The weather, Gitty thinks, is the perfect mirror for how she’s feeling. Gloomy and old, like the air in her too-quiet house and the seat beside her that had once been Sori’s. Now, there’s a woman in it, elegant and sophisticated. She keeps trembling, this woman who must be ten years her junior. She must be feeling Yom Kippur with the weight it warrants.

Gitty is distracted. A year ago, she’d been davening for shidduchim for her children. A year ago, she’d had no idea how quickly it would all happen — three children, married in beautiful weddings to wonderful spouses. Baruch Hashem. Baruch Hashem, because she would never be so ungrateful as to dwell upon the fact that all three children had chosen to spend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur elsewhere. The boys stayed in their homes, and Sori — her daughter, her best friend — is with her in-laws, because her husband loves the davening there.

There, away from Gitty, who languishes in an oppressively silent house and struggles to imagine the year ahead of her. What is there for her aside from her children? She’s beginning to discover that she hasn’t invested much into her life outside of her sons and daughter, and she feels the lack now. The year already feels empty and lonely, and her heart aches with confusion and unreasonable grief.

There’s a young woman a few rows up. She has three small children, as close in age as Gitty’s are, and Gitty watches her with ridiculous envy. Glancing again at the seat that had been Sori’s, she notices that the shaking woman beside her is watching the young woman, too.

The weather, Ariella thinks, is the perfect mirror for how she’s feeling. Yom Kippur had once been her favorite day of the year, the day when she’d felt most connected to her davening and to Hashem. She was that girl standing quietly next to her mother, absorbed in the words and in that sense of ethereal prayer that suffused the whole world on Yom Kippur.

Why don’t you come to me? her mother had suggested, glancing pointedly at her twins. I can help you out with the babies so you can still have your Yom Kippur. Ariella had refused, of course — she can handle the twins, can handle all three of her toddlers. She had insisted on doing it all, and it had seemed so easy when she thought about it.

It isn’t easy. The babysitter canceled just before Yom Tov, and the kids are more difficult than they’ve ever been. The twins keep crawling under other seats, ruining the davening of some very indulgent people, and Ariella wants to scream, to cry, to run away from them and just get in a single Vidui without someone tugging on her dress. She’s exhausted, and she just wants to be free, to have a few minutes without being tethered to the children she loves but cannot stand right now.

She’s a horrible mother. She’s a horrible person. She blinks away tears, positive that everyone knows exactly how pathetic she is, and she buries her face in her machzor as little Miri tries to pull it away.

It is such an enormous relief when it’s time for Yizkor.

To feel relief at Yizkor — to pile out of the shul, to take a moment to breathe in wet air and wrap arms around your body in the chill — is a gift, too, and all three women are acutely aware of that. Gitty feels a surge of guilt at mourning children who are alive and well, and Ariella herds her children outside and tries to put things into perspective.

Baila stands alone on the far side of the shul parking lot, looking away. It begins to rain, which is really just typical, and Baila finds her gaze turning toward the mass of strollers near the door and watching water pour down on them.

Good, she thinks savagely, and then she wants to sob at her selfishness, at the weight of the bitterness that has made her into an awful person on this Yom Kippur. A few mothers open the hoods of the strollers, but one stroller catches her eye, an expensive-looking triple stroller without a cover deep enough to protect it from the rain.

“Oh, no,” says a ragged voice, and Baila knows exactly who it must be. The young mother of the three toddlers hurries to it, and she gropes beneath it, searching for something — a cover, maybe, because it looks as though it isn’t waterproof — and fails to locate it. The woman desperately moves the stroller under an overhang that does nothing to protect it, and one of the toddlers starts to cry.

“Please, Miri, just a second—” The woman twists around, and then a second toddler falls, scraping his knee. “Oh, no, Chaim—”

All three children are crying now, and the woman who had been sitting next to Baila in shul bends down to pick one up. “It’s all right,” she croons, but the baby only cries harder.

The mother looks lost and shattered, her hand on her wet stroller as the rain ruins it and the children scream. “Please,” she says, and Baila isn’t sure if the water on her face is rain or tears. “Please, please—”

Baila moves forward. She doesn’t know that she’s doing it until she’s speaking, saying words she can’t take back. “I actually just moved in across the street,” she murmurs. “Why don’t you bring the stroller and the kids in until we can go back to shul?”

The young woman looks at her gratefully. The third woman, still holding one of the babies, stumbles in place, and Baila looks at her worriedly. “Are you feeling lightheaded?” This woman only has a decade or so on her, but she looks weak and pale, as though the fast is getting to her. “Maybe you’d better come along, too.”

The woman glances between them. She bites her lip and nods. “Gitty,” she croaks.

“Baila,” Baila offers. She had stood next to Gitty in shul on Rosh Hashanah, too, had heard her discussing a daughter’s wedding. Gitty is old enough to be a grandmother, then, and she needs to be cared for.

