Why I Light this Candle

Monday night was my father’s yahrzeit, and I lit a candle.

He died in 1980 on the 23rd day of the Hebrew month of Shevat, February 10th by the American/Gregorian calendar. Since the Hebrew calendar follows a lunar month, the date shifts around every year, and I have to check each year to find out when Shevat 23 lands.

The candle is a special candle that burns for about 26 hours. I light it at sundown the night before his yahrzeit and I say Kaddish, a Hebrew prayer of mourning. Then I take a photo and send it to my siblings and my daughter.

My brother replied: “Saying kaddish? Praying? Do you guys do that? Is the religious aspect of Judaism important to you all? Do you believe in the Jewish God? Or any god?”

These are all good questions. I only started lighting the candle a couple years ago, so why exactly do I do it?

First, there’s the God part. I have a physicist’s view of the universe. Einstein and Hawking and Feynman and Thorne are my source material, and while I marvel at the amazing answers science has been able to provide, I am in awe of the unanswered questions. The mystery is what thrills me, the unknowable (so far). That mystery is what I might feel God-like (or physicist-like?) about.

So that really doesn’t have anything to do with “belief.” Or “higher powers” or the usual ideas about God. Prayer is a melody, not a request or a hope. It doesn’t do anything.

So if I’m not lighting the candle for God; am I doing it for Dad? Well, Dad is dead, and he has no idea I’m lighting any candle. I also tend to skip the part about telling stories about him, remembering him, reflecting on him. My Dad had a difficult childhood with ideas of parenting I have since rejected, but I made my peace with him. So I don’t think I’m lighting the candle specifically for my Dad (even though it’s his yahrzeit).

I am lighting the candle because I am part of a line. Other people lit candles for parents and grandparents and I am a daughter and it’s my turn in the line.

I didn’t really understand this line until I had a daughter. She was named for my grandmother, but she extended my line into the future. That’s a really earth-shaking realization – a total transformation of reality – and once you’re extended into the future, your link to the past is cemented, too. In our Third Thirds, it all seems so much clearer. That past comes with tradition, history, and ritual. In my pick-and-choose way, I pick the candle ritual.

In my case, the tradition is Judaism. This is what I believe: whatever you are, however you identify yourself, you have to be it wholeheartedly. You have to affirm it, learn about it, be proud of it, espouse it. At the same time, you have to enjoy that everyone else is affirming, espousing, and proud of what they are. If we don’t do that, we all become just white bread.

Ursula K. LeGuin wrote a fascinating book called The Lathe of Heaven. The protagonist has “effective” dreams, meaning they actually alter reality. A psychiatrist tries to steer his dreams to solve world problems, such as racism. But as dreams work, George dreams that everyone is now gray … and his girlfriend no longer exists. Being black was such a powerful part of her identity, she couldn’t exist in a gray world.

A gray world, a white bread world, is a world I don’t want to live in. I want big, vibrant African-Americans; big, vibrant Puerto Ricans; big, vibrant Norwegians (recognizing that might not be their style…), etc. etc. And my contribution to this is as a Jew.

So this is why I light the yahrzeit candle: I am reaffirming my place in the Jewish line of my grandparents, my father, my family, and my daughter. I am honoring them and our tradition, and I am being who I am. That’s all.

One foot in front of the other

I’d hoped that by my Third Third, I would have achieved some Wisdom. I thought Wisdom would be kind of mellow, that I’d feel content and solid and calm.

I spent election day happily welcoming A-->L and M-->Z voters  (A-->Ls beat M-->Zs 656 to 491, as expected). Then I heard the results. So now I’m processing this all, and it’s taking me a long time. Sometimes I cry, sometimes I am angry angry angry. Sometimes I’m vindictive; sometimes I’m passive. None of it feels like Wisdom. It’s an Elisabeth Kübler-Ross process. Bear with me.

Day One, Wednesday
Overpowering grief settled on me, overwhelming futility, despair, and sadness. A lifetime of fighting mental other-ness and I succumbed, for the first time, to not getting out of bed. I stayed there. Even my mother’s death didn’t put me there; the election put me there.

It wasn’t because my candidate lost. My candidates mostly always lose. I live in a “red” state; most people vote differently from how I do. I can handle that.

In fact, it’s precisely because I’m “very blue” that I have been saying all along that people left out of prosperity aren’t stupid. The stupid ones are the 1% that thought they could keep this up forever, that they could keep people scraping by while they lived at the top of the food chain.

