Drash for Kol Nidre 2019

KN 5780

U’netaneh Tokef

I was thinking a lot about what to say tonight - thinking about why this holiday is so important to me - why I consider it my favorite holiday of the year.  And I read an article about how, even in the darkest of times, Jews have found a way to mark Yom Kippur.  From the Spanish Inquisition through the Holocaust - in secret and in desperation and sometimes at the risk of their lives - Jews commemorate this day.  Why?

I’m a pretty Johnny-come-lately Jew.  I was raised in a completely secular household and sought a more Jewish life as an adult.  I remember going to my first Yom Kippur service at B’nai Jeshrun on the Upper West Side in New York about 25 years ago. I felt so out of place - I didn’t know the prayers, I didn’t understand the words.  And still I was mesmerized - struck by the melodies and the power of the energy of that room.  

I still don’t knew Hebrew - much to my husband’s chagrin - and I still don’t understand all the prayers.  But I realized that the more I understood the liturgy, the less I felt out of place when everyone around me was davening and shockling.    

And so my Jewish life has become not so much a system of belief as a process of discovery.  Study of the words and why they were written leads me on a path to my own religion.   And as I dive into specific parts of the liturgy, one thing becomes clear.  Judaism - no matter how you observe it - is a tradition committed to personal agency and the possibility of transformation.  

Last year, we talked about the Kol Nidre itself - the legal contract that kicks off the service and frees us from our vows and promises so that we may move into the new year with a clean slate. 

This year, I want to move from law to poetry.  Because this rich service that takes us on a 25 hour journey through our souls includes legal concepts, prayer and yes, poetry.  In fact, contained within the High Holy Services is a poem so beautiful it inspired one of Leonard Cohen’s most haunting songs, Who By Fire.  Its a stunning melody, but sort of a bummer.  Its basically a contemplation of all the ways we can die.  That’s the holiday in a nutshell, right?  “On Rosh Hashanah it is written, and on the Fast of the Day of Atonement, it is sealed.”  We’re told our names may not be written in the book of life.  Bummer.

Let’s face it - the whole holiday is a bit of a bummer. We dress in white and men wear kittel - the garment they will be buried in.  We don’t eat food or drink water.  Its basically a dress rehearsal for death.  (So Jewish - its a wonder we don’t call our estate planners and ask them to join us during the restorative yoga break before sundown.)  But to approach the holiday as a bummer would be to miss entirely what’s so beautiful about it. 

This poem, the U’netaneh Tokef, which literally means LET US SPEAK, is said on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, in the third  b’rakah of the Amidah in Musaf.  

That means that on Yom Kippur, it comes just around the time you’re starting to feel weak from hunger.  You might be thinking about how you’re going to make it to Neilah, or you’re starting to calculate the hours left before break fast.  You might miss Musaf because cut out of services early to take a walk with a friend, or maybe your YK nap went a little long and you’ll just meet everyone later over a bagel.  That’s ok.  

But let’s assume you stay.  Now, its Musaf, and the ark is open and we stand for the repetition of the amidah.  We reach the Unetaneh Tokef - a poem with a perfect three act structure.  

The first act is pomp and circumstance. God is on a throne, angels are trembling and the shofar is sounded - a reminder to wake up - pay attention.  

The second act is all plot - who will live and who will die, who by fire and who by water, who by famine and who by thirst- its brutal.

You’re vulnerable anyway - tired and hungry - and the liturgy chooses this moment to remind you of your fragility - remind you of how quickly what you have can be taken away.  It says you have no power at all - your destiny is written in a book you can’t read and kept in a place you can’t find.  Its deep stuff - and terrifying.  It plays on all of our worst fears.  

How many moments or hours or days of the week do we spend thinking about bad things - future fantasizing our anxieties about death or disease, literal and metaphorical - our failures and our foibles - what might befall our aging parents, our growing children, our bank accounts, our work life, our personal relationships?  Time spent contemplating the exact things listed in this doom poem and more.  We know its not productive and we get caught in a cycle that feels out of control.  

So just when the Unetaneh Tokef is leaning into our greatest weaknesses, something extraordinary happens.  A second act twist if you will.  Mind you, this part is NOT in the Leonard Cohen song.  After that long list of horrible things we have no control over, when we are feeling at our most vulnerable and out of control, we say the following words:  

U-t’shuvah, u-t’fillah u-tz’dakah ma-avirin et ro’a ha-g’zerah.

