No Tuesdays with Morrie

She sat right across the table from me, with those paper thin hands carefully wrapped around her coffee.
We were so close I could see every age spot, count the detailed wrinkles around each eye, even smell her soap when there was a breeze...
And yet at the end of her story...or the middle...or the beginning,

i couldn't help but feel an entire world apart.

i was looking at her, hearing things that happened to her,
but completely and utterly helpless to understand.
the events that she endured as a 12 year old girl during the Holocaust (and i shudder to use the word "events" )
were (and are) beyond my sphere of comprehension...

and yet how i need to hear!
and how, i think (maybe)...she needed to tell..

writers block is often, if not always at my doorstep.
but this is different.
each time i turn a page of notes, it's not that i do not know what to write
...it's that i don't know if it is my place


there is so much there-
and she remembers so much,
and in such vivid detail...

but they are HER memories. and her details.
her entire life she had things TAKEN from her.
books, food, clothes, her home, all the material things yes,
but so much more than that.
her family members. her identity. her freedom. her spirit.
her Faith.

and so who am i? a young american girl,
to sit at my desk and letter by letter, phrase by phrase, take away perhaps the only thing she really has left-
her story.

...
we are meeting once a week, every wednesday.
she said she thinks it would be good to talk more about it all...
as long as i promise to tell her about other things,
about lofty adventures, and good books, and interesting people.

so i promised.

and now wednsdays with Beatrice couldn't come sooner.