Who By Fire

I’m writing this ahead of time because Yom Kippur started last night.

Last weekend, ChickieNob and I tested out 7 trailers, trying to choose a new television show to watch together. We landed on Bad Sisters on Apple TV. (Side note: We really loved the first episode. Funny and dark and interesting characters.) The show’s opening music is a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Who By Fire.”

How timely.

The song is Cohen’s version of the “Unetanneh Tokef,” a prayer central to the High Holidays. Who will be written in the book of life for another year, and who will be lost before the next Rosh Hashanah. The prayer talks about how all of that is decided during these days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

It’s a prayer I’m struggling with this year — actually, I do every year — because I feel time so acutely right now. I didn’t as much when the twins were little, but they are older and I am older and everyone I love is older. But we’re living the next eight months or so in a period of deep unknown. Where will the twins be next year? What will have changed? What will not be as bad as I fear? What can I not predict at all right now, still standing on this side of the change? Having to sing about not knowing things, having to reflect on everything humans don’t know on a yearly basis is really really hard.

That’s what is on my heart today.