June holidays, then and now

It’s the time of year to eat white foods, and maybe also to remember your first sip of the white blessing at your mother’s breast.

My wife is a heroic and devoted lactation consultant at Women & Infants Hospital, and I admire her dedication with all my heart and soul, this month as always.

In addition to Shavuot, it is also the month of Flag Day, Father’s Day and the start of summer.  These days mix and stir memories, personal, historical and “political.”

I miss the American flag of my boyhood and youth, when it stood for the patriotic hope of victory over the nation’s foes. I regretted the addition of the phrase “under God” to the salute to our stars and stripes, because here in Rhode Island, we stood for freedom from religion, as well as for religions.  I believed it was a cowardly concession to the House Un-American Activities Committee years, the obsession with our Cold War anti-Soviet “atheism.” Something like that.

As for Father’s Day, I enjoy coming across photographs of my dad as a youthful person and treasure my thoughts about our evolution in chapter after chapter of our shared lives.

The start of summer, like each phase of the moon, has its ironies and paradoxes.  Summer days will shorten as the first day of winter will introduce the return of ever-lengthening daytimes.

As for the Jerusalem Day holiday in Israel, I relive my early visit to the Western Wall, when I hid my prayer among the stones for the creator to bless my own then forthcoming days as a father.

Returning to the white menu and the meaning of Shavuot, I know that, like my two brothers, I was breast-fed by our belated noble mother, so my wife’s profession has a quite special  meaning for me, a totally intimate tradition, from generation to generation.

I hope to dwell on these sacred things as I stroll the shoreline from The Towers in Narragansett to the birthplace of the sanderlings and piping plovers at Narrow River. I also hold eagerly onto my prayer for another V-Day, a victory for my beloved Israel and a defeat for the foes of our homeland, among which I sadly list my former friendly campus communities at Yale, Harvard, Brown, the Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia and Cornell … the allies of yore, but no more!

So on my forthcoming strolls, hopefully heading for a dip and a float where beach curves into tidal estuary, I will pray silently with a l’chaim for the newborn creatures of this troubled world, who are sorely in need of our prayers!

MIKE FINK (mfink33@aol.com) is a professor emeritus at the Rhode Island School of Design.