This Week: Turbulence at Home

Big Kid has trouble at school. Mama and Ima are having a hard time. And that's ok.

The Earth, two dinosaurs, and our pet cat on Halloween. Photo credit: My wife, who portrayed the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs, per Big Kid’s request.

Dear fam,

I am writing this in the very few moments of quiet I’ll have today. My wife took Big Kid to the library to pick out some new books, which means I have the house to myself for an hour or so. I’m trying to collect my thoughts into a coherent update on the Chaos Palace, but I think the Palace has gotten the better of me this week. I feel kind of like I’ve been clinging to a giant pendulum as it swings back and forth with increasing speed.

Also, I slept on the floor of Big Kid’s room every night this week. In case you were wondering, no, hardwood is not comfy.

Big Kid is melting down a little bit, and it’s breaking our hearts. A lot. He had a very hard week at school, the second one in a row, and as he gets older it becomes harder to shake off the bad days. When you’re two, thankfully, you don’t make as many memories. Plus, the other kids may or may not remember an outburst or a crying jag.

When you’re four, they definitely remember.

Big Kid has big feelings and a sweet heart. When other kids say they don’t want to play with him, or similar kid stuff, it shatters his little heart. He feels deeply. In his soul. I’ve seen him weep because a friend preferred another child at a particular playground moment. It was a long five minutes of holding him and stroking his hair until he calmed down.

That was last week.

He also has Opinions About How Things Should Happen. When other kids (or the teachers) don’t jive with how he sees the day playing out, he can get very, very upset. We’ve had to explain to him that he’s too young to be in charge of the classroom. That other people’s opinions are also valid. That there are ways of being safe with his anger (I wrote about that back in May) so he doesn’t do something he regrets.

Last night, my wife and I sat on our couch, tired and sad about how hard things are for our little-big one. It can be so draining to parent a kid with endless energy and emotions. The incessant negotiations over everything, the constant reminders not to climb the bookshelves or the fireplace, the holding space for so many feelings. Not to mention the confusion about whether anything we’re doing is right and the general hopelessness that arises when, once again, an educator tells you they’ve never seen anything like this¹.

Hoops & Checkers

These feelings are, I think, something I would like to take some time to validate. As we sat there, laundry and toys everywhere, my wife wondered whether we have the right to feel so bad when there is so much destruction everywhere. And, yes, I am once again referring to the war.

I get what she’s saying. Our concerns over whether Big Kid gets along with his friends do feel frivolous when I think about my best friend running to a bomb shelter with her two children in Ra’anana. When I think of the babies and parents and grandparents who are missing, probably breathing dust in the tunnels beneath Gaza City as the earth quakes above them. When I think of the people above the tunnels, drinking salt water and sewage because they were born in one of the worst corners of the earth. Who are wedged between the rock of a leadership they do not support (and who have been stealing resources for years — as seen here and here — to buy weapons instead of building infrastructure) and the hard place of an Israeli government led by a corrupt Prime Minister who would prefer to appease his cronies and stay in power than lead the region into anything resembling a peaceful future.

I know that our problems are small potatoes compared to all of this. But they’re still hard for us. Still real. Still valid.

Too often, we’re encouraged to ignore our troubles because someone, somewhere, is suffering more. This can be a helpful framing, at times, but I think it depends on how you use it. If I try to use the plight of others to erase my own challenges, it won’t work. Instead, I think it’s more helpful to remember these things are not mutually exclusive. The fact that I’m having a hard time navigating the endless costs and red tape of getting my kid help does not invalidate any other person’s pain.

Actually, pain and struggles are not a zero-sum game. We can all have a hard time, in our own way, and there will be enough sadness to go around. If I let my internal voice trash-talk me for daring to be frustrated when there’s so much sorrow in the world, well, what good does that do anyone?

I think this reframing is helpful in growing one’s capacity for empathy as well. Another thing we talked about last night was how upsetting it is to see folks rip down posters of missing Israelis. Those babies who are trapped underground — their likenesses are being shredded by self-important passersby on the streets of Western cities.

