Faith, for me, is a complicated topic. As I said in an earlier Retrospect story, I mostly don’t believe in God. But for some reason I’m not quite ready to rule out the possibility entirely. For instance, all through my years in school, when I was nervous about an exam, I would talk to God, saying “if I get an A on this exam, I’ll believe in you.” And even now, when I’m on a turbulent flight, I find myself saying “please don’t let this plane crash.” Who am I talking to? I don’t know.

I think I found it hard to believe in God once I learned about the Holocaust, and the pogroms in Russia that caused my ancestors to flee. The entire history of the Jewish people revolves around persecution, and is supposed to show us that God ultimately saved us, by parting the Red Sea, or making Esther the queen of Persia, or whatever. But then why didn’t God stop the Nazis? Or the Cossacks? It didn’t make sense to me.

I never asked my parents if they believed in God, and now it is too late. I’m pretty sure they didn’t though. When I was seven, I started religious school at my temple, which I didn’t love but didn’t hate either. The next year I said I didn’t want to go any more. I think all kids say that, my kids said it multiple times. It’s mainly the having to get up on Sunday mornings that is objectionable, not the content once they get there. Anyway, my parents just said okay fine, you don’t have to go any more. We didn’t even have a discussion about it. Not what I was expecting! I was happy that this meant I could relax on Sunday mornings, go get lox and bagels with my grandfather, just have a lazy day. It wasn’t until many years later that I regretted being a religious-school dropout and wished they had made me keep going. Learning Hebrew is much easier for a young brain than it is for a middle-aged one, as I discovered to my dismay when I tried to study it along with my children as they were preparing for their bat and bar mitzvahs!

I wish I could believe that there is a Heaven, and that my parents are there hangin’ out, and someday I will get to see them again. It would certainly make the idea of death more palatable. But it would take a lot more faith than I can muster to believe that such a place exists.

Regardless of my doubts about God and Heaven, I am very committed to Judaism. I love singing in the temple choir, the beautiful Hebrew prayers set to music (and transliterated, fortunately). I treasure the stories of all the holidays, and the rituals that go with them. The Passover seder, where we eat matzah because there wasn’t time for the bread to rise, and where we splatter red wine on our plates for each of the ten plagues that were visited on Egypt. Purim, where everyone wears costumes, and we act out the story of Esther and Haman, cheering every time Esther’s name is mentioned and booing, hissing, and rattling groggers at every mention of Haman. Lighting the menorah and playing dreidel on Chanukah. Rosh Hashanah, where we dip apples in honey to signify a sweet new year, and we throw bread into the water to signify casting away our sins. Breaking the fast at the end of Yom Kippur, where we joyously consume plates of herring in sour cream with the rest of our temple family.

It does seem like a lot of the tradition is about food. And yes, I do love the food that goes with all the holidays. But even more I love the sense of community I get from my synagogue at home, and from the Jewish people I meet when I travel. Maybe because we have always been a minority, and often a persecuted minority, there is a feeling of kinship with strangers when I discover they are Jewish.

When my mother died in February of this year, it was my temple family who helped me through it (along with my real family, of course, and also my Retrospect family when you gave me such wonderful comments on my story about her, This Story Is Not About Cooking). The rabbi and the cantor both called me to offer their support as soon as they heard the news. I met with the rabbi two days after my mother died when I could barely talk about her without bursting into tears. The rabbi asked me if I wanted to have a shiva service, which would be held within the week after burial, and I said I don’t know, I don’t think I can do anything right now. Then she told me there was something called shloshim, which comes at the end of 30 days of mourning. So eventually I decided to have a shloshim service. I’m so glad I did! The rabbi and cantor both came to my house, along with about 40 other people — choir members, mah jongg players, my book group, the old Girl Scout troop, colleagues from work, and more. We had a beautiful service with music (clarinet, violin, and piano, as well as voices), eulogies (I read my Retrospect story), and poems, and yes, a couple of prayers including, of course, the Kaddish. Performing this ritual, surrounded by people who cared about me, was incredibly healing.

This week is Passover, and it was important to me to have a seder on Monday, the first night. I made my charoset from the same recipe I use every year, a mixture of apples, walnuts, cinnamon, honey, and wine that represents the bricks and mortar used by the Israelites in Egypt. We had the horseradish, the shank bone, the roasted egg, the greens, and the bitter herbs, each in its little compartment on the seder plate. Of course we also had the feminist orange, added after a rabbi 20 years ago allegedly said “Women belong on the bimah as much as an orange belongs on the seder plate.” Sure, we rushed through a lot of the ritual and skipped a bunch of pages in the Haggadah, but we covered the basics. We were slaves in Egypt and now we are free. Sometimes traditions can just be comforting, even if you don’t really have faith.

