Spring ahead
Greetings from Central Avenue, area code 516. As I write this, I am parked in a lot that has hundreds of empty spots, but for some reason, the sushi restaurant delivery guy has decided to park dangerously close to me. Why?
I am in my car, trying to write my column, waiting to meet Strudel and her parents for dinner, minding my own business, and I am just wondering why this car is parking here. Okay, the guy he is with just told him to re-park the car because he has realized that I am in my car waiting for him to hit me. Enough about that.
Today is an interesting milestone. It is the last simcha (God willing, until 120 in good health, no we are not a superstitious people) that Husband #1 has to go to without me. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you feel about celebrating simchas with other people, there weren’t that many that he had to do without me. One of Husband #1’s lines when I was sitting shiva was, “I thought I would get a whole year home by myself!” But, alas, that was not meant to be. Because we are soulmates, the One Above had a different plan for us. Nine months home together every single night. No weddings, no bar mitzvahs, no Broadway shows, no movies, no concerts. Nothing. Just two people in love watching television in different rooms of the house. It really brought us a lot closer, she said, with a hint of sarcasm.
The only reason why I accompanied him out to the Island of Long is because he was afraid to drive Strudel home by himself. I am still not sure why. It’s not like he was going to have to change her diaper (which he still hasn’t done) or feed her (which he has attempted to do) or put her in the car seat (nope, he hasn’t done that yet either). Because I am such a good wife, I didn’t give him a hard time (of course I did, but you don’t need to know that) and that brings us to why I am sitting in a parking lot, all alone, sharing this nonsense with you. You can thank me later.
Our year of mourning together has gone by pretty quickly. I didn’t even realize that we were changing the clocks this past weekend. Didn’t that use to happen much later in the spring? Is that my imagination? I thought Husband #1 was kidding when he said it was an hour later because no one mentioned it on Facebook, Instagram or Netflix. And all of my friends on 1010 WINS seemed to forget to mention it as well. Come to think of it, how did Husband #1 know about “springing ahead”? Wait a second, some woman just pulled up right next to me, and now I am not going to be able to get out of the driver’s side either. What is with these people from Long Island? Aren’t you glad I am reporting all of this in real time? Is it annoying you? Please let me know if it is.
In any event, Husband #1 is “done” with his year. He lit the yahrzeit candle, and we couldn’t figure out why it didn’t burn for the whole 24 hours. Is that his father trying to tell us something? Did I buy it on sale and, unbeknownst to me, it was defective? And because this year isn’t another leap year, I am only two months behind him, not three. In an eerie coincidence, a couple that got married around the same time we did, are now in the same sad predicament that we are — but they are at the beginning and we are approaching the end.
It is like everything else in life. Until you go through it, you really don’t know what it is like. For example, writing the headstone. How can I adequately describe what type of incredible human my dad was in less than 150 words? I can’t, so I am doing the best I can and I hope that he likes it. And who really reads headstones? It is for the family and, I guess, the guys who work there.
My Oreos were upset when I told them that we were putting the NY Mets symbol on the stone. In the end, we aren’t, because my dad also loved the Brooklyn Dodgers, and we didn’t want him to be upset if we chose one over the other. These semantics are really just a lame attempt at distracting us from the very sad fact that our dad will not be around to see the Mets win another World Series. And that we will never see him throw his hands up in the air and say, “They blew it again.” And that is the way it goes.
Yes, this column got away from me.
Banji Ganchrow of Teaneck will try to have a more coherent column next week with a beginning, a middle, and an end that all tie in with each other. Thank you for your patience.
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