This is the story we reread each year, how negative consequences and harsh punishments moved a hard-hearted Pharaoh to, begrudgingly, let his slaves go free.  And this is a good story, but my question is: what about the positive things?  Can we take a moment to remember some of the good things we do that lift us out of slavery and into freedom?

Here’s a list of “Ten Passover Possibilities” which I’m introducing at our Seder this year. Feel free to use these as a “jumping off” point to discuss all of the good you bring to the world, because you DO BRING GOOD TO THE WORLD.  As always, I encourage you to write your own list of possibilities.  How do you act in a way that brings freedom to others?   How do we march side by side with people whom we will never meet but to whom we are so inextricably linked?  I know that we can’t erase the past, but a list of “Ten Passover Possibilities” might just embolden the people at your Seder to work towards eradicating some of the present-day plagues with which we are all so sadly familiar.  Here’s my list:

1.  Helping and asking for nothing in return

2.  Asking for help even when it’s difficult

3.  Agreeing to disagree

4.  Rising to a new challenge or obstacle

5.  Having faith in strangers

6.  Giving away things that you no longer need

7.  Telling your story no matter how hard it is to do so

8.   Hearing someone else’s story

9.   Creating from dreams

10. Singing your gratitude to the source of creation

Now go write your own.  And have a liberating Passover!

I have a memory of trick or treating around my neighborhood as a kid.  There was one house down the street where the couple always gave away odd shaped popcorn balls instead of wrapped candy.  And they always had these creepy smiles, as if to say “Go ahead.  Take one.  We might appear quiet and weird and our front yard might be overgrown with nondescript bushes but go on.  Take two.”  Where are the milk duds?  Where is the Snickers Bar?  Will these people come after me if I don’t reach out and take a moist, exposed popcorn ball?

Years later, I’m just old and damaged enough to decline the offer whenever someone offers me homemade food from an unknown source in a public place.  I’m picturing an overly zealous Wetzel’s Pretzels server, standing in the hot sun in an apron holding free samples of cinnamon pretzels with dipping sauce every time I walk down the Third Street Promenade.  Just…don’t.

I returned to the breakfast buffet on the second and final morning of my stay in North Carolina, and here’s where our drama begins.

There was that same stack of granola in plastic bags, quietly calling out to me.  It dawned on me while I  stared unblinkingly at the toaster so that my bagel wouldn’t be the least bit over-singed, that I could use a bag of granola in case I get hungry on my flight to LA later that day.  You should know that I’m one of those people who thinks of the film “Castaway” at odd moments during any given day and usually (appropriately) before getting on a plane.  Every time I see a mini flashlight or a small pup tent, I turn into Tom Hanks and say, “Take this in case you get stranded on a deserted island.  You’ll need it.”  So, I took this as another “Castaway” moment.  “Take the Granola.  You’ll need it for the flight back to LA.”  Against my better judgment, I picked up a bag and brought it back to the table.  How dangerous could this be, I thought.  It’s not like the dishwasher is filling these bags between shifts with his bare hands, is he?  As I tossed the granola in my shoulder bag, my friend Beth Schafer looked up and said, “Oh my God, you’ve become THAT person.”

“What?  I have a flight,” I answered defensively, “I’m gonna get hungry and I’ll need it.  Plus, remember the movie Castaway, Beth…”

Interrupting me, she reached for a packet of Sweet-n-Low sitting in the white ceramic holder at the center of our table.  “Take this, Grandma. You’ll need it.”

What?  I don’t use Sweet-n-Low.

I got to the airport and was delighted to learn I got an upgrade to first class.  Cue the fireworks.  If you really want proof of how the world has turned into a huge race to the bottom, just compare your 1991 experience of flying first class with your 2011 one.  But in an effort to suspend reality just a few moments more, let me tell you it was so elegant and excessive in First Class, so fancy, clean and joyful that I forgot all about the bag of granola I had taken from the buffet.

