The flickering candles in the meditation hall cast dancing circles on the walls, and on the flower­adorned altar at the front of the room. A light ribbon of smoke rises from the burning incense and mingles with the faint scent of perfume. At the front of the hall, the guru's seat is empty but for a framed, nearly life­size photograph of him: a balding Indian man with close cropped salt­and­pepper sideburns and beard. The photo sits on a white fabric loveseat, where the guru himself will sit this evening before hundreds of devotees.

             From speakers positioned around the room, the low twang of a sitar stirs the silence, slowly increases in volume, fades out. The recorded group chant begins: Oooooommmmm . . . .

             I am one of only a few people sitting in the hall. I cross my legs and settle into the plush pearl­blue carpet, drop my shoulders to relax, close my eyes, take a deep breath and join in. The vibration in my throat grows and spreads to my chest, to my fingertips, to my toes, to my teeth­­becomes a nagging noise in my mind.

             "OMmmmm . . . mmmm . . . " Mahhhh . . . Meeee. Mommy. It's interesting: in many of the world's languages­­Swahili, Yiddish, French, English, Russian, Spanish, Norwegian­­the word for "mother" begins with "m." The universal mmmm: Delicious. Pleasure. Mmmm, nipple, flesh, close, warm, safe. Mommy. You said you didn't breast­feed me because it wasn't fashionable. Shhh! Meditate! Ommmmmmilk, mmmm, hungry. Quiet! Meditate! Baba. Baba guru. Baba, father. Why 'father'? They even talk about 'the guru's milk.' What am I hungry for? Maybe it's not enlightenment after all, but the promise of something else that attracts me here, to the ashram. To the New Age. To Baba, which also means 'grandmother' in Slavic, and, in Yiddish, bubbe.

             Bubbe?

             It is a hot day for June; the sky is overcast and the air thick. I finally locate her gravesite in the Long Island cemetery crowded with headstones. I have come to New York to see the guru ("Go to New York," my yoga teacher encouraged, "it's karma."), and Gramma. Or her resting place, really. She has been dead many years, and I did not go to her funeral ("Stay at college," my mother insisted, "it's more important."). Absentmindedly I handle a rock I have brought from my garden in Denver to place on Gramma's headstone. I had been tempted to bring daisies, to leave her something fresh and surprising, though it would defy the Jewish custom against flowers for the dead. Would she have been offended? I am not sure. She is, after all, buried next to her husband and kinsfolk, the members and families of the Workmen's Circle, "an early Jewish immigrant cultural organization," my mother once tells me. "Leftists." They had questioned their religious roots­­seemingly out­dated rules and customs, even the existence of god. They had escaped the small­mindedness and persecution of eastern Europe and tried to become enlightened "free thinkers" in the New World. And my mother, Gramma's youngest, had rejected religion entirely, and encouraged me to do the same.

             Still, there is something that lingers among the congregation of granite stones chiseled with menorahs and stars of David­­a nagging hum: a prayer, a lullaby. If not religion, then tradition. Or memory, a stubborn root that tugs at my heart. I place the rock carefully on Gramma's headstone, not wishing to offend. Enough of that was done in life.

             My mother hollers at Gramma over the heavy black rotary telephone: "Mama, I'm sick of your complaining. You have a good life here! You don't like it? Maybe you should go back!"

             Wheezing, listening to my mother's angry mix of English and Yiddish expletives, I crouch at the kitchen table, barely tall enough to see over it. I imagine Gramma's worried eyes staring at another heavy telephone in an apartment on Kings Highway, on the other side of Brooklyn.

             Besides not understanding much English, Gramma is hard of hearing and must have said, "Vus?" because Mom starts repeating everything she has just said, only louder and angrier. After a final, emphatic "plotz!!" Mom slams down the phone, fuming, and launches into her "all­the­things­wrong­with­Gramma­she­should­only­drop" speech.

             Mom, the American­born daughter, is the only one in the family who makes much of the fact that Gramma, born in Russian Poland, had refused to learn English after coming to Brooklyn in 1920. She insists Gramma's "English aversion" was because Gramma was a stubborn and spiteful woman who hated books and learning, both of which Mom loves. Gramma forced Mom to learn Yiddish before she learned English, not only so they could communicate, but so Mom could be a buffer between Gramma and the strange New World. When Mom tells me the old story about her and Gramma for the hundreth time, I can imagine the scene.

