A Word From the Weiss

     It was on a Friday afternoon in mid-August, nearly two weeks ago now, that my son called and blurted out some alarming news. Aidan had just heard an awful rumor from an acquaintance that their mutual friend Shimrit Shoshan had suffered some sort of serious, mysterious emergency and was lying in a coma in the hospital somewhere. How, he wondered, could this possibly be? She was only 29, and just the week before had been her usual vivacious self, bursting with energy, the picture of perfect health. And yet why would anyone ever make something so terrible up?
       

        Aidan had first met Shimrit (pronounced “shim REET”), a gifted young Israeli jazz pianist and composer, when he’d been assigned to profile her for JazzTimes magazine in March of 2011. A rising star on the New York music scene, she’d recently released her first album and had been chosen to give the final performance on opening night of Winter Jazzfest, an annual event held at assorted clubs throughout Greenwich Village.
       

He also confessed that she was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever seen.
       

But he firmly stood his ground.
       

“Shimrit, roughly 'saved' in Hebrew, got her name when her mother developed pneumonia prior to her birth, and doctors gave her the grim choice between saving herself or saving her daughter,” he explained. “She took a leap of faith and, miraculously, both survived.”
       

“An excellent debut from a wonderful talent,” concurred TheJazzPage.com.
       

“Steeped in this rich history, Shoshan smoothly integrates the jazz piano totems with a lithe, Mediterranean sound…” he wrote. “Here, Joanne Brackeen meets the Golan Heights. This is a jazz confection with a cosmopolitan edge, as Shoshan guides the listener through a harmonically sophisticated maze of odd time signatures and inversions, never settling for the obvious resolution.”
       

They became such good friends, in fact, that when my daughter moved to New York last fall to pursue her own music career, Shimrit proposed that she and Allegra meet and begin sharing her nanny job. She’d been taking care of an Israeli little girl for several years, but with her own musical aspirations taking off, she was becoming less available. She and Allegra clicked instantly, and while splitting baby-sitting duties became good friends too.
       

Aidan had summoned the nerve to call Shimrit’s cell phone after all, and her boyfriend had promptly answered and confirmed our worst fears. Allegra remained vague on the specifics, but as she filled me in on what she knew, I began to wail, too.
       

        During all the time that my kids had known her, I had never actually met Shimrit. I’d simply heard about her so often that I considered her part of my life too. I’d asked more than once if my husband and I could go see her perform while we were in the city. But my son preferred to keep his personal life private, and of course I respected that. So we’d never gotten to hear her play, other than through the recordings I’d listened to online.
        Still, I’d been very excited when Aidan had taken us to Aroma, an Israeli espresso bar, when we’d visited him in New York over New Year’s, explaining that he often went there with Shimrit, and I got to taste her favorite item on the menu, sachlav, a sweet, creamy, custard-like concoction flavored with coconut, pistachios and cinnamon. Putting my lips to that frothy, fragrant cup, I felt as though I could almost begin to savor the warmth and sweetness of the girl herself.
        Over the course of that weekend I jumped every time the phone rang, expecting it might bring further news. Allegra’s good friend Samara came home to be with us. It was hard to do anything but sit and worry, though. I couldn’t think about anything else.
        Was there any hope, any prayer at all, that Shimrit would recover and resume her life? I also couldn’t stop my mind from wondering what it would be like for her if she did manage to survive, but was never again able to play or write the music that was her life.
                   
