Sun spots

Every so often, I happen upon Clara sitting in the kitchen in a pool of sunlight that has sneaked through the clouds, between the tall buildings, and into our window.  My first thought is always "Why is she sitting in the middle of the kitchen?" but I quickly notice the brightly lit rectangle in which she has placed herself and I dismiss my initially absurd question.

At home, my dog used to do the same thing around the house.  You could often find her curled up in splashes of warm afternoon sun, oblivious to the world.  I know that a lot of animals do this, and it makes sense.  If the sun is shining, go sit in it!  But sometimes I'm envious of the way Clara can just wander around until she finds the warmest part of the floor, hunker down, and enjoy it for as long as it lasts.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do that just as easily?

Well, after much searching and waiting, I think I have finally found my sun spot.

My last job as a music teacher ended in June and until last week I was unemployed.  Originally I had thought surely I would have a job by the beginning of the school year in September.  Throughout the spring and summer I applied for a multitude of teaching positions, hoping desperately that I might be able to use my music education degree to its full extent here in New York.  But the pickings were slim and, more frustrating than that, agonizingly slow to materialize.  At the very end of August I was finally offered a part time after school position.  Minimal hours, decent pay, challenging school environment, but teaching music nonetheless.  I knew I still needed something in addition to the 8.15 hours I would be paid there, but I was at least happy to have something.

A few days later, I got a call for a general music position that I had been pursuing for months.  I was ecstatic to finally have clinched that one, but I'd still have to wait nearly a month to do a demonstration lesson for the principal and the program directors.  In the meantime, I calculated that I would have less than 17 hours a week of classroom teaching, and I knew I'd need a little bit more.  Not even because of the money, but just to keep myself occupied.

So I sat around and twiddled my thumbs for a few weeks, waiting for one program to start and for the date of the demo lesson to arrive.  I was happy I'd have some work, but I was frustrated by both the lack of positions in my field (especially since I really wanted to teach in a string program) and the astonishingly slow pace with which everything was moving forward.  While I was sitting around, students had already started school and I wondered "Why aren't these music programs starting, too?"  Apparently this is one of those New York things.

Then, a week before my demonstration lesson, I got a call about a school that needed a string teacher twice a week for 10 hours total.  Oh my goodness, yes! I thought.  This is what I want!  And I could probably do this in addition to the other two programs, so long as we could organize the schedule correctly.  I immediately called for an interview, we set one up for the following Monday, and it went very well.  It looked like I was well on my way to having three jobs at three different schools, but doing what I love.  Hard work, to be sure, but I was excited nonetheless.

Two days later was the demonstration lesson.  It went swimmingly.  Afterward I was shooed away so the principal and the program coordinators could talk behind my back, and later that day I got an email from one of the coordinators.

"The principal wants you to teach 16 classes."

Twice what we had first discussed.

Crap.

Somehow in the span of a week, I went from worrying that I wouldn't have enough hours to being offered an overabundance of classes to teach.  I may have been pushing it thinking I could teach at three schools every week - an after school program for around 9 hours, 8 classes at one school during the day twice a week, and 10 classes at another twice a week - but add another 8 classes to that and I knew it was past my limit.  Thankfully, I had a few days of Jewish Holidays to think about it before any decisions had to be made.

Throughout the holidays on Thursday and Friday, plus Shabbat, I didn't know what to do.  And what's more, I felt frustrated.  Why was I told something at the last minute that would force me to decline something else that I so desperately wanted to do?  Why was this all happening at the same time?  Why wasn't it easier?!

But when I told people about my situation, many of them noted the overwhelmingly positive aspect of my circumstances.  Unlike a month prior, I had plenty to choose from!  I had options, and the people offering them to me really wanted me to work for them!  So shouldn't I be happy?

Well, today I talked with one of the program coordinators for the school that wanted 16 classes a week.  We spoke at length about the situation and he sympathized with my circumstances.  He knew what I wanted, he knows where my educational passions lie, and we figured it out.  By the time I made the decision to decline the string teaching position, I was confident I was making the right choice.

Once I made the decision, I immediately felt better.  I felt as if I had chosen the best option, not only for me but for the adults and students involved.  I'm confident that in the next few years I'll get other opportunities to teach strings, and I'm incredibly happy to be working for this particular organization for my first year in New York.  It took a while, but I think things finally settled in the way it's supposed to be.  I found my own little sunspot, and I'm going to enjoy it as long as I can.

