Just one more

We had a lovely weekend. Friday night we (mostly I) cooked dinner and ate with Dina and Aaron and the children. We were planning to serve it in our apartment but it was better for Julia’s schedule to be home, so we took the food over there. We spent Sabbath afternoon with three couples, friends who have lived in Sharon and we have known since the late 1980s. It was a splendid afternoon, with good food and terrific conversation.

When we were leaving the Synagogue to go to lunch, Barry went to the coat room to retrieve our coats. He took a while returning and I figured he had run into someone and was chatting. That would have been a nice reason. But instead, he came out and told me he could not find my coat. He found a coat very similar to mine but it had a name written on the inside label that was not mine. It turns out it was the identical LLBean Ultrawarm Coat, Long, item # TA227262 size M in black. I bought the coat last year. The reason Barry knew the one in the coat room was not mine was that the label had a name written on it. I knew immediately that it was not mine because I had taken the hood off of mine, choosing to wear a dorky looking but very warm hat (LLBean Ultrawarm Bomber hat in wine, a color they no longer seem to offer) instead. The name on the label was familiar to me although I could not have identified the owner, and by that time she had surely left for home. So after Sabbath I found her phone number and called her. She said she was a bit suspicious about the missing hood but figured she had taken it off to wash the coat and forgotten to put it back on. She even found the piece of Kleenex I had left in the pocket and, although she had no recollection of leaving it there, figured that she had. She was going out to pick up one of her children and she stopped by and we made the swap.

This whole episode brought to mind an incident that occurred when we lived in Sharon in the late 1980s. A new family had moved to town. They had two daughters, one Simmie’s age and another a bit older. They were new to living a more traditional Jewish life, and really enjoyed the warm welcome they received from the Sharon community, which to this day remains a key asset of its key assets. One Sabbath, when they went to the coat rack, the wife’s coat was gone. This was long before the internet and e-mail and Facebook, so there were repeated announcements at services during the weeks that followed asking everyone to check their closets to make sure they had not inadvertently taken the wrong coat. No one ever came forward, and the family has long since moved away. I can only hope that eventually she recovered from the disappointment that the loss of that coat represented for her.

We had a full day on Sunday. For the first time ever, Barry and I took the three big girls (not Julia) for an outing. We have never taken more than two children at a time. With my limited mobility it has just always seemed too daunting. But they are older, and we were headed to a safe, enclosed place: Launch. I wrote about this place back in February, it is essentially a huge room filled with different sorts of trampolines. The children love that place! But I am concerned that we may need to enlist the help of “Amusements Anonymous” to get past what happens every time we go to such places. Barry tells the children that they can each buy a $5 card (forget tickets, it is all electronic now) and that once they spend that, they are finished. But inevitably, they end up wanting just one more game, “please, please, please, just one more game, I promise!” is their rallying cry. We did give them each another $1 and guess what? When that was spent, they wanted more! When we reminded them that we might not have time to stop for ice cream, they finally got past it.

We then headed over to JP Licks for ice cream. You are probably wondering what happened to lunch. Ah, the benefits of being grandparents!

We returned to our apartment where Barry and Joshua had a date to watch Saturday night’s World Series game, which Barry had recorded on our DVR. Both boys had pledged NOT to read or watch the sports news in the morning so they would not know who was going to win, and they had a great time watching the game.

We all gathered for a barbeque at Dina’s house, complete with protein and vegetables to compensate for that ice cream lunch. It really was a grandchild-focused day, and life does not get better than that.

Have a wonderful week.

Love,

Rebecca