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| Aren't you excited to have another birthday? |
Talia has a special skill: compliment her on an item in the house or a piece of clothing she is wearing and she will immediately tell you who gifted it or in what shop, online or off, it was purchased, and when. I, lacking memories not written out in this blog, am wowed every time she does this trick. I suspect this skill is inherited because Talia's mother, Nurit, can likewise detail the provenance of her possessions. Further, she builds on this to do something even more impressive: she produces objects--critical artifacts for ceremonies, gifts purchased decades ago, the right tool for the job--exactly when they are most appropriate or needed. This implies that she not only knows where things come from but also where they are and, in some cases, that she first acquired them with this eventual use in mind.
There is a lot to like about my mother-in-law but I particularly admire this ability to produce a carefully stored item at the moment it is most needed. It demands organizational skill, careful planning, and, most special, the ability to imagine yourself at a specific juncture in the far future which, I assert, is a rare act of imagination: yes, we all think about the future and some of us even make plans, but most of us don't really believe in a time that is not now but is then.
Nurit does and so do I, but unlike Nurit there's not a chance I will remember where I buried a time capsule without written instructions, so, note to self: if you are looking for books and toys for eventual grandchildren they are in the eaves of the barn, the pictures of the framing of our rebuilt house before the drywall went up are in the folder labeled--wait for it...--"Behind the drywall at 10 Court," and the ketubah is, hmmm, well somewhere in the archive I'm sure.
