The drive from upstate New York to my aunt’s home in Washington, D.C., was one of the most harrowing parts of the trip. It made me physically ill.

I mistakenly entered the truck lane while driving down and couldn’t escape, so I had to drive with all of these trucks beeping at me.

I got to my aunt’s home in the afternoon and celebrated the beginning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, with her that night.

I visited my maternal grandfather, a Czechoslovokian Holocaust survivor, and he talked with me about how he was simultaneously lonely being one of the few Eastern European Jews and yet was annoyed that there were too many Jews.

…You kind of had to be there.

We also talked about aging and the loss of the past. But those discussions were less amusing and more profound. And thus, not worth delving into.