103.8

My baby is burning with fever.

He whimpers, restless…

I try everything I know

To soothe him, comfort him

Ease his pain

But I am helpless.

He reaches out to me, desperately

Pulls me close

Then pushes me away

Lies down

Gets back up

Picks up toys and puts them down

He doesn’t know what he wants…

Just that the pain should go away

I stand, holding him close

In his dark room

My mind is sluggish

I have been up far too long..

But he needs me,

So I am here…

His head is heavy,

Limp on my shoulder

His face nestled into the hollow of my neck

His skin, like coals

Burns mine

And he cries. 

And I cannot console him.

And then I understand

Maybe a little bit better….

I think of the parent

The Tatty

Who watches

While His beloved children are burning

Burning up

With baseless hate

And with self destruction

And with emptiness

And we cry

Whimper, restless…

Call out for comfort,

To be soothed

For this Pain to lessen

But we cannot be consoled.

And we keep crying…

We reach out, desperately

We pull Him close

And then push Him away

We fall

We get back up

We try and distract

And we realize we can’t..

We don’t even know what we want

Just…that the pain…should go…away…

But He stands

Holding us

In this dark, dark room.

It is too late; things have stopped making sense

But we need Him

Oh, how we need Him

And He is there…

………………….

Today my baby woke up

With a watery smile,

His skin cool to the touch

I whisper my quiet Thanks upward

And move on to start my day… 

Oh, for the day

To be free of this fire

May it come speedily in our days…

Brave...

I never thought of myself as brave

I’m just a regular kinda person

Well,

I’m not afraid of bugs, or dogs, or heights

Or blood, or flying, or speaking up in public

But I never saw myself as particularly brave

I wonder…

Would I drop everything and run

into a blazing building to save a child?

I’d like to think so, but if I had to be honest

I think I’m the type to freeze up and just stand there staring, horrified,

While others rush around helping and doing and saving

Would I hold onto my beliefs and affirm my trust in G-d

And rather be burned by the stake than denounce my faith?

I wish I could give a resounding YES…

But how could I know that for sure?

Would I be willing to donate a kidney

       to a complete stranger?

Would I have the courage to enter the gas chambers with my head held high,

       still believing in His goodness?

Would I make the split-second decision to run in front of a truck

       to save a little child?

Would I behave like the people on Flight 93

       if I found myself faced with a terrorist?

Would I act like my grandfather did

       as he ran from the Nazis?

...

I have never been tested in such big ways.

But

I’ve been told that I’m brave.

That facing my fears and doing what needs to be done

       is brave

That by taking up my tiny dagger against the huge and terrifying monster…

And not hiding from myself

And not lying to myself

And taking that leap into the abyss

And trusting that this fall is what needs to be done…

And believing that He knows what’s best for me

And loves me

And won’t let me die…

And putting all my energy and strength and faith and sweat and blood and tears

Into this task that seems so incredibly impossible…

And waking up every morning with the decision to keep doing this…

And still moving forward

With a smile

And a thin but unwavering song woven tightly around my heart

Even when life comes again to smack me in the face…

………That by doing all this………

I am being

         So

     Unbelievably

             Brave.

Bliss

My whole being is on fire. The love courses through my veins, pulsing hot and thick, making my limbs tremble.

He sits, heavy in my lap, drowsy and weighted, his hair smelling of sweetness and standing out in puffy spikes like it does after each bath. He gives a contented sigh and melts in further, nuzzling his cheek against the soft of my sweatshirt and letting his eyes close.

There were hard days and long nights. A thousand dreams were born and died, a thousand tears traced letters down my face and into my arms. A million whispered, feverish prayers, a lifetime of yearning…

And now, this. This moment, this golden boy, this gift beyond all the fleeting dreams I ever had. I look into his face, trace the lines on his eyelids, feel the soft warmth of his sleeping breath. He is alive, warm and heavy, and my breath catches.

There will doubtless still be hard days and long nights. There might be times of whispered conversations with G-d and days of tears and longing. But right now, holding this living, breathing, wondrous gift, holding him tight and feeling his aliveness with every heartbeat…this is tasting a tiny bit of gan eden.

I am a mommy.

Child

They take me around everywhere.

**

Sometimes they take me to a nice place, like the benches on the side of the building where I can watch the children from the other apartments play and laugh and run around. Sometimes they knock into me which makes me upset and then I yell at them but usually they’re nice and they say hello and good morning to me.

**

Other times they take me to places I don’t like. I get angry and I tell them I don’t want to go but they take me anyway. She tells me that I have to come but I don’t want to listen. I yell and curse in every language I know, which makes her angry, too. They take me by the arms and help me walk while I spit out my anger. Why are they so mean to me? I did nothing wrong…

**

We are walking across the street. I think there is a house behind me, but I don’t remember where we are coming from. I am sad and a little upset and I am mumbling under my breath because I don’t know what else to do. She is asking me what is wrong, but I don’t know how to answer. So I keep mumbling. Then she smiles and says cheerfully, “We are going to Chani’s house! You love Chani!” I don’t know who Chani is…. All I know is Chana’le and she lives down the dirt path from my house and I have not seen her in a few days. The trees are turning colors.They are pretty, but they are so different than any trees I know. They are short and their leaves are yellow. I have never seen trees with yellow leaves. I feel confused.

