A Decade in the Life: Part Three

Yep, Just Like on 'Sex in the City'

When I left Austin, I closed an important and treasured chapter of my life. My experiences there changed me forever; and frankly, I didn’t know what to expect on returning to Atlanta. As it turned out, a whole new era was about to begin.

Looking back, I know I met the man who is the love of my life once before I even moved back to Atlanta. I’d come home for a visit and to do some work for my friend’s company, where he happened to be working. I remember we had a nice conversation about New Orleans and I thought he was really cute, but that was about it.

Once I did move home, however, and we began working in the same place and hanging out with the same group of friends, it didn’t take long for me to figure out that the cute boy in the lab was a really incredible person himself. I could go on for a while about what makes him so special to me (and lots of other people), but that would embarrass him and bore everyone else.

As we began spending more time together, the primary tension in our relationship was that MD-future-H had always envisioned himself marrying someone Jewish. Someone born Jewish, actually. And so he only dated Jewish women, which obviously I was not. So we oscillated for a few months between dating and not dating [I think he broke up with me three times during this period]. And in the meantime, I found myself reading “Judaism for Dummies,” among other things.

I’d been on a path of spiritual searching for years (far longer than this blog covers), and my close-up experience with Catholicism in Austin had piqued my interest in ancient and ritual-focused religion. So as a relationship with a nice boy spurred me to learn more, I found myself drawn to Judaism at the deepest levels of my being. After further education and mutual soul-searching, MD-future-H and I decided that someone willing to consider conversion and someone willing to consider marrying a convert could make a go of a relationship.

From there, we just followed the path that seemed to be appearing at our feet with each step. We took a Derech Torah class as a precursor to my conversion, where we met lots of great people – some of whom were in the same situation we were, and many who have been our friends ever since. Soon I began studying with Rabbi Analia, one of the most wonderful and wise women I’ve known. She and her husband Mario lead the congregation where we’ve found our spiritual home.

We got engaged in February 2006; MDH knew how much I love Jane Austen, so he took me to see “Pride and Prejudice” at the Alliance Theater, and proposed at a quaint little Italian restaurant before the show. His wonderful family accepted me warmly, and they have never treated me any differently than they would a born Jew.

In May, Rabbi Analia decided I was ready. The Bet Din (conversion panel) and my submersion in the Mikvah (ritual bath) were incredible experiences that marked a whole new era in my life as a Jew-by-Choice. I’m honored to be part of the Jewish community. I am still learning, day by day, what it means to be Jewish, and particularly how to help lead a Jewish household. It will be a lifelong journey and I’m cherishing every moment.

In September 2006, our beloved Rabbis Mario and Analia presided over our beautiful garden wedding. When Analia talked about how my mom and Sam’s dad (who had also died suddenly in April 2002) were both with us in spirit, a sudden breeze blew the white tulle walls of our chuppah high in the otherwise calm air. It was chilling and lovely.

The last three years of my decade have been decidedly different from the first. There have been more losses – both grandmothers, my brother’s best friend, my first boss at the Catholic school (who was always really kind to me). But there have also been tremendous joys, achievements, new friendships and the deepening of old ones. I went back to grad school, completed my Master’s in Counseling and am enjoying the challenges of a new career, one that constantly drives me to reflect and question myself.

For me, the impulsive choices and perpetual newness of the early 2000’s have been replaced by a whole new kind of adventure. In June 2009, we expanded our family with the long-sought addition of our beautiful baby boy. He's an amazing little kid with a funny personality that is already beginning to emerge. Difficulty getting pregnant and the experience of undergoing fertility treatments has helped us -- if at all possible -- to treasure him even more.

I no longer characterize myself as a world traveler – though we did take a fantastic trip to Ireland when I got my counseling degree – but being a mother to our six-month-old son takes me to new places every day. And while no marriage is fail-proof, MDH and I work hard to secure ours to something larger than ourselves, so that we’re not left alone during those inevitable hard times.

And Two the cat is still hanging around, letting us know when the kiddo is crying (as though we can't hear him). She's a decade older than when she came into my life, but not too much worse for the wear. Our family has lots of big plans for the coming months and years; but if 2010-2019 is anything like this past decade, we'll mostly just be holding on tight and trying to enjoy the ride.

Chisel, Stone and Frequent Flyer Miles

… And we’re back. The blog has been on a hiatus for a month or so, partly because of my graduation and all the festivities surrounding it, and then because we took a trip to Ireland for nine days. It was my first time crossing the Atlantic since I backpacked through Europe 10 years ago with a friend from college. [How old does that make me feel???]

