Extroverted and strongly opinionated he was. The kind of guy many would call intimidating, aggressive, or for some, maybe even annoying. But as he dropped his salesman pitch, he exposed a softer underbelly.

Then, like a purifying lightning bolt, it hit me. Rachel’s most romantic comment called me out as I thought about what’s ultimately ahead for us all... 

She appeared about fifty yards to the right of where I stopped. A red light to change – a left turn away from the beginning of my drive home. Over her shoulder a bike, around her neck a flat inner tube, and in her hand, a dismantled rim and tire.

So it is with this subtext I’ll talk of a stranger I met on a hot summer day. A giant of a man who I ran into as he sat under the cooling shade of a tree, silent and withdrawn he was as his sheer stature took a dominant section of a city bench.

The day started at around 8am, a morning split between in-laws homes as a functional/dysfunctional mix of family dynamics, that dependent on who got the most sleep, rose and fell. Yes, it was the day before Christmas and dinner prep was front and cente...

He looked into my eyes as I asked him a leading question as to who he was… He paused, and as many a good Rabbi does, poised himself in contemplative thought. I could almost her the still air as the room grew silent, then he said,

He stood at the edge of the sand, a walking path where in his almost nude, most likely waxed, and very public form; he twisted his barbershop quartet mustache as a not so assuming tourist posed by his side... 

"His greeting was more than a passing hello..."

"It was as if an Angel had reached past the darkness of temporary scarecrows and brought forward ghosts in the closet. A whispering voice that did not originate in my sub-conscious, but rather flowed out of her eyes, and as it did,

She burst through the doors! Head tipped back, snarling sighs echoing, pupils rolled back into her head, the whites filling the fullness of her eye sockets. Mocking, she exclaimed for all to hear, “Do you have a dime? Unbelievable!”