But it’s turned out that prosperity may not have really been the issue at all. One Trump supporter told me America needed to return to the time “when men were men,” when women didn’t act like men, when there weren’t so many homosexuals around. One said, “We’ll never go back to Black again.” And the anti-Semitism has been so overt I can pick it up without a “dog whistle.”

I believe in making America great again. If we’re in our Third Third, we share the same decades, but they weren’t the same for all of us. Some of us couldn’t buy homes in certain areas or swim in their pools. We girls couldn’t take shop class and play the sports we might want to. Some of us were discouraged from applying to certain colleges because they didn’t take “our kind.” Some of us couldn’t vote.

That’s not the great America I want to return to. In fact, returning to that America would mean my America was dead. I knew my mother would die; I didn’t know my America would.

Day Two, Thursday
I feel like every single person who voted for Donald Trump is telling me I have no place in America. They’re telling me my daughter has no place here. They’re telling me my gay family and friends, my Muslim students, my Black friends, my Spanish-speaking friends have no place here. In fact, I probably have the wrong friends. Oh, maybe they’ll make an exception for me because they know me, but the world they want to return to has no place for me.

Maybe the Trump voters felt like all the changes in society meant they have no place here. Where could they go to get away from gays, from bossy women, from “Happy Holidays”? From black lives mattering, from people speaking Spanish? From people wanting to limit guns sold to mentally ill people?

But we’re just one country geographically. How are we going to share?

Day Three, Friday
But how can we share a country with people who want us not to exist? Are gay people supposed to vaporize? Non-Christians, too? People who speak other languages?

Let me try an example, a very personal one. Maybe you think America was great because there was prayer in school. But I have a different memory: I spent every morning of my elementary school years being forced to pray to Jesus – not my religion – in public school. On Fridays, when class was released at lunch time for catechism, only the Brown kids remained. Let me tell you how much our teachers liked that. Let me tell you what it was like when I was told to stand up at Christmas concerts because I was different: “Santa will never come to Barbara’s house.”

And I was in privileged America. My parents could buy a house in a white neighborhood, watch it appreciate in value, and create a nest egg for the future. Black families were denied that option.

Ask me if that’s the great America I want to return to.

I’ll tell you what I miss about America, the one I wouldn’t mind returning to. I miss common courtesy. I miss kindness. Now violence, bigotry, and meanness have been unleashed. People are saying things OUT LOUD that are appalling and threatening. Swastikas are being painted on store windows, the KKK is planning a victory parade, our new president bragged about sexual assault. He incited this and condoned this, and people voted for this.

It was here that I’d written that if someone didn’t vote, they couldn’t complain. And now I’ll say that if they voted for Trump, they have to own it. They can’t say, “I didn’t know it would be like this” or “I was just being a good Republican.” The whole campaign functioned on a racist, anti-Semitic basis at its core, and if they didn’t speak against it, they have to own it.

I’ve often wondered how the people who screamed at Black children integrating schools in the South, who were photographed with their hateful signs, felt years later when those photographs re-surfaced. Did they say, “It was different back then” or “I see I was wrong”? Did they own the damage they caused, the fear and terror they put into a young child’s life? And what about the silent people who let them do it?

It was hard to find a Nazi after World War II, and eventually, it may be hard to find a Trump supporter. People living near Auschwitz could claim they didn’t know what was going on, but I will MAKE SURE people know the damage they wreak. I am an avenging angel. I am Rage.

Day Four, Saturday
Garrison Keillor wrote that “Democrats can spend four years raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen….” and I am outraged. How can someone tout privilege like that? How can someone dismiss the rightful concerns of so much of the population? The Democratic Party is part of the problem. They got us into this mess because they protected their inner circle, they catered to the 1%, they didn’t listen! No one in power was listening! People are being left out of prosperity, out of opportunity!

No one is listening!

Yes, I sound like a Trump supporter. Bernie supporters start at the same place, with the people who’ve been left out.

I shared a house once with a young man who told me he wasn’t into the political work I was doing. He said letting more people have “some” meant he would have “less,” whether it was money or power or even access. He was not into sharing if he could hold onto “all.”

Now I’m angry at everyone.

Day Five, Sunday
I see Arrival, the movie, and I step out of my angry present. Wisdom, I think, is always relearning empathy. Do you know my reasons? Do I know yours? I have not stood in your shoes and you have not stood in mine.

