How do you commemorate one woman’s life, one woman’s loving, one woman’s smile and furrow of her brow, her accent and back scratches into words?

Words are one way we share memories. We share through stories and tales of days gone by. We tell stories to remember and to co-participate in the literal re-membering of our experiences. 

Stories are how we re-member together our experiences so they might continue to be shared.

In this way I offer you a few words about my Bubby. First it feels important to simply say how much I love her. I have never loved in the way I share with Bubby. It was and is a special kind of love. One I know I share with Lauren, Izzi and Morgan. We knew we were loved.

Bubby was, still is and will forever be, the champion of my heart. I was raised in her embrace and under her watchful eye. Those of you who know me probably remember that as a young child learning to speak I even had an accent just like her. My parents tell me I would say “vait a minute, vait a minute”.

Bubby did not teach me about the great planet we live in. She taught me about the vast inner world we each have within. And in so doing was a huge influence in my devotion to its understanding as my life’s work

I found Bubby curiously reserved in her emotions. Of course she expressed happiness and joy on many occasions with me, but I never heard her speak badly about someone to my face. She never actively disagreed with me and she never, well almost never, shared stories of her past. Bubby rarely bestowed to me the word--her word--of the past. On rare occasions after I had sat with her for quite a while she would sometimes tell me bits about the old country and the war. But she rarely shared prolific memories. Though I always knew she had them.

As a child and through college actually I was a figure skater. Some of you probably remember those days of skating practices, competitions and the little outfits. Years of skating went by before Bubby told me that she too had figure skated.  I sat dumbfounded that day as she told me how she and Leo would skate down the frozen river together. The entire time prior I thought I was forging a new path being original in the Shapiro line. Little did I know I got the gene from her. She gave me her very old pair of ice skates with fur on the top ankle rims.

And so despite the few instances like what I just mentioned, Bubby kept her inner world mostly separate from me. Which frankly as a child I think I liked. I loved that I could go to her and be her entire world. I loved that when she picked me up from school she was 15 minutes early always. I loved that she had a food remedy for every mood of mine.

See what Bubby may have not realized all these years is that in the space of not sharing so many words and stories of the past she always showed up fully for me in the present moment. She taught me about what it is to BE with someone. She taught me how to be quiet and just exist in the comfort of another’s company. She taught me that the inner world could be shared without words. She offered to me through her love, her devotion, and her quiet even attitude a sense of respite and relief in a world that always seemed big and mad.

Bubby was my island of sanity.

Just recently a colleague said to me “Livia, you are lionhearted. You are a voice of sanity amidst the madness.” I took this as a great compliment with tears in my eyes. For what this friend and colleague didn’t know is that I am after all named for Bubby’s ever and always beloved Leo. Indeed, I do have the name of the lion And the lion heart is always betrothed to the voice of reason and sanity. Bubby was my voice of sanity inside my own madness for many years. She never waivered. Ever.  

Bubby also understood that people thrive in the arms of love. She knew that in order to be lionhearted and the voice of reason in places where everything seems bonkers, We need a beloved with which to share.  She was devoted to seeing my heart in love more than most.

For years I tried to get her to give me the recipe for her Kugel. I remember she would make a big pyrex of it and would slice it into portions and freeze them individually. Then when I would come over she would immediately put a piece in the microwave and serve it up with some sour cream. Have a problem? In a bad mood? Here have a piece of Kugel. It’s worth mentioning that the sour cream was always fat free. The kugel however was not. Defintley not. And the running joke in the family was always when we would ask her how to make it and what was in it. She would say:

“Vell, noting really. Dere is really noting in it.” She then would proceed to list the ingredients.

“You know, vone cup sugar, five eggs, vone stick butta, vone package egg noodles, vone package cottage cheese. Vell and you know you can use any cottage cheese. Can be vone percent, two percent, four percent. Don’t matter. And zen you know you put vone can crushed pinaple. And zen of course ze raisins. You know ze fruit is very good for you.”

So for years I tried to get her to right it down for me along with the directions so that I could make it. But to no avail she would say yes but then I never came a way from the house with the coveted prize

When I met my husband I told him this story and it of course became a comedy act of me impersonating Bubby. I have to tell you. I do an amazing rendition truly. It is sort of to the point where my friends tell me I am such a Bubby. He was so excited at the prospect of having real old style kugel he was determined to get the recipe.

