This Week: Fever Dreams

Worrying about Big Kid. Worrying about my homeland. Dreaming of a better future.

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Ready to cook Big Kid’s “Famous Tomato Pie” which was surprisingly yummy and also surprisingly not a pie.

Dear fam,

I guess it’s been a week since I last wrote to you, although it seems like more than that. A lifetime? Every day is long, but the weeks themselves fly by. This week was challenging in some ways and lighthearted in others. Some things have resolved themselves and others have become more complicated. As always, we try to see our way through the thicket to make sense of our world. But why am I speaking in code? Let’s get into it.

For those who are just tuning in (hi, new subscribers!), our Big Kid has been having trouble at school. He’s just four and a half, but it looks like he’ll be leaving his third preschool next week. This week began in a panic, as the administration made clear that he would not be able to return to school if he had another meltdown in class. As I described last week, this is not a doable ask for Big Kid, whose emotional world is far more extreme than that of the average bear and whose sensory system is wired in a different way. So, my wife and I began each of the days this week on tenterhooks, waiting for a call from the administration to tell us to come right now.

Thankfully, it was a short week due to the Thanksgiving holiday. We made it to Wednesday afternoon without expulsion.

To be clear, I think the school administrators and teachers are doing their best. And I am very grateful for their clarity on what they can and cannot provide for Big Kid. I especially appreciate their transparency on the timeline of this whole kerfuffle, which (despite being pretty quick in a stressful way) has allowed us to find Big Kid a new school and manage the transition in a thoughtful way.

Nonetheless, it’s still a shitshow.

How do you explain to a child that there’s nothing wrong with him, it’s a failure of systems to accommodate his different neurology? How do you keep him from internalizing the rejection of it all? How do you explain that his big feelings are a blessing? How do you teach him to let the feelings move through him, so they don’t completely hijack his sense of self and ability to move through the world?

If you have answers, please comment below. Seriously. My wife and I are very curious.

Last night, I dreamed about the teacher who expelled Big Kid last year. It was a very different situation. I do harbor resentment against her, even though I understand on an intellectual level that she was doing her best. Last night, in my dream, it felt like it did when we were asked to leave the preschool community. It was after hours, she was preparing some kind of evening, and I was in the way. I felt like the proverbial fly in the ointment; if only I could get my shit together maybe I wouldn’t ruin everything all the time. Excluded. Unwanted.

In my dream, I wandered into the dark Brooklyn night, where all the streetlights were off. It felt ominous. I wasn’t safe — I knew this in the dream way that you can’t explain — so I walked another block, hoping for a lighted path to walk on. I found a street with lights, but on the buildings there was a projection of the faces of those who have been killed in the conflict back home. Faces, and faces, and faces. I knew I had to get out of there, so I hurried down the block looking for a place without people, where I’d be safe.

Then I woke up.

I’ve been plagued by anxiety dreams for years, so I’m used to the experience of waking from a fitful night just as tired as I was the night before. My psyche is never subtle, either. Last week, in therapy, I described a recurring dream about being pushed down a rushing river in an uncontrollable kayak (or inner tube?) over and over, the terror of sudden drops, the water threatening to drag me under. “What do you think that’s about?” my therapist asked. “Um, my whole life?” I laughed, “I don’t think I feel a whole lot of control these days.”

The difference now is that I also wake up into an unceasing cloud of fear and anxiety. I shouldn’t, but the first thing I do is read the news. Which is awful. Then I spend the rest of the day clinging to a pendulum that swings back and forth between trying to figure out how to help Big Kid as he spins out and trying to make sense of the catastrophe unfolding in my homeland.

Both of these might as well be full time jobs.

I stop often during the day to wonder if this is real. Any of it. It doesn’t feel like it could possibly be real. And, though I thought I was keeping my struggles with Big Kid separate from my anxieties about the war, I think last night’s dream makes it clear that this is not, in fact, the case.

And how could it be? Sometimes I’m so naive, I surprise myself. Life isn’t divided neatly into topics. Love melts into fear melts into anxiety melts into happiness melts into heartbreak. We’re all just puddles of emotion trying to get through the days.

Next week, Big Kid will begin a new school in the afternoons, where he’ll have a special education teacher who (hopefully) understands what to do with his meltdowns and his special sensory needs. In two weeks, he’ll begin a new school in the mornings, where he’ll focus on social-emotional learning and (hopefully) get to practice playing with others. I think he probably would have struggled with frustration and sharing anyway, but being a Covid baby didn’t help; Big Kid only began interacting with other children when he was two.

Will this solve all our problems? Likely not. But it’s a good start.

There’s something to be said about the bureaucracy involved in getting help for neurodivergent kids (and adults), and that something is that it sucks. As an ADHD-er, I struggle with tedious tasks, keeping track of paperwork, and following up with various government or medical offices. If my wife was also neurodivergent, I don’t know if I would have been able to get help for Big Kid. And that’s pretty messed up.

There’s a cruel irony in the fact that the very systems built to get neurodivergent folks the help they need to thrive in a world built for neurotypical brains is in itself built for neurotypical brains.

My wife is beautiful! And also an incredibly kind and generous person, without whom I’d be struggling a lot more in this neurotypical world.

