Omi-la

I’m in Forest Hills, Queens, NY, staying with my grandmother for the remainder of my time here. Earlier today, I had lunch with my father and his wife. It was quite pleasant. I have healed many of the core issues that I’ve had with him, and over the past five years or so we’ve developed a good connection. In many ways, he feels much more like a friend than my father. It sometimes seems a bit surreal. I’m glad and thankful that I got to see him and his wife today, and for how easy it is between us now.

Afterwards, my mom drove me down to my grandmother’s apartment, where she’s lived for something like 53 years. 53 years! Holy shit! Since leaving home at 18, I think my record is something like 2 ½.

Anyway, my mom dropped me off (I had a really great time with her, and feel like our relationship is completely recreated – see my previous “Loving My Mother” blog for the initial account), and my grandmother and I began our time together.

I love my grandmother so much. She is actually the main reason for this trip. As she is getting older (she’s 86), our time together is more limited. Her favorite thing in the world is to have her grandchildren come visit her (she can’t really travel anymore), so it means a lot to be able to be here.

My grandmother is a holocaust survivor. At age 16, she and her older brother separately fled Germany, leaving the rest of the family behind to a fate unknown. After a time, she was able to get the family out, but it was close. After she worked as a nanny in England, she finally had enough money to get them out, and my great-grandfather came down with appendicitis right before they were supposed to leave. Tickets lost, she had to save once again, finally making enough to get them out for good. They got out literally just in time. They came here to America with nothing, all of it lost to the Nazis, and created a new life for themselves.

I’ve always called my grandmother “Omi,” taken from “Oma” in German (my grandfather, who died when I was 18, was “Opi,” taken from “Opa”). She resisted at first, wanting to disconnect from her German heritage after what she went through, but I was way too young for her to resist and somehow it stuck.

Anyway, she always had plenty of names for me growing up, names like “Meupshin,” “Tundi,” “Boobula,” and “David-la,” among many other that became quite embarrassing to be called in public as I entered my teens. I tried to make her stop, but it was too late; it was way too engrained in her (she has names for all her kids and grandkids; I just found out for the first time tonight after coming across my mom’s baby book that she called my mom “Poppedy” and “Putzele” – yikes!). So, in exasperation and to give her some of her own medicine, I started calling her “Omi-la,” and it has stuck ever since (she feels quite endeared by it actually, as she likes it when I tease her).
The first part of this visit with my mom was about loving more fully and openly while staying connected to my own sense of self and power. Seeing my dad today felt like it was about simply being myself. Being with my grandmother feels like it’s about receiving love, letting it in, and loving myself enough to do so.

My grandmother is very loving. She has always gone out of her way to help others and care for them. She hates to hurt anyone (she lost her temper once when my sister and I were young and behaving in a way that totally deserved it, and she still feels guilty about it twenty-plus years later) and would give anything she could for those she loves. She is kind, warm, generous, giving, faithful, adoring, and devoted. (She is also extremely worrisome, stubborn, and neurotic, and being with her I can see where I got it, for those of you who wonder ;).

Anyway, we have always had a good relationship, and being here now, especially after the shift with my mom, I feel closer and more comfortable with her than ever. I love being able to take care of her (which takes a lot of persistence, as she resists it, finding it both hard to receive and to not be the caretaker), talk with her, tease her, and hear her stories. As I connect with my adult self, my mature self, I can simply be with her as myself, and I can and am letting in her love for me in a way that I’ve felt guilty and unworthy for in the past. So much love in my childhood was conditional, with strings attached, reciprocations expected, or just plain smothering. I felt so unworthy of it when it did come, didn’t trust that it was real, that I closed off to it. I lost faith in love, and, by extension, lost faith in humanity and in God.

Now, that is shifting as well. I am really letting it in. Earlier tonight, my grandmother said that the happiest day of her life was the day that I was born, and I started to cry (it’s making me cry now, too ;) (Anakha even agreed, even though she was six and didn’t know me – how sweet ;). I was so touched, so honored, so moved, knowing that she has had some many other happy and blessed days.

What I am seeing though is that underneath receiving these sweet and adoring words is that I am truly loving myself. It is through this loving that I believe I am beginning to receive more and more of these blessings, and the blessings of the universe. I am opening the flow, unguarding my heart, and surrendering and trusting the divine. My faith is returning.

Tonight, my body is electrified, tingly, turned on, alive. I am in love. I am in love with myself. I am in love with you. I am in love with the divine, with my renewing sense of faith. “Trust me,” it says, and I am. Take me where you will. Make me your instrument, your vessel.

I am yours.

You are mine.

We are each other’s.

Amen.