I, Woman, Still Stand Among My Tribe

There I learned: from the edge of the rails, the ocean's roar, the slaps of cutting waves, she sailed across from Poland, a cold place, a hard place where she escaped from the camps. There her mother died, her sister and brothers, disappeared into the dark forests of blood, where bodies lay topside, no graves, no burial rites. I learned how to survive the generations of women, the insane, the insane asylum. How the hand of G-d and the belly of the Goddess births a people, a nation, and spreads them like salt across the world and gives them a life that is challenged by displacement, estrangement and isolation.

A death of a self that emerges from the ashes, of black hearts, dirty minds, and filthy souls that tear out hearts of families, children, mothers and fathers leaving the women empty in her womb, waiting for a seed to birth a new beginning. And then, after the tears, and grief, and swollen stomach of the dying young, after the stench of death and the screams from behind the jails, I see a tunnel of light. I see the entrance into an angelic realm. Gabriel blowing his horn, Miriam playing her tambourine. I am here to witness how life can distort us into suicidal thoughts, to hate ourselves. And then realize that it is the only life that we have and we have a choice. I am here to watch the thousands walk across the continents, at first one in spirit, then split apart like the atom and exploded into separate tribes, separate nations, separate countries. I am here to hear the call of the wild, the women waving from afar, waving to come home, come back.

My grandmother crossed the ocean in a pickle barrel. She left behind everything, every picture, fork, spoon, tear, touch and connection to her roots. My mother swam in her grief. The women of my family fought to stay alive, fought to find love, fought to forget that there was a past to their beginnings. But they couldn’t wipe it all out, couldn’t forget. They tried, with fancy cars, large diamonds plucked from the sky, gambling junkets and big brick houses with mezuzahs attached to the door, where they kissed G-d’s lips every time they entered the house.

This is their remembrance. The witness of a people who survived but didn’t know quite what it meant to be happy, or alive, or satisfied; an insatiable lust for life that never quite got quenched. I learned so much from these women, these people of the desert tribe, this world I live in because of their courage and valor. I witness being human, being afraid, being torn apart and sewn back together. I have no way of knowing anything except to see that I stand on the earth, sun shining, oaks swaying, moon behind the rim of the stars--and down below is me--watching, waiting, delivering the past from my womb to reinvent the secrets that are encoded in my cells.