But that little plastic bag of granola did escort me all the way home and I am delighted to tell you that I just finished a bowl of the stuff and I am ready for seconds.  It was crunchy and nutty and made with a hefty serving of sweet sweet love.  I want to KICK myself that I almost didn’t try it out of my irrational fear of homemade items.  It was the most delicious reminder of the Southern Home Hospitality I experience every time I travel south of the Mason Dixon.  And had I ended up shoeless, befriending a volleyball on the shores of a desert island, I know this granola would have made it all better.

If you ever EVER have the privilege of eating breakfast at The Greensboro Airport Marriott, do yourself a big favor and take as many of those clear bags of love that can fit in your fanny pack.  You’ll need it.

Dad got dressed in the earliest, darkest hours of the morning and it always looked like an ensemble that he hadn’t merely thrown together. He tended heavily toward plaid. As a student anxiously picks the perfect outfit on the eve of a new school year, I imagine my father laying out his old blue jeans lengthwise and draping them on the bedroom chair next to one of the many, many plaid shirts he had held up next to the jeans to see what worked. He wore plain white undershirts beneath plaid shirts. This combination made me feel warm and protected as a child, embarrassed as a teenager, and finally comforted as an adult. With the belt, he looked like he should be holding a hatchet and standing next to an ox named Babe.

In our tony little suburb of Newton, Massachusetts where professionals dressed like professionals, my Dad went his own way. While other kids’ Dads shopped at The Men’s Wearhouse on Route 9, my very own lumberjack of a father looked more like he drove the hard highways of Northern New England, shaking hands and looking people right in the eye, selling equipment to other hard working men, and maybe even chopping down a tree or building a fire. And while other kids’ Dads looked like they were going to an office, my Dad looked like he was going to a log-rolling competition.

Not once in my childhood did I ever go shopping with my Dad or hear him say things like “I need a new _____”, or “Let’s go to ____ to buy some ____”. I never saw my Dad spend money on himself. I only saw him earn money. In 1974, my mother who handled the household finances gave my father a blank check to use in an emergency. Any time he opened his wallet to give me a few bucks, I would see that old check from 1974, ink fading, edges tattered, waiting in vain to be filled out and signed. But it was never to be. The unused check had taken on the smell of cash and the bend of his wallet, which had left an equally permanent outline on the back pocket of my father’s old blue jeans, confidently held up by that brown belt.

During the Spring of 1978, my mother took a rare trip by herself to see her parents in South Bend, Indiana. I was 11, my sister was 13, and my Dad was 38. No one was really on their A-game for the ten days my Mom was away. She had only been gone a few days and the house and family were already showing signs of neglect. Chores had been ignored, dishes were dirty, food was scarce, morale was low. One Saturday my Dad took my sister and me to a Woody Allen film, “Interiors”, a film so dark that it ends with the mother committing suicide. My Dad fell asleep while I ate milk duds and memorized dialogue, barely blinking.

The one thing I appreciated about having my mother in another state was the fact that she couldn’t monitor my clothing choices. I was a tomboy, but my mother wanted to dress me like the girl I simply was not. Every morning, I would get dressed, walk downstairs in my ripped up jeans, high top Nikes, and hooded oversized sweatshirt to a loving look of disappointment. You’re wearing that, my mother would say as she poured herself a cup of decaf. No Mom, I’m not wearing that, I would mutter under my breath as I climbed the stairs towards my daily morning wardrobe change.

I wore my hooded sweatshirt almost everyday while she was gone. One particular day, I wore my favorite football jersey to school: The Patriots’ quarterback, Steve Grogan, #14. I was in heaven wearing that jersey. My Dad slowed down the car to drop me off at school that day. (Having my mother in Indiana was beginning to take a toll on him as well.) I ran to my classroom with the confidence of a starting quarterback running onto the field for her first team huddle. Then came the blitz. My best friend, Terry Hassol saw what I was wearing, ran up to me and yelled, “It’s picture day, Julie. You’re wearing that?” She was wearing a cocktail dress. I felt like I had been sacked in the end zone.

