes and hearts that cause them to turn away from each other. But the love and pursuit of goodness from a child, who rescues her friend from the frozen cruelty, overcomes the evil.

I wrote a story about a friend, now of blessed memory who was a righteous gentile in the Czech resistance. It is a fictional account I based on his story. It is about love.

There is always a chance to heal the world.