A Prayer for Knees

My father called me with the itinerary for my last minute trip to Chicago. He told me that by visiting my aunt before dying, I was doing what is known in the Jewish faith as a 'mitzvah'. I remember from sunday school at the temple that it means I'm doing a good deed.

My aunt Ilene has been dying for a while now. Until recently though, I don't think she was aware. She fought and fought; the doctor's told her soon...soon. Here it is years later, four years after her estimated time of departure; until this weekend she was optimistic, but she's really dying now. She knows it.

I remember at my grandfather's funeral, I didn't feel comfortable wearing my yamika. It is a rounded bowl-like piece of cloth that's placed on your head during services out of respect. I was raised Jewish, but it is not my choice to be Jewish. My father asked me to put it on, but I was torn. I felt I owed it to my grandfather, but I respected the faith enough not to pretend. This was before my aunt was aware of her own mortality, her face was still plain, but her mouth always on the brink of laughter. Her tight curls bounced when she looked over at me.

"Wear it on your knee," she said.

"On my what?"

"On your knee, goof."

I looked to my right, and her yamika lay comfortably on her left knee. "Is that allowed?" I said.

"I sure hope so," she said smiling. "It's respectful."

She was never very Jewish either. Less so in these last six months, she actually learned to feel a certain disdain for a God that would put her and her children through so much. She doesn't really even want a funeral...but I will be there this weekend, hell or high water. I'm taking a flight from the Cincinnati airport Saturday and coming back Sunday.

It's interesting to me how priorities change. Grad school anticipation, my sister's mess of a life, my own mess of a life for that matter; they all suddenly feel more like details in a story where the characters matter most. And when one of them is suddenly clinging to breath, the world seems so much bigger...angrier, but the important decisions seem so much easier to make.

I'm not doing a good deed by going to Chicago this weekend. I'm not putting my life on hold for someone I love. I'm living my life. I'm wearing my yamika on my knee, rather than on my head. I love her for reminding me of that, and I will miss her.

Seeing Red

Valentine's day is communist. All I see is red. It finally makes sense to me. I would love to paint the head of Joseph Stalin on every damned one of those fat baby cherubs ornamenting each F'ing window I passed this morning. Well this is the McCarthy scare of 2008, baby. You won't see me at our Valentine's day potluck. I'm rebelling!!!!

Purple Rain

On September 11th 2001, the most powerful men in America hid, knees knocking, beneath their expensive desks. Simple black carts were mounted with off-brand tv's as students around the country sat unsure in their desks. The young ones cried because the adults were crying, the older ones cried because the thick black smoke had aged them. Their innocence was gone. I was driving through Cincinnati at the time on my way to visit a girl I'd never met... in a city I'd never been to. Megan liked cucumber melon and the film purple rain. I'd met her online; I was seventeen.

Everyone saw that morning through unique eyes. I remember pulling into her gravel drive. I rang the bell, introductions were cut short as she held the screen door open. She was crying. Her hand over her mouth, she was backlit by an exploding moment on tv. What looked like stones were tumbling from a tall building. They weren't stones; they were moving...they were people. Here was this girl I'd never met, never touched, shaking in her living room. In that moment, I think she was as unfamiliar to that place as a I was. For an hour, I held this strange girl in my arms. I told her everything was going to be alright.

I saw a photograph of Prince this morning and thought of Megan. Most people remember September 11th for its tragedy. I think it was one of the best days of my life.

Trees and Tribulations

Hopefully creating a blog will let the searing tick tock of my wait bode something more productive than an infantile temper tantrum. Wah.

This morning, Katie, one of my cubicle cohorts mentioned that St. Anne's convent, a tiny aged stone building by her house is in the process of tearing down the willows that have shrouded it in privacy for almost a century. The elder trees are diseased; the nuns were worried it would spread to the saplings. Katie's probably shrugged off this story already for something more interesting, but I'm staring out the only window in my office at the leafless victims of this year's first subtle iceage. I've spent the last three months grieving the loss my sister (she's not dead, but that's a fact that's lost on her), the loss of my sanity as I fall further into the rut of my office routine, and something more ambiguous. I'm still stuck on her story. Should I feel more like the dying trees, or their soon to be orphans?

Tick...Tock....Tick...Tock. Twelve schools and nothing. I'd settle for a rejection at this point.