On Green fingers, G-d and a pandemic!

I’m debating how I can get my hands on some plants and flowers given that the world has shut down. To clarify I have the most non-green fingers on planet earth. The only plant that has ever survived under my care is called a “desert flower’ and that survived because it needs to be watered about once a year. And yet, I feel this need to plant something pretty. To see something bloom.

Also, my most awesome neighbor David Kirschenbaum gave my kids his basketball hoop and my desert flower just got smashed to smithereens.

I’ve been biding my time waiting for the right words of wisdom matched with funny to fill my pandemic induced home time…and yet for the most part I’ve come up blank.

Partly because my newest favorite thing in the world is to watch Netflix until 3am and sleep late. G-d how did I forget how fun that is??

Partly because I have been thrown into an existential exploration about my soul, G-d, the universe and the reason for all being. That’s been most fun! Highly recommended along with stabbing yourself in either eye with a set of toothpicks.

I want to lie and say I’ve been in the throws of homeschooling my five kids. But let’s be honest unless my kids can get through school via You Tube videos this year will be a write off.

And every time I have tried to address the list of things I thought I would do, like the family photo albums I am a mere 14 years behind on creating, this blog that I have let slide, or you know just work in general… I find myself having a full blown unmedicated ADD episode which sees me wondering to meet my pals Ben and Jerry at the kitchen counter.

Someone said to me…perhaps we have to go inside in order to go inward (thanks Jodi Basch)

As a teenager I loved the band Greenday. My favorite line in one of their songs through my teenage angst of self-discovery was “Grasping to control, so I better hold on”

But I think (although this may be blasphemous of me to say) but that Greenday had it wrong.

Grasping to control… so I better let go.

I think we are all struggling with words… because in the face of something that is so much bigger than all our parts, something of which we clearly have no certain outcomes or time frames or even protocols, when we debate who and what to trust? How and on what will we live? We have no option but to surrender and just let go.

I was watching a movie with my kids – Evan almighty – a modern Noah’s ark story, with G-d played by non-other than Morgan Freeman himself. And as all things become clear and G-d saves the day when man has truly placed his faith in something bigger than himself, my son chimed up and said,

“Achla G-d” (which loosely translates to mean “Good one G-d!”)

And I thought… that’s really it isn’t it?

Despite the pain and suffering of so many, there is also an exquisite surrender being demanded of us all.

And so my decidedly non green fingers feel like planting something pretty, because while we cant control the sunshine or the water, we can lean in as best we can toward the beauty of it all.

Good one G-d!