EdItoR's NoTe

Congregation Beth Achim

invites your family to join us for

PURIM

Sunday, March 8, 1998:
Purim Dinner and Play -
"This is Your Life, Mordechai and Esther"

bout once every six
months I get this
urge to rearrange

Wednesday, March 11, 1998:
Megillah Reading

Sunday, March 15, 1998:
Youth Department Purim Carnival

Costumes are optional for all events.

For more information, please call (248) 352-8670
Congregation Beth Achim, 21100 W. 12 Mile Rd., Southfield, Ml

NoWt, Cairdata,

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furniture.
Most often, the living room is
where I focus my energies. The
bedroom furniture is too heavy; the
I TV in the den has all those cables I
wouldn't dare touch, and the
kitchen is too small to allow for
much creativity.
Several months ago my - husband,
'Phillip, mentioned that he'd caught
a few moments of a home-decorat-
ing show where the host suggested
that furniture on an angle (that is, in
the corner) makes the room look
1 bigger.
That night he came upstairs when
he thought he heard thunder. But it
was only me, putting all our furni-
ture on an angle.
Most recently, my mother came
for a visit and we decided to shift
the couches around. We put one in
front of the large window, an area I
admit I heretofore always tound dis-
1 concerting. All that window, with a
few inches of wall beneath
what, really, could one do with it?
Although I suspect I'll start moving
things around in the not-too-distant
future, for now I quite like the way it
looks in there. And my favorite spot,
oddly enough, is the large window.
One morning, soon after the
redesign was complete, I found my
baby, 1-year-old Talya, standing on
the couch and looking outside. I
quickly saw what had caught her
attention: It was the birds, mostly
starlings but sometimes a passing
bluejay or cardinal, eating under-
neath the tree.
My husband calls me "the birds'
best friend," because I am always
I tossing them leftover bits of bread,
pasta and cereal. Recently, their
fare extended to bird feeders my
I children made at school: bits of
birdseed and peanut butter on pine
cones, hung from the finger-like
branches of the tree.
In the summer, we can sit on the
front porch and watch the birds for

I

-I I

,-- /

a
good half
hour. The cold of
winter has, for the
most part, limited such viewings, c / \
though sometimes I am in the
kitchen and see them from the small
window there.
I
Since discovering Talya on the
couch I have made it a habit to
I stop there and watch the birds with
her. I'm a pretty quick-moving per-
I son, not much for standing still; but'
these moments are precious to me.
Talya points and laughs and makes
I those dear little baby sounds as she
I watches the birds, and I watch her.
. Yesterday I was there with Talya
when I remembered a story I heard
long ago from my friend, Rabbi
1 Mark Levin. He was talking about
I how fortunate most of us are, how I
much we have and how grateful
we should be.
He recalled a young man who
I had been paralyzed from the neck
I down, and now spent most of his
I life in bed, looking out the window.
1 There was a tree there that he
loved, and he would watch the
passing birds. "And for him, this is
enough," Rabbi Levin said. "This
I alone is enough to make him glad
to be alive."
How I would like to meet this
young man. I would bring my fami-
ly and we would look out the win-Z
dow and see what he sees, and he
I would tell us about himself and we
I would listen, for as long as he
I wanted. I think I would remember
forever that view from his window,
the tree and birds and the remark-
able human being in that quiet par-
: adise.

❑

.14101/u

Elizabeth Applebaum
AppleTree Editor

