Craig Martin

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I could have gone to see my father as he lay dying in a nursing home bed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania; he was only two hours away. My older brother had driven up from South Carolina and was keeping a vigil.  He and my father were close, sharing the same all-encompassing religion-infused worldview from which I had long since parted company. That system of beliefs had left us deeply divided, not by hostility but by a profound emotional silence. And so I stayed home.

> It began with sex. In my father’s world, sex outside of marriage was sinful and not to be spoken of. His approach to my sex education was to give me a book from a Christian press called “For Boys Only”, which focused largely on masturbation as a forbidden activity. (Ironically, one of my father’s assignments while stationed at a Stateside Navy base during WWII was to teach sex education to sailors; I looked but never found the classroom materials!). As to direct conversations with me on any sexual subject, none happened. And that was the beginning of secrecy and the end of transparency.
>
> I had grown up in a closed circle: Christian friends and relatives, a Christian school and a very conservative Christian church that held frequent weekend-long services conducted by traveling preachers. Outside of that lay “the world”, a cesspool of iniquity into which I longed to dip at least a toe. Inside that circle, however, there was little room for doubt or skepticism.
>
> The principal of my school taught our class in Bible studies my senior year. in one lecture he discussed the traditional arguments for the existence of God, among them, the complexity of nature, and the near-universality of religion. He concluded, “Each of them is a weak argument, but together they make a strong argument.” Mentally I was waving my arm, but knew better than to protest. At least I was able to attend a secular university, though I struggled socially. I knew how to maneuver in the Christian world, but felt at a loss with peers for whom religion was by comparison of minor significance (and sex, of major importance).
>
> The farther away I moved away from what my father expected of me (and after spending some length of time pretending still to be a believer), the more I kept my thoughts to myself, and the greater became the divide between us. He had to have known, at some point, that I had changed, if only by my lack of response to his religious observations. But despite his willingness to stand on a street corner in South Philadelphia on a Saturday night and warn passersby of God’s wrath to come, his voice amplified by speakers on the roof of our ‘53 Chevy station wagon (me in tow as a teen, wishing that I could disappear into the sidewalk), he never challenged me directly.
>
> I spoke at his funeral,and for the first time said publicly, and to members of his circle, that how he wielded his religion had created a huge divide between us, and which I regretted. I had imagined, in writing those comments, that I was making an affirmation of myself, and assigning him the large part of the blame. That, of course, was false. My passivity and avoidance left that divide unchallenged (although I have no idea how I might have changed it). And I was surprised by the tears that came to my eyes as I struggled to finish.
>
> I at least helped to make his death more peaceful. Recognizing that he was nearing the end as his lungs filled up with fluid and his other organs failed, I spoke to his doctor, who agreed to stop the hourly finger sticks and begin morphine. But his final words to me captured our history: “Have a nice day”.
>
> In an episode of the TV series “The Pit” a man came to the emergency room to see his dying father, from whom he had long been estranged. He lamented that he had no idea what to say to him. The doctor suggested these words: “I love you, I forgive you, I hope you can forgive me”.
>
> I wish I had known that.

Jewish Christian Christmas

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I went to a friend’s house for Christmas this afternoon.  I had a nice time in her cozy little apartment with her family and a few other friends.

At this point in life, I just enjoy Christmas and try to avoid all of the arguments surrounding whether or not it is a “Pagan holiday.”

I was born and raised Jewish.  But I come from a mixed marriage.  My dad, an Ashkenazi Jew from the NY metro area and my mom, a native of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  White, anglo-saxon, Protestant.  She converted on her own volition in her 30’s.  Years later when I came along, I came from a mixed marriage, but we alway just celebrated Hanukkah, not Christmas.

As a kid, I guess I felt a little left out.  But we were happy celebrating Hanukkah, and that was enough.

As an adult, I converted to Christianity I looked forward to celebrating Christmas.  Just like everyone else.

But then, I encountered Christians who didn’t celebrate Christmas because it was a pagan holiday.  It was really the winter solstice or some pagan day of Saturnalia.  Or some invention of Emperor Constantine and the awful Catholic Church.

Others read the gospels and believe that Jesus was born in the fall of the spring, based on the accounts of shepherds watching their flocks by night.

Traditionally, it was believed that Jesus was conceived on March 25, therefore, he would have been born December 25.