Recovering from the hit, I ran against the rush to the office and called my Dad who had just arrived home from dropping me off at school. “Dad! It’s picture day at school. I am wearing a football jersey. You have to help me. Dad, you have to pick out a different shirt for me, OK? And then bring it here now!” There was silence on the other end of the line. “Go to my room, Dad, and pick out a nice shirt,” I hollered. My Dad had no choice but to comply. I was panicked. “Dad, pick any color shirt you want but it has to be here now.” “Jesus Christ, alright already,” he said. “I’ll be right there.”

The school secretary laughed into her attendance rolls as I hung up the phone. I ran to the front of the school and paced for ten minutes before I saw the station wagon pull up to the school. My Dad did not get out of the car. He made the hand-off and sped away. I looked inside the wrinkled brown bag to find an old, faded light blue turtleneck that to this day I believe he found in a pile of dirty laundry.

I see that 6^th grade picture of myself every time I visit my old school. There is a wall of group photos that go back to the 1950s, and it’s interesting to see the changes as you walk down the long hallway. There I am, the only girl in my class wearing a wrinkled, pale blue turtleneck. I stare at that unshowered, eleven year old girl, wishing for just that day she had dressed like one. I would have looked better in plaid.

In 1974 I was eight years old and unable to ride a bike without training wheels. It was the source of much embarrassment. To make matters worse, anticipating that this would be the year I would finally balance myself on two wheels, my parents bought me a brand new bike. It was a beauty—the coolest bike I could never ride. It was purple, with a long banana seat covered in colorful power flowers. The handlebars were curved and set so high they forced your hands to rest above your head. Kickstand down, I would sit on that bike for hours in our darkened garage, dreaming of one day riding it on the streets of my town.

It stood there for weeks, teasing me, taunting me, whispering, get on—ride off into the sunset with me—leave a trail of rusty metal training wheel parts in your wake. Next to my untouched bike stood my old bike with training wheels. Like everything else I owned, it had belonged to my older sister. It was dull red, rickety, with a bent fender and plain, worn handlebars.

It was springtime and the days stayed lighter later. After work, my Dad would throw my old bike and a wrench into the back of our family station wagon in the evenings after dinner and drive us to the junior high school parking lot. He would not allow me to learn how to ride on the new bike. Learn on the old one, ride on the new one, he’d say.

I was a slow learner and my Dad was a patient man. In fact it would be on this same parking lot that, years later, my Dad would teach me how to drive a car. I ruined three orange parking cones and crushed countless tin cans during those lessons. Dad kept whatever frustration he might have felt inside, God bless him. By the time I got my drivers’ license, my Dad had gone completely gray.

One evening after pushing me off, running beside me and cheering me on, I rode–with a great deal of difficulty– the length of the Meadowbrook Junior High School parking lot without training wheels. I fell off my bike at the end, but I could hardly contain my excitement. It was my first taste of freedom, of independence, of tangible forward movement. That night we came home and told my mom the great news. “We’ll go back tomorrow,” he said plunging his spoon into a celebratory ice-cream sundae. “Proud of you, kiddo. Proud of you.”

And so it made perfect sense that I would wake up the next morning at the crack of dawn, run out to the garage, grab my new bike, all shiny and purple and calling out to me, and without hesitation ride it down our steep driveway, then turn left down our even steeper hill.

The wind blew through my helmet free hair and that feeling of freedom hit hard. Nine seconds later, I found myself lying on my back on Parker Street, a major thoroughfare in my neighborhood, with my brand new bicycle by my side. The bellowing sound of a truck horn and then a symphony of screeching brakes tore through the morning air. When I propped myself up on my elbows, there was a giant truck headlight eleven inches from my face. It dawned on me in an instant: I was inches away from getting completely run over by an eighteen-wheeler. Shaking, holding back vomiting, I pulled up my bicycle and got to the sidewalk. The wildly angry driver of the truck yelled from his cab but I was so stunned, so shocked I couldn’t understand anything he said. He wore dark glasses and had a moustache that resembled the handlebars on my bike. The truck made a loud exhaling sound as it drove forward, the driver yelling and pointing an angry finger at me the whole time.

