[February 31st] Better late than never

Hiiiii. It's me. It's March 3rd. The days have just been passing me by.

I've been really aware lately of my two-ness. Well, I've been really aware of it since I first read the description in early 2017 and was like "OH HI YES THIS IS ME" and that all still feels pretty recent. One thing that I know about myself, and that the language of the enneagram has given me words to name, is that the value I see in myself is anchored in the value others see in me. Thank you all for teaching me, simply by not being disappointed in me because I missed my day, for showing me that when I maybe can't show up for others, you'll still love me, especially if it's just posting on a blog, which is so so important and also maybe there are other ways that I can show up and it's ok if I'm late to post on the blog.

Sometimes I feel like I'm really drinking the enneagram Kool-Aid, but it's really good Kool-Aid and I want people I love to drink it, too. So, if you haven't, I strongly recommend taking the enneagram test (there are also free versions if you google around). Ok, enough plugging.

I'm back in Kenya and I'm having some delightful moments that make me feel like posting on Instagram, and then I kept thinking that instead I could share those moments with you. I sat with a colleague today and told him about how I keep waking up in the middle of the night and don't realize until who knows how much time has gone by that I've been in a half asleep state trying to solve a work problem that I certainly can't solve without my calendar or spreadsheet open and I should just go back to sleep. So, I'm a little stressed...and these moments of delight are all the more, well, delightful. And I want to share them with you!

When I lived in Kenya, I had this idea that I would post on my blog - at all, really, but also a specific idea - sights and sounds and smells of Kenya. I never did, but since I've already embraced the better late than never approach, here are some from the last few days:

I drove all around Kitui County earlier this week, and in addition to generally marveling at the epic blue sky and the gorgeous trees I hadn't realized I'd missed seeing, I loved passing dried up river beds - these seasonal rivers are, like, rushing during and after the rainy season, and NOWHERE TO BE FOUND during the dry season. Whoa, Earth!

[ok I had to give up on uploading this, it's a lot of loud chirping]

I woke up before my alarm because these birds were going caraaaaazay outside, and it was kind of awesome. This is audio, not video, but I think maybe I've successfully uploaded by pretending it's a video?

Sweaty, blinded-by-the-equator-sun me in front of the waterfall in Karura Forest, my favorite place in Nairobi, which Wangari Maathai and a band of fierce women defended so that Nairobians can learn about and enjoy nature, and so that I can take delightful Sunday morning runs. Today, I also saw one monkey on my run, which was like, "Ru! I made an appearance so you can feel like you saw monkeys but I didn't come with a crew because sometimes we're scary when there are many."

I was sitting and doing work and already being like, "I'm so lucky, it's so warm and sunny but I'm in the shade and I have coffee and I got a table outside that ALSO has an outlet" when a child just came over to me and gave me this flower and then walked away (hopefully back to his parents, who I assume were enjoying their own delightful coffee experience.

I visited this decentralized wastewater treatment facility in rural Kenya and the sky was so blue and there were mountains in the distance I wanted to climb and I kept asking people what mountains they were and they were like, "those are just some mountains" so no one else thought they were special but I decided that taking photos in scenic treatment plant locations is my new thing, this is 2/2. 

This is a photo I took for my job, which is about toilets, and that's fun, isn't it?

This was my last meeting of the day and I convinced everyone that we should sit outside in the shade which was a wonderful decision because inside would have been so stuffy and hot and this was deliiiiiiightful and there was a breeze. After the meeting, we discovered that the drive on the very bumpy road had caused the back door to no longer be able to close, so we all stood around watching one person try to close it repeatedly, and then someone, like, hammered something, and then it worked. But again, I was in the shade, and isn't it amazing that shade is a thing?

This is Elizabeth. She sold us 20 mangoes for 15 shillings each (about $0.15) and then she gave us three more for free and I was like, "Ok, Kitui County does not have coffee (like not even instant) and I couldn't get water at breakfast because no one ever wants water for breakfast so they just don't have it, but there are these mangoes, so I'll take it."

And did you think I forgot about smells? Haven't yet figured out how to upload, but I smelled the most amazing petrichor on my way home this evening. It rained a little earlier today - I felt the first few drops as I went full Kenyan and sprinted down the street to try to get inside before the skies opened...which they didn't end up doing...just a few drops and some epic scents.

I love you all. We did it. Thanks for being here. See you next year.

