Devotion Read Free

greater depth and meaning. My own childhood had been spent steeped in religious ritual. There were rules for eating, speaking, sleeping, praying. I never knew why we did what we did—it was simply the way it was. I had fled this at the earliest opportunity, but replaced it with nothing. I wasn’t exactly a nonbeliever. Nor was I a believer. Where did that leave me? Anxious, fearful, lonely, resentful, depressed—troubled by a powerful and, some would say, deeply irreverent sense of futility.
    Most nights, when I stretched out next to Jacob on his narrow bed with a few books balanced on my stomach, he had other plans. He wanted to talk about what happens when we die. His questions had been coming fast and furious. He wanted answers—his voice piercingly clear and pure. “I don’t want to die,” he’d say. And then: “What happens? Where do we go?”
    “Well…” I played for time. “Some people believe that we come back in another life. It’s called reincarnation.”
    “You mean, I could come back as a dog?”
    “No, I don’t think so. Probably not. Probably as a person.”
    I watched his delicate profile as he digested this information.
    “And other people believe there’s a heaven. That we go to heaven when we die.”
    I left hell out of it, since I was cherry-picking anyway.
    “And other people think that the soul continues to exist,” I went on, feeling his small, beating heart pressed against my arm as he lay on his side. “That we stay alive when people remember us.”
    “Like Grandma?” he asked.
    My mother had died when Jacob was four. He would have few memories of her. And none of my father. None at all.
    “Yes,” I answered. “Like Grandma. And your grandpa, too. I think about them every day.”
    But when it came to a deeper response to Jacob’s questions, I was failing him and I knew it. I was laying out a smorgasbord of options, but I wasn’t telling him what I believe—because I truly didn’t know. Each day, e-mails I had signed up for kept appearing in my in-box— My Daily Om, Weekly Kabbalah Consciousness Tune-up —like the results of a Rorschach test: spiritually confused wife and mother in midlife, seeking answers. For years, I had dabbled: little bite-size morsels of Buddhism, the Yoga Sutra, Jewish mysticism. I had a regular yoga practice, but often felt like I was only scratching the surface. My bookshelves were filled with books I had bought with every good intention, important books containing serious insights about how to live. Over the years, they remained unopened. Taking up space.
    What would happen if I opened the books? If I opened myself —as an adventurer, an explorer into the depths of every single day? What if—instead of fleeing—I were to continue to quiver in the darkness? It wasn’t so much that I was in search of answers. In fact, I was wary of the whole idea of answers. I wanted to climb all the way inside the questions and see what was there.

4.
    Here we come a-wassailing among the leaves so green! Here we come a-wand’ring, so fair to be seen!
    The first, second, and third graders filed into the theater and onto the bleachers for the Winter Solstice concert. Parents were crammed into the theater’s seats, some still wrapped in their winter coats. Eric, an emergency room doctor, Liz, a landscape architect, Denise, an attorney, Darren, a software designer. I was friendly with many of them, but still I always had to brace myself for these school events. I felt cut off from the other parents, as if they lived in a country to which I had been denied entry.
    Love and joy come to you, and to you your wassail too, and God bless you and send you a happy new year, and God send you a happy new year.
    As Jacob climbed the bleachers to the second riser, his eyes scanned the audience in the dark, searching us out. Like the other boys, he was dressed in a white button-down shirt and black pants. The girls had gotten a bit more creative: leggings under skirts, black