November Rain (& Roses)

There are some resilient roses out West.

I had no idea roses could live this long; it’s nine months now that I’ve paid attention to their lifespan.

Do they last through the actual winter? (Wait — don’t tell me; I want to be surprised!)

Some friends asked me, moving from New York to San Francisco, if I’d miss seasons.

I miss people, but there are seasons here.

The signifiers may be more subtle and I no longer pass several Starbucks each morning with their chalk placard cues: pumpkin; gingerbread; peppermint.

But it is November; I know it in my bones — my Happy Light plugged in with the changing of the clocks earlier this month, and it stays on until the time switches back in the Spring — even out here.

It’s not the cold, I discovered, but my body craving more hours of light — wherever I am.

And the rain has also arrived.

I try to time my walks with the graying clouds to get caught in it — its clean smell hitting bramble and beach. Rain on freshly tarred roads smells the same on either coast.

Still, this long into a pandemic and time gets shuffled up.

Last night, my kids asked me to read them a Passover story.

They don’t care which holiday we are “on.”

Consistently, they reach for the longest book on the shelf. This one has the story of Passover folded into a modern tale of a girl who’s eaten too much matzah. It’s like Bread and Jam for Frances meets Exodus.

I can’t; I tell my nine-year old, I’m too tired.

“I’ll read it,” she offered.

And she did, her six-year-old brother and I both listening and falling asleep to her voice.

I woke up a few hours later, next to her, and realized the book was a fortuitous selection for this year’s Thanksgiving, with its message of Dayenu.

It would have been enough.

As I get older, being alive, making it to this moment — especially now — seems more and more miraculous each day.

Whomever, wherever, whatever we’re loving, missing, yearning — for me, this year’s holiday feels like more than a consolation, it feels like enough.

Thanks and Praise.

Grateful for the ways we are all connected.

Prayer + Action: Food Banking

Philadelphia Story

I’ve been missing my hometown something awful as this pandemic wears on.

This is the longest I’ve ever been away from Philadelphia — the plane tickets dated last March unused, with no plans, yet, to rebook.

(And it didn’t help to have endless memes of soft pretzels and hoagies and liberty bells circulating the Internet as this election neared its end. Don’t even utter the words water ice: I’ll dissolve into a puddle on the floor with my Tastykake Butterscotch Krimpets — Actually, can someone local mail me a pack of those?)

I am not alone in this feeling — a nostalgia that’s taken a dip towards melancholy as the light wanes and holidays approach: So many of us are aching to see our loved ones in person.

I miss my parents and brother and aunts and uncles and cousins who live in the city, or outside of the city — 40 miles West, towards bucolic hills, expansive sky and farm land.

And I miss the dead, who - though dead - are specifically dead in Philadelphia.

Not just their gravesides, but the parking lots of their condominiums. The last places I saw them alive or remember them most vividly; the farmer’s market on the outskirts of the city, the Aveda hair salon my grandmother visited for decades. 

I go to Ocean Beach, here, in San Francisco to find them — the dead matriarchs — as if some tributary from the Schuylkill River empties into a portal of the Pacific, willed by my imagination.

(Or as I might explain to my children: Just like in Frozen II, water holds memory.)

Pennsylvania contains multitudes, as we’ve all been reminded in recent days.

I called my grandmother, Mommom Ethel, in Philadelphia, after the election four years ago, from Brooklyn, where Dan and I were living with our kids; I was keeping an advice column at the time.

I received a question about healing our divided country, and I called upon my wise matriarch to help me.

But in a Jedi Mommom move, she placed the question back to me, and to my children: It was our work - the future generations to heal this rift.

Re-reading her words and our conversation is a great source of consolation for me.

And here we are.

All of us missing each other, separated by geography, separated by ideology. Separated by death.

And we still have to do it, this work, from wherever we are, wherever we’re longing to be - not yet knowing when we can rebook our flights.

I’m thinking about my Mom and my Mommom this morning: Look how my young grandmother rocked those high heels while carrying a baby on the sidewalks of Philadelphia, the city her parents and grandparents arrived at over 100 years ago, sailing from Russia to America.

I will never be able wear heals like that; I really wish I could — It would make me feel closer to her.

But I will try, everyday I will try to live by the words and actions of my matriarchs and to work towards healing these divides in our gorgeous, aching, expansive country.

Wishing you all some extra light and warmth wherever you may find it.

Prayer + Action: Be kind to yourselves and to each other.

3 bucks and the kindness of strangers

I took my six-year-old son for a couple of booster shots the other day.

It involved tears, and smooth jazz and deep breathing and bribes.

And this was preceding the actual doctor’s visit.

When we pulled up to the large medical office, there were two huge firetrucks blocking the parking lot.

I like to think that I’m reasonable in these situations, but when the security guard waived for me to keep driving, I full on stopped my car, rolled down the window and told him “We’ve got an appointment for 9AM”

No dice.

“Should we go home?” my son asked from the back seat.

“I don’t see any flames coming from the building,” I answered.

And that’s where we’re at folks.

I didn’t make it this far to turn around.

Like so much else - these days - when something seems difficult and absurd and surreal, I try to break it down and make it sound doable for the kids, and also for myself.

“We’ll just circle the block and if we find a spot, we’ll park. And we’ll walk over, and if they let us in we’ll go in. And if not — if the building’s actually on fire — then we’ll go home” No problem!

We parked in a lot a few blocks away. 2A I told myself.

We assembled in a line circling the block, ran into a close friend there, and made our way into the building — my son holding his plush penguin and securing his small mask.

The visit itself was uneventful.

“It didn’t hurt,” he said. “The fear was worse than the shot.” My wise boy.

When we finished we did the thing in reverse, made our way back a few blocks and into the garage.

We circled the 2nd floor, and like some fevered anxiety dream come-to-life, could not find the car: All of the cars in spots were blocked in by valets.

Wait — I’m in the wrong lot; there’s an identical one next door!

“We’ll just walk down these steps and up the next steps and find 2A and get the car!” No big deal!

But then the machine wouldn’t take our money to validate our ticket, and there was no attendant in sight.

I had made a valiant effort to stay calm. Now I could feel my skin prickling up in a sweaty shiver against my shirt. We were stuck. Me and my kid and his penguin plushy.

Then we met Lou.

A man around my father’s age. Also there to see his doctor. He gave me three crisp one dollar bills and told me try again.

The machine was wonky and we still weren’t sure if it worked, if I’d be able to get out of the lot.

And he said: You go first, and I’ll stay to make sure you get out.

I asked his name. Lou. I told him I’d include him in my prayers.

He said thank you, he’d need them.

And that was it.

That’s it.

That’s all of it.

His kindness. His consideration for me and my son before himself. A stranger who I know was at the doctor for something more serious than a booster shot.

His decency is what we’re living off of and I know it, and I tell that to my boy.

We get out of the lot, we roll down the windows, we turn up the music — we make it home.

In time for math.

Wishing you all moments of consolation and grace.

Prayer + Action Vote!