        Finally, late on Sunday afternoon, I saw my husband speaking on his cell phone. It was Aidan calling, and my husband’s face looked grim as he shook his head in disbelief.
        Shimrit had died that afternoon at Columbia Presbyterian hospital, Aidan told him. He had no further details, but the cause later stated by her publicist was cardiac arrest.
        Allegra and I began sobbing uncontrollably. I tried to calm myself down somewhat when my husband passed me the phone, but couldn’t. Aidan could barely speak, anyway, he was so consumed with grief.
        A few minutes later, he phoned my husband again, but it was not with further news about Shimrit. Rather, he had decided to admit to us something else new and alarming. He was undergoing some sort of mysterious health issue himself.
        During the past 24 hours, he said, he had periodically been coughing up blood.
        In fact, the rest of our family all had contracted a nasty upper respiratory malady in quick succession over the previous few weeks, and it was likely that we'd passed it on to him during our trip to my nephew’s wedding the week before. None of us had been coughing up blood, however. This sounded so gruesome that I managed to pull myself together after all and Google what it might mean. Then I texted Aidan back.
        “It says that if it’s due to bronchitis, then it’s rarely life threatening,” I wrote. “But it also says that you should consult a doctor any time you cough up blood.”
        This being Sunday, his only option was to go to a walk-in clinic, which he reluctantly did. He phoned us back an hour or so later to say that he’d seen a young Asian physician, who had insisted that he go have a chest X-ray at once to make sure he didn’t have cancer.
        Yes, that's precisely what she said to him. Can you imagine?
        He told me this as he rounded the corner to the radiology facility she’d sent him to, then cursed in frustration to discover that it was already closed. By now it was 6:30 p.m. on a Sunday, and he said he wasn't going to get an X-ray until after work the next night because the only places that were open in the city were hospital emergency rooms, and he refused to go sit for hours in one of those.
        The problem was that under the current circumstances – having just had it proven to us that a perfectly healthy young person can suddenly become critically ill – I was not mentally capable of waiting another 24 hours to get a prognosis. I needed to know now. Although Aidan insisted there was nowhere else open, he admitted that his Internet connection was inexplicably down. So once again I took matters into my own hands, and with some persistence managed to find a place that was still open, near his own neighborhood, no less.
        Even under the worst of circumstances, Aidan hates to see a doctor. But he finally agreed to go. Then we sat there for three more hours, unable to eat, almost unable to breath, waiting for further news.
        The place I had sent him to closed at 9 p.m., so I really began to worry as that hour approached and we didn’t hear a thing. Finally I dared to call, and he said that a doctor currently was reading his films. Then another half-hour went by.
        Finally, he texted me at 9:31 to say that they’d put him on an antibiotic. So I could only presume that they didn’t think that he had… that.
       Perhaps another mother would have breathed a sigh of relief that her own child was OK. But despite the encouraging news we'd just received, I knew he was not OK.
        One of his closest friends had just died, suddenly and inexplicably. A friend I knew he cared about deeply. Friends are not supposed to simply die when you’re in your 20s. I could only imagine his grief.
        It seemed especially cruel that this tragedy had unfolded just before his birthday. (He turned 26 this past Monday.) It harkened eerily back to the terrible summer that my father died after a long illness, then my mother-in-law died suddenly a month later, just three days before Aidan turned 12, and we’d had to hold the funeral on his birthday.
        Just last year, Hurricane Irene had clobbered New York City on that precise day, and he’d spent the night in his apartment alone, listening to the gale-force winds. This year, we’d planned to take him out the night before to celebrate, but a memorial service for Shimrit was now scheduled for that evening at Smalls, a club at which she’d often played. (The actual funeral was held in Israel.)
        I proposed that we all go to the service together. Allegra, however, balked at this idea. She said that Smalls was, in fact, very small, and that the service should be for people who actually had known Shimrit. It would be terrible, she said, if my husband and I took up two seats there and then someone who'd known her was unable to get in.
        I was eager to attend anyway, believing that this would help lend moral support to both of our kids. But then my husband told me that Aidan had remarked how troubling he found it that I seemed to be as upset about Shimrit as he was, if not even moreso.
        Indeed, in the days that followed her passing, I had continued to sob repeatedly and to sound so morose on the phone whenever Aidan called that it made him feel even worse.
        I began to realize that my agony, however genuine, was making it harder for everyone. I also began to delve more deeply into why it was that I was so completely overwrought, totally devastated about her untimely passing. Yes, she had been wonderful, talented, and exquisitely beautiful, not to mention a true and valued friend to both of my children. But in the end she was someone I had never even met and now, sadly, never would.
        The preponderance of my grief -- aside from reacting to what a tragedy it was for the entire world to lose someone so young and good, and with such artistic promise – was out of empathy for my kids. How happy it had made me to know that my son had a close female friend who evidently cared about him and shared his chief passion.
