Each Friday, when we usher in the Sabbath, is an opportunity to offer blessings to our children. We do this after we recite kiddush, sanctifying the Sabbath. This involves not only the aural transmission of words of blessing, but the tactile conveyance of those blessings through our laying our hands on our children's heads. One of those "children" is taller than I am, so I either reach the top of his head on my tip toes, or he leans down toward me. Either way, we make it work. My husband and I take turns, blessing each of our kids, using the blessing for males for our sons, and the blessing for females for our daughter.
It might seem quaint, even odd, to pause one evening each week to offer a blessing to one's children. I recall vividly, fondly, achingly, the sound and touch of my father's blessing me each new year, for the year ahead. It is one of the most cherished memories I have of my entire childhood and adulthood. I've no idea how my children will process or memorialize for themselves the experience of being blessed by my husband and me, but it's deeply meaningful to us as parents that we give them this experience, that we communicate our hopes that they will live lives of goodness, of peace, of security, sheltered and protected by God.
It may seem strange or even irrelevant to focus on such things at a moment of global struggle, in the midst of a crisis born of an illness that is beyond humans to control fully, much less banish. And yet, it is precisely in these times of chaos and loss of control that slowing down, that leaning in to that which is aspirational and hopeful in the best ways, matters most. I cannot promise anything to my children with more fidelity than that I will love them, that I will cherish and support them. What is a blessing, more than a commitment to those very things? It is through blessing my children that I convey to them that what binds us is not things, it is not the materiality of life. It is the connective tissue of hopes, dreams, love, and the solidarity of family. In the moment I speak the words of blessing, and in the moment in which I lay my hands on my children, that connective tissue is strengthened.
The possibility of offering a blessing is itself a kind of freedom. It represents a choice about how to express hopefulness and gratitude. At a time when choices are so deeply, painfully constrained, that freedom is exquisite. I cannot go where I want. I cannot be with others. I cannot meander in the physical world as I've been used to doing. But sequestered with my family, I am able to talk, and to touch, and to be in ways unmarred by the dreadful pandemic that is COVID-19. That in and of itself is its own kind of blessing.
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