On a trip to visit Bubby a while back I was determined to get the recipe. We sat down and chit chated a while and I slipped into the conversation.

“Bub, I have been cooking a lot”.

“Oh yea, “ she said, “vat do you make? Do you cook for elliot?”

“You know me Bub, I cook a lot of vegetables and chicken and salmon.”

“Vell sure sure you can’t go wrong with those.”

Elliot then of course chimes in saying

“Yea, Liv is such a good cook”

“Oh, yea?” bubby replies, “Vell of course she is a good cook. Her mother is a good cook and you know i taught all da  boys too cook”

So here was my chance. My big moment to use the boyfriend as collateral for the recipe. I went in for it.

“You know Bub, I really want to make Elliot the kugel”

“Yes!” Elliot chimes in. “I reeeeeeally want Liv to make some kugel. Do you think you can give her the recipe.”

“SURE! Get a pen.”

So she gave Elliot the recipe and the directions and told us the trick is to cook it at 325 covered with aluminum foil so it stays moist. She also told us not to cook it on the bottom rack but in the middle of the oven so the bottom doesn’t burn. Upon arriving home I proceeded to buy the ingredients and cook it ala her directions. The completed product was one of such culinary family traditional beauty. It looked exactly like hers, and you know, it tasted just as good. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach well I came to find out that the way to get Bubby’s recipes is through being betrothed. It was as if she had kept these recipes under lock and key until I had a man and potential babies to feed. So the lesson was that sometimes these family recipes are best kept through sharing with those you love. Bubby understood food was meant to be shared and so she made sure I would carry on her traditions in the right way. After all cooking and food is as much an act of the lion heart as any great act and provides sanity to a frantic world.

I wish I could express in words to each of you the complete joy and contentment she had at the end of her life seeing me and my husband Elliot together. I never heard her speak of her own mortality. But several months ago when Elliot and I were visiting, we sat side by side with her and she wept.  She told us how at peace she felt knowing I was ok. She told Elliot how good of a man he is. This was the first time I ever saw her loosen her grip on her own life force. And it was perhaps the first time I was really let into her inner world deeply. Like a beautiful stained glass window she cast the light of her own awareness onto her heart in such a way that we were allowed to see through. 

Bubby gave me the best of her world. She gave me her happy memories. She gave me her recipes. She gave me her joy. She gave me her blessing. And today she gives us all her blessing.

Bubby gave me the crème de la crème of herself, which ironically is what she used to tell me I was. “Livia, you are the crème de la crème”. She used to say.

So today,  I would like to say, Bubby, YOU are the crème de la crème. 

We are all forever changed by you and we rest in the light of your spirit. 

The snow falling down outside my window, fire on, tea in hand, hanuman chalesa playing, basking in an afterglow of sitting in circle with some of my closest women dear to my heart from infancy through older adulthood.

I feel inspired to write.

The muse is funny, you never now when a strong wave will hit you.

I believe finding the right partner is like the coming of the muse. You never know when and where the wave of infinite love is coming.

I am empty and humble in the face of Krishna. There is a profound letting go of hard unnecessary will force. I am letting go of never being enough. I am releasing seeing the world through the lens that things need to be different and that IT (whatever the it might be) is not enough. It truly is enough. At every level it is enough.

There is absolutely nothing more I could have said, done or changed in order to prepare myself for this man. I have done the incredible soul searching, the hard old pattern excavation. I have tested and been tested. I have been hurt by my love and stayed. I have been broken hearted by our love and allowed the feelings of mistrust, fear and anger to break my heart more and more until only a new heart was able to form from the speckles of dust I thought were true.

HE is enough.

I have observed someone transform at a deep core level in order to serve my life force without loosing sight and integrity of their soul and purpose. This, I am realizing, perhaps for the first time, is the deepest gift I have been given from the man I love. He has stood upright and strong with a willingness to serve, but not indulge my madness. He has welcomed the wild in my heart in a productive life giving way. He has opened himself to being touched, moved, and inspired by love. This man, this relationship, the good work we have done  together is truly, Enough.

There is a word in Hebrew--Hineni--it means here I am.

