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Grateful for your grace.

Jun 05, 2024

Dear fam,

I’ve been writing this letter to you in my head for weeks, or maybe months. I don’t know. Time has been a little fuzzy lately; a combination of too many feelings sloshing around our house and too little sleep to fuel our weary bodies makes all the days bleed into one another.

I tried to make a little video of the inside of my head these last weeks:

Does that help explain it? Probably not.

Pesach happened. The week before Seder night, Toddler came down with hand-foot-and-mouth disease, which is when you get boils and pustules all over your body, but mostly on the aforementioned areas. Also a fever.

We pushed Seder off to the last night of Pesach instead of the first night and focused on surviving the week.

I don’t remember a lot about Pesach, except I was off from work for the first time in my life and it really threw me for a loop.

During that week of the Spring / Freedom Holiday Big Kid and I built a garden for the family. We went to the hardware store together, picked out planks of pine, and mulch, and gardening soil. Big Kid doesn’t like getting dirty, so it was mostly me up to my elbows in dirt and mud, turning the earth and saying hi to earthworms and beetles.

I wanted a garden for pollinators — butterflies and bees and dragonflies buzzing around — so we planted three beds of wildflowers in addition to the veggies.

Earlier today, I sat on the deck and watched a lazy yellow-jacket nibble at the milkweed blossoms and my heart swelled.

Does this sound like an idyll? I guess parts of our lives are pretty idyllic. We have two fantastic kids, and a beautiful home with a beautiful garden. Our home is filled with love. And, more often than not, laughter.

Toddler taking me on a tour of our neighborhood. Here, she’s pointing and saying “Etz!” indicating the tree ahead.

The days can be wonderful around here. But they’re not easy. Sometimes, when my wife and I are in the thick of it (and, Lord, it can get very thick) I feel as though this impossible moment is the thing and the whole of the thing, forever and ever. Do you ever feel like that?

When Big Kid is screaming, in full hysterics, and Toddler gets scared and starts crying, and my sensory processor goes full haywire so I feel my brain screeching to a halt.

When I am cleaning my third (fourth? fifth? When should one stop counting?) poop accident of the day.

When I’m trying to finish a damn thought, but I haven’t slept a full night in weeks and everyone in the room is asking me a question.

When I can’t sleep because I’m so worried about Big Kid, who’s struggling again.

When I wake to another day of news that brings me (figuratively) to my knees with horror and heartbreak.

When I see what people are writing about me and what people like me are writing about people not like me, how much anger and hatred and poison1.

When I can’t focus. When I forget things I should remember. When I fail at the little things that should be easy. When I mess up a work assignment I know how to do. When the anxiety about it all makes my stomach turn to acid.

What use are the flowers and butterflies then?

Also in the last few weeks I turned 38 years old. I am now, as they say, pushing 40. Pushing it where, I wonder? I have no interest in pushing off my age, although I bear no judgment towards those who wish time would stop.

I mostly like the signs of aging — the stripe of silver in my hair is pretty cute — but more than that, I like how I know myself better now.

Shortly after Big Kid was born, I wrote an essay about learning to love my postpartum body. I don’t know if I understood, then, that my postpartum body was just one more iteration of my body — a vessel I have spent most of my years trying to figure out how to inhabit. I look at my kids now, how easily they embody their vessels, how unhindered they are by dumb bullshit like beauty standards or wellness culture.

They dance because there’s music that moves them.

They look in the mirror and grin at their reflections.

They wear exactly what makes them feel fabulous — event if it’s a superman cape paired with a chef’s hat.

Case in point: Big Kid decided we needed a disco ball in our living room, a design choice that did not exactly vibe with the original aesthetic vision for the room. But you know what? Big Kid was 100% right, because now we can turn down the lights and have a dance party. Whenever we want.

The older I get, the more I understand my greatest task will be shedding the layers of Expectations and Rules I’ve worn like a second skin all these years.

Something I’m shedding is the idea that I can make this world make sense. Or… maybe that the explanations can make me feel better. Because so much boils down to chance, and so much else is caused by simple cruelty. I don’t like it.

I think one reason I haven’t written is that I’ve been avoiding this feeling, but it caught up with me. I knew if I sat down to write to you I’d have to say:

“There are families who have been cleaved in two, and we can do nothing to make them whole.”

“There are good people who get sick and die, while those who boil over with poison thrive.”

“There are people who face terrible choices, and others who have no choice but to succumb to their lot, and others who choose for millions with no personal consequence.”

“There are so many who cannot look at the truth of what is/has/will being done, and until we look we will not see. So we may not ever see our way out of this mire.”

Try as I can, I cannot square this circle.

An incomplete list of things I’ve done to hide from how I’m feeling:

A get-rich quick scheme of earning money for surveys (it doesn’t work, don’t do it).
Pouring myself into my work every hour of every day.
Playing dumb games on my phone all day.
Drinking wine.
Eating Trader Joe’s gluten-free Oreos.
Reading only fiction (is their world better? Not really.)
Running, running, running.

I’m a person of faith, and I’ve always believed in a Divine order to the world. I’ve been praying — alone, with a community, in little moments. Sometimes, when I’m standing on the bima singing, it’s all I can do not to cry.

מְכַלְכֵּל חַיִּים בְּחֶסֶד. מְחַיֶּה מֵתִים בְּרַחֲמִים רַבִּים. סומֵךְ נופְלִים. וְרופֵא חולִים וּמַתִּיר אֲסוּרִים. וּמְקַיֵּם אֱמוּנָתו לִישֵׁנֵי עָפָר. מִי כָמוךָ בַּעַל גְּבוּרות וּמִי דומֶה לָּךְ. מֶלֶךְ מֵמִית וּמְחַיֶּה וּמַצְמִיחַ יְשׁוּעָה:
He sustains the living with loving kindness, resurrects the dead with great mercy, supports the falling, heals the sick, releases the bound, and fulfills His trust to those who sleep in the dust. Who is like You, mighty One! And who can be compared to You, who brings death and restores life, and causes deliverance to spring forth!

We say this three times a day — morning, afternoon, and evening — as part of the amidah prayer (also known as the prayer of 18). It’s pretty much the most standard part of the liturgy. I’ve sung these words about a zillion times in my life, but I cannot, for the life of me, sing them now without tears coming to my eyes. And yet, I keep saying them. As I said, I can’t make it make sense.

Every day, with all of this, my wife and I have to show up. And maybe this is the greatest gift (in disguise, sometimes) that G-d has given me during this time, because when I’m in it I can’t think about the swirling madness of the world.

Sometimes, being in it means dealing with pink-eye and teething. Sometimes, though, being in it means losing myself in the sweet jubilance of the now. Children know how to be present; they don’t worry about upcoming elections or rising prices. They’re just here. Now. Completely.

On good days, I take a cue from my kids and stay present, too.

Eating ice cream under a tree while Baby and Big Kid make friends with someone’s puppy.

Having a water-fight with the hose in the backyard until we’re all laughing so hard we can’t breathe.

Decorating the front steps with sidewalk chalk.

Playing tag.

Making popsicles.

Reading books.

Putting together puzzles (over and over and over).

Snuggling in bed, all four of us, safe and warm.

Jamming together in the studio.

I don’t know how the world can hold all of this, but it does.

As I make my way back into this space of self-knowing and outward communication, it’s with a great deal of gratitude for this community, for your grace and patience. You didn’t unsubscribe! You waited for me to come back! I’m awed by this and so, so grateful.

Below are some songs and books that helped me through the days.

Yours always,

Mikhal