Random Pensées

Highlights from Yesterday

Yesterday, we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. I should be doing the same thing today but I'm kind of backed up at work and, to top it off, I just got an email informing me that a friend has died and his funeral will be held this morning. I'm glad I happened to be wearing a tie today because I'm going to try to sneak out for the funeral mass.

I took the Girl Child with me to temple yesterday for the whole morning, armed with a bag containing snacks, a drink, and a small selection of books to look at for when she got bored. When I tell you that she looked exceptionally cute, you don't have to take my word for it. Two different policemen patted her on the head as we passed and she thanked them for stopping the cars for us.

After we made it in, we went to the tots service. It was very sweet and the Girl Child got to play the honey (literally, the honey jar) in the little skit about dipping apples in honey for a sweet new year. I think she had a good time and she picked up a couple of new songs. What was the best part? Easily the best part was sitting next to her and watching her face change from fierce concentration to curiosity to delight and back again. She had a good time for sure.

We then went upstairs to the main sanctuary and joined my father and my grandparents, so four generations in one row. That was sweet, too, and I enjoyed having her with me. As we left, we spoke to the rabbis to wish them a happy new year. We sit, with my grandfather, up at the front (the second row) of the synagogue. My grandfather was one of the founders of the synagogue and helped build it. The younger rabbi told me he was impressed by how well behaved the Girl Child was. He clearly did not hear us reading Little Red Riding Hood in Norwegian for a part of the service. I was very quiet.

As we left, the Girl Child turned to me and said: "Did you hear that, Pappa? Mr. Rabbi said I was very well behaved!"

I then returned home with the Girl Child to pick up the Boy Child and take them over to my parents for lunch. The Girl Child amused me by turning to the Boy Child in the car and saying: "BC, sitter du der og driter, vennen min?" She's speaking much more Norwegian now to the lad, which makes my wife and me very happy. A loose translation, is, "BC, my friend, are you sitting there and shitting?" She didn't seem to mind that she was wrong because she then said to him: "are you my little bean, studman?"

The day ended with a profound thought from my wife and I want to pass it along. We were talking about a job interview she has coming up in a couple of days and she was clearly not excited about the job or the interview and so I asked her why she was doing it. She replied that she wanted to meet the people she'd be doing the job with and for. She said that as she's gotten more experienced, she's come to realize that the people are at least and sometime more important than the job itself and if she really liked the people, she'd take a job that didn't interest her. She's a smart one, she is, my wife. I learn a lot from her when I pay attention.