(no subject)

and I'm awake, having just gotten home from Labor and Delivery.

Her name is Sofia, she was a week early and weighted in at just over 6 lbs. Mom and daughter are doing just fine. Mom in fact handed me back one of my "tension breaking" comments, that I used on her just last week during a pelvic exam. As she was nursing her newborn for the first time, she looked up at me and said, "I have good news."

I raised one eyebrow. "Yes.....?"
She smiled. "I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance."
The nurse just looked at the two of us, confused.

I should go to sleep, but there are a bunch of things flying through my head at the moment, one of them being the cup of coffee I had an hour ago, before driving back home. Having had a baptism AND a funeral on Saturday last and now this delivery, I'm rather intensely focused on the cycle of life at this moment.

eireangus asked we earlier this week if I said Kaddish, a question I had not formally responded to yet. The answer to that is yes, but it may not be quite what one might expect. I was reminded tonight (or I guess it's now last night) of something that happened 11 years ago, that still has me annoyed.

Pop died in Sept. 26th 1995, after a long battle with a very rare leukemia. It was right at sundown; honestly to this day, I'm really not certain if we should be observing his death on the 1st or the 2nd day of Rosh Hashonnah. We've decided as a family, to do it on the second day, his last breath literally having been right at the cusp of sundown.

The first anniversary of Pop's death saw me asking my Friend's Meeting if there were Friends who would stand with me as my minyan, my prayer quorum when it came time to say Kaddish for Pop. Over half of my Meeting showed up for me at my home, to be there in support and in love when I began the familiar chant of "Y'itgadal v'yitkaddash....". Familiar that is to me, though not to them. They did however understand how important it was to me to recite Kaddish for my father, and they gave me the gift of my community of faith, there to support me when I needed it so badly. I still get very misty when I think of that day, and what a contrast it was to my trip to the local Synagogue the following week, to say Kaddish again on Yom Kippur.

I have a local medical colleague, a man well known in our community for his volatile temper, verbal rages, and caustic sarcasm. I generally try to keep my distance from him; I find him often offensive and I have no desire to joust with him verbally. On Yom Kippur, 1996, my then PA and I headed together to the conservative congregation in town to say Kaddish, she for her mother, and I for my father. I had not expected to have that particular volatile colleague there; to my dismay upon seeing me he proceeded to park himself immediately to my right. While I was first in silent prayer, and continuing into saying Kaddish for my father, this man in his superb sensitivity to both my grief and spiritual needs, hissed into my ear for a good 15 to 20 minutes. Such a contrast to the gentle and genteel support of my Friends Meeting. I was hurting and I got angry, but I restrained myself from strangling him. Rightious anger aside, my peace testimony remained and remains something I'm committed to. I was dumbfounded that anyone could be that insensitive and that inappropriate.

Well, Angus, it may not be the answer you were quite expecting, but there it is.

Time to get horizontal.