I have spent most of my professional life crossing divides, whether labor with management, political positions, social causes. I have taught, lectured, and run entire programs about “seeking first to understand.”

My Third Third is not the time to start demonizing people.

Whew.

As many of my friends have been consoling sobbing daughters over the last few days, my friend Helen told hers it wasn’t like after other elections, it was more like after her cancer diagnosis: “It wasn’t at all hard to decide what to do then – NOT run away and hide … or give up and give in to pessimistic projections of a doomed future. The only viable option for me was to fight as hard as I could and force myself to believe in an eventually positive outcome, despite the awful things I’d have to endure along the way.”

It’s going to be very, very hard if our climate is destroyed for that future; if families are broken up over papers and documentation; if more children grow up afraid. So I will stand with Standing Rock on Tuesday, I will march with a million women in January, and I will continue to teach English to refugees and immigrants. I am a brave Big Mouth – here and elsewhere – but I hope I will be a kind one. I miss kindness.

Life and Death Lessons

Things I’ve Learned in the Last Week, or Growing in My Third Third:

I learned that losing a parent is painful.

Yes, yes, I knew that, but I didn’t KNOW that. It’s like when I first had a baby. Suddenly I felt like I needed to apologize to every friend I knew with children. I’d had no idea it could be so HARD. I didn’t know about the sleep deprivation, the worry, the demands on your time. I didn’t know about the disruption to life-as-you-knew-it. I didn’t know that finding the right childcare was so hard, that you’d be torn emotionally in so many different ways. These were abstract facts to me, not life-wrenching realities.

The same is true with losing a parent. I’d offer condolences, but I didn’t offer CONDOLENCES, if you know what I mean. I didn’t know you’d be shaken to your core, that the shaking would last and last. That anyone could be this sad.

I’m sorry. I didn’t know.

I learned that expressions of sympathy and comfort make a huge difference.

Yes, it was right here in this blog that I made fun of greeting cards: “NO ONE looks at old greeting cards.” But I didn’t know the power of new greeting cards. Returning from my mother’s burial, picking up the held mail at the post office, I was moved by the sympathy cards. I was moved by the cards that came from people relatively distant in my life, from my past, from my synagogue. It made me feel part of a community. They took time out of their lives to comfort me.

I was moved by the phone calls, the visits, the hugs. I was moved by the comments, the emails, the “loves.” I was honored by all the requests to help. It reaffirmed me as a member of the larger community of human beings: we all hurt, we can all comfort.

When she was little, we never let Sophie play with or wear a gift until the thank you note was written. We wanted to teach the necessity of demonstrating gratitude. It didn’t occur to me that I should also teach – and learn – the necessity of showing support.

My sister has said the same thing. In our Third Thirds, we want to be card and note writers.

I learned that rituals exist for a reason. They are in place to help people in difficult times.

When I had a child, I joined the ranks of mothers from the beginning of time. I was a mother in a long line of mothers. When I became bat mitzvah, I affirmed my place in a long line of Jewish women. And now, my mother’s death placed her – and me, as a mourner – in the Jewish tradition.

Prior to burial, my mother’s body was bathed and purified in a ritual called taharah by a group of women known as the Chevra Kadisha, a holy society. My sisters liked that; they thought of how my mother loved having lotion rubbed into her dry skin, how she would have appreciated being bathed. My mother was buried in a plain shroud in a plain pine box. To my mind, it asserts dignity and respect for the deeds of her life, not any material acquisitions. All these things make me feel better.

In the Jewish tradition, there is a seven day mourning period known as sitting shiva. You’re just supposed to sit at home, receive visits, let your grief out. And here, life has intruded. I had too many commitments – my own good deeds in the world, I guess – that I couldn’t break. But I really appreciate the value – the necessity – of shiva.

Susan said to me, “Please honor me with the mitzvah of helping you at this time.” What an exquisite way to offer help. Now I understand where rituals come from.

I learned that preparing with Advance Directives, Health Care Proxies, and The Conversation Project were critical.

Again, that’s one of those abstract facts that became real in the last week. I’d pushed my siblings to get all the paperwork agreed to and signed. Now, a week later, I know my mother could not have died the way she wanted to without the preparation we did. With The Conversation Project starter kit, I knew how my mother wanted to live her final days. With the Advanced Directives, we could ensure that would happen.

It’s all about dignity and respect.

