The drawer was stuffed.
When he tugged at the wooden knob, a fluff of velvet and satin bulged out. It always happened when he opened this drawer, one of only two drawers in his small dining room. He never emptied it. He’d only overstuff it, which required him to kneel down, his eighty-nine-year-old knees crackling like dry twigs as he picked up the escaped yarmulkes, kissing them gently before packing them back in the drawer.
Except for the one he had on his head for that evening.
Yossi lived alone and only wore his yarmulke on the Sabbath, but his drawer runneth over with not one or two or three of these skullcaps worn by Jews to show their reverence for God. He had dozens upon dozens, his drawer a time machine of simchas, happy occasions.
There were nights, now more than before, when he couldn’t sleep. He’d been alone for so long, but he had felt it more keenly in the past year. He wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was his bladder, waking him in the middle of night, now frightening him in some way. Or maybe that large bed that he once shared with his wife was getting bigger as he got smaller, and so when his leg stretched to the vast emptiness on the other side, the chill from the untouched sheets would startle him and jerk him awake.
On these nights he would lie there hoping, praying, that he would fall back to sleep. When it did not happen, he’d get...
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