What the hell? Is it so hard to have empathy for innocents on both sides of the fence? Children being harmed are children being harmed, are they not? Is an Israeli child somehow guilty of a crime because of their heritage in a way the Palestinian children are not? Or vice versa?

Of course not. Children should not be held accountable for the political or ideological ideas of the adults in their midst. Unless, of course, you believe pain is finite or that some people are not deserving of empathy.

If the latter applies to you, I am sorry for the narrow space within which you live. People who subscribe to antisemitism, islamophobia, or any other bigotry live a constricted life, wherein they choose fear of the other over revelry in the myriad beauty of human possibility. They are wrong. All people are deserving of compassion. Our capacity for compassion is one of the traits that, I believe, connects us to the divine.

If you are, unknowingly, subscribing to the former, I would encourage you to challenge yourself to see empathy, and pain, and joy for the infinite ocean they are. It’s a perception thing, and it can be really freaking hard to do. But it’s a better world when you manage to invite in all those contradictory, inconceivably coexisting truths.

Photo by Hristo Fidanov

This week’s Torah portion is Vayera. It opens with our forefather, Abraham, sitting at the entrance to his tent:

“Looking up, he saw three figures standing near him. Perceiving this, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground, he said, “My lords! If it please you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree.” (Genesis 8:2-4)

The three figures are traditionally recognized to be angels. According to Rashi, the renowned Medieval Rabbi and commentator, they each have a single mission. The first, to announce that Abraham’s wife, Sarah, will give birth to a son. The second, to announce that Sodom and Gomorrah will be burned to the ground. The third, to heal Abraham, who received the only (to my knowledge) nonagenarian circumcision in last week’s portion.

Good news and bad news.

But Abraham doesn’t just welcome the angels in — he runs towards them! He wants to make sure he doesn’t miss an opportunity to learn about these strangers, to help them on their way. He doesn’t know these folks from Adam. Still, he wants to invite them into his home. He is open of heart and arms.

Perhaps one way to view this text is as an invitation to invite in all that the world has to offer. Birth and destruction. Good and bad. Complexity and simplicity. Healing and harm.

This is a tall damn order. I believe it takes constant, diligent work to stay open despite the heartbreak wrought upon us by the world. But I also think it’s worth it.

Wishing you a shabbat of healing and love.

Shabbat shalom,

Mikhal

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What I’m reading

This guest post on

Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

’s excellent publication

Life is a Sacred Text

wherein musician and philosopher Ezra Furman shares beautiful tunes and Torah.

Guest Post: The Prophetic Torah of Ezra Furman

What I’m listening to

Dolly Parton on We Can Do Hard Things was the best thing I listened to this week. Also, this sad but lovely song written by my wife as a gift to those whose families were torn apart by the massacre on October 7th. Translation of the text below.

We Will Envelop You in Light

The desert's voice, a thin silence and in the air

the smell of gunpowder and horror hangs heavy a

red bicycle, cast along an empty sidewalk

as an olive tree wipes away a tear.

The house, collapsed and fallen, echoes 

the heartbeats in the gaping spaces

a Shabbat dress and a swing dancing in the autumn breeze —

among the flowers, a mother and an infant are wailing

And when you return, tomorrow, we'll envelop you in light

You are the gentlest ray of sun, burning from within the dark.

And when you return, tomorrow, we'll swaddle you in song

Even G-d cannot return the time that's disappeared.

We danced all night, into the crimson morn

until, all at once, the earth was an abyss, our

voices melt into one, how we're all

barefoot as the tales of once become the truth 

we live.

How can we rise from this? How can we rise?

How can we get out of this? How can we get out?

There are good people lending a hand, a hug, a smile

That's the only way forward, 

together we'll escape the terror.

And when you return, tomorrow, we'll envelop you in light

You are the gentlest ray of sun, burning from within the dark.

And when you return, tomorrow, we'll swaddle you in song

Even G-d cannot return the time that's disappeared.

1. Which, for the record, I am calling bullshit on. I mean, my kid can’t be the first child to throw a book in your classroom.