From Sand and Ash

by Amy Harmon

Rebellion was always my biggest ally, though sometimes I hated her. She looked like me and hurt like me, but she wouldn’t let me give up. And when fear took my reasons for fighting, rebellion gave them back.

My father told me once that we are on earth to learn. God wants us to receive everything that life was meant to teach. Then we take what we’ve learned, and it becomes our offering to God and to mankind. But we have to live in order to learn. And sometimes we have to fight in order to live.

It was hard to love or miss someone you didn’t even know.

Loving someone and then losing them would be much worse than not having them at all.

“In dreams, we always wake up when we’re falling. We always wake up before we land,”

“When you play, Eva, I feel hopeful. They can take our homes, our possessions. Our families. Our lives. They can drive us out, like they’ve driven us out before. They can humiliate us and dehumanize us. But they cannot take our thoughts. They cannot take our talents. They cannot take our knowledge, or our memories, or our minds. In music, there is no bondage. Music is a door, and the soul escapes through the melody. Even if it’s only for a few minutes. And everyone who listens is freed. Everyone who listens is elevated.

“And you are a poet,” Angelo said mildly, though his heart was galloping. Camillo laughed softly. “That I am. A great poet and philosopher. That is why I smoke this pipe. It gives me the look I desire.”

We would rather die together than be separated from our loved ones.” He puffed his pipe, letting the silence cleanse his mental palate. “Ah, who knows? Maybe that isn’t a Jewish trait. Maybe that is a human trait.”

A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world.

It was beautiful and painful. Just like life.

Sadly, her mother would always be dying in her memories, and her father would never be dead. That’s what happened when you said good-bye to someone, watched them board a train, and they never came home. Somewhere, inside, you always believed they would come back.

“That’s not happy.” Lorenzo yawned, but his eyes were closed. Emilia was asleep already. “But it’s beautiful. And beauty is always joyful.”

Life is like a long note; it persists without variance, without wavering. There is no cessation in sound or pause in tempo. It continues on, and we must master it or it will master us.

Action was life, even if it ended in death.

“With our fingers we touch the filth that is all around us. Our fingernails collect dirt, the lines in our palms become stained and soiled, yet when we raise our hands in prayer or supplication, we demonstrate that even that which is sullied by the world can commune with the spirit. That is why during Shabbat, when we hold our hands toward the candle, we curl our fingers away from the flame, allowing the light to be reflected in our fingernails. Even our fingernails, the part of us that is most unclean, can still reflect God’s light. At least, that’s how I understand it.”

Life is hell shot with just enough heaven to make the pains of hope all the sharper. Life is impossible. Ugly. Agonizing. Inexplicable. Torture.”

“You come down from the stars Oh, King of Heavens, And you come in a cave In the cold, in the frost, And you come in a cave In the cold, in the frost. Oh, my divine baby I see you trembling here, Oh, blessed God Ah, how much it costs you, Your loving me. Ah, how much it costs you, Your loving me.”

Sand and ash. The ingredients of glass. Such beauty created from nothing. It had been something Babbo had marveled about and something she’d never understood. From sand and ash, rebirth. From sand and ash, new life. With every song and with every prayer, with every small rebellion, Eva felt reborn, renewed, and she vowed to press on. She vowed to push back, to make glass from the ashes, and that courage was a victory in itself.

“There are worse things than being afraid,” Greta said gravely, her sudden sadness catching Eva off guard. “What?” Eva asked softly. “Being resigned is far worse. Being afraid lets you know you still want to live.”

Fear is strange. It settles on chests and seeps through skin, through layers of tissue, muscle, and bone, and collects in a soul-size black hole, sucking the joy out of life, the pleasure, the beauty. But not the hope. Somehow, the hope is the only thing resistant to the fear, and it is that hope that makes the next breath possible, the next step, the next tiny act of rebellion, even if that rebellion is simply staying alive.

Our immortality comes through our children and their children. Through our roots and our branches. The family is immortality.

God is quiet. But he is not blind or impartial in the affairs of man. I don’t know his mysteries, and like Eva, I’m not convinced anyone does. But I am grateful to know him to the extent that I do, to feel his love and influence in my life, and to walk quietly with him as best I can.