              "Sarah, are we lost yet?" Gramma says.

             "No, Mama, no." My mother is only nine, shy and anxious, and now she has to ask somebody for directions: "Excuse me, mister? Where do we catch the bus to Pitkin Avenue?"

             "So, what did he say?" Gramma demands.

             "He says we have to go one more block, that way."

             Gramma raises her hand to her forehead. Her face is flushed. "I knew we should have brought Meyer! Your brother would know what to do. We're lost, aren't we!"

             "No, Mama, we're not! But if you don't trust me, go by yourself!" Gramma slaps her.

             "Don't talk fresh to me, Sarah! You're so good at English, you're so smart, you get us home!"

             "I will, Mama, and please don't call me Sarah. I told you, I like Sally." Gramma slaps her again.

            "Oh, I see. Your great­grandmother's name­­may she rest in peace­­THAT isn't good enough for you! How can I forget? This is AMERICA, where they do whatever they want!"

             "Of course," my mother says as she finishes the story, "we had to have this complete conversation in Yiddish­­anxiety, insults and all."

             Mom lets out a chest­wracking sigh through clenched teeth. I think maybe she will cry, but she doesn't­­not when she talks about Gramma.

             Never flowers, always stones.

             The headstones, bright against the darkening sky, say things in Hebrew­­or is it Yiddish? I cannot tell the difference. I only went to Hebrew school for a while when I was ten or eleven, and I was never taught to read or write Yiddish, the language learned not from books but from slaps and caresses, from inflections in tone and gesture, from necessity. From words changed so the children will not understand.

             "Sure, sure," cousin Murray says definitely, telling stories about his years as one of 'New York's Finest.' "The bast. . . ."

             "Murray!" Blanche gives him a shove in the back of the shoulder while tossing her head in the direction of the children at the other end of the table, our direction. Murray waves his hand as if to shoo away his wife's concern, but switches to intermittent Yiddish.

             "The momzers! Gonefs, all of them­­on the take. Nu?" He raises his eyebrows and his shoulders. "That should be the worst crime a bad cop ever committed in the City of New York." And all the grown­ups laugh.

             I tug on my mother's sleeve so she'll tell me what he's saying. She is laughing, too, and makes me wait until we are on our way home, where her translation includes other comments.

             "You don't know what it's like to feel like an outsider," she accuses me, her oldest. "My mother never let me forget I was the only one of them born in this country. I paid the price, all right!"

             "But Ma, what did Murray say?"

             "And I never want you to feel like that."

             "Okaaaay, I won't! What did he say?"

             "Gonefs and momzers . . . he said they're thieves and bast . . . ."

             "Why do you teach her words like that?" my father interrupts irritably.

             "I don't hide the truth from my children!" Mom replies like a fist on a table. "Besides, it's nothing, Yiddish. A dead language. She's just curious. She won't even remember it."

             The only English on Gramma's headstone says "MOTHER," and the obvious strikes me as odd, along with the fact that the graves feel uncomfortably close together. Is she cramped in there? Could Gramma ever have been that little? I look down and step back, afraid I am standing on her toes.

             "Gramma, dance with me!" I plead. Everyone else is dancing­­it is my cousin Joel's Bar Mitzvah. I am four, and slightly out of breath. The band has just finished playing the lively Hora, but has now started a slow number. Neither Gramma nor I have partners. Gramma tries to lift me up.

             "Oy, got! Shayna maydeleh, Gramma can't. Koom."

             So she unbuckles my black patent leather flats, leads me onto the dance floor in my white ruffled socks, and lets me stand on the tops of her feet, smiling and oblivious to the weight I am adding to her already leaden orthopedic shoes. In her embrace, my face is buried in the soft layers of jersey between her breasts and round belly. We marionette around the room, out of step with the lilt of the clarinet, partners by love and default.

