some days feel like the worst ever

i just opened the beautiful invitation to my best friends daughters Bat Mitzvah.  and then i began to cry. 
 
i didn't cry in that 'oh i can't believe she is old enough to be a Bat Mitzvah' way. 

i cried in the 'oh i can't believe that i live 8000 miles away" kind of way. 

i cried in the 'missing very important events in the lives of people who are very important to me' way. 

i cried in the pure feeling of being so very far away way. 

i cried because on november 23rd- when i should be at Temple Beth Elohim in wellesley massachusetts with my people- i will be in the village in luwero uganda at a fundraiser for the little village school with new people- most of whom i don't know.  she will be celebrating. there will be dancing and good food and table decorations and memories.....like the memories i have of her mom's bat mitzvah....and i will be sitting in a field, under a makeshift tent, eating matoke and trying to get people to donate a bag of cement.

i cried because it's everything sometimes.

because i had to go to a meeting at the kids school because we've been placed on high alert.  because the meeting was about security and having police guards with automatic weapons and attack dogs, and things shouldn't be that way.

because the car air conditioning is still broken and it's so darn hot that i bought a bag of ice and sat on it on the way home...seriously.

because even the 'i'm thankful' game didn't help entirely.

so i sat on my bed and cried because some days are like that.  some days you feel old and tired and done.  some days you feel hot and over the red dirt that you know you'd long for if you left.  some days you feel how far away you are in ways that are more than miles.  you feel your whiteness and your difference.  you feel foreign and outside.  and that is really hard on days when you want to belong and feel connection. on days when you want familiar and known.

and then you open a sparkly pretty invitation from someone who has known you for 38 years and you kind of fall apart.  someone who as walked through decades of hard days with you, who knows exactly what to say and do and not say and not do. someone who gets you because she watched you become who you are now.  one of the special people at home who have loved us enough to let us go and manage to forgive us for being so far away and missing their big moments.

and then you realize that your big moments have changed. that your life has changed. you realize that even though you are tired, and sometimes lonely, and even though you want to be at that Bat Mitzvah, you can't really imagine going back. you realize that you have forever changed.  that you now live between places and people and that you can't go back to how it was because you just can't.  you have two things in your heart.  so you have to learn to live with it, in it, through it, despite it, because of it.

you have to be in the crazy beautiful mess of it.

so i went back to the 'i'm thankful' game.  i'm thankful that i got the Bat Mitzvah invitation- i mean that it actually made it here.  i'm thankful that i have friends for 38 years.   that i get to help the luwero village get cement and corrugated metal roofing pieces.  i'm thankful for sparkly and red dirt and that there was ice for my ride home.  i'm thankful for my newish friends here who get this life because they do it to.  i'm thankful for my ugandan friends who love us even though we are different and don't always get each other.  i'm even thankful for the beautiful mess of it.