By Maurice Crystal
Got out of bed at 6:30, late for me. But I had tossed and turned fighting demons. I knew immediately what it was all about, which is rare. I had gone for a walk yesterday in the afternoon. It was nice and sunny and my 4K route takes me by the local elementary school. It was 2:30 and the children were streaming out, hundreds of them, into the arms of hundreds of parents. The crowd of humanity froze me in my tracks. I could feel I couldn’t enter that mass of humanity, masks or no masks. I turned around and found another way home. It isn’t the first time that has recently happened. It was the past Sunday afternoon, another nice day, when Sheila and I went to Trudeau Park. A religious ceremony, part of Rosh Hashanah involving the tossing breadcrumbs into water, was to take place. I had never seen it and I was intrigued. We met some fellow Dorshei Emet members by the man made lake and chatted as we waited for the 4:30 prayer to take place. More people kept coming, not all wearing masks. Soon the three feet personal space had shrunk to two. Sheila was the first to voice my nagging emotions. “This is getting too crowded” she complained. We left. I’m short and when I’m around six footers, I am close to their armpits, yet I have never felt uncomfortable in crowds. I like to schmooze with strangers, but the pandemic has made me fearful. When the plague is over and the High Holidays will see the return of the congregation to the building, will I have that initial panic? It still happens to me when I enter an elevator and the memory of an incident that took place in the Sun Life Building some seven decades ago when the car plunged a dozen floors before the emergency brakes were engaged. It has left a scar.
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