But T’shuvah, T’fillah and Tz’dakah have the power to transform the harshness of our destiny.  (Other translation - “avert the severe decree”)

T’shuvah - repentance but also return

T’fillah - prayer but also self-reflection

Tz’dakah - righteousness, justice and charity

We go from a list of things that can happen TO us straight to a list of things WE CAN DO - things that are proactive - things that have the power to transform.  We are told to not wait for God to act upon us but to take action in our own lives and the lives of others - welcome a stranger into your home, feed the hungry, change the effect of the list of things that can kill you by living in the present.

And just like that we go from victim to protagonist - just like that we become the author of our own story, and just like that we go from waiting for something to happen to us - to deciding that WE determine our own present.  Bad things can happen.  But we are told in this moment that how we live our lives, how we act toward ourselves, toward God and toward one another is what determines the value and quality of our time here on earth.  God inscribes and seals - but how we live this day, and how we feel about this day, is up to us.  

The third act and denouement is a reminder:  each of us comes from dust - and to dust we shall return.  Our days on earth are limited.  How will we live them?  What choices will we make?  What will our attitude be?

Three acts of the story - the three movements to the poem.  First, the wake up call.  Second, the warning and call to action.  And finally, the reminder of fragility. 

And so suddenly it occurred to me - this question of why, in the darkest of times, at the risk of their own lives, whether secular or religious, Jews for centuries connect to this moment of deep spiritual work.  Its because on some level, the law and the prayer and the poetry lead to this one thing, and I can’t possibly say it better than Viktor Frankl so I will quote him:  

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

U’netaneh Tokef: the key to unlocking so much of what this 25 hours is about.  It is the reminder to live in the present  - to take control of your life, and to have the humility to know that we are but dust.  We don’t know how many days or years we will have.  But we determine how we will live them.  

G’mar chatimah tova. 

Kol Nidre 2018

Kol Nidre 2018


Hatikvah, the theme from Schindler’s List, Amazing Grace, and the Kol Nidre.  Four melodies that can move me to tears. As Jews, we do a lot of our praying out loud and we do a lot to melody.  Some of us may not know all the Hebrew.  But we know the niggun, the melody.  And those niggunim become a part of our tradition – a part of our connection to our history and our liturgy.  To open Yom Kippur, we sing the Kol Nidre three times - three times we make the declaration aloud, growing in volume with each repetition as though we are calling out, proclaiming that we must be heard.  Being heard is a big part of Yom Kippur.  This is the only night of the year we say the second line of the Shema out loud.  At the end of Neilah, we say the Shema aloud again just prior to the shofar blasting out to be heard by all.  And to me, all of this praying and singing and calling out to be heard is about awakening and connecting – awaking our souls to connect to a power greater than us.  But to what end?

I got stuck, as I was thinking about what to say tonight, on the words of the Kol Nidre.  Kol Nidre is an Aramaic phrase which means, “All Vows.”  It is not a prayer, it makes no requests and is not addressed to God.  Rather, the Kol Nidre is a juristic declaration before the prayers of Yom Kippur begin - before the prayers for the Day of Atonement.

Atonement, according to the Oxford dictionary, is synonymous with expiation.  And expiation is defined as “showing” regret for something.  Expiation is the ACT of making amends or reparation for wrongdoing.  Atonement is action.  Praying to a melody out loud is action.  And action is that which has the power to bring healing.

Atonement is not “sorry”.  “Sorry” is easy.  “Sorry I burnt dinner.” ‘Sorry I was running late”.  “I didn’t mean to let you down, lie to you, break your heart - I’m so sorry”.  Confession is hard.  I burnt dinner because I wasn’t paying attention. I was mad at you.  I’m afraid to tell you that I lied to you, cheated on you, am jealous of you.  We don’t confess to the things we should be sorry for and we say we’re sorry for things we shouldn’t.  Sorry about traffic.  Sorry about the weather.  Sorry you had a hard day.  That’s not what we mean.  We might mean we empathize, or we might just be trying to placate our husband, child, boss, colleague.  In the first case it’s not something we have any control over, and in the second, we’re merely making perfunctory acknowledgement of someone else’s pain.

