Story of teh Day 8/4/2008 #2

Today was the day Aaron has been waiting for.
When we arrived at Deb’s office, he practically strangled her with hugs.
Really.
He also proclaimed his love for her at least half a dozen times- after all- she is the Hearing Aid Queen.

Anyhow, when she finally escaped from his bear hugs, she made impressions for new ear molds, and sent the broken hearing aid off to be repaired.

Aaron was heartbroken when he realized he won’t have his hearing aid back for the first week of school- but he still left her office still professing his undying love for her.

Today was also the day to pick up Sarah’s textbooks.
Why? Well, we were having to do it, this week, anyhow- but here we were, already at ISD for Aaron’s date with the audiologist.
Whoops, I meant appointment.

Since we are off to the Jewish Deaf conference- she will be missing the first week of classes, and we wanted to get the books and assignments to start work on them- so she wouldn’t’ be so far behind when we get back.

Well, the books were there, but no assignments…..
Which I had kind of expected- even if we had come on Wednesday….

And I think we also confounded poor Cindy- the Middle School secretary, because I wanted to know if these were “our” copies of the textbooks (Social Studies and Language Arts) or Sarah’s copies. Ours, of course being the ones ISD is supposed to provide for us, following the lovely year we had with ISD, when Sarah was the only student in her grade ( oh heck, in the school) denied access to a textbook. Most probably because she was Jewish and her teacher a neo-nazi or white supremacist or whatever specific brand of anti-Semite he was- oh, and the fact that despite repeated attempts to get a book for her through the administration, Sarah was left to flounder textbookless for things like doing homework and studying for tests.

Of course, the Deaf School hasn’t kept most of their agreements with us…so, it was probably asking too much for them to bother with this one…..

Anyhow, back to our visit there.

Cindy did want to share with us about her visit to Washington, DC.
Cindy is a friendly person- and both Sarah and I like her a lot- so, chatting with her does not fall under the category of “unusual” - but , for some reason, Cindy was very specifically wanted to share her experience there with us.

Cindy loves to read and she also loves history- and while in DC she visited the Holocaust Museum.

I have never been there. Sarah and I were supposed to go, several years ago- as part of our program at that year’s Jewish Deaf Conference- but our trip was cancelled due to a family emergency.

I have, however, heard about it and read about it.

When you go, they give you an “identity”- they match you up to a person who experienced the Holocaust. Then you go through the museum and learn about the Holocaust- and at the end, you find out what happened to the person you were paired to…if they died, if they survived, and some of what is known about their experiences.

And Cindy was given an identity and a coincidence.

The identity she was given was for a person whose last name was “Greenbaum”- well, their original name was a European version of that- but he survived, and his name was later anglicized to “Greenbaum” – after he came to America.

Which is the same thing that happened to Sarah’s grandfather- Larry’s father.

And Cindy made a gift of this “passport” (that is how the biographies are done) to Sarah.

Wow.

Which is really the only even half-intelligent thing that I could say to that.

And, of course, now Sarah is trying t find out if her grandfather and this other survivor are related.

There is another word for coincidence. Well, one of the other words, and it doesn’t really mean the same thing- but it is a flavor of the same thing- serendipity. I always think of serendipity as a positive occurrence. Coincidence isn’t necessarily. But, when it happens, it certainly colors the moment in such a way that it is hard to shake off.

Either way- they startle you when they happen- and eventually, you adjust and accept the occurrence. But….