Chapter 32 what is fortune in september

The archmage is using a walker.I was standing in front of his house, and I heard the walker beep, beep, beep coming towards me.It's September, and it's been three years since I visited him in the hospital.The leaves were starting to change color, and I noticed a strange car parked in his driveway.His singing came faintly from behind the door: I'm coming Wait a minute I'm coming The door opened.He is smiling.He is thinner now than when I first visited; the bones in his arms are more pronounced, and his face is elongated.His hair was all white, and his once tall figure was bent at an angle.His fingers gripped the walker tightly.

Say hello to my new buddy.He shook his grip and said: We are inseparable wherever we go. He lowered his voice. I can't get rid of him. I laughed out loud. all right.please come in. I followed him through the door.As always, he took a step, raised his walker, and duk, duk, duk, toward the office where all his books and God's files were kept. The owner of the car in the driveway was a home care worker who had come to the Archmage's house to help him.It was acknowledging that his body could betray him without warning, that many things could happen.The swelling in his lung was still there, but the Archmage was eighty-nine years old, and the doctors didn't think it was worth the risk of removing it.Ironically, as the Archmage slowed, so did the cancer, like two weary fighters trudging toward the finish line.

The doctor said, as politely as possible, that aging would probably take the Archmage before tumors did. As we plodded along, I discovered yet another reason why the car stood out: Nothing new had been seen in the house since my visit six years ago.The furniture hasn't been updated, the carpet hasn't been changed, the TV hasn't been made bigger. The archmage has never been interested in external materials. After all, he never owned many of these things. Born in 1917, his parents were poor even by the modest standards of the time.Obert's mother was an immigrant from Lithuania, and his father was a cloth salesman who worked on and off.They lived in a crowded apartment complex on Toppin Avenue in the Bronx.There is very little food.When the young Obert came home from school every day, he prayed that he would not see the furniture being moved to the road again.

The eldest of three children, with a younger brother and a younger sister, he stayed at the synagogue-run elementary school from sunrise to sunset.He has no bicycles or fancy toys.Sometimes his mother would buy discounted overnight bread and spread it with jam and serve it to him with hot tea.He always recalled that it was the most heavenly meal I had as a child. The Great Depression spread, and Oberth had only two sets of clothes, one for weekdays and one for the Sabbath.His shoes are old and patched, and his socks have to be washed every night.On the day of his bar mitzvah according to the religious tradition / a man from the bar mitzvah Father gave him a new suit.He puts it on as proudly as he wears his best clothes.

A few weeks later, in that suit, he followed his father by tram to see a well-to-do relative who was a lawyer.His father brought a cake his mother had baked. When they arrived at the house, a ten-year-old cousin ran up and burst out laughing when he saw Obert.Al, that's my old suit!He screamed: Hey!Everyone look!Al wears my old suit! Oberth felt greatly humiliated.When he was at his relative's house that day, he sat there with a flushed face, feeling very ashamed.On the way home by tram, he desperately kept his tears from streaming down his face, glaring at the father who exchanged the cake for a suitcase of clothes, and of course his son now understands that such an exchange is actually a way for the rich to subsidize their poor relatives.

When he finally got home, he couldn't hold back anymore.I really don't understand.Oberth blurted out to his father: You are very religious, but your cousin is not.You pray every day, but he doesn't.They have everything they want, but we have nothing.Father nodded, then answered in Hebrew with a microstrip singing accent. ∮ God and the decisions he made were right. God does not punish anyone for no reason. God knows what he's doing. That was the last time they discussed the matter. That was also Oberth.For the last time, Lewis judged his life by what he had. Now, seventy-six years later, what he owns is almost meaningless, nothing more than joke material.He dresses like a clearance sale.He wears a plaid shirt with brightly patterned socks and a pair of mail-order pants from Haband, a low-price clothing brand whose staples include polyester jeans and 11-pocket tank tops.The Archmage liked this kind of thing, and the more pockets the better, he could fit notes, pens, a small flashlight, five-dollar bills, newspaper clippings, pencils.

When it comes to possessions, he's like a little kid; price tags mean nothing, little fun counts.high tech?He likes to listen to classical music on a radio with a timer function.Luxury restaurant?His favorite treats are graham crackers and peanut butter sandwiches.Oatmeal with some breakfast cereals and a cup of raisins tossed in is a big meal for him.Shopping for food is his favorite thing, but he only buys discounted items, a habit left over from the Great Depression.The way he navigated the supermarket has become legendary.He could spend hours pushing a shopping cart down the aisles, deliberating and choosing.At checkout, he pulled out coupon after coupon, joking to the cashier as he triumphantly calculated how much money he had saved.

For years, his wife had to collect his paychecks, or he didn't take it seriously.His starting salary at the church was just a few thousand dollars a year, and after fifty years of service his earnings still pale in comparison to those of other members of the clergy.He never asked for a raise, which he found inappropriate.He didn't even own a car during the first few years of his career; there was a man named Eddie.Aardman's neighbors drove him to Philadelphia and dropped him off at a BART station so he could take a class at Tropsy University. In the Archmage, it seems that the mutual exclusion of faith and wealth is embodied.If the congregation wanted to give him something, he would suggest that they give it to charity instead.He hated fundraising the most, because he never thought that the clergy could ask people for money.He once said in a sermon that the only time he ever wished to be a millionaire was because he thought of how many families it would save from money troubles.

He likes old things best.Old coins, old paintings.His personal prayer book was also worn out, with a lot of newspaper clippings bound up with rubber bands. I have everything I want.He looked at the messy bookshelf and said: Why bother chasing more? You are like that word in the bible, I said.What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own life? That's Jesus. Oops, sorry.I said. Don't be sorry.He smiled and said: That's very apt. ①Dropsie College is a university specializing in Jewish cultural studies. In 1993, it merged with the University of Pennsylvania and changed its name to The Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.