Sorry is not confession nor is it a request for forgiveness.  But on this night, we do both.  We confess. And we beg forgiveness.  We stand and we beat our breasts and say those things that are hard to admit to, difficult to acknowledge and terribly, terribly embarrassing to say aloud.  There is a reason we fast on this day.  A reason we stand for so much of the day and a reason we do it together.  Judgement is not easy and is neither asked for nor made in isolation.

So tonight we gather together to atone for the sins of the previous year, right? WRONG.  Because in fact, the Kol Nidre declaration isn’t about the year that was at all.  It is about the year to come.  It says very clearly “the vows we make from THIS Yom Kippur to the NEXT Yom Kippur”.  We think of the holiday as one of repentance, and we think of repentance as most certainly in the past.  But that is NOT what the Kol Nidre says.  So, what is going on?

For centuries the language did say from last year to this year – it was a declaration addressing the year that was.  But it was changed in the 12th Century by Rabbineu Tam, a son of Rashi, who changed it to the future tense so that the Kol Nidre would conform to the Talmudic passage from Rosh Hashanah which says, “He who desires that none of his vows made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the beginning of the year and declare, ‘every vow which I may make in the future shall be null.’”  Well that’s confusing.  Why would we want to invalidate a vow that we have not even made?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks gives a terrific insight to the Kol Nidre when he talks about Moses pleading with God to forgive the people of Israel who have sinned by making the Golden Calf.  God vows to kill those who have sinned so egregiously against him.  And Moses basically talks him out of it.  Moses pleads with God to forgive the people of Israel so that they may live to go forth to the promised land.  God breaks his vow, he lets the people live and in doing so allows them to go forth – he allows us to be free.

Go back now, to the Kol Nidre declaration which says very clearly that our vows “shall not bind us nor have power over us.”   We are NOT off the hook for vows made to another person.  For that, the Torah says very clearly that we must ask forgiveness of the individual we have wronged.  What the Kol Nidre says is that we are asking to be released from vows and promises to ourselves and to God. If I resolve to do something and I don’t do it, I’m a failure.  I am burdened by my own shortcomings, stuck in my own past.  But if I acknowledge the possibility of failure, if I say my vows have no power over me – then maybe I can get unstuck – maybe I can find forgiveness for myself, be a little gentler with myself about my own shortcomings so that I may learn from them and grow beyond them.  If we consider the Kol Nidre in this light as we go into a day of confession and acknowledgement, then all of the work we are about to do becomes a reminder to forgive ourselves as God forgives us our failures.  And that forgiveness becomes freedom. Not freedom to behave badly or do whatever we want. But freedom to fulfill our potential, freedom to be our very best selves.

On Passover, we free ourselves from the Egyptians, on Chanukah, we free ourselves from the Seleucids.  But on Yom Kippur, we experience a freedom that is entirely about our relationship with God.  On Yom Kippur, we free ourselves from our selves.

As we prepare to chant the Kol Nidre aloud together, I want to share one final thought with you:   Reuven Hammer said “Prayer recited in community has a special dimension... Judaism does not discourage solitary prayer. But Judaism is wary lest such aloneness become the norm and the permanent condition of the human being... prayer should lead us toward the love and care of the world we meet and through prayer we discover how important the community is for sustaining our own salvation.”

So tonight, we raise our voices in prayer as a community of people who are here to do the work, to confess, to forgive and to aspire to a new year of the freedom to be our very best selves.  Shana tovah.

So, this is 50.

So, This is 50.

So this is 50.  It doesn’t feel like 50.  It doesn’t feel like halfway to one hundred and it certainly doesn’t feel like I’m statistically well over halfway done.  50 doesn’t feel like anything special or semi-centennial.  I didn’t get a notice in the mail that I needed a 50-year oil check or special service.  And I certainly didn’t think I’d be 50 and feel like I’ve not accomplished enough or done enough or been to all the places I wanted to have gone and done and accomplished by now.

I guess I don’t really know what 50 should feel like.  I think I thought it should feel generally older.  I think when I was younger, like last week, I thought that 50 would feel monumental and revelatory and slightly creaky and dignified.  I think I thought a lot about what 50 seemed like to me when other people wore it, when I looked at it through younger eyes.

