Calgary, home: JNF, memories, fathers and mothers

The JNF Calgary Negev event was lovely. People were so kind and friendly, and Shai Davidai was passionate and perceptive and brilliant. MP Shuvaloy Majumdar was there, too, and gave a speech that was very powerful. And Anna Tomala read out an important statement from Stephen Harper – in which the former Prime Minister surprised me by saying some nice things about me. I didn’t expect that – nor to see again a painting I had done for a synagogue here.

I didn’t expect to give any speech either! I was still on Israel time and I didn’t have any speech prepared – I thought I was just there to ask questions! – but I gave one anyway. I hope it wasn’t awful.

But I wanted to mention one thing. For me, even though I left long ago, Calgary is still home. This is where I grew up.

Seeing so many places of my youth – feeling the presence of my Mom and Dad just about everywhere in Calgary’s South – was a bit hard. I love them and miss them every single day, and the memories that are here…it is just hard, sometimes.

At the event, two gentlemen and one woman approached me separately to say that they knew or had worked with my Dad in medicine. They said such nice things about him. And, in my exhausted state, I was having a very hard time keeping it together, as they told me things about him I didn’t know. (But I’m losing it now, in my MacLeod Trail hotel room.)

I don’t have to tell any of you, because you know it already, but it all goes so fast, doesn’t it? You blink, and so many years have gone. How does that happen?

Shuv mentioned the Torah last night in a perfect way, so I got back to my hotel room and went looking for something that fit what I was feeling, too. I liked this in Exodus. “Honor your father and your mother in order that your days shall be lengthened upon this land that the Lord your God has given you.”

So I do. I don’t know if it lengthens my days on Earth, but it makes all of the days I’ve got feel much more meaningful. It feels right.

Time to head back, leaving this home for my final one. Hug the ones you love.