May 4

In recent weeks, my kids’ bedtimes have edged backwards to the point that it is rare for either of them to be asleep before 9 p.m. They are typically getting up each morning by around 7:30 or 7:45 a.m., which means they are still getting plenty of sleep, just on an altered schedule. I realized the other day that as a family we have shifted back, more or less, to Standard Time schedules. If we had not changed the clocks in March, the hours they are keeping now would be equivalent to going to bed around 8 p.m. and getting up around 6:45 a.m., which would make sense for school schedules. This presumption, of course, ignores the regulating influence of virtual school schedules and other routines, and a tendency that runs in my family to be night owls (i.e. even on Standard Time we might be staying up later and sleeping in these days).

But still, in spite of my family’s general restlessness because of social distancing, I can’t help noticing that our altered sleep rhythms seem to be more in tune with nature and that, while I am noticeably fatigued as a result of juggling so many things at home, I am not as tired as I usually am at this time of year. I am not alone in noting the silver linings of living at this time, such as clearer skies, and more time to be with loved ones, and it turns out that slowing down our pace is helping my family recalibrate our sleep cycles in beneficial ways.

I know that it is more than a little preposterous to think that this experience will lead directly to changes in Daylight Saving Time policies, but I am hopeful that, along with evaluating our impact on the environment, this time will give us pause to consider how living in tune with nature’s rhythms can physically be better for us..

May 5

It’s the first week of May, which means we are getting close to Mother’s Day, to be followed soon by Memorial Day Weekend and graduation season, not to mention the Jewish holiday of Shavuous. Normally at this time of year, the weather is becoming reliably warm, and we become more carefree as our thoughts turn to celebrations and vacations. But this year is different.

In addition to not having public gatherings, the weather this week is unseasonably cold, with a chance of snow in the forecast for later this week. It’s like nature is adding insult to injury as we slog through this. But that’s if we take a very narrow view of things.

The 1918 flu pandemic killed an estimated 675,000 Americans. That was at a time when the U.S. population was around 103 million. Today, there are more than 330 million Americans, and, as of this writing, the projected death toll for COVID-19 is estimated at 135,000. (More than 70,000 Americans have already died from the disease.) The difference in the death toll may be a reflection of the severity of either illness, but also demonstrates the advancements of science and medicine.

First of all, it is deeply tragic that so many people are dying from this illness (more than the number of Americans who died in the Vietnam War), and we need to continue doing our part to make sure that the numbers don’t go even higher than that.

However, as harrowing and difficult as this experience is for all of us, it is reassuring that the benefits of modern medicine and technology, while not able to completely protect us from contagious disease, are doing a lot to slow the spread and help those who are ill to recover.

A combination of improved hygiene, better nutrition, vaccines, and better treatment for chronic medical conditions help us in 2020 to be more resilient to illness. Scientific knowledge and the generally widespread access to cleaning products (despite the shortage of disinfecting wipes!) help us to prevent the spread of illness, and Internet connections and video conferencing allow us to do work safely from home that we could not have accomplished even a few years ago. These advances clearly are not enough to completely stop this virus, or to prevent devastating economic consequences for millions of Americans, but they go a long way in helping us in general.

If we had to be hit by a pandemic, right now in history is an easier time to deal with it than any time before now. Until recent decades, humanity was accustomed to dealing with waves of deadly infectious disease every few years. Until this spring, we had forgotten what that was like, but it turns out, we are vulnerable in ways most of us never considered.

In 2020, we are isolated at home, and scared for the future, much like people were in 1918, but we have the benefits of rapidly advancing medical research that is saving lives. Right now is a really difficult time, one that most of us never imagined would happen in our lifetimes. However, our great-grandparents survived in a world where this happened all the time. We should recognize how fortunate we truly are, and learn to never take the absence of illness for granted again. 

May 6

To build upon yesterday’s thoughts, I don’t in any way want to imply that we are “lucky” that 70,000 Americans have already died from this illness, and many more are expected to die. The mass casualties of this illness have been devastating, and the trauma of coping with loss and fear during this time will reverberate for many years. What is going on right now is not to be taken lightly. COVID-19 is a vile disease that has struck in unpredictable and swift ways, leaving families bereaved around the world. We are simply “lucky” to have better tools to manage this disease than were available in 1918. (And, truth be told, many of the lessons learned from 1918 provide the best guidelines for how to deal with COVID-19 since the world has not seen a pandemic of this magnitude for more than 100 years.)

I only met one of my great-grandparents, because the rest died before I was born. In my younger years I didn’t spend much time thinking of them, but I find myself increasingly connected to them. One hundred years ago, my great-grandparents had school-aged children, as I do now. They were young adults, younger than I am now, with the responsibility for managing large households without modern conveniences. They lived at a time of World Wars and great societal change. They had resilience and strength, ambition and determination.

In spite of the difficulties of life at that time, they also had incredible joy and optimism, and their love of life and family is what is recalled most clearly by my parents’ generation, who knew them in the waning years of their lives.

Thinking about my great-grandparents now gives me a lot of hope for the future. Despite the hardness of life, they persevered and lived happy lives. This gives me hope that we will too.

May 7

When I was 37 years old, I had surgery to remove a benign thyroid nodule. Such nodules are quite common, and are not usually cancerous. My gynecologist, who discovered the nodule during an exam when I was 35, and ordered an ultrasound to get a closer look, told me that it was unlikely to be cancerous. However, she sent me to a general surgeon for a needle biopsy.

The surgeon, for whom I have enormous respect, grew stern when I told him my gynecologist told me the nodule was probably not cancerous. He would not offer such a blanket reassurance without performing a biopsy and knowing for sure what I was facing. I knew that he was right, but this shook me up. For the first time in my life, I realized that there was a possibility that I could have a serious illness. (Fortunately, thyroid cancer has a very low mortality rate and is less complicated to treat than many cancers. But still, cancer is scary.)

The needle biopsy came back negative. No cancer. But I continued to see the surgeon every six months to a year to monitor the nodule. When it grew, he told me it was time to surgically remove it. The removed nodule would also be examined for cancer cells. The surgery involved an overnight stay in the hospital and a week-long recovery at home.

I was very lucky that the biopsy showed no cancer cells in the nodule, and I healed from the surgery and went on with my life. I have looked back on that experience with gratitude for the opportunity to contemplate, in a very real way, the fragility of my own life. Several weeks after my first meeting with the surgeon and the needle biopsy, I learned I was pregnant with my second child. I thought often during that pregnancy and the early months of my son’s life that I was so fortunate to enjoy these milestones without the complication of a cancer diagnosis. My son was 18 months old when I had the surgery, and he came with me to my follow-up appointment a couple of weeks later. The blessings of my life had never been clearer.

I’ve been looking back on this experience now, when all over the world we are dealing with the possibility of illness and the spectre of death in chilling ways. Usually we go through life without contemplating our mortality, but really none of us knows who among us will be alive from one day to the next. One benefit of this very difficult time is the opportunity to truly consider the blessing and fragility of life, the time of whose end is unknown for all of us.

April 27

We have been social distancing for so long now that it is both “normal” and also surprisingly hard to maintain. Because today was sunny and beautiful, our family went for a lunch-time walk. I was practically giddy, and the improved weather made me momentarily forget that we are still under the ominous threat of a pandemic. 

