The first few days were fine, though. Friends and family sent meals and helped out with the kids. But soon enough we were back to routine, except that we weren’t — I didn’t have use of my dominant arm. Have you ever tried making a ponytail or changing a dirty diaper with one hand?

My work as a graphic designer required hours of fine motor movement at the computer, so that was obviously out for the time being, as were driving and countless other tasks.

We did our best to adapt. Ironically, I taught my two-year-old to climb out of her crib.

But there was so much I just couldn’t do. Four weeks after the accident, my brother-in-law got married. The whole family was getting ready to leave to the Shabbos sheva brachos seudah when my toddler decided that only Mommy could put on her socks. The family crowded around her: Bubby, Savta, Auntie Chaya all coaxed and cajoled, but she wouldn’t have any of them. “Only Mommy,” she sobbed. But Mommy was helpless.

Get a grip, I told myself. Being a mother is about so much more than who chops the vegetables they don’t eat anyway or who folds the laundry — right? But my kids were little. Reading books and applauding their antics was nice, but who was I if I wasn’t their physical caretaker?

Who, in fact, was I?

The question haunted me. My days and nights had been filled with all the mundane moments of mothering: the messes and the shopping, the bathing and the changing. The cleaning up and the cleaning up and the cleaning up.

But now, I wasn’t that mother. I wasn’t the employee I’d been. I wasn’t the homemaker or the helpful neighbor or the talented artist. Who was I?

I’d kvetched about the nonstop demands of little people. I’d longed for an occasional break from the hamster wheel. But now, with all that work coming to a screeching halt, I was completely lost. All those tasks had woven the fabric of my day. They’d defined me. Watching others stepping into those roles, feeling expendable, I had an identity crisis.

So much of the meaning of my life had involved showing up for people in practical ways. But relationships are far more than logistics, and being incapacitated taught me that you can always outsource housework. Instead of letting the busywork take first place, I needed to prioritize those things that only I could provide: the listening ear, the enthusiastic support, and the patient guidance.

But still.

My injury was relatively minor. What about people so hurt that they can’t provide others with emotional support? What about people who have no others to whom to offer their love?

Now I felt viscerally what we always pay lip service to: The idea that life, health, and family are fragile and fleeting. Today I may have a boisterous crew creating joyful messes, but there are no guarantees ten years down the line, or five years, or five minutes. Whether my identity is “mother of little kids” or “kollel wife” or “neurosurgeon,” I’m pinning my very self on things external to me and out of my control.

Wherever life takes me, I slowly realized, I’ll be going along for the ride. I need to know who I am for myself, not vis-à-vis all the others in my life.

At the end of the day, I stand alone before G-d, not as the mother of, the wife of, the sister of, the daughter of. All those are roles I put on and take off as required. The only role with permanence is Me: the child of my Father. What am I going to make of myself?

Some months later, walking with a friend, I listened to her wonder aloud about her aging grandmother’s life. She was past the age when she could take an active role in the lives of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. They visited her out of love and duty, but they didn’t need her cooking, her childcare, her advice. They loved her but they didn’t need her.

“What does she have left?” asked my friend.

What does she have left? This time I knew the answer. She has whatever she cultivated in all her past decades. She has herself. She has her Father. It’s all she ever really had.

It Takes a Village

Hadasa Singer

The phone call comes while I lean into my Korg, totally oblivious.

It’s my mother. “Mazel tov,” she says. “Penina had a girl.”

I exclaim my excitement and ask everyday questions about my sister’s latest addition. The second phone call comes 93 seconds after I press the off button, soft music wavering.

It’s my mother again. “I have to tell you something.” Her voice is shaky. “The baby has… Down syndrome.”

My fingers stop cold.

“Did you visit Penina yet?” my husband asks as I brandish a broom like a witch.

I shrug. “I’ll go later.” I sweep dirt and dust into the dustpan, watch it whirl up a storm.

“It’s three days since Penina gave birth. What’s going on?” My husband talks about how he looked it up, and such babies need more medical care. “Penina needs your support now.”

I know that. I really do. Penina and I are close. We warm the couch together most Shabbos afternoons. I take over my chocolate pudding; she surprises me with a small blender. I read her grandkids stories; she chats with my teens.

So why am I distancing myself when she needs me most?

I have no answer to this question, only more questions.

Five Shabbosim after I don’t cross Penina’s doorstep even once, she clambers up my stairs, tight smile, back too straight. “So what music are you working on?” she asks, cuddling her baby as she sinks into the couch.