I ran up the hill with my bike and got it back in the garage before my family even knew I had left the backyard. I never told a soul what happened.

I spent that day at school in a fog, tasting vomit in the back of my throat, biting my fingernails and reliving the short but powerful trip I had taken that morning.

On the way to my riding lesson that evening, Dad spoke in excited, hopeful tones but I heard almost nothing, only sentence fragments: forget about those training wheels…proud of you, kiddo…now the whole family’s on wheels…we trust you, kiddo. I couldn’t tell my biggest cheerleader about my near miss that morning. It will almost kill him, too, I thought.

Let me begin by saying I’m Jewish. This means that whenever the home phone rings, it is more than likely someone has died. Or worse.

Very early Tuesday morning, the phone rang. I knew it wasn’t going to be good news. From the bedroom, I heard Mary answer on the 2^nd ring as I pulled the covers over my head and closed my eyes. As soon as I heard Mary say “And what hospital is she in—“ I knew it was my sister Robin and I knew, at that hour, she had to have had a bike accident. My eyes opened wide as I mentally sorted through my closet and picked the outfit I was going to wear to her funeral. For a split second before my warm feet hit the cold hardwood floor, I became worried that I wouldn’t fit into that outfit. On the short walk down the hall corridor, I said a prayer of gratitude that I had her as long as I did and wondered out loud how it had taken 17 years for her to finally crash into a tree and kill herself.

Mary was still on the phone when I walked into the kitchen, a look of concern on her face. She made a motion for me to step into my office so we could talk away from my daughter’s young ears.

Robin had indeed fallen during a long, early morning bike ride and had broken her clavicle, her pelvis, several ribs and sustained a concussion. All of her injuries would heal. Mary gave me the phone and although Robin was a bit incoherent, it was clear that she could still use her voice, her cell phone, her morphine button, and nobody’s opinion.

Nevertheless I sat and cried over my big sister falling off her bike for about 5 minutes. Hysterical, wet, snotty, loud, sobbing cries until my daughter came in and asked me what was wrong. “Oh, nothing, Sarah (snort). Eema just stubbed her big toe (sniff)”. Given my history, I was sure she would buy it. She didn’t.

OK, she’s alive, I thought. Now I’m pissed. Why must she ride that bike for that long at that hour on that pair of Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen twin tires? “My sister! Jesus fucking Christ are we even related?” I whispered loudly to Mary as I put that fabulous black cocktail dress back in the closet. Then I got online to find a flight to Boston. Oh, I wasn’t going to be angry in Pacific Palisades. Not a chance. Have you seen my view? No, I was going to pay a small fortune and take a direct flight to bring my anger directly to Robin the very next day.

Did I tell you never to trust a ringing phone?

Now if flying to Boston to share your anger means being at your sister’s beckon call for three days and nights and doing 18 loads of laundry, then yes, I flew to Boston to share my anger. But I also shared three wonderful days with my older sister, Robin. I watched in awe and admiration, as only a little sister can, a constant stream of visitors, friends, family, neighbors, rabbis, fellow riders, fruit baskets, pies, apples, casseroles and various gadgets to make the next 6 to 8 weeks a little bit easier for Robin, pour down onto her house like a waterfall.

That’s the thing about never leaving the town in which you were born. Get hurt, and people you’ve known for 40 years show up to offer comfort, a laugh, a meal, or easy conversation. They heal you. My sister has lived in this community for 40 years so it was a familiar sight, watching her sit back and receive all of this love. She built this community. She maintains it. She passes it on to her sons every day. And if her neighbor fell, Robin would be right there, on hand and knee, picking up the sharpest pieces and working to put them back together. You can count on it.

I left home 16 years ago for Los Angeles and in many ways have lost that feeling of constantly being surrounded by familiarity. And perhaps that was why I left in the first place. More likely it’s why I fly back to Boston so often. But one thing was made clear to me last weekend that has never been clearer. In this life, you’re bound to fall off your bike. Somewhere around the corner, over that hill, beyond the next curve in the road, someone is going to run a red light and it’s not going to go well. In fact, you can count on it. And when you inevitably fall, there’s one thing that can make or break what happens afterwards: Community. Family members who, like firefighters, run right into the crisis and carry you down the stairs to safety. Friends who bake their best pies and offer their tastiest trays of ziti with broccoli. Miraculously present parents and siblings and children who make sure the dishwasher gets filled and then emptied (correctly, I might add) And to know that you have that in your life and can count on it, just like you can count on falling off your bike, is the greatest gift life can give you.

