Jiya Backup

How did the boys coax me into their little prank? It was easy. I was the only girl not invited to Louise Alpern's sleepover. On that summer evening with the fragrance of lilacs in the air, my task was to knock on the door, get Louise to open up for me, and then step aside.  They'd do the rest - bombard the girls with water balloons. My little ping in the grand symphony was to simply knock on the door and step aside. Later, Louise's mother would be livid, as the water had stained her carpeting, and Louise would demand to know how I dared do such a thing. Water balloons were a huge part of our lives that summer. In assembly line fashion, we filled them, knotted them, and lobbed them at each other or at innocent passers by.  Late afternoons, we'd take pleasure in climbing up on a cement embankment and releasing our plump balloons down onto grocery shoppers rolling their carts out to the parking lot. That evening after the boys had finished water ballooning Louise's hal...

I often ask myself why my mother ever told me about the call that she received one winter morning from Aunt Becky.  Aunt Becky wasn't actually my aunt, she was Bonnie's mother. Bonnie was my friend who lived across the street.  I'd known her since I was four years old. We'd played jacks together on her wooden bedroom floor. I'd wait for her while she practiced the piano, and I'd wait for her while she finished dipping her last Nabisco wafer into her glass of milk, so that we could walk to kindergarten together. Now Bonnie and I were in fifth grade. Aunt Becky said that she didn't know if she should actually tell my mother about it, but then she felt that it would be better if she did. The girls had been over at Bonnie's yesterday and she'd overheard  them talking about me. Actually, they were discussing a number of girls, and when they came to me, they decided that they didn't want me in their club. And she'd overheard one girl say, "Oow...

If I hadn't been rejected by the girls at school, I might never have decided to enter a Bible Contest and spend hours, weeks, months and years studying selected books of the Bible. The grand prize was a trip to Israel. Each year there were different books to study. One year it was Genesis, Deuteronomy, Judges, Kings I, and Ezra.  The next it was  Exodus, Numbers, Samuel I, Jonah, and Hosea. I entered  three years in a row and eventually made it to the finals in New York. With four little kids running around at home, it was impossible to concentrate, so I'd often trudge over to the temple to study. Temple Sinai was a private mansion which had been converted into a House of Worship. I'd found an attic room where I could be alone. In winter, I'd pull on my boots. Gazing up at the icy branches and  the forlorn sky, I'd wend my way over there. In spring, I'd practically skip along the sidewalks past the house with the velvet lawn and onward to the Temple gates. It be...