I am preparing for Roshanna dinner I feel totally sideswiped into, although I would have loved to give my partner a real celebration for the Jewish New Year, the timing is off. I have a ton of reading I’d rather be doing—a paper and a novel I yearn to write—so much to explore and deadlines—school is in session.
I am tidying the house, cleaning off the counter tops to make a place for the spread of holiday food to be served buffet (except for the soup and gefilte fish). My beloved paternal grandmother’s cut glass perfume and powder set have been sitting on the granite breakfast bar for months, ignored by the housekeeper grimy with years of basement dust. One stopper edge has a corner broken off as does the powder top and base. I wipe the six pieces clean with Windex and paper towels, images waft off the slick and broken parts. Grandma’s iconic darken bedroom—a faceted plane gleams with votive candlelight lighting infamous saints with flickering light reflected in the large mirror attached to the dresser. I am too young to understand the complexity of the juxtaposed objects and space. I am not even aware of our family’s dysfunction. We are a pack of open ganglions, noisy and combative but always there, protecting and assisting, for each other. I have not been a good caretaker of my inheritance, my older brother worst. The perfume stoppers and powder jar were damaged by my carelessness. I regret this since I dearly cherish my grandmother memories. I have realized in the last months, after decades of struggling to keep my beloved older brother I must stop clinging to my sentimental version of the past. The brother I grieve for (although he is alive and living well with his family) is closed off in an unreachable corner he has closed the door on.
Interactive intertextual narrative 