My father never got to be 50, so I don’t know what that looked like.  By the time my mother was 50, she was a widow with three almost adult kids and a soon to be second husband.  By the time my grandmother was 50 she had survived the death of both of her parents, life as an orphan, a world war, and emigration first to Israel and then to the United States.  By 50, she had raised two beautiful daughters, run her husband’s business, seen the birth of her first granddaughter and had endured and taken in her stride more of life’s hardships and joys than most of us will ever know.  I didn’t know her then.  I wasn’t born yet.  But I’ve seen pictures of what she looked like at 50.  50, on the face of my grandmother who had lived a dozen lives by then, looked wrinkled and worn through and kind and soft and woven with a thousand stories never told.  50 looked old. 

50 doesn’t look old anymore.  I look around at friends close to either side of the line and none of them look like what I think of when I think of 50.   50, at least in Los Angeles in the year 2016, looks pretty hot.

I don’t feel hot.  Here’s how I feel: Dorky.  A little out of place.   A little awkward, a little unpopular, a little like I’m always saying, doing or wearing the SLIGHTLY wrong thing.  I feel young in a junior high sort of way.  I know I’m not.  And I have an awareness that the world responds to me as a somewhat dignified and relatively competent adult.  An adult who recognizes appropriate skirt length and bedtime.   An adult who has the right advice about things like laundry and deal memos and cooking and how to deal with a difficult work situation.  I can tell myself the story of my life and it certainly seems to cover 50 years worth of stuff.  But truly I don’t feel like what I think 50 is supposed to feel like.  

Here’s what I know: I don’t look as young as I think I do.  I’m not a babe.  I’m attractive enough.  But, I’m no longer a bird, a skirt, a chick or a lass.  I’m a broad.  I’m a dame.    I sit more comfortably in my slightly saggy, gravity challenged skin.  I like that I spend no time worrying about what men think about me when I walk down the street.  I finally walk down the street thinking about what I want to think about rather than what I think others think about me.  And that is a massive relief.

So part of me is relieved to be 50.  Part of me is relieved to be beyond the stage in my life where I worry about getting pregnant, where I try to figure out what moisturizer to use to prevent wrinkles, where I think about whether a heel height or skirt length is work appropriate.  Here’s the truth: I can’t get pregnant, I’m already wrinkled and I can’t wear a short skirt even if I wanted to thanks to the earth’s gravitational pull on my age-challenged thighs. 

And part of me is terrified and struggling to reconcile the fact that 50 years have passed and I have so much less to show for it than I thought I would.  My 50-year-old ego is struggling with my 50 year old soul and winning the battle 50 percent of the time.  I am not only halfway through the century, I’m halfway between satisfied and yearning, halfway between secure and terrified, halfway between the utter Zen that comes with knowing yourself and the sheer panic that the self you know is not good enough, not accomplished enough, rich enough, pretty enough, smart enough, generous or kind enough. 

Here’s what I also know: very few of us escape the approach to 50 unscathed.  In talking to friends and colleagues, it seems that no amount of wealth, success or acknowledgment can prevent the inevitable navel gazing and self-flagellation that accompanies the half-century mark. 

The truth is, I always hoped I would approach my 50^th year with grace.  I fantasized that I would be the woman skating through middle age with all the elegance of one of those thin waspy ladies with a perfect shoulder length silver bob and a blasé attitude.  But in fact, I spent my 49^th year struggling and raging and fighting against the inevitable in a graceless, wretched way.  I was the opposite of stoic, alternately manic and anxious and depressed like a teenager.  Life and career slapped me down left and right.  My 49^th year was an unwanted lesson in humility and humiliation.  I’m not sure I understood either fully until this past year.  And so I looked them up.

Humiliation is defined as embarrassment, mortification or shame.  And there is certainly a lot about turning 50 that feels humiliating.  Skin that is slack beyond my control resulting in a “resting bitch face” that is neither appealing nor representative of my general state.  Hair that grows where it shouldn’t and thins where it should.  A defiance of gravity overall that reminds me that a mumu should replace a bikini as acceptable beach wear. And those are just the things that slap me in the face upon waking. 