I laugh a hollow sound. “Nothing much, really.” The room goes silent.

Penina eyes me, clears her throat. “So I started knitting.” She starts a monologue of the blanket that’s coming together while I hem and hum in the right places. Until she says it’s for her baby and something gels in my chest.

“Why?” I ask before my mind can catch up with my mouth.

Penina blinks. “Uh, so she’ll be warm, you know.”

Yes, I know. Why am I asking such stupid questions?

With time, I talk to Penina more, even as I ignore her kid. I listen to her lament after each hospital run when Miri’s lungs give out, how all these uncertainties and emergencies are souring her business she worked so hard to build up. And I want to grab her shoulders and scream, Why? Why are you doing this?

It’s over a year later. We’re schmoozing on my couch: the extended family, aunts, and cousins. Miri is drooling, and my sister Yehudis wipes it away and scoops her up. “You’re yummy,” she singsongs. I glance at them, my stomach tight, and feel adult eyes on me. Especially Penina’s. So I reach out to this little kid, pat her head. Swap. She pushes me away with her pudgy hand like I’m a villain. No one laughs. And I get up abruptly and bring in rugelach.

I watch Penina give Miri one and she scampers off. Soon, there’s a deluge of kids clamoring for chocolatey dough. Miri reaches in to take seconds, and my five-year-old son, acting as judge, flicks at her hand.

In a sudden, swift movement, Penina drops to her knee between the warring kids. “Don’t hit Miri,” she says, her voice strong with a slight quaver. “Talk to her nicely. Okay?”

There’s electricity in the air. My son stares, then runs off with his goods. And the conversation drones on where it left off, but I’m not in it. I’m in the dusty attic of my thoughts, where memory lurks just out of reach.

When they all go home, I’m left with lint wandering about. The night is long, the hallway I roam longer. And wisps of things that happened long ago enter forbidden areas. I’m 13 again, in that house with the blue walls and green rug that runs from one end to the other. There’s something there that keeps coming after me with gnashing teeth and sweetened breath. I run, but it runs faster. I fight, but its might is fiercer. I talk, but the shouts silence it. So I succumb and shatter, crouching under the smoky sky in the charred grass. My world has become a village without villagers, its villas demolished.

The next morning, I’m in Penina’s kitchen, poring over a blueberry muffin recipe I need. Right now. If Penina is surprised to see me, she does a good job at hiding it. I write over the list of ingredients slowly as I watch oatmeal travel from big hand to tiny mouth, until Miri slaps the spoon and goo splatters. Wipe, swipe, bend to retrieve. I study Penina’s movements like my identity depends on it. Maybe it does.

I’m at Penina’s house often now, to experience the safekeeping moments I look out for. Miri wobbles and falls; Penina croons over her. Miri bumps; Penina scoops her up. Miri tantrums; Penina waits and soothes. And I ask more questions that don’t make sense. “Why did you pick her up?” “What made you soothe her like that?”

“Why are you asking?” Penina’s voice is soft.

My eyes bulge. “I don’t know.” And I divert the conversation.

At home, the question nags at me. Why am I asking? What do I need to know? And I’m back in that desolate village, searching among the disappearing villas for the villagers. I find none.

What kind of little beings don’t get protection?

IN Penina’s village, there are villas going up. Villagers hurry about with their young ensconced in kangaroo pouches. Penina hires professionals and then practices and practices with Miri to form sounds into words, wobbly steps into a firm gait, loose hands to grasp things, and shape mindless play into social activities. Grandmothers gift special toys with intention, grandfathers open pockets and dispense encouragement. Aunts and uncles, neighbors and friends take and bring and do and be.

And me? I rush out of my house on the way to Penina for what have become dignitary visits. At the end of my walkway I stop, turn back. Up the stairs, to the kitchen, open pantry, choose, back out. I arrive at Penina’s, see Miri at the door, and dangle a Fruit Roll-Up in front of her. “Look what I brought for a cutie girlie!”

An uncertain smile plays on Miri’s face as she grasps it.

Something soars in my chest, like a bird in the clear blue sky, the scent of freshly cut grass bringing a new revelation I couldn’t have known when I was 13. I couldn’t have known it because there were no villagers to stand in front of me.

All little beings are precious, whether they get protection or not.

Catch My Breath

As told to Tali Edelstein

When I went into labor with my sixth child, I knew I had to hurry. It was four weeks early, but my previous births had been so quick that I’d hardly made it to the hospital in time, so we rushed. We arrived at the hospital quickly, and I expected things to progress as they always had… but they didn’t.

