For This

I've decided to take old memories, photos and writings, and place them here on my blog for posterity.

This first post takes me back to the summer of 2008, a few short weeks after Mendel's autism diagnosis. As an over-analyzer of every situation, I've found myself too often feeling like an outsider looking in at my own life. Not so the moment of Mendel's diagnosis, on June 25, 2008 in a tiny room in Mount Sinai Hospital with a tactless developmental pediatrician and a helpless case manager from YAI, plus my husband and I and Mendel, 2.8 years old. I remember how deeply I felt in my body hearing those words, and how I felt the room spin around me, and knew with utter certainty that life would never be the same. Denial came later, and stayed for a while, but I never forgot that moment.

Here is one of the first pieces I wrote about Mendel that summer. I could barely even say the word autism in those days, but I guess I could write it.


  For This
  Written August 2008

There’s a refrain to my life these days, and it found expression in the sudden appearance of an old song I hadn’t heard in years and a convergence of feelings old and new that held me for a moment with its deep power and left me shaken.

It happened as I was carrying my sleeping little boy, not yet three, to his crib late one night. A recent purchase I had yet to listen to was playing on our CD player and the song jumped out at me; it had been years- two decades, at least- since I’d heard it last. “Eleh Chamdah Libi; V’Chusa Na V’al Tit’alem! Eleh Chamdah, Chamdah Libi, V’Chusa Na….” (For this my heart yearns {oh G-d} Have mercy, and do not conceal Yourself..)

Mendel, winter 2007, 1 year old

For this my heart yearns! The melody, at once joyful and pleading, takes me back instantly to the Simchat Torahs of my childhood. In our Chabad House, where my father, red-faced, would dance with abandon together with the motley crew of Jewish souls who would come through the door for just this night, the human moisture created a fog so distinct I can feel it now. The smells of cold cuts and whiskey and sweat were the undercurrent; above them rose a shining Presence, a sense of G-d so powerfully visible through the mist; so strong that I, a child, watched and understood and have never forgotten.

There was no music playing on that holiday on our Chabad Shul; the room was full of joyous song. My father, his voice bellowing, would begin, and the assembled- Israeli ex-pats, long haired hippies, Jews wide-eyed at this celebration of their souls- would join in. Newcomers would dance in the circle gingerly, clutching Torahs tightly, unaccustomed to their bulky shape, and I would watch- see their faces shining with sudden joy at the weight of this scroll in their arms. Eleh Chamdah Libi- I didn’t know what the words meant, but I saw it in the yearning of the faces in the room that night and that particular song, a special favorite of the Israelis who sang with gusto in their native tongue, reverberated in the room and deep into my heart.

For this my heart yearns, I think , staring down now at my sleeping boy, my little son, whose diagnosis is autism and whose beautiful eyes stare out vacantly but with a depth of soul such as I have never seen . The sense of G-d, the people-mist and the soul presence of long ago Simchat Torahs suddenly rose in my heart. Eleh Chamdah Libi! Have mercy and do not conceal yourself! You, so real and present in my childhood, You, who has given me this special soul I hold in my arms, his sleeping face blurred now by my sudden tears, You! Hear me calling out, hear the yearnings of my heart! Have mercy and do not conceal Yourself-Shine Your presence on my little boy and make him whole.

I dried my eyes- as I do so often these days- and laid my son in bed. ~

Some photos from that time

Three under three, summer 2008, just after our move to 54th Street. Mendel looks so typical here even I think I must have been exaggerating his condition. I wasn't.

Chana, about 8 months old, summer 2008. A magnificent, happy baby and a source of so much comfort in those days.