             I am startled by the sound of weeping behind me, in the next row of graves. I turn to see a frail white­haired woman supported by a tall, lanky man wearing a black yarmulke he must hold on his head against the gusting wind. "Moishe, my Moishe," the woman repeats to the grave, sorrow rising from her like a weary ghost. She then talks quietly to the young man beside her. "Your grandpa, your zaydeh, was a wonderful man . . . ." she begins, but the rest of her words drift away in the humid breeze. I look back to the graves of Gramma and Grampa, planted side­by­side for eternity. The only picture the family has of them together is really two photographs of two people taken in two different places. They are patched together by photographic wizardry to appear whole.

             "You don't know what you're talking about," Mom says to me, defensive.

             "But Mom, what kind of man leaves his wife and two little children in Russia for ten years while he comes to America, supposedly to make a new life for them? Ten years! Thank God Tante Kraindel sent Gramma the money, or she'd STILL be there­­if the cossacks or Hitler didn't get her!"

             "You don't know what Gramma was really like," Mom persists. "She drove Tante Kraindel and everyone else crazy with her begging and pleading, otherwise they would have left her in Russia!"

             "And Aunt Betty and Uncle Meyer? Would Tante Kraindel have left the children there too? At least Kraindel had a heart­­which is more than I can say for Grampa!"

             Mom gives me her look of feigned pity that makes my jaw muscles tighten. I know what is coming next.

             "Your grandfather was a wonderful man. It's a shame you never knew him. He worked hard for the union­­sometimes seven days a week. He closed down a lot of sweat shops, I'll have you know. And­­you were a baby when he died­­he loved you very . . . ."

             "Too bad some of that love didn't go to his wife! But it went to somebody. He didn't spend ten years like a monk, did he! His wife and children finally come over here and they find him shacked up with another woman. Welcome to America, Yetta Mendelowitz, the land of promises! Wouldn't you have resented having to learn English?"

             Uncharacteristically, Mom does not respond. I feel confused by the rush of sadness that douses my anger. She gets up to close the jalousie windows against a light rain.

             The wetness settles on the shoulders of my thin Indian­print blouse. The faint odor of damp fabric is overpowered by a green, woody scent rising from the thick groundcover blanketing the graves. I inhale deeply and close my eyes, reminded of the smell of wet sidewalks in Brooklyn, and a bus ride to Gramma's.

             The apartment building sat in the crook of a triangle on Kings Highway, next to the huge "Have A Camel" billboard that had real smoke rings wafting out of the O­shaped mouth of the smoker. Every Saturday, Mom would take me over there to spend the day with Gramma and Aunt Betty.

             "Ma, how do they do that?" I ask, spotting the billboard from the open bus window.

             "Do what?" Mom says over the traffic noise, not looking up from the editorial section of the New York Times.

             "You know, the smoke!"

             "Oh." Her gaze follows my six­year­old finger through the window to the Camel billboard. She shrugs. "I don't know­­a smoke­making machine."

             "Oh. Yeah, but I mean HOW, Mom. Mom?" She is back to reading. I turn my attention to a dark colored man with shiny hair, sitting across the aisle from us.

             "Ma, is he Jewish?" I say loudly, pointing at the man.

             A lady sitting next to us holding a bundle laughs and says, "Oy, she asks about a Shvartseh!" A dark­haired man frowns at the woman and shakes his head.

             "Linda, please! It's none of your business!" Mom whispers down at me hoarsely.

             "Why not, Mom? Mom?"

             She folds her newspaper and reaches for my hand. A dull ding! signals the next stop, and Mom stands up quickly and heads for the exit, me tottering behind. The bus lets us off right on the corner next to the apartment building, under the el. I jump off the bottom step into damp, hot exhaust fumes, the deafening whoosh and clackety­clack of the train passing overhead, and the sweet aroma of chocolate­covered butter cookies from Bierman's Bakery.

             "No, he's not Jewish, and don't ask me questions like that in public," Mom hollers over the noise of the el, tugging hard on my arm. "It's not nice."

             "Um hmm. But what's 'shva . . . shvar . . . shvat­sa?'"

