More Life

 Wednesday night, we attended a costume party/murder mystery at a restaurant in downtown Morgantown.  Kathy, the guest of honor, was turning seventy-five. She is a friend from temple, although only her husband is Jewish. She's been active in Democratic Party politics here, and helped me with my first political campaign. We were to dress in gangster outfits from the 1920s. We had roles to play: I was the butler to the head gangster and it was suggested I wear a tuxedo. Instead, I came in a black shirt, black pants, a loud jacket- and saddle shoes. The costumes ranged from very successful to not so much. The game was moderately interesting. What I realized was that the guests at the party were mostly people I know and like very much, and that seventy-five is only ten months away for me. My sister and I offered to make our mother a seventy-fifth birthday party in 2003, but Mom insisted on planning her own party at an Italian restaurant in Pikesville, Maryland, inviting only family. She died thirty-nine  days later, so the idea of being that age is scary.

They pulled my cancerous thyroid gland out in early November, and, as predicted, it wasn't too bad. I'm still sleeping a lot, but less, and I'm back at the gym, and went out for a run today. I'll see the doctor in February, and he'll decide what, if anything, needs to be done next. So I guess I'm doing well for seventy-four. I can feel my joints freezing up, especially the knee that was bad over the summer. 

Joe and I were back at my sister's house in Greenbelt, Maryland last week. I didn't throw up, and no one from the temple died, two events which have messed up our vacations in the past. We ate at a Jewish deli in Fulton, a Howard County suburb, and my sister Robin treated me and Joe to some new clothes. I hear a lot about how awful the economy is, but the stores were mobbed with people, so someone has money. We ate the traditionally Jewish Christmas meal: Chinese food, at a storefront restaurant in Beltsville, just north of Greenbelt. The portions were huge, and everything was yummy. Robin has all the streaming services Joe and I don't subscribe to, so we watched "Maestro" and "Oppenheimer." The commonality is that both are about chain-smoking Jewish men who are unfaithful to their wives. I thought "Oppenheimer" was a better movie. "Maestro" didn't cover a lot I would have liked, about the man Bernstein left his wife for, who later died of AIDS, or about the party for the Black Panthers at the Bernstein's, which was organized by his wife, Felicia. In The Forward, a critic pointed out that they downplayed Bernstein's commitment to Israel and to Judaism generally. It might have been interesting to see how both men died from their smoking habit, Bernstein of a heart attack when he was hospitalized unable to breathe, and Oppenheimer of cancer of the larynx. 

A young man at the party last night, a friend of one of  Kathy's grown daughters, asked me about staying in Morgantown. He was raised here by adoptive parents and now lives in Virginia, near Washington. The people at the party, mostly about my age, are our friends, and although Joe would like to live elsewhere when he retires in two years, preferably somewhere with warmer winters where we know people and he wouldn't have to be "The Rabbi" all the time, I'm not sure I have enough life expectancy to start over someplace else. We've been here more than eleven years, and we're invited to a party with gay fiends on the 30th, and a party with temple people on the 31st, so we do have different crowds we can hang with. I also have political friends, some of whom were there last night. 

I can say now that I'm doing okay. My health problems are all typical of someone my age, and I think I'm in better shape than most. That's no guarantee that I'll make another year, but I'm doing my best to stick around. Joe and I agree that we have good lives, even as the country and the world fall apart. But that's a whole different essay.

End of the Year and New York 2019

This year didn't totally suck, Friends from California visited us here in Morgantown: Jonathon and George from Long Beach, and Roy and Pat from Los Angeles, now living in Lompoc, in Santa Barbara County. We traveled to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where we saw our old crowds, and felt welcome, and just this week, we were in New York City for the first time in three years.We were in Memphis at Thanksgiving. On my own, I visited eleven of the twelve counties I planned to visit, four each in Ohio and Pennsylvania and three in Virginia. The largest and most interesting was Cuyahoga County, Ohio, including Cleveland. Many of the places I visited were economic dead zones, pretty towns with declining populations and abandoned business districts. I ran into a demonstration against abortion in DuBose, Pennsylvania, which infuriated me, and visited Bucyrus, in heinous troglodyte Jim Jordan's Ohio congressional district. I noted that it was warm in northern Pennsylvania in January and February, when it should have been cold. Virginia is pretty, Ohio has good libraries and Pennsylvania has extensive state parks. Most of these places are exclusively white and at least nominally Christian. I know people are in pain, but I still don't get voting for the awful Congresspeople they support. I have that problem here in West Virginia as well.

