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E Embarrassment is what sits with you for 20 minutes. Or sometimes even 20 days or 20 months. Once in a while you think about it remember it feel embarrassed.

Shame is what sits with you for 20 years and it’s always there sitting just beneath your skin so every scratch or bruise or bump brings it back to the surface.

I hurt someone. Could never let it go because I wasn’t just embarrassed I was full of shame. And it was there there right below the surface never leaving me never giving me peace. Sure there were moments — days maybe even weeks — when I wasn’t thinking about it. Births. Bar and bas mitzvahs. Weddings. Life’s most significant moments often intrude. But even so shame was always building inside threatening to rain down pain on me.

It was all mine and only mine. Embarrassments are sometimes even often shared. Shame? Not so much. I didn’t share it. It was hard enough for me to live with the recollection. I couldn’t stand the thought of letting anyone else in.

And then one day 20 years later I talked. I shared it. Everything spilled out of that storm cloud in great drops of pain and ice and cold. It didn’t solve anything couldn’t solve anything but what a relief. A long-evaded first step on a winding road and that first step is always the scariest. But if I could do this take the first step and tell one person then maybe I could take the second step and tell two.

And then…

She calls.

Less than 24 hours after I share the shame for the first time she calls me although I haven’t heard from her in two decades.

She’s in town. She’s just saying hi.

I’m in absolute shock.

I can apologize.

If I have the guts.

I’m scared to death but I have to do this. How could I possibly ignore the Divine setting of the stage complete with props and cue cards? I can’t. I can’t. What throw His gift — sent express — back in His face?

“Do you want to get together for a coffee?” I ask.

“Well I’m leaving tomorrow and I really want to go to the Kosel.”

Better and better.

Harder and harder.

I write out what I want to say. We meet at the Kosel greet chat make small talk as we head down to daven.

I don’t know what she’s praying for but I’m begging for His help to say what I need to say in the way she needs to hear it. Not too much not too little. Just to do my part to make it right. There’s no dress rehearsal. This is opening night and closing night in one and then the curtain will come down.