Section 1

The Treasure

Sometimes we have to travel far to discover what is near.

There is a wonderful children’s book, The Treasure by Uri Shulevitz. In it, a very poor man named Isaac dreams of finding a treasure in a city very far from his home. Isaac tries ignoring his dream but it won’t go away. So one day he packs his things, puts on a heavy coat and hat, and sets off. He travels over hills and dales, fields and mountains. It is a long hard journey but he perseveres. Sometimes people stop and help him but often he goes alone. When he reaches his destination he discovers a guard standing at the very spot where the treasure is supposed to be. Day after day Isaac returns to this spot but each time he finds the guard stationed there. After many days, the guard, not understanding why Isaac returns to this spot, turns to him and asks, “Old man, why are you here?” Learning about his dream, the guard laughs.

“Foolish man,” he says, “if I believed in dreams I’d go to the town where a man named Isaac lives and I’d go to his house and dig under his stove. A treasure is buried there.”

Isaac thanks the guard and sets off again for the long journey home. When he arrives, he does as the guard instructed and discovers jewels and gold. In appreciation to the guard he sends him some jewels. He also builds a chapel for travelers with a sign that says, “Sometimes we have to travel far to discover what is near.”

I first heard this story from my friend and colleague, Florence Meyer, who told it to her stress reduction class. Observing the class, I was captivated as she described how Isaac “kicked open his door.” To demonstrate this, Florence took a breath and thrust out her own leg, giving us a sense of the energy and force Isaac needed to venture out into the unknown in search of a treasure he had seen only in a dream. As she told the story, I found my eyes tearing up. The story seemed to symbolize the distance I had traveled to discover the treasure buried inside of me.

To come home to myself and find that I am a treasure feels like a miracle. It’s sweet and simple and seems to happen each time I can let go of my harsh internal monitor or my expectations of how I THINK things should be. If I can steady myself and simply investigate the sensation in my body or the thought that’s causing me to be angry or hurt or disappointed without judgment, a deep letting go, a melting of old defenses and hurts comes. I can truly be at home, at peace, quiet and still joy bubbles up and I’m lighter and freer.

Buddhism talks about suffering and the end of suffering. “Cling to nothing,” the texts say. “Everything is impermanent.” My mind knows this but I don’t like it. Letting go doesn’t come easy for me. When I quiet down, rather than instant happiness I sometimes feel a lingering sadness, a heaviness located in the center of my chest in the area of the heart. Feeling this isn’t pleasant.

“Sometimes it takes a while for grief to leave the body,” Sylvia Boorstein, a teacher of mine, reassured me on a retreat. Sylvia’s statement comforted me. She spoke to me with sympathy and understanding. There was no blaming or judging. She didn’t correct me or make me feel like a failure as a meditator. Her response helped me let go of my unhappiness at not being happy. Perhaps, I thought, I just needed more time to release old patterns and hurts, imagined and real, from my past. I needed to trust that this moment, here for me now, was the treasure, and there was NOTHING I had to do but allow it to unfold. It helped to take the time to be on retreat, another treasure, surrounded by good people, great food, and a lovely setting. The only demand on me was that I be considerate of others and not come into the meditation hall late, be noisy or push ahead in the food line. I could do that.

Cancer motivated me to use the time I had as fully as possible. It pushed me to examine what really made me happy and what really allowed me to be well. Until I confronted death and the mini deaths of hair loss, identity changes, physical and mental limitations, I could be lazy. I didn’t really have to let go, pay attention and be present. Chemotherapy did more than eradicate cancer cells. It also seemed to burn away some of the neurotic underpinnings of my life, the if only’s. If only I were taller than five feet. If only my memory were better. If only I was smarter, wiser, thinner, more patient. My effort to be well absorbed my attention. I couldn’t afford to be angry or overly self-critical: it zapped too much energy. I needed to focus on what could support and enliven me: the resources and riches buried under my stove in my very own house.

Like Isaac, I am not young, beautiful or rich. I’m ethnic-looking and I sweat. I can be schmaltzy and very emotional. I’m stubborn, impractical and determined. I also persevere in the face of challenges and am willing to take risks.