At the end of last year, Joe and I were talking about whether we wanted to stay in West Virginia. We are bicoastal people, at home in New York, Maryland and California. We have friends in big cities on both coasts, and we miss them. We have many homophobic people in our state legislature, and they showed it openly on several occasions this year, including an attempt to overturn Morgantown's non-discrimination ordinance. I told Joe I wanted to run for reelection to Morgantown's City Council just to prove it wasn't a fluke that I won. Ultimately he was offered and accepted a five-year contract to continue as rabbi at Tree of Life Congregation, so we are staying.

The congregation has been lovely to both of us and people have included us in their lives. Younger people have moved away and are difficult to replace. There were several funerals this year, and Joe spends a lot of his time visited hospitalized congregants. How long this congregation can continue is a question, but it's important that there is a liberal Jewish presence in this part of the world. Joe often speaks to non-Jewish groups, and I spoke to a high school class south of us about the Holocaust, and to pharmacy and counseling students at West Virginia University about "Jewish culture," even though I am unsure what that means.

My reelection turned out to be a joke. Two people originally challenged me. We had to turn in seventy-five signatures in our ward in January and February. I didn't get the help I had two years ago, although my friend Ash helped and neighbor Paul circulated petitions for me. One candidate turned in signatures in the last ten minutes of the last day. It turned out that many of his signatures were fraudulent, a fact discovered by a civic gadfly who thought there was something fishy about this guy, who had moved into the ward, to an apartment building owned by a real estate developer who has made his contempt for our Council clear, specifically to run against me. Why the City Clerk's office didn't catch the signatures that were the same as those on my petitions is a good question. Long story short, there was fraud, as far as I know unpunished, involving this candidate, who not coincidentally, had run for a statewide office as a Republican. The clerk's office and the Republican Party are up to their ears in this, but thanks to our Republican State Attorney, Mac Warner, from our county, nothing came of the investigation he supposedly conducted. The election was the end of April and for several weeks, it looked like I would be unopposed. Then the other challenger, on the Republican central committee in our county, signed up as a write-in. He ran a pathetic campaign, but still won 27% of the vote. I got 73%, but I was robbed of the challenge I wanted, someone with ideas I could debate and prove myself against.

Our big issue on Council was a proposal to annex a large unincorporated area of our County into  Morgantown. This is important for us to maintain the vitality of the city, to increase housing options and to make these areas more livable by providing police and fire services, zoning and building requirements. We were met by a barrage of criticism from real estate developers, business owners and some homeowner associations. We had meetings where some people brought up good questions, which we were able to work on, but mostly we faced off against powerful interests who have no interest in the community other than making a fast buck. We were also personally attacked by a number of people, making me question who we might actually want in our city. I've changed my shopping habits to try to buy more from merchants in our city limits.

 I look back at pictures of the victory of our "all-progressive" City Council when we were elected in 2017. We were happy and optimistic. That's gone now. Cracks have appeared over the issues of homelessness and drugs in Morgantown, and we have gotten no respect from the Chamber of Commerce (now called Morgantown Area Partnership), West Virginia University, and the Monongalia County Commission. We have five good people from our County in the State Legislature, but they are up against homo-haters, anti-abortion zealots, white supremacists, and people paid off by extractive industries from other parts of the state. It's tough. No knock against the new Councilors elected in 2019; I totally respect Dave Harshbarger and Zackery Cruze, and we are united on most issues. Still, I miss Ryan Wallace, who moved to Canada, where his wife has family. He was my closest friend on Council. And Mark Brazaitis, the Prophet, who was criticized relentlessly for his take on issues, didn't run again. He was right about everything. I have a year-and-a half to go on Council. I hope I can stand it.

