Thank you notes

Dear Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Morty,

I’m sorry you couldn’t come to my bat mitzvah.

I don’t remember why you couldn’t make it, especially since 30 years have passed since then. My mother says you didn’t like to travel outside of New York much so that was probably it. The ceremony was held at the new synagogue in Blacksburg, Va., which we had just finished working on. It used to be an Oddfellows Lodge, and when we were cleaning it up Mr. Krutchkoff looked in the small room behind the pulpit and found a coffin. Fortunately, it was empty.

My father always called the synagogue The Building. “We have to go work on The Building,” he would say, and we were always working on it — it was the first time such a place existed in our corner of Southwest Virginia, where the Jewish population wasn’t exactly thriving; we did most of the handiwork ourselves. Now it reminds me of that song “I’m working on a building for my lord, for my lord,” but I didn’t know the song then and anyway, I wouldn’t have sung it because at the time I thought if you were Jewish and you sang gospel songs you might get into trouble.

My bat mitzvah was the first to be held in The Building and I did a pretty good job, if I do say so myself. I led the service and proved to my other New York relatives that you can learn Hebrew in the south. I still remember the first line of my haftarah. I don’t remember my speech, though, and I don’t think my mother has it anymore, in the cabinet where she keeps the other things I wrote. But I think you would have been proud of me.

I understand how a person can buy a gift and forget to give it. I buy gifts and then lose them all of the time, so I get how that might have happened with the $50 savings bond you bought for me, especially if you weren’t very organized (and my mother says you weren’t). Your daughter found the bond a few years ago when she was going through some things from your estate. She gave it to my Long Island aunt and uncle, who kept forgetting to give it to me. They remembered this Passover.

When I first heard that there was a savings bond waiting for me, I’d thought maybe it was from my grandmother, who died before I even had my bat mitzvah. But when I saw the date — September of 1979 — I knew it had to be from the two of you. At first I was disappointed it wasn’t from Grandma, who never got to see me get bat mitzvahed or married or have children. I’d planned on giving the bond to my kids so they’d have an inheritance from her of sorts: Look. This is from your great grandmother. I still have other things from her, though, like the animal pins that she gave me every time she visited. I can give those to my daughter now that I’m less afraid she’ll poke herself. I have my grandmother’s “short” genes. And stories. I don’t have things like that from you since I never knew you as well (and since you weren’t short). But now I have this bond and the story that goes with it.

If I had written this note around the time of my bat mizvah, it would have been more concise because I would have been cranking out thank-yous in my best, 13-year-old, production-line style. Dear Aunt Sylvia and Uncle Morty: I’m sorry you couldn’t come to my bat mitzvah. Thank you for the bond. I will save it for my college education. But since I’ve finished all of my other notes you get more than the usual three lines. And since I’ve finished college, the money is not going into my college savings account.

With interest, the $50 savings bond you bought me is now worth $219.13. I’ll have to pay tax on the interest (something Uncle Morty, being an accountant, would know all about) but it’s still quite a bit more than I’d imagined. The money could help with a number of things — insulation, an electrical repair, some new boxwoods — but I’m planning to use it to buy an electric keyboard for the kids. I’d promised them a keyboard, one with weighted keys, like a piano, the next time I sell a book. But the picture book market is pretty slow right now. Of course, you lived through way worse economic times than these; I know for years the closest Uncle Morty had to a room of his own was the day bed in the living room. He went from there to my aunt’s house and then the two of you got married.

My mother was your maid of honor. She wore a pink dress, made of tulle with silver trim, and then cut it shorter to wear for her senior prom. Times were getting better. And they’ll get better again. But until they do, it’s nice to discover bat mitzvah gifts you never knew you had.

So thank you for the gift, which will be a gift to my kids as well. And thanks for remembering me on my bat mitzvah. My mother says family was always important to you, so I want you to know, I told your great, great niece and nephew about you today. My mother says you were also a little shy, so I’m hoping you won’t mind — I told a few other people about you, too.

Love,
Madelyn