Humility is defined as a lack of vanity or pride.  And this has been the toughest lesson of all.  Because no amount of vanity or pride or EGO will stop the progress of time, no amount of flailing or denial can prevent the inevitable forward march of the clock that reminds us that we have to struggle to remain relevant and cling to our connections.  None of it can be taken for granted and none of us is immune.  There is a story told by rabbis about the man who walks around with a piece of paper in each pocket.  On one is written, “The World was made for me.”  On the other is written, “I am but dust and ashes.”  This dichotomy is the struggle between ego and humility, between hubris and confidence, between humility and humiliation.  Because it turns out that if you are truly humble, you are immune to humiliation.  I’m not sure why it has taken me 50 years to learn the lessons I have in the past twelve months, but here I am and shockingly, right by my side through the raging and tears and fear and anger is my husband, my dear friends and family.  And that, is truly humbling.

Here, in a nutshell, is my advice to my 50 year old self: 

1. Have sex with your husband whenever you can even if your body is not in the mood because your heart and soul with never regret it.  
2. Have that sex on your back or in the dark.  The wisdom of this should be obvious. 
3. Accept that you do not know very much about the internet.  You will never know as much as your assistant or your child.  Skype is passé.   Use phrases like “Google Chat” or “slack” instead.    You can download Wishbone on your iPhone but you’ll never actually use it.  And Minecraft is a subversive slippery slope created by Swedes to make us all feel like losers.  
4. Keep tweezers in your purse, your office and your car because daylight is a harsh and cruel master and whiskers are not found only on kittens.   
5. Wear skirts of appropriate length and underwear that is always slightly inappropriate.  
6. Accept that the smile you just got from the male passerby is probably “that’s a nice looking older lady, I wonder if she needs help across the street” and not “I want to bang that chick”.
7. Embrace your age.  And it will embrace you back.  There is nothing so satisfying or so humbling as acknowledging how much and how little you’ve achieved at the midpoint of your life.  Enjoy the paradox that might have tortured you in your youth.  Or even in your 49^th year. 

. 

PRODUCTION POTATOES aka I'm back

I'm back.  Sort of.  I confess I disappeared from the blogosphere and cannot commit to this as a triumphant return.  I'm here, for the moment, checking in from down under (and by this I do NOT mean a Rhianna-type reference to my nether regions but rather an actual geographical reference to a large continent in the Southern Hemisphere known as "Oz").  Likely no one will know that I've checked back in.  That's ok.  This is merely a shot over the bow - a flare in the dark to say "I'm still here."  43 is barely a flicker in the rearview mirror.  The half century mark rapidly approaches.  And just for tonight, just in the middle of shooting my second movie as a producer in my second act, I'm back...

Day 29 of 45 is now over and I’m dug deep into the ivory pleather couch in my Gold Coast Australia rental.  I'm 43 flights above the beachfront and fighting the urge to throw myself off this Southern Hemisphere balcony.  I'm hungry.  I'm tired.  I want desperately to be a pot smoker but am tragically still unhip.  I'd like to say I have the energy to shower, make myself presentable and sit at the bar of my local ready to tuck into a beautifully prepared meal.  But neither of these is the case.  So, here now, with no better option, is the solution to my food dilemma for the evening.  I have no room service and no food delivery in this subpar culture posing as a first world civilization.  And so, operating under the assumption that life, in fact, is nothing like a box of chocolates but is much more like a pantry full of mismatched foods that blend together in no particular way until you come home, exhausted, starving, desperate for a cocktail and carbs after a very long shooting day, is my new favorite dish:

PRODUCTION POTATOES

Recipe is per serving and may be multiplied at will

• Two baking, Yukon or delicious golden Aussie potatoes sliced 3/8” to ¼” thick
• Two eggs
• One golf ball size chunk of sheep’s milk feta
• Half a small handful of fresh herbs, rosemary a must, anything else a bonus
• Squeeze of fresh lemon
• Salt and pepper – lots of each
• Two glugs of gorgeous olive oil  (if you don’t know what a glug is, you shouldn’t be cooking)

1.     Slice potatoes and spread in a shallow fry pan, cover with water, salt.

2.     Bring to high heat and simmer 10 minutes until water boils down and potatoes are lonely in the pan

3.     Smother with oil glugs, salt and pepper

4.     Cover pan and cook until you’re forced to turn on the fan or risk setting off the fire alarm

5.     When there’s a crispy crust on at least one side, throw in handful of herbs and a squeeze of lemon – cover for one minute.