And, really, when I say I forgot, I just mean that COVID-19 wasn’t pervading my thoughts the way it often does. My family continued social distancing, just without the emotional weight.

Even though our society has become unexpectedly adept at social distancing, there are limits to how long this can go on. It takes constant awareness to stay six feet away from others and to remember to wear a mask to go shopping, and wash our hands frequently (though that last piece of vigilance should become standard practice, and should have been already). It’s human nature to become more lax about these things. While there are signs that the levels of infection are beginning to abate, we are still in a phase in which it is critical that we maintain necessary precautions.

On the other hand, the phenomenon of “corona shaming” (embarrassing those who don’t appear to comply with social distancing) is pointless and destructive. Before we began social distancing, I had serious doubts about whether a significant portion of our society would comply with official recommendations. However, with widespread closures, and public education about the seriousness of this illness, people have been much more compliant than I would ever have imagined. Yes, there are those who are not complying, and that’s not insignificant because every social contact can help to spread the virus, but all around the world, people have come together (by staying apart) in ways I could not have imagined, despite the economic and emotional toll of doing so. 

As for those who are not complying, unless you are a public health official or other person charged with enforcing social distancing, I suggest that, at most, you offer friendly guidance to those who would be receptive about how to social distance, call the police for truly egregious violations, and otherwise stop focusing your energy on those who are not doing what’s right. If you think about all the things that are going wrong, and all the people who are not complying, you will go crazy. As a society we are not going to do this perfectly, and no one ever suggested that we would, but in addition to observing the restrictions on our own, we need a certain amount of generosity of spirit toward others to help us get through this. 

April 28

I have never known real food insecurity. I am incredibly fortunate that all my life, even when my family experienced financial difficulties, we never had an empty cupboard and fridge. We never had to wonder if we would be able to buy the food we needed.

While I have tried throughout my life to appreciate this good fortune, living through COVID-19 has given me my first real glimmer of understanding of what it means to be food insecure. Because of shoppers who hoarded various items, when we have gone shopping in recent weeks, we have done so with the knowledge that we might not be able to purchase things we want or need. In addition, we are limiting the number of times we shop and therefore learning to be a little more creative in making meals and substituting ingredients that are available at home, rather than making unnecessary trips to the store. 

This experience has shown me how very spoiled we have been. My whole adult life, I’ve cooked with the knowledge that I can run to the store if I find I have forgotten an ingredient for a recipe. With rare exceptions for special occasions, I have never had to worry that the stores would have the things I planned to buy, or if I could afford them.

Living through COVID-19 in good health and comparative luxury, I can begin to understand the pervasive stress of not knowing how or if one will be able to feed his/her family. It’s terrifying. And those who are truly food insecure are feeling the impact of this pandemic much more brutally than the rest of us.

My grandparents were young adults during the Great Depression. For the rest of their lives, they were extremely careful to never waste anything, especially food. While I have always aspired to minimize waste, with the busyness of family life, I have found that we end up wasting a lot more than I prefer. However, one bright spot of this experience is that I am paying closer to attention to how much we actually need, not just what we want. We are eating more leftovers, and cooking smaller portions. Again, we are grateful that this is not a financial decision. Rather, it is a recognition of the scarcity in our food chain, and the importance of not wasting. Instead of making one meal from a package of meat or chicken, in which at least one serving goes to waste, on a few occasions, we’ve cooked half the fresh meat, and frozen the rest to prepare another meal. This is good for us, the environment, and our fellow consumers. I hope this new focus on minimizing waste becomes a permanent facet of our family life.

If you live in Squirrel Hill and are experiencing food insecurity, please contact the JFCS Squirrel Hill Food Pantry.

April 29

It’s a beautiful day in Pittsburgh, my kids’ school has helped our family remember to celebrate Israel’s Independence Day today (Yom Ha’aztmaut), and we are beginning to see the first signs of the economy gradually opening up. It feels like hope is returning, and so I have decided to be radically positive in my posting today.

I enjoy the environmental observations of NYTimes columnist Margaret Renkl. This week, she wrote about nature’s apparent resurgence during social distancing. With fewer cars and humans afoot, it is quieter and safer for animals to venture forth. The air is cleaner, the sky bluer. Renkl is careful to point out that none of these positive developments in any way represent a reversal of climate change, but she counsels us to think about our relationship with the natural world and see what we can do to reduce our negative impact.

Thinking about this suggestion, I have realized that now is a great time to think about what is possible. What are the things we can do to make our environment cleaner and safer for plants, animals, and humans? While by and large social distancing has been hugely inconvenient and in some ways devastating, it has also shown us what we are capable of when we work together (even when we are working individually because we can’t be physically close). During this time, great minds all over the world have come up with incredibly creative ideas to help people continue important services remotely, and this same creative brilliance can be used to come up with solutions to our climate crisis.

Throughout this experience, I have been amazed at the resilience of humanity. Over millennia, the human race has learned to adapt to horrible conditions, and has survived harrowing experiences. We have learned from these experiences, and found ways to prevent them from recurring. We can do that again. It’s time to shake off our malaise of believing that we have arrived and achieved the zenith of existence. Perhaps we have in some ways, but we have done so at the expense of harming our beautiful world. It’s time to change our behavior, in ways that may be inconvenient and difficult, so that we can create a future that is healthier for all of us.

April 30

I find that between getting my kids ready for their day of school from home, helping them deal with tech issues, and trying to settle in for my work day, I have a pounding headache by 10 a.m. (My husband does too.) In some ways, adjusting to the routine has made it easier, but in other ways, the fatigue of multi-tasking gets worse over time. The last couple of days, I have found it especially hard to focus on work. However, I am amazed that at the end of each day I am somehow, miraculously, continuing to make progress on work projects, even if the pace and quality are not what I would prefer.

Sometimes I feel guilty about being distracted, but I try to remind myself that I get distracted plenty when I am in my office at work, so I just have to continue doing the best I can.

The roller coaster of emotions of this pandemic continue to fluctuate between hope, despair, anxiety, and frustration. It’s a toxic brew. While I welcome the impending, gradual openings of various services, I also worry about things getting worse again, and needing to return to social distancing. I keep reminding myself that no one knows the future, and not to put too much stock in predictions, but also to stay the course of continuing to follow the recommendations of health officials. Yesterday, I was feeling radically positive. Today, I’m struggling to stay on task. It’s what’s to be expected in these challenging times.

April 20

As planned, I took a two-week break from blogging to focus on the holiday of Pesach. While I continued to do some work for my job, the majority of my efforts were devoted to cleaning, cooking, shopping when necessary, and celebrating the holiday with my husband and kids. (Last year I blogged about Pesach cleaning, and this year a version of my post was published in Nashim Magazine. I submitted the piece before the spread of COVID-19, and worried that it would seem tone deaf in these changed times, but in the end, I think the ideas still held up.)

While Pesach involves tremendous exertion and can be exhausting, it is also typically an invigorating and hopeful time. I love the traditional holiday foods and enjoy having a break from regular routines during what is usually a particularly beautiful time of spring.

This year, my family had most of the usual holiday foods, and the flowers outdoors were indeed blooming. However, the background knowledge of the pandemic was constantly on our minds. I was deeply grateful for an opportunity to disconnect from the news, and found this break to be restorative physically and emotionally. However, the holiday was missing a lot of its usual joy, and when it ended, instead of feeling buoyed and energetic, I felt deflated.

