Categories
family VanLife

Blooming Where Planted – musings from vanlife

I’m on a journey. Back in the van, which I love by the way, and I’m driving en route to the midwest primarily to check in on my brothers who both have been struggling health-wise. I love them both and would miss them dearly if either of them should check out of this world before […]

Categories
belarus family Jewish

Train Travel Through Time and the Search for Belonging

They left Belarus in 1923 and the good life that they had created. Times had changed and the place of their home was no longer one in which they could remain. Just as I am departing now on this train to Minsk, my ancestors too left Vitebsk, six of them including my grandmother crammed into […]

Categories
belarus family

Returning to Belarus – A Journey of Discovery

I’m on an airplane to Belarus and I find myself a bit teary. Not quite sure why, but it just feels like I’m feeling the sadness of my family for having been such a long time away. A return to this place is assuredly bittersweet in the hearts of my people. My grandmother Sonia Breinin […]

Categories
family nepal

Nepal Trek – Upper Mustang – Part I

Jomsom to Kagbeni I Love spaciousness. My soul loves being in the middle of vastness. Something in me very simply relaxes. This feels like the most amazing place in the world. It may well be, or perhaps it’s that my mind simply confuses perfection, which I find here, with penultimacy. I’ve just begun my trek […]

Categories
family life

Dust in the Wind – The Impermanence of Memories

Places don’t have memories. Memories of places belong to the people who hold those memories. When they forget, or die, the memories which they hold die along with them. This doesn’t have to be a glum realization, but there is something about it which feels a little disappointing. A story. After the visit, my uncle […]