106 - In Sanibel

Reid, E.G. and I have been spending the past week on Sanibel Island on Florida’s Gulf Coast. We’ve been coming down here for 8 years over the school winter holidays. The best part, aside from the warm weather - escape from Chicago snow - is the people we have bonded with down here. One family are old friends: their oldest son and E.G. were in the same Hebrew School carpool. The mom, Sybil, likes to say that she watched E.G. grow up in her rear view mirror. We are joined by Sybil’s husband’s brother and his family, who also live in our neck of the woods, three families from New York, another couple from Chicago. With the various kids, parents, grandparents and friends, it is a big group that congregates around one of the pools each day and discusses who is going to dinner with whom and where.

But it is more. It is a vacation family. We’ve watched kids grow up in the mirror of our sunglasses. There is a calm constancy to these days: beach walkers, shellers, pool sitters, shmoozers. Some years we celebrate Hanukkah together. Sometimes, everyone gathers in our apartment to light candles and welcome Shabbat. There are more stars here, I think: no Chicago or New York skyglow, no streetlamps. Just the ocean and the sand and the sky. God is good.

One Hundred

In Sanibel

At this latitude, changeling winter warmth,
Here between the ocean-sky,
I consider Your heavens
And Your sweet-singer of praises.

I consider Your heavens, dark night,
Clear with rising moon sliver;
I consider Your heavens and startled,
Know Dovid ha-Melech saw just these stars.

This brief moment, this clarity of stars
Points the way to ancient holiness,
The unchanging connection, slender, potent,
That You send us through their constancy.

I consider Your heavens.
You are mindful of me.
I consider Your heavens
With my mind full of You.