This week’s Torah portion is about dreams, too. Our forefather, Jacob, has escaped from the wrath of his brother, from whom he stole the family birthright, and is searching for a haven to reside in until everything calms down.

“[Jacob] came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. He had a dream; a ladder was set on the ground and its top reached to the sky, and messengers of G-d were going up and down on it." And standing beside him was יהוה, who said, “I am יהוה, the G-d of your father Abraham’s [house] and the G-d of Isaac’s [house]: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring. Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants.” (Genesis 28: 10-14)

Often, this passage is taken as proof that the Land of Israel was promised to the Jewish people. And that promise is then weaponized to justify all kinds of horrifying violence, none of which (I believe) is in keeping with what the text intends.

One of my favorite things about reading the Tanakh is how I always see new things in it. This time, as I read these words I’ve been reading all my life, I’m struck by two things of note.

First, the angels are using a ladder. A ladder! Can’t they fly? These are supernatural beings, the embodiment of G-d’s omnipotence, and they need to use a ladder? To me, the ladder is there to underline that attaining access to one’s higher self is an arduous journey. One does not simply snap one’s fingers and ascend to the heavens. Rung by rung, we must life ourselves. In the moments when it seems impossible to find our divinity — the compassion, and love, and humility — we need to take a deep breath and challenge ourselves to try. Jacob is on a journey to figure out what’s next, after having done something pretty terrible in swindling his brother and father. The angels are here to show him that even a hard journey is a possible one.

Second, is the fact that the promise doesn’t end with the land. Which tells me that the land is not the bottom line. “All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants,” says G-d to Jacob, before promising to protect him and his descendants. In other words, the most important thing is not the material aspect of the promise. It’s not by getting the land that we fulfill the words of the Holy One, it’s by being a blessing that we can be worthy of the land.

And the path to being a blessing is rung by rung, out of the nightmarish delusions of the current world and into a dream of a future. One where we are more committed to our higher selves than to destruction.

This week, a woman I don’t know replied to something I posted on Facebook (unrelated to the conflict) that she has no optimism for the future. The past, she wrote, has proven that peace is impossible in the Middle East.

Me? I feel it imperative to hold onto optimism. What choice do I have? I have children. My sister, in Jerusalem, is about to give birth to her first child. How can I believe in any future that includes her child or mine going to war in 20 years? I see and read the words of Palestinian and Israeli activists (like the ones who work together with in the Standing Together Movement) who are fighting for another way of life and I believe it’s possible. If I let go of optimism and a long (very long) view of the future I'll crumble. As long as the world turns and there is even one voice calling for peace, there's hope.

Here’s to dreams.

Wishing you a Shabbat of blessings,

Mikhal

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What I’m reading

All about the conflict, in a million different ways. As always, I’m not necessarily endorsing any of these takes. I’ve been reading articles from everywhere to try to get a clear picture, and I’m sharing what I find helpful, interesting, or intriguing here. I’m trying to read even (especially!) things I find challenging with an open heart and really try to understand where folks are coming from. I think it’s helping me grow my capacity for understanding and compassion.

• A little about the complexity of different people on the ground in Israel and Palestine in the NY Times

• A Palestinian-Israeli and Jewish-Israeli activist take to the college campuses of the East Coast to talk about their work.

• An open letter from Jewish American activists and creatives about their understanding of the relationship between antisemitism and antizionism (namely, they say the two are not the same and explain their reasoning).

• This hopeful and sad essay by

  Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg
  in
  Life is a Sacred Text
  about her children learning in a multicultural Hebrew-Arabic school in Jerusalem.

• Some Torah from my cousin,

  Rabbi Josh Weiner
  , about the idea of Us vs Them in his excellent Substack
  'Darosh Darash' - some Torah thoughts
  .

What I’m listening to

Too much news. Two of which are:

• An episode of Disillusioned, a podcast by Yahav Erez, who I met when she was a teen and I was her counselor in our youth movement. This is a conversation with Ita Segev, (a formidable creative person and peace activist) and it was very difficult for me to listen to because it challenges so many things I think about my homeland. But it also made me think about a future where everyone lives together in peace. Like all things Israel-related, it was complicated.

• An episode of Unholy: Two Jews on the News which included some interesting thoughts about Israel’s military choices. Yonit Levi and Jonathan Freedland chat with Amos Harel, the military correspondant for Haaretz. This was also difficult for me to listen to. I often feel that the hosts are too one-sided about things and, as you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m really hoping for some media that’s more measured. Still, this was interesting.

What I’m writing

• This Q&A with Caitlin Cook about her new one-woman musical, in which all the lyrics are bathroom graffiti. Caitlin talks about how inviting chaos into her process makes magic.

• This reported essay about ADHD and anger and how volatile emotions fit into the landscape of an ADHD-ers life

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One last thing

Last week, I shared a conversation with Professor Hillel Cohen, of Hebrew University, a historian of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It was a fascinating historical overview of the last 100-or-so years (actually, he goes back thousands of years, but mostly the last 100) in the region.

For my Hebrew-speaking readers: here is a link. I actually cannot suggest listening to this strongly enough.

For my English-speaking readers: Would you be interested in a translation of this episode? I would be happy to write a translated transcript, but only if enough folks are interested. Please answer this poll so I can gauge interest.