I’ve heard people make all sorts of arguments against Christmas.

How ironic, that the people who most objected to Christmas weren’t Jews, but rather, Christians.

Then, I often found myself working on Christmas.   I was a caregiver.  I once was stuck on a case for 36 hours on Christmas .  Another time, I accompanied a woman and her family to the Mohonk Mountain House on Christmas.  These were the kinds of cases where the home health aides weren’t allowed to leave the patient, even if they went out with other family members.  Who wouldn’t want to go to Mohonk Mountain House?  But I didn’t feel comfortable with this family.  Who wants to spend Christmas with a family that you don’t know or like?

Another year, I spent Christmas with a patient whom I liked and got along well with.  Working on Christmas isn’t great, but at least I was with someone that I liked.

I was so lost, lonely and isolated back then.  Still living in the aftermath of my own family trauma.

Now, I’m grateful to be in a different place.

I let go of bad employers.  I let go of dogmatic, hyper-religious people.  I let go of the turbulent history between Christians and Jews, and I just enjoy the day.

C. Mallor

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One step forward

Two steps back

The backward ones feel so much bigger

Having seen ahead to where they come from

I try to walk slower, keep my pacing, my eyes focused on the spot

No matter how hard I try I still fall back

I’ve had such strange dreams these past few nights.

I was at a diner with strangers who were my closest friends.

I spilled a glass of water on the coffee table and was terrified someone would find out.

I wrapped myself in layers of wool blankets and couldn’t get warm.

A man I’d never seen before kissed me on the lips and I fell in love with him.

I stood by an open window in my bedroom and watched my neighbors barbecuing as it snowed; they looked up and waved at me to join them, but I was getting smaller and smaller and eventually couldn’t see as high as the window anymore.

The alarm goes off.

My dreamworlds vanish.

Waking me knows just what to do.

No time to finish this poem.

I don’t want to be late.

Maggie Lawson

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DIGRESSIONS

Maybe this current me is an actual ghost of myself returning on an abstracted plane, or I am an amateurish 3-printed version, or perhaps the old Star Wars robot, R2d2, winding down in slow-motion, like a top spinning its downward spiral, sadly squeaking, lopsided, running out of juice. Did I just write juice? Not TOO subliminal! This may actually be all about prune juice! Please include it with whatever this latest reiteration is as an essential lubricant for my body parts real or imagined.

A much more likely scenario is that (through my love of octopuses, and my history of all-of-my-exposed-body-parts-suction-cup-branding by one I held while they fixed her environment at the aquarium) an octopus’s alienesque ability to adapt with camouflage was transmitted into me to finally awaken 50 years later.  Reread that slowly or, better yet, here’s a summary: I got hickied by an Atlantic octopus and I’m finally realizing that although they don’t live long, I may have received some of their unique and special powers to circumstantially become almost invisible.

Is the concept of oneness with universal energy the pulsing glow I’m experiencing or is it my a-fib? Love it. This, right here, this waning is it. You do know what “it” is, right?

So, there you have it. Ghostly, a faux print, imprinted, embodied with abilities to hide in quasi-plain site. This is me trying to explain the shift; me letting go. Am I being graceful?

This is the extended nowness of aging incrementally. One day I was flying off to Madagascar on a whim (I never explained myself; I just left a sign on my office door: GONE), and the next I’m asking myself if my cane should go in the trunk, just in case the next now includes uneven ground. Oh, and put prune juice on the list, while you’re out, please.

“Mercy, mercy, mercy…” See! There it is. Elders mumble that stuff, their bobble heads shaking with laden acceptance. My Granny used to say, “Oh, my stars and garters!” It meant a bit of amazement, some disappointment, and then acceptance. Acceptance has become part of the slow dance, the shuffle, the slow pivot, the dog circling three times before finally laying down and staying. Good dog. Good grandma. Wait! Ed’s bobble-head just stopped bobbling; it’s hanging by a dangling sprung spring. Ed? You, OK? “Lordy, lordy, lordy!” followed by Granny’s often eye-rolling, wait for it… expected add-on, “The exuberance of youth…”

Can I bring you a drink? No, not you, Ed. You’re dead. I told myself I didn’t have time to explain myself.

