Odysseus can’t return unchanged to his wife Penelope after so many years trying to get back to what he left. The scars of battle and the trauma of his travels have forever changed him.
It’s interesting what we attach ourselves to and the meaning we ascribe to objects that somehow, over years, become important not in functionality but just in being.
The anniversaries in my life are a mix of celebrations and contemplations battling against each other for days on the calendar that I count down towards in both expectation and apprehension.
I don’t think I ever fully realized the scope of this country I live in, the grandeur of the spacious skies and purple mountain majesties that were only mindlessly sung in a song or displayed on my 13″ laptop screen.
Having finished a year of this, I have to say that my assessment of online learning is overwhelmingly negative. However, there are elements of the online teaching experience that I will take into my classes even when Covid is a memory and the Zoom stock levels out.
The memories we unpack each year, the feelings the objects evoke, the sense of family and tradition they create, tell stories in a much more powerful way than the Haggadah.