My husband had an uncle who lost his job at some point. Apparently he couldn’t find another and couldn’t face the disgrace of not having a job. Every day he got up, got dressed like usual, took the lunch his wife packed for him and left the house as if he were going to work. Every day for years. Until he could “safely” say he was retired.

They say that men define themselves by their work and women don’t. I’m thinking maybe they had in mind an earlier age in time.

I think I basically retired.

I’ve never had a normal job – well, when I was pregnant with our oldest daughter who just turned 35, I worked for The State of Wisconsin updating licensing for nursing homes. You don’t get much more normal than that, I suppose. Punched a clock, checked paperwork all day and could’ve made more money working at MacDonalds.

But generally speaking, I’ve always had jobs where I’ve made my own decisions, kept my own hours on a per project basis and noone really knew what I was doing or where I was doing it.

When I was in college I worked for a labor union – long since defunct – whose regional offices were 300 miles away in Chicago and national offices were in New York. My job was to show a strike film to rank-and-file around the state of Wisconsin. In 6 months I might have shown that film 3 times. It’s a family joke to this day.

But I turned into a responsible person at some point and  worked harder and put in more hours in my self-devised frameworks than lots of people do in the places where the clock gets punched.  No dropping the pencil mid-sentence at exactly 4 o’clock for me.

I planned building projects and supervised them going up on virgin hills. I took SOS calls when electricity went out in the middle of the night or contractors threatened to walk off the job. I spoke to the press at the sites of terrorist attacks, political rallies and at dramatic turns of events of all kinds. I solicited philanthropic funds all over the world.

Wow! I’m even impressing myself!

And then, about two years ago, I stopped.

It didn’t happen in a day, or a week or a month.

I started screening my calls from the media, taking only those from the largest agencies that I couldn’t ignore. I started skimming the newspaper, checking only one or two news sites and only once or twice a day.

All those articles about lowering your tension levels by giving up reading the news? They’re true. Ahhhh! How nice not to know. And what do we know from reading the news anyway? As Mark Twain said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.” Wise man.

I had stopped taking on new clients several years previously  in theory. I turned theory into reality. Slowly but surely, my “current projects”  finished up and became past clients.

I’d begun listening to dharma podcasts and found myself, more and more, listening to them on my morning walk instead of listening to music. And the music I listened to at the end of the podcasts changed. Until one day, or over a period of several months, I came to the realization that the principles had been soaked up into the very fabric of my thinking, feeling and  behavior and the calming music had become my music default.

I found a yoga class I loved and found that yoga added to meditation added to dharma equaled a peaceful happiness that served me and all those around me well.

Sounds idyllic, right?

There was this one little cloud on the horizon. When people would ask that question “So, what are you up to these days?” I heard myself hedging. Making the 3 clients I still handle sound like a real job. Embellishing the help I give a friend who’s directing a big project in the Galilee and the Negev.  Hinting at a busyness that, in actuality, has more to do with travelling around the country to see my granddaughters than anything else.

Had I become Gershon’s Uncle Sam? Metaphorically taking the packed lunch off to “as if” work every morning? Was my definition of myself really that dependent on my work and the status of what I do as I perceive it in the eyes of others?

I practiced the other night answering that question differently. No hints of greatness or fame. Her: “So, what are you up to these days?” Me: “I’m doing alot of yoga and meditation.” Her: Those are the main things you’re doing?!?”

YIKES!!

Me: “Yep.”

Oh, so proud of myself. I did it. I stopped packing my lunch. I retired.

Now I just have to worry about how it’ll be when Gershon retires. You know the adage – “For better or for worse, but not for lunch.”

Thursday is one of my favorite days of the week.

When I open my eyes on Thursdays as 6 a.m. approaches, my body decides for me whether or not to head out on my usual hour walk through the misty valley and up the little mountain near my house. Lately I’ve been trying to remember to say the morning blessing of gratitude for waking up to another day and sometimes that 30 seconds is just enough to fight off the temptation to close my eyes and roll over again into that blissful morning slumber.

