L'Shana Tova Everyone!

and a happy, healthy, and fruitful year to all. the rabbi gave a very interesting speech (i know, how often does that happen, right?) about how today's torah portion was about sarah and the haftorah portion is about hannah. both are women who were childless, and who were given children late in their lives, after they had nearly given up. the rabbi's focus was on birth/rebirth but also the question of 'when is it too late?' sarah had her child in her 90's. what does it mean when you get what you most desperately wanted, but so much later that it doesn't even mean the same thing anymore as it once did?




Dream Deferred


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Langston Hughes




what does it mean to find the love of your life...in your 60's? to finally be a parent at 90? to get your PhD in your 70's? those dreams don't have the meaning they once did...once they were sweet and now they are bitter-sweet. but he says that bitter-sweet is basically the defining emotion of being human. and the torah urges us to be less bitter and more sweet when given the option to chose. he also said it's never too late, for anything.

i don't often have any kind of connection, sitting there in temple, reading words someone else has written, praying to a god i'm not always sure is there. but i felt connected today; with the plight of sarah and hannah, with the bitter sweetness of deferred dreams, and with struggling to remain optimistic when pessimistic is the most rational path. (for ex: now in my 2ww...optimisim and pessimism are in a nearly constant battle, with my soul bouncing back and forth between the two like a ping pong ball. it's exhausting really. at least, it seemed to give me permission to be optimistic every now and again if i feel like it :P ).
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and now for something completely different.




yesterday at work at the children's hospital we were SLAMMED. one little girl of about 3 came in with her mom, spanish speaking only. the mom kept saying the child had an animal in her head and pointing at a lump in the back of the scalp. i thought my spanish was off, but the lump did need to be opened and drained. well, guess what came out of the lump? Bot Fly larvae. it looked like the picture but was longer and much more disgusting. child did ok, got the wound packed with gauze and put on an antibiotic. it was definitly something.