An Odyssey of Memories: a Perfection of the Present

Five months ago our family lost my father.  Not lost, actually, because in truth we found so much of him and ourselves in his last days.  (Even his nurses found new words, new ways to reach their own loved ones through his example).  While his body died, his outsized impact, his oft-repeated expressions, his smile, his constant fund of jokes, his example of vigorous embracing of whatever life sends ones way; these stay with us.  For such a life-affirming man, our grief could not long be for him, who enjoyed every last moment of his long life and whose great heart failed mechanically but never in all the ways of connection and laughter. Instead, we grieve for ourselves and the simple missing because he had filled us with so much important love.

He did, however, leave the love of his life, my mother, the uncharted task of reconciling her long-standing independent pursuit of her own interests and talents with the loss of her buffer from his more social and worldly links. She was suddenly bereft of the daily cocktail before dinner and the sharing of news, accomplishments, and plans.  She was left to do business and finance and no longer the nursing and managing of his care that kept him alive and vital for so long.

So how to mark the importance of his loss, our recovery from all the hard work of his final days, and embrace the best of his legacy? By celebrating his old world charm, his new world sense of adventure, and the memory of many visits to one of the most beautiful places on earth; a trip to Glion, Switzerland.

Coffee at Riverside Cafe, Geneva

Blessed with great genetics and disciplined with sensible living habits, my 88 year-old mother braved the overseas flight and talked me into a walk along the lake front and an afternoon espresso in Geneva before ending our 36 hour travel day.  Her flawless French and German (mine far less flawless)  allowed us to immerse ourselves immediately in the languages of Switzerland.

The next day, it was on to the mountains, via a train ride to Montreux. Hotel Victoria perches at 3000 feet above the southern end of Lake Geneva in the village of Glion.  No matter that it is a world class old-style European hotel with outstanding copious food; the views from the room and the elegant dining veranda themselves are worth the challenge of getting there…

View from our room

The hotel, known for its high quality of service, the distinctive mélange of antiques and art set in spectacular mountain scenery is an example of the kind of travel that my parents and their parents always enjoyed. It is fine, European, slow-paced enjoyment.

Rose walk at Hotel Victoria

  

Chateau de Chillon

The writer in me savored the view of the medieval castle of Chillon, first built a thousand years ago. Its 16^th century history prompted Lord Byron’s famous poem Prisoner of Chillon and it was one of the settings of  Henry James’ Daisy Miller.

We spent our single rainy day perusing the tourist stores in Montreux, readying itself for the thousands of people attending the International Jazz Festival the following week.  (Leonard Cohen, African jazz, Salsa, Green Day just to name a few!!!) While sorry to miss this world-class festival, we retreated to our mountain aerie and prepared for the next day’s adventure. 

With walking sticks and a picnic lunch, we embarked on an excursion via a rack and pinion electric railway to the summit of Rochers de Nay, at 6700 feet, another 3000 feet above Glion in elevation. The Rochers de Naye (French, lit. "rocks of Naye") lie on the watershed between the Rhone and the Rhine rivers.

Chemin de fer Glion–Rochers-de-Naye

Edelweiss!

Aside from a marmot zoo (seriously…) this mountain top spectacle came with an alpine flower botanical garden and a changing skyscape alternately hiding and revealing the Sarine valley below and the next alpine peaks.

Yes, I did hike a quarter of a mile on a rocky trail at 7,000 feet!

Determination, arduous work, rewarding beauty; our adventure to this summit was a fine metaphor for the way my mother lives her life, and a fine example of just how she does it; one foot in front of the other with persistence.

Snow, sun, clouds all at once...

The village of Glion, with its quaint houses, and long history as a resort is also home to Hill House International School.  With its central campus in London, the school in Glion provides language immersion, enrichment and holiday recreation for its students.  We happened upon a flier for a Sunday evening concert by the girls’ choir and joined other lucky audience members for a beautiful performance by this talented group.

