Friends Like Helen
Helen and 'Dilemma' Bond
I consider Helen a close and dear friend and I am honored to say so. I love her for all kinds of reasons which I’ll list shortly but right now I must tell you how and the setting in which we met because it gives insight into both of us.
I am Jewish, I was raised Jewish in Fall River, Massachusetts. My father was a ‘pillar of the community’. My grandparents migrated from Russia, fleeing persecution. I feel a committment to all those who have gone before me. I feel a committment to all those who go ahead of me. So, even though I am a strict spiritualist, not religious at all and not a practicing Jew (even though I vibrate Jewish), I raised my kids with a Jewish education and participated in the creation of a Jewish community in Sedona and the Verde Valley of Arizona where I live. I needed to pass on the heritage and all that that implies onto my kids. I was compelled. Which is what brought me to the Friday night service at which I met Helen for the first time.
Backtracking a little, I will admit to myself publicly that I always felt awkward in the upright Jewish community – awkward in any ‘upright’, conservative community for that matter. I always felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb – never quite appropriate enough. They tell me that artists feel like that, that this feeling is common amongst us ‘unrestricted’ types but that doesn’t make the feeling of not quite fitting in any better. It was in this feeling state at one Friday night service that I met Helen.
She talked to me like I was a regular person, like I had value! I remember being delighted and appauled all at once, my inner thoughts scrambling for a safety ledge. No one (of the adults) had ever talked to me in this Jewish community before! No one had ever expressed interest in me or who I was. Neither had they felt drawn to share themselves with me in any way. My inner thoughts in that first conversation went something like ” You’re talking to me. Don’t you know who I am? I’m an artist! It’s not really appropriate to be talking to me”. I suppose, for the sake of honesty and full disclosure, I probably didn’t approach them either although I do remember welcoming newcomers once and being severely rebuked, never to touch a toe into those waters again.
Helen talked to me! And we talked and we talked and we talked. Our sharing hasn’t stopped. It’s continued all these years – almost 15 years now I think. She is one of my most precious friends. I rarely participate in the synagogue community but I am always visiting and in touch with Helen. We gravitate to where we find true sustenance, true?
She grew up in Brooklyn, in a tenement, in the heart of the Jewish community. She was three years old in 1929 when the stock market crashed. Her stories of living through the Depression, of how in her little second floor apartment over the grandfather’s butcher shop, she, her sister and mother and father lived in one room, her two aunts in another, her grandparents in another, her other aunt, uncle and their children in another. How she would awaken in the morning to find strangers sleeping on three dining room chairs put together. She recalls family conversations to figure out how to get money into the hands of a prideful old uncle who had not money enough to pay his bills but too much pride to accept charity. Charity was considered dirty then in this community so she remembers dropping baskets of food or shoes or whatever the needs were onto the stoop, ringing the bell and being instructed to run quickly away before whoever answered could see who it was that was sharing. These times and memories helped to carve the character of this woman.
Education was not much heard of for women in those days but Helen had skipped three grades, graduated from high school when she was sixteen and was encouraged by her father, a tailor who’d worked long factory hours all his life, to get the college education he’d wished for himself. She went to Brooklyn College, became a teacher and ended up heading a program at City College in NYC that provided support and tutoring for inner city kids, enabling them to receive their much sought after college degrees. She worked tirelessly in those years raising three kids and working full time. She worked tirelessly to support the successful matriculation of inner city kids who normally had not the ‘priviledge’ available to receive a ‘higher education’.
Everything Helen does, as far as I can see (and you can see that I am not objective) is imbued with a fineness, a precision, an attention to detail. She is a deeply considered person. Intelligent. Very. And kind. Deeply. She thinks about and cares about others. Her motivations are grounded in justice and fairness. Her concerns are for the rightness of things.
This has impressed me. My background had much to admire. There was a lofty spirit in my home which is probably why or part of the reason I feel so connected with Helen. But also there was a part of my upbringing which continues to discomfort me. It’s the part that values TALL - THIN – and – RICH( I’m none of these) above all else. I take comfort in Helen because she values most the unseen human qualities of kindness and justice, creativity and industry rather than exalting outer material values.
These are difficult economic times in this country and specifically for my husband Paul and me as stone carving artists. Artists, especially artists who sell their own work like we do, are the proverbial canary in the coal mine. We knew a year and a half ago what was coming with this economy. Like the wind, we felt and smelled it and our sales reflect it. People right now, including us, are not spending any money. Don’t get me wrong, in a larger sense I ‘m very relieved and happy about this shift. We’ve been praying for ‘the shift’ from greed to caring, from an oil based to a renewable resource based economy, for a long time now. It’s happening. We’re all a part of it. The hundredth monkey has spoken. We will save our Earth for our children and their children. I digress. The shift is thankfully causing us to live precariously close to the bone. I am enjoying it actually. Life is simpler. I am grateful. But a few months ago Helen, Helen, without words from me and at the exact moment when Paul and I were sitting across the table wondering how we were going to pay for the $600.00 art show fee that was due, handed us her $600.00 ’stimulus check’ from W! She said “I was sitting at home thinking ‘What am I going to do with this, what do I need this for? What do I need to put this into my savings account for? I have plenty’.” That was the $600.00 check she timed so perfectly to share with us.
Yesterday Helen graced us with another visit. And let me describe to you the extent of what I mean by ‘graced’. Helen is in her mid eighties. She is healing herself from emphezema. She is athsmatic. She wears an oxygen tube around her apartment. She travels with it including while she’s driving the car. We live out in the country, close to the Verde Wilderness. We live probably forty minutes from Helen. She ‘graced’ us with a visit the other day. We spent a lovely afternoon, as we always do when we’re with Helen, ranging, grazing on a variety of subjects like they and the sharing of them were nourishment for our souls. She came to purchase three of our Alabaster candlelamps for each of her three kids. Kids! Two chiropractic doctors, the best, one in New York City and one in L.A. (If anyone reading this article wants the recommendation of truly the best chiropractors, call or write me!) Her daughter was awarded teacher of the year! Excellence in their genes.
The economy has worsened for us, for everyone but …….Miracles happen. This one’s named Helen. We were able to pay our bills this month. I am so grateful and incredibly moved by her action.
“Share the Wealth” was a phrase spoken by our new President. He’s also on record saying “I have plenty” and “I don’t mind” when talking about sharing the wealth. It’s the question that we all need to carry in our hearts and minds in order to save this planet for our children and our children’s children. It’s the action we all need to take. What is enough, what is too much, what can I share, who needs what I don’t or no longer need.
This is the shift, these are the essential questions and actions that will propel us on to our highest living ideas. Helen is our role model and our inspiration.
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