Friday Dispatch: A Kind Face

A full circle post

“The little boat floats silently. / Two girlfriends ride in it. Oh take us little boat to the shoreline of happiness and health.” Image from Jewish Women's Archives.

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Friday greetings,

Back in my early blogging days, I began a practice of sitting down to write even – especially – when I wasn’t “inspired.” Often, I’d find my way in by writing, “I’m sitting…” Over the years, this became so second nature that Aviva once pointed out that all my letters to her when she was at camp started that way! Now sometimes, I do it as a joke. But it’s also still a practice I turn to often.

Like this morning, as I stare at the blank screen and sip the last of my coffee, with nothing in particular on my mind to write.

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I’m sitting at my dining room table. Chalupa snores quietly on her bed to my right. A steady stream of morning traffic passes in front of the house. I look through the windows and see a foggy October morning. I find myself more and more often playing a little game where I see what I can now say in Hebrew – אני יושבת בשולחן אוכל שלי, for example (“I’m sitting at my dining room table”). This brings a smile, as it evidences the efficacy of the intensive I’m taking in preparation for a required placement test in the spring.

My mind is a bit fuzzy and unfocused, as I’ve been contending with an on-again, off-again headache all week. It’s like my brain could use a nap.

Filaments flutter through my thoughts…

A line from our rabbi’s Rosh Hashanah sermon: “Sweetness is not a luxury, but a life force.”

Yesterday would have – should – been Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s 24th birthday. We lit a candle when we sat down to dinner. The Hebrew date of his birthday lands on October 7, a nearly unbelievable confluence.

When we sat down to eat, M.J. looked across the table at me and said, “So, 5785. Tell me about it.” It was such a nice invitation to touch into where I’m at as we begin again.

My father turns 82 tomorrow! Happy birthday, Dad. We love you!

I’m driving down to NYC tomorrow to spend the weekend with Aviva, whose 22nd (!!) birthday is next week. Yesterday after services and a run (my first time running since May – hard but good), I wrapped all of her presents. They look so pretty. I can’t wait to hug and celebrate her and shmy around and talk about everything.

On Monday morning, before I head home, I’ll meet a long-time client in person for the first time, someone who has become, in the years since our first email exchange in April 2015 when she wrote “The universe keeps sending me in your direction!”, become a true friend and ally.

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I’m bringing a lot of awe and gratitude into the new year along with a sense of calm and curiosity. I have plenty of questions and uncertainties du jour, and also faith that things will continue to unfold, as they always have and do (until they don’t, and even then, they kind of do), and we will meet each moment as it arrives.

Don’t get me wrong – I know this sounds all kinds of Zen. It’s not that I’m sitting here in full lotus levitating :)

Take yesterday morning, when we arrived 30 minutes late to services because I had gotten the time wrong! When we arrived and I realized my mistake, I was completely flustered since I contribute to the High Holiday services as the congregation’s “poet laureate,”

Thankfully, I wasn’t too late. But latent fears of messing up, letting people down… all of that rose to the surface. M.J. reached over and squeezed my hand, somehow knowing exactly what I needed. I found our page in the machzor and turned inward to gentle the voice in my head that had wasted no time in piping up (What if you had missed your reading? etc.).

And here we come full circle to those early blogging days. In my first-ever post, on January 7, 2007, here’s what I wrote. I was 32.

But missing the mark – now this was a concept I could get my head around. Forgiving, roomy. With implications of more chances. You know, nobody’s perfect. Better yet, imperfection is where all the juice is. We do our best, we practice, we try stuff, we throw spaghetti at the wall and we skin knees and we get hurt and we learn in ways that are sometimes grueling and other times graceful – about relationships, about love, about work, about pretty much everything. In all that trying, in the practice, comes the learning and the growing that we’re here to do. And in the process, maybe the bullseye itself isn’t ‘getting’ the thing we’ve been aiming at but rather hitting on some increased ability to be patient and kind to ourselves.

So much, and so little, has changed.

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Wherever you find yourself sitting – at a table, in a pew, on a mountain, in a boat – may you savor the sweetness and company in your midst. May you let the filaments flutter and fall. May you look across to see a kind face looking back at you.

Shabbat Shalom and love,

Jena

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