I know that the feelings I am having now are not just because I am Jewish. In our sixth week of social distancing, as we continue to hear about spreading infection and death tolls, this is a point at which we wonder if life can ever get back to normal. Almost more upsetting than the illness itself is the devastating economic toll this is taking on those who have lost jobs. I am grateful to work for an organization that is helping our community to weather these difficulties, but the amount of need created by this disease in our country and globally is absolutely staggering.

Over the last few weeks, I have been repeating to myself that we are in the worst part of this disease cycle, with infection rates peaking or plateauing in many places, with hopes that they will soon begin to drop off. There is a lot of reason to hope, but there continues to be great uncertainty about how we will move forward.

Even in these dark times, there continue to be sources of inspiration and optimism. There are people donating blood or plasma to help those in need; our medical workers show up day after day with incredible energy and devotion to help those who are suffering and dying; and low paid grocery workers continue showing up, day after day, to ensure that people have food to buy. 

Looking at my closest circles of friends, I was encouraged to see friends on social media cheerfully preparing for and celebrating Pesach even though most were unable to be with extended family, and some had to unexpectedly engage in the arduous preparations for the holiday when their plans to go to fancy resorts were canceled. I hope they found this richly symbolic holiday to be even more meaningful than it would have otherwise been and I hope that some of them, despite the tremendous work involved, will decide in future years that they can forgo the fancy resorts in favor of the simplicity and beauty of celebrating Pesach at home.

For me, Pesach has always been a holiday of simplicity. We are restricted from eating many foods, and learn to do without others that are permitted but not really necessary or worth the hassle. Like a lot of things in western culture, even Pesach has been affected by the trappings of consumerism and aspirations of luxury. However, just as so much of our lives have been stripped down to basics by COVID-19, I think for a lot of people this year, Pesach was an opportunity to return to a basic, unadorned celebration. It was still a time of festivity, but a more muted one, recognizing the times we live in.

When we first began social distancing, I must admit that a big part of me hoped this would all end by the time Pesach was over. I tried not to pin my hopes on that, knowing that I could be setting myself for deep disappointment. I felt a big sense of let down as the holiday ended and there is still no clear sense of when this will end. So, now I am focusing on redirecting my thoughts in a different way.

I remembered that when we first knew that we would be distancing for at least two weeks, I felt overwhelmed and wondered how it was possible we would get through it. Now that we are a few weeks past the two week time marker, we have seen that we can do two weeks, four weeks, and soon six weeks. We can’t do this forever, but we’ve already done more than many of us ever imagined. Rather than focusing on the big unknowns, we can tell ourselves that we’ve done this for X days so far, and we know we can do at least one more, and then one more, and then one after that. We’ll keep social distancing, and looking for silver linings, and eventually things will get better.

April 21

You know when you are a kid and you watch a movie about someone overcoming something really difficult, and you think to yourself, “That’s really cool. I would totally do the same thing if I were in that situation”? As a kid, you look at people doing heroic things and allow yourself to believe that you have the same heroic capacity. The thing is, they’re called heroes for a reason.

Even though I was a good science and math student growing up, I never considered a career in health care. I knew that I couldn’t do it because I don’t have the stamina to work long and unpredictable hours, tend to be germ phobic, recoil at unpleasant odors, and am not great at dealing with other people’s problems. I probably would have done reasonably well in the academic science classes and failed miserably with any practical applications of medicine. The world is a better and safer place without me providing health services.

This is my way of saying that I have great admiration for doctors, nurses, physicians assistants, nurse’s aides, dentists, dental hygienists, and all manner of therapists (physical, occupational, speech, psychological, and anyone else I’m leaving out). Even in the best of times, I couldn’t do the work they do, and in times like these I would be a disaster.

It’s important to know yourself, and troubled times tend to bring out people’s true natures. So I know now that, unlike the heroes who rush into danger and save others from disaster, if I were in those hero flicks of my youth, I would probably be frozen in terror or running the other direction. Because that is how most of us are, and that should give us a deeper appreciation of the greatness of those who are putting their lives at risk now to protect the rest of us.

While I have found out that I am not made of hero stuff, I have also realized, again, like most people, that I am more resilient than I thought I would be. There have been so many times that I have felt “I can’t do this,” and then I find that I can. Most of us can, and if we know of someone who is experiencing real psychological danger in these times, there are resources available to help them. It is OK to not be OK, because, again, the heroes are out there to help people get through this, and the rest of us have the responsibility of keeping our eyes out for those who are suffering, and pointing them in the direction of the services they need.

One of the most encouraging messages of the social distancing era is that the passive act of staying home is saving lives. It really is, and when you think about it, that’s really cool. A meme I saw said that “Your mother told you that you’d never amount to anything just sitting on the couch, and here you are saving the world.” 

So, while I’m not out there with my sleeves rolled up to treat people who are dangerously ill, I am calling any day a success in which I am managing to function in a capacity that somehow mimics normalcy and in which I am able to fulfill basic human responsibilities. I allow myself to periodically freak out or take a break to sit in a catatonic state when I feel overwhelmed. I know I’m not alone in this. I know I am so much more fortunate than many people going through this. I know this will not last forever, but while it does, I’ll do what I can to passively support the heroes in the thick of things, and to continue flattening the curve.

April 22

I continue to frequently feel caught off guard by my own feelings. Today, a minor disappointment made me cry. I let the tears flow, knowing I needed a release, and knowing that my reaction wasn’t just about the little thing that went awry, but more about all the concentrated emotion underneath it.

Times are tough, and one of the toughest things is that we don’t know when or how they will get better. And, in the meantime, we keep hearing bad news. The magnitude of loss of human life right now is mind-boggling, and what is more astounding is that even with close to 200,000 global deaths, the toll still pales in comparison to many man-made conflicts. Yesterday was Yom Hashoa, which commemorates the millions of lives lost in the Holocaust, including 6 million Jews.

With all of this sadness, I have found it helpful to acknowledge that we are all grieving. The New York Times offered this helpful piece today : https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/esther-perel-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage.

And, then, I read this helpful essay from my friend, Dorit Sasson: https://www.kveller.com/that-anxious-middle-of-the-night-feeling-its-grief/

When it comes to grief, the only way out is through. We have to feel the sadness, and grapple with it, so that we can get through it. And we will. It’s just a matter of time.

April 23

I have realized in the last few days that I am starting to feel more normal. In the first few weeks of this crisis, I couldn’t eat much, and I felt as though I were doing a lot of things mechanically. I was fearful and trying to keep myself from panicking. I still feel that way from time to time (including some whole days at a time), but my appetite is more or less back to normal, and, quite the opposite of feeling an artificial removal from things, my feelings are hitting me with particular force.

I think this is a natural way of working through this difficult situation. And, while there continue to be a lot of very ominous unknowns about this pandemic, we are now well into the period of not just anticipating what will happen, but reckoning with all of the illness and loss. 

I am also gradually coming to grips with the fact that my hopeful ideas of this virus being contained quickly were misguided. All along I have heeded the guidance to stay home, but I kept hoping that the restrictions were more stringent than absolutely necessary. Now I see that I was mistaken, and it is difficult to truly grapple with the enormity of what we are experiencing. It’s not gone, and it’s not going away quickly, and the responsible thing is not to rush back to the way things used to be, but to proceed cautiously and slowly toward gradual restoration, knowing that some of the things we miss about our former lives will take a very long time to return and others will be permanently altered.

