First Grade

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β€œDon’t cry,” my mother tells me. I am in first grade, with a pretty knapsack and a lunch she packed me, and first grade always made me cry. β€œBut I want to stay with you.” It was, to my five-year-old self, the most dramatic thing that I had to spend the whole day away from her, and I didn’t understand it. β€œYou’ll be home soon.” -- β€œDon’t cry,” my mother tells me. It’s a habit that, as a twenty-something year old woman, I pretend I had grown out of. I’m sitting on her couch writing poetry – a piece from San Francisco that would one day become a friend’s housewarming present – and airplanes always made me cry. β€œI’ll just miss you, that’s all.” β€œYou’ll be home in a few months.” None of us could have predicted a fucking pandemic that had probably already started, or known the next time I’d come back would be almost two years later. -- β€œI told you not to cry,” but I know she is also crying. She has stage four colorectal cancer, and we both wrote a piece with the exact sam...
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The Choice of Transformation

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𝐼 π‘“π‘œπ‘’π‘›π‘‘ π‘šπ‘¦ π‘“π‘–π‘Ÿπ‘’ 𝑖𝑛 π‘Ž π‘€π‘–π‘›π‘‘π‘ π‘‘π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘š.

π·π‘œπ‘›β€™π‘‘ 𝑝𝑒𝑑 π‘šπ‘’ π‘œπ‘› π‘Ž π‘π‘’π‘‘π‘’π‘ π‘‘π‘Žπ‘™. 𝐼 π‘π‘Žπ‘› π‘π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘Žπ‘˜ π‘ π‘‘π‘œπ‘›π‘’ π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘šπ‘¦ β„Žπ‘Žπ‘›π‘‘π‘ . π‘€π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘π‘™π‘’ 𝑖𝑠 π‘‘π‘œπ‘œ π‘π‘Žπ‘™π‘™π‘œπ‘’π‘  π‘‘π‘œ π‘π‘œπ‘Ÿπ‘‘π‘Ÿπ‘Žπ‘¦ π‘‘β„Žπ‘’ β„Žπ‘’π‘šπ‘Žπ‘› β„Žπ‘’π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘‘.

𝐼 𝑀𝑖𝑙𝑙 π‘Ÿπ‘’π‘› π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘œπ‘’π‘›π‘‘ π‘€π‘–π‘‘β„Ž π‘šπ‘¦ π‘ π‘œπ‘’π‘™ π‘π‘Žπ‘Ÿπ‘’ π‘Žπ‘›π‘‘ π‘šπ‘¦ π‘“π‘Žπ‘π‘’ β„Žπ‘–π‘‘π‘‘π‘’π‘›.

We all keep trying to return to the way it was. Aren’t you desperate? Desperate to drag yourself out of bed at 6 in the morning, to reteach your hardest classes and stare down the days that once had you questioning your profession to begin with? Haven’t-swept-the-floor-since-Pesach, sleeping-in-work-uniforms-because-by-G-d-I miss-it? Desperate to relive the beauty in the bottom of your third cup of coffee, and all the other things we all took for granted?

It isn’t enough, just to go back to it. If we just return to the way it was, we lose the point in all of this. Take an Advil, and glory in the marvelous release from pain for a moment. When we go back into the world, This Will Have Transformed Us. I don’t know how yet. Perhaps that transformation will claim the shape of scars, which leave us more vulnerable but also more protected? Perhaps the transformation will be something intrinsic, redefining what it means to be human.

I think it is a choice. I think this time alone leaves us with gaps and holes and empty spaces. I think we decide what we will fill them with – be it anger or pain or a love more profound than we ever imagined – because we never would have chosen to let it penetrate the places that are now laid bare, and deeper.

We have to make it all mean more than it was, so that this time isn’t wasted. When I hold you, I will look deeper into your eyes than I dared to in the past, and pray that I will see things you once never dared to show me. Can we build something more vibrant than any we’ve built yet, but also remember to take sacred space for ourselves as we do it?

Let us hold the sunrise closer. I can taste promise on the winds.

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