It was about Enlightenment . . .

It was about Enlightenment . . .

Long before Elizabeth Gilbert decided she needed to go in search of her own in Eat, Pray, Love, my mother decided she needed Enlightenment. Not mine, I presume, but her own, as she had just recently left Judaism for a kind of yogic truth that now seems had already been about ten years out of date. I’m sure she thought that maybe, just maybe, someone else she brought with her could achieve some kind of spiritual awakening; one of the someones might have included me, but we kids were really just along for the ride. And since we weren’t allowed to stay at home alone, why not bring your children to the ashram during the summer holiday in 1981?

One of the ironies of this trip, that summer, from the Jersey Shore to the Catskills is that we were making a kind of reverse migration in time and place. See, Jews from the New York City boroughs during the early to mid-twentieth century usually, if they could afford it, would migrate a few weeks in the summer in one of two directions: south down the seashore or north to the mountains. Either way there were bungalows, shared kitchens, small hotels, meals brought to sea- or lake-side beaches that ended up getting limp, gelatinous, sandy or dirty, and lots of landsmen crammed into small spaces. Maybe the only difference between them in the past and us in that 1980s is that there was clean air and fresh water, because certainly there were the same squabbles and petty grievances and gossip that home life was all about.

Another irony is that my parents who, that summer, were looking for Truth, Beauty, had already been to the ashram, when it was the Brickman Hotel. They had performed in summer stock productions, they were two of the numberless young people paid pitiful wages but who received free food and lodging for the opportunity to get out of the torrid city and maybe have a brief affair, make an Important Connection, and move up in the world. When we got there, my parents marveled at how they already knew the layout of the hotel and grounds; they were familiar with the bungalow colonies and where to go for food.

So, we went late that summer to the Siddha Yoga Ashram in South Fallsburg, New York. We stayed in a dank and, to my mind, insect-infested cabin, but which was also quiet and verdant. It was also a far cry from the safety and familiarity of my grandmother’s house in Bradley Beach, but we had become used to our parents taking us to summer music festivals or living in borrowed homes and sabbatical rentals when my father needed work as a precariously-employed Artist in Residence with little job security. The place was familiar because we’d spent some time in the Teton Mountains during what I have come to call The Summer of Lentils, but it was also strange as we were expected to participate in some of the ashram’s activities from pre-dawn chanting to pitching in to help maintain the place.

I remember my middle sister and me being a little jumpy and confused at first because the way people were behaving was unlike what we had experienced in synagogue, our only previous spiritual or religious experiences. We went from practices that made sense to us — participating in Hebrew prayer and reading with a rabbi — to ones that were literally a foreign language — silently meditating and reading transliterated Sanskrit. Still, I was intrigued because I think I’ve always been a watcher of people, studying interesting groups and trying to solve social puzzles.

We fell in with a group of kids who, like we were, in our early teens. And from all over the world: India, Australia, various US locations, England, France. Mindy, because she was beautiful with dark skin, wavy long hair, and brown eyes, was quickly chosen for special assignments and positive treatment by swamis and others in charge. I, with my short hair, wore overalls and glasses, and an affinity with the cartoon character Gumby, was happy to be left alone. I babysat some of the younger kids and participated in my work assignment, which suited me just fine. I learned that to clean windows one needs vinegar and newspaper — not paper towels, as they leave streaks. I didn’t mind that I was asked to wash stairs and windows because I got to be by myself and think.

Once the week was over, I liked it enough to stay and incredibly, my parents let me. My father and grandmother had to go back to work, and it was decided that the family would return in two weeks and take me back to the Shore. I was some money to tide me over, a room in a dormitory with seven other women young and old, and two friends of my mother who watched over me.

Not a lot happened that was supposed to happen in those two weeks. Except I managed to work and eat sometimes. I had two pairs of overalls — blue and blue. My mother signed me up for a meal plan, but the food was so foreign and so green and brown, and the meals were at such odd hours that I often couldn’t or didn’t eat. I was hungry a lot. But I was also happy since I was able to be by myself walking to South Fallsburg once or twice to get a cheese sandwich at the diner or to listen to talks and take yoga classes. I never mastered what I thought meditation should be. There was also drumming at night for those who wanted to stay up late.

One thing my parents should have done but didn’t consider is that I would be curious. I’d done it before: when my sister and I were about four and six years old respectively, our family experienced the Shapiro-infamous Candyland Incident in which my sister and I woke up so early one morning that it was barely light, packed a wicker doll’s suitcase full of our underwear and nothing else, went into our parents’ room and told them we were going to Candyland. What we actually did was walk down the street to the park and play blissfully for several guilt-free hours, not having an idea that our parents were frantic with worry. We were unclear as to why they were angry at us since we’d told them where we were going and what we were going to do — wasn’t it their fault for not listening?

Anyway, true to form, I suppose, but just as independently, I became bored with my routine of cleaning stairs, eating strange food that ran the color spectrum between yellow, brown, and green, and being expected to meditate when I wasn’t doing either of the other two things. I had to get away once in a while and just sit and watch people.

I was sitting on a garden wall one day when a nice older teen started talking with me. Unlike me, who was waiting out the two weeks away from home, Dan was actively seeking something like the Enlightenment my parents sought. There is something pervasive, maybe tragic, about the ability of modern American Jews to seek Truth, Beauty in other groups or ideologies but not their own communities or practices, but that’s another story and one that perhaps has no discernible resolution. I latched onto Dan for a few days while he wasn’t pursuing his own spiritual practices, as he had normal food, shampoo, and an extra sleeping bag in his tent. Despite the insects, I was glad I didn’t have to sleep with seven other women coming and going at all times of the night and sharing a bathroom. Looking back, I am glad for his kindness in letting a young teen live in the woods outside the ashram. Not much older than I was, seventeen going on eighteen perhaps, he told me stories about his family, his grandmother and mother and his background as the child of an immigrant Jew from South America.

Dan was interesting to me because he talked to me like an adult would talk to another adult, and also because his family sounded something like mine. He reminded me of my mother’s younger cousins who would take me out to lunch at the nearby tavern when I’d work in our family’s jewelry factory in Perth Amboy; while they drank beer, I’d have a chocolate milk and a grilled cheese sandwich. I believe I was like a pet who Dan was nice to and who then followed him around. He gave me his grandmother’s address and said I could write to him there, though I don’t know if I ever did. I’ve always wondered whatever happened to him and have never found out. Once in a while I’ve looked online and haven’t found anything, so I assume he’s led a perfectly ordinary life.

What made my life change, what made my Time stand still, then sometimes loop wildly and swing pendulum-like forever, was when I went home with my father and sister while my mother and little sister stayed at the ashram for a last week. My father had to go home to start teaching and my sister and I had to start school. It turned out to be a very bad thing. Enlightening for sure, but not in the way anyone would want.

You see, I moved in with my mother’s best friend and her family. It was then that her husband started to molest me. For months.

To be continued . . .