Things work out, some in surprising ways. I read 8 verses of Bereshit to plaudits from some – really good friends and family – and to my own limited satisfaction. To those who do not grasp the difficulty of reading a few words in Hebrew after a lifetime of training, I’ll give a short explanation. Hebrew as we use it in the US is written with marks next to and under the letters which are the vowel sounds. In the Torah those marks and any punctuation are omitted. rd ths sntnc wth t th vwls nd y wll gt th id. Even with knowledge of the words it takes some practice. Israelis and other Hebrew speakers can do this from context. For me, first I have to learn the text in Hebrew, then I have to learn to read the Torah text. Just to make it more interesting each Torah is handwritten and among the scrolls we have at Temple B’rith Kodesh there are a few different fonts and sizes. 

That was more explanation than I planned on. We concluded the service with the 3rd soundings of the shofar each sounding is made up of 3 cycles of  3 different blasts and the last sounding ends with a blast called Tekiah Gadola or the long Tekiah. This often becomes a contest if there is more than one shofar blower. The proof is when the congregation starts to giggle and starts clapping when the last sound is finished. This is probably inappropriate but very common.

Wednesday we set out early for a task that had been put off for the duration of Covid lockdown at the Canadian border. We have Trusted Traveler passes that give access to special lanes and one particular bridge across the border. The border guards on both sides recognize us as trusted and ask very few questions. Lying to them would result in loss of the privilege forever. Two weeks before the appointment I was notified that my card was in the mail and I did not need to keep the appointment. Having received no such notice for Carol we attempted to keep the appointment, arriving at the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge a few minutes before the appointment. She was not on the appointment list! There was some discussion during which one of the agents took Carol’s card to see why. A few minutes later she returned with the card and pointed out that it did not expire until 2024. We must have renewed it in 2019 and totally forgotten. I can see the payment made  back then.

We used the cards to drive over the Whirlpool Rapids Bridge to visit Aunt Dorothy in Hamilton ON which was the reason for all of this anyhow. I may have noted earlier that Aunt Dorothy was Carol’s mother’s youngest sibling and is cruising along at 99 years of age. She was only 6 when Carol’s brother was born. 

We couldn’t resist stopping in Niagara-on-the-Lake on the way back just to wander among some of the stores on the main street for an hour. It was too late to get tickets for any of the performances in the Shaw Festival. Of the plays being performed there was not one we really wanted to see. Neither of us feels the urge to see another staging of “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde.

We continued home eventually on the Lake Ontario Parkway right on the lake. This is s favorite drive in the car. No commercial vehicles or RVs allowed, the bridge clearances are as low as 10 feet.