Of Tracks in Time
For Leo and Ruby
The sweet sounds of my grandchildren surround me as they
play on the floor of my study. Though they have come into my space, I feel as
though I am in theirs, feeling as a voyeur listening, peering over my desk or
even bending to look under it as they engage with each other. Drawing on a
recent trip to Belgium, I had planned to write a very different piece, a
deeper, reflective one on journeys and delays along the way of getting to where
we are going, and of what we learn in between. I had taken notes and had even
begun to write, stealing away to my study as the little ones slept in, thinking
I had a few hours to work as they woke into the day and had breakfast. Truth to
tell, I was feeling untrue to myself and to them in not spending every possible
moment together, especially such simple, unscripted moments as of a day’s
beginning. Seeming to sense my longing, they soon found their way to my study
and have now made it quite their own.

Leo is standing up now on the arm of the sofa in my study
and playing with the train cars from so long ago that sit on a few remaining
pieces of track on top of the old wooden file cabinet. I tell him of the
electric train set given to me when I was not much older than him, describing
the ever-circling journeys that played out on the table my dad built, lights
shining along the track, a distant whistle sounding through time, days of
glory.
Ruby calls to Leo, “Yea’o,” as she pronounces his name,
“don’t you want to play with me?” As big brother comes down to the floor, the
two begin to put together the old wooden train tracks of another train set, one
that their mother and her brother and sister once played with. Of journeys and
generations, tracks joining from one generation to another, the two reach into
the firm, blue and white cardboard box that waits for them between visits. They
take out the wooden tracks, setting them on the floor, and with a sense of
wonder they hold up the still brightly colored wooden train cars, as though
musing on the distance traveled, a moment of time and conveyance suspended.



Telling of journeys and generations, the Slonimer Rebbe
reaches all the way back along the track to the holy Baal Shem Tov, the founder
of Chassidism, who taught, all the
journeys of Israel were forty-two and they correspond to (the journeys) of each
person from the day of their birth until they return to their world, so from
the day of one’s birth and going forth from their mother’s womb, it is in the
aspect of the Exodus from Egypt, as is known, and afterwards journeying from
journey to journey until one returns to the land of the living above…. The
journeys in the Torah are to teach the upright way/l’horot ha’derech
ha’yashar…, to know the way in which one should go all the days of one’s life,
to journey from journey to journey//lesah me’masah l’masah. The Slonimer
then adds words of his own, telling of time and timelessness, this parasha is speaking to each and every
generation and to each and every individual/l’chol dor va’dor u’l’chol yachid
v’yachid, that as one passes through all the days of one’s life it is in the
aspect of the forty-two journeys (of Israel)….

It is time to go and to give undivided attention now, in the
way of Shabbos, of journeys and generations, of tracks in time, of homecoming.
Victor Reinstein
Victor Reinstein
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