Feb. 27th

Hi my friends,

Another February is nearly complete! Wow. This one really flew by for me, for a few reasons. First, Micah and I took a legit VACATION to the Bahamas for the first week of the month, which was deeply relaxing and rejuvenating. I kept being overwhelmed with wonder and gratitude that "vacation" is even a thing, and feeling super indebted to and inspired by labor activists of past generations for fighting for this to be part of my rights as a worker. Thanks, guys! Wow, I needed that.

It has also flown by because I am pregnant with twins, and I find that I am experiencing and marking time and in some new ways as the pregnancy progresses, including thinking more in weeks and days than in months at the moment. I'm happy to report that so far everyone is healthy and well. :) During this February month I started to really feel fetal movement, and now these kicks and flips and dance parties happening internally are punctuating my days (and totally distracting me during some of my therapy sessions with my clients!). So, for me, this month has felt very ALIVE this year.

And now to some internet things to share just for fun:

I saw "Green Book" last night, and actually really enjoyed it. But/and, after seeing the movie I watched this funny parody of that genre of movie and, while some moments are a bit slow and maybe it's a bit long, numerous lines in it made me laugh out loud and I recommend it. The very end gave me the biggest laugh so it is worth sticking with it.

Other than that, last thought is that I'm really enjoying paying attention to how the days are already getting noticeably longer even though it's still totally February and still winter. Each time I see the sun still out after 5 pm it gives me this little thrill of excitement about spring coming. The feeling makes me think of this song from Nava Tehila that I love and want to share.

Love to all of you wherever you are,

Nomi

[february 24, 2019 - femsex throwback]

Dear ones, 
I spent some time looking through old emails this week... Sometimes they let me hear my mom's voice in my ear and I remember that she is always on my shoulder. 

In fall 2009, I participated in FemSex - The Female Sexuality Workshop - that many of you know and participated in as well.  One specifically meaningful assignment for me was... to make "a map of home." I just found my map, and I wanted to share it here for you. I don't think I've shared it with anyone other than my mom herself. The quality is... lacking, but I think you'll get the idea.

Leah (Lola) is my mom's mom. Amalia is my dad's mom. Naomi is my mom. And then there's me. Aya, you might recognize the bamboo rafts from Thailand... The poem is below. Interestingly, I am ever more grateful for the monthly ceremony of bleeding, even though I am currently in some different kind of ceremony... all feels related to motherhood and my ancestors who brought me to this moment.  

Love and gentleness, 
einat

poem in praise of menstruation

lucille clifton

if there is a river

more beautiful than this

bright as the blood

red edge of the moon          if

 

there is a river

more faithful than this

returning each month

to the same delta          if there

 

is a river

braver than this

coming and coming in a surge

of passion, of pain          if there is

 

a river

more ancient than this

daughter of eve

mother of cain and of abel          if there is in

 

the universe such a river          if

there is some where water

more powerful than this wild

water

pray that it flows also

through animals

beautiful and faithful and ancient

and female and brave 

Some Confections

Hi my dears, I am squeaking it in during the ending hours of my allotted day, February 23rd.

Earlier this month, I spent a little bit of time looking through my entries from February Projects past. Has anyone else done that? Re-encountered a previous self inhabiting a different life that is no longer?

I recommend it; there was perspective there. And some delight. And a little bit of heartache. But in a primarily good way.

Look at us! Having done this for enough time that we have inhabited a few different incarnations of our existences since we began. How beautiful. How marvelous.

Lately, I have been less about words, more about image and about intuition. I'm going to share some pantings my one of my favorite artists, Wayne Thiebaud. I even like saying his name. There is something delightful about it, a delight that I also find in his art, especially in the pieces he's most famous for, which depict desserts. These reproductions don't do justice to the spirit that comes off the canvases when you are in their presence (duh), but at least you can get the gist, then maybe go visit a few of them at the MoMA or the SF MoMA or the Getty or the East Wing of the National Gallery or somewhere like that.

His paintings have this thrilling electricity to them, emanating (I think) from the slight shocks of bright color that appear slyly in every piece, unmissable but never taking center stage.

So here they are. If ever you're feeling in need of a little zing, Google "Wayne Thiebaud dessert."

My love to you all.

February 22

On my way to the blog today I bumped into this little guy, who asked me to come up with a SINGLE reason he shouldn't be featured. I couldn't.

hedgehog

Lately I have been doing freelance editing professionally, and I was introduced to this quote in a client's manuscript. It's about therapy, which is something I really like.

