“Birdsong and laughter.”

Remembering what matters most.

Over the holidays, a friend paused toward the end of an evening’s talk and jollifications to ask, “Should we be celebrating?” We stood together in front of the decorated Christmas tree and in the course of drinks and dinner had been discussing—the topic is inevitable, it seems—Israel’s inhumanity toward the people of Gaza, the incomprehensible suffering, the radical injustice. I do not think I have sat with friends once since the autumn just passed without this topic weighing heavily on our shoulders.

I responded without hesitation. “Without any question we should,” I replied. I was not immediately sure what I meant and from whence my certainty derived. But there are moments when one understands one’s thoughts in the course of speaking of them. And so I made my case: We owe it to ourselves, to humanity, even and esepcially to the Palestinians, to keep burning the torch of joy, of shared connection, of the sheer delight of being alive. We must show the Palestinians of Gaza, most of all but not only, that the flame of humanity is still alight and that the human spirit lives.

A friend who thought this over said some days later, at another convivial gathering, “Yes, but we must celebrate not mindlessly or forgetfully—rather, fully concscious of the cause, honoring it, observing our responsibilties.” This seemed an astute addition to my thought on the matter.

We publish the lovely piece that follows with this in mind. The cause is the human cause.

—P. L.

5 JANUARY—My heart has never been so heavy as one year ends and another begins. This has been the saddest of years.

I never thought I would see a genocide unfold in real time and that no one, not one nation, would try to stop it—until South Africa stepped forward last week and filed a genocide claim against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Or, worse: that my own country, the United States, would be fully supporting it, providing much of the weaponry, and that those opposed to the ethnic cleansing of Gaza would be accused of being anti-Semites.

I write this looking out of a window onto an unfamiliar landscape, sitting in a chair in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar house.

We found ourselves homeless in the final month of this troublesome year. After a journey of nearly 3,000 miles, driving from central Mexico to Maryland, we arrived in Baltimore to take up residence in a house we had rented based on photos we had seen and discovered, upon entering it for the first time, that it was derelict. The moving truck, which arrived several hours before we did, had already unloaded everything.

I will never forget the telephone call I made to friends in Connecticut. “Sue Ann,” I began when she answered the phone, “we’re in trouble. The house we rented is uninhabitable. Can we stay with you for two weeks?”

“Yes,” she replied without hesitation. “We’ll have dinner ready for you tomorrow. You can tell us about it when you get here.”

That was nearly two months ago. Since then, another friend opened her home to us and we are now in a small village in Massachusetts—still living out of suitcases and a car but with a roof over our heads, a comfortable bed, and a warm home in which we have marked the holiday season.

I am sad beyond reckoning and also aware of my good fortune.

Almost every morning of this year I woke up with a smile on my face listening to the sound of birdsong coming in through our open windows in Mexico. I miss the birds of Mexico. They made me feel at home on this planet and in my own body.

Birdsong and laughter. These are what lift my heart. I have never so fully appreciated the sound of human laughter—how it feels to let go and laugh—as I have this year.

At the end of a year full of so much sadness and confusion, brutality and injustice, it is birdsong and laughter and the kindness of friends that I pay homage to.