Getting lost at the Da Capo

Rosh Hashanah (lit. "Head of the Year") has become one of my favorite holidays in the Jewish calendar.  It even beats out Hanukkah which, although fun, doesn't have quite the spiritual breadth and depth of Rosh Hashanah.  The Jewish New Year is celebrated as a two-day holiday which manages to encompass a wide variety of Jewish values: family, community, joy, prayer, and thanksgiving, as well as introspection, repentance, forgiveness, and humility.  And food.  Lots of food.  What kind of Jewish holiday would it be without food?

I've always enjoyed the spirit of the holiday and the symbols that are so ingrained in its celebration.  We eat apples dipped in honey to remind us that we should have a sweet new year, and we pour honey on our challah instead of dipping it in salt, for now is not a time for sadness.  The challah itself is shaped differently: Instead of being braided into a loaf, we make it into a round braid or spiral to emphasize the idea of continuity from one year to the next.  Traditionally we eat a new fruit on the holiday, and many people choose the pomegranate for this custom as it is rumored to have 613 seeds - equal to the number of commandments in the Torah.

And those are just the symbols at the dinner table!

Every year, I have celebrated Rosh Hashanah at home with my parents, my siblings, and whomever my mom invited to join us for either of the two festive meals.  Even as a college student, I always went home for the New Year.  There were some years where I debated, thinking maybe I would stay on campus instead of schlepping home, but ultimately I could never resist the comfort of spending this particular holiday with my family.  No matter where my roots were spreading, I always felt an unconscious desire, a need, to start the year at the beginning -- my beginning.

This year everything has turned topsy-turvy and my new home is some 800+ miles away, so I was faced with the opportunity to start a completely new beginning.  Yet another Da Capo moment!  But I realized about five hours too late that I wasn't prepared to "make Rosh Hashanah;" to account for the food, the timing, the traditional elements that always seemed to appear before me - like magic! - at home.  (Thanks, Mom!)  Realistically, I don't think there is any way I could have recreated any of my life's intimate experiences with this particular holiday even if I had tried.  For starters, Tomm is working a month of nights without any time off for the holidays, so big, festive meals in the evening were out of the question.  We did, however, do our best to make Wednesday night's dinner something worthy of the New Year, even if the holiday wasn't beginning until three hours later.  Pasta Primavera may not exactly be standard fare for such a meal, and unfortunately I completely forgot about the traditional pomegranate, but we blessed the grape juice, the round-ish challah, and the apples with honey, so it still counts, right?

After he left for work I went to shul for Maariv, the evening service.  I don't believe I have ever before attended the evening service before Rosh Hashanah.  Usually I was at home helping my mom prepare for guests.  I'm glad I went, though, because the small choir that supported the chazzan lent a great deal to my experience.  (For an orthodox synagogue to have anything resembling a choir is virtually unheard of to my knowledge.)  Yet despite the music - so grand and beautiful to behold and in stark contrast to my typical shul experience - it could not make up for what was lacking.  I didn't dwell on it, but in the back of my mind a thought, not fully-formed and more closely resembling a feeling, nagged at me.

The next two days I spent a great deal of time at the synagogue.  The services were about three hours longer than I would've anticipated, and the choir only sang for part of it.  But I was there, I recited the prayers, I heard the sounds of the shofar, and I sang along where I could.  Did I commune with G-d?  Not so sure.  Even less uncertain is the answer to the vexing question: Did I commune with the community?

Since moving here I've been feeling like I'm missing something in regards to the Jewish community.  I feel like more of an outsider than I really should be, and I can't help but contrast my largely uninspiring experiences here with the overwhelmingly positive experiences I grew up with.  With that in mind, I'd like to share an experience Tomm and I had on Friday night:

We had just arrived to the synagogue for the afternoon and evening prayers, quick services that would mark the end of Rosh Hashanah and the beginning of Shabbat.  It didn't seem the services had commenced so we dawdled outside the doors of the sanctuary for a minute.  An older gentleman with a long, straggly beard appeared and made some comment about the talk that was going on before the services.  Perhaps they were going longer than expected?  I asked him if they'd started the afternoon service yet and he said no, then - detecting either our accent or our uniquely Midwestern sense of kindness and civility - he asked us where we were from.  We told him about our respective hometowns and the city where we met.  "Oh! That's Twerskiville!" he announced, referencing the large Hasidic community on the West side of the city.  I attended shul there a couple times and I'm familiar with the rabbi, though I certainly wouldn't identify myself with him.  At any rate, this man had at least some idea of where I was from.

