Want to SuperSize Your Sign?

My business partner's father passed away suddenly 40 days after my dad died. It was the most bizarre and unbelievable situation, to have both of us facing the loss of our fathers in such a compressed timeframe, and yet it has been tremendously comforting to be able to talk to each other about where we are right now/where we think we'll be in 6 months/how our families and kids are doing/etc. We both have said that we would never wish it on each other, but if it had to happen we are glad that it happened this way so we can have each other as we navigate this new road without our dads.

Yesterday we talked about "signs." You know, signs. Those things wanted by almost every grieving person on the planet that will tell you that your loved one is okay and that they did not suffer at the end, and that you believe will give you some kind of mental tranquility in the current emotional chaos that is your new life.

I was lying in bed awake the other night talking to my Dad in my head, basically doing a total low-rent off-Broadway version of Yentl (think Julia Roberts in the starring role with Ryan Seacrest instead of Mandy Patinkin. Yeah. That bad):
Papa Can You Hear Me?
Papa Can you See Me?
Papa Can You Find Me in the Night?
I remember everything you taught me
Every book I've ever read...
Can all the words in all the books Help me to face what lies ahead?
The trees are so much taller And I feel so much smaller;
The moon is twice as lonely And the stars are half as bright...
Papa, how I love you... Papa, how I need you.
Papa, how I miss you Kissing me good night.

Anyway, my point is that I always thought myself above the whole "I need a sign" thing. I've always figured that having real faith means that you don't need tables to shake or pictures to fall off walls in order to believe that someone you love is still with you, or to believe that they are indeed fine. But talking to my friend who definitely wants one made me kind of want one too. (Yes, I'm in third grade...)

So there I was in bed doing my low-rent Yentl thing, asking my Dad to send me something so I can know he's okay. And then I started saying, "Oooh, actually Dad, don't, because that would really freak me out if my lights turned on or my window opened. So maybe don't do anything weird but do something normal. But, then again, if it's normal how will I know it's a sign? Damn. Okay, back to the drawing board. But whatever you do, do NOT show up in my bedroom. That will be weird."

So I kind of gave up on the sign thing, even though I secretly wouldn't have minded hearing a still, small Scottish voice in my head say, "E! Light a match, will ye?!" as I left the bathroom. So I figured it was not to be, as it is generally not to be for 99.97% of the world's population who (I have to remind myself) have been exactly where I am today in perhaps much worse circumstances. And then I wondered that if perhaps this "sign" business is for real, that maybe the person waiting for one is my Dad, waiting for a sign from me that *I* am okay rather than vice-versa. I don't know.

All I know is that today my sign arrived.

In the form of a wee old man wearing black calf-high socks with very white sneakers, khaki shorts, a button down shirt and a funky hat. At a McDonalds. Having his free coffee. (Is this sounding familiar to those of you who knew my Dad?!)

No kidding. He walked into the McD's (which I have to say is in a random location far from my home and was a totally random and unplanned place for me to be at that time), made a beeline for me and The Bambina (who was putting herself outside a 6 piece nugget happy meal), smiled at me widely and announced, "Good god, you're blond! In 30 years your hair will match your {white} T-shirt! Beautiful! Absolutely beautiful!" He then went up to order and came right back, sat two seats away from us and started telling me about his daughter and grandchildren and talking to the Bambina as if he'd known her for years and of course she's not scared of him because why would she be nervous about an old man like him?!"

Add to this moment the fact that The Bambina looked at him as he walked away to order, then looked at me quizzically and said, "Bumpa?" and then asked it again as he was sitting near us. So I told him that he was reminiscent of my father who had recently passed and so my daughter was seeing the similarities and trying to figure out if he was The Real Bumpa, ie{which I didn't say aloud}, "black socks: check; kooky hat: check; brilliant white sneakers: check; gregarious to total strangers: check; seems to enjoy my company: check; but--face and voice: not so much." He laughed and said, "Well, it sounds like your dad was a man with style."

We sort of each went back to our meals, not long after which Bambina and I left. As I was leaving, I picked her up to carry her and took one last look back at our friendly neighbor, just to say a final goodbye. He looked up, smiled at me, and shamelessly stuffed about 12 sugar packets into his pockets.

No More Calls! We Have a Winner!

Thank you, Dad, for sending the only sign you knew I'd be open to seeing and believing: petty larceny of condiments by a kooky wee man.

Diff'rent Strokes

I shiznit you not, my friends. I have just realized that The Bambina is channeling none other than Arnold Jackson of Diff'rent Strokes when I ask her to do something. This is the exact expression I am given as she inquires (as a liberated and self-actualized toddler of whom I am most certainly not the boss although I seem to mistakenly think so), "Whatchootalkinbout Mama?"

I was getting annoyed at the faces and the almost-constant limit-testing that I know is 100% normal but also 100% tiring. Now, it just makes me laugh. Especially because I now give her the same expression back and revel in her confusion as she wonders, "Who the hell is Willis?!"