        Then, I have to confess, there was the continued secret hope I'd harbored that perhaps someday their friendship would have blossomed into something more. I know that sounds insane, but show me the Jewish mother who doesn’t have fantasies about getting a Jewish daughter-in-law who is kind and beautiful both inside and out.
        There was also the element of having heard so much about her, and only heard good things, that I felt as if I actually had met her, knew her, and loved her. She was part of my life. And in my mind, she was a precious jewel, a flawless diamond, perfect in every way.
        But I also have to acknowledge that perhaps what happened to her, whatever it was, tapped deeply and excruciatingly into my worst fear – every mother’s worst fear. Perhaps my children don’t understand why I’m feeling such torment over this because they have yet to experience what it’s like to have a child. Until you do, you don’t know the limitless depth of love – and the boundless fear -- that I believe only a parent feels.
        I’m not belittling romantic love, the kind about which the singers all sing, and the infinite joy that can bring. But once you become a parent (or certainly a Jewish one, which is all that I know), you live in a constant state of underlying anxiety that at any moment some unforeseen calamity could happen out of nowhere to your cherished child, and you have to convince yourself otherwise almost every time he or she walks out the door.
        You assure yourself that you’re being neurotic and that such things rarely, if ever, occur. Then one of them does happen, striking close to home, no less, as this did. And you realize that you have reason to worry and to live in dread, after all.
        But mainly, in the end, my heart goes out to Shimrit's parents, and imagining their grief hurts most of all.
        My heart breaks for these people who let their daughter go off to another land to pursue her dreams, only to have those dreams lead to every parent’s worst nightmare.
        I think one reason I wanted so badly to attend that memorial service -- aside from my remaining convinced that I could offer some solace there to my own two children -- was that I felt robbed of never having met this lovely girl, this live wire, this radiant gem. Yes, I have listened to recordings and seen videos of her magnificent piano playing, both before this tragedy happened and many times since. Yet I imagined that by going to witness this sad ceremony, I might have gotten closer to her, glimpsed some of her true essence, and captured a more three-dimensional sense of who she had been.
        Allegra phoned me afterwards to inform me that this wasn’t the case, though. To her own disappointment, she found the proceedings profoundly sad, yet unsatisfying as a testament to her departed dear friend. Most of the people who contributed were fellow musicians who chose to express their anguish by playing their own music. And as cathartic and heartfelt as this may have been for them, it didn’t exactly reflect Shimrit.
        At least there were some participants, including a rabbi, who chose to speak.
        One young woman, she said, made a short speech reminiscing about how she and Shimrit had enjoyed going to the beach together each summer, and how Shimrit had always tanned easily because she was a Sephardic Jew (i.e. of Spanish and Middle Eastern descent), while her own skin had always burned because she was Ashkenazi (meaning that her ancestors came from France, Germany and Eastern Europe). This had offered one of the few light moments of the night, and everyone had laughed.
        But Allegra had kept wishing that someone would get up and talk in more detail about the real Shimrit. The one who’d had a secret shopping addiction, with a particular weakness for UGGs. The one who had given piano lessons to underprivileged children. The one who was always upbeat and laughing. The one who all guys were crazy about. The one she had known and loved.
        Yet despite their warm friendship, neither she nor Aidan chose to speak, feeling that it wasn’t their place to give a eulogy, I assume, and I don’t blame them a bit. I feel presumptuous writing about her here, as though this were my loss.
        On the other hand, this is my loss. We’ve all lost something in this sad, sad case.
        Parents everywhere have another reason to worry and wonder, “Could this be me?”
        Her many friends and family, who were fortunate to know her best, have lost a true treasure in her. Her unparalleled zest for living, her luminous spirit, her spunk.
        And the world has lost all of the music still inside her that she had left to make.
        A posting on the NPR music blog this week noted that her first album, released little more than a year ago, had been “an auspicious debut,” then added, “But Shoshan seemed to acknowledge that it was just a start, a foothold on future things to come. Perhaps that's part of why she titled the record Keep It Movin'.”
        It then went on to quote Aidan’s original story, crediting him by name. " 'It takes a long time to release something very personal to you,' she told [the JazzTimes reporter]. 'A lot of mental work is, "Am I ready to do this?" Now it's like, "I'm unstoppable! When's the next project?" Little things are happening and, hopefully, bigger things will happen.' "
        Bigger things should have happened for Shimrit. She had so much more in store.
        As she wrote in one of her last Twitter postings, on July 2, "Up is the only way to go!"
        Life must go on, I know, and it will. It will. Allegra says that Shimrit was such a positive person that she would have wanted that for us all, and we have to honor that. Of course I want to honor that. But I’m finding it awfully hard to “Keep It Movin’” for now.

