Left to Wonder

Esther Kay

When my social work clinical internship program informed me that my first client would be over Zoom, I sighed. It wasn’t exactly what I’d signed up for. By nature, I’m a very experiential person. I hate online courses, audiobooks, and sitting in a lecture with a pole blocking the speaker. So while I knew lots of therapists did great work virtually, I wasn’t convinced that my true self (or my client’s) could be expressed via a computer screen.

But when Rina* started seeing me, I slowly discovered how much could be explored and accomplished without ever meeting a client face to face — or at least that’s what Rina was indicating with her positive feedback. “I really look forward to our sessions,” she told me once. “You’re really helping me.”

Rina was a twenty-something who came from a tumultuous family. In her teens, she began to shed some of her family’s religious practices and now identified as Orthodox, without the “ultra.” From the very first session, I made sure to consult with my rav about which comments I could or could not make in response to certain behaviors she shared with me. He confirmed what I had intuited. “You can’t express full approval,” he said, “but you do have more leeway than a regular friend or teacher. Listening to her and supporting her emotional health may bring her closer to Yiddishkeit.”

So, I walked the frum-therapist tightrope — shedding all judgments and personal agendas when entering sessions, while davening for Rina out of sessions, hoping she would find a greater connection to Hashem and His mitzvos.

At the end of my internship, I suggested to Rina that we try to end with an in-person meeting. She was delighted and offered to come to my town, a few hours away from where she lived.

I rented a cute little office space for the occasion, and as I anxiously awaited her arrival, I positioned the chairs a friendly      but safe distance from each other and arranged some empty cups and cold water on the end table. It was nighttime, and I went out to meet her so she could find the entrance easily.

I spotted her sitting on a bench, wearing cargo pants and a black T-shirt, and holding a bouquet of flowers. “Hi, Rina,” I said, not sure if she recognized me in 3D. As she got up, I was startled. All I knew of her appearance was her sweet face, confined to a box. Seeing her in real time was different. Hearing her speak face to face was different too. In fact, everything was different in person.

What is this feeling? I asked myself. But I set it aside for later. Throughout our final 50 minutes together, I once again tried my best to remove my judgments, needs and agendas as we focused on Rina’s future plans and feelings about ending.

When our time was up, she got up to leave, handed me the bouquet with a sincere thanks, and said, “I guess I won’t say ‘keep in touch.’ ” And she was right — we would not.

We always say KIT — even to those really annoying camp friends we hope to never see again. But unlike any other relationship in my life, in the unique encounter of client and therapist, after ending there’s usually no room for follow-up emails, text messages, or brief calls to say hi.

In preparation for the session, I’d spent time contemplating how to make the termination as secure and complete as possible for my client. I’d discussed ideas and techniques with my supervisor, and introspected about times in my life I’d had to say goodbye so I could better understand her needs. But never once did I expect it to be so hard for me.

As Rina put out her arms for a hug, I felt the ache and burn of tears welling up in the ducts behind my eyes. My throat became stiff and dry. Rina was leaving.

Until now I’d been such an intimate observer (and at times, facilitator) to her growth and development. After this goodbye, I’d never know what she would do with the changes she had made. Would they bring her closer to her family? To Hashem? Would she marry a man who values Judaism? Would she choose a life of emotional health and of Torah?

Now that I had met Rina for the first time, I didn’t want to let go.

I walked her to the door and she left, her black outfit gradually fading into the dark night.

“Goodbye, Rina,” I said aloud. And I was the only one to hear.

*Name has been changed

Still a Mother

Esther Kurtz

“I

t’s over,” I told the nurse.

She was supposed to say, “Don’t worry, it’ll be okay.” Instead, she just said, “I’m sorry,” confirming what I knew. They couldn’t stop my labor. I was delivering my son at 20 weeks and five days. Medicine is near miracles today, but I’d need a real one; viability still wasn’t for a couple of weeks.

Before birth, babies exist in the abstract. People don’t know how early their baby looks like himself. They don’t know how early their child resembles them, or his siblings. All most people see are jagged black-and-white images on a sonogram. Or if they’re lucky, pixelized 3D versions. But babies take on a distinct appearance, similar to their brothers, early on. I know that now.

He had long fingers, a point in his chin, and his eye sockets were wide — if open, those eyes would be big and wondering like his brother’s.

I held my son, his weight barely registering. I nuzzled his nose. It was cold.

No breath was big enough for him, no cry loud enough, only silence could speak clearly. I held him, I hugged him, I kissed him, I told him I loved him.

But what else do you say, what else do you think.

Part of the joy of babies is their potential. Not what they are in the moment, but what they will one day be. Babies are our imaginations manifest. We can dream possibilities for our child, for ourselves. In those first moments we see first steps, first words, first tries. We see laughs and messes and connection.

What do you tell a child with no future? What do you tell yourself, whose future was that child?

In those fleeting moments of presence when we snuggle with our babies and marvel at their innocence, where we hold them close, keep them warm, we’re keeping ourselves warm. How do you embrace a child that’s beyond innocence, a child that is the definition of purity? How do you warm yourself with a child who is eternally cold?

What is a mother to make of the circle of life happening in one moment?

In the moment, I did nothing, but what I was supposed to. I birthed my child, I breathed, I caressed him, and waited. They said I was strong. The nurses marveled at me. That just made me wonder what other mothers do in my place. I didn’t feel strong; I needed something else for that.

