Last night a Machvanka called -- I will call her Lana. She called after 10 pm my time. She is on the east coast and I always think that she calls when she is alone and can't sleep, when her husband is out with the "boys," drinking, gambling, making good luck with good times, something no upstanding Machvaia wife would ever complain about.

We always talk about her mother, a woman who, three years ago, left this world for The Other Side. Lana misses her mother and asks me, her senior by a generation and an old friend of her mother's, why that excellent woman no longer appears in her dreams.

But remember, I say, she came just last week when you were full of sorrow. She came as a pretty butterfly and geve you healing kisses all over. Remember?

Lana does remember but wonders why the kisses were so strongly suctioned that she had to wrestle each of them off?

That's because, I venture positively, she really wanted you to notice her, to pay attention and stop the bad luck of grieving. Too many tears can make you sick.

When Lana calls, we are joined in a comfortable conspiracy of remembering and cherishing her mother. Lana calls me several times a month.