HOME & FAMILY

"Poor Mrs. Cohen," thought Michal as she hurried across the street, hoping Mrs. Cohen hadn't noticed her walking away. "What could I possibly tell her?" she thought to herself. "What could I say about her three- year-old daughter? Should I have said she's cute? How could I? After all, she's deaf."

PREPARING FOR THE FUTURE
Relating to Emergent Ruchniyus
by R' Zvi Zobin

Levi decided that he needs to serve Hashem with total devotion. He became a tremendous masmid. He kept mitzvos with meticulous care and davened with total kavona.

Summer Camps
by A. Ross

With the long summer holidays ahead of us, most parents will be thinking of how they are going to occupy their children. Some mothers positively look forward to the holidays. To the lack of regime, the relaxed atmosphere and no buses, car pools or deadlines to meet in the mornings. This has nothing whatever to do with the size of the family. It depends on the temperament of the children and of the mother/father. Other parents dread the onset of the holidays with all the children home all day with nothing to do and six weeks or more to do it in.

LETTERS, FEEDBACK, EITZES

Credit, Where Credit is `Dew'

First of all, many thanks for an inspirational article, "Morning Dew" [Parshas Behaaloscha]. I read it over and over. What strong chizuk, presented so simply. And "Chance of a Lifetime." Also one of the most worthwhile articles I've ever read . . .

Try a Smile
by LMW

Thought you were invisible as you walk merrily down the lane? Actually, if you want to conduct an informal survey, you will see that a smile is a splash of sunshine on a cloudy day. Try smiling at someone who annoys you, a child, a neighbor or non- acquaintance. A non-acquaintance is someone whom you frequently meet without an introduction or acknowledgement: in the doctor's waiting room, at a PTA meeting, on a bus route, at a weekly shiur or at a neighborhood store. Try a smile.

Your Medical Questions Answered!
by Joseph B. Leibman, MD

I do want to continue with my series on the skin, but since I raised the issue of sunburn, it pays to discuss safety issues for the summer.

Poet's Corner

It Starts With a Rose
by Varda Branfman and Judy Belsky

A Challah-Braid poem written in tandem
Ramblings into the realm of the imagination

It starts with the rose
I stick my nose into

It starts with the fragrance of apple blossoms
Stop
Stop
Breathe
Inhale

It starts with the fragrance of apple blossoms
Wafting in on wind
The scent of something embedded in memory
Myself a walking fossil
With a shiny surface like coal
Inside are trapped fragrances of other times
Spinning themselves out
Inside of me
Until I remember
I reach in
I bring them up
To my nose
Inhale

It starts with a rose I lean my face into
Petal past velvet petal
Deep
To a golden center
Everything carries me to the center these days

The scent of something embedded in memory
A fragrant barge laden with flowers
Parting the river on the bias
Opening waters
Opening canals of memory
The perfume of
My mother's cheek
More
The pores on her cheeks

Everything carries me to the center these days
A steadied heartbeat
Saying "I am alive,
I have been alive,
I will be alive"
Something has transpired these years
Clear prints of my feet where
I sink in

Clear prints of my feet on an open road flanked by evergreens
A huge sky
Don't forget an open sky above my head
Running
Running away
How long until you realize
You are moving toward your mother
Sometimes I catch my hand
In a gesture

My hand in a dance
Illustrating something
It is her hand
I shrink
Into her
Hand

I am a hand
Hand me
My self
I'll hand you
Your self

My mother's cheek
More
the pores on my mother's cheek
I am pulled so close
That my lips brush the soft skin
How soft she is
How lucky I am to have a mother
How lucky I am
To kiss her cheeks
And feel her warmth
Even in a dream
It's so simple now that I have trespassed
Into older age
into her territory

I am a hand Hand me
Myself
I can't lose if I just be
Myself
be
Myself
Put nothing in between me
And myself

Hand me a memory
My mother's hand on a child's forehead
My mother's hand reaching in to hang fresh washed clothes
My mother's hand on the mezuza
No sound as her lips move
her arm outstretched
so that standing there
She is the prayer.

No sound as her lips move
she is one
With hand raised up
Asking, asking
For touch
Asking for His Touch

When you
Hand me myself
I give you my hand
Now we are twin circuitry
A high wire act
Stretching out further
Than either of us were ready to go

*

Listen
We've plugged into
An energy bigger than any one of us
Have you ever seen waves pounding the shore?
Do you know that lightning
Can split a tree right down the middle?

Waves pound the shore
You can't wait
To dip your pen
Into the sea
Inscribe oceans
Reams of sky
Wind on endless scroll
Your song...

[This poem goes on and on and on. It is a poem we women sing in our hearts, our minds, our hands, our breath. The creative source of life stirring within us. Judy Belsky, prompter of a Creative Women's Writing Group, explains the technique of writing in pairs:]

With a first line, we move into ourselves, come up, exchange lines, go into our own experience again enriched by the exploration of our friend, we bring another stanza to the surface. We laugh aloud in delight at the startling innovation of our friend. From a rose we turn to mothers, friends, memory, prayer, a sense of our own strength, and G- d.

We move past the fear of trusting ourselves. We jump more readily into the unknown territory of our hearts. We can skip over old barriers to our self-confidence. We jump off the edge of familiarity together now. Our poems expand each other's work.

We seem to sense Hashem better from a center of strength. Perhaps in our self doubts, we have been hiding, defending ourselves against imagined blame from old stories of guilt and shame that took root around criticism. Hiding behind old stories, dead cliches.

Every time I peel away a layer of self doubt, I come near to Hashem in poems that reach in and in prayer that reaches up.

Shiru laShem shir chadash. Sing unto Hashem a new song.