corner of the world, is part of a huge scheme for the
propagation of a species.
“What do I know?” thought Avrom.
He walked into Simon’s room, switched on the light
and pulled open the blinds, “Good morning, Simon.
Time to wake up.” No movement. Waking Simon was a
task. He never woke easily. He relished the comfort of
the bed. The little boy stretched and yawned but didn’t
rise. He turned back into the sheets, pulling up the
blanket.
“Simon,” Avrom almost yelled. “Get up!”
Nothing.
“If you don’t get out of bed, I’m going to smear honey
all over you and bring in a pack of wild coyotes,” Av-
rom said, with mock sternness.
Simon bit at the joke. He jumped up, a look of alarm
on his face. Not scared of the coyotes, but amused by
Dad’s inventive discipline. He smiled. They did this
every morning that Dad woke him up.
Avrom smiled, too. He was thankful for the coyotes’
assistance. Avrom would feel so frustrated when Simon
wouldn’t obey him, even over relatively small things.
It was partly because the kid would commit the same
offenses again and again. It was the old parent’s refrain,
“If I’ve said this once I’ve said it a thousand times,” but
on a deeper level, not knowing what to do or how to be
sure he was doing the best thing, frightened Avrom.
It was hard for him to discipline or punish Simon. He’d
shout threats that he didn’t mean or wouldn’t carry
out, which he knew just made the matter worse. Simon
was a little boy; he needed guidance, but Avrom had
no role model of how to be a father. Sure, he could see
how it should be done. There were examples. But he
lacked the emotional imprint that comes from experi-
encing a father’s guiding hand in his own life. Lack of
discipline had been his dilemma and his downfall.
As he made Rachel’s turkey sandwich and put some
chips in a baggie, Avrom gazed at the window, beyond
which the blossoms were blurs of color. Looking at the
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transparent glass separating the clean, dry, warm living
space from the outdoors, he thought about a civiliza-
tion that could turn sand into glass, transmit infor-
mation through midair, create weapons of mass de-
struction and waste billions of dollars on meaningless
fads and fashions, while being unable to solve so many
basic problems. Focusing on the flowers, he thought
about the simple mystery underlying it all.
After his constant struggle to make sense of the con-
cept of God, what an irony it was that Avrom’s new life,
in which he was at least willing to be sober and respon-
sible, depended upon a belief in what could be referred
to as a higher power.
Despite his beliefs and doubts, and because of the
gift of desperation, Avrom had begun to pray. He was
honest when he said that intellectually he didn’t be-
lieve in God, that his mind could imagine a million
arguments against the existence of a God that cares
or intervenes on his behalf. “Why care for my future,
or me?” thought Avrom, “and not care for some child
somewhere being raped? And to think that God would
have a mission for my life, what is that but ego?”
Despite all those doubts and disbeliefs, and because
of his recovery from drugs and alcohol, Avrom had
begun to pray. It didn’t matter whether there was a
God or not, nor whether his prayers were heard by
anything. He did it as a ritual, a discipline, which is
something that had been sorely lacking in his life. It
was part of the actions he took, whether they made
sense or not, which kept him sober. The fact that his
life was so much better overruled the need for debate,
or to even make sense.
Not long ago, while he and Suzanne were praying
before going to bed in their Paris hotel room, offering
words to a God he couldn’t define or didn’t particu-
larly believe existed, it dawned on him that if he didn’t
believe, he was alone.
He wasn’t alone in the sense of loneliness; he had
Suzanne in his life. She was his wife, lover and best
friend, a compatriot and a confidant. But all his life
he had always had the burden of deciding, of know-
ing what to do, how to live. It rested on his shoulders,
alone. He had been trying to figure everything out,