I learned that de-cluttering accomplished BEFORE my mother died was absolutely the best thing.

My mother and we siblings had already cleared out the family home. Truckloads of furniture, memories, and photos were distributed, dealt with, disposed of years ago. My mother was an active player in all this as she launched her own downsizing. In July, her apartment was further condensed. When she died, she was surrounded by only her favorite things. My siblings and I dealt with it all in a few hours.

By de-cluttering early, my mother gave herself the gift of lightening her life. I still remember us asking where she wanted to put the photo albums in her new apartment. “I’ve had them for years,” she said, “It’s time for one of you to take them. I don’t want them filling up my new place.” By getting rid of the weight of her old life, my mother could make room for a new life.

She gave us the gift of that lightness, too. Everyone who has dealt with parental clutter says the same thing: I don’t want my kids to have to deal with all this. I cannot imagine sorting through 90 years of memories and possessions while grieving. Thank you, Mom, for sparing us that.

Mostly, I’ve learned that life is short. Live it well.

Building – and Keeping – Traditions

Oh, I love New Things, but Old Things hold such comfort and warmth. Here in Alaska, far from our original hometowns, we’ve had to create our own traditions: our own Thanksgivings, New Year’s Eves, Passover seders.

Let me tell you how much I love Passover! In telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, we tell a story of slavery and freedom, injustice and social conscience. We do this while sharing a meal and enjoying each other’s company. It’s a thousands-years old tradition, but for us, now in our Third Thirds, our version is almost thirty years old, too.

We tend to alternate Thanksgiving with Bob and Connie so this year, Tim and I got the seder. This means that I got to pick the haggadah, the book we use to proceed through the rituals, engage our kids, and give meaning to the holiday.

I pull out my huge collection of haggadot and that’s where I see the years of accumulated Passovers. My very first: a faded, yellowed one on newsprint, the one we used back on Long Island, the free one from Chase and Sanborn Coffees. Mine has a post-it note on it, “Love, Mom.”

Then I have the college haggadot from Liberation Seders. Each year, we’d focus on another population that needed both freedom and our attention; One year, gays and lesbians, another year Ethiopian Jews. I had lots of them so they were the ones we first used in Alaska. This year, my new additions focused on refugees.

I remember that first seder in Alaska. Gathered together were maybe a dozen of us who’d all grown up with our own family’s Passover. We all thought that’s how seders had to be done, and then we encountered … deviation. “No, you’re not allowed to eat until we finish.” “My family always let us eat.” Sacrilege!

Mark reminded us about the time he’d been assigned matzoh ball soup. He’d had no idea what he was doing so he just got some matzoh and kind of broke them up and kind of stuck them in canned chicken broth and kind of made a mess of the whole thing. This year, he brought Brussels sprouts. Marla did the soup.

There are years of tradition in the charoset, the mixture of apples, walnuts, wine, honey, and cinnamon. One year someone introduced Sephardic charoset with dried fruit, different spices. One year, a newbie didn’t grate the apples or chop the nuts: it was like a chunky salad, not like the mortar it’s supposed to represent. And then, because one of the kids had a nut allergy, we offered a non-nut version.

Kids changed the Passovers over the years. Kids meant the introduction of the shorter haggadot, the ones with pretty graphics, the ones that didn’t take hours.

As we sat at this year’s seder, with Rebekah the youngest and so the one who had to ask the Four Questions, we looked around. Yes, there had been a time when Tim was the youngest. Max and Sophie used to do it together, and now Max is back at the table as an adult.

There was the year Sophie and I bought little toys of the Ten Plagues: rubbery frogs, little cows, plastic bugs. Somehow, when tossed out, they stuck to the ceiling. Throughout the seder, frogs would rain down on us. It was very profound. For months afterwards, I’d find plagues in the potted plants. I hope Sophie found a seder this year, that she’s creating her own traditions.

This is what I know to be true: every year, Connie will want to make the special Passover dessert; Celia will make gefilte fish from Alaska fish (halibut or salmon). Rebekah will usually slice all the eggs with my special egg slicer. Someone will grate fresh horseradish root, and I will repeat the story of the time I grated it, sniffed it in the food processor, and passed out on the kitchen floor. Karen will remember the time, after dinner, when her dog grabbed the leftover turkey plate and ate it all. Poor _____, not a Passover goes by without someone remembering the time as a baby he projectile vomited grape juice all over the single guy at the table. Things change, and things remain the same.

