Evening falls the match aflame and the whisper brings around the memories long, long past. Memories of childhood and a warm woman standing in what seemed like a huge kitchen. Today you know it would be tiny but not to your childhood memories. There expanses of formica stretched and cupboards where a tiny child could hide.
Blink and you were holding her hand on the bus to White Plains. The buildings sped past, more and more quickly until you arrived at that more metropolitan destination for shopping.
Click, the Upper West Side of Manhattan via Grand Central Terminal. Always a stop at Fanny Farmer for a treat for the little boy who was good, and a stop to watch the huge pocketknife twirl in the window before getting the S train to the 1 on the Broadway IRT. Out at 72nd Street and a short walk to Aunt Jewel’s apartment.
Quiet conversation for the sisters, noise making on a beautiful grand piano foreshadowed actual playing by some years. Cousin Norman and Sol passing through.
Another glimpse of a Rosh Hashanah and honey cake, a family meal, days of joy and conflict, celebration on acceptance into a great university.
Then final days, a frail woman taken too soon, ravished by cancer.
Blink, thirty four years gone, another lifetime.
Yitgadal, vyitkadash the prayer starts, praising god as these memories swirl and a brief blessing remains in the air. A small bright candle’s glow will remember for a day that beautiful soul whose memory I cherish with love, and where even now a mom shaped hole in my heart. How I wish she could have met our daughter.
My Gifted Life 