So I stand finally as bride empty and yet so full. I stand here with no fear of the other in my heart. I have only the silent inner prayer. “This is enough”

I stand here saying, “here I am”. I am here, humble servant to love. In the end my soul has been left with no choice but to join and be grown by something much bigger than anything I could have ever imagined was capable inside this small body-fractal of the universe.

I am enough.

You are enough

We are enough.

Hineni.

Our lives are a constant interweaving of the wounds and the resources, the sufferings and victories that when strung together with devotion to ones esteemed path becomes a work of art to be prayed with, beautified with and through which we adorn ourselves and the lives of whom our work touches.  It is easy, too easy really, in cultures priding or privileging the wounded healer to focus too entirely on the moments in which we were missed, abused, hurt, or dealt an unlucky hand of sorts.  Looking to these places of scathing helps to cultivate interest in how to heal both ourselves and others which is an invaluable contribution. The shadow of this searching for healing out of our wound is that too much time focusing on all the painful beads stringing our lives together is simply only half the picture. We can become fixated in how much we have overcome. I can assure you it is not a contest. The person fixated on how much hurt their family bestowed is as much an emotional sinner as the person in complete denial of any madness they encountered.

Sitting at dinner the other night, my husband said to me “Well your parents must have done plenty of somethings right because you turned out really fine.” Well in fact, my beloved is correct. If I reflect, if I really look back at the truth, I can see not only the bloody gore of emotional upheaval, but I see many beads of both matter-of-fact rightness and easy rhythm as well as sparkling moments of positivity. My parents did a whole lot of things right actually. They took me to the opera from the time I was a little girl. I was raised going to theater and museums. The first snow of every winter my mother and I baked chocolate chip cookies. My father played catch with me in our yard. We had a garden. My mother read to me every night. My dad proofread my papers. I was allowed to apply to any college I wanted. We ate dinner together almost every night.

There are of course plenty of memories that lay in mind far from ideal that have left scar marks on my heart. But lest I forget the many more moments of health and true love my parents bestowed to me in my life. In the face of our very human family flaws there were many more moments of family rhythm, normalcy, congruency, and freedom and love. Enough of these moments got strung together like beads to create a space in which frankly, I really ended up totally fine.

I did not leave unscathed, but then again who does. Frankly, leaving home not hurt is unlikely and I might even guess unnecessary even. For how else do we then feel the call to make things better? How else do we learn to tolerate the pain of being hurt by the things and people we love? The way in which we learn this and the how in which we continue on from those places becomes our medicine, our teachings, our lessons for other down the road. No bead on the string of our life is arbitrarily placed--not when you are endowed to a life of devotion.

Think of a string of mala beads. All one hundred and seven of them plus the last one making one hundred and eight, are strung together with a prayer.  Each bead is unto itself individual, but it is connected to all the others for the entirety of the strand. Each bead is momentarily focused on during meditation to keep pace and rhythm, which focuses our attentional muscle toward greater awareness of both higher and deeper states of consciousness. If each bead on the mala of your life is a moment or memory then how will you choose the beads that make the strand? For me, coming out of a school where the culture is to privilege the wound, it is easy to string a slew of disfigured beads together. I could ruminate on those all day. This however feels inaccurate, and it focuses my awareness to encapsulate an energy only in the pattern of get wounded, get healed, repeat. A strand of only the most glamorous memory beads feels equally as inauthentic. It skips some of the essence of why I am meditating and praying anyway.  It skips the cuts and scrapes that inspired me to sit down in the first place. The most accurate mala I can fashion from the memory beads of my life are a rich and diverse combination. I must fashion a mala that holds within it beads of memory filled with inherent resource, health, comedy and love.

These strands of beads hold tremendous power for focusing and broadening our awareness. So why then should we focus our life work only out of the instances and memories of the times there was less than (fill in the blank). Let us weave bead after bead with prayer and devotion in such a way that all the health of the things that went just right and all the things that went good enough and all the things that went better than expected are woven into the fabric of our consciousness. The wounded healer has tremendous power--I know this to be true. But the compassionate sees the goodness and wellness right in front of their eyes. If we do not hold this for ourselves the people with whom we work will not learn to hold those moments either. 

The mala is the garland of a life we wear made memory-by-memory, moment-by-moment, that is strung together with a devotion to the privileging of life in all its forms. Its beauty does not rest on the glow of each bead individually, but rather the potency of the collected pieces strung together. This is good enough.