To view a video of Shimrit playing her own composition, "Chamsa," please click on this link: http://youtu.be/MKKVo-57EBU

A Word From the Weiss

        When I was growing up, my parents, like almost any other reasonably well-to-do Jews in the Northeast, enjoyed nothing more than to spend an invigorating weekend up in The Catskills, at the Concord, Nevele, Fallsview, Grossinger’s, or similar so-called Borscht Belt resort. So when my husband and I were packing to visit our good friends Pat and Michael in Stowe, VT, last weekend, I had a moment of major-league déjà vu.
        As with the Catskills, we were told to be prepared for a dizzying array of athletic activities – hiking, biking, swimming, and tennis. (Is it any wonder that I came equipped with eight different pairs of shoes?) As with the Catskills, there would also be a plethora of more elegant evening activities, mostly revolving around food. But most of all, as with the Catskills of days gone by, we were assured that we would be spending every single minute among our people, hobnobbing, sporting and consorting strictly with other Jews.
        Huh? Somehow, I’ve always viewed Vermont and virtually all of New England as being dominated by Mayflower descendants. WASP Central. Pilgrims and Puritans “R” Us. But evidently, along with Manhattan, Miami Beach, and Eretz Yisrael itself, the Green Mountain State has become a second homeland to us of the Hebrew persuasion – that is to say, the place where many a well-to-do Jew chooses to own a second home, particularly Jews like Pat and Michael, who both originally hailed from Montreal.
        This wasn’t the first time we had visited them at their own home away from home. In fact, we’d been there twice before – once when our daughter Allegra had sung at a nearby après-ski lodge with a band, and again precisely a year ago, when she had performed at a stylish fundraiser for JCOGS, the Jewish Community of Greater Stowe.
        Still, I must confess that I approached the weekend with no small amount of trepidation. We were excited about the invitation and always have a great time with Pat and Michael, and their weekend home is not only exquisite but as palatial and inviting as any resort. However, I’m not the most athletic person in the world, and having heard numerous passing references to 25-mile bike rides, I worried about keeping up with the “K’s.”
        What’s more, I’m not anything close to gregarious by nature. We had been invited to accompany them to a big party they were attending on Saturday night, and as generous as it was of their good friends “Deborah and Myron” to include us, I felt a bit shy about spending time with innumerable friends of our friends, even if I’d met most of them before and knew that they were all a lot like me – in other words, other Jews.
        We arrived on Friday just in time for Shabbat dinner, only to realize that I shouldn’t have worried after all. In deference to us, Pat and Mike had decided to forego their usual ambitious biking treks and stick with activities that were more our speed. Also, in deference to my introverted nature, they had kept the company down to a minimum for dinner by inviting only two other couples, both of whom welcomed us warmly with kisses on both cheeks, in keeping with the Continental style favored by many a Canadian.
        After joining in on singing both the blessings over the Sabbath candles and a rousing Kiddush and Motzi – as good a set of icebreakers as you will find anywhere – we found ourselves laughing uproariously at each other’s anecdotes and jokes. (OK, here's one courtesy of "Myron:" A man keeps complaining to his therapist that he thinks his wife is trying to poison him. Finally, the shrink asks the man to send his wife in for an appointment, after which he tells the man, "I just spent three hours with your wife, and you know what? I'd take the poison.")
        But just when, realizing I was among landsmen, I had begun to feel totally at ease, Pat came out with an unexpected and rather alarming observation. She said that every time so far that they’d had weekend guests other than us, there had been some sort of accident.
        One had injured himself badly skiing. Two others had suffered biking collisions requiring surgery, and a fourth had broken a toe while taking a simple hike. Never mind that we had visited there twice before without incident of any kind. Along with being shy, I’m a chronic worrier by nature, and to me this was pretty much the equivalent of telling a confirmed hypochondriac that there’s something going around and it tends to be fatal.
        A few minutes later, we all got up to clear the table, whereupon their dear friend “Deborah” slipped and took a loud fall, breaking both the teacup and pretty Murano glass goblet she’d been carrying, and badly bruising the elbow on which she’d landed.
         While everyone rushed to her aid and to gather the broken pieces scattered across the floor, I began wondering to myself. Could this possibly have fulfilled the customary accident quota for that weekend? Or might there still be more trauma in store… for us?
