Barb picked up the phone, her voice a little sleepy, and asked if she could call me back after taking a minute to walk Jay back to his room. I said, yes, if she didn’t mind, could she please call me back (I was bristling and could barely restrain my annoyance. How could she put me off yet again?) I got a glass of water and waited a minute or so for the phone to ring back.

By the time I picked up the line again, something—angels of mercy, the hand of the Creator, or even the old man with the sickle himself—something had touched me. My hands, head and heart felt like a flutter as of feathers, and all my vituperation dissolved and floated upward like a mist, and I was engaged unknowingly in one of life’s sacred and true rituals.