Goodness is frightening...

Dear 2005,


You've got me a little scared. You see, you've been my best year ever, my most wonderful, exciting, change-making, stimulating, challenging year to date. Because of you I have a baby! Because of you I have a book of essays forthcoming, and a chapbook of poems, and a Pushcart nomination, and poems in the Iowa Review, and a cat-still-in-the-bag.


Not to mention countless yummy lunches and sound sleeps, a life with my super husband, the best friends (new and old), a good relationship with my family, a new city (and the stamina to adjust to it), unemployment, a little brick house, podcasting gigs, trips to New York and Iowa, etc. etc. etc.


So you can imagine that I'm scared to leave you, 2005. What will 2006 be like? What if Half/Life bombs? What if Mose gets a fever? What if the house burns down or I get really sick or the cat never comes out of the bag or I have to get a crappy job as a janitor in a slaughterhouse or nothing fun ever happens again?


Hold my hand, 2005. Help me get over you? Let me down easy?


And no matter what, I'll always love you.


xoLaurel


*****



Dear 2006,


I'm not sure that I have many resolutions for you, so I'm wondering if you can let me reserve my resolutions until we get a little further along. You see, I might need them later.


You've got a hard act to follow, what with 2005 being the best year ever, but I don't want you to think I don't love you, becasue I do. I'm excited to meet you, thrilled to dream about our adventures together. Together we'll go on book tour, with Mose in the back seat of our car and country music on the radio. Together we'll see Mose walk and talk. Together we'll go to AWP and turn 32 and eat yummy foods and make up for all those bottles of wine undrunk in 2005. Together we'll bake cookies and you'll help me learn to be a housewife. Together we'll start writing something new...


I only ask that you help me find the strength to tackle motherhood, and be patient when I screw up. Which I will. And if we could go to the gym a little more often, and keep the house a little cleaner, and do a slightly better job of saving money, that'd be cool too.


Love, and the thrill of the hunt!


Your new friend,

Laurel

Announcing my new SITE!!!

Announcing the newest site from JewishyIrishy Industries, DIVREI!!!


DIVREI is a site for interfaith thinkers, a Torah site, where I'll be posting a dvar torah (sermon on the weekly Torah portion) each week. With a reading, an understanding of the bible which is of particular interest to those from interfaith homes, or those interested in the shaping of interfaith homes, or those in interfaith marriages... or anyone who just likes me and wants to know what I think.


Culling the bible for positive (or at least interesting) ways of thinking about intermarriage.


Check it out, once a week!!!!

I'm still alive...

But most of the time, I'm asleep.


Happy Hannukah to you all, and Happy Christmas too. We're having a quiet year, at home with a baby who meeps and a cat who eats ribbons, and a dog who loves everyone There is no money for presents, but I will make pecan pancakes for breakfast and we will drink a toast. There's no need for anything more than we've been given.


We will have Chinese food for both holidays, as everything collides this year. All at once. Fried. Egg rolls. General Tsao's. Chinese food and egg nog. As befits this most JewishyIrishy of homes in this most accomodating of calendar years. We will sing some songs and light some candles and think about miracles.


PS: GIFT is not a verb, goddammit!

A website for Half/Life...

Over at Soft Skull!


Blog will follow at some point, I'm sure... since I'm a girl who cannot resist blogging!

Half/Life in the Times!!!

Katharine Weber's fabulous essay for my anthology Half/Life is in this weeks New York Times. Go and read it!!!


I can't say I'm not disappointed that they cut her bio down and left out our plug, but I figure... if it's good enough for the Times, it'll be good enough for other folks too. So I think this bodes well for reviews and press ops, as well as the general chances for "people liking the book". Which is, after all, more important.


Not out until April, but since this essay was seasonal, it made sense to run it now, rather than hunting for a magazine to print a Yiddish Christmas story in April...

Mose Central...

If you happen to be the kind of person who likes to see kids doing funny dumb kid-things, sucking their fingers, and spitting up mashed yams...


You might want to stop by MOSE CENTRAL, a site registered for me by my rocking friend Jeff Skinner!!!


There, in coming weeks, you'll get to experience such events as "Mose puts his finger up his nose" and "Mose makes a funny face while farting."


Delights abound... like the one above, brought to you by "Mose takes his first bath".

