One busy summer Sunday 
at the Getty Museum gift store, I gave
a middle-aged woman her change, 

but instead of moving away from my register
she just stared at the coins in her hand.
She must’ve seen my irritation 
 
because she said, No worries,
I’m just looking at your money. 
I’ve never seen it before.

She was Australian. L.A is a busy hub 
between our two countries—
and a lot of Ozzies visit the museum.

Where are you from? she asked me.

The name of my birth country 
is always followed by too many questions, 
so I often say England,

and I still don’t know why,
with all those people in the line 
behind her, I told her the truth.

What a coincidence, she said, 
I’m also South African. 

To meet someone from back home
is a happy occasion. I was doubly delighted 
to discover we came from the same city.

Her name was Carmella.
I didn’t catch her surname—
it began with a Z.

I told her I’ve only known one 
Carmella—my sister’s childhood friend.
Who is your sister? she asked. 

This woman, a stranger from Australia 
was my sister’s best friend.
I remembered her as a short chubby girl 

who peered through thick lenses of her spectacles.
I didn’t recognize you without glasses, I said. 
We laughed. And then we cried.

                        

Your daughter is going to send 
you butterflies, or little white moths,
a psychic told me,
a month after Mahalia died.

I see them.
You can’t ignore a butterfly
if it flies around you while you hike
on an otherwise empty trail. 
Hello, I say, Thank you for coming,
and blow kisses. 

The pandemic forces us to honor 
her memory remotely. 
Using our computers, we’re able to join 
Shabbat services 
from her synagogue in Vancouver.
 
Today’s service opens with three women 
singing a cappella in the shul garden,
and when it continues with the mourner’s 
kaddish, the two-thousand-year-old prayer 
for the souls of our departed loved ones 
that begins,
Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba, 
a white moth flies in circles 
above their heads.

Shabbat Shalom Mahalia.

YouTube video of Roseanne reading "Signs."