One of the highlights of my 2018 was randomly connected with a retired therapist, Geri, who grew up with my Grandma Roberta, during an Ashkenazi immigrant cultural heyday in Brooklyn. Please let it never be forgotten that when I first moved to Brooklyn, I got an old bike, named her Roberta, and rode my Grandma all around her previous stomping grounds.  Roberta died sort of suddenly, before I got to know her that well, which is entirely my fault, as I had plenty of time, but we were so similar that I think we reflected ourselves back to each other, were too much like the south poles  of magnets. Geri saw my name in an article about the Cake, reached out via my agent, and we began chatting intermittently over email and phone. I received the below from her, yesterday — (she’s referring to an article I did in which I speak to feeling religiously, politically ‘split in two.’)

I just read the LA Times article from June/2017 and now the shrink speaks.  Nothing,  absolutely nothing can split you apart – that will always be  your choice, so never go there. You have every right to feel confused, conflicted, stupid, and so on, and that’s called growing, and grappling with who you are always becoming, enriched, smarter more humane where all that grappling takes us, so go with it, and always be exactly who you are, at that moment, because that is the reality of how we live, and eventually you’ll have it all worked out, and by then you won’t give a shit. Just be the who you recognize and if some of that is in confusion so be it, confusion and nuance are wonderful, they deepen us.  I am awed by the degree/depth of your productivity and probably are the object of enormous envy so relax and be Bekah, whoever the hell she is, she’s terrific.