I had a light bulb moment in New York Christmas night. People in West Virginia talk about how much they love this place: the beautiful scenery, the friendly people, the sense of place. It is pretty, away from the strip mines, the trash heaps and junk yards. Morgantown is a unique town, and there are many good people here. But I don't find most people here friendly, quite the opposite. So the moment came when we were out with family at Sammy's Roumanian Steak House, a famous Jewish spot on Christy Street on the Lower East Side. It's loud and crowded, in a basement, with raunchy jokes from the DJ/Comedian, Dani Luv. He asked where we were from, and he was shocked that we were Jewish from West Virginia. But I also knew that my great-grandfather ran a little store across the street from where Sammy's is, in the early part of the twentieth century, when my grandfather was a child. I felt a strong connection to that place. I feel that way in New York City generally, even though I never lived there. We visited often from Baltimore when I was a child, and my mother's parents, who lived in Queens, took me into Manhattan to see the sights. I get, more than I did before this trip, how people can feel attached to a place. It's an emotional and visceral thing.

In New York we stayed in Hell's Kitchen, once a rough neighborhood, and maybe still, to some extent. There were lots of gay clubs on the streets, and our non-luxury hotel was filled with people speaking foreign (to us) languages. We felt welcoming to them, and I tried to translate from Spanish for a couple who couldn't make themselves clear to the desk clerk. We walked quite a bit and took subways to most of our destinations. We weren't far from Times Square, absolutely mobbed at all hours. I like it, but I was sad that we are too old to enjoy the gay clubs, and that the people on the subway were almost all much younger than us. The stairs to the subways were daunting for me. Decades ago, I would have run up and down them; now I clutch the rail and walk slowly and carefully.

Joe's brother Henry, a musician, was in town from Louisiana and dragged us to Carnegie Hall to see Handel's "Messiah"with a small baroque orchestra and amazing soloists. While I might disagree with the theology, the music was glorious. I took Joe to see Pedro Almodóvar's stunning new movie "Pain and Glory," out of fear that it would never play in Morgantown. We walked around Greenwich Village that day. One day we visited the Guggenheim Museum, one of the last of Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces, on Fifth Avenue, to see an exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe photos and those of people who came after and critiqued or imitated him, then we visited the Neue Gallerie, in a mansion down the street, to see German and Austrian Art, including Gustav Klimt's "Woman In Gold."

Just being in New York, seeing the 59th Street Bridge, the block where the album cover for Dylan's
"Freewheelin'" album was photographed, walking through Central Park and Times Square, places we could identify from movies and television, was great. We visited Joe's stepmom and went out with her a few times, and hung out with Joe's brother and sister, in from the South, and his half-brother, the notorious baseball collector and YouTube personality, Zack Hample. I saw two cousins of mine, one after forty-five years, because I made a connection with her adult grandchild on 23 and Me. A successful  friend of Joe's from Harvard came into town from Long Island with his husband and treated us to lunch at the fancy Harvard Club. Our last night in New York, we took the subway to Brooklyn to participate in the lighting of a giant menorah by Chabad in the rain on the last night of Chanukka. We wanted to show solidarity after the attack on Jews in Monsey, Jersey City and in Brooklyn.

I noticed that the temperature was well above normal for the last week of the year in New York City. It's not just weather, it's climate change, and it's here. The day we left there was a forecast of flooding in many areas around the waterfronts.

Of course, the trip was exhausting and expensive. We drove, and paid to park the car for a week, in addition to the hotel. I came back with a cold, and we had boarded the cat, who has been clingy and neurotic since we picked her up.

So, if you asked how I was doing, I would say I'm depressed about how things are going politically, for me personally on the city council in Morgantown, but also with the corruption and hatred generated by our state's Republicans and by the current administration in Washington, I turned seventy in 2019, so I'm a year older than my father was when he died. Of course I worry about my health and that of everyone in my generation. I feel left out of contemporary culture, like my time has definitely come and gone. Joe has been stressed too, and while our relationship is strong, it's been strained this year by the pressures we both feel.