Three things...

Thing one:


If you are the anonymous comment-leaver who thinks I am a "faggot" and wants me to "die"... you should know that when you leave comments on old posts, I don't know which post you're referring to. I get an email with your little messages, but have no way of knowing why you're saying such things, since the posts are old and archived... If you truly want to dialogue about my "faggot" status and my mortality, you'll need to back-channel me, or comment on a more recent post!


Thing two:


I have a house on Po-Blog Avenue. Do you?





Thing three:


Mose is still the best thing ever. I love him.

Behind schedule...

CDYoung, ArtHeart, and Postcards have been remembering. I like (re)meme(ring).


Ten years ago:


I'm living in Israel, in the drafty dorms at the University of Haifa, after a few months at a Kibbutz in the Golan Heights. My closest friends are a Staten Island gal named Erica, my dread-locked suite mate, Nikki, and a non-Jewish student from Holland, Karin. We are a motley crew and we spend hours and hours playing Spades, Spite and Malice, cooking odd dishes with what we find cheap at the market, and drinking Maccabee Beer. The winter season is startling to me, and I can't get over the absence of Xmas everywhichway I turn. So I'm planning a trip to Bethlehem for the 25th... where I will get peed on by a drunk dancing man in Manger Square and feel what it is that I miss... what I want to feel, a little more out of place.


Five years ago:


Iowa. I've finished the MFA at the Workshop but am still hanging around, waiting tables at the Hamburg Inn #2 and trying to figure out what comes next. My love life is a mess, as my last boyfriend has moved away... and then come back to "work it out" with me, jealous since I've moved on and started a new relationship. I am doing a terrible job of moving on, or moving backwards, and have managed to dangle myself halfway between men, lives, worlds. I am an overeducated waitress, as much as I am a completely unpublished writer. I cannot decide who to be, and instead I get drunk. All the time. I lose weight. I line dance. I screw with the heads of those I love most dear and spiral into a pretty massive depression. I do not like myself, but everyone says I look great.


One year ago:


Atlanta. I've been in town a few months and I'm liking the change, but not so much my job, which takes all my time... and I'm homesick too. I wonder a lot if this move was a mistake, even though I recognize that we needed to move. I think about Nashville, Baltimore, New York. And I'm getting ready to leave for a week in Florida with my in-laws, excited about the water. I'm not really writing. Not at all. I'm waiting for things to fall into place. Hoping that everyone is right, that it "just takes time."


Yesterday:


I'm printing out the AWP job list, feeding my baby, grocery shopping, practicing guitar quietly, shopping for snap-button flannel shirts at Old Navy, so that I can nurse with a minimum of effort and delay. I'm insanely happy. I'm proofing the final edits to the chapbook. I'm finishing thank you cards. Marvin Bell has sent me a little lamb that plays "Mary had a little lamb." An old friend has sent me a onesie that proclaims "I Can't Read." My sister in law has sent a bib that says, "Guns N Roses/ Appetite for Destruction." My house is clean and I have bought the stuff to make oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookies. Lucky girl am I. All I ever wanted. It is probably time to make a will. If I die, I leave everything to you.

Faith and fasting...

My friend Frida should arrive today in Guantanamo. She, and a group of other Catholic activists, have marched there from Santiago. Marched!


The goal? Simply to meet with the detainees, bear witness...


You know... TRUTH TO POWER... WWJD... brother's keepers and so on...


If they are not permitted to meet with the detainees, they plan a fast, a hunger strike. Yes, a fucking HUNGER STRIKE!


So put down that McGriddle and blog them please, donate if you can... THIS is the definition of conviction... enough to wake me from my milky baby-bed. Support Frida and the other marchers. Please?


Website HERE!


FRIDA blogs HERE!

Beginning of the end...

Some of you have emailed to ask for pictures of the new family... My hesitation to do so thus far hinges on my fear that I'll do so, and begin to slip, so that this site becomes "Mose Central".


But hey, what's a mom to do?


So here are a few pics from the bris. Just me, my mom (henceforth known as Grandma), my dad (henceforth known as Boppy), my step-dad (henceforth known as Grandpa Steve), Chris, Mose, and Susan...

Pushcart before horse...

A nomination! For me!