March 30

Yesterday the weather was beautiful — sunny and warm. My family spent a lot of time outdoors, and I got a lot of cleaning done inside the house. I felt great, and confident that “I’ve got this” social distancing business. Then, today was overcast and chilly, and it seemed harder than ever to get my family to focus on their things so I could concentrate on work. My fuse is shorter than usual, and I am finding it hard not to lose my temper when things go awry. Today, my family got the full treatment, followed by lots of regret by me.

It just goes to show that there are going to continue to be ups and downs with this process. One of the things that is helping me today is the advice of Natan Sharansky, a famous Zionist activist who was imprisoned in the former Soviet Union for 9 years. He posted a humorous video with his tips for enduring a difficult situation that has no known end point.

His advice is similar to a lot of other tips I have seen, but carries the weight of someone who lived in solitary confinement for years. If anyone knows how to stay sane during a time of restricted freedom, it’s him. We have the additional comforts of sleeping in our own beds, and being able to communicate by phone and video with family and friends. As periods of isolation go, we are really very lucky, and that helps to put things into perspective.

March 31

I realized when I opened this document to write today’s entry that I had the wrong date on yesterday’s entry. I know many others have observed that they are losing track of what day it is, and apparently I am too. Time certainly feels very different from our usual routines, without the regulation of leaving the house at particular times, and needing to be on time for school, work, and appointments.

We are all disoriented, scared, and, increasingly, we are sad as we learn of hardships others are facing, and as we hear of those who are very ill and dying. This wonderful opinion piece from Psychology Today beautifully describes the emotional weight of living through this time. When I read it last night, I realized that it’s OK to be sad right now. It’s OK to be functioning at a lower level than usual. While it’s generally not good to dwell on negative emotions, sometimes we have to let ourselves feel them before we can move on.

As a fun family activity, over the weekend, we decided to watch the Pixar film “Inside Out,” which imagines the emotions inside a tween girl’s brain as a colorful cast of personalities named Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger, and Disgust. As the girl goes through an upheaval in her life, Joy, once her dominant emotion, gets sidelined. It turns out that Sadness needs to have a more central role in the girl’s life as she matures. While the movie was lighthearted overall, it carried a deeper message that moved me. Joy and Sadness are intertwined in our lives and our memories. What makes us happy can also make us sad, but sometimes things are just sad. It’s just the way they are, and we can’t cover that up. We can just struggle through it. And sometimes, the sadness we express can give other people the opportunity to connect with us, and create more opportunities for joy.

Even now, there is still joy in the world, and when we have come through this great time of sadness, joy will come back to us. We just have to help each other in the meantime in whatever way we can. 

April 1

Between managing my work responsibilities, and trying to make sure my kids stay connected to their online classes, I sometimes feel like I barely have a moment to breathe all day. Today, I followed some guidance from the JFCS Counseling Department in how to breathe deeply. This video offers a simple breathing technique that I used yesterday and today and found to be helpful.

I took a moment just now to use the technique, and felt my body relax and my worries begin to subside just a bit. I notice that during times of stress, I tend to worry about not only the big topic that is creating stress, but also lots of much smaller issues that don’t usually stress me out. For example, when my laptop battery was running low this morning, I began to feel really anxious, when all I needed to do was plug it in so I could continue working. I try to be aware of this stress to keep myself from flying off the handle for minor inconveniences.

In the last couple of years, I have tried to challenge my own internal worries. For example, whereas in the past I would have invested a lot of worry into some minor detail that I couldn’t control, in recent years I have tried to let go of this worry, knowing that worrying wouldn’t help, and that anyway, the consequences of things not going according to plan would be very minor. I’ve been proud of myself when I have been able to do this, but I am finding it hard to do this right now. Instead, when I feel my anxiety level escalating, my new goal is to take time to breathe deeply.

April 2

It’s almost uncanny how much difference the weather makes in getting through this difficult time. Today it was finally sunny again. At lunch, my kids and I took a walk around the block, which did wonders for helping me feel less stressed out and anxious. When the sun is shining, it feels like a reassurance that life is still going on and following the natural order. It feels like good times are on the way. I happen to enjoy a nice rainy day from time to time, but right now I am appreciating the illuminating power of a sunny day.

Objectively, not much has changed in the world since yesterday, and I can’t avoid the disturbing headlines that keep popping into my e-mail inbox, but it helps to have some historical perspective. Humanity has endured wars, famines, and plagues much more severe than this one. The resilience of human beings, and of our world, is truly remarkable. 

There are a few glimmers of hope that help me cope with this pandemic. First, the significant reduction in traffic from cars and airplanes, and probably even from industries, is good for our environment. Several weeks of this, going on not just here but globally, will result in a small, and probably temporary, improvement in air quality. I am hopeful this will in turn help our plants, animals and insects to be a little bit healthier. And, I hope the knowledge that we can live with less dependence on fossil fuels will help us make permanent shifts in our culture to preserve the environment.

On a personal level, it has been nice for our family to be together a bit more and to be less rushed. (It’s also extremely stressful and frustrating at times…) We have this opportunity to learn to tolerate, appreciate, and support each other. We will certainly remember this time for years to come, and hopefully in hindsight will be able to focus more on the happy times together than the pervasive fear around us.

March 23

It’s the start of a new work week. When I went to bed last night, I was full of anxiety and unsure if I would be able to sleep. Fortunately, I drifted off without too much difficulty and woke up feeling calmer and ready to face the day. While I’m falling short of sleeping the recommended eight hours a night, I find that going to bed and getting up at regular times is helping me to manage my emotions. As a bonus, I can sleep a bit later than I would when I had to take my kids to school each morning.

On typical workdays, I often write a to-do list for the day, and I am continuing this at home. The list is especially helpful when one of my family members interrupts what I am doing, and I lose my focus. The list is in some ways an anchor to my work.

Previously, when I needed a mental break at work, I often checked news websites to learn what was going on in the world, but in recent days, I have found the news greatly increases my anxiety and makes me feel less able to work. Instead, I am avoiding the news, except when absolutely necessary, and instead focusing on the positive benefits of being busy with work. It’s truly a sign that things are turned upside down when work is the escape we seek, rather than the responsibility we seek to escape from. I am also thankful, daily, that my job is intact, at least for now, as I hear of friends being furloughed or laid off.

March 24

One of the heartening things about this crisis is that friends, relatives, and colleagues all seem to be genuinely concerned about each other. In addition to asking about me, my coworkers ask me all the time how my kids are doing, and how I am handling things. Overall, I am happy to say, we are all doing fine, but I realize I have neglected to mention a very important person in these posts: my husband. He is also working from home now, with the added challenge of working non-traditional hours because his employer doesn’t have capacity for everyone to work on the remote network at the same time. So, he’s supervising and distracting the kids when I am working, then logging on later to do his own work. I know that many parents like us are working “shifts” so that someone is constantly available to supervise the children.

There’s no perfect formula for working and schooling at home, and inevitably, my husband and I both have our work interrupted, and our kids periodically slack off or misbehave on their video chats (my apologies to the parents of my kids’ classmates). Sometimes I feel really stressed and exasperated. Today I am just thankful for the things that are going right, and hoping they continue.