I'm trying to be hopeful for myself and our country. I hope to build some bridges politically with other progressives, and be more understanding of those who think differently. I want to continue to travel, and to strengthen my marriage, shunning those who think it is illegitimate. I say this every year: I want to lose fifteen pounds (I lost five this year) , and declutter my house. May this be the year. If you've read to here, thank you for letting me rant, and may 2020 and The Twenties, be a healthy and prosperous time for all of us.

The Wedding, The Fourth of July, and City Council

I normally just do what I have to do, make plans and carry them out. I understand that I am not young and I have to be a little careful. No one else sees that.

Last weekend, my sister Robin came in from Maryland. Part of it was to spend the holiday with us, but also she wanted to see me installed in City Council on July 5. Joe and I were asked to do a wedding July 2 in Pittsburgh. The groom is from Morgantown, and we did his brother's wedding three years ago in Charleston. I used to sing for Jewish prayer services. I stopped after the major holidays in 2003. I had been ill that year, and found doing the services too hard for me. People know I sing, but I am rarely asked. Joe does his own singing at synagogue, and I don't want to compete with him. I have a book of cantor music for life-cycle events. At the wedding, I sang the sheva b'rachot, the traditional seven wedding blessings, a benediction, and a selection from Song  of Songs. I worked on my voice for the week before and rehearsed the music at home with the piano we almost never use.

Saturday, we drove the seventy-five miles to the Strip District in Pittsburgh, in time for a late afternoon rehearsal and then dinner at a seafood restaurant. The buffet did not include any "forbidden species," to my relief. We went back to our hotel after dinner; the couple and their friends stayed later to drink and party.

Joe at the restaurant where the rehearsal dinner was held, Strip District, Pittsburgh

It was warm in Pittsburgh Sunday. We left our hotel, dressed for the wedding just after noon, and found a restaurant for lunch. We had looked around the area earlier. We were in suits while everyone else was in summer wear. A nap would have been nice. Instead, we sat in the air conditioning at the  Heinz Museum where the wedding was to be.

The wedding went off without a hitch. The groom was handsome, the bride beautiful in a gorgeous dress, Joe was charming and entertaining, and I sang better than I thought I would. We stayed for dinner and left after 8:30 to drive home, just as the bride and groom were lifted on chairs while everyone danced around them.

The bride and groom are graduates of WVU, and we met many of their thirtyish friends who had gone to school with them, some from West Virginia, all living in Pittsburgh. A typical comment was "We didn't see a future for ourselves anywhere in West Virginia. We learned to do high-tech jobs, which don't exist in West Virginia, and we also wanted to be in a more urban and sophisticated environment." We have work to do here if we hope to attract or retain bright, educated young people.

We got home around ten, and I just wanted to sleep. Robin and Joe played Scrabble before going to bed.

It was my idea to have City Council members ride bikes with the kids in Morgantown's Fourth of July parade. I was already exhausted. We had been out Monday night in Fairmont with friends, who had fireworks, and cooked the kind of vegetarian food we don't normally eat. I take a "water" pill every other day, and I was on the last day of antibiotics for a cut on my arm that was infected. I wanted to stay home, take care of my stressed digestive system and rest up before the parade. The bikes were to meet at five. Instead, we went out late in the morning to walk around Cheat Lake, one of the prettiest recreation areas around here. It was already too hot. Joe and Robin wanted to go out for lunch; we settled on a "fast casual " chain restaurant near our house, so I could nap for an hour before going out to ride my bike the three miles from our house to downtown. It was 86 F. at 5 P.M. Four of us from Council showed up to ride. We rode from the meeting spot to the head of the parade, then waited close to an hour to step off. I was dizzy and had to sit on the curb. The parade went well, and although people offered me a ride home, I opted to ride back. I had used up the one bottle of water I brought, and I had one of those plastic envelopes of juice-like drink, courtesy of one of the organizers for the kids.