"Y'know," he said, "for people from out of town, meaning of course anywhere outside New York or Lakewood [NJ], it's different.  Jewish communities are more open, more welcoming out of town.  But in town, it's like there are too many people.  People don't notice you as much, it's not as much of a community.  When a place gets so big, it's easy for people to get--" and he reached over to point to a notice on the bulletin board.  LOST.

"But come, let's daven (pray)."  And with that he led us into the sanctuary.

Lost.  Precisely.  As this man spoke I looked at him and wondered how he had managed to so perfectly encapsulate my experiences up to this point.  He was an absolute stranger, but it was as if I was meant to cross his path so that he could give credence to the very feeling I had been trying to ignore.

The fact is, my presence in the synagogues around here has been largely ignored.  The mumbled "shana tova" (Happy New Year) or "gut shabbos" (a wish for a good Sabbath) exchanged with others are mere pleasantries said as quietly and unenthusiastically as we can.  I am not a part of this community and I am no closer to them than the black-hatted and bearded Hassids who breeze past me on the sidewalk with bristling indifference.

At both the congregations I've called home throughout my life, I went to shul to feel connected -- connected to others and by extension to G-d.  I went to shul to be counted, acknowledged, appreciated.  I went to feel part of something larger, holier than myself.  Singing out loud and saying the words that are so many hundreds of years old with my families - real or surrogate - surrounding me and singing with me was what made it a holy experience.

In music, especially when playing through a piece with an ensemble for the first time, reaching the words da capo at the end of the piece can be disabling.  Faced with the sudden change in direction, we may have to quickly turn a page or five only to reveal that the music's tempo, time signature, key signature, dynamics, and style have completely changed since the beginning.  Eventually we manage to get back on track, maybe even skipping a few measures of music between the da capo and the opening bars just to get our bearings.  But inevitably we catch our breath, return our focus to the music we make, and move forward.

This year, the da capo is certainly throwing me for a loop.  I seem to have lost the melody, and I'm looking at the conductor thinking Where the hell are you? but it's not too late to make something beautiful.  I just have to take a breath, pause for a moment, and find where I belong in the music.

L'Shana Tova u'metukah.  May you have a happy and sweet New Year.

And grass grew in the street

I have grown up privileged.

All my life I was surrounded by grass.  Not always green grass, mind you, nor in overwhelming quantities, but it was grass nonetheless.  Grass in front of my house, behind my house, and to the side.  Grass in my neighbors' yards - front, back, and side.  Grass marking the distance between the sidewalk and the street where trees grew at intervals.  Grass in the parks, the school yards, the memorials.  Grass that thrived openly and freely without fences to dictate its borders.

With the grass came other joys.  The smell of it freshly cut, the childhood delight of whispering the seeds off dandelions, the feel of it beneath one's bare feet, and all the other equally and overly poeticized activities associated with it.

I wasn't raised a country gal, but I took grass for granted.

In New York City, things are different.  Grass is harder to come by and has been replaced by stone, steel, and glass.  I walked through a neighborhood the other day where there was actually grass in front of the tightly-packed row of homes and I thought aloud "These must be the rich people."  Grass is found in the parks, where it is lush and green and manicured and contained, orderly and appropriately mindful of its place in the concrete jungle.

Today I ventured to the Lower East Side of Manhattan for a job interview (yay!).  On my way back to the train afterward I decided to wander a bit because it was a beautiful day out and I really didn't have anywhere I needed to be.  So I strolled through NoHo along Lafayette and rather enjoyed eyeing up the small shops and trendy restaurants surrounding grand buildings like The Public Theater.  It was just the right mix of classic and contemporary that made me smile and feel good about the day.

And then, as I crossed an old cobblestone street whose uneven crags and crevices were an unexpected but welcome challenge for my short and uncomfortable heels, I noticed something peaking between the smooth, worn stones.  There, unobtrusive and unassuming, were the bright green slivers of grass growing outside its mandated boundaries imposed by the New York Department of Parks and Recreation.  I considered it and smiled as I walked along, slowing my pace just enough to observe it fully but careful to make it to the other side of the intersection before the red hand stopped blinking.

A tree grows in Brooklyn while grass grows in NoHo.

I may not be in my comfort zone and I may feel overwhelmed at times by my new surroundings, but if a few blades of young grass can make it in the most unlikely of places, then so can I.