Since the day I met her she’d been piling memories and events like crooked stacks of books that rest unevenly from the bottom bound to fall.

“Do you know what he did today?” the conversations usually start.

“Do you know what he did yesterday?” they continue.

“I’m so tired. I can’t move anymore” they end.

At first I thought it would help to pour out all the old mud going over past events and actions like babbling brooks go over stones to cleanse.

But year after year she came back with the same intro statements. The same conclusions.

That’s when I said in my soul “This is not going anywhere.”

That day she called and said “This is not going anywhere.”

And I understood exactly what I needed to say or think.

“I believe a person hears what’s in another’s soul” I say “especially a husband. And it’s no wonder that he does these things because he hears you hate him.”

She’s quiet. The rush of critical floods stops.

“What are you saying?” she asks not wanting to really know but really wanting to.

“A person especially your soul mate hears your every thought” I repeat.

“But I hate him because he hates me” she says.

“He hates you because you hate him.” I consciously reflect the thought back.

“I ask him ‘Just pick up the challos for Shabbos’ and that’s too hard.

“I ask him ‘Just move one little bookshelf’ and that’s too hard.

“I ask him ‘Please don’t eat over the computer’ and no that’s too hard.”

She’s in the middle of going on and on when her husband comes in.

“Hi Michael” she says her tone like a new bride’s.

And it doesn’t match up at all.

The voice that comes out and the voices inside.

What a shame I think.

I think about all the histories recorded analyzed stored and filed. How each time a situation comes up the same recording plays over and over like a record with a scratch that doesn’t let the music play on. And how we become paralyzed by our own thoughts of wrongs we or another did in the past.

I know a woman whose husband is allergic to tomatoes.

The first meal she ever made for him was chicken cacciatore.

She’d been waiting all her life to be able to prepare that dish in her own home. She took out fresh tomatoes crushed tomatoes and tomato paste. She simmered stirred covered and baked.

She set the table. When her husband came home she served him on the big silver tray they’d gotten as a wedding present.

Her husband didn’t know what to do. They hadn’t yet gotten to the detail that he was highly allergic to tomatoes.

Well what exactly happened that moment we’ll never really know because each one recorded the event on an already filled disc.

But what I do know is that it became a scratch. And from there the recording got stuck. The hearts got stuck. The feelings towards each other got stuck

Only recently after years and years and grandchildren did they both wake up and say: “Hey why are we doing this? Living in the past?” And they decided to start from scratch.

Sad that it took so long. Beautiful that it took.

In Sdom an entire city had to be destroyed. A few were permitted to escape.

G-d said “Don’t look back.”

One woman didn’t listen. She looked back. And turned into a pillar of salt. Stuck for eternity.

We have the greatest advice straight from G-d. He tells us “Don’t look back.”