Sitting shivah

Last Sunday Emily Gottfried, the executive director of the Oregon Area Jewish Committee, died unexpectedly from a condition that no one is quite sure of how or why it entered her body and attacked her immune system. Tuesday was the funeral and today was the shivah. I decided to take Rachel because I thought it would be a good cultural and learning experience for her. She and I made chocolate covered toffee bars on Tuesday (I had chorus practice last night) and after I picked her up from preschool, we drove to Emily's house, a beautiful modern ranch-style place in Southwest Portland.

The house was packed and there was a lot of food. Before I realized what had happen, Rachel had attached herself to Emily's uncle, Marcus, who I would estimate is around 62 or so. He swooped her up in his arms and settled her in his lap and promptly announced that he was going to marry her someday. They had quite a nice time together while I got to talk to people including John Moss (the president of OAJC), Oregon's Supreme Court Chief Justice, a friend of Emily's, and various board members from OAJC. Meanwhile Rachel kept sitting on Marcus's lap and when I tried to remind her to say "please" and "thank you" and not spill food on the floor, he kept telling me to stop interfering and not worry, that he had things under control. I winced inside, but, hey, Rachel loved the attention.

Toward the end I noticed that Emily has the same songbook I used to sing Rachel songs out of (and used when I was a volunteer in Africa). Maybe Rachel saw it too; she asked me to sing to her when we drove home. I chose "Roll on Columbia," and she asked me to explain what the line "Sheridan's boys in the blockhouse that night," meant, and I told her about the battles between the whites and the Native Americans and the concept of land-stealing and herding Native Americans onto reservations. (I had explained this concept to her before, so it wasn't completely foreign). When I finished the song, she said, "Let's have a discussion about the whites and the Native Americans all the way home." It was actually a fabulous conversation, and it even touched on the concept of reparations. She concluded that the whites and the Native Americans should all share the land, and back in in the 1800s it was too bad that they didn't have the "Solution Wheel" that she has at preschool, where all the kids are shown different options for resolving conflict -- sharing, telling a teacher, etc. I told her that it's a shame grownups forget about the concepts in the Solution Wheel when they stop being kids.