This Week: Just Out Of Our Grasp
Holding each other close as we lean into new beginnings.
Dear family and friends,
I kind of can’t believe it’s already Friday1, and I also can’t believe it’s already June. Where the hell did this week go? How are we in mid-2023? I’m still processing 2019, and somehow Big Kid is almost done with 3K and Baby is trying solids and almost crawling.
I’ve never really understood how to feel about time. Maybe it’s because there are about a million zillion things to do to get through each day. Or maybe it’s because I struggle with time-blindness, which means I can’t really gauge how long something will take or what 20 minutes feels like. Lengths of time feel mushy in my head, like baby food.
Incidentally, this is why a lot of us ADHD-ers are chronically late for everything. It’s why I will consistently leave my house 30 minutes before a meeting that’s 40 minutes away and believe I can not only game the trains but get coffee on the way. It’s why I’ll tell my wife I’m ready to leave, even though I’m watering the plants and have only one shoe on. And it’s a big part of why I feel confused and conflicted about my babies (and me) growing up.
Some days I feel like an origami crane — all my memories folded in on each other, on top of one another, instead of being discrete events.
But enough about the mushiness of time itself. Let’s talk about this week at the Chaos Palace, where things were messy as all get out. But also not half bad.
So, Baby is really trying to crawl. She rolls over on her cute belly and scoots herself to one side and then the other. She rolls in the direction of an object, flipping over and over until she gets what she wants. Or she’ll reach a sweet hand out as far as it will go and call out like a tiny dinosaur for whatever is just beyond her grasp. She calls and calls but it won’t come, until her face crumples and one of us picks her up and soothes her. “You almost did it!” we congratulate her, “Good try! You’re doing great!” Out of breath, she snuggles her tiny head, still yelping, until she calms down enough to try again.
Meanwhile, Big Kid is still clingy as ever, but he’s also hellbent on being independent. “You stay over there, Mama,” he instructed me yesterday at the playground, “While I bike down this ramp.” So I stayed, heart in my throat, and watched him navigate the speed of his new bike whooshing down the ramp. He was fine, it wasn’t such a steep ramp, but I suddenly had visions of teenage Big Kid popping wheelies around the city in my mind and, wow, am I ever not looking forward to that.
Despite his newfound independence, he also insisted on sitting on me, on hugging my wife, on physical contact of one type or another at every meal. He’s been very clingy. Very. Yesterday, I sat next to him and edited answers to an interview I’m working on as he clung to my back and nuzzled his head in the crook of my neck. He lays his head on my knees as he tries to fall asleep at night, asking what we’re doing tomorrow, trying to process what happened today.
Basically, what I’m saying is they’re both on the verge of a new level of autonomy. And I think it’s freaking us all out a little bit.
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Last week was Shavuot, the Jewish Festival of Weeks, a celebration of the completion of the Omer — a period of 49 days (or seven weeks), during which Jews recite a blessing and count each day (e.g. “today marks 7 and 30 days, which are five weeks and two days of the Omer”). Shavuot is rich in symbolism and meaning (like most Jewish holidays. It’s a harvest celebration, the anniversary of the day the Israelites received the ten commandments at Mount Sinai, and one of the three regalim (holidays of pilgrimage to Jerusalem). It’s traditional for Jews dress all in white and refrain from eating meat (as the Israelites did when receiving the commandment). It’s, therefore, also informally known as the cheesecake and blintz holiday.
Shavuot is also when we read the Book of Ruth. Which is a doozy. I won’t go into the particulars (because it’s too much, y’all), but to sum up — this woman named Naomi has two sons and a husband who all die, she is left all alone in the world except for her daughter-in-law, Ruth, who swears to stand by her no matter what. “Where you go, I shall go, too” says Ruth, and the two women travel far, looking for a place to live and thrive. As two unattached women in the Bible, things didn’t look great for our heroes, but they make their way in the world by using cleverness, deception, and what can only be described as feminine wiles to make it work. Naomi and Ruth are so devoted to one another that they are willing to do anything to survive together.
Much has been made about the potential queerness of this story2; I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention this interpretation of Naomi and Ruth’s devotion to one another. I love the idea that the Book of Ruth, which culminates with a casual mention of a queer-adjacent family (Ruth and Boaz have a child, but Naomi is said to also be the child’s mother. Are they a throuple?) brings to the fore an alternative way of being in the world. And does it with such nonchalance3.
Still, this is only one of many symbolic understandings of the story. This text has been called a feminist story, an expression of the importance of welcoming immigrants into our midst, a story about family ties, an origination myth for King David, proof of how G-d is present in everyone’s daily lives, and on and on. It seems that if you want to superimpose a meaning on Ruth and Naomi, you probably can.
But what’s interesting to me is that moment before they made it work. The moment before they even leave their home, where all their men had died. The moment when they were about to go find a new life and had to take a leap of faith. They had to get closer in order to find their individual selves. They must have been thrilled. And not a little scared of what they’d find.
I think what’s happening this week in my house is a version of that. We’re on a precipice, each in our own way. In a few weeks, Baby will be crawling. Big Kid will be graduating. And we will all be packing up our belongings and moving to a new town, with new people, a new house, a new community. We’re going to where our kids will grow up. Where we will also, in a way, continue to grow up. What will we all learn there? Who will we become? What is in that place we’re reaching for, that we’re desperate to grasp and so fearful of inhabiting fully?
The future won’t wait. It’s tumbling towards us. So I guess it makes sense we’re all trying to hold our arms open to catch what comes and cling to one another at the same time.
If only I had more arms.
I hope we’re able to have grace for ourselves and each other as we traverse these next few weeks of uprooting and moving ourselves across the river. I’m nervous. And excited. And a whole other jumble of feelings.
I hope you’re able to have grace for yourself, too. Try to remember to take a belly breath when things get too hard; that’s what we do with Big Kid when everything’s too much. Hell, it’s what I do on my own, too. It really works.
Shavua tov,
Mikhal
What I’m reading
This ode to the color heliotrope by
is divine. One of the most gorgeous essays I read all week.This essay by Helen Lewis, from the March issue of The Atlantic, about how freedom-loving Florida fell in love with Ron DeSantis’ authoritarianism is a whole bunch of food for thought.
Burn it Down, edited by
, is a book of essays by women who are writing about anger and when I tell you this is some of the most powerful writing I’ve read in this realm please believe me.What I’m listening to
Taking Things for Granted by Joy Oladokun
Love You for a Long Time by Maggie Rogers
This episode of V Interesting with V Spehar, where they interview Representative Zooey Zephyr from Montana and her fiancée, activist Erin Reed. Need some queer joy? It’s here.
What I’m writing
A lot of stuff! Look out for a new piece about a queer opera in Detroit and a play that explores the problems of Shakespeare’s Shylock next week. Next week you’ll also get a new Q&A here on Substack. We’re chatting with Mars Wright about trans spirituality, reimagining masculinity, and how queer and trans joy really is resistance. If you want access to that, grab a subscription to the Chaos Palace!
This week, Parents Magazine published this piece I wrote about how parents and caregivers who have ADHD (or who have kids with ADHD) can survive the ongoing Adderall shortage. Also, Real Simple published this piece I wrote about LGBTQIA+ indie fashion designers whose work is grounded in some form of activism.
I know it’s Saturday :) I started writing this yesterday, but got overtaken by the chaos. Thus, I finished writing and sending it today.
What? They aren’t just roommates? No, my dude, perhaps not.
You don’t have to agree with this interpretation. That’s what’s fun about Torah, you get to think about it in new ways every day. Turn it round and round like an unsolvable Rubik’s cube.