Rachel's Hebrew-school chorus, Shir Joy, performed tonight. It was at a service thanking the religious school teachers for their work all year (last day of Hebrew school is May 17th, and then we're off for the summer and fall until Rosh Hashanah). Drew came in time for the 7 p.m. service, and I was worried that if we waited until after the service Rachel wouldn't eat until 9 -- and we have a jam-packed weekend planned -- so, I walked her home from school after she stopped in the school library (and unfortunately forgot to bring home the books she checked out, sigh) and made Italian lemon chicken and egg noodles while she played in the backyard and read in her room. We said the blessing over the candles, ate quickly and got to the synagogue just in time for her to practice at 6:30.
The service was really lovely. One of the songs that Shir Harmony, the choir of older kids, sang was tango-inflected (there was a clarinet!) and it was wonderful seeing Rachel in the front row of the younger kids' chorus. At the Oneg Shabbat afterward, I got to talking with the father of one of her close Hebrew-school friends (they had a playdate last weekend) and he is the editor of a health-policy journal whose narratives are sometimes excerpted in The Post -- I told him of one I had read that really resonated with me, about the importance of coordinated care for elderly patients -- and he seemed impressed that I remembered it. Turns out he also knows former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and former Oregon Department of Human Services director Bruce Goldberg. Such a small world -- here we are, thousands of miles away from a state I left two years ago, and it turns out I talked to a guy who knows two people I covered as a reporter in the late 1990s/early 2000s. You just never know where life will take you.
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