Toward the end of a Passover Seder comes a song known as “Dayenu” – Hebrew for "It would have sufficed.”
The song tells the story of the Jews’ flight from Egypt step-by-step, pausing to note each moment of grace or blessing with the phrase “dayenu.” Here’s a bit of it from the hagada, or text, my family used for our Passover Seder last night, “The Egalitarian Hagada” by Aviva Cantor:
If God brought us out of Egypt, brought us out of Pharaoh’s bondage, that alone would have sufficed us. Dayenu.
If God gave us all the Torah, gave us the Five Books of Moses, that alone would have sufficed us. Dayenu.
If God gave us all the Sabbath, to rest up from six days’ labor, that alone would have sufficed us. Dayenu.
If God brought us into Israel, to a land of milk and honey, that alone would have sufficed us. Dayenu.
I’m sure there are many interpretations of this song. Last night, I heard it as a contemplation of the quality of gratitude. I’d received an email earlier in the day that put humility at the heart of thankfulness.
The email was from Sue, a Denver woman who was living in her car when I interviewed her this winter. She lost her apartment four years ago when the rent, which had been steadily rising, finally outstripped the $1,000 a month in disability payments on which she survives. The median rent for a one-bedroom apartment in metro Denver last month was $1,074, according to the on-line real estate company Apartment List.
Sue has been in touch several times since I interviewed her. I knew that after the coronavirus outbreak started she’d been given vouchers that have allowed her to sleep in a motel instead of her car.
Sue was watching TV in a room at a Motel 6 south of Denver when she (and everyone else in the area with a cell phone) got an Amber alert about four children who were reportedly taken by their mother, who did not have legal custody, from Wyoming to Colorado. I’ll let Sue take up her story from there:
“I didn't know what the vehicle looked like so I googled it to look at a picture of it. When I saw that they were Native American kids, being Indian myself, I thought I would like to help. I thought I don't know them I don't know where they are. I got up to look out to see the storm clouds and the sunset and I looked down in the parking lot and I see that vehicle down there. I got my glasses and saw that it had Wyoming license plates and the last four numbers of what they listed on the alert was on the license plate.”
Sue dialed 911 and within minutes two officers were knocking on her door. The officers told her they had found the vehicle abandoned behind a nearby store. Because of her call, they decided to review footage from the Motel 6 video cameras. After a few hours, one of the officers got back to Sue to tell her the girls had been found safe in a motel room three doors from hers.
“Pretty wild huh?” Sue wrote me.
I have to agree.
She went on to say: “Had it not been for somebody else helping me so that I could be here I wouldn't have been here and been nosy enough (my mom didn't call me Nosy Rosie for nothing) to be looking out the window and see that they were right here. One good deed deserves another?"
Sue knows it could be years before she reaches the top of wait lists for below-market rate housing in the Denver area. I know people who read the story I wrote about her in February see her as homeless – some pity her, some question what she did to end up in her car.
Sue is a person who sees her connections to other people. She’s thankful for a motel room, though she does not know how much longer she’ll be getting vouchers. She’s thankful to have been able to help others.
I’m humbled to know her.