We honor our parents by not accepting as the final equation the most troubling characteristics of our relationship. I decided between my father and me that the sum of our troubles would not be the summation of our lives together. In analysis you work to turn the ghosts that haunt you into ancestors who accompany you. That takes hard work and a lot of love, but it’s the way we lessen the burdens our children have to carry. Insisting on our own experience, our own final calculus of love, trouble, hard times and, if we’re lucky, a little transcendence. This is how we claim our own lives as sons and daughters, independent souls on our piece of ground. It’s not always an option. There are irretrievable lives and unredeemable sins, but the chance to rise above is one I wish for yours and mine.

I work to be an ancestor. I hope my summation will be written by my sons and daughter, with our family’s help, and by their sons and daughters with their guidance…. But this kind of story has no end. It is simply told in your own blood until it is passed along to be told in the blood of those you love, who inherit it. As it’s told, it is altered, as all stories are in the telling, by time, will, perception, faith, love, work, by hope, deceit, imagination, fear, history and the thousand other variable powers that play upon our personal narratives. It continues to be told because along with the seed of its own immolation, the story carries with it the rebirthing seed of renewal, a different destiny for those who hear it than the painful one my father and I struggled through. Slowly, a new story emerges from the old, of differently realized lives, building upon the rough experience of those who’ve come before and stepping over the battle-worn carcasses of the past. On a good day this is how we live. This is love. 

—from “Long Time Comin’,” the final chapter of Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen

The quote reminds me of a value/belief that's really deeply held by my family on my mom's side, which is, "Good things come from New Jersey."

Secondly, my sister-in-law again said something this week that the hedgehog told me to put here. She was talking about baby Ruthie's sleep, and said basically, "With Leo, I read all these different books explaining why you have to co-sleep forever or sleep train in just this or that way and thought that the answer was in the books and I might screw Leo up if I did the wrong thing. Now, I'm pretty sure that Ruthie will be fine whether we co-sleep for three years or let her cry it out at 3 months, and I think what would actually screw her up more than necessary is if her parents pick an approach that makes us more anxious or disturbed than necessary." Far be it from me to enter the sleep-training debates, but the kernel of her thought process really resonated with me: that the answer might not be hidden in that one book she didn't read yet, but rather floating somewhere in her, waiting to be found.

I love hearing everyone's voices. Xo,

Anna

Feb 18 (but on the 21)

Well isn't that just nice?

That's a joke for Tricia, really, but if you imagine hearing a 92-year-old lady you met once at synagogue saying it to herself quietly before she hangs up the phone when you call to offer her a ride, you can be in on it, too.

Anyways, I'm a few days late, but probably because February was just waiting for me to this find this comic and send it to you.

https://www.davyendler.com/On-God

It's really good.

Thanks for sharing and for being here to share with.

Rackover Update & Some Writing I'm On...

For complicated resaons, I have to take down my post.

I'm really sorry.

I actually thought the blog was 'secret-ish' so that only the participants could see it.

In retrospect, I realize we never set it up like that.

\love
m

Feb 18th (belated post)

How wonderful it is to return to this virtual community gathering year after year! I am so grateful for each of you, for your openness, for your entries that make me *feel* in so many ways, for this shared space, and for our reliable Ruthie who manages to reignite this every year.

I offer you an assortment of things:

1) This article about closing doors -- something that I really struggled with recently as I agonized over a career-related decision. Honestly can't say the article solved my problem or made the decision much easier, but I still liked it or at least thought it was interesting.

2) This piece that made me giggle entitled, "If You Ever Hurt My Daughter, I Swear to G-d I’ll Let Her Navigate Her Own Emotional Growth"

3) These beautiful passages on grief and loss by Mary Oliver, because I couldn't help but add to the Mary Oliver collection that we're assembling on this blog.

Love and hugs to you all,
Tali

circle game

hey februarians -

writing to you from my little desk in my little apartment above the shuk in jerusalem. it's a clear, cold day, and i'm about to disappear for a long weekend in the desert. i'm very, very excited about it. i always find the expansiveness of the desert contagious - i can't help feeling more expansive myself when i'm there.

which is nice, because this february, i'm feeling a familiar sense of constriction that comes from those moments in time when "so what's next for you?" becomes an all-too-common refrain. my fellowship is starting to end, with talk about "final presentations" and "next steps" and "application deadlines" on the rise. with the pressure building, i'm doing my best to remember just how expansive the future itself is, how little control i really have, and resist the temptation to get sucked into making decisions just to fit into narratives that i think would sound good to other people. because, after all, there's no rush. we're just going in circles, anyway.

