SINGLE LIFE
Of relationships, yahrzeits, transitions and the
Shoah, while awaiting the return of the jacaranda.
MARLENE ADLER MARKS
Special to The Jewish News
ike had read the
One Minute Man-
ager and the One
Minute Salesman so
now he hoped to
become the "One Minute
Casanova.
"Listen," he says to me on
the phone. "I'm a business-
man, so let's be efficient
about this. We'll meet for cof-
fee, let's schedule, say, 20
minutes. O.K.? I mean, you'll
know and I'll know in 20
minutes what we have be-
tween us. And if we like what
we see, then we make a date."
Usually it takes me more
than 20 minutes to pick out
my earrings but I figure, what
the heck? Mike has convinc-
ed me already that he is
everything I could want in a
man, so I am ready to be
impressed.
But then . . . Mike is sitting
at a window table not far from
the door when I arrive.
"Hi!" I say, and as I walk
toward him, he ever so fur-
tively checks his watch.
Twenty minutes later this is
what we have between us: two
drained coffee cups and a
small arugala salad. The fork
hasn't had time to unchill
when he shakes his head.
"I'm sorry,' Mike says sad-
ly. "There's just no magic
here. I know magic when I see
it. This isn't magic."
Marlene Adler Marks is
managing editor of the Los
Angeles Jewish Journal.
Do you think I make these
stories up? Recently, I met
Bruce, an attorney with a
toupee. Another quick study.
Two short dates and he had
big plans.
"So what do you think of
our relationship?" he asks.
"Relationship? This isn't a
relationship, Bruce, it's only
lunch."
In dating these days, time is
of the essence and attention
is focused on the bottom line.
"Is he worth the effort?" a
friend asks about a possible
fix-up. Who can be bothered
with merely a nice dinner, or
a guy in a nice suit? I say, peo-
ple should come to first dates
with letters of reference from
three close friends. Maybe
Mike, the "One Minute
Cassanova," is cruel, but he
isn't so off-base. In 20
minutes, either there's magic
or there isn't and hey, baby,
life is tough.
Two years have passed since
my husband died. The
jacarandas are in bloom
again. With a halo of cool
blue flowers on green
feathery leaves, the jacaran-
da is the peacock of the
tropics, but now I dread its
annual show. The jacarandas
were in flower the month my
husband lay dying, and by the
time of his funeral, blue
petals littered the streets,
trailing our cortege.
"Have you always been so
tough?" my friend Ed asks
me. Who knows? The year
Burt died I cracked four teeth,
but inside I never broke. "We
are survivors," my motherr
tells me, "You're not made of
spit." Of course not. But a few
weeks ago, in a moment of
whimsy, my brother and I had
our tarot cards read on Venice
Beach. "You are in a period of
transition," says Mya, looking
at a card of a woman by a
boat. "Don't choose pain."
Well, of course, I am
recovered now. I've had new
The year Burt died,
I cracked four
teeth, but inside I
never broke.
loves, new dreams. I have
heard "our song" on the radio
and couldn't recall why I once
liked it
And yet . . . the other day, a
note came from my
synagogue, which caught me
up short.
"Dear Marlene," it began,
with a near black hand-
writing filling in the ap-
propriate blanks.
"We are called upon to re-
mind you that the Yahrzeit of
your beloved husband . ."
How tough am I if a form let-
ter from a synagogue can
register shock?
When I was a child, the
scariest night of the year was
not Halloween; the scariest
night was when my mother
lit the Yahrzeit candles, in
memory of her parents. Once
a year, the flame flickered for
24 hours through the cheap
glass jelly jar with the white
paper label, casting eerie
shadows on the kitchen walls,
announcing to us, night and
day, that the dead, for all
their silence, must be served.
The question is, how to
serve and how much? What is
eternal and what is irrele-
vant? Do I note Burton's
Yahzreit on May 13, the day
he died, or on the 14th day of
the Hebrew month of Iyar,
which varies by the year?
(This year it's May 19; next
year it's May 9; in 1991 it's
April 28.) Obsessing about
detail can be therapeutic, a
last ditch attempt to hold on.
"I never knew my mother's
Hebrew date," my mother
tells me. The news comes as
a relief. I can fudge a little; no
one will tell.
"Weep ye not in excess for
the dead," said the prophet
Jeremiah, "neither bemoan
him too much." But what is
too much? If I marked only
Burton's Yahrzeit, dayenu,
But if I also note his birthday
and our anniversary and the
day we met (I don't), you have
to wonder, what gives?
We recently marked Yom
HaShoah, Holocaust Remem-
brance Day. These two
Yahzreits are mixed in my
mind, the personal and the
collective. I suppose it's im-
politic now to call this corn-
memoration a "mistake," but
still it gives me pause. Acor-
ding to Michael Strassfeld, in
his book
The Jewish
Holidays, Yom HaShoah was
created by the Israeli
Knesset, a civil holiday of
questionable religious
authority. (Why does it fall on
the 27th day of Nisan? Only
because it comes convenient-
ly between the Warsaw Ghet-
to Uprising and Israel's
Memorial Day.)
Today Yom HaShoah has
come to dominate both our
Jewish calendar and the
secular world (with its annual
TV specials and documen-
taries from the camps). The
Shoah, for good reason, grabs
the imagination and doesn't
let go. But is the Holocaust,
the ultimate unfathomable
tragedy though it is, really a
different variety of martyr-
dom than the destruction of
the First and Second Temples,
and the expulsion from
Spain? The Jewish calendar
already allows a day of na-
tional mouring and fasting,
Tisha B'av, in mid-summer,
when all of our tragedies are
symbolically joined as one. By
singling out the Holocaust, a
certain historic warping
occurs.
What do we do with
memory? Can we honor the
past without choking on it? A
tragedy recedes; a candle is
lit, a story earns its 20
minutes, and we wait for the
jacaranda to bloom.
❑
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
89
ENERATION
Living In Memory