“There’s no such thing as causes. There are only people”
Becca has written to the girls’ parents but does not know if there will be a reply. She saw that with her friends at the Paris academy: Some parents stayed in touch with their daughters, writing regular letters and sending the occasional package. Others merely sent a card once a year, before Rosh Hashanah, often containing a brachah penned with a quivering hand.
To her chagrin and shame, Mama and Papa were the latter, non-letter kind of parents. It was not that they didn’t care, she’d mentally explain to her friends, although they never asked. It was more that once they had found a solution for a child — sure that he was shod and fed and clothed and safe, they turned their attention to the business of simply getting through each day or week or season.
“There’s such thing as a post office,” she had told them one summer, when she had returned home for a visit.
“Ah. Of course,” Tatte had said.
She had looked at him and realized that perhaps, somewhere in a different universe, a regular postal service existed — just like somewhere out there there were trains and steamers and a school where young women learned to go out into the world and become teachers — but it did not exist for him, in his world.
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