It was at this moment that, I’m ashamed to say, I busted out the big guns

Yesterday, after a rejuvenating vacation in Eretz Yisrael with an extraordinarily long (and delayed) flight home, my husband and I landed in JFK and, exhausted, took a yellow cab to our house. We pulled up to the driveway right before bedtime, and the kids ran out to the car, appearing to have taken on the role of perfect angels the moment we left. We floated inside in a flurry of hugs as violins played and the sun set slowly and beautifully over the horizon.

A half hour later, my husband, the responsible one, looked up from the souvenir Lego set (not Israel-themed, but five-year-old boys prefer what they prefer) he was putting together with my son and scanned the living room, a frown gathering. “Do you see my backpack? I want to put away the passports,” he said. I couldn’t see it. He couldn’t see it. Long story short: He’d left it in the back of the random yellow cab we hailed off the JFK taxi line. Long story shorter: It also contained his tefillin and wallet.

It was at this moment that, I’m ashamed to say, I busted out the big guns. “Gather round, children,” I called out in a honeyed morah voice that I’d never heard myself use before. “This is a huge opportunity for—”