             "Oh for godssake. Do you have to copy everything you hear? That woman on the bus was an idiot. 'Shvatsa'­­'Shvartser'­­ means 'black,' a colored person, but it's not meant in a nice way."

             "Was she talking Jewish?" I bend down to pick up the curved green shard of a Coke bottle. It begins to drizzle and Mom holds the newspaper over her head.

             "No. Yes, Yiddish. Put that down, you'll cut yourself. Will you come on already?"

             The cemetery is silent now, shrouded in a fine mist. I feel limp, like a dishrag only partly rung out. What is it? Something unsettled: I do not know how to leave. Finally a crack of thunder and the groan in my stomach reminds me I have not eaten since the breakfast of porridge, fruit and milk at the ashram. I stand up shakily, raise my small camera, and photograph Gramma's grave. And then hers and Grampa's together. I turn to go.

             "Don't take them, nit nemt mine bubelas!" Gramma is wailing, her arms outstretched toward us, her three grandchildren, secured in the back seat of the Yellow Cab. The cab driver, patting Gramma on the back, takes off his hat and smooths back his thinning hair.

             "Look, Grandma, it'll be okay, don't worry. They'll write to you!"

             But Gramma's eyes are wide, frightened. "Sally, zit azoy goot! Please!" she begs my mother, who has turned away.

             Screaming and crying, clawing at my mother's arms, I try to get out of the cab. Mom slaps me and tells me to stop it. In a moment we are driving away, hurrying to the railway station to catch the Silver Meteor to Florida, where, in 1957, the crime rate is low and the air is clean.

             "Grandma will be all right­­you'll be all right. Don't worry," Dad says without conviction.

             "We'll never see her again!" I sob inconsolably.

             From behind the dirty back window of the cab I wave goodbye to Gramma, repeating her name in a long, undulating lament until she disappears in a haze of tears.

             I do not see Gramma again, except in my dreams, and for that one time, in 1968, when I visit her in a nursing home on Long Island, the year before she dies. She squints up at me from her wheelchair and squeezes my hand. "Mine shayna Lindeleh," she smiles, pushing a $20.00 bill into my fist. "Don't tell Meyer."

             I have driven the rented car almost to Canarsie before I hear the screech of the windshield wipers on dry glass and see it is no longer raining. I have missed the exit to Manhattan, or at least the one I planned to take back to the ashram. In a mild panic, I pat around the passenger seat for the street map. Realizing the futility of attempting to read the map and drive, I try instead to recognize street names on the exit signs: Pennsylvania Avenue, Rockaway Parkway . . . Flatbush Avenue. I take Flatbush, recalling that somewhere along here are places Mom often described but never took me to visit: the brownstone where Tante Kraindel lived, Gramma and Grampa's first apartment, the house where Mom was born two years after Gramma and Grampa got back together. When I come to Kings Highway, I cannot keep from turning on to it.

             I stop in the "No Parking" zone in front of the now graffiti­covered red brick apartment building. The Camel billboard is gone, replaced by one still advertising cigarettes, but without smoke rings. "You've come a long way, baby," it says. The empty lot across the street where my cousins Allen and Joel used to play ball is now a twelve­storey housing project. Bierman's Bakery? The sweet aroma of chocolate is long gone. The el is still running, though. It whizzes past the apartment building's second storey, past my cousin Joel's old bedroom window, where I used to sit on his bed and get dizzy watching the five­second blur. The screeching train fades into a decades­old conglomeration of other city noises: car horns, kids shouting over the hollow echo of a Spalding bouncing off the alley walls, the drone of the television announcer calling the Saturday afternoon Dodgers game at Ebbets Field. The light clinking of silverware and lunch dishes from Aunt Betty's kitchen.

             "MAMA, koomen tsu ehs'n! Lunch is ready! Come! Eat!" Gramma is in the livingroom, reading the Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish newspaper that covers everything from trade unions to the "Bintel Brief," letters to the editor.

             With a mouthful of milk, I turn to see Gramma as she comes into the kitchen. I choke and spit the milk everywhere.

             "Oy, a bayndeleh!" Gramma rushes over and begins slapping me on the back.

