Little Gifts

The givers of many little gifts

This last month has been a nonstop carousel of insanity.

Passover came and went, with a flurry of chaos and love and joy and family.

Great aunts and uncles, distant cousins... a ridiculously full house for the Passover seder

Easter came and went, with sunshine and chocolates and full houses and full tables.

My Jewish, atheistic, color blind father dyes his first Easter eggs with my children

My birthday came and went, and I left my twenties forever to join the ranks of "real" adults. Sort of.

Yeah, that's me rocking out with a live band at a seedy bar. I'm singing the Beatles, because I'm edgy.

I performed in "Listen To Your Mother," which was a remarkable and moving experience. (Yes, more on this later.)

Photo by Balee Images

And then Mother's Day, with my children's love and the blaring, oppressive heat and humidity of Chicago in May.

Kisses and hugs are always the best gifts

And through it all, I've been working as hard as I can on the book. The book. It's practically an obsession right now, because it's practically done. Really done. I've put it through the ringer with beta readers and professional editors. I'm incorporating the last dozen bits of feedback and building it into something bigger and stranger than I imagined it would be. This thing, this labor of love of mine.

It's so close to done, I'm almost afraid of finishing it.

And through all this, it's been the little things that have kept me happy beyond reason.

My children, singing the Four Questions in Hebrew for their enormous extended family

Beautiful sunny days after a bitter, seemingly eternal winter

Visits from old friends

The friendship of these remarkable and ridiculous women
(Again, Balee Images)

My daughter marching around the house in her Pirates cap, screaming "GO PIRATES!" at the top of her little lungs

And maybe my favorite little gift. Messages from you, my lovely readers, making sure that I'm okay, that I haven't left the blog or you. And I haven't. I'm here, and I love you all. And now that this month of insanity has passed, now that I'm almost really truly completely done with the book, now that I'm not having daily panic attacks over getting onto a stage alone, or trying to decide what turning thirty means, or setting ever more places at the table, I can come back to you.

I've missed you all.

It's going to be a glorious summer.