It’s midmorning, a day off for my preschooler, and we’re on the couch reading a book called “The Shabbat Puppy” (thank you, PJ Library). It’s about a grandfather-grandson pair who go on weekly walks in search of “Shabbat shalom,” sabbath peace. They find it in butterflies that land on their shoes and snowflakes that land on their gloves and a mother duck gliding across the pond with her ducklings. In the beginning of the story, the grandfather won’t allow the family puppy, Mazel, to join the peaceful walks – too rambunctious. By the end (spoiler alert!), Mazel grows up, Grampa relents and the duo becomes a trio.
My little guy, Benji, is in a major doggie phase, so he’s all about Mazel. I’m in a major personal growth phase, and also majorly preoccupied with world issues as of late, so I’m all about the characters’ mindfulness ritual. They’ve carved out time each week to, as the saying goes, stop and smell the roses. It’s something I don’t do enough but decide to try this very day, even though it’s not Shabbat, because, as the saying goes, there’s no time like the present. And some shalom is sounding pretty good, pretty necessary, right about now.
I share my grand plan with Benji, who is less in need of a perspective shift and also unmoved by my “You’ll be just like Mazel!” pitch. He declines, and I don’t push him because I can’t imagine such an exercise would have its intended effect with an unwilling participant. Plus, I have backup child care because my husband’s working from home. I can take my mindful walk while Benji mindfully watches “Spidey and His Amazing Friends.”
We live in a planned suburban community in South Florida, basically rows and rows of very similar houses built around man-made bodies of water. I figure I’m most likely to find some sort of natural beauty around one of these “lakes,” and I’m right, greeted almost immediately with a scene straight out of “The Shabbat Puppy”: a mallard and her band of ducklings waddling and pecking around the lawn across the water. Their feet are an impossibly vibrant orange. I zoom out and notice the same vibrancy in the green of the grass and the blue of the sky.
A breeze blows through, and I open my hand to catch it. A woodpecker with a red head taps on a nearby tree. Two Blue Jays zip by, and I think of my sons playing chase. I hear a tweet above me and spot a small warbler with a white chest that looks more like fur than feathers. (And I don’t even like birds!)
An intricate spider web catches my eye, full of what at first looks like schmutz but is probably a collection of small bugs. The leaves the web clings to are round and waxy and almost seem fake, but they’re real. The towering palm trees, though strategically placed by the housing developer, are also real – and really beautiful. I’ve always found the fountain in the middle of the manufactured lake pretty cheesy, but today the wind blows its spray sideways, and there’s a rainbow reflected in the mist.
At this point my hokey earnestness starts to make me cringe, but it’s true: I feel content and buoyant and awed, awash with shalom and abuzz with life’s possibilities – which is, I think, the whole point of rose-smelling to begin with. In a world of panic headlines and quick dopamine hits, where politics can feel all-consuming and it takes almost no effort at all to check out, it’s easy to forget to check in, which is a major lesson of Shabbat, but also something we can take with us any day of the week. From our overflowing bins and shelves and piles, Benji couldn’t have picked a better book at a better time.
As much as my walk was a huge relief and possibly transformative (too soon to tell), I’m not sure our family is yet at the point where we can commit to making this a weekly ritual. Not only is regularly dedicating the time a tall order, but such an exercise takes genuine buy-in, and I don’t think I can expect it from my kids at ages 8, 6 and 4. They’ll happily zoom around the block on their scooters, but suggest they go by foot, and reactions range from Benji’s earlier “nah” to full-on mutiny. It’s not that I couldn’t force a walk – I am the mom, after all. But you can’t force peace.
I want so badly for my children to learn to live in the moment, to feel the awe and gratitude central to the Jewish experience and probably to happiness in general. I don’t want them to lose sight of the big picture, and I want them to know the option to tune out and cut through the noise is always available to them, even and especially when it gets as loud as it’s been lately. But maybe, like Grampa did with Mazel, I’ll have to wait for them to grow up a little.
Meanwhile, I can keep working on this stuff myself, can try to remain present, to take my eyes off my phone and my mind off the future at times, not only for my own sanity, but also so I’m available to notice any flashes of everyday magic to point out to the kids – interesting shapes in the clouds, cool bugs, that sort of thing. Hopefully these casual, organic observations will land (I’m breezy!), but regardless, I’ll take all the shalom I can get…even if just for myself, for now.