Church where we heard the concert

Then came the visitors; my father’s long-time business associate Paul and his partner Enzo.  They were driven from their home in Solothurn by a young German man, David,  and the five of us made an excursion to Evian, across the border in France. We had a delicious lunch at the Hotel les Cygnettes right on Lake Geneva. Yet another delectable meal was capped by coffee on the veranda of the Royal Hotel on a hill above Evian.  Meeting and catching up with these long-time acquaintances (in German… David spoke no French and little English) was an interesting sharing of cultural, personal and political perspectives. (Enzo is originally Italian!) Missing were the raft of jokes my father would surely have told, but it was a warm and delightful time.

The sitting room at the Royal Hotel

The pool with a view at Hotel Victoria

After another day of walking, swimming and enjoying Hotel Victoria, our long journey back to the U.S. began with the train to Geneva and an overnight visit with our friend Alex. We met him at his office at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.  It was sobering to hear of his work and the work of the Commission in the increasing number of tortured places in the world where people have become refugees. It was challenging to reconcile the idyll we’d just experienced for the last five days with conditions Alex described.

As we headed over the ocean for home, I was deeply grateful for the opportunity to savor our family’s past and enjoy the present with my mother in such comfort and splendor.  Darkness, change and light will follow one upon the next in our lives.  And that’s ok…

Hike and Bike: the Grand Staircase in Utah

Day One

Sculpture outside Vdara Hotel

The REI Store in Hendersonville, NV sits in an upscale mall in an upscale suburb of Las Vegas, and after two days of Vegas glitz, crowds, and openly crass commercialism, I am daunted at the prospect of 6 days of physically challenging hiking and cycling.

My trusty husband, pleased at my introduction to the opulent hotel casinos of Vegas, the good food and the better shows (Jersey Boys and the Cirque d' Soleil Beatles' Love), is dutifully dropping me off on this odyssey.

 Directed to a back room at the REI store, I meet my adventure mates.  The first shock is that three of the four intrepid travelers are at a senior end of middle age similar to mine. I am probably not the oldest. The youngest is forty-something. We are from Alaska, Michigan, New Mexico and Wisconsin, and our guides are from Arizona.  

None of us has the appearance of a life devoted to extreme bicycling. For no good reason, it occurs to me that I may not be the only one who hasn’t had an easy life easily lived. We are none of us by appearance professional athletes, though our two young guides do appear to be strikingly fit and athletic.

Tom and Maryanne

 I learn later that looks can be deceiving.  Gil, and his son Eric have between them and together competed in 100 mile races in the dead of winter in Alaska, Iron Man races, and more bicycling races and trips than I can absorb. 

Gil out on a cliff

Gil and Eric playing in the waterfall

Diane

Diane will finish our six-day trip and go back to New Mexico where she will participate in a century bike ride next Sunday. 

Perhaps it is only I that have taken on the challenge of this trip to remind myself that I am able and strong and that I can still use that ability and strength to push into new frontiers.

We load and board the van and begin what should have been a 2.5-hour drive to the entrance to Zion National Park.  A runaway trailer on a highway hill ahead stops us for an hour.  It is a 100-degree day and my fear of heat exertion in the days to come is further fueled.  At dusk we arrive at Springdale, a lovely resort town at the south end of Zion, for dinner at the Spotted Dog Cafe.  The trepidation and the heat fall away with the wonderful food and lively conversation and with the last light we enter Zion National Park as the magnificent limestone peaks fade into darkness. We will spend the next two nights at the Zion National Park Lodge.

Day 2.   

We eat 6:30 breakfast in the only cool the dawning day will afford.  By 7:45 we're on the hiking trail toward Weeping Rock and the Echo Canyon overlook.  After three miles of climbing, we are nearly 1500 feet from the canyon floor and have spectacular vistas alternating with intimate views of the Great Artist's canvas. It is drawn in the medium of geologic wonders, canyon trees (Pinyon and Ponderosa Pines, Canyon/Gambel Oak, Rocky Mountain Maple, and 'snowing' Cottonwood) and wildflowers. As in the other gorgeous examples around the 130,000 square mile, 11,000-foot high Colorado Plateau, the ancient desserts and seas, volcanic and tectonic activity, and the power of the Virgin River and erosion have carved magnificent colorful cliffs and canyons from sandstone and limestone. The plateau steps down, beginning with Bryce Canyon, then Zion and finally the Grand Canyon in what is known as the Grand Staircase.  For a special treat, a family of longhorn sheep grazes the summit of the Great White Throne, directly across from our vantage point.

