For the past several years, my family and I have not engaged in the wrapped-and-bowed gift giving tradition. of the year-end holiday season.

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This is purely the number of engagement announcements from family and friends that have hit my feed over the past 30 days.

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"It gives me time to get back with my family and do things I've been wanting to do for the past four or five years, " the 52-year-old said.

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On Tuesday, after the storm had passed, I gave my family the slip and walked a mile south through Red Hook, first past houses and businesses that were still bilge-ing out waist-deep water on Van Brunt Street, than over to Lorraine Street, where I heard the water had been high that morning, and the Red Hook Houses, a housing project.

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Being separated from my family for such along period of time made me realize how important my family is to me and how I had taken them for granted in the past.

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And she seemed one of those people, of sturdy Jewish stock and not unlike members of my own family, who would live on and on, at least into her 90s and possibly past 100, never losing a single marble, and applying her brilliant wit to whatever outraged or amused her.

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