That, and an excellent personal injury attorney.

Here’s what I’m thinking about:  My friend Dave, let’s call him the Rhoda Morgenstern in my life, always has the same answer when I ask him how he’s doing.  “Read my blog”, he says.  I’m not too keen on that answer.  Don’t get me wrong–I read his blog all the time.  But when I ask, I actually want him to tell me how he’s doing.  I don’t want to read what tens of thousands of other people are reading.  I don’t want a status update.  I mean, he’s practically my husband (if that were in any way possible, which it isn’t).  As I used to say to my daughter, “Use your words, honey.”  Of course, that was before she started a punctuation-free sentence about a year ago which still has no end in sight.

If I took his advice and read the blog to find out how he’s doing, we’d never talk.  Which is sometimes what I think my go-to play date, my afternoon movie partner, my sushi loving friend of friends might really be looking for.  But I know in my heart that this cannot be.

Some say the definition of a bore is someone who tells you how they REALLY are when you ask.  Sometimes waiters come to my table during a meal and ask me “Is ANYTHING alright?”  But floating somewhere in the middle of all of it is the language that only two friends can speak.  The low-down.  The skinny.  Just the facts, ma’am. The ugly truth.  The real deal.

The Rhoda and Mary.

Let’s face it.  There isn’t much I don’t want to hear.  Except of course anything that has to do with The Team That Dare Not Speak its Name.

I’ll be fine.

Concert Photo, July 10, 2008, Rio

Rio, July 2008

Back on the blog after far too long an absence.

It is 8AM Saturday the 12th of July, and my time in Rio de Janeiro is coming to an end.

I arrived on the 7th of July, 2008, but in truth, my voyage to South America began with a phone call in December of 2007. We had just arrived in New York after I had been on the road for the entire month doing concerts, mainly in the Southeast—Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama. That tour culminated in several performances at the San Diego Convention center for over 5,500 Jewish leaders from all over North America, Israel and parts of Europe. It was incredibly validating—to stand before the Jewish Community and realize that 20 years of writing, traveling and recording have passed and this faithful community of learners and teachers continues to embrace my work. I am grateful beyond words for all of it.

While at that convention, I shook hands with more than the usual number of Latin Americans. There is little I enjoy more than speaking Spanish with native speakers. I left that conference with a tangible sense of hope that one day I might visit Buenos Aires or Montevideo, and bring my music to a Spanish speaking country. All I want to do is use the Spanish I became so fluent in while living in Spain, I thought. And although speaking with our beloved Sonya and Lillian in our home has become quite natural, I wanted to speak of more relevant things with like-minded people—preferably outside of Southern California.

So there I was in New York, preparing for our annual Chanukah/Christmas/Mary’s (real) Birthday party when I received a call from my good friend, Rabbi Len Thal who is the Senior Vice President of the Reform movement. He was sitting in his office in Manhattan with a woman named Miriam Vasserman, a Brazilian and Board Member for the World Union for Progressive Judaism in the South American region. In that moment he switched the call to speaker and I heard Miriam’s voice, I knew that my prayers had been answered. I was being invited to sing in Brazil.

Lenny gave me an overview of the conference that was to take place in July, and whenever Miriam chimed in I could hear the accent that had become so familiar to me over the years as a lover of Brazilian music. I remember the moment I first heard artists like Antonio Carlos Jobim , Caetano Veloso, and Milton Nascimiento. I felt like I had found long lost relatives. The music made me want to dig deeper and deeper, and head for the roots. I can’t say I’ll ever actually touch the roots of this rich, beautiful music, but reaching for them feels really good.

Come on back for more on my actual trip later.