Go Toward the Open Door.

Wise women have told me this occasionally over the last few years. And, this is just the opportunity I got this weekend – to go toward the open door.

Originally planned for this weekend, was helping my immensely talented and ambitious friend by volunteering at her art show benefit for Japan. My volunteering for her had come as a status reduction from being in the art show, as during the time of my unemployment, I realized I was not energetically inclined toward creative production, nor, unfortunately, toward the donation of any art I currently own. So, I downgraded myself to volunteer last month.

Then, I continued to be unemployed, and although now (halleLUjah) employed, I don’t get paid until the 15^th of this month. Her show was planned for last night, Saturday night, and I have $40 to my name until Friday. I had to tell her I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn't afford the roundtrip to the city. It just wasn't feasible.

Do I/did I feel like a flake? Yeah. Was there anything I could do about it? No.

In the meantime, having unceremoniously bowed out of volunteering, on Friday morning my office was in the midst of heading out for the weekend to a “Shabbaton,” basically, a weekend at an overnight summer camp in the Santa Rosa mountains, where 250 members of the congregation (did I mention I work, now, at a synagogue?), kids, grandparenty-types, Board members, staff members, would all gather and have a hella Jewish weekend (well, hella Reform Jewish weekend – which includes guitars, LOTS of clapping on the up-beat, and the community-sanctioned use of a cappuccino machine on Shabbat).

I, was not going to go. I told them over this week and a half of my new employment that I wouldn’t be able to go, as I was volunteering with my friend’s art show. And, part of me didn’t really want to see these people, as I was still feeling rather resentful at being a freakin’ secretary, answering phones and manipulating mail merges.

However, there was another part of me who is, about 7, I’d say. And she, every time I heard someone wish me a good weekend as they were departing on Friday afternoon, would say to me, I wanna go to camp!.

I wanna go. I wanna go to camp. I wanna sleep in a bunk, and clap during song session, and eat at long uncomfortable tables, and see the mountains. I wanna go to camp!

She whispered this to me all day. Indeed, she’d been whispering it with increasing intensity all week, but adult me was too pissed at these people for having supporting roles in the drama of my life that was once again entitled, “Molly: The Disgruntled Employee.”

Then, however, came the reality that I would not, in fact, be joining my friend for her art show. And I’d been offered a ride by another reluctant employee earlier in the week, that she was going up on Saturday morning, coming back on Sunday, and I could ride with her.

She’s new to the office as well, and I could sense that perhaps we could get along. So I told her I’d think about it. And, as she was generously giving me a ride the the bus stop on Friday afternoon, long after almost everyone else had defected for the mountains, my little girl was screaming to be heard.

I was, in fact, on the bus home when I finally gave in to her. I called the woman, and I told her that if she was still willing, I’d love to ride with her to the Shabbaton.

Because, in reality, my alternative now, without the art show, was to sit on Saturday in my apartment, continue to read my Zadie Smith novel, see a few friends, and putz around, as per usual. I saw that very clearly as I rode that bus through Berkeley. Everything as per boring usual.

I have been camping once this summer. Several months ago now. I have kept my childlike spirit drowned out with the adult business of interviewing, resumes, finance planning, budgeting, cost efficiency, worry worry worry. There has been nearly NO play in the last 3 months. At all. A few movies here and there for a break from the awful soul-crushing of unemployment, but other than that, no glitter, sparse laughter, begrudging fun, and a riotous need to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.

So, I said YES. I went toward the open door.

The adult in me was also very calculatingly clear, with its Cheshire cat smile, that this weekend away would not cost me a penny. That I would have good meals I didn’t have to cook, pay for, or clean up from. That I would get the chance to go to the mountains, and hike there, as I did, without paying for a rental car, gas money, a camp site, anything at all.

I would be able to get out of dodge simply by saying “yes.”

To think that I almost didn’t makes me laugh at myself.

The weekend itself was both satisfying, and exhausting. Exhausting, as I was “on” the whole time, schmoozing with people, making my new presence known. It was not an entirely selfless or avocational decision to go up, obviously – it was/is also important to me that people got to know me as more than the receptionist, should the ears of the executive director be listening to the chatter in the water. Phrases like “raise” and “room for growth” come to mind as I go forward with this job. It was a political decision. – Also, it exposes/d me to people who might be good contacts later on.

Indeed, there was a published/working poet there with whom I got to spend some good conversations. The last one included my bald question, “Is it worth the fight?” [to be a writer, to pursue this {or indeed any} art, to continue to put one word after another as a sign that we mean something to ourselves, others, this world we live in – that we are not floating mindlessly through it – that we value our experiences – that we mold and shape them and ply them and tongue them and pinch them into these characters we imprint on paper and screen … Is it worth the fight to do this?]

His answer, after the knowing laugh, was yes, if you believe it is.

I believe it is. I believe in marking my existence. I believe in questioning it, turning it, shaping it, and being shaped by it.

I believe in inviting you to share it with me. To tell me how you see it, to let me have my own world shaped for a moment or more by how it is you walk in the world.

By saying yes to this weekend, I allowed cherished and often dismissed parts of me to sing in the sunshine. To look at the Milky Way, for Christ’s sake. To dance in a circle of women, to talk blogging with a stay-at-home dad. I got to see a fawn pounce through the brittle brush and pet baby goats, and to sing at my most favorite service in all of Judaism, Havdallah, the closing of Shabbat, where we say good-bye to the week we’ve had, and we welcome the week to come. The service where we invite the sweetness of Shabbat to come with us into and sustain us through the coming week.

It is a service that dances the edge of wistful, grateful endings and limitless, renewed beginnings. And, simply, it has the best music.

Shavuah Tov, friends – May you have a happy week.