Lately when I walk in the mornings the exercise starts to get hard at a particular long hill. But it’s all worth it because at the end of that hill there’s a house with big yellow flowers sprouting everywhere and
the fragrance as a greeting after the
long climb.
I never really understood the honeysuckle thing.
Where we grew up we had shrubs and a mimosa tree. In camp there were pine trees. No one had honeysuckle.
I thought honeysuckle was something you only understood if you had a Southern accent the main ingredient in the cheap perfume the saleswoman behind the counter in the department store sprayed. Or just the most common scent used for car or home.
But now I see honeysuckle is real yet something beyond earthly delight. So as I walk up the hard hill and get closer to that place where the yellow flowers wait I breathe in and its fragrance feels like kindness.
And as I walk I see all the beauty. Weeds like wheat stalks blowing like silk catching the sun. White stones like perfect sculptures feasts for hungry eyes. And all the beauty feels like kindness like random pieces of leket left purposely behind.
And the walk and the sun and the heat make me think of Naomi and Ruth. Of how they walked to Eretz Yisrael just like this. And I wonder if they also had honeysuckle to greet them at the top of the hills. When they saw the weeds did they think of wheat?
And I think about the love they must have had for one another.
The other day I was at a neighbor’s house. We were talking about something that led to something about daughters-in-law and mothers-in-law. How she might have been having a bit of a hard time with hers. And then the neighbor told me she had a friend who once told her “If you want a good relationship with your daughter-in-law keep your mouth closed and your wallet open.”
As I take this quiet walk I think about that statement and how far it feels from this moment of quiet and truth. Because when you walk you touch the ground. It’s different than driving where you pass by so quickly so above it all that you hardly feel the road.
I recently heard an interesting true story about a simple uneducated small-town girl who got engaged. The boy had met this girl in unusual circumstances. She wasn’t what the family would have chosen if they had gone through their standard channels as the family was highly intellectual and very wealthy and they looked for the same.
Everyone in the family kind of quietly looked down on the new bride’s simplicity. But the mother-in-law worked hard to make her feel accepted even when the girl asked for ketchup at the Shabbos table to put on her mother-in-law’s famous honey-garlic chicken.
This mother-in-law also made sure to give sincere hugs to her daughter-in-law when she came in and when she went out.
One night they were all sitting around the Shabbos table and the newly married son says “When you get married you really change.” And the kallah who rarely says anything around the family because she feels the judgment suddenly finds her footing and speaks up. She says “You do more than change. You reveal.”
At that moment the family hesitant to fully appreciate their simple kallah saw something else.
The mother-in-law saw how there is wisdom in the simplicity in the struggle of the daily. There is a different wisdom a different dimension of understanding when you walk the road. Where there is poverty everything feels more intense. Cold is colder. Heat is hotter. Every stone every insult goes deeper.
But on the flip side so does every kindness.
It’s no coincidence we read Megillas Ruth on Shavuos. It is about kindness to one another and return from mistaken paths.
Before we received the Torah on Sinai we had to suffer poverty to walk through the desert. Mahn was dropped for us like leket. We picked it up and ate and our hunger was satisfied. And though it seems hard at times if our eyes are open to it it is a path of kindness.—