A Week to... Remember?
Carbon monoxide, vile equivalence, and "Hash yeri m'anhoon, ma jinne m'ayyeyaan?!"
I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch all week. I’ve been working an exhausting assignment, fighting the endlessly reincarnating cold, and I spent two evenings after work helping a friend who first got carbon monoxide poisoning from a series of illegal things happening in her apartment building, then discovered a gas leak in her new building! I helped her deal with the gas company and landlord on that. The gas company was wonderful and helpful, as was the landlord, but my friend was totally freaked out, and is still very sick from the original poisoning. As the gas company says, “If you smell us, tell us.” If you think you smell gas, call the gas company. That stuff can make you blow up, y’all.
Many of us have spent the week in mourning for our little redheaded lions and their mother, following every detail of the funeral, Yarden’s eulogy, and Israeli and other reactions. Meanwhile, our non-Jewish friends for the most part seemed to have no idea what we were on about and not care. As usual.
Some of my “As a Jew” former friends took to social media to rant about how “As a Jew,” they found it just as horrible that Palestinian children were killed in war (where as we know Hamas uses them as human shields and builds tunnels with entrances in children’s bedrooms) as babies taken hostage and strangled with bare hands and then their bodies mutilated to make it look like an Israeli airstrike. Melanie Phillips put it best: A Vile Equivalence, but many of my friends and yours wrote eloquently on the topic.
As we have mourned together, felt alone in the world except for each other, and written back and forth this week, you and our other friends on here and other places have been my daily inspiration to keep going. As Carly Rae Jepsen said, “Before you came into my life I missed you so bad!”
I’ll write more interesting things later, but for now, Shabbat Shalom, worldwide family.
And in case you’re wondering what the third part of the subtitle means, no, it is not a confused attempt on my part to write Hebrew! It’s what Daenerys asks the Dothraki from atop her dragon, Drogon.
“Are you with me, now and always?
To which the answer is an emphatic YES, in Dothraki.
I’m with you now, and always. And when my dragons finally hatch, we can fix some things up.