This is what tradition is: the memories that hold us together.

More than the sound of music

When I wrote yesterday about all that culture in New York City, you might have noticed a glaring absence: what, no music? Well, barely any: there were two Broadway musicals, but that was just incidental. I don’t seek out music. Mostly, I actively avoid it.

I don’t know if it’s being sort of tone deaf or the ulcer I got at age 12 from piano lessons. The day I quit piano lessons – and I was pretty far along – was the last time I touched a piano.

Oh, I love the Rolling Stones and a good dance beat. I like the early Bob Dylan and Joe Cocker and Laura Nyro; and lately, I’ve been experimenting with cello performances and I enjoy them. When Sophie played the bass, I loved the deep, enveloping sound. I’m thinking of taking bass lessons. So I’m not a music-hater, more like music-reluctant.

When Grant Cochran of the Anchorage Concert Chorus asked if I’d take the part of the narrator in this week’s (tomorrow and Sunday) performances of Verdi’s Defiant Requiem, so many alarm bells went off for me: music! Classical music! Religious classical music! Catholic religious classical music! And then, because these performances highlight the Requiem in the Terezín (Theresienstadt) concentration camp, more alarm bells: not another Holocaust-Jewish-victimhood story again! Jews having to perform for Nazis like little puppets.

Everything said No! … so I said yes. But I was worried that with two performances AND two rehearsals it would be a struggle not to fall asleep in front of an audience.

Then my world shifted.

Wednesday night was the first rehearsal, and I am STUNNED. No, let me put it more accurately: I have FELT music, and it is TREMENDOUS!

Even the first view of the stage can knock you off your feet: 200 singers and 80 musicians! It’s the Anchorage Concert Chorus and UAA Singers, 13 music professors, Anchorage Concert Chorus orchestra and UAA Sinfonia. They’re all there!

I sit with six basses, ten cellos. There are four bassoons. Way over the sea of violins are giant drums, more trumpets. And when the singers sing, it’s no anemic, barely-heard-above-the-music singing – it’s a thunder of singing.

Murry Sidlin, the conductor who brings the Defiant Requiem around the world, clarified things. The inmates of Terezín sang the Requiem – from one copy of the score, committing it to memory – for themselves, not for the Nazis. They were nobody’s puppets. Long after they’d labored all day, mostly starving, mostly sick, they sang. They sang for an audience of mostly starving, mostly sick, mostly beaten-up fellow inmates. When one survivor says this singing gave her “pure joy” – in a concentration camp – I started to understand. This music was their creativity, their affirmation, their expression of personhood in a place that sought to deny it. It kept them alive.

When they were forced to do it for the Nazis – just once – they sang it to their faces. They sang out their courage, their being human, their having dignity and character and music. The Defiant Requiem is a story of defiance, not victimhood. It’s a story of standing up in refusal to be beaten down.

Now I get it. Music-reluctant me gets it. When the trumpets do call-and-response, when sweet sounds come from some place I can’t locate, when the voices rise up with spirit and defiance; I FEEL it. When all those basses rumble, my insides rumble. When the whole chorus erupts in song together, something inside me boils over. My whole self gasps and stands up.

Is it the music or the history? I don’t know; I’m a music novice. But I suspect they can’t be separated. I don’t know the words; all I hear is boldness and will, just like the Terezín inmates heard. Do the musicians and singers inject the spirit? Did Verdi? Do we the listeners?

Or is it just the sound of the big life force of being human?

The Apology Test

This is that complicated post I was struggling with. Here’s a little pre-blog survey: When you think of things that require proper apologies, do you think of apologies you need to receive from others or apologies you need to give to others?

    __    Someone owes me an apology for something they did
    __    I owe someone an apology for something I did

By the time I reached my Third Third, I’d heard these two sayings many times:

1.  First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me.
2.  Hate does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to the object on which it is poured.

So while they’re not complete opposites, they do reflect differences in how to deal with transgressions. Other people’s against us. Do we stay on guard and protect ourselves from people who take advantage, are cruel, or are inconsiderate? (#1) Or does holding onto our feelings (like distrust, resentment, even hate) damage us? (#2) When do the healthy boundaries we set for ourselves become grudges?

