The Journey of a Thousand Miles . . .

. . .begins with a single step.

In 1993 when my firstborn daughter Miriam was living in Kansas in her car, she called me to announce that she had nowhere to live. The silence on the phone line hung between us like a string pulled taut between mother and daughter, about to snap. I took a deep breath and tried to make light of her dilemma - well, honey, it's May and the weather is getting warmer every day, so just hang in there and once you get a paycheck from your job, you'll be o.k. It was not what she wanted to hear from me.

After I hung up, I called Rabbi Goldberger and told him about her call to me. And he gave me words of advice that rang with the truth of Miriam's life. "Karen," he said, "you cannot sacrifice the well being of the five children you still have living in your home in a useless attempt to help a child who isn't asking for your help and will only want it on HER terms, not yours."

I always remembered Rabbi Goldberger's words - until November 2006, when I forgot them.

The idea was that Miriam and her husband Noah would move into the basement of my rancher and for the next three years they and their four children would live here at a greatly reduced rent. After June 2010 when Miriam will have finished her RN from Baltimore City Community College, we would sit down and decide where to go from there. If they felt the need to strike out on their own, then they would look for a place to live or possibly consider moving to Israel. That's not exactly what happened.

We first discussed things last November, and they seemed eager to move out of the house where they were renting a first floor apartment and make a fresh start in my home. But in spite of all the red flags flying around me like the prayer flags of the Himalayan climbers facing death, I took no notice of her need to feel like it was "her home." Time and again she complained about something - a color choice, how the kitchen was laid out, the "wasted space" of my Passover cabinets that should be used instead for pantry storage and appliances. I had patiently waited for almost 30 years for those easy-access cabinets, and by golly I wasn't going to budge. And she just kept harping about it. And still I remained blind, deaf and uncomprehending to her plan - to make me the guest in my own home that would be hers. All hers.