Surrendering Expectations

I am not a baker.

But, occasionally, I’ll attempt something simple like brownies.

And my kids will ask: “Are these brownies good?” before grabbing one.

And I’ll answer honestly: “They’re good if you pretend you’ve never had brownies.”

I have learned, over the past week, that this truth is also applicable to my newly established homeschool.

It is going spectacularly well if you pretend that you’ve never heard of school.

We’ve danced to the Bee Gees.

We’ve enacted the Passover story with stuffed penguins.

We’ve attempted a discussion of home economics, as they pertain to chores in the home that we’re all spending more time in.

And when sharing a homeschool with Dan’s headquarters for our (now) virtual congregation began to feel crowded, I packed our kids in the car and drove to the beach — the sunroof down and 2Pac’s California Love blasting.

I don’t need to consult a pedagogy to know that this was the right decision.

I know it in my bones, and on the expressions of joy and calm on my kids faces — the wind whipping all of our curls back.

We’re experiencing something unprecedented, and I think, if we want to maintain our sanity, we’re going to have to look at things with new eyes right now, and surrender expectations.

I’m sure there will be more directives to follow as time passes.

For now, I’m accepting that I can’t provide a replica - or maybe even a semblance - of a traditional third-grade or pre-k curriculum in my living room.

To the best of my capabilities, I’m offering something new — and worthy — but different than what’s come before now.

And that’s today’s consolation: when you pretend you’ve never had a brownie, the thing that I’ve baked is actually pretty tasty.

Love and strength to all.

Monday, Monday

Good Morning.

It’s Monday. Most of us are home. And I am here to greet you with consolations.

The past twelve hours, in our house, have been filled with some semblance of normalcy. My little one woke me in the night when he couldn’t find his plush penguin, and then again when he decided he didn’t actually want the penguin: He wanted the sea otter.

I’m the first one awake this morning; it’s dark and still, and rainy — which feels right.

The kids will be up soon, we’ll eat breakfast, get dressed.

Record Scratch.

I told them to be ready for circle-time at 9:15Am — but it will just be the three of us sitting in a circle in our living room. (This did seem a lot more manageable before playdates were taken off the table!)

I’m reminded of the first anniversary of 9/11, and a walk through Washington Square Park on my way to work, in my business casual clothes - brown pin-striped pants and a sepia sweater, I remember it so clearly.

I stopped at a prayer vigil in the center of the park.

I pray every morning; I have since I was five-years-old when my grandmother taught me the Shema. But here I was with all of these other people praying. (A few years before I met Dan and I was not a member of any synagogue.)

The experience was new and astonishing; something that I did all along — alone — I was now joined by so many others — this sacrosanct moment in Greenwich Village — where the people in Washington Square Park who were not praying stood out.

I’ve had traces of this feeling as I’ve spoken to others over the past couple of days: Some of us — for various reasons: parenthood, illness, care-taking, remote-work — have been self-isolating for a long time— and it now feels like we are in the company of so many others — Well everyone actually.

And it’s wild - comforting, confusing.

None of us are sure how long this will continue. Some parents circulate detailed homeschool curriculums while we wait to hear from the teachers.

Me? I’ve lined up one craft project, and told my kids we’re not watching t.v. until 2:40 pm - when the school day ends. We’re all doing our best.

The consolations? I’m flooded with them (My first thought was to ration them out over the week) But I think we need them now so here goes:

After I posted suggestions for family movies, a congregant showed up on my doorstep - in a face mask - with old Disney VHS tapes (including a film I have never heard of starring Ricki Lake and talking cats, and I’m just sad I can’t have people over for a viewing party). Another bagged up the DVD collection which she told me comforted her kids during the second Israel intifada and left it for me — with a portable dvd player — on her stoop next to the bottle of hand sanitizer.

I have reconnected with friends from all over, our East Coast community joining in with our West Coast congregation live-feeds. People wanting to connect over teachings and continued rituals — even virtually.

And an abundance of offerings: It looks like I can integrate cooking lessons and yoga and breath-work into my open curriculum this week!

There’s tremendous goodwill and desire to channel it towards the most vulnerable among us, and I hope we’ll continue to take care of those in need after this crisis passes — which it will — eventually.

For now, my prayers are with the sick, the bereaved, and those with a lot less flexibility than myself.

And they’re also with all of you.

With all of us.

Whatever else is going on, our kids are still going to wake us because they want the penguin, and wake us again because they want the sea otter.

And that’s real and deserving of an Amen too.

Until Soon, friends.

The Picture You Discover When You Wait 12 Years to Sort Through Wedding Proofs

I do not recommend waiting twelve years to sort through wedding proofs.

But I can easily understand how it can happen!

Way leads to way…And here we are folks!

We’ve arrived at this morning’s consolation.

If I had sorted through these proofs a dozen years ago, I would have seen this picture of myself, with my Aunt Sherrie holding my arm in the air, dancing, entangled with my mom and my loved ones on the dance floor.

I would have been 29, okay 30, if I dragged my heals, but had accomplished this task in a reasonable timeframe. And I would have a lovely wedding album filled with artistry — I picked gorgeous wedding photographers.

I don’t have that; I have a small red Samsonite personal-effects suitcase, with an indestructible shell and a combination lock — A wedding gift — which stores hundreds of photographs in small envelopes.

Over the past few years when someone that I know dies, I think there’s a good chance they were at my wedding (there were 225 people in attendance) and I open the suitcase, crouch on the floor and sort through the envelopes.

This is an absurd way to experience the wedding photos; I know this. It’s something that I accept about the hazard of a poet and a rabbi joining in union (and the absence of someone who might have finished this job).

But because it’s 2020 and not 2008, I’m looking at my Aunt, my beautiful beloved (dead) Aunt Sherrie holding up my arm, and she’s only a handful of years older than I am now. And I look more like her in that photograph than I look like myself in that photograph.

And the love and appreciation and yearning that I experience now is so palpable that I feel I could actually pull her out of death with my extended arm. I do.

I don’t need to talk about how she died each time I talk about her life; to me she will always be my vivacious, hilarious, generous Aunt — the woman who drove me to each dress fitting and let all of my poet friends crash on her basement floor.

I mention how she died — suicide — for the sake of the living.

Because we can’t see in this photograph, or any, really, the ways that people who we love are suffering.

And we need to look at that, at them.

I heard someone say, about my Aunt, that people are given two hands by God: one for giving and one for receiving, and that Sherrie used both hands for giving.

The consolation of my ridiculous procrastination: Discovering my own hand forever held to my dear Aunt Sherrie, so that I might, somehow, in some world — even beyond death — hold her up.