The 'fragile
and the very sick'
Sandi put together a list, and then she checked with the shabbaton advisers to make sure
nobody had been left out. She was afraid of missing someone who had
become too sick to
attend the shabbaton, or too fragile to endure the entire event, which
starts Friday night and doesn't end until Sunday morning.
Neighbors
offer furniture
When word got out in Sandi's neighborhood, the neighbors started calling to ask if
they could use more tables and chairs. Then came a summons from an
"embittered neighbor whom one did not relish being told to go see," Sandi
said. "I expected him to warn us that we 'better not be noisy' or step on his
plants. Instead, he handed me a $10 bill and said, 'Go get the ice cream; I
hear these kids have problems.' "
Wheelchair parade
When it came time
for the party, cars began to arrive at the house. "The parents
brought the children in their wheelchairs," said her brother, Douglas. He
was in a fragile state himself at the time, still recuperating from a hip
fracture suffered on the basketball court.
The father in the car
Guests feasted on ice cream and
a fancy watermelon boat created for the occasion by Sandi's father.
When Mr. Isaacson went out with the trash, he noticed the father of
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one of the guests sitting in his car,
discreetly parked a couple of houses down the street.
Spinal bifida girl's first party
Mr. Isaacson soon learned that
the man's daughter did go to shabbaton, "but she
had never been to a party." This father was content to wait in the car, because he
"didn't want to embarrass his daughter."
He had driven his daughter from their home in
Brooklyn, all the way out on Long Island to Sandi's home. "We lived on
the line between Nassau and Suffolk County," said Sandi.
Her parents spirited the father upstairs,
and they all had coffee.
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