I’m now referring to yesterday—Christmas—when my son-in-law asked me if I wanted a drink, not my daughter. She signals for me to get up and get my own drink. She’s working hard to stay in her own lane, nowadays, which I can only admire. She knows I am able, but also incredibly lazy. Do I consciously play the old lady card? I did venture out to the front porch to look for a drink, and here are some of the choices: cocoanut water with was it “Yuma” or “YUNA”, flavored lite beers and sparkling fruit-infused canned bougie-ness. That selection made my head spin and choices null.

In retrospect, this malaise could simply be from sitting much too long and not hydrating enough.

Am I becoming a bit curmudgeonly? It wouldn’t be all bad. Personally, I adore curmudgeons, their grumpy demeanor meant to make even the bravest among us whimper and scuttle submissively backwards in fear. But underneath their gruffness is usually a lovely, sweet, soft-shelled lobstery, not monster-y, soul always with an eye-twinkle. They shiver in either fear or anticipation knowing that if I catch their eye and remain unflappable, they must love me. They have no choice. So fun. Try it.

I may have written that savory, salivating example because I love lobster, with hot butter for dipping, but I digress.

I’m not a planner—except for prune juice and my sidekick, my cane—I’m an evolver, and I’m sticking to it! It’s opposite, digression, is an important skill, though. Earned, this never-expected-to-live-this-long self has realized its allowed; it’s a part of storytelling—these flashbacks, these wandering thoughts.

I’m on a yet another learning curve, trying to be amused by the whirly-gig up-and-downness of this life’s merry-go-round. Today, I can hear the distant carousel’s calliope music box tune slowing down, running its course. Wind it up, again, please. May I ride the octopus, this time?

Maggie Lawson

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ALONE WITH A BORROWED PUNCHBOWL

A blur, now, it was just another potluck among friends. Suzanne had left her punchbowl at my house maybe a year—a year and a half ago—well before her husband fell ill. He finally died last month, around Thanksgiving. It was shortly thereafter my husband had flipped out in a maniacal manic episode. Was that horror scene just last month, too? I know the shit hit the proverbial fan on October 17th.

This punchbowl was a good size, probably 20” across, but who’s measuring? It was not fancy or glass, just utilitarian plastic. The punchbowl was before. I’m figuring out “the after”.

Her husband had finally died. “They” said she didn’t kill him, but I knew she’d wanted to. He’d become sick, sick with a disease that was terminal. He was already an angry, self-centered man, and while disabled he’d treated her even worse than he had for most of their marriage. She’d planned to leave him when the kids left. They left. Then, on their departing heels, the diagnosis. Crap. It took three more years out of her life to nurse him and watch the miserable bastard die.

My husband had finally left us. The last few years were Hell. He was a clergyman, and he had open affairs he naively masked as providing therapy. We had two little ones, and, of course, I kept trying to “fix it” whatever that means. I was an emotional zombie. He finally blew out and left, presumably to run away with the wife of a couple he’d married last Spring. She reneged at the last minute, not wanting to leave her mother. Her mother called me and asked me what was going on. I hung up on her. You can’t make this shit up. All I knew, deep down, was that our in-resident poltergeist had gone with him. My relief was palpable.

Suzanne got so much sympathy, and food, poor widow. She milked it. She deserved it. Bring on the sympathy. She could summon convincing tears with the mention of his name. I knew they were actually tears of relief.

All I got were shock waves, not even food. There were no words. I think his sudden leaving was too real, shattering their Hollywood impression of ideal marriages. No one could have guessed. I’d played the dutiful wife so well. I was a “minister’s wife, thank you very much. I had a role to play. How could I have told anyone, anyway. Not in those days. He’d left his congregation, too. I backed away, giving them a chance to regroup. I was on shaky ground. No sympathy; no food. Death, they understood, not insanity and abandonment.

Suzanne got it, though, and we decided to see a comedy, together. Shake it off. Breathe. It was my first venture out in public, but we’d just go in the dark theatre, and no one would look at me, then avert their eyes as if they hadn’t ventured a pathetic glimpse. I knew they had no words for what had happened to me.

The punch bowl! I’d return it. It’d been months.

Popcorn is so expensive, there. I’d fill the punchbowl with popcorn, cover it with tinfoil, invert it on my belly, and zip up my coat! No one would know.

I rigged it up in the parking lot and walked, well more like waddled, into the theatre and met her in the lobby. It was just two minutes until the show started. It’d be quick. She did a quick askance look at me, and I whispered my plan. She laughed.

