Until soon, dear ones

A poem from Einat (duh):

February 29   Jane Hirshfield

An extra day— Like the painting’s fifth cow, who looks out directly, straight toward you, from inside her black and white spots. An extra day— Accidental, surely: the made calendar stumbling over the real as a drunk trips over a threshold too low to see. An extra day— With a second cup of black coffee. A friendly but businesslike phone call. A mailed-back package. Some extra work, but not too much— just one day’s worth, exactly. An extra day— Not unlike the space between a door and its frame when one room is lit and another is not, and one changes into the other as a woman exchanges a scarf. An extra day— Extraordinarily like any other. And still there is some generosity to it, like a letter re-readable after its writer has died.

What if I just decided that one of the other months should have 32 days sometimes? Wouldn't that be weird? It's February 28th today and I am in the Detroit airport and soon I will be in the air and I was just in the air and when I stop being in and out of the air, for the time being at least, it will be the end of the night on Monday and it will be the end of February 29th and it will be the end of this February. And tomorrow, the 29th, kind of isn't going to happen for me at all. And, kind of, it will be an epically long two-day-day that I spend in my own little capsule traveling through space and time. And that's still totally, totally weird for me.

A warning, or a heads up, that there's some, uh, February in this post. Skip a few paragraphs if you're more in need of lightness.

The last week has been far too February for my liking. Someone in my life, someone to whom I am deeply connected in many ways, died. I say "someone" because I've been struggling to define exactly who he is. Was. He was the father of my dear, dear friend Lizzy (note: not this Aya-Lizzie) and he was a close father-like friend to my sister, and he was the once-husband of one of my second mothers, and also he often called me by accident when trying to use voice commands to tell his flip phone to call his daughter. Micah very accurately called him my "other sister's father" and so far that's felt like the most accurate...name.

We knew this was coming - heavily, he had the same brain cancer my dad had, almost thirty years ago now. And it's still just as hopeless and just as shitty. A year ago, last February, he was diagnosed. And then his fucking French bulldog, Mitzi (short for Mitzvah - I KNOW), fucking died. As Lizzy aptly put it, "when it rains, it rains diarrhea" because fuck "pouring."

So I came home. Because I didn't know what else to do and I didn't know what to do and it felt kind of right and also nothing was right and what did I know. But also, I may live a gajillion miles away but I refuse to not be a part of my community anymore. Time and space and distance and money will. not. isolate. me. Or, that's how I felt last Thursday when I booked a ticket, canceled it, had Einat talk to someone in India while she was in Israel gchatting me while I was in Kenya to make sure the flight was canceled...and then rebooked a new ticket and put my body on a plane.

But then I was here. And you were all here, posting and existing and remembering and holding me from all of the places a gajillion miles and minutes away.

Fuck. Fucking everything. There's so much. And I was so grateful to be home and so connected with the idea Tricia shared that grief is love and I know it so much, and also, fuuuuuuuuuck. Fucking everything. You know?

But because I flew home this particular week, I got to be part of the little surprise dinner my sister had been planning for my mom's birthday. And my "aunts" who are really my mom's best friends were there, and I got them to play Celebrity but they gave up when we started the charades round. And they all talked about the crystal wine glass sets they got for their weddings and and how the red wine glasses are big enough for red wine now, but the red wine glasses are just too small. I joked that they would make good shot glasses.

And I got to see people I love and I got to stock up on gluten free things like brownie mix (I know, it's going to be terrible) and the service at Starbucks is so. fast. And between paragraphs of this post I completed my journey and unpacked and took a shower and now in Nairobi it's technically March but for most of you it's still February 29th and here is our last post of this year's February. And we did it, and we made it through again, just like we do every year, and on every one of the difficult days that hide themselves throughout our years. And sometimes they are conveniently (?) clustered in February, and sometimes they pop up in effing June. We did it and we keep doing it and I can only really keep doing it because of all of you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, for sharing and being and for making this project real again.

Ok, the promised lightness:

Because sometimes things are painfully cute and the struggle is too real.

Because these guys did that sweet Gotye cover all on one guitar and now this. Also, the middle guy looks like he's wearing a nightgown.

And because honestly, I can always use a little Disney.

See you next year, my loves.
Ruthie