 

The heat and exertion of the six-mile hike seem to heighten the grandeur, and after a fine picnic lunch of salad and chicken wraps, we cycle the flat canyon bottom from one end to the other for twelve miles of red limestone roads, and a path crisscrossing the Virgin River, mountain peaks towering in the afternoon light. Today was about finishing, and the heady freedom to be in the moment.  There are no worries, no deadlines, no constraints outside remaining safe in the heat, and hydrating ourselves with joy and water.

Day 3

A 6:15 a.m. hike to Emerald Pools begins the day and we share the morning cool with deer, "goat" frogs (they really sound like goats) and the color show of the rising sun finding the face of Lady Mountain.

Lady Mountain, sunrise

Virgin River, Zion, morning hike

Ice in Mossy Cave

Falls at Red Canyon

After breakfast, we transfer to Red Canyon and begin the 20 mile ride to Tropic, UT and Bryce Canyon National Park, At mile 16, an errant rumble marker catches my tire on one of the only highway rides we're doing and I fall spectacularly.  I earn a lovely road rash on knee, hip, elbow and shoulder, several impressive bruises, and a nice little dent in my helmet, but nothing is broken and after a little roadside patching, I am able to hike the final mile long walk past Mossy Cave (where there’s a little patch of ice remaining from the winter…) to the waterfall below.

Amidst the otherwise idyllic day, the fall is a sober reminder of how fleeting our joy and even our safety can be. For brief moments I dwell on the easily returned-to rumination that my life has already had enough lessons about how to recover from derailments large and small.  I guess not. Then I remember that we can choose to stay in the moment and be grateful for the opportunities that remain. I was a lucky girl today.   Tomorrow may require some pharmaceuticals to ride the 25 miles and hike three comfortably! It can all change so quickly, but I'm resolved not to lose a single second of this spectacular place.

Day 4

Today’s was a delicious ride from Tropic, UT to Kodachrome Basin State Park, part of the Escalante National Monument.  13 miles each way with a 2 mile hike in the park to an overlook of the magnificent sandstone chimneys that characterize this area geologically.  The hills are gentle and the roads fairly empty with the temperature in the 70s; perfect cycling weather.  Another display of beautiful rock formations is just the warm-up for the sunset hike along the rim of the spectacular amphitheater at Bryce Canyon. The signature hoodoos formed because of erosion patterns with the particular layers of sand and minerals compressed into rock over the last 200 million years are an otherworldly wonder to add to the others of the Colorado Plateau (Zion and the Grand Canyon). Starting at Sunrise Point and hiking to Inspiration Point, the continuous changing beauty of late light on the magnificent colors of the claron formation and the bizarre shapes of the hoodoos create a breathless and disorienting vision of a wonderland. Continuous exertion at 8300 ft. elevation also may have something to do with the effect!  A friend of my son’s posted a quote on Facebook: For the raindrop, joy is entering the river.  For anyone who aspires to be an artist, the creation of Bryce is indeed the river.

Rim walk- Amphitheater- Bryce

Day 5

Face the challenges you must; choose the ones that mean something.  Today was the longest, hardest ride, and the occasion, in rapid succession to 1.  Curse the decision to take on this challenge, 2. Begin the 17-mile cycle that climbed 2000 ft. to an elevation of 9100 ft. with several 6-8% grades, and then 3. Bless the power that allowed me the strength to ride past one spectacular vista after another punctuated by glimpses of antelope, deer, and pine forest.  Near the top, with the steepest climbs, I gasped for every molecule of the thin air, and my legs shook, and I released the last of my self-recrimination for having taken the option of a lift for four of the continuous climbing miles near the beginning of the ride.  I did the other 13 including these harshest final 3 miles and I was going to make it, the rising wind driving head on while I visualized turning just the next corner, and then the next until the wind-twisted pines at the overlook signaled the first flat ground in two hours. I'd done this sort of warrior quest on a bike trip to Spain and I recognized the fine mix of intense physical exertion, exhilaration, pride of accomplishment and awe at the beauty of the landscape.  These visits to the source of my essential energy are nourishment of the deepest part of what is important in me, and too seldom frequented.        