So here I am with a discussion group on the subject of Forgiveness and Repentance. In Judaism (the framework for our discussion), there’s no absolution that comes from some designated authority. God isn’t “in charge” of forgiving sins against other people. Only the parties concerned can right the wrongs between them. I like that, but it means the question of whether or not to forgive sits right in our court.

The philosophers came up with all sorts of lists as they closely examined the issue. Repentance is when you’re sorry and you want to make it better. For repentance to count, five things must be present: recognition of the act as bad, remorse, not doing it any more, restitution, and confession. And this is the biggie: none of it counts unless you don’t do it anymore.

So let’s say someone does all five things, is the other person required to forgive? Philosophers agree that repentance must be sincere, initiated by the bad guy, and involve some element of personal transformation. There is no easy forgiveness; you have to earn it and deserve it.

So Judaism is mostly big on repentance, stopping doing bad things. Not so big on forgiveness because the big deal is stopping doing bad things. The idea is that if you forgive too easily, you’re allowing evil to continue. But if you forgive too slowly, when do you become cruel?

So there I was, thinking about all the rotten things people have done and mentally cataloging which of the five things they missed in their inadequate – or even absent – apologies. Concluding, of course, that they did not earn or deserve forgiveness. So my big decision was whether to keep my distance from them (#1) or move on (#2). That was my big issue.

Only afterwards did a light bulb go off and I re-read the bit that said “…mostly big on repentance … because the big deal is stopping doing bad things.” Click! I looked in the mirror and had to ask if I was doing my five things, had I repaired things I might have broken and was I not breaking them anymore?

Oh, no, here I am again at the contest between Better Barbara and Shitty Barbara (who made their original appearance here). Shitty Barbara focuses more on the rotten things other people do rather than her own rotten stuff, so my first concern had been Forgiveness. Like, who’s entitled to it? Not you! But now it’s, What counts as a Bad Thing? To me or to you? Do I even notice my Bad Things as easily as I notice other people’s? Will I fix them?

By the time we’ve reached our Third Thirds, we’ve experienced many wrongs, both as the good guy, the bad guy, and the bystander. I keep hoping I’ll acquire some sort of Wisdom-with-a-capital-W, but really it’s always the same: Does the Better Barbara win?

"Turning" to the Better Barbara

Sometimes I wonder if religion will get more important in my Third Third. To me, religion is that opportunity to contemplate the “still, small voice” within me. Maybe that’s a God-voice, who knows? What is essential is listening to it, thinking about it, trying to consistently act on it, having conversations about it, wondering about it, not listening to it and messing up, recommitting to it. All that can come from a novel or play same as it comes from a prayer book or sermon.

But there are certain times when the sound of the “still, small voice” is more focused and intense, and Yom Kippur will always be that kind of day for me. It’s not so much that I’m fasting; it’s that I’m sitting in a synagogue for a whole day reading a book that says the same things over and over with a synagogue full of people saying the same things over and over. You say things so many times you can’t avoid hearing them.

All day during Yom Kippur, we hear that we can “turn,” become better people any time. So I sit there going over what a shit I can be, and I vow to be kinder, nicer, more understanding. Less critical, unyielding, and stingy. And then I beat myself up because I’ve said that in previous years and what good did it do? (Think New Year’s Resolutions…)

So we get to the part about needing “courage to do and to become, not only to look on with helpless yearning as though we had no strength.” And then I beat myself up not only for being a shit, but for lacking courage and being a helpless whiner.

Yom Kippur – with all my thoughts of all my inadequacies – is not a bummer day. It’s actually exalting and awesome to contemplate improvement, to have a vision of a Better Barbara. To sit in a roomful of people all thinking of their Better Selves and making plans to bring them to life, to contribute to a Better World. Eventually, I get an idea for something specific I can do, and Better Barbara gets moving. Better Barbara is pretty good at that, but unfortunately, Shitty Barbara usually follows her along.

Once, though, I had some success, and I’m trying to figure out how to duplicate it. I used to be a shrieker. Shriekers shriek things like, “I told you I was buying milk!” or “I told you I would be ready to be picked up at 5!” Shriekers even shriek things like “Who put the bath sponge in the floor-washing bucket?!” Shriekers think no one is listening to them. Then, one day, I heard a friend shriek at her family. I saw the reaction on their faces, I heard her voice – really heard it, for all its screechy ghastliness – and I stopped shrieking. Wham. Gone. Just like that.

No, not “just like that.” It took years of Yom Kippurs. Maybe the message just finally got through. Now, what about the rest of the list?