Entries 102
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How to ask
My mother would read chapter books with me before bed, the two of us alternating between reading aloud and listening. How long this lasted I couldn’t say, though I imagine these evenings ending a...
Resiliency, or something like it
This morning my husband woke up feeling ill so I got both of our children dressed and fed and onto the Metro with a bus transfer to drop off my son at daycare. The Metro is only running every 20 ...
The best is yet to come
I am exceedingly grateful to be done with this part of my life. That’s not to say “my family is complete” (a declaration that seems a surefire way to end up with a surprise child), but moreso jus...
Rootlessness
Early, early Thanksgiving morning. You and I and the one dim light in our living room. I’ve given up on sleep for either of us, for now. You look into my eyes and I look into yours and with my ga...
Slow down!
The last year and a half of these pages read like a fever dream. Isolation and shortages and angry protests and pipe bombs. Is it any wonder I’m having a hard time feeling that it’s okay to slow ...
Two photographs
13 days. That’s how old our son was when I took the picture of him strapped to his father’s chest as we waited for the Metro. In the picture my husband is smiling, but it’s a pained smile. Many m...
Joy comes in the morning
This verse was stuck in my head today, the words in English and accompanied by electric guitar, clearly some mostly forgotten vestige of my childhood. I look it up. Psalm 30. Weeping may endure f...
She's here, with fanfare
The very first thing she taught us is that no two children are the same. It’s been a hell of a few weeks. … My son was quarantined from daycare because one of his classmates got COVID. The next d...
Between the hospital and here
in the hospital i hold her swaddled against me and feel the shape of her knee beneath the blanket and remember how that knee undulated inside me now i lay in my bed home, but without her it feels...
Tomorrow and every day after
Eventually I will fall asleep. Then all too soon I will again open my eyes to a world that doesn’t value me or my family. Somehow, I will climb out of bed and carry on. I’m so very tired.
Hinei mah tov
When you were so very pregnant and I was still reeling, sitting in the coffee shop over a shared cookie, you comforted me with the idea that one day we’d watch our children run and play together....
Growing
She’s growing. She’s healthy. And this time, I’m not so burdened by my fear. The joy shines through. Perhaps I’m growing too.
The great shift
As spring greets us with warmer weather and mass vaccination, I’m feeling the first pains of what I can only assume is one of many great shifts. More people are ready to see us, to resume relati...
The Taking of Pelham 123
I didn’t really appreciate how much the isolation of pandemic restrictions would make this, these terrifyingly uncertain and physically exhausting first few weeks of pregnancy, so hard. I’ve been...
Futile?
I think the anxiety is better, so far, than it was the last time around. I’m better at recognizing unhelpful thoughts, better at acknowledging but not fixating on them, better at accepting uncert...
Impossible to title
I’m pregnant. I will never be excited like I was the first time, but this time around I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything, either. If there is to be joy, then there will also be time fo...
We're pandemic fine
Our interim director asks me how I am at the start of a meeting that I’m about to lead. I respond vaguely and he follows up, “How’s the family?” I think back to the last time he asked me this, ba...
The sounds of the spaces in which we dwell
This morning I could distinctly hear the daily, trumpeted call of the National Anthem from the Navy Yard or the Marine Barracks (I’m not sure which). The sound doesn’t always travel to our living...
These days
Some days it feels like things just keep getting worse. Like every glimmer of hope just gets extinguished by some new, previously unimaginable tragedy. And even when things go right, when they co...
Sparks of the past
Memories keep coming to me. … After a long day I ask David “What if they were just tired?” I came home during every break from college and became my brother’s primary caretaker. I fed him, bathe...
I'm not okay
I struggle to let myself feel how I feel, because the message is always that someone else is going through worse. And, especially now, especially over the last year, the message is also to keep c...
This town
The first time I felt truly afraid in this city I was sitting helplessly at my desk as I listened to an endless barrage of helicopters and sirens and the whispers of coworkers trying to account f...
Whiskers ... WHISK!
Now almost daily he’s got me musing on the etymology of words, distilling every construct into its most basic elements. A new world of wonder and delight, for him, yes, but for me too.
Where we were
We were eating lunch at the spot we always used to go before shul, sitting outside at a table set up in the parking lane. You didn’t need a phone notification to know. Clapping and shouting from ...
A stroll for my native Washingtonian
Yesterday we took a long walk through the city. We strolled under the shade of the trees in Rock Creek, my toddler shouting, “Hike! Hike!” (Because in his little city boy head, the slightest bit ...