Picnic on the ride down from Rainbow Point- Bryce

Day 6

A fine rain with the potential for slick roads on a severe five mile climb keep our intrepid crew from cycling this morning, but we enjoy our last hike to the scenic viewpoint over Kolob Canyon on the west side of Zion National Park. An invigorating walk with one of the best wildflower displays of the trip is a final reminder of how much I love the mountains, even if I am a committed Great Lakes girl. I think of my father, who spent the best times of his youth skiing and hiking and dreaming in the German Alps, and I send a special packet of my enjoyment to wherever he’s roaming now.

Kolob Canyon, Zion

To Walter Stark 9/13/1919-1/17/2013

                                                      

Eulogy for Walter Stark 

January 20, 2013, Temple Beth El

When my Dad was in the hospital just recently, the hospice rabbi came to visit and brought us a book of "Prayers for Everyday and Not-So-Everyday Moments." The prayers are taken from the work of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, who lived a couple of hundred years ago in Ukraine. In one of life’s lovely ironies, it was not Walter, who for most of his life was a serious Jewish scholar, but my mother Margaret who spent many long moments at the hospital with the prayers in that book. She chose several that she thought represented my father’s values and spoke to her about the way he lived his life. I want to share a few of those with you today.

The first of these is “Teaching by Being.” The prayer includes the lines, “Teach me to Embody those ideals I would want my children to learn from me. Let me communicate with my children wisely in ways that will draw their hearts to kindness, to decency and to true wisdom.

My brother Bob described some of the ways that our Dad was an example to us, and my sisters will share more. Walter understood and took very seriously that he should model the life he wished his children and grandchildren to have; Decency. Check. True wisdom. Check.  Joy! Double check.

Walter was very cognizant of, and very grateful for the blessings of his life. He believed to the bottom of his heart that through good living and devotion to the right values, all obstacles could be overcome.  In “A prayer of Thanks,”  Rebbe Nachman gives thanks for  “awakening true, meaningful words from deep within, words that strengthen, words that ease my pain, and heal my wounds, words that dispel darkness.” Walter summoned words from deep within.  He strengthened. He eased our pain, and he brought us light.

My father was not by nature a patient man, but over his life, he learned great patience.  It was one of the ways he taught us to work at who we wanted to be, and believe that change is possible.  In the prayer “Learning to Wait” we read:  “Help me to learn to wait- for the good that is just around the corner; for the assistance that will soon be within my reach; for the relief that is just a moment away.” From the minute difficulty to the momentous, Walter taught us to be patient with ourselves and our problems; to believe that good is just around the corner; that with hard work, we could do anything. He did this by being patient with us and by endlessly cheerleading us through thick and thin, helping us to reset and reframe when we needed it.

          In my Dad’s final days, he had two visionary episodes that I can only describe as instances of spiritual enlightenment. Several family members and the rabbi were privileged to share those times with Walter. The first was while he was still in the hospital, and my mother, my nephew and I were with him.

Walter was experiencing his own version of the biblical patriarch Jacob’s dream in the desert.  In the dream, Jacob sees angels traversing a ladder between heaven and earth and experiences God confirming that he has blessed Jacob and all of his descendants.  When Jacob awakens, the Bible relates that he says “God was in this place and I did not know it.”  Scholars have theorized many things about that dream, including themes of personal exile and spiritual distance.

 Walter was not exiled from his spiritual solace or his relationship with his God.  Just ten days ago, when my Dad was home and a nephew and my sister were visiting, my Dad exhorted them to tell us all to attend to our spiritual education so that we would experience the enlightened comfort that came to him. He was literally seeing the light, and his first instinct was to share it with his children and grandchildren. 

My final words today belong to Walter.  I recorded his prayers on that dreamy day in the hospital and I have found great comfort in them.  In Walter’s own words…..