March 25

For the last couple of days, my family members have been more hyper/edgy. My husband and kids all popped into my various video calls with work today. Fortunately, I work with people who were amused by the distractions rather than being annoyed with them. It was validating that on the same call, another coworker’s kids could be heard in the background and another’s cat kept walking in front of the camera. Such is life in the age of working from home.

It’s getting harder to be home all the time, and it’s hard knowing that this may go on for many weeks or even months. When I dwell on how long this could last, I start to feel paralyzed. Instead, I focus on one day at a time. Today, I can see my kids mastering their new routines and becoming a bit more independent. Today I can continue my work for an agency that is needed more than ever by the community.

I am thankful to live in an age when technology enables us to continue so many of our activities remotely. My boss pointed out a few days ago that even five years ago, we didn’t have access to all of the tools that we are using now. Even though this time is incredibly difficult, the challenges of being away from other people are significantly alleviated by video conferencing, online ordering, and other tools.

March 26

Stay home. That’s the message we’ve been getting, and that is what I have been doing, except for walks outside and necessary trips to the grocery store, pharmacy, or post office. And yet, I still feel guilty. I keep my distance from others, avoid touching my face, and wash my hands as soon as I get home, but, like just about everyone I know, I worry about whether this is enough. 

I try to balance this anxiety out with more reasonable thoughts: I am following the recommendations of experts, I am doing my part. We are living in scary times.

I am inspired by my fellow citizens who truly have an “all of us are in this together” attitude. They’re choosing to stay distant for their own health and that of others. I am too.

But it’s hard to come to terms with the reality that we have to be so much more careful than we’ve ever been before, and at the same time to recognize that we still have to be human and to acknowledge that if we are following the official recommendations, we shouldn’t blame ourselves for the things we can’t control.

That’s what I’m struggling with today.

On a more positive note, when I haven’t been dwelling on the morbidity of this situation, I’ve made some real progress on work projects, soaked in the sunshine, and enjoyed the quiet blooming of spring. The renewal of nature gives me energy and hope, and helps me continue moving forward in this dark and strange time.

March 16, 2020

Today was the first work from home and no school day of the COVID-19 social distancing efforts. My kids each had a list of assignments from their teachers to keep them busy. I was impressed that they were mostly compliant with “school at home” for the first day. They had “recess” in our backyard, and some spurts of screen time throughout the day (more than I intended) but they also spent a lot of time on reading, math, and their other subjects.

I participated in a JFCS Pittsburgh staff call via Zoom video, then went into the office for a brief meeting with the development/marketing department to discuss our plan for working from home. Then, it was back home to try, with frequent interruptions, to do my job as a grant writer. I can’t claim to have been super productive, but to borrow a sports metaphor, I kept the ball moving forward. I am grateful in these crazy times to still be connected to meaningful work and to have a sense of being productive even in a very small way.

March 17, 2020

The hardest thing about working from home is maintaining the structure of work. On a video call with coworkers today, one of the JFCS development staff remarked that she finds it very hard to be away from her regular work environment. Still, we’re all trying to stick to normal schedules, logging onto work when we would usually begin our work day, and keeping up with the needs of the agency. For staff who work directly with clients, that means calling to check on them, and offering to provide services via video or phone.

Those of us who don’t work directly with clients are able to access our work documents remotely and to keep working toward deadlines. Because closures related to COVID-19 are widespread, some of our work is understandably slowing down, so I am trying to make steady progress toward deadlines that are a bit further off, and to be available to help with other agency projects, as needed.

For many of us, our work gives us a sense of normalcy, in a very abnormal time, and helps us stay connected to other people while we are physically distant from one another. JFCS clients should know they are encouraged to reach out to us, as all the staff remains connected and are available to help.

March 18, 2020

There are pluses and minuses to every day of working from home. Today, one bright spot was that the weather was nice, enabling our family to go for a walk in the park at lunch. Another positive was that my kids had their first day of virtual learning, in which they could see and hear their teachers and classmates via video link. 

On the other hand, adjusting to distance learning was a challenge for all of us, especially with difficulties setting up the technology. Frequently today I reminded myself to take a moment to breathe, and I gave myself permission to just sit still to collect my thoughts during the rare moments that I wasn’t responding to a work e-mail or answering my kids’ questions about school work.

A consistent highlight to my day has been the opportunity to touch base with coworkers by video link. Human connection is so important, and each day I notice that some of us are struggling a bit more than others. Our daily conversations give us the opportunity to keep tabs with each other, provide an opportunity to talk through our challenges, and maybe even share a laugh when a pet or family member makes a cameo appearance on the video feed.

We are all juggling a lot of balls right now, with little time to process everything, and the background anxiety of knowing that we are living through a very difficult period with many unknowns. It’s a lot to deal with. However, even though we are physically distant from each other, we are not alone. Sometimes just taking a couple of minutes to talk about what we are experiencing offers others a feeling of comfort and validation and lifts our own burden a little bit, giving us the psychic space we need to focus and be productive.

March 19, 2020

It’s my fourth day of working from home, and my dining room table is more cluttered than ever, but my family is settling into our new routines and learning to use new technologies, while giving each other space to do our work. I am also following the great advice of this article from The Cut which advises parents to take the pressure off themselves to get a lot of work or schooling done during this period. I remind myself that anything we accomplish is great, but it’s most important to stay physically and emotionally healthy right now.

As a grant writer, my job is to think about the quantifiable impact of JFCS’s services on the community. For example I often write about the number of people who receive food assistance from the JFCS Squirrel Hill Food Pantry, the number of jobseekers who find work through the JFCS Career Development Center, and the number of vulnerable refugees who receive the supports they need through JFCS Refugee and Immigrant Services.

However, in this time of crisis, I am learning about the extraordinary human impact our staff have on the community. Even though the JFCS building is closed, staff are constantly in phone and video contact with clients whose existing needs have been intensified by this crisis, and our agency is here for anyone in the community who is newly struggling.

While the news from day to day is overwhelming, I am in awe of my coworkers who are approaching their work with new energy, a willingness to help wherever needed, and the creativity to assist our community in totally new ways. JFCS is still here for you. Don’t hesitate to give us a call.

February 27 marks 17 years since Mr. Rogers’ death. That’s a long time for someone who in many ways has seemed more alive than ever in the last couple of years as a result of a documentary, a feature film, a stamp, a biography, and other commemorations of his life and his work.

I never met Mr. Rogers, but I was an avid viewer of his show as a kid, and I was one of his Pittsburgh “neighbors” in the last three years of his life, which coincided with the beginning of my career.

I moved to Pittsburgh in July 2000 to work as a “two-year associate” (basically a paid intern) for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A few months later, in November 2000, Mr. Rogers’ production company announced that filming of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood would conclude at the end of that year, and the final episodes would air in August 2001. The Post-Gazette’s television editor, Rob Owen, interviewed Mr. Rogers about the end of the beloved series, and wrote an extensive feature article about him.

I found it cool and a bit surreal that Rob, a coworker and nice guy who lived near me and often rode the same bus to work, got to have a face-to-face interview with Mr. Rogers. I couldn’t imagine doing this myself. Friends of mine had chance interactions with Mr. Rogers over the years, and told of being tongue-tied or saying something cliche about it being a beautiful day in the neighborhood, and I suppose I would have done something similar if I had met him. However, just knowing that he lived nearby was a source of pride and comfort.

