When he first called me over, I thought about that story where the girl stopped to help a guy at the bus stop and got mugged for her trouble. But this man was small and old; he was wearing a feathered gray fedora, the kind my grandfather used to wear, and his eyes were also like my grandfather’s eyes at the end of his life— perceiving me rather than simply seeing me. So I stopped and sat down on the bench. “Can I help you?” I asked in Hebrew. His clouded eyes registered hope. “Can you dial the telephone number on this paper? I can’t see. Something happened to my eyes, and I need to get tested. But I have to call this phone number. Can you dial it for me?” He held out a paper with trembling fingers. It was blank. I turned the paper over and over. “Um, there’s no number here.” “Can you dial the number?” He turned his face in my direction, his angle slightly off.I said it in a louder tone. “There is no number. I’m sorry.” He held up his cell phone. “Because I need to go get tested. I need to see what happened to my eyes. I didn’t daven today because I have an early appointment. I have not missed a minyan in 60 years. But I need to go.” “There is no number.” “No number? Ah.” He held his phone loosely, and I took it from him and started scrolling through his phone numbers, but there were only three or four of them. “Is there anyone I can call—from your family, you know— who can help?” He smiled. His teeth were stained, and that made me unbearably sad for some reason. “I am like David Hamelech,” he said. “His son wanted to kill him.
So does mine. He will not come.” “Oh,” I said. We sat. “I’m sorry,” I said. He nodded. We sat. “I’ve used up a lot of your time,” he said. “And for that I am sorry. And you should be blessed and have male children and nachas, and Hashem should give you all that you ask for.” “Thank you,” I said. He fumbled for his cane. “Can I help you get somewhere?” I asked, because I had to do something for him, anything, really. He shook his head. “I live right here. There is a woman who comes to clean my house. Maybe she can help me. Maybe I dropped the paper with the number on it.” He sat there for a while longer and I sat there with him. When he finally pulled himself to his feet, I watched him until he was out of sight and then I glanced at my watch. If I hurried, I could still get home in time to get some work in, and maybe even a load of laundry. I reached into my pocketbook and pulled out the notebook. For my birthday last year, my husband had bought me a beautiful notebook, small enough to fit inside my pocketbook but big enough to make me want to fill up its pages. When he handed it to me, I had a ghost of that old feeling I used to get when confronted with a pretty notebook—that its creamy pages were already filled with almost-stories, and I could feel those almost-stories forming in the back of my mind. How I love a pretty blank notebook! Thank you! So thoughtful! I felt almost decadent as I gently slid my present into my pocketbook. It stayed there, empty, for a long, long time.
Because, of course, I don’t need a notebook; I have a laptop. I’ve been typing instead of writing for years—haven’t we all? A notebook is just not practical anymore. And besides, I find somehow that when I write by hand, stopping every so often to rub my aching wrists, to examine the spot of ink on my finger or the callus beneath it, my words become precious to me, too precious, making it almost impossible to edit them without mercy. But it was so pretty, the notebook, so wonderfully blank, so wonderfully full of promise. I kept it in my bag, and once in a while I would sit down with it and take out a pen, holding it loosely in my hand as if trying it on for size. The pages stayed blank. One afternoon a couple of months ago, the kids were tearing the house apart more than usual, and my patience was hanging by a thread. I don’t remember exactly what happened that made me afraid the thread would snap, but I think it was something ironic. Spilled milk? Following whatever-it-was, I locked myself in my room to take a quick breather. I remembered then the notebooks of my teenage years, which served as receptacles for endless venting. Only a 16-year-old can fill 20 notebooks with angst. Maybe I can vent in this notebook, I thought as the kids called to me through the door, demanding that I return.
Maybe that’s what it’s for. I pulled it out, smoothing down its first page thoughtfully. The kids, I wrote. The words looked so fresh, so beautiful—the first words in my notebook. I paused, looking. I thought about the kids, in particular the one who was banging my door down. “Ima!” he called. “Ima, I want a drink!” “Ima will give you a drink in a minute,” said the voice of his older sister. “Don’t be so impatient.”I laughed out loud to hear that coming from her, she whose biggest test so far seems to be her lack of patience. My heart melted. “I’ll be right there,” I called. I put a period after “The kids.” The first sentence in my notebook was a fragment. I am so grateful, said the next sentence. Thank you. And suddenly I had so much more to write, but now wasn’t the time. I unlocked the door and they poured in, my blessings. And there is so much to write. Every single day there is so much to write; it’s almost decadent how much there is to write in my gratitude notebook.