Your Time Is Also a Gift 

Somehow, the memories of my youth don’t match up with the current reality — although growing up in Boston in the ’60s certainly can’t compete with today’s frenzy in Brooklyn, Lakewood, Chicago, or Eretz Yisrael. Back in those “olden days,” the women would put some pieces of homemade strudel and cookies on a paper plate, with perhaps an orange or bottle of wine, and send it off with one of the children.

Every family, of course, had its own special shalach manos recipients, and mine was no exception. I clearly recall two special shalach manos we gave each year. One was to “the Rav,” Rav Mordechai Savitsky ztz”l, who would receive a sponge bundt cake with a bottle of wine in the middle, made with reverence and admiration by my mother a”h. It came with a price tag, though. I had to get farhered in the process. But I would walk away with the incredible sum of five dollars for my troubles. (You could get a new Chevy for as little as $2,000 back then. This was serious cash.)

The other special delivery was to my Uncle Shloime’s elderly aunt, known simply as Moomie, who lived in Revere, Massachusetts, quite a distance from Boston. The price tag for our visits to Moomie were her teiglach, which could fill our existing cavities while creating new ones. (I never knew her real name. Her husband was simply known to me as “Uncle.”) It was a significant drive each way, but to me, that was Purim. A half hour at the Rav’s, and an eternity at Moomie’s.

Why would anyone care about the Purim of my youth? Because there was a lesson in those trips in those simple, carefree days that has remained with me for almost 60 years. Allow me to share it.