Topic Drift: My New Meme

Topic Drift: My New Meme

Totally hilarious.

My People Are Going to Hell and All I've Got is This Lousy T-Shirt

My 9 year old niece told me the other day that some Christian kids in her class told her that people who don't believe in Jesus are going to go to hell. When she asked, "Who do you mean?" they very flippantly said, "You know, Jews and Muslims. Anyone who isn't Christian."

Nine year-olds. Consigning entire groups of people to hell from the comfort of their plush suburban school desks. These children have been taught at home that--let's include the Chinese here--BILLIONS of the world's inhabitants are going to hell because they don't believe what the Christians of a small church in a small suburban town in a small state in the USA believe.

I was absolutely speechless when my niece brought it up. How in the hell does a grown-up make sense of that kind of statement for a child? That there is no way for her to achieve "salvation" but through Jesus. And not just "Jesus" but a very specific "Jesus" as defined by those kids' churches.

So how to answer? Should I give her the theology:

Genesis (8:21 and 4:7) clearly states that mankind was created with the inclination toward evil and the ability to master this inclination. That we can repent and do the right thing and find our way back to God directly. The Hebrew word for repentance is "teshuvah" which literally means "to return" to God. Malachi: "Return to me and I shall return to you." Most importantly, Ezekiel: "When the wicked man turns away from his wickedness...and does that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive." For sweet pete's sake I could go on and on with the chapter and verse, but something tells me these kids' parents would just say I'm misinterpreting my own damn scriptures.

So, should I give her the "F Them" attitude? I'm thinking not, simply because, unlike the parents of those kids, I'd really rather not teach her that other children are going to hell for their beliefs, no matter that I consider them to be erroneous at best and criminally insane at worst (the hell part, not the believing in Jesus part).

So what my mom and I did was just talk her through our own beliefs, rather than taking a swing at those of others. We talked about a few things:

--The fact that Judaism does not believe in Hell as a place. There is no eternal damnation in Judaism that we know of. Ecclesiastes says: "The dust will return to the earth, as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it." In the paraphrase of Bill Cosby: God is the one who breathed life into us, and it is God who'll take it out. No demons involved.

--The fact that the word Satan in Hebrew literally means an adversary that comes to challenge us. God created temptation to test our loyalty. And, going back to Genesis where we are given the urge to temptation but also the ability to master it, we know that it is within our ability to beat a satan. So, no devil waiting for us in the foyer after we die.

As you can tell from my chapter and verse quoting, we were getting ourselves all worked up about how to competently explain things until we had some kind of theological harmonic convergence and started to say the same thing simultaneously:

If there is a hell, GOD will decide who goes there. Not your friends at school.

That seemed to work for her and she went about her business unfazed, as every 9 year old should.

It reminded me of a little blurb in an old and marginally funny book titled "Only In America" by a (Jewish) man named Harry Golden. It was published in the '50s, so many of his references are lost on me. But one anecdote made me laugh, especially in light of the recent press release by elementary students that I'd be flying to Hades first class:

The Downtown Luncheon Club is More Exclusive Than Heaven
I am puzzled by the letters and pamphlets I receive from Christian and Hebrew-Christian mission groups urging me to become a convert. I am also puzzled by the vast sums of money appropriated by many church organizations for the purpose of carrying on this mission work. The Downtown Luncheon Club I cannot join. If they don't want me for one hour at the Luncheon Club, why should they seek my companionship in heaven through all eternity?"

Support Our Troops...

I know its fashionable to hate PACs, but this one I love, and here's why:


For the sake of all Americans, we cannot allow partisanship to dominate the debate around Iraq, Afghanistan and the threat of terrorism. We cannot let the same rancor color our policies regarding the welfare of our servicemembers and Veterans. The Bush administration must not be allowed to cow sensible Republicans and Democrats from offering critiques and alternatives to our current course of action at home and abroad with baseless accusations of anti-Americanism. At the same time, the Democratic Party cannot continue to evade a unified position on a success strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. The young men and women returning from duty abroad, and their peers who have joined the political battle their deployment sparked, represent the best hope for America to transcend the destructive partisan rift that threatens to paralyze this great nation at a profound moment of truth. We can shape a positive agenda that embraces the challenges that lay ahead, an agenda that reverses the alienation and impotence that so many Americans feel when presented with the reality that "our politics is more polarized than the people themselves."

Amen.

IAVAPAC

Friends With Low Wages

Maybe I'm a bit late finding this one, but I loved it. If you haven't already seen it, enjoy.

WalmartWorkersRights

Best Week Ever

I wish I had a more glamorous reason for not posting in 5 full days, but I only have two pretty lame ones:

1. I have a raging cold, sore throat, etc etc and I don't feel like doing much. Strangely, Bambina seems unmoved by my pleas for mercy...



2. I'm late filing my business state taxes and for various unavoidable reasons don't have access to all my financial data, so I'm spending any available time getting those done so I can not owe more than one month's penalty.

Yeah. I'm having a good week.