My Daughter Stuck Penniless in India
Remember I told you that my oldest daughter was in India? Well, she came home b”H, but now her 19-year-old sister, Hallel, has taken her place there.
Hallel was having a fantastic time until yesterday, when she accidentally punched in the wrong pin number, so her credit card got blocked. Hallel wrote me: “Eema, can you please help me to fix it? I don’t have any money left!”
This triggered flashbacks to a movie I wish I hadn’t watched on the flight last week telling the true story of a 5-year-old boy (just like my Yoni!) in India who got stuck on a train which took him 1000 miles from home, leaving him hungry and homeless, and separated from his family for 25 years.
But it turned out that helping to get Hallel’s credit card unblocked was going to be complicated. Since she has no way to call the bank in Israel. And since she’s over 18, so I can’t speak to the bank in her name.
Which meant that yesterday, I spent two hours on the phone with the bank and the credit card company trying to make some headway. My neck muscles ached with tension, and I even found myself starting to hyperventilate.
Hallel had travelled to India with her best friend, but now they were in different cities. What was going to be? What if we couldn’t figure this out? What if she didn’t have money for food? What if she didn’t have money to pay for a place to sleep? What if she lost her phone and she didn’t have money to fix it? How would we find her? How would she manage?
Even the Chabad House she adored so much has closed up for the winter! I didn’t know Chabad Houses ever closed!
Anyway, I went to sleep exhausted and early. And this morning, as soon as the clock struck 8 I was on the phone again. I spoke with a woman from our bank’s national headquarters. She was nice and empathetic and clearly wanted to help. But after she put me on hold for a while to speak with somebody at Hallel’s branch, she got back on the phone. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Weisberg, there’s nothing the branch can do to unblock the card. But it turns out that if a credit card is blocked because of a mistaken password, then at midnight it gets unblocked. So the card’s already working again. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
Ahhh. What a relief!
And it reminded me. If you would have engaged me in a DMC on any given day of my 21-year mothering career, I would have inevitably told you about some issue I was facing. A challenge, a difficulty, a crisis that was (in many cases) seemingly insurmountable.
And isn’t it suspicious that those insurmountable challenges change from month to month, from week to week, from day to day? Whether I get all upset and panicky about them, or (preferably) not.
hi there…. what is “dmc”??
is it deep meaningful conversation?
thanks for sharing your story.
another “learning experience” for Jewish Moms.