A Day in My Life
On Shabbat I went to shul. It had been a long time since I had gotten up the nerve to enter, since I hadn’t been there in a long, long time. My friends were all there, as I remembered from before. I pretended to pray, whatever that means, partook in kiddush... Then I spied an old friend sitting alone on a bench across the bima from where I had gathered next to the whiskey. He was smiling, as was proper for such a lustrous character. He walks with a walker, now, but doesn’t do it the way you’d expect. He pushes it out in front of him as he goes, then shuffles to catch up. He likes the handles high, like a drag-bike, and enjoys just watching it roll, as did I witnessing him with it. I sat next to him on the uncomfortably sublime bench in shul, and we talked of our lives. I saw his Brooklyn soul shining through tearing eyes as he spoke. Kiddush is like that, telling tales of old and of new, shiny stories and dull history colliding to recollect truth from each and every moment.