super moon

We have been taking walks after dinner to wring out the excess energy the kids are no longer expending during the day. On Monday, as we meandered up Woolsey, the full moon was rising, a massive white spotlight between tree branches. On a route we’ve covered hundreds or thousands of times, it was obvious how all the rules have changed. Octavio swung around a stop sign post and we both barked, “Don’t touch!” Flora chewed sourgrass and we pointed out that once your hands are dirty, you shouldn’t put anything into your mouth.

It’s impossible to implement these wishes with kids. We were both wearing cotton masks, newly sewn by our neighbor, but the kids weren’t masked—a stance I feel fairly convinced of, since they’re more likely to touch their faces if there’s a mask to mess with and adjust. Better to just keep them in the open air and avoid more reasons for them to put dirt near their noses and mouths.

The weight of this situation is ambient. Sitting at the dining table each day, working from home, I’m no more confined that at any other time when I’ve done exactly this, except I know there are walls around the walls. This morning, I decided to try my luck at buying Lysol wipes online and it appeared that they were available through Amazon Fresh. So I added them to a cart and proceeded to fill it with $100 worth of other grocery items, imagining as I went the little needs this digital errand would meet—homeschool snacks and lunches for the next two days, matzo ball soup broth for Saturday’s Zoom seder, some backup ground meat for the freezer, a bag of marshmallows and a box of Rice Krispies because wouldn’t it be fun to make rice krispie treats with the kids. When I went to pay, though, the prompt to select a delivery slot was greyed out. I clicked through days and weeks of potential dates and none were open, all the way into May, where the calendar of options terminated. The cart will now be relegated to a default shopping list—items I might remind myself to try to acquire some other way, some other day.

Tonight is the first night of Passover. We didn’t have a seder but we did read the story of passover while we ate bowls of rice with tofu and cabbage and marinated cucumber and chili paste. Our dear Octavio Moses learned of the centrality of his namesake in this story of liberation. We FaceTimed with the grandparents, who had earlier celebrated with a Zoom seder that included participants from around the country, sharing the reading of the Haggadah as around a table, but across timezones.

There’s a frozen chicken thawing on my counter, given to me by our neighbor, who received it from her father and stepmother as a token of gratitude for the cotton masks she sewed for them. The chicken will be poached in water to make a stock, and the meat shredded for a matzo ball soup, the surplus going toward tacos for another night. Frozen short ribs await braising. A canister of matzo cake meal from last year was luckily never opened or tossed out, so we can have dessert.

Before bed, Tavio wanted to practice the Four Questions. The song verses came back to me on the spot as we worked our way through. Now, as they fall asleep and I scan the internet twilight, memes abound to mark the strange symbolism of a holiday about captivity and freedom. But I’m moved by a Twitter thread from an art curator we used to know:

The word Dayenu means "it would have been enough." i.e. "God, if you had done just one of these 15 things, it would have been enough…There's a weird tension in the song, though, between that sentiment and the list of 15. Because even as we say, “it would have been enough,” we keep listing the next one. I think about this in a time of #covid19. It would be enough to be healthy and for loved ones to be healthy. But would it REALLY be enough? What about those who are losing loved ones? What about systemic inequality and racism making this pandemic worse for some than others? So for me, there's that tension. I am grateful for the least of my wishes. But I still hope and pray and work for ALL the miracles possible right now. Dayenu. It would be enough. To be a small speck of breath in the universe. And for that universe to be transformed.