**

We go into the house. She puts me into a chair and ties a big napkin around my neck. I feel tired, and the chair is stiff. And I feel hungry, but my hands shake and the food spills off the fork. She feeds me a little. But I am angry at her still, so I eat slowly and I spit some things out and I tell her she is bad and evil. She is patient with me. Why is she so nice?

**

Around the table are many children. They talk fast and I cannot understand anything they are saying. They all come over and say hello to me and wish me a gut yom tov, and they all seem to know me. I do not recognize any of them, but one little boy looks like my brother, Shmuel’ke. I wonder where Chana’le is. They are all talking fast and loud. I am tired of listening and eating. I fall asleep in my chair.

**

Sometimes my dreams wake me. I’m a little girl, standing in the dirt-floored kitchen, watching my Mama mixing challah dough. And then I’m a few years older and I’m standing in the forest and it’s cold and everyone is lying on the ground except me. I cry out and get tangled in my blanket. I hear her coming down the hall in her heavy slippers. She comes over to my bed and strokes my face. “It’s ok, Mommy, it’s ok…you’re just having a nightmare.”

But she doesn’t understand….. My nightmares are not when I sleep. In the dreams, I know who everybody is. In the dreams, I know the houses and the roads and the forests. When I’m sleeping, I understand. When I wake up, the nightmares begin…

To my Tante Adele...

May you soon find comfort and peace even within your nightmares.

kashering the insides

I sit back on my heels and feel the fridge behind me. Gratefully, I slump against it and let the muscles in my arms and back relax.

I’m exhausted.

And my oven is still disgustingly filthy.



Some halachos are relatively easy to keep. If you were lucky enough to have learned to say brachos as soon as you started to talk, remembering to make them on food can be something you do without any effort. Or something like helping the elderly shopper next to you read the price it says on the label of the can of corn she’s holding. Or being kind and friendly to the woman who runs the cash register at the dry cleaners. Sometimes keeping mitzvos is easy; they're the kind of things that don't take up much energy and you know they're the right thing to do. Then there are those mitzvos that are not just easy, but doing them makes you feel good, too.

And then there are the mitzvos that are tedious and hard. That sap you of physical energy and wear you down. That sometimes you secretly wish you didn’t have to keep.


So I sit here on the floor leaning against the fridge, my arms heavy and aching, my nose burning from inhaling the cleaner I’m using, my knees raw from kneeling on the hard floor for hours, my arms scratched from reaching into too many sharp corners, feeling like there is no end in sight. My oven is hopeless. I’m feeling kind of hopeless, too. (Do I get a new oven? New grates? Do I just keep cleaning? Is there a halacha that permits one to stop cleaning after having cleaned a certain amount of hours? And what in the world is wrong with the couple who lived in this apartment before us?!? How in heaven's name can you live in such a disgusting kitchen???)



And then suddenly I think of my grandmother.

Cleaning the floors of a Polish police station on all fours. Without rubber gloves to protect her hands. Probably with poor cleaning utensils to help her with the job. Scrubbing hard, because her life depended on it.

And I think about my great grandmother, and her mother, and hers. They cleaned, too. They kashered their homes with just rags and cold water and perhaps some soap if they could find it. They toiled for hours over their kitchens.

Why?

Because Hashem said so. So they did.

And I sit here with steel wool and cold grease cleanser and paper towels and Windex and rubber gloves and hot running water. And I complain that it’s too hard to keep a kosher kitchen?


I take a deep breath. I go back to the oven grates that are sitting in the bathtub and scrub as if my life depended on it.


Because does it not?

What does my life depend on if not keeping His Will to the best of my ability?


And I sort of feel proud to have such hardworking women standing behind me. I can almost hear them whispering small words of encouragement. They would be proud of my work, I think. This is hard for me, and I am tackling it with all I have, despite my exhaustion and the niggling thoughts of giving up. As I scrub, I take my mind off the aches and instead feel grateful for the tools He’s given me to help me keep His mitzvos. I whisper my thoughts upward as I work.


Soon…perhaps in one hour, perhaps in many…my oven will be clean.





And I'm beginning to feel a little cleaner, too...

mishap....?

i lost a key.

but

it's okay.

cuz look--

it was so close...................................

imagine i'd lost the enter

....................or the backspace

i'd be stuck with long-winded-paragraphs-going-on-foreverwithoutbreaks

........and lost of misrtakes

so i lost a key

but see?

i'm lucky

..

Mosaica

in..........and..............out....................

........................in..........out........

.................in.......................

...................out......................................

.....sporadic.......................

..................................................halting

.........................frag-

................................mented....

splinters.........

..........................shards

.................................................twinkling

.......................................mockingly.............

...........as I

..lay.....

......................................................pant

..............................................................ing

....how....

.......................................?

You

..You...

........see it...

.............whole

.................streamlined

...............unblemished

............unbroken

.........pure

not.........................as...........

...................I............................................

.........................for me...

................................................strewn

......fragments...

......................glittering...

...........................................razor-sharp....

.....but that's

.............................because...

..I.....................................see it..............

......from......................

..........................eye........................

.........................level.......................

.......................................................as I

.......struggle...........to

.....................stand.

..But You

............see things

...................from clearer

.................................angles.

...........................You see

....................not broken

...............shards of

.......glass...but

mosaics.

.....And......when.........I

...........am............finally....

..able......................to regain..

..................my..........

..............................balance......

................I.....can..

..................start

................to

..........see

.......it

too

.