If I had wings....

היום אחד עשר ימים שהם שבוע אחד וארבעה ימים לעומר
Today is eleven days, which is one week and four days of the omer
נצח שבגבורה
A day of perseverance in a week of strength

I have to write two short bios for myself this week--one for the Hazon ride in May and one for the educator institute I will attend this summer with The Jewish Women's Archive.

It's times like this that I feel my age with a different perspective from the physicality of aging. How to boil down my almost 40 years of adult experience into three or four sentences? What do I choose to tell; what do I choose to leave out.

I haven't written the bio for JWA yet, but here's what I wrote for the Hazon ride:

Marilyn Heiss is a native New Yorker and a 26-year San Franciscan. An Emmy-award winning editor, she has been working in the TV/Video/Film industry for over 30 years. Marilyn found her way back to Jewish practice through yoga, and is a proud Torah chanting, minyan going, tefillin wearing woman. A participant in the initial meditation practice periods at Makor Or, the meditation center founded by Rabbi Alan Lew, z"l & Zoketsu Norman Fischer, she served as its program director from 2003 - 2005. In addition to her editing work, she trains b'nei mitzvah students, and teaches Torah and Jewish studies to 7th & 8th graders at Peninsula Temple Beth El in San Mateo.

Pretty straightforward, showing pretty equally the mix of my professions as an editor and a Jewish educator. They seemed happy with it :)

Doing this has reminded me of a song that felt very close to me when I was a teenager. It's on Peter Paul and Mary's Album 1700. It still speaks to me today as it spoke to me then.

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, no one asks why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I'll fly free then.

Yesterday's eyes see their colors fading away
They see their sun turning to grey
You can't share in a dream, that you don't believe in
If you say that you see and pretend to be me
You won't be then.

How can you ask if I'm happy goin' my way?
You might as well ask a child at play!
There's no need to discuss or understand me
I won't ask of myself to become something else
I'll just be me!

If I had wings no one would ask me should I fly
The bird sings, and no one asks her why.
I can see in myself wings as I feel them
If you see something else, keep your thoughts to yourself,
I'll fly free then.