We got the tickets and started to #3 theater when a loud announcement blared that our film had been delayed 15 minutes, and to wait in the lobby.

Oh-kay.

This was not my plan. I paced uncomfortably for a while, but my “pregnant” arched-back posture was straining my back. Incognito was my plan, not exposure. Then I sat on a bench. Fifteen minutes felt like hours. That was worse. It’d be over in a few minutes, right. I tried some deep breathing but could only inhale the smell of the warm popcorn and butter. Could others, too? Was my ruse up? I began to perspire.

I desperately fought the urge to unzip. It was warm in there. I tried not to wiggle.  I wanted to cry I was so uncomfortable. I shut my eyes. When I opened them, I was looking down. I saw a pair of nice, leather, men’s shoes facing me. Slowly, I looked up to find Jackson, a clergyman acquaintance of my husband’s standing there, looking at me. He looked so sad. Before I could say anything, he said, “OH, Maggie, I heard it was bad, but I didn’t know it was THIS bad, and at Christmas!” Smiling reassuringly, I now began to unzip my jacket, “No, no, no…Jackson, it’s just popcorn.” I could tell he thought I’d totally lost it. “Maggie! Zip up, NOW!”

Just then, the announcement said we could go in, and we must have, but I laugh whenever I think of popcorn and the movies. Poor Jackson. He’ll never know, that other than Suzanne, he was the first to care.

Sentient Being

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I Dreamt of Albert Camus

Last night I dreamt of Albert Camus. Which is really weird since I haven’t thought about Albert Camus for 10 or 20 years, maybe even more. But there he was, standing at the lectern, smoking a cigarette and getting ready to deliver a poem about Peace to a packed house of seemingly rabid fans and I was there sitting in the middle of it all.

He started reciting the poem in French, and it all seemed very garbled and unintelligible  and I couldn’t understand a word of it, yet as I looked around me, the audience seemed to absorb it as they remained riveted in their seats giving the short, scruffy looking Frenchman their full attention.

“But wait!” I cried, as I stood up and turned to face the larger part of the audience. “That’s not his poem.  He didn’t write it.  He’s only reading it.  Somebody else wrote that poem. Why doesn’t he read his own poem instead of merely mouthing somebody else’s sentiments about peace or whatever the hell he’s talking about?”

Yes, it was clear from the guy who introduced Albert that he would be reading a poem about Peace that was written by somebody else.  Who that somebody was, I have no idea.

This whole incident strikes me as being very bizarre, since I don’t make much of dreams and I resist interpreting them and I have no patience with people who tell me about their dreams and then go into elaborate interpretations of them, sometimes alluding to previous incarnations where this or that happened to them and therefore blah blah blah and yada yada yada.  I indulge them.  They are my friends.  What can I do?

That being said, this dream stayed with me even as I got up to pee at 5am, let the dogs and cat out, take my 2 droppers full of Lion’s Mane extract for clarity and focus, make my Death Wish (“the world’s strongest)” coffee, and hop onto the computer to check the latest messages and emails to see what’s really going on in the world, despite what the mainstream media is all too willing to tell us.

Why Albert Camus?  I haven’t the slightest idea and I refuse to bring a former incarnation story about how we were  twin souls on a divine mission to save humanity and usher in a new Golden Age.  I’ll leave  that narrative for my friends to indulge in, since they seem to love the saving humanity theme a whole lot.

All I know is that I was really pissed that he was reading somebody else’s poem instead of his own.

I think that’s it.  It’s time to take out the cleaver, folks, and strike down to the bone and get to the very heart of the matter and cut away all the bullshit and outside influences that seem largely to guide our lives.

Yes, as you can probably tell I am getting for New Year’s Eve and starting to map out my big resolutions for 2026,

Not only do I plan to get back to Nature and live a more healthy life style as the book I am reading (The Path of the Spiritual Warrior) suggests, but I am planning to bring onboard a lot of other new intentions for 2026 as well, such as:

  1. Working out every day in our new home gym that my wife promises to create in our one spare room that is currently filled with all sorts of furniture, boxes, and various odds and ends that we brought up from our home in Woodstock when we moved up here to Roxbury almost two years ago.