Before relocating to the Steel City, I don’t recall associating Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood with Pittsburgh, but once I was here, he became a frequent topic of conversation, bringing vague memories from my childhood into sharp focus.

For example, during a newsroom chat, my editor was talking about the graceful moves of retired Steeler Lynn Swann, whose leaps were improved by taking ballet class. I suddenly remembered a favorite episode of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood that featured a football player in ballet class.

“That,” my editor told me, “was Lynn Swann.” Not being a sports fan, this bit of trivia was impressive to me mainly because of the realization that what Mr. Rogers showed on TV had been real, and that I was actually now living in The Neighborhood.

Snippets of Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood are deeply embedded in my memory.

I think fondly of his instructions for making home-made “peanut butter,” which involved breaking peanuts into small bits and mixing them with butter. Even though my mother told me that wasn’t actually how peanut butter is made, this recipe was fun and easy, and more accurate to my young sensibility. (Why call it butter if it didn’t actually contain butter?)

I also loved when he took us on a tour of the Crayola factory, and was disenchanted when he took us behind the scenes of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Seeing how puppeteers brought the characters to life diminished the magic for me. I preferred the illusion.

A kindly man with folksy ways, Mr. Rogers reminded me a little bit of my grandfather, who also had a childish enthusiasm for details of every day life.

When Mr. Rogers died in 2003, I was deeply saddened. On the day of his death, I tuned my television to WQED, the station that broadcast Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. For hours, they ran a loop of his most famous episodes, many of which were included in the 2018 documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” I learned of his kindness to Jeff Erlanger, the young boy who appeared on the show in 1981 in his electric wheelchair and spoke with Mr. Rogers about his disability. Jeff beamed as he sang “It’s You I Like” with Mr. Rogers. His appearance was just one of countless opportunities Mr. Rogers took to include and feature children and adults who were typically overlooked in mainstream media.

But more than that, that evening I soaked in an endless reel of film in which Mr. Rogers seemed to speak to me directly and remind me that “I like you just the way you are.” I was 26, in an unsatisfying job as a marketing writer, and in a strained relationship that would soon end. I felt that my imagined trajectory of success had been upended, and I was feeling particularly low. There could not have been a better moment for me to hear, repeatedly, that I was fine the way I was, just by being me.

Even though I did not have the good fortune to meet him in person, at that moment I felt connected to Mr. Rogers, and his mission of helping people learn to value themselves.

Leading up to the release of the feature film “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” I found myself again immersed in Mr. Rogers’ legacy. I read Tom Junod’s article which inspired the film. The article describes the journalist’s interactions with Mr. Rogers both in Pittsburgh and in New York, where Mr. Rogers kept an apartment and where some scenes of the children’s television show were filmed. The article was published by Esquire in 1998, during the time I was a college student in New York City, living just blocks away from some of the events in the article. Watching the 2019 film illustrated to me that not once, but twice, I had lived in close proximity to Mr. Rogers without ever meeting him.

New York is an enormous city, so it’s not surprising that our paths didn’t cross on his brief business visits. Even if they had, it’s unlikely I would have been close enough to speak to him, or that I would have found the words to do so. But I am left with an additional sense of loss. It feels like I was so close, and yet so far away from Mr. Rogers.

However, I didn’t have to see him face to face to absorb his optimism.

Several years back, there was a backlash against the “you are special” message of Mr. Rogers. It was the source of young people’s sense of entitlement, went the argument.

This was false. Mr. Rogers didn’t tell children they were entitled to anything other than an intrinsic sense that they were worthy simply as human beings. This belief is deeply rooted in the religious idea of being created in the image of God. It’s a concept that is supposed to engender respect and decency, and is one that our society needs now more than ever. Imagine how much better our world would be if we all treated each other like someone who is special.

Seventeen years after Mr. Rogers died, his messages of kindness and of remembering how children see the world resonate more than ever. Mr. Rogers nurtured our child-like sense of wonder and desire to connect with others. Perhaps all the celebrations of his legacy, on film and otherwise, will inspire us to carry on his legacy.

When I was a kid, one of the early indications of the great importance of Pesach (Passover) was that a couple of weeks before the holiday my grandmother would go to the basement to take inventory of her Passover products and dishes/utensils. This was remarkable not for the work that was accomplished, but for the fact that she walked down the stairs.

From the time I was a small child, my Bubby suffered from crippling arthritis. Her mobility was very limited, and from the time I was about 8 years old, when she was in her mid-70s, she used a walker to get around.

Steps were a particular challenge for her. While she continued to sleep in a second-floor bedroom until the last year or so of her life (she died shortly after my 20th birthday), she almost never went to the basement. So, when she took her annual trip down the stairs, it left an impression. It meant that Pesach was serious business.

The selection of Passover foods has always been limited in Charleston, West Virginia, where I grew up, so for years my grandparents made an annual pilgrimage to Cincinnati during the month before Pesach to visit my aunt and go shopping. Meats and cheeses went in the basement fridge or back porch freezer, and non-perishable items were laid out on a ping pong table in the basement that Zayde set up before the holiday.

The Pesach dishes were also stored in a large cabinet with a barrel bolt lock in the basement (never to be touched during the year), and a week or two before the holiday, they were taken out to be washed over the laundry sink, a job that usually fell to my mother.

Even though she was no longer able to perform some of the labor associated with the holiday, Bubby was still in charge. Her foray into the cellar, which lasted an hour or so, enabled her to take stock of everything and let the family members know which utensils were needed first to begin food preparations. Eventually, the dishes would be brought upstairs and stored in the pantry on a counter top and in a free-standing cabinet that Zayde brought down from the attic each year.

As a kid, I had some modest responsibilities leading up to the holiday, such as dusting shelves of knick knacks, and setting the table on the seder nights, but the anticipation of the holiday, and watching as older family members brought out the Pesach dishes and foods, was very exciting. As my sister and I grew older, we helped bring items up or down stairs, and annually we were warned to be careful, and reminded of the time, long before we were born, when Zayde had accidentally dropped a whole stack of plates on the stairs, breaking them.

These memories flood back every year as I set up folding tables in my basement to hold the foods I have purchased and the dishes, pots, pans, and utensils that will soon be brought out of plastic bins and cardboard boxes. The Pesach cabinet that Zayde brought down from the attic is now stored in my basement, more than 200 miles away from their old Quarrier Street house. I don’t really have space for it in my kitchen, and I haven’t used it much in recent years, but it is standing at the ready, a stalwart of Pesachs gone by.

Pesach celebrates the redemption of the Jewish people from Egypt, which enabled us to solidify our national identity and begin the journey to receive the Torah and, more than 40 years later, enter the land of Israel. It is the critical story of our people hood. The story of Yetzias Mitzraim (the Exodus) is one that captures our imaginations not just once a year, but throughout the year, and in our daily prayers.

And so, I guess it makes sense that it takes, on average, about a month of gradual preparations to get one’s home and one’s heart ready to spiritually experience the Exodus again.

The rabbi of my shul, Rabbi Daniel Wasserman, gives an annual sermon a few weeks before Pesach in which he reminds everyone of the importance of removing chametz (loosely translated as leaven) from our homes, which involves extensive cleaning and checking. While this process can be arduous, he reminds us that we should find it “ennobling.”

