Added in Yiddish It comes from the Other Side Asher Boxing football People are hurt It must come from the Other Side I drew him sitting on the parkway bench in front of our apartment house In the spring and early summer, and some-times in the beginning weeks of autumn he would sit on that bench with my mother on a festival afternoon They would talk quietly together and I would scamper about I was a child then and never really understood what they were saying But I re-membered their faces and gestures the lowered eyes the smiles the light brushing of fingers across an arm or shoulder I re-membered those moments on that bench, and now I drew them And drew too the way my father once looked at a bird lying on its side against the curb near our house It was Shabbos and we were on our way back from the synagogue Is it dead Papa I was six and could not bring myself to look at it Yes I heard him say in a sad and distant way Why did it die Everything that lives must die Everything Yes You too Papa And Mama Yes And me Yes he said Then he added in Yiddish But may it be only after you live a long and good life my Asher I couldn’t grasp it I forced myself to look at the bird Everything alive would one day be as still as that bird Why I asked That’s the way the Ribbono Shel Olom made His world Asher Why So life would be precious Asher Something that is yours forever is never precious