August 15, 2017

remembering Charlottesville

Not the way I saw it in a photograph from yesterday's paper, the fists
of men meeting in smoke-filled streets, police standing too far away,
impotent in riot gear and indecision. Instead, it is the kitchen on South Bath Avenue
in nearby Waynesboro I tumble back to, the one my parents made our Sabbath dinner in, 
and the one from which we emerged to drive to a synagogue 30 minutes away.
How despite the strangeness of our new Southern home, the neighbor girls
who couldn't pronounce my sister's name, the church bells pealing on the hour,
there was a place for us in Charlottesville, a sanctuary filled with prayer and blessings
knitting us together. What I want to remember is how close we sat in the pews, humbled
by so much welcome, our hands loose and open at our sides, almost touching.