At Cheat Lake, July 4, photo by Kevin of Woodburn Shanks Barbecue, who happened to be there

Three councilors on bikes, plus our pal Evan Hansen, July 4 I'm not sure who snapped this photo

I got home close to 8 P.M., overheated and dehydrated. I drank three bottles of water, and Robin put a wet towel on my head, as I was burning up.I managed to swallow some food after 9.

Our first Council meeting was Wednesday, and I had suggested we all meet at a flatbread-pizza-and- salad brew pub in Morgantown's Wharf District for dinner. I knew they could accommodate a crowd. I barely got out of bed most of the day. Twenty people showed up for dinner: the seven Councilors, spouses, some children and friends. I was happy that we could all relax together without the rancor that plagued the last council.

Dinner July 5 with Councilors and family, taken by a server at the restaurant

Our installation on council only took ten minutes, as I expected. There was some business and we each had a chance to say something at the end. My ward is possibly the most politically conservative in the city. I explained my being there by comparing myself to Christoper Isherwood, the author whose story "Goodbye to Berlin" became the musical "Cabaret." Isherwood once wrote that his Catholic British mother wanted him to be patriotic, religious, and married. He said he had become that, only American, a Hindu, and married to another man. As someone who is religious, married, and a homeowner, I said felt that I am  exactly in the right neighborhood.

I'm elated to be on the City Council, and I was happy to be at that first meeting. I've been to City Council meetings before, but it's different being on the Council. It's an awesome responsibility.

Our official portrait from the City's photographer

It's now Sunday night, and I have stayed as close to home as possible the last few days. I'm still out more than most men my age, but sleeping more during the day, and feeling like I had the wind knocked out of me. I did bicycle an hour and a half this afternoon in cooler than average weather, but I skipped seeing Bernie Sanders, whom we saw in Charleston two weeks ago, and also the Morgantown Interfaith Council this afternoon, where Joe was explaining Jewish practices to the group. Tappuz, our cat, has also been staying close to home, instead of spending most of her time outside, as she had been doing since the weather warmed up. Maybe she reflects my diminished energy, or perhaps she was frightened by fireworks last week.

Tuesday will mark five years since our arrival in Morgantown. My original goal here was only to be a spouse for Joe, and to support him in his new career. Now I have my own career as a representative of my city, and last week I enjoyed performing at a wedding (it helped that the couple was so sweet). I've also signed up for a writing workshop at the end of the month, so hopefully, I will be doing more writing than the disjointed pieces I put up on this blog.

I only hope I can muster the energy to continue these endeavors, pacing myself physically, especially, but also emotionally, so I don't crash and burn.

The Holidays and The Hospital

During the holidays this year, I had some medical issues. Just after Rosh Hashana, I went in for an echocardiogram. My cardiologist was afraid my heart wasn't functioning as it should. He called late the afternoon before Yom Kippur, and left a message that said. "Call me back. Don't worry, it's not urgent."

Our Yom Kippur services run all day, from a children's service at 9 A.M., through morning, afternoon, Yizkor (Memorial) and Ne'ilah (closing) service. Joe also runs a discussion group. There is a short break in the early afternoon. Joe and I came home and napped briefly. He was fasting from the night before- not even coffee. I don't try. He went back to temple, and I stayed for a light lunch and more sleep. Repentance and prayer are important, but if I can't concentrate for lack of food, it's not worth it. And I have medication to take with food in the morning.

While I was home, the cardiologist called again.

"Your heart muscle is weaker than three years ago. We need to go in and see if there is something we can fix. It doesn't have to be this week."

I said "Fine. Can we do it after November first? I'm teaching a class."

"I wouldn't wait that long."

"Oh. After October 6? I'm going to D.C. for that weekend."

"We shouldn't wait that long. I'll have the nurse call you."

I returned to services for Yizkor and Ne'ilah. I thought about my parents and the medical choices they made near the ends of their lives. They chose to live as fully as they could. When we came home, I told Joe what the doctor had said.

