Chapter 44
44
The next day is a blur that somehow also brings clarity my way for the first time in a long, long time.
It’s my birthday.
I’m forty.
My little sister is married.
My mother is putting her house on the market.
My father is still gone.
But he’ll also always be here.
My best friend is sleeping on my couch.
My crush is just across the hall.
There is no golem in my bed.
There are no easy answers.
My apartment is a mess.
Everything is a mess.
And I’m just happy to be alive.
I don’t know why I struggled so much with this milestone, with this number. Yesterday I was in my thirties; today I’m not, but what changed? I should be proud of every step I took to get here. I learned a few lessons along the road—most of them the hard way—but God, I still have so much to learn. This isn’t the end of anything. It’s just one more beginning, like every damn day can be if we just let it.
Exhaling and resolving to let this day be a good one, I pull open my middle dresser drawer. I reach in, fingers stretching out in search of something soft, something to wear to welcome myself into this new dawn. This new decade.
Instead, my fingers close around something hard, and for a moment I freeze.
Then I pull my crumpled ugly Hanukkah sweater from the drawer.
Still clutching the battery pack encased within the fabric, I find the little switch, and turn it on. For a second, nothing happens. Then every twinkling flame on the menorah begins blinking off and on, good as new. It feels like a birthday greeting from my father.
Maybe that’s exactly what it is.
I press the tacky sweater to my face and sob. Sorrowful, grateful, hopeful, everything all at once. For the first time ever, I’m comfortable with the messy, authentic reality of myself. I don’t have to just be sad, or just be happy, or just be on autopilot. I can start to remember how to feel all the things. How to be there for myself, and for my loved ones.
It’s just going to take a little time.