There is great joy in spending time with people who look like it is painful to be near you which is to say there is a person I have seen multiple times who sometimes acts as if I have befouled the air between us.
We don’t know each other well, but we know someone in common and occasionally I think about asking common if they know what I did wrong.
It is kind of funny this particular interest of mine because generally I shrug my shoulders and move on because there isn’t tiume nor energy to waste on this kind of nonsense.
Except in this case I can’t look back and say I am sorry they are upset, but man was it fun getting in trouble.
It is a funny time of life now, but not in a laughing kind of way and perhaps that is why this intrigues me a bit. Perhaps it is because I am angry about antisemitism and and angry dad is not hear to celebrate Chanukah.
I think about him often, but the last few days have made me think about him more. It is strange, I keep seeing two primary images, one is the last time he was able to really look at me and the other is of him when his health wasn’t in question.
I meant to build enough time in to stop at Trader Joe’s. Meant to take time to hit Barnes & Noble and do a few other things as well but it didn’t happen.
Time got away from me and now I am back home staring at a flickering candle thinking about the meaning of Chanukah and a million other things.
Thinking about my daughter who has a new set of scars, some of which will fade easily and some less so.
My baby girl got mauled by some of the players on the soccer field during this last tournament and was rightfully angered by some bad calls associated with it as well as the cheap shots.
But she protected herself out there and she made sure some of those who mauled her will remember her. She did so with class, grace and elegance which is to say she knocked them on their asses cleanly without a word.
Kind of funny to sit here and touch on ignoring people while writing about how she didn’t get caught up in the poor sportsmanship of the other teams.
Some of the parents on the opposing team used saltier language and directed it at her and the other girls on her team.
I cannot confirm nor deny her father having had words with some of those aforementioned parents about their poor vocabularies and trouble distinguishing between adults and children.
He might have told one or more they weren’t allowed to speak with her…maybe.
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The Jewish population in Los Angeles is substantially bigger than here in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, proportionally and numerically.
While it is not uncommon or impossible to run into people in L.A. who know very little about Judaism and or Jewish people it happens far less frequently than it does here in Texas.
Which is to say I often find myself far more conscious of being Jewish here than back there. It is not a good thing or a bad thing, it is just an observation.
And it is also why sometimes you find it more important to go to Jewish activities you might or might not attend back in LA.
It is good to be part of a community and to show the community that you exist.
But sometimes you can go to these things and find yourself among your people yet still alone. It is not necessarily because of anything people did or didn’t do either.
Sometimes it happens.
I heard a story about George H. Bush had with his granddaughter in which he said he wasn’t afraid of dying because be expected to be reunited with the people he had lost.
Just after I heard that I saw a political cartoon of him arriving in heaven where he is greeted by his wife and the daughter that died at 3.
“We waited for you” is the caption and if I am being honest, it made me choke up for a moment.
I don’t know what happens after we die. I want to believe in something after and that we are reunited with those we lost.
Who wouldn’t.
Since no one has come back to tell me what comes next the most obvious answer seems to be that life ends and that is it. Maybe that is true and maybe it is not.
What I know for certain is dad has been gone for four months now and that even if we are to be reunited I don’t plan on it for a long time.
So it is four months now and if things go as I hope the answer to how many more is quite a few.
I know he didn’t have all the answers and that if he were here he would tell me to use my best judgment to handle the current stuff.
And I know that it would be accompanied by a string of colorful language and an icy glare. We weren’t always on the same page on everything, but on this kind of stuff there is no question.
I think I am ready to end 2018 today, it is time for it to go.