gosh, there's so much to say. death and life and love have all been very present for me these past couple months. i wrote a bit about it here last month on my personal blog if you're curious. but suffice it to say that i'm doing much better than i was the last two februaries, and feeling a lot of gratitude for that, for communities of support like this one, and for my ever-evolving relationship with Nico.

leaving you all with some words about seasons and time from joni that my mom used to sing to me:

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

--Joni Mitchell


James Bland

Too late but I hope not too little

In honor of Anna's timeliness, I am tardy. I was so proud of myself for drafting this post early and then I completely forgot to send it. Please forgive me. By the standards of our friend group, it's almost like I'm on time. 

--------

There are few moments when I feel as grateful and humbled as I do when I read all of your words. Ruthie, thank you for having the vision and intuition to bring together when we needed it many years ago. And to everyone in this community, thank you for showing up and reminding me that we are still here and we still need each other. Some February’s, I think, “I’ve got this.” But you all know me better than I do, and I can’t take this magical gathering for granted.

I trust this is a group that will never tire of Mary Oliver, so I will add to the collection, especially in honor of the fetuses growing inside one of our beloveds!

Teach the children. We don't matter so much, but the children do. Show them the daisies and the pale hepatica. Teach them the taste of sassafras and wintergreen. The lives of blue sailors, mallow, sunbursts, the moccasin flowers. And the frisky ones-inkberry, lamb's-quarters, blueberries.  And the aromatic ones-rosemary, oregano. Give them peppermint to put in their pockets as they go to school. Give them the fields and the woods and the possibility of a world salvaged from the lords of profit. Stand them in the stream, head them upstream, rejoice as the learn to love this green space they live in, in sticks and leaves and then the silent, beautiful blossoms. 

Attention is the beginning of devotion. 

And for the moments that feel a little less joyful, and when it’s a little harder to remember that beauty grows within and beyond us, here are the tough, beautiful and comforting words of Rebecca Solnit, excerpted from Hope in the Dark.

Causes and effects assume history marches forward, but history is not an army. It is a crab scuttling sideways, a drip of soft water wearing away stone, an earthquake breaking centuries of tension. Sometimes one person inspires a movement, or her words do decades later; sometimes a few passionate people change the world; sometimes they start a mass movement and millions do; sometimes those millions are stirred by the same outrage or the same ideal and change comes upon us like a change of weather. All that these transformations have in common is that they begin in the imagination, in hope. To hope is to gamble. It's to bet on the future, on your desires, on the possibility that an open heart and uncertainty is better than gloom and safety. To hope is dangerous, and yet it is the opposite of fear, for to live is to risk.

I say all this to you because hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. I say this because hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency; because hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal. Hope just means another world might be possible, not promised, not guaranteed. Hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. At the beginning of his massive 1930s treatise on hope, the German philosopher Ernst Bloch wrote, "The work of this emotion requires people who throw themselves actively into what is becoming, to which they themselves belong." To hope is to give yourself to the future, and that commitment to the future makes the present inhabitable.

Thank you for reminding me that it is not our responsibility to finish the work, but we must not desist from it either.

 With love and gratitude (and now Shabbat Shalom),

Sophie

Take This Quiz to Find out Which Family Member You Are

This one-and-a-half-minute video shows my sister-in-law Hilary with her mom Shepley (voice only) and her kids, i.e. my nephew Leo and niece Ruthie. Many of you know that my grandma Ruth passed away two and a half years ago and this is her namesake. 

I know this is a grainy video about someone else’s family whose classic Talking Heads soundtrack is rudely cut off in the middle. But still, I suggest that you watch it, and I invite you to ask yourself — which one do you identify with at the moment?

Is it the grandma, who offers up reassuring institutional memory, sees a grandson's needs, helps a tired mom relax just by showing up? Is it the big brother who’s proud, and worried about whether there's enough love to go around, and still playful all at once? Is it the mom who is able to see and accept two people's different needs, stay present and improvise? Or the baby, whose sensory experiences wash over her to her wonderment, not yet incorporating sounds, sights, and physical sensations into the categories we later develop, not needing to speak?

These descriptions, of course, are all my own projections, because they’re all in me. Perhaps the baby most of all, at this moment. Let me know what yours are :)

Love,

Anna

P.S. I hear that on social media, it’s important to admit the publicizing of prettier-than-average moments. This adults and kids in this family also fight, tantrum, miss opportunities for connections, have difficult relationships with other relatives, and snap at each other [not pictured]. 

