Yesterday, I had to unearth the four 1 x 2 foot stepping stones that for your entire childhood, made a path through the grass from our home to our car. It felt like a desecration.

 It was a task borne of necessity—not an undertaking I chose. A worker had arrived unexpectedly to remove three tree stumps (ash, cedar, and elm) from our property, and the cedar stump could only be accessed by displacing the stones.

Ce qu’il y a de plus profond dans l’homme, c’est sa peau.

The deepest part of a human being is her/his skin.

-Paul Valéry

Tobias, my firstborn, is eight days old, and his circumcision, or brit milah—the covenant of circumcision—welcomes him into our Jewish community and the entire Jewish tribe.