I’m supposed to leave here tomorrow night but I can’t go, I think as I look out on the warm, gold glow from the new old streets. I may not be able to leave. I have a ticket, though. For a flight that is supposed to take off, but it might not. There’s snow coming in and the country is reacting like it’s under attack again. Come to think of it, this seems to be worse. I may not be able to leave.

“If there’s a place in this world that can make you cry, isn’t that where you ought to be?” Daniel Gordis asked. If a place can make you cry, you may not be able to leave. The only way is to freeze your heart, freeze it colder than the snow about to coat the streets, colder than the floor on your toes as you walk out to get one last look at the nof at night. If a place can make you cry, you need to freeze your heart. Freeze the tear as you zip up your bag and tell yourself you’ll be able to take off. And as you board that plane and think of the warm, gold glow, your tear will melt and swell in your eye.

I may not be able to leave… but if I do, I hope to God I’ll be able to come back.

The dust is gathering on the shelf around me, and I really wish someone would open a window. No one’s opened me in months. I worry I’ll forget what it’s like to be looked at. I’m not in the shape I used to be.

It wasn’t always like this. Usually, at least three or four times a week, her hands would pull me by my leather binding. Right when I got off the shelf, she would use her other hand to support my pages. She would blow the dust from off my cover each time, even if she had taken me out earlier in the day. She would hug me to her chest, cross her arms over me, and carry me to the orange velvet couch.

My first memory is with her. It was dark right before I met her, too. She ripped the paper from my face and smoothed out my leather. Her hands were soft and warm. “This will be perfect,” she smiled.

Soon afterward she filled my first page and started opening me daily. “This is his first time eating solids,” she started saying. She would touch her hand to my pages, careful enough not to leave a strong print. She would giggle. “Isn’t he wonderful?” Then, “He’s a great big cousin. Look at that!” Then, “His English teacher said he never would, but I knew better!”

True, during that other stretch of time when she didn’t open me, I learned to get used to the silence. Or so I tried. Luckily, one day, she took me out and smoothed her hand over my leather again. She opened me, and this time there was a young girl there who had never been in my pages. “This is his first time eating solids,” she smiled, pointing once again. She laughed. “He asked me not to show you the ones of him in the bath!”

The young girl pressed her finger to my page. “That’s you?” the young girl giggled at him. He nodded, his cheeks flushing red. They flushed the same color on their first date. “He was so nervous,” she would say when she showed that one. “Aren’t they just adorable?”

She started to fill me with images of the girl and the boy. Soon, the girl wasn’t a stranger anymore.

And then, “This was their first dance! He swept her right off her feet.”

And then, “He looks just like his father! Look at the way he curls his toes!”

Her hands started to feel colder on my pages. Still, every time, she would blow the dust off of me and smooth out my leather.

The last day she took me out, it was more slowly than usual. Her grasp was weaker, and her hands were shaking. “This was his first time eating solids,” she sighed. Her voice was shaking too. “Wasn’t he wonderful?” The girl, older by now, leaned over me and a drop of water fell on my page. Then she closed me and pushed me back on the shelf. I’ve been there since.

Except I feel something on my spine now—is that a hand? Yes, it’s her hand! She pulls me out with two hands, takes a deep breath, blows the dust from my cover, crosses her arms over me, and carries me once again to the orange velvet couch.

I wrote this two years ago, during the Aseret Yemei Teshuva while I was in seminary. Not much has changed… besides for my phone, which is why I’m publishing this now. Mom, the phone survived for two more years.

It fell in slow motion. One of those moments where I knew it would happen, but just kind of assumed it wouldn’t. My phone bounced off the rim, glided through the air, and fell in the toilet.

A gasp slid down my throat to the pit of my stomach.

It bobbed there for a second before I jabbed my hand in and grabbed it out. Automatically, I cleansed the phone, patted it down, and cushioned it in a bed of therapeutic rice. Once I took a breath and acknowledged my phone was on its way to recovery, I sat down at my kitchen table and played back what had just happened.

I grabbed that phone in a split second.

Don’t think I would’ve reacted that quickly for human life. Hehe.

But wait. Epiphany #1. Would I?

I chuckle, hope the water will seep out, and pray my nervousness won’t seep through.

Continue reading →

Hey. I have a crazy idea, but bear with me.

Let’s run away.

Let’s go to a place like Paris, or a place like Boston, or a place like New York, or a place like Peru. A place like that, but where there’s no hate. Where you can just breathe deep and breathe easy without a worry of who’s trying to kill you or who’s trying to kill your family or which friend’s name you’ll find on a list or how you’ll explain to children you don’t yet have why there are people who hate them. Because who hates children? Because people won’t hate children in this place. It’ll be fun.

There’ll be deep sea diving and deep breathing and homemade smoothies whenever things get a little stressful, because, I don’t know, some sand just won’t come out of your shoe or something. Because that will be the biggest problem, because there won’t be hate and there won’t be violence and there won’t be panic and there won’t be cell phones and there won’t be biased reporting that changes the course of history because there will be no hate.

Nope, no hate. Only smoothies.

Continue reading →

We all know That Guy, she says with a sly smile, who has no idea what he’s doing. Don’t be That Guy.

That Guy, she says, who skips the stone without regard for the ripples that cause the tsunami.
That Guy, for whom we buy pom poms and paint posters, just to see he benched himself again.
That Guy, who buys pom poms and paints posters for us, just to see he missed the game by a day.

But what about the That Guy, who skips the stone without regard for the ripples that cause the wave we catch and ride on a day of dismal waters?

That Guy, who buys pom poms and paints posters for us one day late, who remind us that losing sucks, but hey, at least we have That Guy?
That Guy we’ve barely ever spoken to, who as we walk away from a random friendly run-in one afternoon, shouts after us that he likes our blogs?
That Guy, who instead of sensibly telling us to go to sleep, talks us through the anxieties of time differences at 3:45 AM?

Yeah, That Guy may be a girl or a boy. That Guy may be an idiot for skipping stones without regard for whom they may hit. That Guy may be a tweeter, a copywriter, a best friend, a tourist photographer, or even an elevator hummer. And That Guy has no idea what he’s doing. That Guy has no concept of the grins, the giggles, the glimmers, or the pushes up the hill he’s given me.

It occurred to me recently that I’m That Guy Who Takes Those Guys for Granted, and no one wants to be that kind of That Guy.

So thank you, That Guy, although you have no idea who you are. I aspire to be you.

Today, I neglected to remember one fact per apple I hoarded from the cafeteria:

a. I was not going straight back to my dorm

b. I was not carrying a bag, and

c. I cannot juggle.

(a) thus I walked down the street like an idiot (b) holding two apples in one hand and one apple and my phone in the other, like one of those people who juggles at a talent show but hasn’t realized the music already started.

(c),  I bet if I was juggling, people would be pretty impressed.

It turns out this isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Let’s remain in metaphor, yes? I’m tempted to take apples because I figure they’ll be good for later then remember that they’re devilishly inconvenient for me now. I forget that I cannot juggle without going from three apples to none, or three apples to three very badly bruised apples.

Because it’s not just about the apples. It’s all the stuff I might be good at; all the stuff I’d like; where I’m needed, when I need it. When I need to help, fix, jump, slide, stay awake, fret, laugh, yell, smile, smile more… and carry three apples.

They say, keep your head above water, but as it turns out I can bob in and out sometimes and still swim against the tide.

They say, bob for one apple at a time.

They say, you can’t juggle.

I know, one day, I might end up on the bottom of the ocean with three bruised apples floating above my head.

They say, don’t mix metaphors.

But I still try, and I’m not sure why.