Back then, I spent 6 months visiting 20 countries and traveling became a way of life. I got accustomed to needing only what I could carry on my back and to exploring new places and people almost daily. This time we spent just 8 days, and confined ourselves to the Emerald Isle and one night in London. Still, the experiences felt pretty similar and by the third or fourth day, I found myself back in the traveling groove, hoisting my pack onto busses with authority and counting a good map and guide book among my most prized possessions.

We walked (or biked) several miles each day, sometimes with our 30-lb packs in tow. We put our lives on the line and into the hands of the Bus Eireann drivers – who appear to have somewhere to be and nothing to lose on the way. We sat in pubs and talked politics and football with the locals. We sang passionately along with the ‘rare auld songs’ as though we’d been hearing them our whole lives. We allowed ourselves to be surrounded by the warm welcome of the Irish people, who showed us enormous kindness at nearly every turn. It was one of those trips that demands of your time, energy and love; and from which you come home totally exhausted and fully renewed at the same time.

It’s funny how trips like that – whether they’re to another country or just a few miles from home – help us to discover who we are. By engaging with experiences and culture that are not our own, we learn something about who we are – maybe something that changes even at the moment we’re learning it.

In our performance-oriented culture, we often define ourselves by what we have and what we do. People we meet ask us about ourselves, and we tell them first where we work. We pride ourselves on having the nicest home, the most exciting job, the most volunteer commitments, sophisticated tastes, interesting parties. All these active, deliberate things have a place in who we are and how we express ourselves to the world. They are things that make up our identities, our self-concept.

But another, often-overlooked part of ourselves is not in what we choose to do, but in how we respond to the world around us. Travel is a great example of both active and passive interaction with the world. It all starts with active choices: choosing to travel, selecting a destination, buying a guidebook, picking activities, and putting yourself out there for the experience. After that, it’s all about responding.

The long room in the library at Trinity College in Dublin is the world’s largest single-room library. For centuries it has housed two stories of shelved books (organized, oddly enough, according to their dimensions) in its long arched room, and it will continue to do so for many more years, long after its current students and this writer are gone. In its quiet way, it is epic and lasting. But its impact on me is not just through the stories I tell, the pictures I take or the postcards I bring back with me. There's a more subtle impact in my internal reaction, the moment I ascend the stairs and take it all in.

The awe I feel entering the hall with its polished wooden walls and the incredible arched ceilings. The first breath as the unmistakable scent of old books fills me with memories and possibilities – my summer at Oxford, childhood trips to the library with my mother, pecking out my first story on my grandmother’s old typewriter… It all comes back instantly and disappears just as quickly, with every step I take across that hallowed floor.

Walking down the hall, my reaction to this place is visceral, unique, and difficult to describe. And even though I can never fully share it with others, it’s part of what makes me who I am, as fundamental in that moment as anything else about me.

Of course, you don’t have to travel to Trinity College or anywhere else to respond to the world in this way. Every day, we react in small, often-imperceptible ways to sensations and situations, and each reaction is a tiny pixel in a total self-portrait. Jazz music. Fresh coffee. The sound of a baby crying. Poetry. A friend’s laughter. A stranger in need. The annoying guy in the next office. These things have little intrinsic meaning until we react to them. But by eliciting our reactions and pushing us to engage with the world around us, they help chisel out the sculpture of who we are.

Often, I think, we get so busy focusing on our life’s active choices – going to work, scheduling our social lives, keeping up with an endless to-do list – that we stop paying attention to our little reactions to the world around us. We lose touch with what (largely) makes us who we are.

For me, traveling is a great opportunity to reconnect with that reactive part of myself, the part that connects directly with the world, taking it in without judgment and allowing the reaction to flow wordlessly through me. Getting out of my routine allows me to sit back and just enjoy being a part of the world, appreciating the artful expressions and emotions of those around me (and those who lived long before me).

I am not a singer, but when everyone in the pub is belting out “Wild Rover,” I can add my voice joyfully, without thought of what others will think. I am not a theologian (or even a Christian), but the echoes of children singing within the old stone walls of St. Patrick’s can still fill me with spiritual reverence and comforting grace. I am not a historian, but I can place my hand on a carving created thousands of years ago and feel connected to my infinitesimal place in human history.

Back on my home soil and into my own routine again, I feel challenged to keep awareness of these responses and reactions with me, to allow them to impact me fully. It is our gift as human beings to be able to participate each day in our own creation. We are made, not by chisel and stone, blood and bone, but by moments and experiences.

What will I do with what the Sculptor gives me today?