Some Things Never Change

I don’t know the difference between denial and faith.

I have this friend, a rebbetzin. I don’t even tell her when I’m in town, these days. I just show up at her doorstep in the middle of the night, and we talk about strawberry seltzer and complicated journeys and the color of our souls. She never tells me to leave, up to her I’d stay past midnight. Sometimes I do.

There are so many parties in the city this weekend, that for once I don’t mourn not being a part of. I’m learning to see things as whole and concrete and lasting. That I can come here whenever I want, sit by the pool with my sisters. There is always a cat or two. Some stray thoughts from the bayou. My neighbor comes out in her sundress, “you have such a beautiful family.” For fifteen years I’ve watched her come out in that sundress. Time stands still in Texas.

“Are you home for the summer?”

“I’m home for the weekend. But my sisters are here. I don’t know what my brothers are doing.”

She laughs. “That’s how brothers are.”

She has the date for my mother’s surgery memorized. “I know she’ll be fine.”

Sometimes people know.

We don’t set the shabbos table. I’m not sure if that stopped when my mother got sick or my siblings left home, or maybe it’s both. We take our soup to the couches and my mom wears pajamas and my father plays his guitar for us.

I want to talk to my littlest sister. And outrun my father’s prophesies. And communicate in the secret language of rabbis.

They tell me Tammuz is a time for fixing what was broken. (Because words have power. Because all the things we’re mourning now are only promises of the beauty that we’ll build from them. Because when my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer in her fifties, I was so sure in that moment she was just a little girl.)

And I, her oldest daughter, would protect her as best I could. But I cried too much. Which of us is the child?

I must have tried for a moment to stop believing in G-d. I applied to rabbinic school. What kind of rabbi doesn’t believe in G-d? (Actually, I know lots of rabbis this applies to.) Anyway. It didn’t work.

Tell me if you’re like me. Holding the sunlight on your skin, holding every aspect of your life too closely. It won’t fly away.

I was taught to believe that even our thoughts influence this world. (Of course they do. This world runs far too deep to not be altered by our thoughts.)

So, they’re promises today.

So Tammuz is a time for holding (not too tight), the things that fell apart, and loving them for falling.

So I don't need to know the difference.