japa mala

living in circles

Photo by Amelia Bartlett on Unsplash

I have made a japa mala. One hundred and eight beads strung between knots in a black hemp cord, like a necklace, with a one hundred and ninth bead, bigger than the rest, strung outside the circlet. There is fringe attached to the final bead. I have chosen wooden beads in a gradient of colors: tan to red to mahogany. It makes me happy.

Yesterday was a perfectly golden fall day. Sun-colored maple trees overarch my parents' back yard. I walk beneath them with my sister, a mug of strong, hot tea cupped in my hands. The sun is warm but the wind is chilly, rustling through the branches and bringing down more leaves with each gust. The tea is a French blend, that's what it's called. I taste lavender and bergamot, and something that might be rose petals. It is spicy and sweet with a deep body from the black tea leaves and the lightness of the cream I always add to black tea. It tastes like autumn.

My daughter swings on a tire swing, her body arching to maintain the momentum, her grin enormous. My sister is pushing her, but I have a brief shock of nostalgia. For that one moment it wasn't her but our youngest sister, my Rena's best friend. She wore fall like nobody else: messy bun, denim jacket, infinity scarf, jeans and boots; all put together just so. Nothing was too nice to play in, or dance in. Her clothes, like her family, along for the ride.

My sister, the artist, pauses next to a spray of maple leaves. "Stand there, this needs to be a picture." I smile self-consciously. Hers is genuine. "You look good in fall,” she says. “You're like a fall woman." I'm wearing the vest and jeans jacket she bought me, holding an empty mug that still smells like a garden in autumn sunshine. I breathe deeply.

A japa mala is a strand of beads used in the Hindu tradition for prayer and meditation. I use mine as a focus for my breath, usually to come down before bed. Sometimes I sleep with the strand wrapped around my hand, the smooth wood of the beads comforting and grounding, like touching trees in the forest.

My mother has the table set up outside, on the porch. Rena helps her string a paper chain along the porch railing and across the stairs, hemming us in together. It is Sukkot, the Jewish festival that commemorates the Israelites’ historic wandering in the wilderness after escaping slavery in Egypt. The house smells like turkey and all the fixings, which is how we celebrate the decades of hardship and bloodshed our spiritual, if not physical, ancestors endured: with pumpkin pie, sparkling grape juice and lemonade, and all the tea and coffee we can drink. We are not Jewish, but have adopted this way of toasting hardship with an upraised glass and middle finger. “They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat.”