glenrockschwartz

Dear Alex and Avery, It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today.  Your Saba passed away in the early hours of the morning on Monday. Below are a series of hopefully not too disjointed thoughts that I want to share with you. I like the word erudite - and not just because it was made popular as one of the four factions in the Divergent book series.  No, I like the word erudite, because it rolls around in my head and off my tongue as the perfect word, the perfect embodiment of my grandfather.  An intelligence that cannot be bought with education, a sense of class that is lauded in movies that make fun of "new money".  Some people might associate erudite with snobbiness and being judgmental; to that I say, oh yes! And as the third in the line (hi mom!) of absolute judgy snobs, I say this with glee and pride. My grandfather is better and he knows more.  Proof positive is this renaissance man who has a clearly thought through view on world politics, who is a s...

Dear kids Rosh Hashanah starts at sundown this evening and as it is meant to be a time of spiritual renewal, here I am reflecting on my world.  There are phrases like “a world forever changed” that are used after catastrophic events like the assassination of JFK (well before my time) or September 11 attacks (in my prime time as a newly married young adult). And it’s true, we can all talk with extreme clarity about exactly what happened in those moments. Our current world forever changed, the one we are living through, is different. Rather than a point in time and the aftermath, it’s a slow burning, multi year long, new way of life that has changed forever how we act, how we think, how we feel.  (Complete parenthetical side note before I return to gloom and doom. Worlds are forever changed with happy events as well. That moment I said to your dad “Ani l’dodi v’dodi li”, or when I first found out that I was going to be a mama, and sublimely (there may have been some drugs involv...