Sometimes the Phoenix Burns…Sometimes the Phoenix Returns…by Robert M. Katzman
Sometimes the Phoenix Burns
Sometimes the Phoenix Returns
by Robert M. Katzman, October 3, 2016 Â (and updated a year later)
(In classical mythology, the Phoenix was a unique bird that lived for five or six centuries in the Arabian Desert, after this time burning itself on a funeral pyre and rising from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.)
On a grey drizzly Rosh Hashanah morning, I was sitting on my squeaking old cedar swing in Racine, Wisconsin, where Jews seem to be an endangered species. Just sitting still, staring at this massive brick fireplace I built out of heavy reddish paving bricks during my long winter without Joyce. Her illness kept her away from our home for months. I wanted to build something permanent, something that would stay with me. I decided to build a fire.