by Laura Tennenhouse
Back in April, I went to London for the first time. It was horrible. Everyone was very nice to us, and London is a beautiful city. Still, any week that includes a funeral (and 3 sleepless nights) is inherently horrible. My mother-in-law died, after a serious illness that left just enough time to say goodbye.
We had been thinking for a long time of going to visit my partner Vicki’s mom, Eve, to see the city and the London Jewish community she came to love since moving there 30 years ago. It never seemed all that important for us to go see her when she was coming to the US two or three times a year. Eve was slowing down when she went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. (She said she was starting to feel her age (94), and would vacation in Portugal instead of Australia this summer.) So Vicki and Andy and I were thinking vaguely about what would be the best time to visit her in London. Obviously not Passover, but perhaps early summer? Late summer? Maybe Rosh Hashanah?
When Vicki and I lived in different cities, we traveled all the time, back and forth, but now we stay very much at home. Travel is more daunting. I stopped carrying a backpack everywhere because it hurts my shoulder. But I remember the time, years and years ago, that I went to an end-of-passover seder at the Havurah. The person leading the seder asked everyone to put something on the table that they would bring if they had to leave right now, go off into a new life and not look back. Something you had with you, not something in the back of your closet at home. Some people put books. I think somebody put their wedding ring. One person put a packet of flower seeds. I remember pawing through a bunch of things in the backpack that would be useful to travel with, before coming up with the prescription bottle of anti-seizure meds I’d just picked up from the pharmacy. (I didn’t have a passport with me.)
When we talked to Eve on Zoom the morning before Passover, she said she wasn’t feeling up to going to the cousins’ loud and lively seder she usually went to on the first night, even though one of those relatives was being entirely unreasonable and overprotective in hiring somebody to look after her and spoil her rotten for the weekend. She had agreed to go to the doctor on Monday just to reassure him that nothing was wrong, but we shouldn’t worry.
And then it turned out she had lung cancer, and Vicki’s brother went off to help her coordinate treatment and care, because these days half of cancer treatment is supposed to be outpatient.
Each time we realized Eve’s situation was worse than we had thought, Vicki was at the computer looking at last-minute plane tickets with me and our partner Andy saying, “Yes, you could do it alone. But you don’t have to do it alone. There are three of us and we take care of each other.” But Eve was on the phone saying, “Vicki, love, don’t come see me in the hospital. Hospitals are boring. Come when I’m home and we can sit in the garden.” So we decided to stay home, because as I said above, travel is daunting when you’re out of practice and covid and Passover and prescription refills and argh.
And then it turned out the cancer was even worse than they thought, and Eve was asking for Vicki. We were out the door on our way to the airport in less than 5 hours.
It was still the middle of Passover, of course. My dad used to say it was the time to remember our ancestors who had no time for their bread to rise, they only had time to beat egg whites. So while Vicki called the cat-sitter and I started packing, Andy sighed heavily, and said “I’ll boil some eggs.” The haggadah says “Because they had no food prepared for the journey,” as if they hadn’t noticed any of the back and forth with the “let my people go” and plagues and trying to leave and turning back and suspected this might mean they needed to actually pack. As if we hadn’t noticed all the fretful calls to London and looking at British Airways schedules and saying “no, not now” might translate into needing to travel during the week when you can’t just buy sandwiches at the airport.
I am so very glad we got there when we did, two days before the end. It meant so much to have those last 2 days together. It matters to say you love each other that last time, those last dozens of times.
Eve’s community in London is very conservative, and I had expected to politely fade into their background except when I needed to back Vicki up about something. It turned out they already knew about me. “Oh, you’re Eve’s daughter-in-law from Boston? Yes, of course, Eve was so open-minded.” SO many people said this to me, exactly the same way. It started sounding funny. Eve had moved from New York to London in 1990.
Not as funny as the cheerfully welcoming person from Eve’s synagogue who was so delighted with himself when he figured out what sort of person I was. “Reform Jews! I’ve heard of them! That’s what they have in America, counting women in minyans, right?” I had just casually assumed that such a crowded room of people sprinkling their English with Yiddish must be a minyan already. I hadn’t been talking about the Havurah and complaining that I wanted to go home where people did things right. I very briefly wished I had Siddur Birkat Shalom to show him, but I only said “something like that.” The Hav is, as we say, hard to classify, but we do indeed count women in a minyan.
It’s hard to sit shiva in a city where you don’t know anyone, no matter how kind the strangers might be. We came home the second day after the funeral, with Vicki saying she wanted to do the rest of the shiva with the Havurah where she knows people. I thought she didn’t know people at the Havurah because she never goes to services. (Another reason I hurried home was that I was having trouble refilling the anti-seizure prescription mentioned above, despite the help of a local Havnik. When he offered that help the day I left, I burst into tears. This isn’t a particular friend, or even somebody I know from seeing them at services. Just somebody who pitches in to help because community.)
So we came back to Boston, and to our own little apartment where the lease technically forbids us to have ten guests at a time, so we sat shiva at the Havurah. Vicki said of course she knows the Hav. Some she knows directly or indirectly, and some just showed up to make sure there would be a minyan because that’s how we roll. And some of her friends from New York that met her decades ago in New York, came to the hav for the shiva and felt at home here. This is the community we came home to, and I am so very grateful.
