October 28, 2021 - Why am I still stuck here 7 years after arriving for a temporary stay? I hate this town, I hate this state, I hate this country. I know there are better options around the place, cities where I might feel happier and have a daily life that might feel closer to actually living in the world.
December 31, 2023
In early December, we celebrated my son’s 4th birthday with a party at a barn in the Blue Ridge mountains. This was my first time arranging an actual kids’ birthday party, and I was worried sick that nobody would come. As we drove out towards the mountains that morning, winding our way westward along narrow roads, I imagined our guests making the same journey, the effort of it, how unlikely it was that they would bother just for us. When we arrived, I set out the snacks and coffee and the large sheet cake in its box, laid out paper plates, napkins, and a package of candles waiting for the moment when we would gather round to sing. The big barn doors opened out onto a beautiful natural play area for the children. With everything set up and still ten minutes to go until the start time, I sat alone in the quiet and looked out at the mild morning, the sky a hazy blue from the rampant wildfires burning too damn close to us for months. Elliott was already running wild outside and I knew that he wouldn’t really notice or care if only one or two people showed up, though he might notice and begin to make evaluations about his self worth if there was nobody.
At the appointed time, voices began to reach me from out front and soon the space was filled with noise, people, activity. We had invited Elliott’s friends (most of whose parents are our own friends) and we invited our own friends with younger kids Elliott has no interest in. The party was almost as much for us as for him, as maybe all little-kid birthdays should be. We had a blast. Everyone came, everyone knew one another, all of these incredibly busy people showed up for us and our kid. I felt for the first time in years that I was contained within a circle of people I cared about, and who cared about our family. It was bliss.
When it came time to pack up and leave, one friend said “Same time tomorrow guys? Anyone else have a birthday we could celebrate?” We wished we could have this sort of scheduled fun more often. I promised I’d take on the task of arranging something else before the end of the year, some low-stakes morning at a local park in the nothing days between Christmas and the New Year. I thought about my promise a lot over the following days, in the two weeks before Christmas, and then the days after, when we were supposed to be hanging out, when I was supposed to have arranged something. I didn’t get around to it. But I feel certain that, in setting any intentions for 2024, gathering people together intentionally will be near the top of my list.
I’ve been complaining about living in Charlottesville for a long time. My diaries are filled with these little rants, usually prompted by something political or the extreme heat of the long summer. Among the many reasons I love keeping and re-reading diaries is the identification of patterns and the subsequent transformative power of self-awareness.
I don’t think it’s going too far to say that my son’s 4th birthday party changed how I feel about where we live. It’s not the first place we would choose, but in the absence of perfect (a house in Dublin by the sea), it’s plenty.
It was not long after I arrived at my newfound state of relative contentment that I read the story of Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha, who was detained and beaten by the IDF as he attempted to cross from Gaza into Egypt with his wife and children. His youngest son has a US passport, which was the only reason they were permitted to leave in the first place. Toha wrote about the whole experience in an essay for the New Yorker that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. It is written in the first person present tense and reads like a diary. It’s all horrendously memorable, but the part that has stuck with me, that I have copied by hand into my own diary as I try to absorb its truth, is the following:
“Each time I have returned [from the U.S.], with photos of unfamiliar cities and trees and snow, people have called me “The American,” and asked me why I came back. There is nothing in Gaza, they say. I always tell them that I want to be with my family and my neighbors. I have my house and my teaching job and my books. I can play soccer with my friends and go out to eat. Why would I leave Gaza?”
I believe that many people, even liberally minded empathetic people, including those in power, make the grave mistake of thinking of the Gaza Strip as a godforsaken stretch of desert whose people might, in the end, be better off living somewhere else, if they are lucky enough to make it out, if they are not murdered by US-funded Israeli bombs. Wouldn’t they be better off in Egypt or Turkey or whichever other country (not ours) will take them, goes a certain line of thinking. No, not if you think about what they leave behind as not only fundamentally real, as real as anything you consider yours, but literally the only things that matter on this godforsaken earth: Family, community, a home of one’s own, teaching and learning, books, stories, playing, eating with friends and neighbors - this is all that matters. And that’s before you even consider history, ancestry, the stuff that the earth itself holds. This is what they leave behind, this is what is being destroyed: everything.
Elsewhere, Atef Abu Saif is writing diaries of his days in Gaza for various outlets and all are worth your time.
It might not surprise you, given the premise of this newsletter, that the changing of the years drives me mad with sentimentality. Even thinking about Auld Lang Syne could make me cry. The illusion that we can hold on to time is shattered by the advance of the calendar from one year to the next. I remember writing the date at the top of my copybook page as a schoolchild and always finding the newer, bigger number shocking when we returned to school after the Christmas break. Nineteen-ninety FOUR?! Twenty-twenty three was unfathomable then, and now that, too, is gone.
Anyway, enough. In closing, I’d like to offer a list, since I enjoy reading those from others. Here are some things that improved my life in 2023:
Our bird feeder (with the fancy seed to attract all the best birds): the spectacle of birds outside our living room window in the early mornings is mesmerizing. Just this morning we saw red-breasted woodpeckers, bluejays, cardinals, chickadees, white-breasted nuthatches, cedar waxwings, house finches, A VULTURE (across the street, observing - we would have intervened if it had approached), and so many tiny, quick brown birds we couldn’t easily identify.
The Circle Round podcast from WBUR Boston. Here’s an episode called The Persimmon Sisters, adapted from a folk tale from the Jewish and Arab traditions.
My Garmin Forerunner 245, which Adam got me in May for mother’s day, and which has since accompanied me across 454 miles of running.
Audiobooks. 36% of my reading this year was done via audiobook, while running.
Spending August in Ireland. This was not only a wonderful experience while it was happening, but its broader effect on my wellbeing improved a large chunk of the year.
The following books: Lost and Found by Kathryn Schulz, Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon, Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan, Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy, After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell, Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas, A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell, Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt, The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan.
Auld Lang Syne asks the rhetorical question, Should old times be forgotten? And of course the answer is in the asking.
Yours,
Helen.