Between Saturday and Sunday

More Chanukah links can be found here.

I called my cousin M a few hours ago. I'm in NYC and she's in CA, so I always have to keep in mind the 3-hour time difference. M and my mother shared a name, though my mother spelled her name slightly differently. My nephew M is named for my mother, part of the Jewish tradition of naming children for close, deceased relatives.

Anyway, it was great hearing M's voice. She has a nice, kinda husky voice that tickled my memory and put me back in the past. She'd gotten the copy of the entry I put here about her hubby E who died this summer and she emailed me to tell me how much it meant to her and so I had to call her because I never did tell E how much he meant to me and I don't want to not tell the people I love how important they are to me and how much I love them. There's something about getting older and realizing the generation before yours is getting older, too, and seeing some of them, and even now someone in mine, die that is a painful reminder that carries a lot of regret. So M and I talked about how we'd falled out of touch and will be in contact with each other and isn't email great. And it is, because it's gotten so much easier, when both parties have internet access to email than to pick up the phone and call these days and I wonder how that happened because I used to love talking on the phone. But time gets away from us sometimes and the calls don't get made.

Sometimes, it takes a holiday or an event like my nephew's bar mitzvah or sadness like E's death to give us the push we need. I'm glad I picked up the phone tonight and M is glad she was home to answer and for a little while, E was with her and my mother was with both of us.