             "Mama, stop. You'll make it worse," Aunt Betty intervenes, firmly guiding Gramma from me to a chair. Gramma, clucking, turns to me again and, amidst Betty's protests, wipes my mouth roughly with a dishtowel that smells of Tide and onions. She pinches my cheeks gently and turns to her cool borscht and thick pumpernickel.

             Sometimes, when she is reading after lunch, Gramma takes me in her lap and rocks me, lightly bouncing the heels of her support­stockinged feet, swaying a little from side to side. I point to the odd looking symbols on the crowded newsprint and pretend to read.

             "And Gramma drank her milk too fast and swallowed a bayndeleh!" I report proudly, looking up at her.

             "Farshtayt Yiddish, mine tooteleh? Understand?" She laughs deeply as I nod my head, and her belly jiggling makes me giggle. She hugs me close and begins to hum a tune, low humming that repeats and ends in "trie lie la la . . . ." Curled up against her, eyelids heavy, I feel the vibration in her chest, and drift into sleep amidst the faint odor of moth balls and Tums, to the steady thumping of her heart.

             The evening meditation hall is full. I breathe deeply, gently trying to open my heart. It is almost time to leave. I came to New York to pay final respects to my grandmother. I come to this New Age spiritual practice looking for some safety in a world filled with conflict and confusion. I hunger for the buffer of prayers, chants, the blessing of a guru. And I am not alone. Sitting around me are Lakshmi, Radha, Jyoti­­their given names are Barbara, Shelley, Liz­­other nice Jewish girls experimenting with exotic new identities.

             I try to meditate deeply on Shiva or Shakti or my yogic mantra or the oneness of the universe­­images from a tradition that is no more New Age than Jewish tradition. Yet it is Gramma and Mom I can't get out of my mind. I am not thinking of their history of exchanging unkind words, or even of the emotional tug­of­war I often felt as a daughter and a grandaughter. I am remembering how lucky I am to have been born into the loving arms of a Yiddish lullabye.

             "Potchie, potchie kich­a­lekh . . . ," Mom sings, at my request.

"Kich­a­lekh?" I interrupt. "'Kich­a­lekh' means 'cookies,' doesn't it?"

"How do you know?"

"I looked it up in a Yiddish­English dictionary the other day."

"Oh. Well, listen, Linda, I don't know. I forget some of the words."

"Okay, then, what's the word for 'feet'? When I was little you told me it's a baby song about clapping feet, right?"

"Boy, what a memory! Yes. 'Fis . . . Fis­a­lekh.'

Potchie, potchie fis­a­lekh,
Mama kafen shuk­a­lekh,
Tata kafen zok­a­lekh,
and Lindeleh a gezundt in the bakh­a­lekh!
Clap, clap feet,
Mama's gone to get shoes,
Papa's gone to get socks,
and my Linda has rosy cheeks!

Or something like that," Mom shrugs, suddenly self­conscious. "Things get lost in the translation."

On my last morning at the ashram, I take an offering of fresh flowers to the altar. One is for the guru who looks more like a zaydeh than a baba. The rest are for Gramma, for Mom, and even for Grampa­­who I will eventually forgive and remember with love­­and for all the precious Yiddishkayt I only learned in bits and pieces.
During the final meditation, I am immersed in deep silence when suddenly, into the heart of my imagination waltzes a little round old woman with choppy grey and white hair and heavy black shoes. She smiles and winks at me as she leans over to more closely examine Shelley, the woman sitting next to me. She squints at Shelley's name tag.

"Lakshmi?!" The old woman says loudly. "Pleeeez! If this one isn't a 'Rachel,' I'm chopped liver!" Then she kneels down and whispers in my ear.

"I'm telling you," she says in perfect English, "the New Age, the New World, it makes no difference. Everything changes . . . " Her breath becomes soft, she strokes my hair and kisses my cheek.

             " . . . except who you really are, my darling Lindeleh. Never forget that."

I feel a tickle on my tongue, a warm, delicious trickle that spreads to my throat, to my heart, to my fingertips, to my toes, to my teeth and into my hot, wet cheeks.

"Ich farshtay, Bubbe, I won't," I promise her, and I watch my grandmother turn and dance away.

.