instant farbrengen

I passed a classro0m today and overheard the following comment: "The State requires teachers to be licensed, but we don't need licensing to be a parent!"

The comment was made by the teacher, a coach, who was training a group of adults in sports coaching.

I don't know if he meant to ridicule the idea, support the idea or just get the group to laugh.

As I continued down the hall, a line that I heard from a Living Torah video, played in my mind, "You have to educate her from when she is little, that her purpose is to make a Jewish Home".

We don't need to be licensed, because we are already qualified.

G-d gives us children because he believes that we can raise them.

We, who follow in the path G-d created for us, educate our children to be parents.

If we don't, we're betraying G-d's trust.

If we do, we raise licensed parents.

The drawers are empty. As are the closets. The piles on the shelves are growing shorter and shorter. Shwekey, Lipa and Ohad take turns singing in the background. The blue light on the police tower flashes through the window consistently.

Packing again. Another goodbye.

It’s been a long year of goodbyes.

During the day, when the sun shines, in those rare moments when I face forward, I imagine I’m no different from those around me.

Even at night, with the door closed and the music playing, I believe that I am okay.

But then, it’s time to say goodbye again. And I know that nothing is the same. They are moving forward, always forward. Sometimes, I stand at the side of the tracks, waving as they pass me by. Tonight I am on another train, going the opposite direction.

Each time, I start all over. Goodbye to my man, goodbye to my home, goodbye to my innocence, goodbye to my trust, goodbye to another piece of myself.

Suddenly the darker spots fade, and I yearn for what could have been.

Goodbye to Crown St., Goodbye to all the family parties I hated, goodbye to washing the floor, goodbye to Prospect Park, the subway, the library. Goodbye to the streets of Crown Heights, where the houses stand like soldiers saluting an unseen general. Goodbye to all the times I walked on Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, Crown, a stranger in my own home.

When I leave tomorrow, I will leave behind all the missed opportunities, all the many days I could have smiled and chose instead to grumble.

Have I learned anything?

Kindness.
Discipline.
Balance.
Proactivity.
Humility.
Communication.

Where do we start?

A breath of air on my face and I know it is night time.
The crickets sing incessently, and their song saddens me.
I wonder how long they will sing the same song.
The table is strewn with the leftovers from Shabbos dinner,
It groans quietly but there is no one to hear.
Save I.
I scan through the book in my hand and a tremor of warmth breezes past me.
I gaze hungrily at the letters, as though they were beloved friends.
They look at me from the past, when the world was a beautiful place.
I can hear them begging me to realize that they are not relics.
They tug at my sleeves, at my skirt, my hair.
But my heart remains cold.
I am afraid to betray the reality i know; afraid to enter this world of old men.
I am afraid to find that I am not who I think I am.
I am even more afraid to close the book.
The words engulf me and I allow myself to melt in their embrace.
The wind knocks on the door, rousing me from my peace.
Reality won't allow me to forget it, but niether will reality.
The Rebbe teaches that there is no need to choose between the two, only to fuse them.
And of that, I am most afraid.

Darkness

It's the dark before the light. The quiet before the storm.
Life before the moment of death.

Conflict. The deepest conflict can always get deeper.

What if you are the conflict?

A tied man cannot free himself.

A conflicted man cannot release himself.

Sometimes it is excessive to pray to G-d for peace, rather pray for the prison warden.

just checking