“Well then,” the caller says calmly, “I wanted to let you know that you’ve just won a ticket to Israel for the hilula of Rabi Shimon bar Yochai. We want to book you on the charter flight leaving tomorrow”
AUDACIOUS REQUEST I put it in my prayers. A presumptuous bakashah but no more audacious than the other huge things I daven for easily — health happiness; surely if I could ask for those I could slip in a tiny little request for a reunion
S ome things are a given. The setting sun. Pythagoras’s theorem. My friendship with Riki.
Other people may have thought I was just being nice. They had no idea. I liked the person under the flailing hands and crippled feet. The girl in the wheelchair was a friend. To laugh with to enjoy a game a sleepover a study session — and also to help.
I did Riki’s patterning exercises with her for years. Perhaps it was a lot for a high-school girl to handle but this sort of giving helped me grow too. I learned to push myself beyond my comfort zone beyond my years all the while gaining insight into life behind the disability label.
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