It’s been such a long time since I wrote here. Since I felt an urgent need to write here. The muscle that I used to flex when I opened this app (which is no longer even named the thing it used to be) has gone slack. I don’t know where to begin anymore. So I stole a page from my blogging practice, and I opened up Flickr to find a Creative Commons licensed photo that would result from a keyword search. I used to choose the less obvious search result, but I don’t have the mental energy for that today. I searched for “reflection,” and you get a photo titled Reflection. How transparent of me. I’m embarrassed.

While I was on Flickr, photos from one of the two people I “friended” there maybe 15 years ago showed up. She is apparently still using Flickr actively. So I quickly caught up on her kids (same ages as mine, so now enormous) and my finger slipped and I wound up “liking” a photo of her partner and a person I assume was his mom, holding a box I assume to be ashes, standing on the bow of a ship. I undid the reaction immediately, but the damage was done, and my friend (whom I’ve not been in active contact with for many years) might see a vestigial sign of my inadvertent enthusiasm for this voyage of dumping the ashes and this is how even in the digital realm, we can still commit cringeworthy faux pas. You might think that when you’re pushing 53, you are no longer susceptible to such cringe. You’d be thinking wrong.

Today I spent more hours at Yom Kippur services than ever before. It isn’t the need to talk to God that kept me there. I don’t actually know if any entity by that name exists, and this joke sort of sums up how I feel vis à vis God and the events of the past year and the past millennia:

For me, the hours I spent in synagogue were more to do with what the humans there would say (the ones who were running things), and even more primally, the need for public singing. We spend a good portion of any holiday singing. Our cantor puts together ensembles of various ages and has them perform throughout the day, but we also sing even if we’re not standing up in front of everyone. I may not believe in God, but I sure believe in my people. It is good to spend a day surrounded by them, singing with them, crying with them.

I went through a whole package of tissues today. There was just so much to cry about. Remembering our departed loved ones. Remembering those brutally murdered a year ago in Israel and all of those murdered since then. Listening to a speaker whose father was murdered on October 7, whose brother was murdered while being held hostage by Hamas, whose mother was held hostage for 49 days before being released and then hospitalized for seven months because her captivity left her in such fragile condition. Listening to her desperate plea for peace despite these things. Feeling hopeless about a resolution to this war, a constant undertone which threatens to bring me down pretty much every day. I’ve spent the day reflecting, and it has made me more sad and wrung out this year.

Also, this year is the first time our family dynamic has changed. Young J is away at school and won’t be back until Thanksgiving. I’m thrilled for him to be building his new life and community, but I feel his absence. I’m still not used to it. Still feel like doing a double take when I pass his room and the bed is still made (something which never, ever comes to pass when he’s home). My relationship with Young A is undergoing changes too, now that he’s the only kid left around here. It was good to have him sitting next to me at services today, even though he and J didn’t stay as long as my mom and I did.

I have been changing too. I’d like to say growing, but it isn’t ever clear to me until much later that I’ve undergone a period of growth. I started school in September, a year-long certificate program connected to my job, which should make me into a more skilled teacher by June. Schoolwork has been an overwhelming thing to contend with, and my ADHD has come into sharp focus, particularly when deadlines are looming.

Luckily, one of my assignments this week was a reflection paper. While some of my classmates were dreading that assignment, I was happy to do something that comes as naturally to me as expressing myself on the page. I wrote a bit more than I was required to, because once I started reflecting, it was hard to stop. I made what sounded like intelligent connections to the readings we did for class, but I also situated those in the context of some truths about my life. In the process, I realized that come December, I will have been a librarian for thirty years. (That blows my mind, especially because in my mind, I’m still only 30 years old.) I wrote about ADHD and in the process, discovered that there is not much known about people with ADHD in academia who are not students. People like professors or instructors… people like me. I also mentioned my cancer experiences and how those contributed to my shifting professional gears to the health sciences.

This week I also ran into a former student, who is in her third year of med school. She saw my yellow ribbon pin, a sign of my support for the hostages in Gaza, and we wound up in an intense conversation for a good 40 minutes. She told me how upsetting the past year has been for her, with classmates turning against her, excluding her because of her support for Israel, and classmates who are spewing vile memes and rhetoric on social media, acting as willing mouthpieces for Iran. It scares me beyond belief that people who plan to be doctors are also totally okay with statements that are hurtful, dishonest, and which display utter disdain for the sanctity of human life. The next day, I met a second-year med student who has been through a similar ordeal. Now that I am wearing my yellow ribbon pin, I will be hearing from more and more of them. While I’m glad to be there as someone they can unburden themselves to, I desperately wish I could do more, effect real change in the university and across academia. There is a sickness in these systems, which fail to acknowledge the minority status of Jews and extend protections to them. Not to mention the utter degradation of civil discourse that this war has brought into sharp focus (but which has its origins in things that began more than a year ago).

Health-wise, I’ve also been changing, in other words, The Change. Perimenopause is long-lasting, and annoying in a way that cancer wasn’t for me (because I was lucky). I started hormone therapy, and that seems to be helping a bit. I’d love to come through on the other side of this and start building the new me, but it will take a bit longer. I’m a month out from my next cancer scans, for those keeping score at home.

Since October 7, I’ve been hearing this prayer sung at gatherings. While I confess it was new to me, because I am not religious enough to attend the services where it is chanted, it is ancient in its origins.

If I could have one wish granted before the gates close tonight, ending Yom Kippur and sealing our fate, it would be for an end to this war. It sure would be helpful for me to have faith in intercessory prayer right now. I don’t, but I will sing along.