I doubt that Bubby would have described her Pesach preparations as ennobling — she did not mince words in noting that Pesach places extraordinary burdens on women — but she also took these responsibilities upon herself without complaint. Despite her physical limitations, she continued to do the majority of her household cleaning by herself.

She took great pride in having a home that was clean and orderly, and preparing delicious meals that were more than just physically nourishing. On the seder nights, she was exhausted, but full of laughter and pride.

At the seders, my grandparents would often tell stories about their parents’ observance of Pesach — the songs they sang, the foods their mothers prepared, how or where they obtained matzah, wine, and kosher meat in the towns where they lived. (Bubby’s parents made their own wine, including during Prohibition.) As we retold the national narrative of the Jewish people, they were also transmitting our family narrative, an informal practice that is part and parcel of the seder experience for many, if not most, Jewish families.

As the days unfold leading up to this year’s Pesach, I am tired, absent-minded and anxious about forgetting important details. Every time I check things off my long to-do lists, I think of several more things that must get done. It’s overwhelming, but it’s also deeply meaningful.

Returning to the rabbi’s drasha (sermon) about the cleaning being “ennobling,” I have come to realize that it satisfying to work for a holiday whose practice is festive and even magical. Educators these days talk about “experiential learning,” which is learning through doing. In a lot of ways, the seder itself is experiential learning, but I’ve come to realize that the cleaning is too. It’s the physical application of a spiritual task. Without days or weeks of effort, planning and exertion, the holiday would not have the same level of anticipation and excitement. The holiday is the goal, but the process of preparing is half the journey.

And, of course, Pesach is inescapably about family: family members working together to create a special holiday atmosphere, and passing down family recipes, memories, and jokes.

With unleavened bread and simple ingredients, we create a little bit of magic, just at the time that spring is magically transforming our world from brown to vibrant color.

This year, while I was in the basement, cleaning and reorganizing to make space for all of my Passover products, my kids came down out of curiosity to see what was going on. Instead of complaining they were bored or begging for screen time, they stayed close by, playing with their art supplies and talking about the foods they look forward to eating on Pesach.

In the coming days, I’ll give them small jobs to do, and in future years, their responsibilities will increase. For now, though, it is heartening just to see them curious about what is going on. Bubby and Zayde would be proud.

It’s that moderate time of mid-winter, when the days start to be noticeably longer, and the weather milder. In the gentle breeze, there is a scent of something fresh and full of promise.

Although it is after dark, the temperature is well above freezing, so there is less urgency to rush, less danger of discomfort from the cold. I exhale and relax for a moment when out on an evening’s errand.

By the grocery store, the street violinist is fiddling her tunes. In all these years, I have never stopped to give her a tip. I see her face, and notice she is aging. Even familiar strangers grow older over time.

When my groceries have been paid for and loaded in the cart, I pass her again on my way back to the parking lot. I linger for a moment and decide to put a dollar in her hat, a small thanks for the melodies she has entertained me with for nearly two decades.

She greets me with a smile. One song has ended, and she is debating what to play next.

“I am trying to think of romantic songs,” she says, and then I remember that it is Valentine’s Day, a holiday that I don’t really celebrate, though not out of bitterness or cynicism.

I suggest the old standard “Isn’t it Romantic,” but she doesn’t know it. I thought it was Gershwin, but later find that it’s Rodgers and Hart.

She asks me to hum it, and I try, but it doesn’t ring a bell for her. And yet, it has sparked an idea. She has been playing popular songs of the day, the stuff the kids listen to. Maybe she should play some of the classics from musicals. There’s that song from “My Fair Lady” she likes.

She places the violin beneath her chin and uses her bow to summon “On The Street Where You Live,” a song I love.

I become conscious of the time, and that I must be going, but as I move along, those lovely notes carry me into a happy, romantic dream.

On Saturday morning around 10 a.m., as is typical, I was getting ready to leave the house with my kids to walk to our shul (synagogue) in Squirrel Hill. Even though services begin before 9 a.m., youth activities don’t start until 10 a.m., so my goal is to get to shul then, though we usually run later. On this particular occasion I was aggravated by our lateness because I knew we had to hurry to hear the Torah reading by the boy celebrating his bar mitzvah that day. It was also raining lightly and I was fretting about whether my kids and I had chosen the right shoes and jackets for the 15-minute walk.

 

A few steps outside our house, it registered with me that I had been hearing sirens nearby. Since we live in a city neighborhood that is crisscrossed by a few major thoroughfares, and since we are relatively close to several hospitals, it’s not unusual to hear sirens. It is unusual,  however, to hear multiple sirens, or sirens that go on for a long period of time. As we walked, my kids and I talked with concern about what was going on. To calm them and myself I pointed out that over the summer there had been a kitchen fire in a house on our street, and four fire trucks had come, more than seemed necessary. Maybe lots of sirens meant the response was overly cautious.

 

We live about a block and a half west of Murray Avenue, one of the main commercial streets in Squirrel Hill, which also offers access to the Interstate system. Our synagogue is on the lower part of Murray, a block away from the Interstate entry ramp. As we approached Murray, the sirens grew louder. Slowly, I began to grasp that something serious was going on. When we were around the corner from my sister’s house, I noted that the sirens were not going toward their block, which was a relief. I thought next about my husband, who was already at our synagogue. I soon determined that the sirens coming from lower Murray were moving up the hill, away from the shul. My kids speculated that maybe something had happened at the JCC, at the corner of Murray and Forbes avenues. By the time we reached Murray, I looked toward the intersection with Forbes, and saw an emergency vehicle cross the intersection and keep going, so we knew the JCC was fine.

 

Maybe it was a bad car accident, we thought, or maybe there had been an incident at one of the college campuses in that direction. “I hope they are able to help the people who need help,” I told my kids.

 

As we progressed on our walk down Murray Avenue, one by one, a series of approximately 20 emergency vehicles passed us, including a City of Pittsburgh fire department SUV, several ambulances with the names of suburban emergency services, and quite a few unmarked cars and SUVs with flashing red and blue dashboard lights, some of them likely high ranking city police officers or federal officials. I marveled that all of these people had mobilized so quickly on a Saturday morning. The more vehicles that passed, the more I was certain that something very bad had happened.

 

I held onto both of my kids’ hands and kept them steadily moving toward our synagogue. When we arrived, the door was locked, which is not typical, but within seconds, a shul member standing guard let us in, recognizing that we belonged there. Inside the front hallway, there were at least a dozen people, including the shul president and a board member who I knew was involved in security upgrades for the building. I asked the president if he knew what had happened. “There has been an incident at Tree of Life,” he told me. My heart sank, fully aware now that there had been a violent attack on the Jewish community. I was advised that the building was on lockdown, and that the children should either be in their group activity rooms or with me at all times.

 

After stowing our coats on the coat racks, we went upstairs to the group rooms, which were locked. The coordinator of the children’s activities had a key to let the kids into their respective rooms. After leaving them there, I proceeded into the sanctuary, where the bar mitzvah boy, with remarkable composure, was reading from the Torah. On my way to my seat, a friend stopped me to say that she had seen my husband who was concerned that I would not be able to enter the synagogue, but she assured him that the guards would recognize and let me in.

