Slow return to regular life

This has been a stubborn upper respiratory tract infection. I took ten days of antibiotics but my strong suspicion is that it was viral, so I am still just waiting for it to pass. The main consequence was a very quiet Passover holiday at home for Barry and me.

But little by little I am trying to get out. This past weekend we finally went back to Sharon. We had dinner Friday evening with Dina and family and lunch on Sabbath day with Simmie. Maya had her closest friend over for lunch and it was fun watching the girls giggling all afternoon.

We had bought tickets for “Sesame Street Live” on Sunday afternoon at a lovely classic theater, the Providence Performing Arts Center (https://www.ppacri.org).

PPAC is a 3100-seat, world class venue located in the heart of Providence’s arts and entertainment district; it is the second largest theatre of its kind in the country.  PPAC is listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it has also been ranked by Pollstar as one of the Top Venues in the world. The theatre became known as the “Jewel of Weybosset Street” after its doors opened as Loew’s State Movie Palace in 1928.

The beauty of the Theatre combined with the excellence of the productions makes every event at the Providence Performing Arts Center a work of art!

The lighting was dim so pictures were difficult but here are a couple we managed to take. Julia was totally engrossed in the show! Ella had gone to a friend’s birthday party but Eliana was thrilled when we asked her to join us, and she was a big help with Julia.

When we returned to Sharon, with our two little ladies soundly asleep in the back seat, we took off with Ella, Joshua, and Aaron to buy Ella a new bicycle. She is tall enough now to justify buying her a somewhat better bicycle which should last a few years. We headed over to Landry’s Bicycles, a wonderful shop near Sharon, where we are rather certain that we had bought Simmie and Dina their first “real” bicycles back in the late 1980s. The current location is quite a bit larger than it was back then, and they still have a great selection of bicycles and helpful staff. After trying a number of bicycles Ella settled on this one:

http://www.landrys.com/product/trek-skye-womens-277537-1.htm

The Sunday during Passover was a beautiful day and we headed for a while to the Botanical Gardens, where a new exhibit of works by artist Dale Chihuly was about to open. There are programs planned around the exhibit throughout the coming months and we hope to return to it when our grandchildren visit this summer. Here are a few pictures to give you an idea of the artwork on display.

We had bought tickets for the Mets’ opening day game on April 3^rd but I was not up to going. Fortunately, we were able to sell them quite quickly. Unfortunately, after a very good start to the season, the Mets have not been doing very well. But we are still hopeful, and the weather is supposed to be good on Thursday so we now have tickets for the afternoon game they are playing at Citi Field. Let’s hope the weather holds out.

As I end these words, I heard an interesting piece on NPR’s “Fresh Air” about a new book by Kory Stamper, Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries. One of the topics Terry Gross discussed with the author was the appropriateness of ending a sentence with a preposition. Apparently, the thinking on this topic has changed, so I guess it is no longer something of which I need to be afraid. But clearly, I still am.

Have a good week!

Love,

Rebecca

A very quiet holiday

This Passover was already going to mark a major difference for us: for the first time since they were married in 2000, Dina and Aaron planned to spend the first part of the week-long holiday in Baltimore. But we were happy to be planning to spend the first days in Sharon with Simmie and Ronen and the girls.

The first days of this holiday are the major part, the time when families gather for the at-home service known as a Seder (say-dare). It is full of song and ritual foods and can be quite an enjoyable evening if you are not under the weather or not too exhausted from the extensive preparations.

As they say, people plan and Gd laughs….and, unfortunately, I have had a rather stubborn respiratory infection that forced us to rethink those plans and opt for a very quiet holiday here in New York. We had prepared our house because we had planned all along to come back here for the second half of the holiday. But it was a bit lower key than we would have liked. Simmie and Ronen had, fortunately, invited other company so they were still able to have a more joyous couple of days.

Of course, even this disappointment is much better than the level of “excitement” we had five years ago or forty years ago. But it was the right decision to make, because I am still not completely back up to speed.

Hopefully things will look brighter a week from now. We do plan to be in Sharon because we have tickets to take Julia and Ella to “Sesame Street Live” up in Providence on the 23^rd.  

Enjoy the warm weather!

Love,

Rebecca

Forty blessed years

April the 4^th of 1977 was a Monday, the second day of Passover. I was 28 weeks into what had been a mostly uneventful pregnancy. About two weeks earlier I felt what I’ve always called, using parlance stolen from a popular movie released later that year, a “tremor in the Force.” I called my obstetrician who suggested I come in, and by then my blood pressure, which had been normal, was quite elevated. Within one week I was admitted to the hospital with epigastric pain, a rather dire symptom of severe pre-eclampsia. In these cases, the outlook is not great for either the baby or the mother, but after a few days with increasingly severe symptoms a decision was made to deliver the baby. This little girl came into the world weighing just 1090 grams, 2 lbs. 7 oz.

We were fortunate to be at an excellent medical facility, The University of Rochester Strong Memorial Hospital. Those early weeks were quite a roller coaster ride but little Simmie was a fighter. And here we are, a mere forty years later, still celebrating our little miracle.

In Simmie’s honor, we sponsored a surprise Kiddush (refreshments after Shabbat services) and I am proud of the girls for keeping the secret. Here is a picture of the sheet cake we served.

And here is a picture of a tee shirt I could not resist buying for our birthday girl. Leave it to Simmie to point out that, technically, she was “made” in 1976, not 1977! I just love that wry sense of humor.

In the Jewish tradition, Moses was said to have died at the ripe old age of 120, at which “his eye had not dimmed, and his vigor had not diminished.” For this reason, Jews commonly wish one another that they should live until 120. Simmie, you’re 1/3 of the way there!

Love,

Mom/Rebecca