Losing and Finding and Finding and Losing

It’s the middle of July, and today is a Tuesday when I normally put up an episode of MILK.

I don’t have an episode.

The episode I’m imagining was supposed to tie up this season of MILK Podcast: Moms I’d Like to Know, Lost and Found. I had planned to interview my kids and husband about the past 5 months we’ve spent together since New York City shut down on March 13, 2020.

It’s been on my to-do list for three weeks now. 

During the pandemic, I’ve produced 15 episodes about being lost and being found.  Episode 6 and beyond were remote interviews, as the pandemic unfolded and doing things from my home studio became the only way to keep my show going. Every woman (and one man!) I interviewed during this time has helped me to feel less scared and more connected during a truly fucking weird time. We’ve discussed motherhood and failure and pivoting and racism and sexual abuse and activism. We’ve discussed books they’ve written and thoughts they’ve had and fears they’ve navigated. What they have learned about themselves as they go through losses in real time – what is there left to find? I hope these conversations have resonated.

I can hear my son through the wall we share. He’s plays Roblox for hours these days. My daughter sleeps until 1 pm or later. Both have refused online classes during the summer. Camp wasn’t an option. Parenting as a verb is long gone. I think I’m doing my best? If I’m being honest, the only time I feel “successful” is when I’m cleaning out a drawer or after I exercise. It is not optimal.

NYC is in Phase 4 now with some exceptions. That means we are doing well. My husband and I make arbitrary decisions every day about what is safe, and what is comfortable. Our family left town for a few weeks when “school” was winding down to a wimper. We celebrated our daughter’s middle school graduation by watching a schmaltzy video with her in her cap and gown. We safely (we hope) socialized with our friends outdoors, trying to create normalcy and some fun for our kids. We noticed the unsettling feeling of being in a Trump-y community in upstate New York (boats with flags on the lake, unmasked people in the Target, very few cases of actual Coronovirus) and how complex that felt after the sirens, the sickness and the suffering happening just three hours downstate -- not to mention the protests and the curfews and the helicopters.

We returned to Brooklyn last week, and ate dinner outside on the sidewalk of our neighborhood local spot.  Seeing people on the street again doing all of their New York City things, only in masks, feels to me like a weirdo Richard Scary BusyTown book about our city coming back to life (pig construction worker poking his head out of the manhole, fox waitress carrying food, fox and pig couple biking along with masks after getting a haircut). These are all pleasant things that feel like we’ve made progress as a city, and that our efforts to socially distance have had an effect. But March, April, May and June will live inside my head forever. The terror and anxiety. The anger. The pride in our essential workers. The rawness of inequality in every system we are supposed to rely on. And the knowledge that those with money are always always always less vulnerable.

It’s summer and I’m not used to hiding out in my house. I want to send my kids to camp, I want to sit inside a café in the AC, and go to the beach without a mask. And yet, worrying or desiring these aspects of a normal summer is so obviously a luxury.

I hear people around me figuring out what is best for them and their families, debating “coming back” to New York, and it reminds me of all of the other scrambling we’ve had to do at so many junctures of family life before this one, with so little support for working families across the socioeconomic spectrum. Figuring out childcare after I had my first kid, my second, and what was the calculus on housing in NYC balanced with sending my kids to public school, which I believe in regardless of its flaws. I’m reminded of that as I hear people talking about homeschooling and podding and hiring tutors so they can work from home. School will happen in some form in a month or so, and this is a limbo moment where I am expecting very little from an education system so weighed down, so inequitable. I know that I will bear the brunt of making sure my kids are getting what they need. I also know my kids will ultimately be fine. But what about ALL kids?

I feel very connected to my neighborhood and to my city and to the people who are working hard to boost and bring things back to life. I feel like it is my job to help with that, not to dismiss New York as some kind of court jester designed to entertain me.

I want to be a part of systemic change. I also want to be around for my kids right now, but I have no idea if I’m doing any of this right. 

Hopefully I’ll have that podcast episode tying it all together neatly with some answers soon.  Stay tuned.

