In 2020, I started playing around with “birthday gematria,” using the Hebrew numerology system that assigns numerical values to each letter. Add up the values for the letters in a word, and every word can have a value, too. Sometimes that gives us timeless Jewish truths (18 is the numerical value of chai, life, leading us to give tzedakah in increments of 18), and sometimes it’s just fun (I once did a whole series of Pittsburgh Steelers’ gematria based on uniform numbers when the team was playing in the Super Bowl).
Unfortunately, my age in 2020, 47, left me with the letters mem and zayin, and the only reasonable word I could make with those was . . . Zoom. Not the encouragement I needed in the summer of 2020, let me tell you.
Today, I turned 53, so let’s try again.
Fifty is nun, and three is gimel. Both are letters on the dreidl, but it’s July so let’s make the word…
Gan. Garden.
I’m a mediocre gardener, except for the grapevine on the porch that I didn’t plant, but which I have maintained for twelve years and managed not to kill. This year, I’m trying to learn lessons that have escaped me for the previous fifty-two:
- I will not get as much work done in one burst as I think I will.
- Despite that, each individual task I am dreading is actually a good bit shorter and easier than I imagine it to be.
- The thing I say “can wait,” can’t always wait.
- Tomatoes, blueberries, and herbs do not simply appear out of benign neglect.
- Simon the Groundhog – and Harry the Dog – like these foods as much as I do. We are not on the same page when it comes to the garden.
- Nonetheless, even if I only get a handful of berries or enough basil for one jar of pesto each year, there is something worthwhile in the process.
- I can’t just garden “sometimes.” I’m never “done.” It’s a thing I need to keep at.
The very first Garden was given to human beings with the instructions, “l’ovdah u’l’shomrah,” to work it and to keep it. But because Hebrew words often mean multiple things, l’ovdah can also mean “to serve it.”
Understanding things that way makes it a good metaphor for my work in primary care. My job is to serve people and to care for them – keep them, to use the Torah’s word. Keep them alive, keep them well, and keep them close, not losing track or forgetting about them. The lessons I’m struggling to internalize about the plants outside my house also go for the people in my office. I can’t accomplish everything in one visit – but I also don’t need as much time as I think I do to make sure a person understands how to take their meds, or ask what they’re really worried about, or make it clear that it really matters to me what happens to them. I am not always on the same page as the people I take care of – but that doesn’t make us enemies, just partners who need to find a good compromise. The rewards are often small, but precious – and getting there is as valuable to me as being there. And of course, I am never done.
That’s enough for today. Wishing all of us a fruitful year of growth and caring. Be sure to catch tomorrow’s new episode (Ep. 18!) of Healing People, Not Patients with Rev. Dr. Anastasia Holman. And circle back here at the end of the week for more.
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