Judah Leblang

Boston, Cleveland

Freelance Writer at Freelance

Boston-area writer/performer of "It's Now or Never" at a digital Fringe near you. Author of the memoir Echoes of Jerry, available now @ https://t.co/aQ0ovjTHUi

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Articles

Bay Windows :: Welcome Home

1 month ago | baywindows.com | Judah Leblang

"Welcome to Cleveland," the Rabbi said jokingly, when I told her about my first week back in the city, and the reason I'd just moved to another apartment in my neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. When I looked out my front window on my first Sunday morning in town, I noticed that the kids next door, who had been chalking the pavement in their driveway the night before, had written "faggot ass Chancey" in mine.
Living in a Liminal Space

Nov 26, 2024 | baywindows.com | Judah Leblang

After three years of living in a residential community in Boston with a rotating cast of 18 other individuals, most of whom were half my age or less, I'm back in my apartment in Medford Square—living alone and trying to figure out what to do next. My original plan was to live at the Beacon Hill Friends House for four years, the maximum time permitted by House policy. But life at the House grew contentious around the Israel-Hamas War and what the community should say and do about it.
Bay Windows :: The Drumbeat

Oct 30, 2024 | baywindows.com | Judah Leblang

It's a drumbeat, a thrum, an electric current running through my mind and body on a daily basis. "It" is the news — an endless stream on phone (I'm addicted), TV, National Public Radio. The pundits, newscasters, commentators count down hours, days, weeks till election day, and whatever comes next. Like a rubber-necker at a five-car pileup, I can't look away, and can't stop thinking about the election and its aftermath.
No One’s Son

Aug 7, 2024 | medium.com | Judah Leblang

I was just past 30 when my father died of a heart attack in the summer of 1988, the first one of my friends to lose a parent. I felt isolated and alone, having landed in Boston the year before, without a network of local friends or people who understood what I was going through.
Gearing Up: One Man's Quest for a Good Night's Sleep

May 1, 2024 | baywindows.com | Judah Leblang

For the past ten years, ever since I was diagnosed with sleep apnea in my late fifties, I've been on a quest to get a decent night's sleep. But so far, that quest has been quixotic, frustrating, and at times, downright ridiculous. None of my doctors suspected I had apnea. After all, I was thin, fit, and didn't snore. But by the time I hit 55, I was also chronically tired. I tried supplements, thyroid pills, and Chinese herbs, all without success.
An Adult Orphan

Apr 30, 2024 | medium.com | Judah Leblang

An Adult OrphanPhoto by Stormseeker on Unsplash“No matter how old you are, when you lose your second parent you feel like an orphan,” my Aunt Edy said on a cool day in the fall of 1971, the day of my grandmother’s funeral. Her mother, my beloved grandmother, Nanny Frida, had just died of heart failure. Edy was 50, I was 14, and it was hard to imagine a fifty-year-old orphan. Still, my father had come a hair’s breadth…
The Mother I Wanted

Apr 3, 2024 | baywindows.com | Judah Leblang

"There are no good options here," the surgeon said, confirming what I had just figured out, the realization snaking its way into my mind and body. Standing on Harvard Street in Brookline on a blustery day in early January, ten minutes out of therapy where I told my therapist that my mother, getting hospice services in her assisted living apartment, was rushed to the ER the night before due to heavy internal bleeding.
The Mother I Really Wanted

Mar 29, 2024 | medium.com | Judah Leblang

The Mother I Really WantedPhoto by Judah Leblang“There are no good options here,” the surgeon said, confirming what I had just figured out, the realization snaking its way into my mind and body. Standing on Harvard Street in Brookline on a blustery day in early January, ten minutes out of therapy where I told my therapist that my mother, getting hospice services in her assisted living apartment, was rushed to the ER the night before due to heavy…
One Day - Or One Moment at A Time

Dec 12, 2023 | medium.com | Judah Leblang

One Day — Or One Moment at A TimeI’m sitting on a plane at Logan, waiting for something to happen, waiting for my JetBlue flight to finally move after a 2-1/2 hour delay, to bring me closer to Cleveland, closer to my mother who is fading away, “dwindling,” her doctor told me years earlier. This was my second trip back to Ohio in a month, as the crises come more and more often, weekly and now, almost daily.
What's Coming Next

Nov 16, 2023 | mysouthend.com | Judah Leblang

I'm sitting in a writing class, trying to concentrate on my writing assignment when the text pops up from my mother's care manager on my phone: "Your mother is down to 79.2 pounds this morning." Suddenly I'm back in Cleveland in mind and body, picturing her—or trying to—this skeletal version of the woman I'd last seen in August. Back then, she was at a new low of 87. Now, in the space of just two weeks, the bottom had dropped out, and she had lost another 8 pounds, ten percent of her body weight.