A new kitchen. A big birthday present. What was there to weep about?

The orange stool— that faithful four-legged friend that stretched my four foot eleven (and three-quarter) inches and enabled me to just reach the second highest shelves in my kitchen cupboards — that stool was coming with me into my new kitchen. No smooth-talking carpenter would separate me from the one link to how it used to be.

A new kitchen. A big birthday present. What was there to weep about?

But creating a new kitchen meant destroying the old one. One  so full of memories. My children, all thoroughly grown by now, had done their growing up in that kitchen. I and the young ones had sat around the kitchen table on Shabbos mornings, nibbling at Shabbos treats. I’d watched as one by one, the table emptied, as one more child became old enough to go to shul.

The shul goers would wait until the afternoon for Shabbos treats. That’s what growing up is all about, delaying gratification and learning what’s really important in life.