The hours passed, and nothing actually happened. My labor had stalled. Eventually, my baby was hurried into the world — but unfortunately, he wasn’t ready.

Some of my other children had been born early, and they’d all been fine, so I wasn’t expecting any problems. Neither was the staff; 36 weeks is barely even considered a preemie.

But when my little one was finally born, he couldn’t breathe.

And so I was introduced to the world of the NICU, a world where medicine rules supreme, and mommies are an annoying necessity. At least, that’s how it felt to me. With my baby on a ventilator and the staff doing their professional best to keep him alive, I felt like… like a nuisance. I just wanted to be with my newborn son, hold him, and keep him safe — but I couldn’t.

It was a terrible time.

Hormones and emotions are always so fraught after birth, and even more so when instead of soft blue blankets and warm, newborn cuddles, you’re faced with sterile gowns and antiseptic, monitors and doctors, blood tests, beeps, and breathing tubes.

And then there were five other children at home who needed me.

“I can’t do this,” I cried to a friend on Day 2. “They want to send me home tomorrow! But my baby’s still going to be here!”

My amazing community arranged meal trains for my family and stepped in any way they could. It was an incredible help, but the grueling schedule of traveling to and from the NICU, over an hour away by car, and splitting myself into so many pieces, was so, so hard.

Emotionally, I was a wreck.

And then came the knocking.

It wasn’t real knocking, of course, but I heard it. In my exhausted, depleted, overwhelmed state… I heard it.

It was Hashem, and He was knocking on my door.

I tried to explain it to my husband, hoping I didn’t sound like a lunatic, talking about Heavenly knocks. “You know how much I’ve tried to daven over the years,” I said, late one night, as we folded a load of laundry together, “and how hard it is for me.”

“You can’t expect yourself to daven formal tefillos,” he objected. “Your Hebrew reading is so weak, and you were never taught to daven. You speak to Hashem from the heart. That’s good enough.”

“I’ve been using that excuse for such a long time,” I argued. “I’ve been playing the baalas teshuvah card as a free pass from davening for so many years. I feel… I feel like Hashem is really talking to me. I hear Him knocking. He wants me to daven.”

“When are you going to daven? You’ve just had a baby, you’re running back and forth from the hospital, trying to juggle everything, how in the world are you going to fit something else in?”

I closed my eyes briefly, fatigue sweeping over me. He was right. I couldn’t add tefillos to my crazy, crazy days. But the knocking was there, gentle, persistent. It was practically real.

“I can start with something small,” I said, quietly. “I can say brachos. Or Shema.”

My husband looked at me wordlessly over the towel he was folding.

“Hashem wants me to daven,” I whispered, fighting back tears. “My baby can’t breathe. He’s so far away. He needs me, and I can’t be there for him. Hashem is asking me to daven to Him. He can fix the baby and bring him home.” The tears came. My husband got up and brought me the ArtScroll siddur that I’d purchased so many years ago, as a fresh and excited baalas teshuvah. “Here you go,” he said. He opened the siddur and showed me birchos hashachar. I put a bookmark by the page and committed to saying the brachos every single morning. “I won’t eat until I say them,” I told my husband. “That will make sure that I stay committed.”

“You need to take care of yourself,” he replied.

“Yes, and taking care of my neshamah is part of that,” I said.

Every morning, as we drove to the hospital to see Baby, I opened the siddur. The going was painstaking; I’d never really learned to read Hebrew. Each word took effort. But it felt good. It felt like Hashem was proud of me. I felt like I was reaching out to Him.

It was a long month, almost endless, but Baby was home before his due date, and had his bris eight days later. In those hectic, busy days, I clutched my siddur tight, and every morning, carefully said those brachos.

A preemie’s first year is often challenging, and my son’s was no exception. He came down with repeated chest infections and needed constant nebulizer treatments. I kept up with my tefillos through every virus and every pneumonia. The words became familiar, easier, and I was saying them faster. Around my baby’s first birthday, I decided to add Shema to my daily davening.

That little preemie, who spent the first month of his life struggling to breathe in the NICU, is now a tall, handsome teenager. And throughout his life, every few months, I’ve added another paragraph to my tefillos. Now, I daven three times a day, Shacharis, Minchah, and Maariv. I’m still not saying every single part of Shacharis, but I keep building on what I have, conquering one more piece at a time, adding another gemstone to my payers. It’s been 16 years, and I’m still growing, davening, and connecting.

Hashem knocked, and I heard.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 913)