Personal Heritage

Mom's Books

In the thesaurus, heritage and inheritance interchange; in my mind they mean different things.

Inheritances are the castles that parents leave behind when they die so their offspring can invest in keeping them in shape for occupancy.

Heritage is the culture and wisdom of the ages that bestowed on each of us from the immediate society into which we were born.

These are my personal explanations and how I understand the meaning of the words.

Inside the global, more encompassing heritage - for example the collective knowing of being a Jew in Israel - there is a personal heritage. This is what was left for me from my family, to me and no other - in my case, my mother's poems.

I had left in a box her books, the ones she wrote, the one not published yet, and the books she had translated. There are many.  I would very much like to update them all unto a disk of some sort so it can be published on the internet, but I'm not sure how to go about it.  So they are left in a big carton box that carries a title, "mom books".

Last night, a cousin of mine, who volunteers in her local school as a teacher aide, called.  She needed to check on the specific words to a poem.  She recalled most of the words, only a sentence or two escaped her. I opened the box, then the book, and here on page 42 was the poem.  She quickly wrote them down so she can teach the poem to her class.

That phone call caused me to tear.  It’s been a very long time since anyone remembered my mother's poems.

297th Day of Praise -

I thank you God that you reminded me my heritage, my personal heritage, which is connected to who I am, to my being in Israel and also is connected to my present and future assignments in this land.

Shabbat Shalom,

Orith