We had been thinking for a long time of going to visit my partner Vicki’s mom, Eve, to see the city and the London Jewish community she came to love since moving there 30 years ago. It never seemed all that important for us to go see her when she was coming to the US two or three times a year. Eve was slowing down when she went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. (She said she was starting to feel her age (94), and would vacation in Portugal instead of Australia this summer.) So Vicki and Andy and I were thinking vaguely about what would be the best time to visit her in London. Obviously not Passover, but perhaps early summer? Late summer? Maybe Rosh Hashanah?
When Vicki and I lived in different cities, we traveled all the time, back and forth, but now we stay very much at home. Travel is more daunting. I stopped carrying a backpack everywhere because it hurts my shoulder. But I remember the time, years and years ago, that I went to an end-of-passover seder at the Havurah. The person leading the seder asked everyone to put something on the table that they would bring if they had to leave right now, go off into a new life and not look back. Something you had with you, not something in the back of your closet at home. Some people put books. I think somebody put their wedding ring. One person put a packet of flower seeds. I remember pawing through a bunch of things in the backpack that would be useful to travel with, before coming up with the prescription bottle of anti-seizure meds I’d just picked up from the pharmacy. (I didn’t have a passport with me.)
When we talked to Eve on Zoom the morning before Passover, she said she wasn’t feeling up to going to the cousins’ loud and lively seder she usually went to on the first night, even though one of those relatives was being entirely unreasonable and overprotective in hiring somebody to look after her and spoil her rotten for the weekend. She had agreed to go to the doctor on Monday just to reassure him that nothing was wrong, but we shouldn’t worry.
And then it turned out she had lung cancer, and Vicki’s brother went off to help her coordinate treatment and care, because these days half of cancer treatment is supposed to be outpatient.
Each time we realized Eve’s situation was worse than we had thought, Vicki was at the computer looking at last-minute plane tickets with me and our partner Andy saying, “Yes, you could do it alone. But you don’t have to do it alone. There are three of us and we take care of each other.” But Eve was on the phone saying, “Vicki, love, don’t come see me in the hospital. Hospitals are boring. Come when I’m home and we can sit in the garden.” So we decided to stay home, because as I said above, travel is daunting when you’re out of practice and covid and Passover and prescription refills and argh.
And then it turned out the cancer was even worse than they thought, and Eve was asking for Vicki. We were out the door on our way to the airport in less than 5 hours.
It was still the middle of Passover, of course. My dad used to say it was the time to remember our ancestors who had no time for their bread to rise, they only had time to beat egg whites. So while Vicki called the cat-sitter and I started packing, Andy sighed heavily, and said “I’ll boil some eggs.” The haggadah says “Because they had no food prepared for the journey,” as if they hadn’t noticed any of the back and forth with the “let my people go” and plagues and trying to leave and turning back and suspected this might mean they needed to actually pack. As if we hadn’t noticed all the fretful calls to London and looking at British Airways schedules and saying “no, not now” might translate into needing to travel during the week when you can’t just buy sandwiches at the airport.
I am so very glad we got there when we did, two days before the end. It meant so much to have those last 2 days together. It matters to say you love each other that last time, those last dozens of times.
Eve’s community in London is very conservative, and I had expected to politely fade into their background except when I needed to back Vicki up about something. It turned out they already knew about me. “Oh, you’re Eve’s daughter-in-law from Boston? Yes, of course, Eve was so open-minded.” SO many people said this to me, exactly the same way. It started sounding funny. Eve had moved from New York to London in 1990.
Not as funny as the cheerfully welcoming person from Eve’s synagogue who was so delighted with himself when he figured out what sort of person I was. “Reform Jews! I’ve heard of them! That’s what they have in America, counting women in minyans, right?” I had just casually assumed that such a crowded room of people sprinkling their English with Yiddish must be a minyan already. I hadn’t been talking about the Havurah and complaining that I wanted to go home where people did things right. I very briefly wished I had Siddur Birkat Shalom to show him, but I only said “something like that.” The Hav is, as we say, hard to classify, but we do indeed count women in a minyan.
It’s hard to sit shiva in a city where you don’t know anyone, no matter how kind the strangers might be. We came home the second day after the funeral, with Vicki saying she wanted to do the rest of the shiva with the Havurah where she knows people. I thought she didn’t know people at the Havurah because she never goes to services. (Another reason I hurried home was that I was having trouble refilling the anti-seizure prescription mentioned above, despite the help of a local Havnik. When he offered that help the day I left, I burst into tears. This isn’t a particular friend, or even somebody I know from seeing them at services. Just somebody who pitches in to help because community.)
So we came back to Boston, and to our own little apartment where the lease technically forbids us to have ten guests at a time, so we sat shiva at the Havurah. Vicki said of course she knows the Hav. Some she knows directly or indirectly, and some just showed up to make sure there would be a minyan because that’s how we roll. And some of her friends from New York that met her decades ago in New York, came to the hav for the shiva and felt at home here. This is the community we came home to, and I am so very grateful.
Laura Tennenhouse is a member of Havurat Shalom She hopes to see London soon in happier circumstances.
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