The new exercise equipment is here in boxes in the hallway and in the kitchen area all ready to be unpacked and put together by my wife  who is really good at this sort of thing. Whether she ever gets around to actually doing it is another question entirely, but if we don’t get the home gym set up in 2026, we always have 2027 to look forward to.  I am an optimist at heart and I always try to Look On The Bright Side of Life, as Monty Python admonishes us to do.

  1. Walk the dogs!  I really feel guilty about not walking the dogs.  When they act up and start barking, which is an indication that they want to go out, I usually just hook on their leashes, walk them to the car and take them for a little ride down to the Kayak Center about 2 miles from home and then bring them back.  It seems to satisfy them but perhaps they would prefer an actual walk, who knows?

Anyway, we have a really nice trail in the woods right next to our house so for the New Year I resolve to walk them in the woods, which would also serve to fulfill my getting back to Nature promise as well.

I think two resolutions are enough.  I don’t want to overwhelm myself and get burned out before Valentine’s Day, as has happened all too often in the past.

Maybe walking the dogs in 2027 and working out every day in our soon-to-be-constructed home gym  in 2027 isn’t such a bad idea after all.  I mean, why rush?

Where are we going anyway?

Exiled King

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I like the way Christmas has evolved to become almost nothing. From its monumental and magical centrality in my childhood, through the years of parenting when it was a big stressful production, to this elder era, when my wife and I agree…we enjoy giving each other a few gifts, but we’re done with all the trappings. No decorated tree, no hanging stockings, no cliche music. Some good food with family, but only a select few. Peace and quiet.

What is left to get excited about when one is seventy-three? Only things with which one can engage in depth, in thoughtfulness. Only things with meaning.

I say “one” as if I’m making a generalization about senior citizens, but I’m really talking about myself only. And of course, meaning is found wherever you create it…so for those who care to dig beyond the society’s tinsel Christmas wrapping in search of something deeper, I wish them well. My preference is to separate myself from it entirely, and find meaning elsewhere.

For example, in questions. What is behind all this? Backstage, the nuts and bolts of the gigantic, infinitely complex theatrical extravaganza of life. And even more impossible to answer: why?

Christians might attempt an explanation, and connect it to Christmas: the birth of Jesus, son of God, manifesting a divine plan for all humankind. I understand that story very well, having been taught it in great detail throughout all the years of my childhood and youth. But I can’t make it make sense, so I look elsewhere.

Now, dinner is finished, kitchen clean, family gone…the fire in the wood stove glows and the house is quiet. Maybe this is where we find a window into the what and the why.

I am grateful for everything that comes before this sentence.

Deep Country

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Ken-san knew enough to know that he would never become a nihon-tsu, or Japan expert.  He had turned 40, his partner was not Japanese, and his academic field was American Studies.  Before he began the rudiments of language study in Washington to prepare for his first assignment at the Embassy, Ken was a Japan virgin, an all but tabula rasa.  He knew about Pearl Harbor, he knew about Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  By the midpoint of the initial four-year tour, he had a modicum of language, a dose of culture, and the ability to give good briefing to diverse Americans preparing to give talks and exchange views with Japanese counterparts under the banner of the American Participants program.  Bottom line, he was a quick study, a sponge that American guests could squeeze and feel more knowledgeable about the country where they would spend the next week or so, taking the world renowned shinkansen (bullet train) from city to city.  Energy sapped by trans-Pacific jet lag and the physical demands of speeches that resembled political campaigns, the speakers acted out a version of 1969 film, “If It’s Tuesday, It Must be Belgium.”

Despite four life-stifling years in the bureaucratic and hierarchical Embassy, Ken knew that he wanted to return to Japan, but as an American Center Director, a smaller universe, but a more fruitful one.  To achieve that goal, however, he would have to succeed at the State Department’s Japanese Language Field School in Yokohama.  Like many Foreign Service Officers, Ken had a talent for languages.  He was fluent in French and language qualified in Hebrew.  But succeeding in Japanese was like climbing Mt. Fuji out of season, a daunting task.