I was born in 1943 to Jewish parents in Mt. Vernon, New York. My father, “smilin’ Jack” Rosenbaum, was the older of two sons. He was a paint salesman, charming, warm and impractical. He used to remind me to smile, which I didn’t appreciate at the time. My mother would have to urge him to get to work in the morning. Dad preferred sitting at his desk, going through papers and jotting down inspirational sayings from books he got in the library. Later, when I’d ride with him in his car, which also served as his office as he drove through the south Bronx going from paint store to paint store, I’d notice some of these sayings in different colored inks on a sticker on the dashboard:

 

You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow
from flying over your head,
But you can prevent them
from building nests in your hair.

“Jaack! It’s late!” My mother, a 4'11" dynamo with big breasts that she always complained about, would yell at my father as he sat at his desk writing down yet another saying. Dad had no sense of time. He was very thoughtful and went out of his way to please my mother but he wanted to do it his way and in his own time frame.

“Who wears the pants?” he’d cry out when he thought she was pushing him around too much. Mom, who worried more than Dad and was less easily satisfied, could get VERY angry and frustrated at him. Growing up poor, the second youngest of eight children, she worried about money. Conscious of being a child of poor immigrants in upstate New York, she felt the effects of anti-Semitism and felt different. Born between a sickly older sister, Ethel, and a boy, Larry, who as a boy and the youngest was special, she felt inadequate and unloved. Mom, warm, intuitive and loving, also wished she were richer, didn’t live with her in-laws and had gone to college. She was very sensitive and easily hurt. I, her daughter, the oldest, also struggled with feeling I wasn’t good enough and couldn’t satisfy her no matter how hard I tried. I did not think I was a treasure . . . but I wanted to be one, as did she. Neither of us believed it was possible.

When I was in my thirties and divorced, I decided it was time to stop complaining and give myself what I felt had been denied me growing up. I gave myself ballet lessons, I began playing the saxophone in a sax choir for adult beginners, and I painted a mural on the walls in my bedroom that covered the entire room. I’d change it as the mood took me. Across from my bed were birches, graceful and aesthetic. Leaves grew lushly on each branch in different shades of green. The sky was blue and cloudless. It was springtime and serenity greeted me as I woke up. On the large wall to the right of my bed was a very large oak with broad branches supporting creatures of the imagination.

I spent days and nights painting the trunk, branches, and roots of the tree. I used house paint, pastels and acrylics. My father had given me colored tints and I mixed my own paint. The wall was large and I used it all, painting my emotions, my passion, my fears and uncertainties. Coming home late at night, taking out my brushes, the different mediums I used for color and texture, I filled every part of the wall and moved to the door and over the entranceway. My tree was broad and full. Its roots were equally large and wide, filling a greater part of the bottom of the wall. The tree had depth, variety, and color. I’d add to it late at night, creating new images or adding more color to its branches. It appeared strong and solid and graceful. It reached out and up.

When my mother came to visit me she looked at the mural, sighed and said, “I guess that’s you.”

My name is Elana. It means tree in Hebrew. Elana, tree, Elan, spirit. Elana, the name I had been called when I spent a year in Israel when I was a junior in college. Elana, a name with a lovely cadence, promise, possibilities, connecting me to historic roots and offering me a future of hope and freedom. I was not born with this name. I gave it to myself after my divorce in 1975, when I returned to my maiden name, Rosenbaum. I no longer felt like Ellen Rosenbaum, that girl from Mt. Vernon who was so insecure and inadequate, so unhappy.

During my illness, as I struggled to find the treasure of equanimity, the image of a tree came back to me. This time I focused not on its trunk or branches, but on its roots, imagining them going deep, deep down, pushing through crumbling soil and moving towards moisture and nourishment. The roots support the tree. They are its foundation, allowing it to rise high and put out branches and leaves that touch the sun, the air, the wind, and the rain.

Each time I return to my breath, each time I come back to the present moment, I imagine my roots becoming stronger, keeping me upright as I move through seasons and climate change, braving the elements of my mind, my wants and desires, disappointments and losses, to bring me home again, to the treasures that are here now.

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