The nurse called Friday and we set it up for Tuesday, September 29. She said it would be outpatient. I should be fine for the weekend. I told her I was teaching a class starting Thursday and moderating a panel Thursday night.

I love Sukkot, although I understand that most Jews don't observe it. It comes only five days after Yom Kippur, after which people are depressed from all the repentance and fasting.  But Sukkot is the time to relax, visit friends, eat outside in a little hut if one chooses to build one (we don't). Sukkot lasts seven or eight days and is followed by Simchat Torah, when we celebrate the annual cycle of Torah reading. In Reform Judaism, the first day is a religious holiday, and the eighth, Simchat Torah. The rest is relaxing.

Our temple was invited join the temple in Wheeling for a barbecue Sunday night, the 27th, as the holiday started. Joe and I were the only ones from Morgantown to make the 75 mile trip to Wheeling. Beth Jacowitz-Chottiner, the rabbi there, and her husband, Lee Chottiner, who once lived in Morgantown, have become our friends.

Monday I attended "Safe Zone" training, to learn to be a trainer for a program to combat anti-gay violence at WVU. At the end of the training, I opted not to become a trainer, because I don't have a presence at the university. I told Ben, the trainer, that I would be at Ruby Memorial on Tuesday, and couldn't swear I would lead the panel discussion I had arranged for Thursday night, part of Diversity Week at WVU. I barely managed to keep from crying.

Monday night, Zalman and Hindy Gurewitz, the couple who run the local Chabad, invited us for dinner in their sukkah. I'm not a big fan of Chabad, but  Zalman and Hindy have been friendly to us and we've been guests at Chabad. In a town with so few Jews, I respect their outreach to the community. Joe had scheduled a meeting at temple, the second night of Sukkot being less important to Reform Jews. It was hard for me to relax knowing I was going to the hospital the next day. This was their night to have adults in the sukkah, as opposed to college students, their usual clientele.

Joe rescheduled an appointment with the dentist to take me to the hospital Tuesday. I'm going to skip the gory details. It was an ordeal. I had to make it explicit that I would sign no forms without Joe present, and that he was privy to any information. The whole procedure was delayed, and when it was done about 5:30, I had three new stents in my arteries. They kept me overnight, and I left Wednesday morning. I was well enough to go shopping in the evening, as long as Joe carried the packages. I was told not to lift more than five pounds.

I slept late and skipped my writing group Thursday, but I got out to teach my Beach Boys class at OLLI from 1 to 3. I covered 1964 and 1965, the Beach Boys' most successful years, and to my mind, the best years ever for Top 40 pop music. I crashed at home for a bit, then Joe and I went to WVU, for my panel for Diversity Week, "Love For All- Religion and the LGBT Community." I had five panelists, Joe and other clergy, including three Christians and a Buddhist. I was afraid no one would show, or that I would pass out from heart failure or exhaustion, but we had sixty people and I was fine. Many asked questions, on file cards which I had purchased earlier in the day, so that the askers could be anonymous, and I could filter out the nastiest questions. I asked all the questions I was given, and the panelists were brilliant in their answers. The take-away is that God loves everyone, that we have to be tolerant of other opinions, and that young LGBT people, confronted with hatred from their own family, need to, at some point, break away and assert their independence.

I rested up Friday so I could go to our Sukkot dinner at temple. I tried to limit what I ate there based on the guidelines I got in the hospital, so only one slice of pizza and one cookie.

The sun came out Saturday for the first time all week, so I walked for about forty-five minutes. That was the most I could do, and I felt a tightness in my chest even walking he small hills near here. We were invited to a dinner celebrating the fifth anniversary of a lovely couple from temple who found each other after their spouses died. The crowd was mostly department heads from WVU, current and retired, the food from a  great Middle-Eastern restaurant at Morgantown Airport. A young woman from Indonesia played piano. She wore a white pleated skirt with black piano keys for stripes. Early on she played classical music, but later switched to Gershwin songs. I told her I could sing along, and I did, and got Joe and others to sing, too, especially when she played 'Embraceable You," the first dance at our wedding. The party was called for six to nine. I dragged Joe out at 9. I had been sitting quietly, exhausted, since about 8:15.

