Massage

During my massage today I thought about how rare it is for me to enjoy concentrated attention from someone else. The physical sensations of the massage were wonderful and restorative, but the luxury of the experience was from not having to worry about anything other than my own sensations. It was a warm cocoon in which I was the bright center of the universe for ninety minutes. And it was the enjoyment of that experience which I am holding on to now, hours later. It feels like that was what I paid for.

We had out seder tonight. Though each year it gets easier, I feel an outsider the entire time. It’s not my story, but it is of those I love and live with. And it’s fine and a ritual, and each year the kids have more attention span and bargaining for the afikomen gets more fun, but I always experience a degree of feeling like an interloper, or someone peeping through a window. What my kids are experiencing now—the annual seder meal as part of their lived experience—I never had, and don’t have that memory to compare with the present like I do with Thanksgiving or Christmas or Halloween.

That’s all.