Headlights in the darkness

You come at me, just two pinpricks of light. I can't see you and I will never know who you are. In the worst of nightmares, you are the last thing I see before the crash, before it all goes dark.

You blind me. As I pass you, you switch off your brights so I don't see blotchy splotches of light for miles after, but sometimes it is too late, and for a second, I can't see where I am going. It is ironic, that with such a strong light in front of me, I am blind.

The darkness doesn't scare me, or if it does I would never admit it. My headlights lead the way, I feel safe and confident on the road. But when you come at me head-on, that is when I get scared. The road is narrow, what if I don't swerve in time?

I wonder what you think about when you see me coming. Do you feel the same way? Or am I just another anonymous companion on the road, traveling to an unknown destination? Do you give me any thought at all?

Just two headlights in the darkness is all I see when you come at me. But what is behind those headlights, or who- that I will never know.

And I hope to never find it out the hard way.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It is so very cold, and I am trying to steal (borrow) internet from the neighbors. All is good in the heights, now that I am here. And I will be here for the weekend.

Gotta love working in a 'Hebrew day school'. Nowhere else have I ever gotten off for Thanksgiving weekend.

Enjoy the Turkey, and have a good one!

What are you doing on my roof?

That is the title of my new book. (The one that has not yet been written.)

A blank page

The page is blank, but not because I have nothing to say.

There is a saying, "no news is good news", which is not always true. But when a kid goes away to camp and barely calls home, it is usually because he is too happy and busy to call.

I pointed out to a friend of mine that I feel like I don't write as often as I used to, and that I have been slacking off. She expressed her concern, and thought maybe I was going through a slump. But I told her it was quite the opposite. The times when I have an urge to write, to express myself, are usually when I am feeling depressed or upset about stuff in my life. Don't ask me why there are so many poems and songs about sad dark depressing thoughts, but there you have it.

The Rebbe said, I am here for you when you have bad news to tell me, but don't forget to let me know when there is good news to tell.

It seems that when life is all rosy and good, people don't have anything to write home about.

Here's the proof: I haven't called my mother in awhile, and I don't write as often as I used to.

Consider this a blank page.

Oh to be a child... one more time

I listen to them giggle and chatter. They talk about the usual stuff, school, classmates, teachers. I try to add in a few words here and there, thinking that I am one of them, hoping they won't notice how oddly I stick out. But then they point out that I am their teacher, and despite the fact that it is only for davening, and only once a week, I feel like I have been found out, I will now be named a fraud and kicked out of their little group.

But they don't mind having me there. And I think back to what it was like being a 13 year old girl, how we enjoyed the attention of older people, because it somehow validated us and made us feel less like the immature children that we were. Apparently, that is what I am to these girls. It makes me realize with a thump that I am not, and will never again be 'one of them.'

They start to get hyper, they laugh, they want to paint my nails and play with my hair. I let them, because it feels nice to be a part of their group. It is a weird feeling, wanting to be a child again, wanting to be one of them, but knowing that I am not.

They are now grating on my nerves, with their childish laughter and how they cling to me. They ask me what I think of them, and I try to answer nicely so as not to hurt their fragile egos. One of them wants me to come to her brother's bris, but I barely even know her. In a way, I want them to forget how much older I am than them, but they too want me to believe that they are older than they really are. It is kind of hard to do with the way they are acting.

I retreat, and they follow me. I finally decide it is time to leave. Playtime is over. I am frustrated and annoyed, and I wonder, why are these girls acting so immature, why can't they just behave like me?

And then I realize, they are only children, but I am not a child anymore, and I will never again be one. It is like the book "Morris the moose goes to school". (One of the first books I read as a child.) A moose goes to school, and the children hang their coats on his antlers. They recognize that he is not one of them, even as he tries so hard to blend in.

It's nice to hang out with children once in awhile, and have the illusion that you are accepted as one of them. But I've had my fix.

Now it's time to go back to the adult world and try to prove that I am really 'one of them', that I am not a child anymore.

Oh the strange world we live in.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

In the mornings it is like my vocal chords are paralyzed. (G-d Forbid.) How can a kitchen containing four girls be so quiet? Simple. Who has energy to talk in the morning? The best I can do is grunt.

Luckily, I am not usually up so early every morning. But when I am, it reminds me of my high school days. Wake up ten minutes before the bus comes, roll out of bed, throw on a uniform (Thank G-d for those) grab two pieces of bread to call lunch, a bowl of cereal and milk which I brought on the bus (and tried expertly to hide from the driver who refused to let me on with food), and then colapsed into a seat on the bus, to get in a few more minutes of sleep before that horrible thing we called school was upon us.

Oh, and to see the bus. Row after row- girl, girl, girl, girl, girl, one girl per seat, each with ear buds jammed in, in her own little world, and if someone dared to ask to sit down, she would grudgingly move over. No talking. Again, who has energy to talk in the mornings?

I motion for a world where grunts suffice as conversation. All we need is a different sound for everything we want to say.

"Good morning" 'grunt'.

"How are you" 'grunt'.

Maybe a friendly nod. That's about it.

It's also funny how many things are going through my head in the morning, and how so few of them ever get said. I look at a girl and think, what is she doing, why is she in my way, maybe I should nudge her along or she will be late for school. But none of those things actually get said. It's like the path between my brain and my mouth is still asleep.

Don't be fooled by this post- I really am a social person.

Ode to my niece

I love you even though you are not here,
and even though I don't see you every day.

