Bliss
We stood in the kitchen. There were 5 of us. It was myself, 3 friends, and the man who had made over 21 meals for us that week, voluntarily. This man, silver haired, red-tanned face and a body for children to use like a cuddle playground, he was the most glowing man I had ever met. A professional business man during his normal hours, but he had chosen to come and spend a week serving others, for no reason other than for the joy of giving. When he smiled, he shined and when he cooked he smiled and his shiny love poured into the pots that fed us.
We were in Italy. I had raced around Rome in 2 days. I had been to the Vatican and seen the Sistine Chapel. I had taken an overland train to Pisa and was picked up to go to a small village in Tuscany. I had been sponsored to attend a leadership course in a Villa on the dewy hills in spring. What gifts may come!
A whole day to ourselves with no classes left, our bags were packed and ready to leave at midnight that evening. A quick walk to the kitchen to see the effervescent smile and there we found him alone, preparing two large trays for a 40-person helping of Tiramisu. Tiramisu, he said, means to lift one up, called that because it contains so much sugar, caffeine and alcohol that you get high off it.
Our lesson started, from whipping cream, emptying out bags of sugar, grinding 70% chocolate, laying out biscuits, swigging and pouring the finest wine into the cream and soaking the biscuits. His feint-Dutch accent passed on his family-treasures of cooking secrets while we all got sillier and sillier. A simple heaven.
Then, during one of the toasts, someone made a quip, a quick funny well-timed retort. Giggles started around the culprit, they then spread to the surrounding seats, within seconds everyone else was chuckling. The chuckling turned to laughter, the room got fuller and fuller and started vibrating with snorting, trying-to breath laughter. It turned into deep-hearty guffaws and eventually, all 40 of us were in manic hysterics. Looking around, eyes were about to burst out, tears streamed out, mouths dangled over bowls as wine and food sputtered out, bodies shook with all-consuming howls. The room felt like it had been lifted off the ground into another dimension, we all floated around in the smoky haze of delirious joy that had flooded the room.
We were lifted up by a heavy-handed helping of Tiramisu heaven. Bliss.
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I remember…
….Falling asleep in my older brother’s room when I was younger, in my mid teens perhaps. Just a couple of years before, he was a gawky science fan with a mushroom haircut. He was a non-fiction reader, which didn’t mean anything for his extravert social younger sister. His little trouser pants sat high on his waist with his shirt tucked in as tight as it would go. These were the same years that I outrightly refused to wear dresses.
…When my parents brought home the most beautiful dress they’d ever seen, I think it was white-gold with fine textures and patterns. They presented me with this gift that would turn me into the little girl that all parents want, but I wasn’t having it. Refusing so much as to try it on, my dad trying to convince me that it was something I wanted. My dear dad, who so wants to give to others, wasn’t listening to what I was saying and what I was wanting. Dear parents worldwide, let go of your images of what and who your children will be and become. They are your children, but they aren’t yours.
…When my brother suddenly grew up. He cropped his hair, grew tall, became confident and started making friends. Within a blink in my memory, I had a transformed sibling. One that was hiding from the outside world to one that basked in it. He always stayed private though, a superhuman ability to keep himself company without outside affirmation and back pats and applause, slightly different to his in-search-of-a-spotlight sister at the time.
…Friday night dinners at my dad’s house, with his really genuine attempts to give us a family dinner no matter which girlfriend was cooking. At least the three of us were constant and my dad was happy, so we were happy for him. He invited his friends over and spoke about things I didn’t care about, but my brother was always part of it. Talking about big world things and adult stuff and constantly debating theories, philosophies, religions and current affairs. I think that’s what they spoke about, but I was never listening. I always had my friends over. We’d sit for as long as we absolutely had to until we were excused to go and be young and talk about god only knows. But there my brother sat, talking to the grown-ups until he was excused to go and read his impressive books or look at impressive websites. Oh the enigma of my older brother.
…Mornings before school at my mom’s house where she put breakfast on the table. She did too much for us, an amount that is impossible to repay and letting go of the need to repay her for her selflessness, kindness and love has been one of the fights in my head. Until I realised that she would never want such a fight for me, so I let go and became grateful.
…Him teaching me how to drive. I think we learnt in his first car, it was white or beige with manual gears. We had gone away for the weekend with his girlfriend and my best friend at the time. The ‘thing’ between my best friend and him started somewhere when I was in Grade 7 or 8 and it’s gone on and off until this year, 10 years later. Learning to drive was hysterical though, I’d been let on my dad’s lap driving up to his house on the mountain and so as far as I knew, I could drive. My brother used to get frustrated when people couldn’t do things that he finds easy, so I remember being really scared that every time I would mess up that he would explode, but he didn’t. He taught me slowly and patiently and by the end of my lesson, I was a driver. Passed on my first time and all.
…The tension and love between my brother and my mom with their polar opposite views on the world and our purposes here and who made us. He is a head strong atheist who will always argue his side and knows The Truth; she is a being of spirit love who knows The Truth. My father has tried many religions and ideologies, now he has found comfort in the traditionalism of Judaism and the Kabbalah as well as Buddhism, but seems to always be searching for The Truth. The picture I get of the three of them is one of two steadfast trees that are ever-growing in their direction and in the middle, a tree on legs that settles in soil that is most comfortable for the season of its life, but may now have perhaps finally found a peaceful piece of land to grow on. All are right in their own right and wrong in the others.
…Falling asleep in his room and talking about god and the universe. I was always curious about his ideas of creation and how and why things are. Around him, I tended to agree with him, around my mom, I tended to agree with her, but I never agreed with the moving tree on religious grounds, no matter how much I loved him I wasn’t fickle in my beliefs, I just hadn’t picked the one that resonated with me and he had a pretty good argument for everything he thought. We were talking about evolution I was proud of my question, ‘But if god exists then who made god?’ I felt that I deserved to be part of the conversation. I think he must’ve chuckled and said, ‘You do know that the universe is constantly expanding, right?’ He had an uncanny way of accusing me in an answer before I got there. I lied and said that of course I knew. Then I asked, ‘But what is it stretching into’. As I said it, I felt engulfed in anxiety, that I absolutely had to know the answer, but I never could and what if I never found out and that means that god has a maker and space has space and and and…it took years before this sense of ‘How and Why’ found resting ground.
…When we moved in together. We lived for 2 years in a little flat, but our university times crossed paths and we both worked non stop and so we saw each other less than one would expect sibling roommates to. I do remember making him breakfasts and sitting on the balcony and falling asleep on the couch waiting for him to come home. I remember him rubbing my back when I was crying for no reason and listening to my secrets. I remember that he gave me the big room with no argument and always came to my little events, that were so big at the time. And he always told me how proud he was of me. Then he left, 2 and a half years ago. He travelled up Africa and at the end of the year sent us a letter letting us know he was joining the Israeli army. My atheist brother, fighting for land in a country he was neither born nor raised in. Where he still is today, with a year or so to go.
The question still swam in my mind for years. I wanted to be part of the image of trees with my family and their opinions. My name translated even means Tree. A couple of months ago, a calm peace fell over me and I knew. I knew absolutely. I knew The Truth. That resonated as strongly with me as theirs did with them. I knew that I would never know. That I – a young human on this earth, in a world of billions of people all running in the same beautifully detailed intrinsic master design that allows Life and Thought – will never know. That I don’t have to search for The Truth, that I have it on a very unconscious level and no amount of foreground thinking can ever bring it to the surface. And the absolute Truth and Peace that I have, is in not knowing and letting go of trying to.
And I love my brother. That I know.
