Dream Tending

My great-grandfather was a shoe cobbler from the old country, a place called Belarus or “White Russia.” His shoe repair shop in 1950s Pasadena, California was a small room on the ground floor of the old rickety house he shared with my great-grandmother. It opened to the street just a few yards from the railroad tracks, and the windows rattled when the huge locomotives thundered past. The shop had an unforgettable smell of fresh-cut leather, shoe polish, and kerosene. Shoes of every size, shape, and style were piled up in rows to the ceiling, leaving hardly any space to stand. I remember the walls were covered with little scraps of paper with parables written on them in my great-grandfather’s funny handwriting. Great-grandfather (who I called “Zadie”) was so different from us. Zadie was large, had a thick Yiddish accent, and always seemed so happy. His cobbler’s shop was usually crowded with people who came to sit and talk with him. He’d work on their shoes some, but mostly he asked them questions, offered advice, and told stories. He had a joke or allegory for everyone—even me. He’d ask me questions, tell me stories, and give me a penny every time I laughed. Great-grandfather was ninety-three years old the first time I looked into his eyes behind their old-time spectacles. His eyes were blue and crinkled all around the edges, and the skin around them scrunched up even more as he laughed and laughed. His hands smelled like shoe leather and the borscht he had for lunch. He made me feel completely grown up and ready for adventure. I had never felt such belonging. I was just six years old when he died and I don’t remember the funeral. There wasn’t much talk about him after that. It was easy to see that my father, his grandson, had loved him, but at the same time my dad seemed uncomfortable and even ashamed whenever he was mentioned. My family, like every family I knew, was from a world far different from the long-ago village. We grew up with the Cold War, the H-bomb, and Sputnik. It was our duty to do well in school, go to college, and study science and math in order to beat the Russians at everything. There was little room for remembering the quaint oddities of an old man from a completely different time, and so eventually I stopped thinking about him. Twenty years later, I had become a psychologist interested in dreams. The 1960s had radically opened up the field of psychology, and I had eagerly joined in the revolution. I went to workshops and lectures of every kind, and gradually learned that dreams were something more than just a chaotic rehashing of our daytime life. During that time, I was at a dream workshop and remembered a dream I had about my great-grandfather. In the dream I heard his voice. He told me to go to a house where there was a wooden chest, and inside this chest was a book that contained my whole future. This dream was different from any I had had before. It was not so much a dream as it was a commandment from the other side. I was shook up, but also aware of the warmth I felt for my nearly forgotten great-grandfather. Excited, I called home that afternoon and asked my mom and dad if they knew anything about a wooden chest and a book. Neither had a clue what I was talking about. Not wanting to let this go, it occurred to me to contact my great aunt, Zadie’s sister. She was always a bit odd, but she was one of my favorite relatives. I called her and told her about my dream. Incredibly, she said she knew just what I was talking about and told me to come right over. When we were sitting together in her living room, she asked me what I remembered about her older brother. I told her my memories and all that had been shared with me, which wasn’t much. She then pointed to a wooden chest covered with an embroidered cloth and flower-filled vases. “Stephen, in that chest is a book that will give you the answers to everything you are searching for. I have saved it all these years, waiting for the person who would come to find it. Now it’s yours.” Crossing the room, she opened the chest and handed me the book. Strange hieroglyphs covered its worn red cloth cover. My aunt explained that the book was written in Yiddish and that it ran from right to left and back to front. Turning the book over, I opened it and saw something I never expected. On the first page there was a photograph of my great-grandfather with his wife at his side. He was dressed in a grey flannel suit, and those amazing eyes I remembered from childhood were staring at me. “Your father’s grandfather was a revered tzaddik,” my great aunt told me. “The people you remember seeing in his shop were there to ask him questions about life, to hear his stories, and to listen to his teachings.” She described him as a man who was learned, but not in the ways of the university. My great- grandfather, it turns out, was steeped in the oral tradition from the elders of his country and others. “This book is called Der Shooster, which means ‘The Shoe Cobbler,’” she said. “It’s a book about him.” I looked at the photo again, and I was filled with pride and a sense of belonging to a lineage I had never imagined existed. What had been a source of embarrassment for my family was now flooding me with something essential, something wise. I felt my great-grandfather’s presence in my blood, his heart beating in my chest. The force of his character strengthened my own. It was my turn to open the book and read the story that would forever change my life. In the following months I had the book translated into English. I located a woman in New York City, who lived in a Jewish neighborhood not far from where Zadie had lived when he first arrived in this country. Every thirty days or so, I received about a dozen pages of typed text. For over a year, as the translation continued to arrive, I experienced the revelation of my inheritance, yet it took me much longer before I began to truly realize the depth and meaning of my great-grandfather’s teachings. It came as a shock to me that this man, whom my family had always seen as a fossil from the past, was the storehouse of the very knowledge I needed to encounter the future.