Equinox

A delicate balance

Photo by Slim Lukka on Unsplash

AUTUMN EQUINOX (definition): first day of fall, when there is an equal amount of daylight and darkness. This year, the equinox fell on Saturday, September 23. After this, the days will get steadily shorter. For those of us with Seasonal Affective Disorder, this is already not great news. But this week marks another annual hurdle for me…

Here come the dreaded days (September 29 and October 1) when I grieve my mother’s and sister’s deaths anew every year. And as I always do, I try to figure the number of days passed since their passings. In Mo’s case, it has been 42 years, or an incredible 15,330 days since she left this earth, at age 23. For Joanie, it’s been a mere 17 years (6205 days). How long until I see them again? In any case, I’ve been alive far longer than my sister was (I passed that milestone at age 46), and I may well make it to 80, Mom’s final age.

Putting away my calculator, I realize that timing is really irrelevant. They’re gone. I miss them. The world turns on, the poorer for their absence. But I am so blessed by the memories.

Photos: Mo’s last note to me, and the last picture of her taken the day of her death; Mom at age 79, and the notecards written by 12 year old Julie for the beautiful eulogy she delivered at her Nana’s funeral.

Rose sang this lovely Gershwin song at Mom’s funeral in 2006…

TRAVELS WITH STEVE AND ELISE: DO THIS, NOT THAT

DO explore the many amazing museums and churches when in Europe! DON’T miss some of the charming oddities you may encounter (and keep your camera handy—allowed in most European sites). For instance, we snapped a photo of Adoration of the Magi by Botticelli in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence (notable for the gentleman chilling in the far right corner and staring back at us—it is a portrait of the patron who commissioned the work—he just had to get in on the act!)

And those medieval altars collected in the National Art Museum of Catalonia (Barcelona, Spain) are quite a trip…imagine going up to communion at THIS altar (replete with graphic images of martyrs being dispatched by saws, in cauldrons, etc.) Holy moly!

And then there’s the ossuary (“bone church”) in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic. During a pandemic there long ago, the corpses piled up too fast for burial in individual graves. Later, artists created sculptures and chandeliers in a church from the bones, which (believe it or not) we found to be more cool than macabre!

WRITER SPOTLIGHT: The Word Mavens (Joyce Eisenberg and Ellen Scolnic)

My friends Joyce and Ellen started PlayPen, a suburban Philly writers group, back when their own kids were babies (in playpens, get it?) I joined them years later, and now, after 32+ years, they are still meeting and supporting their fellow scribes. Joyce and Ellen call themselves The Word Mavens, and have written several books which take a light-hearted (and educational!) look at Jewish culture. They write many of their essays together, a skill I greatly admire, and they speak regularly to groups, in person and on Zoom. Mazel Tov, ladies!

BLOG PREVIEW: HONY (Humans of New York)

In 2010, a young photographer named Brandon Stanton decided to take pictures of 10,000 New Yorkers. It wasn’t long before he was interviewing them and sharing their stories. Now, Humans of New York has millions of followers, and Stanton uses the site to support and champion his subjects. What HONY has come to mean to me, a native New Yorker who (shamefully) still avoids making eye contact with strangers—tomorrow over at Working Title.

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” – Rumi

May this be a week of contact—eye contact, heart contact—with our fellow travelers on the journey. Blessings to you, my friends!!

Photo by Siora Photography on Unsplash