I love you even though you never talk to me,
and sometimes you cry when I'm near you.

I love you even though you don't do much,
and the most I see of you is from pictures.

I love you even though you are the smallest person in my life.

I love you because you are beautiful, and you smile all the time.

I love you because you are so cute,
and you are a part of me.

I don't love you because I have to,
or because I choose to;

I love you by default,
because how can I look at you and not love you?

I love you, my one and only niece, my beautiful booba, my Pretty Princess, Rochel Leah.

First Snowfall in Orange Connecticut!

I thought it was raining outside, but when I opened my shades, this is what I saw:
(First the turkeys, now this. What other surprises await behind my window shade?)

An hour gained, an hour lost

We changed the clocks back but I didn't gain an hour. Or rather, I gained an hour but then I lost it. So it didn't really do me any good.

I only remembered about changing the clocks when I noticed that the time on my laptop was an hour behind my alarm clock. But I didn't go to bed right then, I didn't get up and say tehillim for that hour, I didn't start dancing. I just sat there and continued to do what I had been doing the whole time from 1 am until 2 am.

In other words, I got the chance to redo an hour in my life, and I did nothing about it.

I remember a scene from the movie Donald Ducks, where the three ducks stopped time for awhile, and everyone just froze. They ran around running errands and doing whatever they had to do, and then when they were done they started time again.

If I were handed an hour on a silver platter and told, forget about the world around you, everything is going to stop for you while you do whatever you want with this hour, maybe I would use it. I don't know what I would do with it, but certainly not whatever I was previously doing the rest of my life.

Perhaps for the first ten seconds I would stand still, trying to decide what to do and where to go, but then I would be off and running.

So why then, when I just got a tangible extra hour to use for whatever I wanted, I wasted it? I didn't utilize it in any way other than to notice that I just got an hour back, and then to continue doing what I was doing until then.

Is time that unprecious to me?

2 years and 400 posts and I'm still going strong!

I am gonna make this short, because it is Friday and I have to go shopping and cook for Shabbos. (I love the sound of that!)

Today marks 2 years since I started my blog. This also happens to be my 400th post. Four hundred posts in 2 years is a pretty good average. It also shows that I like multiples of 2. (My brain thinks in positive numbers.)

Today is also pay day, which I'm happy about.

There are lots of reasons to be happy. There are also a lot of quotes about happiness. This one in particular I really like:

"Being happy doesn't mean that everything is perfect. It means that you've decided to look beyond the imperfections."

That means that even when your life is seemingly bad, and everything is going wrong, you can still find reasons to be happy.

Have a good Shabbos, and may we all see revealed happiness in our lives.

To another year of wisdom and lots more blog posts!

Change

"You never realize how much things change till you look back and everything is different."

To say I hate change would be false. It is more a reluctance to let go of the past, and an uncomfortable feeling with the vast unknown.

Big changes scare me. Little changes make me nervous. And the ones in between sometimes make me nauseous, or a combination of the two.

It is not that I don't understand that change is a good thing, that we can't live without it, that it is in fact healthy to change, and unhealthy to stay in the same spot your whole life, physically or otherwise. It is that I yearn for familiarity, for comfort, for something in my life that is constant.

Whether my fear, or rather aversion to change stems from moving houses four times throughout my life, the first time when I was only three years old, or something else that I don't know about, or just because that's how I was made, doesn't really matter. Most of the time it doesn't matter how you got to where you are now. The main thing is to deal with it now. (Unless of course you believe in Freudian psychology.)

My life went through a lot of changes in the past two years, some good and some bad. I go back only as far as two years because I see my life as stages. When I finished high school I began a new stage, which lasted about two years, and this year began the next stage in this whirlwind called my life.

I am reflecting on all of this now because tomorrow marks two years since I started my blog. It is a big accomplishment for me, and maybe the longest time I ever stuck to something. Of course, writing for me is an outlet, and an enjoyment, but not always.

There are so many things I have done in the past that I wish I never did, and I wish I could undo. Sometimes I wish that humans were built as robots. That we didn't have this inhibiting thing called emotions, that at times causes us to go astray, and at other times trips us up, makes hurt other people or ourselves, holds us back from moving on. But without emotions, we wouldn't have this beautiful thing called love.

I can't undo the past. And when I look back and see where I used to be, and where I am now, it is with a feeling of relief that I am finally growing up. It is a feeling of contentment, that I am at a good place in my life. It is a realization that maybe my mistakes were stupid, and I should never have made them, but in the end I may very well be a stronger person because of them. (That doesn't stop me from wishing they could be erased.)

I don't know what the Hebrew date was when I started my blog, but November 5th will always be a special day to me, a kind of turning point in my life.

So here's to good change and bad, and everything in between, and may we have clarity to always make the right decisions.

Get used to it

It is my guilty conscience telling me that what I am doing is wrong, but more than that, it is the fear that I will be discovered. That I will be told off, that I will be asked to leave. That they will realize that I am a fraud, and that they made a mistake.

I tell myself to follow the rules. To obey the powers that be. But there is a part of me that wants to live on the edge, discover the wild side. Not only that, I just hate rules.

But if they find out, who knows what will be. I feel like I have been punched in the stomach. My conscience bothers me, my guilt gnaws at me, and the fear won't let me rest.

I like my freedom. I hate the constricting feeling of someone telling me what to do. But when you have a job to do, and you know it, what other option do you have?

Free time? Maybe some other time. They are my responsibility, and this is my life now.

Get used to it.