Twenty-Seven

Two rabbinical students studying Talmud at our dining room table. I’m so thrilled that Léah and Emery are here with us on Léah’s birthday. It was obviously not possible for Léah to be in L.A. last year and it was touch and go this year (thanks, Omicron) until their plane touched down on Christmas Eve. It’s depressing that the pandemic still rages but Léah has made the most of it with their Zoom seders and weekly online Havdalah service. My beloved first-born is just beginning this new chapter in their life and it’s so gratifying to me that they are following their bliss towards a vocation that combines all of their strengths, skills, and passions. What more could any parent ask for?

Today we will do our traditional birthday hike up Runyon Canyon in the unusually brisk Los Angeles weather and I will think of that amazing moment 27 years ago tonight when Léah came into this world.

As I’m sure I’ve relayed in several of these posts, their mom and I were at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood watching The Lion King for the umpteenth time when labor began and I wasn’t sure that Léah wasn’t going to be born right there in our fifth row seats while Rafiki sang “Circle of Life” (a song Léah would later sing in a great production of that musical, as seen here with a slightly terrified baby Charles). And a birth like Esther Blodgett’s in A Star Is Born (“I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater, in Pocatello, Idaho…”) would have been all too appropriate for the life Léah was destined to live.

When I turned 27, I was three months into my new life in California, away from everyone and everything I knew but following my gut to stay put in this new land even when the job I moved out here for went bust the following month. I’m glad that Léah has always followed their gut, even when their decisions, like the one to leave high school at the beginning of sophomore year, were scary and unpopular. Finding connection and community hasn’t always been easy for my oldest child, but nevertheless, Léah persisted and moved forward despite the challenges, and that movement and trust has borne so much fruit.

Léah, I’m far from the perfect dad, my mistakes are legion, from torturing your beautiful curls when you were young to not always making time for you when you needed it to mangling your pronouns as an adult despite my best efforts, but I love you more than I can possibly say. I can’t begin to express my gratitude that you are such an important part of my life.

Last night when we were doing a jigsaw puzzle together (correction: when Kendall, you, and Emery were working on a complicated jigsaw puzzle and I was looking on in horror), you mentioned that you had recently watched Yentl again and I started spontaneously singing the final song from that film that we both love. It suddenly seemed so perfect for this occasion.

The time had come
To try my wings
And even though it seemed at any moment I could fall
I felt the most
Amazing things
The things you can't imagine
If you've never flown at all.

Though it's safer to stay on the ground
Sometimes where danger lies
There the sweetest of pleasures are found
No matter where I go
There'll be memories that tug at my sleeve
But there will also be
More to question, yet more to believe.

The more I live, the more I learn
The more I learn, the more I realize
The less I know
Each step I take 
(Papa, I've a voice now)
Each page I turn 
(Papa, I've a choice now)
Each mile I travel only means
The more I have to go
What's wrong with wanting more?
If you can fly, then soar
With all there is, why settle for
Just a piece of sky?

I love you, Léah.

Comments

[Charles Miller]

Happy 27th birthday! ❤️❤️

[Mike Cohen]

Happy Birthday Leah!