Dani Shapiro - Devotion: A Memoir

A woman named Sandra was cradling my head in her hands. We were in a small roomjust the two of usand it was so quiet I could hear the ticking of her watch. The air smelled faintly of eucalyptus. A high window overlooked a parking lot, and beyond the parking lot, mountains. I tried to relaxthat was the point, wasnt it?but I wasnt relaxed at all. I had signed up for something called Master Level Energy Work, thinking it would be like a massage. But this was no massage. For one thing, she was sighing a lot.

After some moments, she spoke. I see some sort of teacher. Do you have teachers in your life?

Yes. A few people came to mind: a man in his seventies who had a shock of white hair and wore baggy suits; another man, younger, with a closely trimmed dark beard; a tiny gray-haired woman, also in her seventies.

Do they assume a form? How do they appear to you?

I hadnt realized talking would be involved. Had I known, I never would have made the appointment. I wanted to lie still and be silent; it was peace I was after. I had been waking up in a cold sweat nearly every night, my heart pounding. I paced my house, worried aboutwell, worried about everything.

Your teachers, Sandra prodded.

Well, sometimes we have coffee, I said. Or we exchange e-mail.

But what do the forms look like? Do you see a light? Do they seemspectral?

Ah. She meant otherworldly teachers. Beneath my closed lids, I rolled my eyes. This wasnt going to work for me, this talk of spirits. I started wondering how long I had been lying there, and how much longer this process was going to take. Would she be insulted if I got up and left? I was twitchy, impatient. Disappointed, too. It was rare that I allowed myself such a self-indulgent, not to mention expensive, hour.

She sighed again, a bit more loudly.

Are you feelingpushed? she asked. Like someones pushing you from behind?

That precise feeling had been plaguing me for as long as I could remember.

Yes, I said. Exactly.

I was always racing. I couldnt settle down. I mean, I was settled down I was happily married and the mother of an eight-year-old boy. But I often felt a sense of tremendous urgency, as if there was a whip at my back. I was fleeing somethingbut what?

Her hands on my neck began to tremble.

Its your father, she said. Your father is pushing you.

Had I told her about my father? No. I thought about what she might have gleaned from looking at me: blond woman, mid-forties; wedding band; tank watch; yoga clothes; a necklace dangling with two charms, M and J. How could she have known that my father was dead? Did I have a tell, like a poker player?

Was your father a religious man? A man of faith?

She said it as if she already knew the answer and was only waiting for my confirmation. I was suddenly very alert.

Yes, he was very religious.

And you have a young son?

I do. She had a fifty-fifty shot of getting that right. The charm necklace was a giveaway that I probably had at least one child. I relaxed a little.

The trembling in Sandras hands grew more pronounced.

Your father apologizes. Hes a very gentle spirit.

A stillness settled over me, gauzy and soft. I wasnt frightened, not exactly. Sandras fingers were hot against my neck. I pictured my father. His sweet round face. His kind, hazel-green eyes behind rimless glasses. His easy smile. Hiya, darling! I could summon his voicealways a bit louder than he meant it to beas surely as if I just heard it yesterday. Hows my girl?

Your father is trying to help you, Sandra said. Thats why you feel pushed. He wants to share with you what he believes. He didnt get a chance to

She broke off. Another heaving sigh.

Is there anything you want to say to your father?

I tried to remember what Sandra looked like: around sixty, reddish hair, a weathered face. Ordinary. Like she might be standing in front of me on line at the supermarket, rather than behind me, her hands on my skull. What was happening between us defied everything I believed, but I had entered a place beyond belief. I was here now. On the other side of logic. In a place that felt true, if not quite real.

That I miss him, I said. My own voice sounded strange and far away. I was weightless, tumbling. Tears began to leak from the corners of my eyes. They soaked my hairline, but I didnt move an inch. Even if my father wasnt in the room, it was the closest I had been to him in twenty years.

He died when I was young, and everything I ameverything Ive become since that dayis because of him. Because I had to make his death mean something.

Sandra moved her hands slightly to the left.

He acknowledges that, she said.

She rocked my head from side to side.

Your father is asking if you want him to stay.

Yes. I was weeping now. My father didnt live long enough to know my husband or son. It was my greatest sorrow. Yes, I want him to stay.

Jacob ran ahead of us toward the wooded banks of the Shepaug River, holding a hunk of bread in his small hands. The air was soft, the sun strong. It was a hot Indian-summer afternoon in the middle of September. Lazy, drunken bees hovered all around. The river seemed more like a creek, the water trickling slowly around dark gray rocks glittering in the brightness.

There were perhaps twenty of usmostly people I didnt knowour heels crunching the dried leaves and twigs as we made our way to the waters edge. In this Connecticut nature preserve where horse trailers lined the parking lot, where the prep school track team trained in the hills, we must have been an odd sight: an assortment of adults and children, dressed more nicely than a walk in the country would seem to call for, carrying bits of bread.

It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and many years had passed since I had last set foot in a synagogue, much less participated in this ritual called tashlich , which follows the long Rosh Hashanah service. I dragged myself to the Shepaug River, fighting my own resistance every step of the way. I had better things to do. Virtually anything seemed like a better thing to do. I could have stayed home and organized my closets. But noI was here. And not only had I come, but I had somehow managedsome might call it a miracleto drag my husband and son with me.

Tamara, the spiritual leader (not a rabbi) of this loosely formed coalition (its not a congregation) of Jews, gathered us around her with quiet authority. She wore a yarmulke on her short-cropped black hair. The first time I saw her, I thought she was a yeshiva boy studying for his bar mitzvah. She passed around copies of the tashlich verse from Samuel 7:6 and we read aloud, our voices lost in the vastness of the forest, the trees towering over our heads.

Who is like You, God, who removes iniquity and overlooks transgression of the remainder of His inheritance. He doesnt remain angry forever because He desires kindness. He will return and He will be merciful to us, and He will conquer our iniquities, and He will cast them into the depths of the seas.

Which is why we were there, on the banks of the Shepaug. To cast our sins into a moving body of water by tossing our bits of bread into the slow-moving trickle until it carried them all away. Sins, be gone. The Shepaug flows into Lake Lillinonah, a dammed portion of the Housatonic River. I pictured small, sodden, radioactive morsels floating downstream, infused with each of our sins, one by one disintegrating in the depths of the lake. I looked around: a local real estate developer had moved off to the side and was standing very still, his lips moving. A mom from Jacobs school stared intently at the trickling water, then hurled a piece of bread as far as she could.