        This sense of anxiety bubbled up anew when, after a lovely breakfast overlooking the pond out back and exquisite grounds the next morning, our hosts announced that it was time to prepare for the day’s activities. They instructed us to pack up all the clothing and gear required to play tennis and swim, but that we would start off by taking a strenuous hike.
        We then piled into their car and began navigating the treacherously narrow and winding roads leading toward the top of Mount Mansfield, a popular skiing destination.
       I tried to quell my trepidation as we arrived at the base of a trail leading to Sterling Pond, which Michael had assured us was the area’s shortest and least challenging hike. When he pulled into the only parking spot available nearby, though, edging into a small, rocky clearing along the road, we heard a loud crack and disembarked to find, to our distress, that a portion of the front right fender had popped out and been slightly dented. Fortunately, Michael managed to pop it back in place so it was almost as good as new.
        I tried to tell myself that this calamity must have met the accident for the weekend. But I couldn’t help worrying as we entered the trail. Was more tsuris still in store?
        Meanwhile, Michael distributed one ski-type pole with a pointy end to each of us, insisting that we’d need the extra support for balance and stability.
        How right he was.
        For those who have never hiked before – and until last weekend, that included us – this activity feels a lot like walking up a very steep set of stairs, but it requires you to tread very carefully because there is no actual staircase. Rather, you need to make your way through a narrow track cleared through dense woods, finding footholds as you proceed upwards through the trees and underbrush onto, over, and around large rocks.
        For suburbanites like us, this was the ultimate in conquering the great outdoors. But it also felt like quite the challenge for total novices like my husband and me.
        It was a hot and humid July day, even in those lush green mountains, and within minutes both of us were panting and sweating profusely, and I began to wonder if this was such a great idea, after all. Although Nice Jewish Dad is a frequent tennis player and fancies himself to be in better shape than I am, he’s also 10 years older and in recent years has undergone two hip replacements and hernia surgery. Not to mention that he’d been suffering from bronchitis for a few weeks and was still using an inhaler.
        And not before long he was gasping for breath and needed to whip this device out.
        I was particularly eager to have us both escape injury because we were leaving within a week to attend our nephew Charlie’s wedding in Portland, Oregon. Our flights were all booked, and it was now past the deadline to cancel the hotel. Besides, he’s our only nephew and we didn’t want to risk jeopardizing our getting to enjoy this in any way.
        Watching Pat speed ahead with ease, I tried to assure myself that I would get the hang of it in no time. Could it be the high elevation that was making me light-headed? Or was this just too much mental stress or physical duress for one Nice Jewish Mom?
        Either way, Pat chose this moment to point out that it happened to be Tisha B’av. We’re talking about the saddest day in Jewish history, a date on which we are meant to commemorate the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, which by some odd chance happened on the exact same day, only 655 years apart. So reading from the Book of Lamentations and the Book of Job are highly recommended.
        On this solemn “holiday” (if you can call it that), we’re also supposed to fast as we recall the Expulsion from Spain in 1492 and other catastrophic events in Jewish history.
        And as drastically as a possible sprained ankle or other injury paled in contrast to these tragic events, the ominous import of the day did the opposite of allaying my fears.
        Once again, I tried to quell my apprehension by noticing how many families with young children were attempting the same climb. But no sooner did I consider this than a small troop of boys on an outing gamboled past us, and one of these youngsters, who looked to be about 8 or 9, cried out in what sounded like real terror, “This is a death trail! This is the kind of trail on which you DIE!”
        At this point, I gave in to Michael’s entreaties to take a brief rest and catch my breath. I also urged my husband to watch where he was walking and proceed with care, not that he generally has much interest, if any, in doing almost anything that I suggest.
        As we progressed up the mountain, we began to encounter small streams trickling downward, rendering the rocks and path muddy and slick. And I began to focus on the old adage about whatever goes up needing to come down. Even if we ever managed to reach the top, I realized, it probably would be even more perilous climbing back down.
