The Imperfect People in my Life

The Imperfect People in my Life

Aaaaaaaaargh!

The cashier at the health-food store had weighed and rung up the raisins, the rice, the chickpeas…but when I reached into my purse for my wallet there was none.

And that was when I remembered:

At around 7:30 AM that morning my daughter had asked if she could take some money out of my wallet in order to add money to her bus card. Aaaaaaaaargh again. She had taken my wallet out of my purse, but hadn’t returned it.

[Longsuffering JewishMOM sigh.]

Sunday is a very busy day for me—in the morning I do my shopping for the week and then I film my peptalk and then I cook for the week after my little kids are in bed. Sunday is the day that I have no time to waste on nonsense, like having my purse misplaced by my careless daughter.

So I shlepped back home and called my daughter. I spoke with a nonchalant and calm tone even though I fumed silently that I always have to put up with other’s carelessness…As though my life wasn’t overstuffed and stressful enough already.

My daughter apologized and suggested a few places she might have put the wallet down: and following her suggestions I called Yaakov’s ganenet to see if the wallet had gotten put inside the roof of Yaakov’s stroller. Nope. And I looked on the living room table. Nope. And I looked on the telephone shelf. Nope.

So I did the things that a good frum JewishMOM is supposed to do when things don’t go according to plan. I sat down on the sofa and I said my morning blessings. And then I tried to think, Garden-of-Gratitude stye, of five reasons why losing my wallet was really for the best, and not the huge pain in the neck it actually was. And then I read the Rebbe Meir segula for locating lost objects out loud and with great kavana from the magnet on the fridge.

And all of this calmed me down so that I felt a bit less frustrated with my daughter. But it wasn’t easy. Especially when I started thinking about how my wallet was probably stolen and some dastardly thief was rushing off at that moment to purchase an automobile with my credit card.

And then I decided to take one more look around the house before I let myself fly off into full-blown panic. I climbed upstairs and looked by the computer. Nope. I looked in the cabinet where we keep important whatnot above the freezer. Nope. And then I opened our coat closet and put my hand inside the pocket of my daughter’s jacket. And I felt something smooth and squarish and supple—my wallet!

I had lost an entire half an hour on my busiest morning of the week on my stupid and completely unappreciated wallet search. So I rushed off to the shuk feeling the aftertaste of frustration in my mouth.

I walked so quickly I felt like I was about the take off, with my clunky, iron, industrial-sized shuk cart making a racket as I pushed it along the sidewalk.

I threw some curry paste and seaweed in at the Asian store. Then threw in some raisins and rice and chickpeas at the health food store.

And then I continued on to the market, and bought some red peppers and purple onions and 4 cauliflowers (click here to read what we’re eating this week, major Yum!)

I threw them into the cart and pushed it along towards my favorite fruit stand, when a man whose bald head was covered by a kippah stopped me with an irritated: “Geveret, wait a minute!”

I was irritated by his irritation and by the fact that he was stopping me. Didn’t he know that I was running late because not all of my family members are as perfect as I am?

Without a word he pointed down at my cart with a face that conveyed a mixture of confusion and pre-anger.

And I looked down and saw that I was pushing my red peppers and purple onions and 4 cauliflowers in a cart that was not my own.

14 comments

  1. LOVE THIS LINE:
    Didn’t he know that I was running late because not all of my family members are as perfect as I am?

  2. such a clear message to you! Reminds me of the time I used to work in a flower shop and was running late. So I decided to one last flower delivery that was a bit far. With my driving experience though, I knew I could do it fast. I knew all the shortcuts, I practically owned the streets!
    Then somehow I got lost and it took a really long time.

  3. Love this! Great article. Made me laugh 🙂
    I could really relate.

  4. daniela lowinger

    Thank you for this article. Reminded me how many times this happens to me.. expecting perfection when I am so far away from it..

  5. great story, I had something like that happen to me: lost the wallet, looked all over for it, while condemning myself for my carelessness. put money in the pushka, and soon thereafter found it by the computer. really!! Then went about my business..went to post office, did my thing, and as I was leaving, geveret, the pakid called to me, and I said now what? w/ irritation, and he said, you left your wallet on the counter…amazing!, I was flabbergasted, (besides feeling like a chicken w/o its head running around)
    HaShem certainly watching over me and perhaps decided I had enough aggravation for the day I had a big chuckle; the little comical surprises during my day – simply mindblowing – but so are the ways of the Eibeshter- just wanted to share..

  6. Loved this article, as I do all of your articles! I know this is totally unrelated, but I would love to know more about how you cook all your food for the week on Sunday b/c I too would LOVE to do that, yet I don’t know how….

    Care to share? We’d really appreciate your tips/secrets!

    Thanks!!!

    • Thanks! on sunday and thursday we eat easy quick things to prepare (pita pizza on sunday and pasta with store-bought sauce on thursday) and the other three days we eat something that I prepare on thursday night. a huge thing like the cauliflower curry (I quadruple the recipe) from this week with brown rice. B”H, it works well. I find recipes for the week by googling the main ingredients I’d like to eat that week– this week I googled for example cauliflower and chickpeas, since that sounded good to me. can anyone recommend a good easy dairy/vegetarian cookbook?

  7. I silently ridiculed a close relative for being very absent-minded with her possessions when Hashem sent me a big lesson, at the airport I found that I had left my passport at home!

  8. I love almost every cookbook by Mollie Katzen, especially her Moosewood cookbook, New recipes from Moosewood Resturant and her Enchanted Broccoli Forest. I’m vegetarian and find her recipes flavorful.

  9. I have been eating and making a LOT of recipes from the blog, manjula’s kitchen…i couldn’t recommend it enough. Most fos are vegan and gluten free and don’t need a lot of fancy ingredients. She is a wonderful cooking teacher and she even has a lot eBook for her recipes. She is highly regarded in the Indian cooking world….check her out on YouTube!

  10. And how do you get your children to eat that stuff? Cauliflower, curry, chickpeas… my children would starve (and so would my husband!) Alas, I have the only adventurous palate in my home.

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