By 7:15 the house smells like fresh-ground coffee and there’s freshly sliced fruit on the table – the best in the world. My husband is the morning chef, like his father before him and our older son, who’s continuing the tradition.

After our morning schmooze, I’m out of the house by 8:30 to get to my weekly hour and a half yoga class in Jerusalem. After trying yoga about a dozen times in various studios from California to New York to Jerusalem, I’d about given up on it when I happened onto Rachel’s class. Wow! She does a holistic yoga which includes special breathing and stretches which ease my relatively inflexible body into delicious poses.

Most Thursdays I round up our younger son from the beautiful new Supreme Court Building where he’s clerking and we go to the nearby Mahane Yehuda Shuk for lunch.

Rafi lived just 3 blocks from The Shuk for his last two years of law school and acquired a love for The Shuk to rival my own. He and I wander The Shuk, buying a few things but mostly soaking up the sounds and the colors.

The one place we never miss is Oz the fish monger’s basta. Oz is the very quintessence of basterionarim. A grumpy middle-aged Sephardi guy who always has a 3-day growth of dark beard and a scowl on his face. Despite the demeanor, now that I’ve been buying fresh fish there once or twice every week for a year, he hurls endearments my way instead of insults.

Oz's Father Helps Out at Oz's Basta

“Where’ve you been, Mami,” he shouts when I’ve been out of the country for a few weeks. Or “I’ve been saving two of my most beautiful trout for you, Metuka Sheli.” (my sweet one)…and he has.

Further on is “my” spice man. The smells and colors…nothing compares. I often wonder how he supports his family selling 100 grams of mustard seeds and 200 grams of cardamon. But there he’s been for the past 30 years I’ve been coming to The Shuk. And like most of the basterionarim at The Shuk, he probaby inherited the basta from his father.

Most of the basterionarim in The Shuk have little education. Many of them did not complete high school. Alot of them are rich. Their day begins before dawn and they work hard all day. They’re as honest as the day is long (maybe a tad less honest with tourists). You can trust their word. They’re good to their clients…though they probably don’t call it customer relations.  Oz isn’t the only one who “saves” his best produce for his preferred customers. Sometimes they tell shoppers they’re out of something only to pull that same something out of the back room for their regular clients.

My husband markets fruit to wholesalers, some of whom also have bastas at The Shuk. We’ve gotten to know many of them very well and are invited to their family simchas (family events). Often there are tables and tables of just men…basterionarim. Their wives aren’t encouraged to go out alot but if they do come along they’re always amazing to look at. Dressed like celebs with the kind of high heels it’s suicidal to fall off of. Danskos are so much more comfortable but, oh!, those high heels are to die for.

One basta I frequent for vegetables is owned by an Arab man who is a 2nd generation basta owner. His son works alongside him every now and then – but rarely. We talked about it one day and he sounded a little bitter. He said that he’s not willing for his son to live the life he lives. In spite of his wealth, he said that he regrets not having an education, and is determined that his son (who loves The Shuk) will go to university and do something else with his life.

I get that. It’s a hard life. I’m happy that Rafi is clerking at The Supreme Court instead of getting up at 3 a.m. to stack fruit, dealing with thousands of people a day who want everything a little bit cheaper and falling into bed exhausted at the end of another 15 hours of physical labor.

But The Shuk is still one of the things that make Thursdays one of my favorite days of the week.

What a variety of colors , shapes, smells and sounds! What a variety of humanity passes me by as I wander! What an abundance of the blessings we find here on earth!

“Halva – al ha-sakin!” (halva slices cut fresh) “Agvania b’shekel!” (only one shekel for a kilo of tomatoes)

If I’m given my choice of the top ten places I want to be mindfully in the here and now, Mahane Yehuda is definitely on the list.