        I went to a lecture this week by a Jewish author named Daniel Smith who was discussing his new book, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety. He said that he has long suffered from crippling anxiety, like many of his family members. (“My older brother Scott is the type of person who will think he’s having a heart attack and wind up in the emergency room having all sorts of expensive tests, and then it’ll turn out to be…gas.”)
        He also noted that his mother, who happens to be a therapist (gee, that must help), often observes that anxiety is tied to the future, whereas depression is tied to the past. That is, a depressive dwells on troubling events that have already happened, while his anxiety-ridden counterpart can’t stop conjuring up awful things that simply might occur.
        Well, if that’s anxiety, then I’ve got it. Bad. I’m not saying that I tend to worry about adverse events that very well might befall me. I mean that I hesitate to leave the house even on a sunny day without an umbrella, as well as Kleenex, Band-Aids, breath mints, Benadryl, and an emergency granola bar, just in case someone in the family feels faint and needs a nosh.
        No wonder I couldn’t help envisioning all sorts of horrific potential pitfalls – or more precisely in this case, actual falls. Falls on our knees, falls on our heads, or (best-case scenario) falls on our well-padded butts.
        And so we trudged on through the wild, stopping occasionally for a necessary rest and stumbling now and then despite our best efforts, but still managing to stay upright.
        After what felt like two hours but was evidently only 40 minutes, I began to sense that I’d already reached my limit. My husband was presumably thinking the same thing, because he asked a group passing in the opposite direction if we were near the top. They shrugged, then estimated that we were only about halfway there. I sighed.
        Michael told us it was proper trail etiquette to allow people on the descent to pass, so we stepped aside for another family just as the father proposed brightly to his kids, “Now let’s see who can manage to stay quiet the longest!”
        There was no such sage suggestion from the teenage girl leading that troop of little monsters, whom we overtook moments later. “This is the kind of trail you DIE on!” wailed that same youngster again, at which point I found myself unable to hold back.
        “Stop saying that!” I admonished him loudly -- to no avail whatsoever.
        Fortunately, it turned out that the downward-bound group had slightly misjudged the distance, for precisely an hour after we’d begun we caught up with Pat at the summit. A sign pointed us toward Sterling Pond, and after a short stroll we came upon a stunning lake whose glassy surface mirrored the surrounding hills and clear blue sky.
        Ah, if only we’d brought those bathing suits, which were languishing in the car down below.
        We recruited a young man seated nearby to capture the scene and this moment for eternity. Pat and Michael insisted that I keep my hat on, and, on top of all my fears about imminent danger came the sudden recognition that everyone thought I looked totally ridiculous. I’d feared that the Zumba dance sneakers I was sporting weren’t exactly regulation trail wear. Who knew that backwoods adventurers don’t typically wear big hats -- or hot pink?
        Sadly, our trusty photographer turned out to be a bit too young to date Allegra (although Pat promptly proposed making a shiddoch). But it ended up that his parents had friends who’d attended a Jewish fundraising dinner at Pat and Michael’s house in Connecticut, and we ended up conferring endlessly about that and countless other topics involving temples, our kinder (children), and other issues of keen interest to Jews.
        Then soon enough we could delay no longer. It was time to brave the wilds again for the descent.
        I finally dared voice my apprehension to Michael, noting that I happened to be deathly afraid of heights. At this, he offered some avuncular, truly savvy advice.
        “Focus on the path before you, and look only two or three feet ahead of you at any one time,” he counseled, noting that this would both make me vigilant about where I was stepping and help me avoid worrying too much about what might lie ahead.
        Seemed like perfect wisdom for navigating not just trails, but also the travails of life.
        With that in mind, I discovered that, to my relief, the way back down was actually way easier than the way up. But no sooner did I begin to relax again than we came upon a pale, rather frail-looking woman of 64 seated at the perimeter of the path, clutching her shoulder in unmistakable pain. I’m pretty sure I actually heard her moan, “Oy.”
        Her grown son, who sat fretfully beside her, explained that she had fallen on the trail and was in such agony that he had promptly summoned the paramedics.
        Shortly after, we passed two men in headlamp-equipped helmets ascending the path, followed by two more. Then eventually four more appeared carrying a stretcher.
        For a worrywart like me, this only helped aid and abet my worst fears, as if adding lighter fluid to an already raging fire.
