A Hug from Beyond

Dear That’s Life,

Having a blog is often a strange experience, as it does not always enter my frame of reference that there are people who read it whom I have never met. Every once in a while, someone I do not know posts a comment and I wonder why that person has decided to read what I have written. It occasionally makes me feel a little uncomfortable but in this case, I could not have been happier that a complete stranger stumbled over upon my blog, posted a comment and made the connection.

When a comment is posted, I am notified and given the opportunity to approve or disapprove. I always read through the comments but do not always get the chance to respond, sometimes deciding not to at all. In the past, there was only one comment posted by someone I did not know. When “Kit Cat” posted a comment on something I wrote the day after Bin Laden was killed, I was taken aback. I did not know the person, there was no actual name attached to the comment and his words struck me as peculiar. Not only was his post slightly irrelevant to what I had written, but he mentioned that he had found a book that my great-grandfather had penned – and asked if I wanted it back.

Frankly, I ignored the comment, assuming it was a mistake. How this person had found the blog and made the connection that the author of this work was my ancestor was beyond me and enough of a fluke that I wrote it off as just that. I was convinced this was a prank or that Kit Cat had mistaken me for someone else. Not including my grand-father’s name, nor his own, in the post led me to believe that my instincts were correct. I ignored the comment, did not approve it to my blog nor did I respond. About ten days later, however, he tried again, and submitted another comment.

On the second try, he shared a little more information. Kit Cat assumed that I had not read the first one, or that I had not bought into what he had written about finding the book, but was still determined to find a member of the author’s family and bring the book home. He lived in Maine and had purchased the book on Ebay while studying Hebrew and learning about Israel. His studies were complete but he did not want to dispose of the book, preferring to get it to a member of the author’s family. Doing what comes naturally in 2011 when research needs to be done, he turned to the web.

After setting up a Google site about the book, complete with digital scans, which he hoped would attract someone’s attention, his search became more determined when the site did not serve its purpose. Somehow, he stumbled upon an article I had written over six years ago about my great-grandfather for a journal, years before I had started blogging. He poked around a little more, pieced it together and found me.

We corresponded and I checked out the site. True to his word, there was the book, with hand written dedications in both English and Hebrew to a library that no longer existed. While I have seen my great-grandfather’s handwriting, seeing it next to his picture took my breath away. As if hearing, ‘Yes, Miriam – it’s me,’ I stared at the scans on the computer, knew this was no fluke and that Kit Cat had completed his mission. The book was coming home.

Insisting on not accepting even one cent from me in exchange for the book, Kit Cat simply asked for an address to which he could send the package. I complied, thanked him for his generosity and even more for his determination. As the book is on its way to me, most likely to arrive by the time this piece goes to print, I wonder what it will feel like to hold. Every once in a while, something happens that makes me feel like my grandparents, even my great-grandparents, are making their presence known. Ironically, it was the second time this week that I had that feeling.

Already connecting earlier in the week with someone whose parents had been close friends of my grandparents, his father and my grandfather college roommates, we shared memories of our families together, bringing us both to tears, though we had never before met or spoken. With the book on its way to me, the long distance hug I have been feeling will be that much tighter, that much warmer and that much more real. It is nice to know my ancestors are still thinking of me. I am hugging them right back.

MLW

As seen in the South Shore Standard June ’11