L’Shanah Tovah to my readers who celebrated entering a new year this weekend. I came into the celebration of Rosh Hashanah on Friday evening after a rejuvenating week spend with seven brilliant and badass writer friends at a retreat in Vermont. I’d missed the retreat I normally go to in July, and this was just what the doctor ordered.
There’s something magical about being in a house with other writers —especially writers who also happen to be amazing cooks. We each signed up for a meal, and wow! Like magic these gourmet feasts appeared at dinner time. And given that it was a house full of women, everything got cleaned up by those who didn’t cook that night; the dishwasher got unloaded and the trash emptied.
It always amazes me how much I get done when I’m somewhere else and all the bandwidth that’s normally taken up with “what’s for dinner?” and “is there food in the fridge?” and all the other quotidian concerns of running a household are taken care of.
Turned in the manuscript for an as-yet unannounced Scholastic novel (my first ever co-written book, which has been a blast to work on and we’re really excited about) and then finally figured out how I want to write the middle grade idea that I’ve been playing with. I’d started with a novel, then thought about a graphic novel, but now I’ve settled on a hybrid. I can’t tell you how much fun it is to work on a humorous idea again after being immersed in dark subjects for so long.
But the best part? The discussions! About writing. About techniques. About teaching. Most of all about life, because that informs the subjects we explore and return to again and again.
We didn’t get a group photo, but here’s a pic from our last night.
On the last morning before we left, we sat and listened to NPR’s Morning Edition. It’s the 20th Anniversary of an organization near and dear to my family’s heart, StoryCorps. My sister and I interviewed Dad at the very first StoryCorps booth in the passage at Grand Central back in 2003. Then in 2006, my son Josh interviewed me at the bigger booth there. That interview became one of StoryCorps early animations, Q & A, and it’s had over 1.3 million views on You Tube. We went back to StoryCorps Josh’s first semester of college, when he was struggling, and then again after he’d graduated. Then, as part of the 20th anniversary celebrations for StoryCorps, we did another interview in August, right before helping Josh move to Boston to start his latest chapter, grad school at Simmons University, where he is studying for a joint masters in Library Science and History. That interview will be in a podcast later this fall, but on Friday, Morning Edition played a retrospective of the first three interviews. It’s quite a journey emotionally, and as wonderful producer Michael Garofalo observed, it’s a story of resilience.
We had a 100% crying rate at our listening party. Check it out and let me know your thoughts!
I got home mid-day Friday, and launched into Rosh Hashanah. I was having a conversation recently with one of the young men I interviewed for Some Kind of Hate about my complex feelings about faith. I told him how those feelings and my level of observance have been all over the map, but no matter what my thoughts are about a divine being, going to synagogue is a way for me to connect with my family, especially those who are no longer here. And sure enough during Avinu Malkeinu (click link for a beautiful version sung by Barbra Streisand) I felt like my late parents, grandparents, and the great-grandmothers who I was named after but never met, were all around me, that I was link in an unbroken chain.
But there was also a painful reminder of all that I’d immersed myself in to write Some Kind of Hate, and that’s the police presence outside our synagogue. We always have a security guard when there are services, but for the High Holy Days there was the usual security guard and two armed police officers.
Still, I’m determined to choose love and curiosity rather than hate and othering. To try to foster understanding rather than perpetuate falsehoods and fear.
L’Shanah Tovah. May you all be inscribed and sealed in the Book of Life.
I listened to the original Story Corps some time ago, but this addition makes an already poignant and overwhelmingly sweet story even more so!!!