The Conception

 B"H, 

Elders Set the Example

Deveira:  You let her get pregnant!

Bubbe Bracha:  No.

D:  You were supposed to be watching her.

BB:  I did.

D:  We go away for one short weekend and look what happens.  You didn't watch her!

BB:  Yes, I did.  Two young, healthy folks and then some things are not meant to be seen, only experienced.  This is what young people do.  I am not so old that I cannot remember.  


D:  We have a big problem.

First Yahrzeit - The Candle

B"H, 

Your Son, My husband...

What the hell is going on between you two?

Beatrice, it's a year since you died.  (Oy, I am going nuts.  I'm talking to a candle.)  It is sundown, everyone is home but no one is with me.  It is time to light the first yahrzeit candle for you.  Your son, my husband, should be doing this.  You were his mother, not mine.  You made that clear to me on so many occasions.  So, you might ask, why am I lighting this candle?  ... because I take care of these things.  Did you even notice who was taking care of this candle to elevate your soul?  Me.  I lit this candle for your sake.  Your son is not holding this burnt out match, I am.  

Please excuse me now.  I am preparing our Shabbos* menu.  

The Stuff of Living

B"H, 

The Twists and Turns of Life, 

So many surprises,

So many lessons,

So much mystery.

My dolls and stuffed animals disappeared one day.  There were no announcements.  It just happened.  No explanations.  It just happened.  Even my bride doll that sat on the silk cushion on my bedspread vanished.  I asked no questions.  I made no comments.  I was young.  Perhaps I was in third grade.  What was I to do?  No one to play with now, my imagination travelled inward.  Oh, suddenly, there was a piano.  Were music lessons my consolation prize?  Who knows?  But, I became a student with the same passion that I experienced when I played with my toys.  Perhaps I studied with even more intensity.  

Years later, I found my dolls and animals in a box in the basement.  I sat there surrounded by all my old friends and cried, "I never let you go.  You were taken from me."  Then I heard someone coming down the stairs.  I quickly packed everyone up and put the box back into storage.  Thank G-d, I now knew where they lived.  

Far Fom Home

B"H, 

NO PITY, Always Move Forward

Euphemia  and Sara were best friends.  For eight long years they apprenticed themselves to a fine dressmaker in London.  Now they boarded at the same ladies' rooming house in Sydney, Australia.  All of the Jewish seamstresses boarded with Raizel Blumberg.  Their work was hard but the times were exciting.  Raizel took good care of these young women so far from home and the watchful eyes of loving parents.  She even tried to be a matchmaker when her boarding house gave her a few moments.  

Two Teachers, Same Students, And Bottles of Norvasc & Lisinopril

B"H

"I Kill Them With Kindness"

Deveira:  I can't get these kids to do their work.  Not in the classroom and nothing at home.  They won't listen to me. I've been taking blood pressure pills for years.  The kids, they are killing me.  How do you do it?

Hinda:  Well, Deveira, when I was their age I was a prisoner... treated worse than cattle, worse than farm animals.  Nazi guards, may their souls be erased from the universe, had some very effective means to make us obey them.  Those techniques are not allowed here at our school.  In any case, I did not survive the impossible to emulate my captors.  I remembered a better way from before the madness.

Deveira:  Hinda, they do anything and everything for you, not so for me.  Why?  How?  

The Good Man

A Match made...

B"H, Uncle Yosef was a good man.  Uncle Yosef was the son of Bubbe Raisel's best friend.  She did not have many friends in the family nor out of the family, but, Uncle Yosef's mother, Irena, was very sisterly to her.  And I would imagine that in Bubbe Raisel's loneliness and loss that she was sisterly in return.  When Uncle Yosef was a young man he fell in love with the only child of a  survivor.  Sonia survived some dreadful pogroms, massacres.  Her only child came to her from a brutal rape.  So brutal that Sonia had been left for dead.  A peasant woman found her still breathing and nursed her back to life and health.  Polina was born nine months later.  The peasant lady, Bogdana, may G-d elevate her soul again and again, loved Sonia and baby Lina.  They made a wonderful family.  But, the world they knew continued to convulse.  Bogdana -- the healer, caregiver, home-maker, savior -- decided that she, Sonia, and Lina should leave all they knew and should walk, no run, far away from the madness.  

I met my son twenty years before he was born

B"H,

Bubbe Raisel Goes Shopping:

On a mission



 The conversation...

Bubbe Raisel - You have to get married for the sake of your son.  ...  Here hold this.  (She passes a blue shirt-dress to her granddaughter.)

Anna - Wait, Bubbe, what son?  (hanging the dress back on the rack)

B.R. - Your son.  Here hold this.  (a beautiful paisley silk scarf that would have matched that dress)

A. - (putting the scarf down)  My son!  What son!  There has to be a guy!

B.R. - That's what I'm talking about.  Here hold this.  (a beautiful blue lace camisole that would have matched the dress AND the scarf)

A. - (placing the camisole back on the display counter)  Oy, Bubbe, I'm busy.  I'm studying, I'm teaching. 

B.R. -  Why do you think we are shopping today?  You need to get married for the sake of your son!  (They are walking around as the older lady re-gathers the dress, the scarf, and the camisole.)  Here, don't put these down again.  Hold them.