First Grade

-
“Don’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. “But 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. “You’ll be home soon.” -- “Don’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. “I’ll just miss you, that’s all.” “You’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. -- “I 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...
Post a Comment

The Choice of Transformation

-
๐ผ ๐‘“๐‘œ๐‘ข๐‘›๐‘‘ ๐‘š๐‘ฆ ๐‘“๐‘–๐‘Ÿ๐‘’ ๐‘–๐‘› ๐‘Ž ๐‘ค๐‘–๐‘›๐‘‘๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘œ๐‘Ÿ๐‘š.

๐ท๐‘œ๐‘›’๐‘ก ๐‘๐‘ข๐‘ก ๐‘š๐‘’ ๐‘œ๐‘› ๐‘Ž ๐‘๐‘’๐‘‘๐‘’๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘Ž๐‘™. ๐ผ ๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘› ๐‘๐‘Ÿ๐‘’๐‘Ž๐‘˜ ๐‘ ๐‘ก๐‘œ๐‘›๐‘’ ๐‘ค๐‘–๐‘กโ„Ž ๐‘š๐‘ฆ โ„Ž๐‘Ž๐‘›๐‘‘๐‘ . ๐‘€๐‘Ž๐‘Ÿ๐‘๐‘™๐‘’ ๐‘–๐‘  ๐‘ก๐‘œ๐‘œ ๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘™๐‘™๐‘œ๐‘ข๐‘  ๐‘ก๐‘œ ๐‘๐‘œ๐‘Ÿ๐‘ก๐‘Ÿ๐‘Ž๐‘ฆ ๐‘กโ„Ž๐‘’ โ„Ž๐‘ข๐‘š๐‘Ž๐‘› โ„Ž๐‘’๐‘Ž๐‘Ÿ๐‘ก.

๐ผ ๐‘ค๐‘–๐‘™๐‘™ ๐‘Ÿ๐‘ข๐‘› ๐‘Ž๐‘Ÿ๐‘œ๐‘ข๐‘›๐‘‘ ๐‘ค๐‘–๐‘กโ„Ž ๐‘š๐‘ฆ ๐‘ ๐‘œ๐‘ข๐‘™ ๐‘๐‘Ž๐‘Ÿ๐‘’ ๐‘Ž๐‘›๐‘‘ ๐‘š๐‘ฆ ๐‘“๐‘Ž๐‘๐‘’ โ„Ž๐‘–๐‘‘๐‘‘๐‘’๐‘›.

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.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But in My Heart I'm Jewish

-
I’ll tell you a story. It’s one of those deeper, family stories, but somehow I’ve always wanted to share it with you. My grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, because her face was bitten by a German Shepherd as a child. Because there was a nurse, Marie, who told her parents that they couldn’t hide harboring a little girl. My mother tells her story best. But I knew my grandma differently. I knew the woman who loved theatre and chocolates and beautiful dresses. I knew that when she passed away, and we drove to New York like we had throughout my childhood, her Manhattan apartment at the heart and height of everything suddenly felt too small to contain even the memories of us. I knew that when I let myself into her bathroom after the funeral to try on one of the abandoned garments, the dress was too small also and the laces snapped, and the hair tie I had braided so meticulously earlier that morning snapped in half a moment later, and I knew she watching. I knew the woman who sat on my bed...
Read more

Windstorm

-
I had a dream the other night that explained my mind to me. In the absence of an answer I roam the streets at night, mourning all the things I miss. In the dream it was windy; I must have wandered as far as the river. I do that on occasion. But in this dream the wind picked up, and I laughed at the notion that it was strong enough to lift me. It’s an old childhood fear, being swept off by the wind. But it did grow strong enough, pulling my feet from beneath me. And even as I reached for the doorway of the nearest building – Chase Bank, if you must know it – even as my fingers brushed against the glass, I laughed at the adventure of it. This would make a clever story. But the wind picked up, sweeping broken beams and wreckage, and the Bank was sealed beneath the lockdown as everything else still is. The wind swept me sideways, one hand still gripping to the handle of the bank – black plastic – the other clinging to the cracks in concrete pavement. Holding on by my nails and the st...
Read more

Neighborhood Ninjas

-
You know that really annoying mental clock in the back of your mind that insists on mapping your life down to the minute?  No?  Huh.  Maybe that’s just one of my obnoxious habits. I’m always racing time.  I tell myself it’s just to get the most out of my day, but it probably has more to do with my fear of wasting it.  (And maybe my annoying attempts to control…everything?)  You know, while we’re being honest.  So here I am, ten and a half minutes before work.  I’m actually on time and dressed and in the car with both my shoes on.  And about to run into a mile of construction. Mental memo: The mental clock is really ticked.  I know there used to be a street here.  And who put up that annoying roadblock? Do you think I’ll fit between the bulldozers and that makeshift outhouse? I should really just park here and walk. I don’t know what it is that makes me keep driving.  (Probably not wanting to ...
Read more