6.     Crack eggs over potatoes, cover and cook for one minute, turn off heat and cook for one more minute.

7.     Sprinkle feta over top and serve with an extra large glass of chilled pinot noir and a salad or crudité.

Empty Nest...

The first one was the worst.  Shabbat dinner with no children.  Child One was at college.  Child Two was in his first week of the new custody arrangement – a 50/50 split which gives him more overall time with us but only every other weekend.  So Shabbat rolled around and rather than race home to make dinner for anywhere from four to fourteen people which often included friends of Child One, I came home to an almost empty house.  Sig Other lay on the couch.  I came in, put down my bags, took off my shoes and sat down next to him.  “Should we land candles?” I asked.  “No,” he replied.  “Do you want dinner?” “I’m not hungry.  You?”  “Not really,” I replied.  And I meant it.   And so our first Shabbat without children passed with no blessings, no candles, no singing, no shared stories of the week.  We sat on the sofa, in the dark, catching up on reality television and eating leftover crudités from a plastic container.  By 9pm, we were asleep.

The second Shabbat on our own was almost worse.  I decided we could not simply ignore the Sabbath, could not simply sit like tragic zombies worshipping our apple TV, picking through the Friday night dregs of the refrigerator and waiting desperately for the empty weekend to pass.  I decided we would have Shabbat with or without children.  And so I came home, laid a proper table, opened a bottle of wine and set out the candles.  If anything, the mere process of going through the ritual for just the two of us was an even lonelier experience than not going through it at all.  It turns out that ignoring Shabbat is far less sad than observing in the absence of those who make observation relevant.

Let me explain.  When Sig Other and I became a couple, we discussed the ritual of Shabbat.  It was important to me because I felt I could finally honor the age-old tradition of my ancestors.  It was important to Sig Other because he could, as he put it, teach the children about their religion so they knew what it was they were rejecting when it came time to reject it.    And Shabbat became important to all of us as our Friday nights truly represent what is most meaningful about the ritual – coming together as a family, taking time to honor one another and to honor the demarcation of the end of the work week and the beginning of the time we have, however short, to renew our selves, our bodies and spirits, to prepare for the next week ahead. 

Shabbat dinners, though, are both a blessing and a burden.  Friday night is not just any other night of the week.  The food should be special, the table beautifully set, the mood a little different from every other night of the week.  And this creation of a family setting has been foremost for me for the past almost eight years.  But the creation of a family environment is not without a price tag.  Periodically, whene the week had been particularly cruel and I particularly tired, I would have pangs of resentment about being SuperStep and pangs of longing for a honeymoon with my husband I never had.  We never had time to be a young couple, never had periods of romantic Friday night dates and weekends away.  We had children.  We had family.  And integrating the children into our lives, making the “step-ness” of our lives a perfectly normal thing, was more important than any walk on the beach, any quiet moment, any candlelit dinner a deux.

So you would think I would relish a Friday night alone, you’d think I’d be thrilled to not worry about what to cook, whether there are fresh flowers on the table, what time the kids will be home from school.  You’d think this would be an opportunity. Child One is 3000 miles away.  Child Two is on a regular schedule of back and forth that affords us two weeknights and every other weekend entirely on our own. Perfect, right?  Great opportunity for romance, for coupley solitude, for self-education, self-expansion, self-growth.  But really all we are is lonely.  Really all we do in our moments alone is think about how much we miss the children, how much we miss Child One and her friends and reminisce about days and dinners gone by.

I suppose it’s a victory in a way – I suppose missing the children this much means we managed to integrate them and ourselves into a semblance of perfectly conventional family life in spite of a perfectly unconventional setting.  But it doesn’t feel like a victory somehow.  It feels more like a weekend spent thinking about the next time we’ll all be together as one.   

Hospitality???

