I got an email that made me very wistful; I had hoped to see him one more time. I wrote about him here; Time Magazine interviewed him here. Goodbye, Uncle Richard; we miss you. My children remember your kindness. Rest in peace, and say hello to your brother and the grandparents for me.
It was a day.
Remember this? Prove you’re married or we drop your wife from the health insurance, etc.
We finally got the kid’s transcript in hand; deadlines are wonderful things. So.
Off to his office to fax everything in. Reading the fine print after I got there that I should have paid attention to earlier, marriage and birth certificates in hand, I realized, wait–they want our tax return too? And, just in case we got divorced since last year, they want a bank statement or utility bill with both our names on it that’s not older than two months? But what if those don’t put both our names on them?
Back home, growling at the lost time and the utter stupidity of it all. Growling at myself for forgetting to hit “save” on my *Turbo-taxes yesterday (the software later restored the files for me when I finally dared look at it)… Trying not to let it all get to me.
The only reason I found what I needed is that, on a whim, yesterday I’d gone to City Hall to pay my utility bill in person as long as I was running an errand nearby. Meaning I hadn’t torn off the top of the bill, the part you mail in–and the only part that had both our names, the bank being of no help. Small favors that are everything in that moment; thank you, dear G_d.
Back to the office. I was almost there, driving along–when suddenly I noticed it. Somehow I just simply hadn’t before. It was instantly clear to me what it was.
The eruv.
I am not Jewish. But this is Passover week and Easter week, and those who’ve read my book know that our first day in our new house here, the day of the moving van, a day that was completely overwhelming with boxes erupting constantly from the truck while I tried to manage three kids ages four, two, and crawling, we were invited to come to a Seder as soon as that van left. Just because we were friends of friends and Nina knew what moving was like.
We were the strangers at the gates. She and her husband warmly welcomed us in.
That line overhead had never called attention to itself. It was just the simplest reminder on Earth that G_d is here, too. It brought me up short and completely turned my day around at a moment I greatly needed it.
A piece of string. It healed my world in that moment. My thanks to those who put it there.