You Got This – Musings from My Porch on Day 10 of Quarantine
Day 10 of quarantine and my life has become a playlist of songs — I dance and sing in the 120 meters of my new home for it is not yet time to cross its threshold.
My apartment is a womb of such. It is comforting and protective as I let the music my husband plays for me help me process all that I feel, clarify all that I am thinking, before I am ready to emerge and embrace my new world.
Now, I invite you to hum with me because I still have four more days to sing alone.
For nine months, 5950 miles from here, I woke up each morning for coffee on the porch with friends. We watched the seasons change. Time went slowly. We asked each other how much longer. During these months we married off children, we had grandchildren, we confronted illness. At times, we experienced these milestones from a distance. “We never knew what each day would bring but we never lost our hope because we faced every obstacle and every puzzle together” to the mantra of “we got this – Katan Aleinu.”
And on our porches we prayed for the children and parents we couldn’t always see. My friends and I, my crew, have confronted these months not with a houseful of children needing to be schooled and entertained but with empty nests. For many of us, our gozalim, our chicks, had flown so far away. They were following the dreams of a Home that we had inspired in them.
Since we couldn’t make our sons and daughters chicken soup and chocolate chip cookies, we sat together on our porches face-timing our children, sharing our pride and, most importantly, our Tefilla, our prayers. We asked that G-d should watch over them; give them strength and joy and happiness.
And we reminded each other how humbled we felt for all the very real goodness and kindness that G-d has bestowed upon us.
And now Here I am. Sitting on a very different porch. Looking at a very different view. Still talking to my friends, bridging worlds but now reaching out across the seas.
Yes, it may have taken us four tries to get to Israel. We missed my son’s wedding, and then another son’s conscription and after that another Chag. For what ever reason, those moments weren’t meant to be.
But now it is the right hour, the sha’ah tova, and I thank You for the opportunity to dance within these walls.
I thank You for the opportunity to look across my threshold and see for the first time my son and daughter-in-law as a young married couple, just seven months and five days after the wedding I missed.
I thank You for the opportunity to look down over the railings of my porch and see a chayal, my youngest son, for the first time in his uniform just five months after his conscription.
I thank You for the opportunity to greet these moments not with silence but with song…and for the recognition that –
Here on a porch, 93 Million Miles from the sun “there is a beautiful light shining just beyond the horizon…and that at times the absence of the light is a necessary part to knowing that you’re never alone.” The journey may be long – but you can always come back Home.
So world beyond my 120 meters, I look forward to meeting you in four days. But until then, look up. I am on my porch singing.
We got this.