Sometimes the name they give you is all wrong. My paternal grandmother’s name was Nava, which, in Hebrew, translates to “beautiful.” In the biblical Song of Songs, it says, “Thou art beautiful [nava], O my love, as Tirzah, beautiful [nava] as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners.” By the time I [...]
Things were so very, very different. I was so much more than three years and thirteen days younger. I was a decade younger, perhaps two, neck-deep in a world of money, privilege, international travel and blissful ignorance of so many things. My older brother was invincible, good at everything, impeccable in every way. He was [...]
My husband’s making me nuts. Don’t get me wrong. I’m making him nuts, too. But since I’m the one writing this essay, I get to do the talking. And I say I want him to disappear. Not forever, just for a week or so. Ten days, maybe. Two weeks? See, every winter since before Johnny and I [...]
As I have grown older I have come to learn compassion is something to mature into and is not readily acquired. Compassion is cultivated like the pearl that comes from an oyster. The pearl is refined in the darken womb of the oyster over time, as compassion is empathy cultivated through the exercise of lived [...]
I held my grandfather’s hand, and looked into his eyes, filled as they were with pain and suffering. How many times had the doctors said, “He’s going to die,” and yet he’d lived another year, another five? Yet this time, I could not bring myself to believe that they were wrong. He laid his head [...]
