Fair Lawn Avenue is the main drag through Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Driving west from the intersection of Plaza Road FL Ave. crosses train tracks and then over Route 208. Last evening, I was driving in the left-hand westbound lane when a deer jumped out an across the empty eastbound lanes and a silver pickup truck collided with the deer. I slowed down and gently hit my brakes. The deer was injured. It let out a loud groan, managed to stand up, and hobbled away in the direction from which it had come.
I did not tell my daughter, sitting in the back seat, what had happened. I was in shock. The moment when the deer groaned, spitting steam into the cold early December evening air, I felt somehow that the truck had hit me, too. That collision transformed in my mind into all the moments in my life when someone "injured" me by name-calling, or pushing me down, any time someone hurt my feelings or person. Every time I have felt the sting of words or hands against me, I know my soul let out a painful groan similar to the one the deer let out last night. On every occasion of this kind, I know also that, like the deer, I hobbled away wounded and it felt as though no one was there to help or comfort me.
I think that I also felt moved and pained since there was nothing I could do for the deer.
This Shabbat, as we recite the Mi Sheberach prayer for healing, I will add a prayer for this deer that God may grant healing and wholeness.
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