        But heeding Michael’s astute advice, I continued to put one foot before the other, not daring to look more than a yard or so ahead. And when I finally, at long-last, dared to peer into the distance, I saw that we were approaching the nadir… never mind that the road was lined with an emergency vehicle and a fire truck, both with flashing lights.
        When we finally reached ground level, I felt a rush of exhilaration and began to wonder if I would have enjoyed the experience more if I had trusted all along that we would return safely. Or had a sense of imminent doom heightened the thrill of it all?
        If the latter was true, then I was in for even more fun, for once we began driving away I noticed that the circuitous road snaking back down the mountain was even more perilously steep and narrow than I remembered, much like the craggy Amalfi Coast of Italy, with a series of blind turns that made me wonder why there weren’t even more emergency vehicles standing by.
        When at long last Michael steered us through the worst of it, I let out an audible sigh of relief… only to see him whack his forehead with the heel of his palm “I coulda had a V-8” style and exclaim that he had just realized that he’d forgotten to sign us out.
        Evidently, there was a sign-in sheet at the bottom of the trail leading up to the pond, and he had inscribed our names upon arrival. And if he didn’t sign us out too, then the local authorities would have no choice but to send up a search party to find us.
        It seemed that enough paramedics already had been enlisted for one day to rescue an errant granny, and we didn’t want to burden the local taxpayers any further.
        So we drove right back up again, retracing our path through those hairpin turns as I clutched my seat in the back and cursed silently, my inner litany of what-ifs overwhelming me again.
        After my husband had performed the sign-out honors, we then turned around and had to wend our way back down that mountain again, which somehow now seemed even steeper still.
        I feared that we had disgraced ourselves with our endless fretting and sluggish pace. But no. Our hosts were so amazed at our agility – or at least our ability to emerge unscathed – that they took a detour into a posh housing development, hoping to entice us to buy a condo up there and join them more regularly by becoming honorary Montreal Jews.
        “You’re the only ones to ever visit for a weekend and not get hurt,” reiterated Pat.
        “The only ones ever!” Michael echoed.
        Which only reignited my worrying anew, because the weekend was far from over.
        By now, between sheer exhaustion and dwindling time, we chose to forego the rest of the triathlon we'd planned for the afternoon, despite all that gear we’d packed. Instead, we repaired to their place for a quick snack, and soon it was time to dress for dinner.
        “Deborah and Myron’s” house turned out to be enormous and elegant both inside and out. It was also completely overrun with people both inside and out, all of them beautifully dressed. Almost all from Montreal. And all, without exception, Jews.
        So the only real danger we faced there was getting trampled while competing to get to the massive platters of jumbo shrimp, the sumptuous buffet, and the Viennese-style dessert table.
        All kidding aside, it was a beautiful affair, and once again we felt both welcome and included, so much so that I insisted on being snapped with Pat and three of her closest friends on the way out, recreating the same photo we had posed for exactly a year earlier.
        I also managed to shoot a companion shot including Nice Jewish Dad and the other husbands, my thought being that we were starting a tradition that might continue for many more years to come. After all, as wonderful (and injury-free) a time as we'd had, we also have many more pairs of shoes left to wear and plenty of unfinished business there: tennis to play, a pond to swim in, and many more trails to hike.
        Yet even as we packed up the next morning, I wasn’t convinced that we were out of danger. The drive back through endless pockets of fog and heavy rain was a nail-biter. Yet I can only hope that Pat and Michael realize how much we appreciated their warm and gracious hospitality, and how much in all honesty we genuinely enjoyed ourselves.
        Meanwhile, the journey (and the potential danger) continue. For somehow, I finally managed to abruptly come down with some sort of vile virus while sitting in the safety of my own home, and I’m now nursing a nasty upper respiratory infection. Go figure.
        But we’re flying to that wedding one way or another, and spending a whole week in Portland and at a beach on the Oregon coast, where my nephew has written to assure me there’s a state park with excellent hiking – I kid you not.
        So I’ll see you back here next in two weeks or so. Till then, keep your eyes on the path and only look two or three feet in front of you (no farther off than the nearest Jew). And let’s all try to stay safe!