A necessary pause Although I wanted to write about my
second visit to the Etz Hayyim synagogue in Crete, I couldn’t. Looming over me
were images from the Boston massacre, the face, in particular, of the eight
year old pushing on the restraining rope while cheering for his Dad. That seemed
a lifetime ago, a compacted span of pain and brutality born of a hate filled
ideology I’d spent years studying and teaching about. Clearing my mind of its
ugliness was essential as dressing an open wound.
Who or what could I turn to? I thought of the parents of the
little boy. Trying to think of something I might say to them, an appropriate
condolence, brought me to tears. What if it had been my child? Or yours?
Unbearable. There were no words, no “I’m so sorry” that I
could say without trembling so badly I wouldn’t get past the first word. Almost
automatically, I turned my key in the ignition, willed my car to find a place
to go.
It seemed to respond. I headed down Highway 29 toward
Greensboro, NC but turned off when I saw the Business 29 sign. Close to there
was a ramshackle auction house I’d gone to once. Was it a year or two ago? I
didn’t know; it didn’t matter. No one knew me there; no one seemed to know about
much of anything there other than the plastic gimmicks that seldom sold for
more than eleven or twelve bucks.
I didn’t have a map, couldn’t have told anyone where it was
or what road it was on. But I thought I knew. Instinct guided me. After
following the road’s path for miles alongside the railroad tracks to
Greenville, SC, I came to a traffic light and turned right.
Less than two miles later, I saw it. Characters I recognized
by their old jeans, worn t-shirts, and mostly smoked cigarettes leaned against
the rails of a treated-lumber ramp. They spoke in a language I understand but
can’t mimic. One of them talked about batteries for the hearing aids he’d left
at home.
I walked past them and went inside. As I remembered,
ceilings and walls were unpainted, patched together pieces of drywall and
plywood, a stage with a perch for the auctioneer in the corner at one end of
the room. A hole in the veneer at the other end served as the snack bar, its
counter there.
Chairs were orderly. And old. They may have been throwaways
from various doctor’s offices. Children stood on them; they were durable that
way. They might last forever; they were the same chairs I’d seen the last time.
Mine was stiff, but comfortable. Although I couldn’t rock
back due to its steel frame, I didn’t feel squeezed. Two old ladies next to me were admiring the
box of green queen-sized bed sheets they’d just won for nine dollars. They
weren’t interested in the pair of knives in a nice gold covered cardboard box
for ten.
“How much for this eight piece king-sized comforter set?
Will you give me twenty?” the auctioneer began. No one wanted the zebra striped
combo; there were no bids until he dropped to eight.
In that room, I saw the same people I had seen the first
time I stumbled into that place. I saw the same cardboard boxes filled with police
caliber flashlights that plug into your car’s cigarette lighter and plastic
horses that go up and down on a two-foot pole. I saw the same gray-haired man
with hair to his shoulders and most of his teeth who I’d seen the last time. He
was still selling things at “just enough to pay for them” prices. He may have
been the owner.
After twenty minutes, my head had cleared. That place had
worked its magic. Nothing there held or distracted me. It was what it was;
there were no pretenses, no antiques to marvel at, no dealers to bid against,
no windows to the world outside.
No one cared that I came or went, but I wanted to thank all
of them for being there. It had been my stop along the way to processing the
horror that had blocked me from writing about my return trip to the synagogue
in Crete.
It had felt like touching home plate on a baseball diamond
when no one was watching.
Although it was dark, I knew my way home.
B.Koplen 4/21/13
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