My sister, Lisa, is a master at tight book reviews. Following in her footsteps, yet diverging into film, I’m setting out on a parallel path.

Filmmaker and performer Jeremy Xido’s documentary Sons of Detroit, has just won the Director’s Award at the Sedona International Film Festival. Sons of Detroit is stunning. Moving. Funny. Heartbreaking. And healing by proxy. If such a thing can be entertained. Xido’s 1960’s revolutionary parents moved the family to Detroit’s Chandler Park neighbordhood and went back to saving the world. Jeremy, often left on his own, became the white “cousin” of the loving black family that became his village.

After a two-decade absence, Xido returns. His “cousin” Boo has just been released from 20 years in prison. The leafy neighborhood of well-kept single-family homes of his memories is a skeletal testament to what was.  Xido sets out to find out what happened to Boo, to the black family who raised him, to the neighborhood, and ultimately to himself.  Xido’s interview with his parents (now deceased) will have you holding your breath. The tears will come of their own accord. For Detroiters, Sons of Detroit will have special resonance. Please don’t miss this movie.

Zoe is pure fun .  The film’s eponymous heroine is total mess. No life skills outside of shopping, partying and being a fair-weather friend and romantic partner. Forty-two is fast approaching. Along comes a wizard who offers her one wish. After much characteristic dithering, Zoe articulates something the wizard can work with, crafting for her three lives from which she is expected to find her answer. If she cannot decide from among the three, she must live with the wizard forever. Like I wrote above,  Zoe is pure fun.

Ethan Bloom offers yet another take on the Jewish-boy-doesn’t-want-to-be-Jewish theme. Instead of studying for his Bar Mitzvah, Ethan Blooom is secretly studying to convert to Catholicism. Ethan  loves everything about the Catholic religion.  He rides around town on his scooter wearing a white confirmation robe. He is the none-the-wiser priest’s star student (natch, he’s Jewish after all.) He has an altar in his room dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

Ethan’s father is beside himself with Ethan’s cockamamie obsession. In the opinion of his too-much-info-giving kookie grandmother this is simply an adolescent phase. You know the moment of truth must arrive and it does: with four spare and searing words uttered by his shocked and betrayed father. For now, that’s all I’ll write about this sweet and utterly enjoyable film. Except to say that the last line of Ethan’s Bar Mitzvah speech is worth the price of admission.

Dancer/Choreographer Jenn Freeman was 33 when she received a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. Her life fell to pieces even as all the pieces of her life that had confounded her began to make sense. Freeman’s father filmed much of her childhood and adolescence. There was no way then they could have seen what the viewer now recognizes through the lens of ADS.   Jenn’s constant twirling from an early age was stimming, short for the self-stimulating repetitive behaviors, that helps those with ADS self-soothe and calm the overwhelming input so constant in their lives.  Jenn was fortunate her self-stimming behaviors led to the dance lessons became her lifeline.

Born to Move traces Freeman’s journey as she rewires her sense of self. Examined in reverse, her life begins to make sense even though life as she now knows it only becomes knowable one day at a time. At one point in the movie she muses, “Every day is a new day because I am a new person in it.”

The film is riveting. Jenn Freeman’s courage in allowing the camera access to her journey is a gift. The world is richer when the non-neurodivergents make room for those born to move in their own way.

At times I walk through our house with an eye toward what would I keep? What would I let go? So many tchotchkes. So many estate sale finds: our dining room table (1980); a Restoration Hardware lucite and chrome lamp (2016); yard tools, adn many other finds.

I’ve not yet mentioned the books, of which there are so many. So much truth, beauty, learning. I feel a kinship with the subjects of the biographies. And the books on religions and spirituality. I strive to live the teachings from many wise authors.

The most precioius of all are the children’s picture books. Of all the treasures on my shelves, I don’t think there is one I could part with. Each page is an esquisite translation of word and image. Often the words come first. Sometimes, with doubly gifted authors, the image comes first, calling  out for its own story. Children’s picture books offer up life lessons to the innocent and comfort to the aching heart.  They are works of art I can revisit whenever I like, the bookshelves having become akin to a museum where handling is the point and there are no closing hours.

I am blessed to have a few books from my earliest childhood as well. I have so carefully tucked away my 65 year old copy of Albert LaMorisse’s The Red Balloon that I cannot find it at the moment. But I do have Favorite Poems to Read Aloud which my Grandpa Abe gave me when I was six.  I only have to find the poem about the boy with a hole in his “pottet” to hear his voice and feel his embrace. I have written about Carmen Bernos de Gasztold’s Prayers from the Ark, but not Reflections on a Gift of Watermelon Pickle, a poetry book my mother gave me for my 12th birthday.  Its Langston Hughes’ poem Dreams has been a guiding light in my life. Marci Hans poem, Fueled, well, I think I shall include that one in the Wisdom drawer this month. Much better read and recited than recounted.

From my childhood to my chidrens’. There are the gems from their early years as well. Were Elliot to read The Creation, by Ori Sherman and Stephen Mitchell, respectively author and illustrator, would he hear my voice? Would my bedtime snuggles with Emma return to her in the pages of Martin Baynton’s Jane and the Dragon?  I think so.  I hope so. One of Leah’s faves was Esphyr Slobodkina’s Caps for Sale.  The book’s  lineage passes from Captain Kangaroo to me to Elliot and now the to our granddaughters.

That’s the magic of children’s picture books. Timeless museums of word and image, they are the repository of love from one generation to another.

A friend hosts a monthly activity at Meer Apartments, a senior residence community here in West Bloomfield, Michigan.  He asked if I would prepare a program for May, perhaps about my book, This Jewish Life, or on any other topic I might want to share. Storytelling is near to my heart and so I brought This Jewish Life, spoke briefly about how I came to write it and read my own story which opens the book.

Some of the women shared their stories and I learned of the anthology Don’t Write Me Off! Thirty-Nine Stories of Older Adulthood to which some of them had contributed a story of their own. Ilene, a sweet friend of mine from synagogue was there that afternoon and shared the story of how she became the bubbe (grandmother) to an entire schoolful of children. Edie told the (partially hilarious) story of the morning her husband died. Yes.

I traded books with Ilene. I gave her This Jewish Life and she gave me Dont Write Me Off! I am enjoying it immenely.  The stories are deeply moving. The authors have lived joy, endured sorrow and prevailed over personal crises. They recount rising from the depths with wonder, gratitude and determination to move forward.

We all have a story to tell.  More than one. In some way, by some method, find a way to tell your story. Share one here. Check out StoryWorth.  Write it down. Make a selfie-video.  However you choose, gift those who come after with the gift that is you.