Today I’m thinking about all the women I have worked with. Some have been bosses, many many colleagues, and now I have two women who are my employees (heaven help them). I want to honor the women who taught me how to work:

Cathy, the nurse manager at UCSF who hired me fresh out of nursing school and encouraged me to apply for a promotion and then another one.

Lisa and Lucille at Natus Medical – Lisa who was kind to me when I was pregnant and fought for me when I needed that, and Lucille who showed me how being a woman meant having the biggest brain in the room.

In my job today I am fortunate beyond words to work alongside women who model kindness, ferocity, intelligence, hard work, confidence, respect, loyalty, compassion, collaboration, compromise, strategic thinking, integrity, and humor in the face of — well, in the face of everything. I call them my Pantheon of Stanford Goddesses.

Women who helped me learn to work hard at motherhood and in the domestic sphere hold a special place in my heart, my own mother of course, my extended family, and many friends and neighbors.

A special shout out to working women who aren’t mothers and mothers who “don’t work” (insert hysterical laughter here) and who stood with me while I was living in that complex undifferentiated ambiguous space.

Is there room left for women artists and poets I love? That work is not a hobby, no matter how many times we’ve been told that.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I wear red for you, and my blood flows red for you every day. #IWD

I posted the above thoughts on Facebook on March 8, 2017, In honor of International Women’s Day. Several groups planned events called, variously, “Day Without Women” and “Women’s Strike,” etc, but I didn’t want to miss work. I’m making a difference there after a long time treading the proverbial water, so I wore red along with several of my colleagues, and I kicked some ass (which is what I get to do, now that I’m a Director and all). Ladies with a lot on their minds sometimes are slow to do all the things they love, but it’s never too late to share good news.

The fact that I am woman of a certain age makes it easier to understand why I never played baseball as a child. I think I would have loved playing growing up, in a sand lot, the way my husband did, but that game is way way over. Our son played Little League for many years, an experience that turned me into a serious fan. (You can listen to me read a poem about the mom-fan years here — last name starts with a B.) Then the San Francisco Giants won the World Series in 2010 and I thought I would lose my mind. Where had I been all my life? Not watching this game that clearly is the best and most fun thing ever.

The first winning season I’m sure there was a second baseman somewhere, but you really couldn’t see much past the pitching that year. Oh Timmy, we hardly knew you.

During the Giant’s second winning season (2012), Marco Scutaro turned me into a Second Baseman Woman. You’ve heard men refer to a man who likes to look at a woman’s legs as “a leg man,” and one who prefers to watch a woman’s wonderful and strong rear end as “an ass man” right?  Well this is like that. I like men who play second base. (And if you are thinking about other kinds of first and second bases, well, that’s not entirely wrong, but not the point of this story!) The agility, the speed, the twisting and unexpected lightning turns in mid air! The jumps and leaps and impossible lunges across the indefinite space between second and first base, not to mention that sexy infield shift move, or all the times they get stepped on defending a steal from first. How many other players routinely get cleats in their shins?? I mean, com’on. And the way they get their uniforms completely dirty from rolling around on top of each other… moan…

Marco Scutaro was my hero of the 2012 season ’cause he was old (for a major league player) and he could crush the ball with RISP and he was just all around awesome with his slightly scruffy chin and soulful eyes. If you watched the last game of the NLCS, you’ll never forget him standing on the field when it was over in the pouring rain like an avenging and very dirty angel.

But he’s retired now, gone the way of many second basemen who wreck their backs with all that twisting and lunging. Thankfully the Giants have Joe Panik, or Joe Baby Panik, as I like to call him, who would be my favorite player these days if it weren’t for Hunter Honey Pence, as I like to call him, or Twitchy Pants when he’s on a roll. And even if Joe is sometimes benched when his back acts up (remember the leaping and sprawling?) there’s the almost more adorable Kelby Tomlinson (think Clark Kent). Here they are, doing some awesome second basemen things.

Joe Panik most awkwardly throwing mid-flying leap

Kelby Tomlinson avoiding the cleats and still making the catch

My son never played second base much. He was a catcher and an outfielder. That’s probably just as well. I don’t think it’s healthy for moms to lust after their sons the way I lust after the men who play second base. Oh my.