I was waiting for the morning Megillah reading out in the hallway while the previous minyan finished stomping out Haman. We just bang our feet a little on the floor as if we’re killing a bug and poof! — we wipe an entire nation off our map for another year.
We all stood outside the door quietly so none of us knew we were all English-speakers until one of the girls from the seminary down the road asked if everyone would say Amen to her morning brachos. That’s when the woman standing next to me introduced herself as Rachel and asked how long we’ve lived here explaining that they’d just moved in down the street.
She was sweet and we jumped to friendship like two people waiting at a train station in a foreign country. And as the reading and the last roar of conquered fate finished we simultaneously moved to the side to make room for the outpouring traffic and then made our way together to the first set of lush wooden pews.
“These are much better than the ones across the street from us ” Rachel said. “I think I’m coming here from now on.”
I was also enjoying the luxury of not being banged and bumped and squished for the reading; I grew out of that with time. Now I could rest my Megillah on the shtenders attached to the back of each chair and put my feet up on the foot rest. It was comfortable and almost felt as if time would now tick more slowly and more luxuriously.
I don’t know exactly what we were waiting for but there were a few minutes before the reading and I asked Rachel where her children were in school. She told me the name one of the all-Israeli all “old-family” schools and I got kind of worried for her. An American over there?
But I didn’t — well I almost didn’t say anything. I just mentioned “Be on top of the situation when it comes to self-esteem.”
She answered that the rebbis were nice and caring and she was on top of the situation. Then she said “I send a big frosted cake for parties.”
I understood exactly what she meant. I sent those too — big double-layered chocolate cakes with vanilla frosting I’d whip up at five thirty in the morning making sure my sons could carry the thing almost bigger than they were to the party.
“It’s what makes a kid popular ” she said adding “I know because my mother sent raisins.”
And I thought about how deep that statement was how it just summed up her entire history and defined her future. That she would not be the mommy who sent raisins. And I thought she looked like she came out just fine despite the raisins and I hoped her boys would come out fine despite the big frosted cakes. Time has a way of evening it all out.
As we sat there I had the image of a big pendulum in an old clock each of us swinging back and forth trying to swing in the opposite direction of all those things that hurt though the next generation would swing back even harder.
If I got too little now I give too much and my kids get too much so they give too little. And we swing back and forth.
“I just can’t get the frosting right though ” she admits. “It always comes out a little gritty.”
I ask if she puts an egg in. She lights up like now she’ll get it right. And I don’t say anything more because even when I had the egg in there and the frosting right sometimes the cake was too hot and the frosting melted when I applied it.
There it is timing again.
Just then they banged hard on the table to let us know it’s time and how we’re in time but above it at the same time.
The miracle of Purim was then and is also now. The redemption of Pesach was then and the opportunity for our redemption opens again now.
It’s time. — a