since we’ve done all our cooking and finished with the shiva today, we took the kids out to lunch in Beta Cafe.  To my surprise, everything was open until 2, and every store was crowded – even the second-hand book store.  That’s when I realized I still had a present to buy. 

The choices were few – housewares, an art book, a plant.  I stood outside the housewares shop where there was a table of unappetizing dishes and wondered what to do next.  A woman came up to me – old, bent over, a little crazy looking, and began to ask me what to get as a gift as if I was a salesperson.  “I’d go into the store,” I told her, “and see if there is something nicer.”  And then I listened to my own advice.  I walked in, poured through a lot of practical, not-pretty things, and chose some yellow pot that tickled my fancy but would probably not suit anyone else.  In the meantime, the woman had found her way to the shelves I was looking at and berated me.  “Why did you leave me?” she said.  I can’t buy anything without help!”  “Who are you buying for?”  “My brother’s ex-wife,” she responded, and rejected the cookie jar I chose for her.  “You can’t help me,” she said.  “You don’t understand.”  Since I had just left the kids for this mission sitting around next door, eating ice cream and talking about things I couldn’t quite hear because of the noise, I was feeling like I really don’t understand much.   

But I know that even though I don’t know most of the people in the seder tonight, we’ll all come together on one thing – that we’re a free people, and we’re celebrating that freedom.