#BlogExodus: Tell

Telling can be so hard.

I want to tell you off, but instead, I nod in agreement, smile, and go back to what I was doing, seething all the while.

I want to tell you that I love you, but the words stick in my throat. I know you know, in your heart, so I don’t say it.

I want to tell you what I think, how I feel, what I want, but you don’t ask, so I remain silent, suppressing the words, afraid – without even knowing it.

I want to speak up, say my piece, state my opinion, but I get flustered, flushed, the words jumble in my mind, my tongue grows thick.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima , this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, March 30, corresponding to the Hebrew date 15 Nisan 5778. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts .

#BlogExodus: Hide

Finally! Finally, the weather predictions came true and New York City’s actually getting the nor’easter the media’s been hyping for the last three days!

It’s snowing like the dickens out there and I want to hide.

I want to hide in snow angels, swinging my arms and legs so wide that the depth of the snow makes me invisible.

I want to hide in the fluffy, sweet softness of the marshmallows floating atop my hot cocoa when I come in from the cold, wet play land.

I want to hide in the pages of my book, engrossed in the lives, adventures, and misadventures of characters who are not me, whose worries and triumphs are not mine.

I want to hide in the afternoon’s reruns, shows from my childhood that I have to explain to millennials, shows they don’t want to binge watch.

I want to hide in a nap, stretching out and, wrapped in warm fleece, shutting down while the world goes on for a while without me.

Alas, this is the age of connectivity and there is no hiding.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, March 30, corresponding to the Hebrew date 15 Nisan 5778. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts.

#BlogExodus: Grow

I know today has grown entirely too long because I am just now, at slightly after 10 p.m., lighting the yahrzeit candle for my grandfather, who died 32 years ago tomorrow... and having no luck with either the wick or the match.

I wasn’t home to light the candle earlier in the evening because I was facilitating the NYC meeting of FORCE: Facing Our Risk of Cancer Empowered , a grassroots organization that offers information, resources, and support to individuals and families affected by hereditary cancer.

Ironically (or perhaps not), my grandfather died from BRCA-related metastatic prostate cancer before “BRCA-related metastatic prostate cancer” was in the lexicon. For the last seven-plus years, though, it’s been part of my lexicon, as I’ve worked to raise awareness about the prevalence of BRCA mutations in Ashkenazi Jewish families – and most especially how they can lurk in the background, undetected for generations.

Making the tough decisions to undergo multiple surgeries and long recoveries to prevent cancer and ensure my genetics would not determine my destiny has helped me grow.

Learning the ins and outs of these mutations, advocating on behalf of the community affected by them, and offering advice and information to women (and men) following me on this path has helped me grow.

Perhaps most of all, the warm, wonderful embrace of others in the hereditary cancer community has helped me grow and enriched my life in untold ways – ways I could not have ever imagined back when BRCA wasn’t part of the lexicon.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima , this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, March 30, corresponding to the Hebrew date 15 Nisan 5778. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts .

#BlogExodus: Cleanse

After yesterday’s buying spree at the Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale (eight books for $10), I needed to clean up my Want-to-Read list on goodreads.com to add the new purchases:

1. How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D. (I’ve browsed this book many times, but something else always won out in the get-it-today category…until yesterday, when it could be had for $1.)
2. Midaq Alley, by Naguib Mahfouz (recommended to me by my father)
3. Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English, by Patricia T. O’Conner (Another book I’ve browsed often, and now am glad to own.)
4. Bel Canto , by Ann Patchett (recommended to me by my sister)
5. The Medical Detectives, Volume II, by Berton Roueché (I read the first volume several years ago and didn’t even know there was a second volume…until yesterday.)
6. Mothering Sunday: A Romance, by Graham Swift (recommended to me by my sister)
7. Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, by Lynne Truss (Another volume I’ve picked up many times, but never purchased.)
8. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, by William Zinsser (This book seems to be a volume no writer or editor should be without.)

Although I’m not sure I’ll make it through all these books in this calendar year, I’m well on the way to beating out last year’s woeful showing.

Forget about cleaning for Passover….I’m going to read!

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima , this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, March 30, corresponding to the Hebrew date 15 Nisan 5778. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts .

#BlogExodus: Begin

It’s a good thing #BlogExodus has no rules because if it did, I would already have messed up. Moving too fast, multi-tasking, and failing to pay attention, I used the prompt for 2 Nisan for yesterday’s post, and so now I get to begin again.

Yay….a do-over! And one with no consequences.

Perhaps from this blip on my screen, this imperfection, blemish, failing, shortcoming, defect, deficiency, and blotch, I can learn that it’s normal to make mistakes…and I should stop being so hard on myself when the mistakes are mine.

“No worries,” I say to others frequently. “No worries,” I need to begin to say to myself.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima , this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, March 30, corresponding to the Hebrew date 15 Nisan 5778. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts .

#BlogExodus: Bless

At 85, my dad doesn’t come into the city as often as in the past. Instead, my sister and I have been visiting our “country estate” about once each month, including this weekend.

Due to her business travel, she’s already there, occupying our “suite” that includes a bedroom smartly outfitted with two twin beds, like when we were kids, and our own bathroom. Not a bad set-up at all. I’ll travel there tomorrow morning and our plan is to go right from the train station in New Brunswick to the annual Bryn Mawr-Wellesley Book Sale at the Princeton Country Day School.

According to the book sale’s website, “We specialize in top-quality hardback and paperback fiction, non-fiction, academic, university press, and rare books, all sold at bargain prices,” which means the day will be a guaranteed good time for we three book-lovers. Experience tells me that after we’ve had our fill of books, we’ll perk up with coffee and a shared “sweetmeat” at Small World Coffee or Panera , before heading back to the estate and then out to dinner.

As my dad would say, “A good time will be had by all,” and he would, as usual, be right.

Indeed, we are blessed – all of us.

Inspired by Ima on (and off) the Bima, this post is one in a series marking the days of the Jewish month of Nisan leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown on Friday, March 30, corresponding to the Hebrew date 15 Nisan 5778. If you want to play along, check out this year's #BlogExodus and #ExodusGram prompts.

Welcome Back, Hallway Kiddush

Dear Hallway Kiddush,

Back in January, our minyan was so sad when you abruptly stopped being part of our Shabbat minhag so we could instead go downstairs to the sanctuary at the end of our chapel service and greet Shaaray Tefila’s newest b’nai mitzvah and their families.

We missed the Manischewitz (yes, it’s true!), our schmoozing, and linking up to touch someone who was touching the challah before we recited haMotzi. Without these rituals that we all know and love, our Shabbat felt incomplete and…a little bit empty.

Thank goodness you’re back!

Now, we once again get to spend time with you each week and – if we want – also go downstairs to join the other part of the synagogue community. It helps to have a reserved row in the sanctuary, where we can sit until it’s time to ascend the bimah. And, it seems we’ve already started our own “downstairs minhag,” pointing out to each other young girls’ dresses whose hemlines are, as my grandmother would say, “up to her pupik,” and so tight around they can take only teeny-tiny steps. While we wait, it’s also interesting to see the families’ color choices for the yarmulkes. Having always enjoyed “assigning” names to particular hues, I dubbed yesterday’s yarmulkes “Shrek green,” with no malice intended. I call ’em like I see ’em -- and I love Shrek!

In any event, it’s nice to have you back and perhaps, with practice, we’ll get as comfortable with the downstairs part of our Shabbat as we are with the upstairs part.

Shavua tov…see you next week,
~ Jane.