She turns to the young mother, who says shakily, “Ariella. And Miri and Chaim and Faigy.” Baila picks up a crying Faigy and helps them to her house.

Gitty can’t deny how good it feels to be surrounded by these younger women, both doting on her like Sori might have.

“Do you feel like you’re going to faint?” Ariella asks worriedly. “I have a brother who faints every Yom Kippur at Minchah. Every year,” she says, and she wipes away her tears and laughs a little. She is more comfortable now, safe in this beautiful house, her children toddling through the rooms and her stroller out of the rain. “They revive him. He drinks a little and keeps davening.”

“I don’t think I’ll faint,” Gitty says, but she puts a hand to her head, breathing slowly. “Maybe. It’s been a difficult fast. Sori always said that I wasn’t a good faster — my daughter, you know,” she explains. “She’s staying with her in-laws for Yom Tov.”

Ariella bobs her head, running a hand through her sheitel to smooth down some of the damp, tousled hair. Baila’s face is stiffer, though she has none of that rain-rumpled look the others share.

“Do you have anyone to look after you?”

“I’m forty-eight,” Gitty says dismissively. “I don’t need to be looked after.” But she sits back on the couch and doesn’t push away the pillow Baila tucks behind her head. “It’s just a rough Yom Kippur, you know?”

“Do I ever,” Ariella says fervently, and then looks embarrassed as Baila stares at her. “I mean…I’m fine. I hope the kids weren’t disturbing your davening. My babysitter canceled on me.”

Gitty shakes her head. “They could never,” she says, and she sighs wistfully. “My three were also very close in age. When they were little, I used to stay in our shul playground with them for most of the day. We’d go inside only for a few minutes here and there, and I’d load them up with pretzels and apple slices to distract them. Yours are much better behaved.”

“They’ve been awful,” Ariella corrects her, looking shamefaced. “I know it’s not fair to bring them to shul, but I just — I didn’t want to miss Yom Kippur davening.” She looks down, and Gitty feels a surge of protectiveness toward this girl just Sori’s age.

“No, that’s all right. They really aren’t disruptive at all,” Gitty says, looking at Baila for support, but Baila’s face is tight, and she’s silent. “Come on, Baila, back me up here,” she says with a little laugh. “They’re great kids. We’re happy to have them in shul.”

Ariella watches Baila, every fear about her children written across her face. Baila turns away, and Ariella’s face falls.

And then the children return from their tour of the house. The oldest peers from Gitty to Baila, and decides this must be Baila’s house. “Where are the toys?” he demands.

Baila’s face molds itself into something unreadable, and Gitty understands, a moment too late. It’s a beautiful house, with white couches and glass lamp tables and a pristine carpet, and there are absolutely no children with a babysitter tucked away anywhere. There are no children at all. “There are no toys,” Gitty says.

The boy squints at her. “How are there no toys?” he demands. “What do the kindies play with?”

“Chaim—” Ariella starts, but it’s too late.

Baila takes a step back, her face schooled again into that cool look that Gitty is beginning to realize is a mask. “I’ve forgotten my machzor upstairs,” she says and flees the room.

Gitty remains on the couch, an ice pack that Ariella found in the freezer resting against her forehead. “I’ll watch them,” she says, and Ariella races upstairs after Baila.

Because yeah, this is on her, on her three-year-old’s questions and insensitivity.

“Baila,” she says, and she follows the sound of heavy breathing to an office that might have been a child’s bedroom in another house. Baila is standing by the window, watching the rain stream down it, her fingers clenched into white-knuckled fists. “Baila, I’m so sorry —”

“It’s fine,” Baila says curtly. “He was just asking a question. It’s fine,” she says again, and she sounds brittle, like something about to shatter.

Ariella winces, feeling a surge of guilt. It’s her mess. She shouldn’t have brought the kids to shul in the first place, and she shouldn’t have brought them here, either. She’s inflicted too much on this delicate, refined woman, all because she’d been so determined that she can handle everything when she can’t—

She stares at Baila’s back and she says tentatively, “It wasn’t fine.”

Baila doesn’t move.

Ariella ventures, “You’re… you’re new to the neighborhood, right?” It’s a weak overture, but Baila shifts, sighs, seems to take it.

She turns at last, walks to the stairs and down them as Ariella follows. When she sits, it’s on the couch, her eyes on Ariella’s children as they take turns bouncing on Gitty’s lap. “We moved here to be closer to the clinic,” she says finally.

Ariella knows the clinic. It’s famous, the best in the state. “Have you started there yet?” she asks gently.

“My consultation is tomorrow morning,” Baila says, and she takes a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually this… I’m a disaster,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Yom Kippur is hard.”

Ariella nods, then shakes her head. “No,” she says. “You’re not a disaster. I’m a disaster.” She gestures toward her rumpled dress and sheitel. She’d worn white because she never learns, and there’s already a stain on the dress near her thigh from Miri’s breakfast.

