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Shabbos Nachamu holds some personal significance for me.
One summer(perhaps 1991) I was in NY's Catskill Mountains at a NY-based singles' Shabbos Nachamu weekend being held at the Concord Hotel. I'd traveled to NYC to be with a girl whom I'd become friends with the previous summer at a Niagara Falls singles' shabbaton. She'd planned ahead that we'd spend the weekend at the Concord and so she made plans through a NY-based group for the two of us, as well as for 3 or 4 of her friends that were going to be there too.
It was a fun Shabbos Nachamu weekend, even if I didn't meet the man of my dreams.
Fast forward to Shabbos Nachamu 1993. I've already been dating "the one" since December 1992 and we'd decided that some point in the summertime we'd get engaged. I spent Shabbos Nachamu 1993 at "the one's" mother's home, with "the one" being housed in a room down the hall. I recall when Shabbos was over and I called my parents to wish them a shavuah tov, my father got on the line and said "NU? So any news?" "No, Dad...don't worry, it'll happen." He told me that he remembers that back home (in Shtetlville)that people got engaged around this time. (Okay, so my father and mother, as well as I, only had to wait a few more weeks for that special moment.)
Fast forward to Shabbos Nachamu 1997. I'm married, and later in the afternoon I'm having contractions with baby # 2, so it's not really a relaxing Shabbos as the name depicts. We hope to hold out till Shabbos is over, but that doesn't happen. We have a prearranged taxi service with set fee and $ for the driver to pick up (we looked into the halachic aspects...just in case of this scenario), we go to the hospital, and baby daughter is born about 25 minutes later. Fifteen minutes after that, Shabbos Nachamu is over, and we happily get to call family members and let them know how we spent our Shabbos Nachamu.
In hindsight, perhaps we should have given our daughter the name "Nechama"/comfort, in honor of the day she was born. But even without that name, but with her other two beautiful given names, she is a continual comfort in our lives.
Thinking ahead, I hope you all have a wonderful and significant Shabbos Nachamu yourselves.
3 comments:
So that means she's turning 8 sometime in the next few days.
Yom Huledet Sameach!
[Happy Birthday!]
I love the idea of having a "significant" Shabbos Nachamu.
My daughter always wishes me "a significant" fast, instead of an "easy" fast. I've tried to follow in her footsteps....
She was born on an erev Shabbat on the 200th birthday of Los Angeles. During one point in my labor I noticed that the IV bag was swinging.
"Stop moving the bed," I snapped at my husband. Yes, I was cranky.
"I'm not touching the bed," he said.
"Yes, you are."
He stood and raised his hands. He moved away from my bed. The IV bag's sway increased.
"Earthquake," I said.
I felt a rumble.
The nurse screamed. She ran out of the room.
My husband and stared at each other.
Seconds later the nurse returned. "I'm so sorry. That was extremely unprofessional of me. I'm from New York, and I've never experienced an earthquake."
The IV bag had stopped swaying.
"Don't worry about it," I said.
Rochelle, great story! Worthy of its own scene in one of your books.
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