I’ve always believed my grandfather was my inspiration into spirituality. At a certain age, likely seven or eight, I began studying him more closely when he was engaged in his daily prayers. I tend to think that something ignited then. He was an orthodox Jew, Sephardic, emigrated from Turkey to Ellis Island. He and my grandmother spoke Ladino, a mix of Spanish and Hebrew. When we moved from New York to Massachusetts, they came for extended visits. I’d give up my room and bunk with my little brother in the room next door and for that week or two, they inhabited my space apologetically, gratefully. It was never a chore for me. Their visits were cause for celebration. At night I’d listen to their bedtime banter and then their tandem snoring from the other side of the wall, thinking of them tucked into the twin beds in my room, under the pink chenille bedspreads. Gramma in my sister’s old bed, before she moved downstairs, and Grampa in mine, with the view of the moon from the window.
They were two stout, round people, gentle gnomes with faces that broke into unabashed grins whenever I entered the room. Come darling, sit. My room became a space thick with generosity and unconditional love. I wished they always lived in it.
In the early morning and late afternoons Grampa prayed by the window that faced over the foot of my bed. This window was meaningful to me for by now I had developed a relationship with the moon, asking it questions each night, praying to it, as if it was God. The view out the window was of our square, neatly mowed backyard that rose gently from its edge into a small wood. I know now from visits made back to this childhood home in adulthood that this wood that once seemed vast and mysterious and another source of the Unknown for me, was little more than a strip of undeveloped land spared from the sprawl of split level and ranch homes that bordered either side of it.
Grampa called on that forest as I did, I think. And the moon.
He sang the Hebrew words from the black prayer book poised on his palm, holding the book aloft with tenderness, with reverence, its cover lying flat with the pages rounding over on either side, an offering. His voice was high, crisp, with a Middle Eastern lilt. I know now it resembled the Islamic call to prayer, a gift from Turkey, his Ladino and Sephardism so like that culture in tone and sound.
He was covered in his prayer shawl, the tallit, that hung over his shoulders. I’d watch from the doorway of my room, his room, while he put it on, waiting for the moment when he kissed each knotted end before he flung it over his shoulders. I watched with a kind of awe and also a child’s simple curiosity. What is Grampa doing? What is this? Oh yes, this part when he kisses those little knots at the end. I like that part – look, there he goes! There were also strange mysterious black boxes connected to black leather straps that he wound around his arm and fingers, so that one black box adhered to his upper arm, while another was perched on his forehead. Inside were prayers. Prayers!
He sung and prayed for what seemed like all morning, bending and bobbing in that funny way, a kind of penguin bob, but with importance. It was serious this bob, a way of emphasizing what was happening in his mind between him and God.
When he saw me in the doorway he never scolded. It was okay to watch him. It was perhaps a good thing. He didn’t invite me, but he didn’t chase me away. He never changed his manner because I was there; he just prayed. It was between him and God.
Perhaps that’s where I got it. This understanding that there is something between me and God. Something discrete and predestined.
When Grampa wasn’t praying, he was walking slowly about the house from our shared room, down the stairs to the kitchen, often a stop on the way to spend a long while in the bathroom. His presence in the house had a gravity to it, but never frightening. More, it was solid, a small mountain, something certain and immovable. He always had God with him, I thought.
He ate tomato and feta cheese sandwiches my grandmother made for him. He read the New York Times every day, folding it into neat, manageable columns with dry, cracked hands, the fingernails yellowed. He smoked Camels, cutting off the filter and squeezing the end into a cigarette holder. Why did he do that? The nicotine yellowed his nails.
When I needed something mended, I brought it to Grampa. He was a tailor in his working years, his Lower East Side shop filled with hand-sewn housedresses and aprons, fashioned for the oversized housewife. I remember the long tables where he laid out the fabric and his smiling face when my mother brought me to visit. When he mended something for me, he’d flash a broad yellow-toothed grin as he directed the needle through the fallen hem of my pants or holes of a sock. The needle looked so tiny, almost lost between his thick fingers.
In addition to the morning and evening prayers, he went to shul each day. The orthodox synagogue in our town was under a mile from our house. Grampa walked there, slowly. I watched him disappear down the road, the long overcoat, a grey felt Stetson like my father’s, his wide feet shuffling in thick leather shoes. I could hear him clear his throat halfway down the block. His throat clearing was a sign of him, it punctuated his years, and towards the end, when he was dying of lung cancer, I understood why.
Now and then he let me come to shul with him. We visited Rabbi Ferguson, his friend, who was always so happy to see him. Mr. Fins! He’d exclaim at the sight of my Grampa. Who do you have with you? I was proud to be with these two lofty figures in this apparently holy place. Though I didn’t really like the building: a long, angular one-story with high modern ceilings that made me feel extra small. It wasn’t my temple, it was Grampa’s where the prayers were more serious and only for the most religious people. Still I held my place, my hand in his, watching Rabbi Ferguson with his intense eyes and thick curly beard, flashing red. I realize now he could have been John the Baptist and Grampa my own savior, come for the baptism, that’s how holy it was. And yet, it was simply a meeting of two friends: Mr. Fins! So glad you came, who do you have there with you?
Who did he have there with him? Who was that there?
When Grampa was not in my room, when he and Gramma went back to New York, who was I then, in my room, by that window? Was it he who christened it holy? Was it the thin reed of his voice, rising to the sky, was it the deliberate bob of his head toward the window glass, the way his whole body said, Lord I am here! Was it he that taught me to pray to the moon?
Or was it the moon?
Some afternoons, they were special for this, I trailed up to the forest, that seemingly vast stretch of woods behind my house, and I found a tree that had become dear to me. We sat there, me and the tree, for a while. There was not much said, we were just together, though sometimes I talked out loud to it, or sang. I doubt I ever thought of Grampa then. He was back in New York. I doubt I ever put it together: the moon, the forest, the window, my tree. I doubt I knew then that the tree was as much God as any. It was as much God as the prayer book floating in Grampa’s palm. It was as much God as those little black boxes on his arm and forehead. It was as much God as the look he gave me, the last one from the hospital bed, the first look I ever saw fear in. How do I do this Lord? it said. How do I do this last thing for you? This last prayer.