“I keep trying to convince everyone that I can handle the kids on my own, but I’m useless at it. I’m a nightmare. And you seemed so put-together in shul. So confident. I walked in and thought, I want to be exactly like that lady in the back row.” She laughs, self-conscious, and Baila smiles wistfully.

“You have everything I dream of,” Baila murmurs. She keeps her distance from the kids, Ariella notices, doesn’t reach out to them as easily as Gitty does.

Then Baila looks at Gitty and says, her voice rough, “And you. You’re not much older than me and already such a bubby.”

Ariella is afraid to interject. Gitty scoffs. “Oh, I’m just as much a disaster as the two of you.” She clears her throat. “I don’t even think I was feeling sick,” she admits, her voice low. “I think I’m just so desperate to talk to someone that I couldn’t turn down the attention.” She ducks her head. “My children all moved out at once this year, and I don’t know who I am without them. I’m just…” She gestures at herself. “Mommy, you know?”

Ariella nods wholeheartedly, then looks at Baila, frightened at their own insensitivity in discussing this. But Baila’s pained look has faded into understanding. There is something about this room that feels open as their hearts on Yom Kippur. Maybe it’s a morning spent in reflection and prayer that has primed them for this honesty.

“There is someone buried beneath Mommy,” Baila says gently. “Think of the hobbies you used to have. Spend time with the women you’re friendly with. Find your identity in the silence in your home,” she says, and Ariella glances, subconsciously, at Baila’s big, silent home.

Gitty takes a breath. “If that person still exists,” she says ruefully. “I might need to make myself someone new.”

“I think that’s amazing,” Ariella offers, allowing herself a little bit of admiration for Gitty, who has managed to get past the decades that feel like a terrifying, impossible ordeal right now. Maybe not impossible, she amends. Maybe it’s only that she’s been so wrapped up in being the perfect mother that she’s put aside everything else that matters to her. Even Yom Kippur itself has fallen to the wayside, to say nothing of the friends she’s lost touch with, and the fact that she hasn’t picked up one of her charcoals since Chaim was born.

Baila, who has yet to become a mother, sees them more clearly than they see themselves. Her gaze is on Ariella now, and Ariella offers her a timid smile. She’s surprised when Baila’s smile is just as uncertain. Something quiet and real blossoms in the space between the three women.

Then Baila says, “They’ll have started Mussaf by now.” She sounds regretful, and they look at each other uncertainly, unwilling just yet to leave this safe, exposed place.

Gitty is the first to stand. “The rain’s stopped,” she says briskly, leading the way to the door. Baila takes the stroller, and Gitty helps Ariella with the children.

It’s just as well, Baila reflects, because as much as she might appreciate these women, she knows she can’t spend too much time with Ariella’s toddlers. Children are like ceramic vases to her: delicately crafted and beautiful — and as breakable as she feels, sometimes, around them.

There’s still the shiver of envy as she helps Ariella to shul. But Baila isn’t immune to the admiration of the two women beside her, the way they seem to hang on her words like parched travelers in the desert. It’s nurturing, too, she realizes, to help these women. And it feels good.

They stand in front of the shul. It’s still overcast, but the wind has lessened, and the shul is silent with prayer. “You two go ahead,” Gitty says suddenly. “Why don’t I stay out here with the children?”

Ariella stares, plaintive eyes wide with surprise. “You couldn’t,” she says. “I can’t take your Shemoneh Esreh from you. On Yom Kippur.”

Gitty waves a hand dismissively. “I can daven just as well outside as I can inside,” she says. “And ther’s still Minchah and Ne’ilah. Im yirtzeh Hashem, I’ll be doing this for my own daughter sometime soon.”

Ariella looks dumbfounded at the idea that a mother might want that, and Baila wonders if they’ll see her again next Yom Kippur, or if Ariella will finally give herself the break she needs.

Who knows what the next Yom Kippur might bring? There is that creeping hope again. Baila lets herself wonder, for a moment, her eyes straying to the children now inspecting a snail on the pavement with wide-eyed enthusiasm.

She puts her foot on the first step up to the door, when Ariella says, “Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow.”

Baila looks at her, taken aback.

“Absolutely,” Gitty says.

They are both looking at Baila, expectant. Baila hesitates. She has the consultation at the clinic tomorrow morning, and she’ll be fragile and afraid afterward, lost in possibilities and recriminations.

But there’s something significant in how they watch her, and Baila remembers that they know about the consultation. They know what they’re offering, a small gesture that fixes nothing about her life but still means everything. She is stricken, abruptly, by too-dry eyes, by a succession of blinks that might keep moisture at bay. “I would love to,” she says quietly.

This — this stolen moment, this brief sojourn with two strangers into a place of understanding and companionship — this is something worth holding on to.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 812)