A week ago I was sitting at the funeral of Mike Ellis, the father of my dear friend, Caren Ellis. Mike died at the age of 83, while doing his morning exercise ritual, he went out on his own terms, and lived live with passion like few whom I have ever met or known. Maybe like no other. I could write a dozen pieces inspired by what I learned from, and about Mike, I hunch that this is only the first. The story of Mike Ellis - who he iswas - and what, and whom, he put forth in the world, immediately found a special place in all of me - brain, heart, soul - as soon as I met him a little over a year ago. I first shook Mike Ellis' hand when Caren brought him to Romemu one Shabbat evening, but it wasn't until I sat right across from him, and his amazing wife, Honey, at the Ellis family Seder at the home of Caren's brother, Mark, last year. An incredible experience for me, the only person at the table who was not a direct descendant of Mike Ellis, or married to his kids. Three generations of the extended Ellis family, none of whom would be if Mike hadn't the balls, the faith, the courage and the wisdom as a boy to jump from the window of a train speeding at 70MPH to Auschwitz. That's just one of the stories, and the lessons to share, that I Got From Mike.
That one will be for another day. Because today, I am writing about Love. The love that fills me up more than ever before. The love that I've had to learn through my life what it could even mean. The kind of love that Mike Ellis understood. And emanated and inspired in others. You see, as I sat across from Mike in that Spring of 2000, an only child suddenly embraced for even more than that one night as a "member" of that family, I felt the love. I got it. I understood it. All of it. I wanted to make a movie about that family. A sort of how-to kind of movie, simply letting the people, their stories, their experiences show and tell everything and anything that any and all of us need to know. That love creates love. Begets love. Passes it on and hands it down and shows others the way. I was so moved by what I experienced that night - from Mike and Honey, and their Machatunim (the parents' of their kid's spouse), straight through the lineage to ALL of their incredible grandkids. I told Caren I wanted to make a movie about her family, called, simply, The Love Family. Because that's who they are. From wherever and whomever it started, somehow people spread the word. Held on to the notion and put it into form. Out of peoples' darkness came the light. I saw that night a 3-D manifestation of love in a way that I never had before, certainly not within my own family, or those whom I came to know. No judgment on anyone else, this Ellis thing was something special. I'm just sayin'. It wasn't that 3 generations were together, it was HOW they were together. Connected, Supportive. Interested. Engaged. Kibbitzing and loving. Pissers, not a wallflower among them. I saw what happens when you grow up with that kind of unconditional love (regardless of whatever mishigas there may be in any family) and SEE it, and are TAUGHT IT BY EXAMPLE. Experientially. Not by mere words or just concepts. The essence of what I keep aspiring for in my creative work - to "show, not tell." It hit me why so many of us fall into unfulfilled relationships that end up not really being love, despite what we may have hoped for, and WANTED to see. Wanted to have. Because for many of us, as I can tell, grew up not EXPERIENCING a kind of healthy vision of love, one that would be held up for ourselves as a high-bar that we would know it when we saw it. Felt it. Were ONLY willing to have some form of THAT. And we would find potential partners who understood from the inside-out, naturally, what that kind of unconditionality, what that type of family connection, means - first-hand. Or, for those of us who are willing to do the work to UNlearn and UNweave the firsthand lessons notions that kept prompting people like me to look for something from the outside, or in the wrong "places". How can we "look for" something that we don't KNOW what it is? Beyond the word, and what we might read about it...there's a kid's book called "Are You My Mother?", written by P.D. Eastman and published by Random House in 1960. Here's part of the Wikipedia synopsis: "Are You My Mother?" is the story about a hatching bird. His mother, thinking her egg will stay in her nest where she left it, leaves her egg alone and flies off to find food. The baby chick hatches. He does not understand where his mother is so he goes to look for her. In his search, he asks a kitten, a hen, a dog, and a cow if they are his mother. They each say, "No." I won't giveaway the ending, you'll have to go out and get it. I wanted to do a sort-of heartfelt spoof, for adults, something that might be called "Are You My [Partner/SoulMate/Honey, etc.]?" I think it would be a hit. For us to be able to create love, it has to start within. For us to "teach" love to others, it has to start with ourselves. We can't teach what we don't know. What, when it comes to matters of the heart and soul, can only really be experienced, not "taught" with words. So, I started on my path a good dozen years ago to unlearn and rise up, and fall down, and keep rising. To peel back those layers and, as in my fave parable about Michelangelo and his creation of the David, chip away to expose the David that was inside that hunk of marble. I am so grateful to have learned so much from Mike Ellis, who helped me learn to keep the bar high. I am so grateful to be right here.