The Washington Post and the Stories We Need

I am grateful to the Washington Post for giving me the space to share my reflections on the Tree of Life Synagogue in the wake of the violence the community so close to my heart suffered.

The nostalgia around childhood is powerful. At 46, I can visualize my kindergarten cubby and rainbow-colored mat, feel the pebbly summer-camp road under my feet and hear the conspiratorial giggles of my friends gossiping in the girls’ room of my childhood synagogue.

Now that place is one of the most blood-soaked crime scenes in Jewish American history.

Some of the most visceral moments of my life revolve around Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill.

Read the full piece in the Washington Post.

space

There is some. Finally. My heart has been constricted for so long that it feels rather foreign to have air around my thoughts. Grief is a lot of work and takes up a great deal of space. But some has been cleared.

This last month was an emotional sprint towards the one-year anniversary of mom’s death. There were still firsts to get through – Mother’s Day, her birthday, and several memorials. Heading towards this finish — which really isn’t a finish of course, but is more like the beginning of a life without, was quite challenging. May was tough – Mother’s Day in particular was almost physically draining, and I only got through it with wine and yoga and cuddling my family. I was so grateful for the friends who have also lost their mothers, who shared how much they missed them, and how difficult Mother’s Day was for them, too. I felt acutely part of a club, this sad but supportive little club of motherless daughters.

I sat through a memorial that a national women’s organization put together in her honor. Her hometown chapter named a children’s playroom at Family Court for her, because she spent much of the time she was president of this organization advocating for children and families. It was a real honor, but not easy to watch a slideshow set to that inspirational/sad Desiree song – the “you gotta be” one. Mom smiling wide at a podium, marching in protests, and meeting government officials on behalf of this organization – seeing these images of was a reminder of her accomplishments, but also how much she had left to do when she died.

Her birthday on May 24th was another rough one, because I was literally reliving that time last year when she was alive, deteriorating, and yet still able to call me after receiving the peonies and bright orange scarf I sent. It made me sad, thinking about those tokens I now have back in my possession, the scarves, the gifts, the clothes and jewelry divided up. So I took some breaths and wore the orange scarf all that week in her honor.

Then I was back in Pittsburgh for the unveiling, which is done within a year after a Jewish death. It’s a simple ceremony at the gravesite, where a Rabbi says some psalms, the immediate mourners say the Kaddish, or mourning prayer, and the face of the gravestone is revealed. And then there it was. Her name on a piece of granite. Her dates. Mother, Wife, Grandmother and Friend. I placed a purple rock on the top of the gravestone for Miles and Zoe, as Jewish custom dictates. It was a perfect June day, just as her funeral had been almost a year before. The sun and the breeze filtered through the trees as we put arms around each other and cried again for mom. And then we had brunch.

That weekend of the unveiling was intense, but when it was over and we returned home to Brooklyn I felt hugely relieved and … spacious. I felt like I possessed this certain kind of acceptance and understanding that had been out of reach until that moment. It’s vague and new age-y but I felt I had arrived at a destination, in my heart. And that I was going to be okay, no matter what swirled around me from that point on. I hadn’t believed it until then.

I feel so much gratitude towards friends and teachers and people who have been with me throughout this difficult year, bestowing kindness and reading my pieces and making chit chat and asking my how I’m doing. It has all been a part of this particular journey I’m now on, and each interaction and intersection of humanity has been a step on the ladder towards it. I was so happy to be able to honor my mom with friends in my home last week, for the final and most personal of all the memorials, to accept people’s kindness and offerings and music and warmth. We had an unforgettable small service and mini concert for Judi from my friends Jamie and Erin, where I was able to accept love and say thank you to my community. And to let mom go a little bit more, but with the reverence she deserved.

It must be the benefit of all of the therapy, the writing, the going inward and the good support I have. Because I feel so much less angry about losing her than I used to. A huge relief! I feel grateful to the people who get how to be and less pissed at the people who don’t. And I truly feel lucky to be the emotional person I am, and not burdened by it because right now it feels like something of a gift.

I will continue to wrestle with missing her. I will still be sad and have to shake my head at some of the continued fall-out from her loss. But I will be ok. I’m not just repeating it, hoping it will stick. I believe it.