            “Thank you dear God for having gotten me through to have the knowledge that we’re all doing this together and we have meaning at the end.  It’s so good that’s it’s happening in our day and our time.  Let’s never forget.  Let it happen. And we will be with the children of Israel. I appreciate the joy of it.  And continue to give the joy of it.  Happiness has occurred, let us continue to live forever and ever.”

 

Amen, Dad.

The Best Sermon I Never Heard

The Best Sermon I Never Heard

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, dawned sunny and cool this year, a perfect day for reflection, prayer, penitence and t’shuvah (doing good deeds).  My first good deed of the year was preparing for a post-synagogue gathering of 60 plus friends and family members. With good food and a place to greet each other and the year to come, we were mindful of the obligations we’d all just renewed for these “Days of Awe” between the high holidays. We are obliged to examine our lives, own and apologize for our failings, and pledge to improve as people.  This is a very solemn process, but our rabbi reminded us that it is also incumbent on each of us to find and embrace the joy, the creative, and the life affirming in others and ourselves. The Rosh Hashanah open house we have hosted for many years focuses us on this joyous and positive aspect of the Days of Awe. 

I am by nature a storyteller. When our synagogue announced a theme for the season and the year to come as the Story, I found myself particularly drawn to the rabbis’ holiday messages.  In sermons over the course of two days, I heard… Story Corp from NPR would come to interview members of our community…… our tradition is one of stories beginning with the creation, and we make and find meaning in them……. we make choices that follow and inform our stories….. and religiously, we seek to become a part of our higher power’s story and invite the higher power to become a part of our own life’s story.  These messages were inspiring and relevant to me as a writer and I felt a galvanizing integration of my recent experience, thoughts and dreams.

For example, the lead up to the Jewish New Year this week coincided with a trip to Chicago to attend a luncheon celebrating the 20th anniversary of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and a special Next Generation tribute to Holocaust survivors. Featured Speakers were Ambassador Susan E. Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a member of President Obama's Cabinet, Joshua B. Bolten and William M. Daley, former Chiefs of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, former Chief of Staff and current mayor of Chicago, and Beatrice “Trixie” Westheimer, a Holocaust survivor. The government officials spoke of current crises in the world that threatened Israel or involved atrocities such as in Darfur.  Trixie’s story of surviving the Holocaust closely parallels that of members of my mother’s family and I was mesmerized by her account.

The event’s honoree was Rabbi Steven Stark Lowenstein, my brother-in-law. Steven was honored for his passionate commitment to educating young people about the Holocaust and its relevance today. In the audience of 2100 people at this event on September 12 were my parents, who themselves are Holocaust survivors, and who made the effort to travel there from Michigan, to be Steven’s parents, as his are both gone. In his remarks, Steven shared the stories that caused him to internalize the meaning of others’ experience: the survivor who received a number tattooed on his arm that helped him believe he would live; (the numbers added up to 18, the Hebrew number for life), the survivor who kept his belt from when he was liberated from a concentration camp as an adult; a belt that was too small to fit any of the young students in Steven’s middle school class, Steven’s rabbinical school mentor’s own survival story, and that of my parents.  He exhorted us to remember and share both the stories of atrocities past and present, and to find our personal connections to them and to the remedies to keep them from happening again.

Back to Rosh Hashanah….  I had gone to services the evening before, but on this morning, I missed the part of the service during which the rabbi gave the sermon of a lifetime. His comments had a striking impact on everyone who heard it. As my guests arrived after the service, they were all speaking about it.  The rabbi’s remarks related, as Steven’s had, the shift from knowing and caring about keeping the memory of Holocaust alive so that it never happens again, to having it become one’s own experience.  I wasn’t there to hear how our rabbi learned of his own relatives’ murders and decided to go to Latvia to find their graves and the memorials erected in their memories. I didn’t directly hear the emotional charge of what has since been described by those who were there as one of his best sermons ever.  But I felt its impact. The power of the descriptions shared by others summoned my own experience of researching and writing the life of my family members who were forced to remain in Europe in the 1930s.  They survived many horrors of the Holocaust and went on to live transformational lives in Germany and Belgium in unexpected ways that inspired me to write a novel about them, and inspire me still.

I am reminded from these many directions of how our stories empower us, and how important it is to share them. To a year of stories made, told, celebrated and remembered….