P.P.S. This is the first year that I’ve actually posted on my assigned day. Either you all need to get me checked by a neurologist asap, or I need to reread my copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting a 378-Month-Old […to Emerge from Your Previous Self]. Maybe it’s normal, like Ruthie (Ruthie LR, that is) “finally getting more careful with sorries.” (I loved that, R.)

Transcript of the video. 

Shepley: You think it’s going to be white because she’s been only drinking milk?

Leo: Um, milk is her drink AND her food.

Hilary: You’re right, that is so true.

[Music plays and Hilary tickles Ruthie’s head and torso while she lies on a playmat.]

Shepley: That’s what your mom used to do with you, Leo. 

Leo: Mom, can I play next to Ruth too? 

Hilary: Yes, please do!

Leo: I’ll go on it too? 

Hilary: Yeah, go on it too. That’s a great idea. 

Leo: Because we’re both babies. 

Hilary: Why don’t you move all the way onto it so your head can be right next to hers? 

Leo: But now my feet are out. 

Hilary: You’re right. But I’ll put them up in the air like hers. 

Leo: No, I don’t…

Hilary: Or you can curl them up a little bit like hers, bend them?

Music: Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there…

[Leo lies down and turns towards Ruth. Hilary rubs Leo’s back and Ruth’s tummy.]

Pick me up and turn me ‘round…

Leo: No no, do what you were doing with Ruthie. 

[Hilary tickles both kids’ torsos. Leo smiles.]

Leo: You’re tickling your babas.   

Hilary sings: 

I feel numb, born with a weak heart

I guess I must be having fun.

Yeah, I’m tickling my babas. 

The less we say about it the better

Make it up as we go along…

Remembering Avi (By Yoav Schaefer)

Dear friends,

I have been grateful for the love and support of this community over the years. Although I haven’t participated until now, I have always felt connected to this community. It has been deeply meaningful for me to read your touching and beautiful posts, which have helped to make this month, if not easier, then at least more meaningful. Thank you for inviting me to participate this year—it really means a lot to me.

Today is a difficult day for me. I think that I compress all of the pain and sadness and grief that I feel into a single day. But with the passage of time, I feel grateful for days like today, when I allow myself to be overwhelmed by the depth of my pain, by my sense of despair, by the world-shattering nature of my loss. I appreciate the time and space that today affords me to reminisce, to recall stories and memories, to remember Avi.

I want to share a poem that my partner, Nora, sent me today:

Separation

W. S. Merwin

Your absence has gone through me

Like thread through a needle.

Everything I do is stitched with its color.

Even as Avi’s absence continues to fill me with pain and sadness, there is so much in my life for which I feel grateful. I feel grateful for the support and love of family and friends. I feel grateful to Nora, who has allowed me to imagine, for the first time since Avi died, that my life will once again be full of love and happiness. And I feel grateful to Avi, who, despite the distance between us, continues to be present for me.

With love,

Yoav

[february 11, 2019]

Hi beautiful loved ones,

I remember this day and night 9 years ago… Felt like everything was crumbling.

Sometimes, it still feels like everything is crumbling, and I am (slowly) growing to be at peace with that.

I miss my mama. Dudi and I are deeply excited/humbled on the daily because I have a little fetus growing inside of me (!!!), and my body is changing in many ways, and my psyche is changing too. I hear Ima’s voice in my ear, “Oh my goodness! My baby is having a baby! Tfu tfu tfu.” I always thought it would give me some sort of “closure” when I was pregnant, somehow, the ultimate connection to my mother. Maybe it still will/can… It has made me realize that, just like always, I really only want her.  I miss her nuanced perspective, her intellect, her complete presence with me even on the phone. She always made it known how much she loved us….

Not many more words right now. A Naomi Shihab Nye poem below that resonates.

So grateful for each of you and for this community and space.

Love always,

einat

***

Making a Fist

By Naomi Shihab Nye

    We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.

                                                                  —Jorge Luis Borges

For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,

I felt the life sliding out of me,

a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.

I was seven, I lay in the car

watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.

My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.

“How do you know if you are going to die?”

I begged my mother.

We had been traveling for days.

With strange confidence she answered,

“When you can no longer make a fist.”

Years later I smile to think of that journey,

the borders we must cross separately,

stamped with our unanswerable woes.

I who did not die, who am still living,

still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,

clenching and opening one small hand.