Ken made solid progress in his first few months in Yokohama.  He looked over the horizon and compared himself to Shimamura, the protagonist of Yuki-Guni (“Snow Country”) by Yasunari Kawabata.  Ken loved the novel’s first line, “The train emerged from the tunnel into snow country” and could recite it in measured Japanese. He felt that after the long, dark tunnel of Language School, he was about to emerge into the bright light of language competency.  A roadblock remained:  Ken would have to outduel Sensei on the hillside known as aisatsu class.  This was a private tutorial in which the student, already struggling with Japanese grammar, word order and cultural hierarchy, would have to stretch higher and dig deeper to master the nuances of offering a short (perhaps one-minute) speech at a rarefied level of formality.  The field of battle would be a formal ceremony, party or reception where the student was representing the American Embassy.  The audience was members of the Japanese elite:  his efforts in Japanese were more important than their proficiency in English.  He would be expected to deliver the remarks without notes or error.  Drill and memorization were the implements of torture; creativity was absent in that desolate universe.

And sensei, who had survived the American fire-bombing of Tokyo in the latter months of World War II, was a determined adversary and a fierce purist.  Ken intuited that sensei had trained as a Zen monk or martial arts master (perhaps both). He guessed that the narrow path to success would require him to penetrate sensei’s exterior walls of formality known as tatemae and arrive at his true thinking and feeling known as hone.  He would have to show sensei the deference of a samurai.

The biggest challenge of all might be to remain true to his calling as an American officer while mastering the art of the aisatsu.

C. Mallor

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“I’m interested in hearing about your experience,” my neighbor said to me, after I shared a little bit about where I used to work and what I used to do there. My neighbor, the one whose verbosity makes me cringe. The one who stops me on my way out and fills my space with mindless ramblings, meaningless details of uninteresting stories.

I used to like her more. I used to enjoy our impromptu chats. I used to find her stories interesting. And then one day she told me about a crime that had occurred, and that she believed the perpetrator must have been an immigrant. She said lots of other awful things about immigrants that I will not repeat here, or anywhere, ever. Her tone as she spoke was just as it would be if she were commenting on the weather or other trivial matters of the day. I stared back at her dumbfounded, and finally spoke a weak defense to make sure at the very least she knew I did not agree.

As neighbors we continue to chat when we pass each other on the street, but now I just say hello, smile, and nod, and inwardly look forward to the end of the exchange. This morning she wished me a Merry Christmas and then started on and on about something or other. As I listeneed I realized it was more than something or other. She was sharing her self with me, and therefore I was moved to share my self also. She was a better listener than I’d remembered. Conversation with her was more enjoyable than I’d let myself believe.

Does it make me weak that I can look past her racism? Does it make me a bad judge of character? She wished me a Merry Christmas and I wished her one too. She told me some stories and I told her some too. It was a nice neighborly exchange. And somehow it was much more than that too.

Mountain

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It is the day after Christmas and it was a lovely day. The plan worked. Two weeks ago I invited a friend to come and have lunch with me. She had been helping me with a critical situation at home with one of my cats who had been very ill. Without my friend’s help that week I would have been lost and desperate. I was deeply grateful. Although at that time Christmas was a couple of weeks away, I knew she didn’t have a way to celebrate it, that, for her, it was a time of sadness and memories. And I didn’t have plans either. So let’s have lunch, I said.

I spent the morning baking. I am not a baker or a cook. It is rare that I make something and like it. Usually, I am disappointed in my efforts. I often cook or bake with worry instead of peace. But yesterday morning, despite the finickiness of the recipe, its many tight turns, I felt light. I enjoyed skinning half a pound of almonds and separating eggs, and even got my egg whites to pretty much get to soft peaks.

I did run late though. Only half an hour, but was able to whirl through the house at the last minute, giving the bathroom a quick facelift, changing my clothes, whipping off the protective sheets from the living room furniture, and even washing the dishes and making the bed. The cat litter had to wait, but otherwise we were reasonably presentable.

My friend brought the most lovely plate of food. Not only delicious but artfully placed on a large red plate.

I got the fire going, and we ate and talked easily. That’s what I love about her. We talk so easily. We can fill hours.

And my cake turned out. It looked lovely, and it tasted good. The raspberries I added were still a little too frozen, but I knew better than to mention it. When you make the food you immediately identify its shortcomings. Other people immediately identify their pleasure in eating something someone else has prepared.

So although I didn’t have a single Christmas decoration up, it felt special. She could have stayed longer, we could have lingered over the fire, but she had to get back to call her mother abroad who waits for her daily call at an appointed hour.

So it felt special but not hyper inflated. Simple and nice.