I say this not to brag, but to reassure myself, place this moment in time, and remind myself that (while all I want to do at this moment is snuggle Mose) I am absolutely still a writer. And a little time off won't change that? Am I right?


In other news, all out-of-towners are gone for a few weeks. Husband is at work. It's just me and the baby, writing thank you notes, resting (at long last) my stitched body and my tired self. Fridge full of leftover nova and rugelach. Clean house. Watching Mad About You reruns, with big plans to watch The Cosby Show later.


And for at least a little while, that's who I am. And it's sweet.


But for later? I've got some big plans coming down the turnpike. And a cat still in the bag.

Brit, Bris, Berit Mila...

First, I want to thank you all for your very sweet words and thoughts. Mose thanks you too!


Second I want to say that I'm still in a weird haze of hormonal crying jags, moments of bliss, and sleeplessness... and will be posting for real again soon. Soon, but not yet. Because for now it's enough to just hold my baby, eat, drink, rest whenever possible, and try to mend.


Third, I want to mention that today, Mose entered into the covenant G-d made with Abraham. So he's officially an MOT, following a harrowing half-hour in my living room.


I cried. Mose cried, and everyone else watched. My father was the Sandek and Chris' dad fed my poor boy wine to calm him. It was horrific and important and ancient... nearly an out-of-body moment. I'm very very very glad we did it here in our home, with all the grandparents, and our wonderful friends gathered. Even if it was scary. I felt very lucky to be surrounded by such supportive people.


But the bris brought up an interesting issue, since Jews "name" their sons on the 8th day. And so I was asked to speak, at the end of the ceremony, about why we named our son Mose Benjamin, (or Moshe Binyomin in Hebrew).


And I didn't want to lie, fake like we thought this out in advance, or that the name was chosen for heavy meaning... but the truth was that "Mose" came from a pretty random assortment of influences, including a cat I knew as a child, a Greg Brown song, and a poster I saw on a wall at a blues jam here in Atlanta.


We picked "Mose" because... we liked it. Because it felt right. But that didn't seem like quite enough to say at the bris, as a reason for the all-important selection of a name.


And then it struck me that... the randomness of the selection didn't mean that "Mose" doesn't also have a religious meaning.


Sometimes meanings are hidden at first, but they're almost always there...


Like a treasure hunt... and you just have to find it. So I went looking for the meaning... started to read and think about Moses, about why "else" I might have chosen such a name... and about what I'd like for my sweet son to carry with him from the story of Moses. Did I want him to be a leader? I didn't think so, not really... Did I want him to split seas, command tribes, conquer lands? Not quite...


But I did think of something, something I truly wanted (and want) for my son... and what I arrived at made me happy:


Moses was a Jewish man whose life was filled to brimming with foreign influences. Born a Jew, raised in an Egyptian household... he was as inferfathful as they come. After he killed the taskmaster he fled to Midian where he married and raised interfaithful sons with a non-Jewish woman. Only then, with an Egyptian name, a Midianite wife, and a passle of half-breeds, did he hook back up with his tribe and rally them to action, become the "greatest Jewish prophet of all time" and whatnot.


For Moses, a complicated identity was not a stumbling block. Rather, it was something he pushed through, or learned from... enough so that he became a leader and prophet... and from his diverse experiences he drew strength enough to lead his people out into the dessert (which he might not have been able to do if he'd been a good little Jewish boy through and through), and into the promised land. The complexities of his life became an asset. A gift. Moses was the opposite of a ghetto Jew (and I mean ghetto in all senses of the word... gilded cages and all).


I wish no less for my Mose. I pray that his life, complicated already, will become even more complicated. I want for him to experience everything he can, draw on all of it. I hope that his name will become a marker for how he should embrace the complicated, frightening, foreign, elements in life. Of how he should approach the world, fearless.


I want Mose to find the most confusing things he can find, seek out the anomalies of this world, the details of life that challenge him... and then incorporate them into who he is... allow the difficulty to test him, and then feed his secure sense of identity... strengthen him so that he will feel assured, confident, proud of who he is, was born, and chooses to become.


As a Jew, a man, a ballerina, a quarterback... whatever... So long as it's honest. So long as it's real. So long as he can stand up tall, know himself, and live a proud life.


And if he happens to rescue a nation from oppression, that's cool too!