There's nothing I hate more than checking into a hotel I frequent as a business or personal guest to no amenities.  I like to know that loyalty is honored rather than familiarity breeding contempt.  A note, a flower arrangement, cookies for kids - all are greeted with great enthusiasm.  Fruit plates, on the other hand, can be a mixed bag.  Consider the grapefruit, for instance.  A grapefruit, in my mind, is perfect for squeezing fresh juice.  It may also be useful when sliced into supremes and put in a salad.  Less oft, though certainly admired, is the grapefruit halved and sectioned at the breakfast table.  But rarely, rarely does one think of the grapefruit as a delicious option for a fruit bowl.  Unlike the handy apple, the grapefruit cannot be picked up and walked away with.  Its peel is unwieldy, often thick and overly pithy.  Unlike the banana, the grapefruit has massive seeds one can't carry as one piece and deposit politely into nearby rubbish.  And unlike the fruit-bowl friendly grape, a grapefruit is drippy and messy even after peeled and pithed.  So why, I wonder, do hotels bother to put such a daunting fruit in a basket meant to serve as hospitality?  Well, is has great volume, I suppose.  It might take two apples, a trio of apricots and at least two dozen grapes to fill the space taken by one juicy grapefruit.  And unlike its soft-skinned cousins, the mighty citrus lasts (or at least gives the appearance of lasting) a good long time.  No mushy edges, no spoilt centers - the grapefruit can go on for weeks looking fresh as the day it was picked.

So a fruitbowl, I imagine, stands for hospitality in the modern age. Long gone are the days of truly personal touches - a favorite cookie or preferred flower.  To be honest, I'd even prefer a fresh fig or apricot or representation of anything seasonal in its stead.  But grapefruit we get and so grapefruit, it seems, we shall endure...

WHAT ABOUT mini-ME???

Those of you familiar with Sig Other in worlds either virtual or real know that he is the true originator of the phrase, "What about me?"  It is the name of his future auto-biography.  And it is his daily credo.  But the apple, it turns out, doesn't fall far from the tree.  My return to the blogosphere after prolonged absence was greeted by a call from Child One who chided, "I saw you wrote on your blog today."  "Yes," I said, "how did you know?"  "I check it all the time," said she, and continued, "but I was surprised you didn't write about me.  I mean, its been a big year, with me going to college and all the change."  She paused then and continued, "Why didn't write about that?"

In truth, I've written a great deal about that - about how difficult her summer between highschool and college was, about the loss Sig Other and I feel with her absence, about the profound shift in all of our lives as she's transitioned, rather ungracefully, into adulthood.  But none of it felt appropriate for publication. None of it, that is, except this short piece written at the request of my friend Nicola who created the 10Q (www.doyou10Q.com).  So here it is (for you, my sweet Child One) - evidence that I really do think (and write) about you...

THINK ABOUT A MAJOR MILESTONE THAT AFFECTED YOUR FAMILY THIS YEAR…

It would be easiest, I suppose, to go straight to the obvious – the empty bedroom down the hall, the closet missing half its wardrobe, the usually messy bathroom now standing idle waiting to be made a mess again in a few months.  The easiest thing – the most obvious thing to point to, when asked to think about a major milestone, would be the matriculation of our daughter to college.  She is gone.  The house is emptier, the world a little quieter, the days a little less full, because K is 3000 miles away experiencing a whole new life without us.

But in fact, that monumental event is NOT the thing that comes to mind when I think about a major milestone of this year.  In fact, what I think about is the text I got from K one day this summer.  It read: “…how glad I am to have a stepmother who yells at me for parking her car badly.”  I am that stepmother.  And for years I worked at NOT yelling at anybody for anything.  For years I did what most steps do – I twisted myself into a pretzel to do the right thing, to cook the right thing, to say the right thing so the children would feel safe and comfortable and loved.  And I kept my mouth shut about things I felt were wrong for fear of being disliked.   

But as K neared college, I realized that her ability to cope in the adult world – in the world outside our home – was far more important than whether or not she liked me.  And I started telling her what to do.  I told her to pick up after herself, to knock before she entered rooms, to close the cabinets she left open and yes – to park her car straight in the driveway.  We spent a lot of time alone together, she and I, in the months leading up to her departure.  And those months were fraught for her – full of anxiety and fear and depression and angst.  We talked about more than just parking straight and separating whites from darks when doing laundry.  I said some tough things and had to hear some even tougher.  And in that time, I felt a shift in myself.  I felt as I stopped trying to win, stopped trying to be loved, stopped trying to be the coolest stepmom on the block. I felt as I stopped caring about me and started caring about her – what was best for her, what would serve her, what would help her cope in a world far less cozy than our home. 

For the record, I have never yelled at either of my stepchildren.  And in this particular case, I’m quite certain I didn’t even raise my voice.  But I did give a sharp directive. And K has never parked sideways in the driveway again.  And THAT may be the major milestone of our year.