 

Within moments, the rabbi made an announcement to explain that we were in lockdown because of an active shooter at Tree of Life. As the morning went on, he updated us to say there were reports of multiple fatalities, and that the synagogue would remain in lockdown until the shul’s custodian got an all-clear message from 911. He said he did not think it would be necessary for us to evacuate the building, but if it were, we should evacuate quickly and not pick up our children, since they would be evacuated separately by their group leaders.

 

The service continued more or less as usual, with the bar mitzvah boy reciting the haftarah. In the rabbi’s sermon, he urged everyone to try to focus on the bar mitzvah celebration since little accurate information about the attack was yet available, and because opportunities in life to celebrate are so fleeting. After the sermon, the bar mitzvah boy led Mussaf, and later gave a d’var Torah. Throughout, there continued to be periodic sirens, which heightened our fears, as did the rabbi’s admonition not to stand too close to the windows, just in case.

 

As I sat through the service, it was difficult to concentrate on what was going on. I was thankful that we appeared to be safe, but on edge about the possibility of multiple shooters or multiple incidents in our dense neighborhood. I shuddered at the horror of trying to evacuate everyone safely from the sanctuary and classrooms. I began racking my brain about friends who attend the three congregations that meet at Tree of Life and worrying for their safety.

 

By the time the service concluded, the rabbi announced that the shooter had been apprehended and the lockdown had been lifted. My kids came out of their group rooms to join me in the sanctuary, and before we went downstairs to the kiddush, I quietly told them that a bad man with a gun had gone into a different synagogue and killed some people. I wanted them to hear it from me, and not from someone else. They accepted the news, and were eager to go to the kiddush, but they would have many questions later in the day.

 

At the kiddush, there were some 300 people, all putting on a brave face and trying to join in the celebration of the bar mitzvah boy and his family, but the looks in our eyes were full of sadness and anxiety.

 

In the crowd I found my close friend and coworker to discuss whether any of our other coworkers attend services at Tree of Life. She remembered some, I remembered another. We hoped they had not been there, but had no way of knowing. We would find out that night that one of the severely wounded is the husband of a fellow coworker of ours at Jewish Family and Community Services of Pittsburgh.

 

My husband and I had invited another family for Shabbos lunch, so we found them in the crowd and tried to coordinate leaving together. Just after we got on our coats and were preparing to leave, my sister came into the front hall of the shul. She had received several anxious calls from family members and wanted to be able to tell them we were OK. I assured her that we were, and she told me that she, her husband and kids were also fine.

 

We walked home with our guests and did our best with them to have a normal Shabbos meal that would be fun for our kids. We mostly succeeded. After they left, the rest of the day seemed interminable, with no ability on Shabbos to check the news or to call friends or relatives. I sat in my living room to read the weekly Torah portion, and was interrupted repeatedly by my daughter’s incessant questions about what had happened. Most of them I could only answer with, “I don’t know” or “I have the same questions.”

 

As the afternoon wore on, our landline began ringing periodically with calls from concerned family members. Not being able to answer, my anxiety level rose even higher, feeling bad that I could not ease their fears, and worried that perhaps other bad things had happened in other places.

 

I debated knocking on our neighbors’ doors to see if they knew anything I did not, but I was also afraid of what I would find out. Similarly, I debated walking to the home of the coworker who I knew was a regular attendee of services at Tree of Life, but I was terrified of what I would find out, and this was later confirmed when I learned that her husband was in critical condition.

 

Shortly before 6 p.m., my kids and I ate supper and my husband, who had napped, came downstairs to join us. During the last hour of Shabbos I read to my kids, trying to lift the mood for all of us. Then, immediately after Shabbos, we gave our kids permission to watch a movie on DVD, and we picked up our phones to begin calling and texting relatives and friends who had been trying to reach us for hours.

 

Being digitally connected again gave us a few answers, but did not ease the dread of wondering who the 11 victims had been. I was saddened, but not surprised to learn that my coworker’s husband was among the injured, as I knew he was a pillar of the Dor Hadash congregation. As a hospice nurse and chaplain, he is among the kindest and most generous people I know, as is his wife.

 

This morning, I learned the names of the 11 people who were murdered yesterday. I didn’t know any of them personally, but through social media and the news I found that friends knew many of them well. This afternoon, reading a New York Times article about the victims, I realized that I did recognize one of the victims, Cecil Rosenthal. Cecil, who died alongside his brother, was developmentally disabled and was a fixture in our community. Over the years, I’d seen him at numerous events, always with a smile on his face. I learned from the article that he and his brother, who was also developmentally disabled, greeted congregants every week at Tree of Life, and handed them prayer books turned to the correct page.

 

So, now that the shock and the dread have begun to subside, I am left with devastating sadness. At moments I feel paralyzed, wondering how to focus on anything but the tragedy. At others, I am determined not to let the acts of one hate-filled murderer derail the goodness in my life, my neighborhood and my community.

 

With this is mind, I took my kids this afternoon, as planned, to a local production of the musical “Annie.” The girl who starred in the show is the daughter of a friend whose family has had a generations long connection to Tree of Life. I messaged my friend last night, to let her know I was thinking of her and would be at the production. She found me at the intermission today and we embraced.

 

“Annie” is an upbeat, fun musical with undertones of tragedy. Even as a kid, the songs sometimes made me tear up, and in the darkness of the theater today, it was hard to keep from sobbing. Fortunately, there were no young children orphaned in yesterday’s horrific attack, but we were all victimized in a different way. One friend’s husband is fighting for his life, and another friend was traumatized by witnessing the deaths of his congregants. We are all shaken by the knowledge of the proximity of the attack, and our extreme vulnerability. The attacker made no secret of his desire to kill all Jews. He killed 11, but he was coming for all of us.

 

We humans compartmentalize our knowledge of danger to permit ourselves to function in daily life. So when anti-Semitic attacks happen in other places, it is “over there,” far away, so that we can feel safe. This time, the attack was in my neighborhood. My daughter asked me why the shooter picked that synagogue and not another. While the news suggests he picked it because they hosted a refugee Shabbat, he could have just as easily walked into my shul, or my workplace, or any of the many other Jewish institutions in our neighborhood and opened fire. I can’t separate myself from the reality that he was coming for me too.

 

The people who died yesterday were the best of us: people who prioritized their faith and their community. Several were health care professionals, and the others were elderly people and the disabled, the most vulnerable among us. They were the shul regulars, who came on time and came every week, so that those of us who come later can count on there being a service. They cannot be replaced, and as time goes on we will feel their loss more and more.

 

However, as many others have already said about our Squirrel Hill community, this will not destroy us. We will tighten our security and close any loopholes, but we will continue to be the caring and close knit community that is so special. As Jews, we have collectively been through unbearably dark times, and we will come through this as well. I pray that our community and our nation will come out to the other side of this wiser and safer, as well as more thoughtful about the way we conduct public discourse. At my core, I agree with Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto’s determination that we are better than this.

 

May yesterday be our darkest day, and may we greet tomorrow’s sun, like Annie, with renewed optimism. Today’s staging of the musical was preceded by a moment of silence and a rendition of “Hatikva,” Israel’s national anthem which means “The Hope.” “Hativka” was composed before the state of Israel was a reality, and kindled hope in some of the darkest times in Jewish history. If hope could prevail then, I pray that it will again.