GRACE

[schlomo]

Grace

While I was waiting for my wife to join me at the Hawaii Theater, I saw a matronly middle-aged woman slightly limping across from me. Before she would be out of sight, I, perhaps indiscreetly, blurted out that I would be happy to walk on my own with her infirmity. The woman, hardly offended, stopped next to me and began a long discourse on the history of her arthritic hip flare ups. Wow! I have just been diagnosed with the same problem. She continued listing and describing some of her other arthritic concerns, ones similar to mine—from shoulders to knees. I reciprocated. When we finished conversing, she plodded onward.

Talk about serendipity! As I got seated in the handicapped area of the theatre, I saw the same woman whom I had earlier met, sitting right next to me. She must have been worse off than I had realized. I was wrong. It turned out that she was situated beside a woman in a wheelchair and a neck brace, a person whom she pleasantly and intimately chatted with before the concert began, a person whom she evidently cared for. Although my compatriot in the throes of arthritis didn’t pay any attention to me, I was happy that she spent her time with someone less fortunate. Bravo indeed!