Reform Simchat Torah was Sunday night, but we celebrated it Sunday morning with the kids in Sunday School. We rolled out the Torah around the sanctuary, marched around with the scrolls while singing repurposed nursery rhymes ("Old MacDonald had a Torah", etc.). Monday, the last day of the festival season, I stayed home and finally got the rest I was supposed to have all week.

What I learned this holiday season is to be grateful. I'm grateful for my husband, who stayed with me when I needed him most, for the cardiologist who spotted a problem and, hopefully, fixed it. I'm grateful for life, for whatever health and time I have left. Yes, I believe in a God of mercy, who has saved my life several times. I am always conscious of God's watchfulness, even though I understand that life is finite. I'm sorry I missed my 48th high school class reunion in Baltimore and time with my sister and her family. I pushed myself a lot, but that would have been too much.

Things are still busy. This afternoon (October 8) I'm introducing my elderly students to "Pet Sounds" and "Smiley Smile. " That should be interesting.

Sunday night September 27 in Wheeling with Rabbi Joe Hample, Rabbi Beth Jacowitz-Chottiner and Lee Chottiner

Friday evening October 2 in the sukkah at Tree of Life

Sunday, October 4 at Simchat Torah services

Pre-Rosh Hashana

I have been joking here, and friends in California and Israel have been saying as well, about how hot it has been, and how it is a tradition that the hottest weather is at Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

During the seven years I worked as a High Holiday Cantor, I went through six weeks of anguish preparing for the holidays. The first three years, I worried about singing in key; the last four, I tried to make my art a holy experience for the congregation. I no longer work, but I am married to a rabbi. He spends his days now in his basement office (which is quite comfortable) churning out sermons. He also will lead services for the children, including  skits and parody songs, and host a discussion on Yom Kippur afternoon. He not only fasts, but doesn't drink coffee for twenty-five hours.

It's just after three in the morning now, and I'm not sleeping, mostly from indigestion I think, rather than the worries that keep most people up. This happens sometimes, but not every night. Still, when I'm up at night, when even the cat is asleep under our bed, I think of things.

It occurred to me tonight that a Season of Repentance is good to have every year. You forgive everyone, and even yourself, for all the knuckle-brained, thoughtless things you've done, and then you move on and vow to do better. It beats carrying around a lifetime of guilt.

I realize now, and I think Joe feels the same way, that we were raised to be selfish jerks. We were first-born sons of mid-twentieth century Jewish-American families. It was up to our mothers to cook and clean, even though they both worked. Our families expected us to find wives to take the place of our mothers. It didn't occur to them that we would live alone, or with another man.

 Sometimes I'll mention to Joe how something in our lives reminds me of some long-ago event, often  where I could have helped and didn't. He asks how many years ago the event was, and he usually says "Isn't it time you forgave yourself for that?"

That goes for other people, too. Often, I'm still resentful of people and groups of people."Isn't it time you forgave them?" Joe says. I was thinking tonight about a reunion from my high school next month, all the classes from 1963 (the first class at that school) to 1969. I graduated in 1967. The people I was most friendly with, the Jewish kids, and those who went away to college, mostly don't go to these things. And in a new group on Facebook from my junior high, a man and woman I remember confessed that they had a crush on each other. I don't imagine anyone would say that to me, and my crushes were often other boys ( although thinking about it, I can't remember anyone specifically). Suddenly I was back in the world of seventh and eighth grade hurt over not being invited to a bar mitzvah.

I'll be sixty-six in October, just after the holidays. It's time to let go of resentments from the past. They are exhausting and worthless. I've created a whole long life for myself. I can go back and visit that old world online or at a reunion, and be upbeat and charming, knowing that I'll return to my real life, my good life. I'll forgive the slights and hurts, and forgive myself for the slights and hurts I inflicted, knowingly and unknowingly, all of them. And, at this holiday season, I can vow to not be the selfish jerk I was raised to be, and be the loving, compassionate person I want to be.