I called my mother, my socked feet dangling off the side of the hospital bed, still wearing my coral chenille snood, and the maxi dress from Amazon that gave me room to “grow.”

“Can you pick us up?”

Why did I call her? I was in North Jersey. She was in Brooklyn. Someone much closer would have been happy to do me the favor.

I’m a child; I needed my mother.

I am a mother, and I need my child.

What did it mean to be a mother to a child who never lived? It haunted me hashkafically. And I wondered, how of all the million abstract questions I’ve asked myself over the years, why I’d never stumbled on one this obvious.

A realm of pain, of questions, of denied sorrow was now mine. At first, I cried, then I stilled and loathed existence. Eventually I opened up to hear the chizuk I had violently rejected at first.

I learned that yes, he’s my son, I am his mother, and always will be. He had a neshamah, as light as his body. And he achieved his tafkid. He achieved it with my help, a mother’s help.

I left the hospital in my mother’s car, without my baby, but still a mother.

Back to the Wall

Chavi Kessler

One night in camp, at some unearthly hour, because it was color war and color war meant staying up all night, I painted the Kosel.

“This looks so real,” I said to my friend, sighing, reaching for yet more stale popcorn with my paint-coated fingers. “I wish I could be there. At the real Kosel, in Yerushalayim.”

The canvas for our team’s scenery was rolled out over the carpeted lobby hallway, stone bricks staring up at me, a poor replica of the real wall I’d never had the privilege to visit.

Five years later, as a newly minted kallah, I made it there. My parents treated me to a ten-day trip to Eretz Yisrael before my chasunah, to daven at mekomos hakedoshim. Finally, I would be able to visit the Kosel Hamaaravi, in all its heart-stopping splendor.

Everything about my trip to Eretz Yisrael was surreal. My parents and I visited family, made the trip north to Meron, Tzfas, and Teveria, davened at Kever Rochel, and drank the air of Eretz Yisrael with unquenchable thirst.

But nothing compared to that moment when I disembarked from the Egged bus and knew I’d arrived. My heart quivered as I was swept along with the throngs of people, past security, across the Kosel Plaza. With a wild mix of awe and excitement and fear, I found myself facing the majestic wall.

I cried.

I couldn’t breathe from emotion. I couldn’t contain the avalanche of feelings that tumbled through my body. How do you greet the symbol of our nation’s history, the proof of our existence, the remaining wall of the Beis Hamikdash?

I couldn’t. I went through the motions — a kvittel between the cracks, a Minchah like I’ve never known, select perakim of Tehillim. I murmured tefillos and bakashos in my own words, all of which felt inadequate — do I have an inkling of what I need to daven for?

“We need to leave, Chavi,” my mother whispered to me after an hour. “Are you almost done?”

I wasn’t. I would never be done. I had to stay, had to keep my fingers on those stones, had to keep the words flowing.

Because this greeting — my very first visit to this makom kadosh — was also a farewell.

My chassan was a Satmar chassid, which meant that when we got married, I’d be taking on the Satmar shitah of not visiting the Kosel while in galus.

I’d barely said hello, and there I was, tasked with saying goodbye.

Not a goodbye until the next time I visited.

A goodbye until the building of Bayis Shlishi. A goodbye until Mashiach came and all of Klal Yisrael would return to Eretz Hakodesh.

The knowledge was unfathomable. How could I retreat from this place knowing there would be no coming back?

“Chavi…” my mother prodded.

We had to leave. We were scheduled to meet with old family friends, and it wasn’t fair to keep them waiting.

We had to leave. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t rip my gaze away from the Kosel when the words shook in my head: I will never return.

I kissed my siddur. Pressed my fingers into the stone. Blinked back tears.

It was time to say goodbye.

But I didn’t.

Because it dawned on me then, with the sun beating down hard, with swarms of women coming and going, whispering and swaying: This is not a goodbye.

I would be back soon. And imagine, when I returned, I wouldn’t come alone. I would come with all of Klal Yisrael. I would come along with every Satmar chassid who hangs back for now. I would come along with Mashiach, and it won’t be just one wall. It will be the Beis Hamikdash, the third one, the one that will be ours forever.

This wasn’t a goodbye. It was a step toward the Geulah, toward a time, so soon, when my greeting would be permanent.

One Last Chance

Riki Goldstein

W

hen we left behind our charmed kollel life in Yerushalayim to move to England, we left so much. The light of Yerushalayim, the special fellowship of belonging to the Mir, the holy places, the wonderful people, and… Bobby.

Bobby was 99 years old. How could we leave her?

My very English grandmother who’d settled in Yerushalayim, Bobby was a short lady with indomitable strength of character. Bobby was convinced that we were all marvelous (by her own admission), that no one had a family as nice as hers, as good as hers, as helpful as hers. If someone belonged to her family, they were wonderful, and this belief extended to my husband and all new family members, whom she immediately welcomed with absolute warmth and appreciation.

Bobby came from the finest of families, and she carried their genes and hashkafos, so although her excellent education came entirely from a top-notch non-Jewish school (that she had won a scholarship to), she lived fully and passionately, to quote her, as a “Yiddishe Yid.”

By the time we left, Bobby was living in a nursing home. But just a few years before that, she was still making and hosting Shabbos independently in her apartment in Katamon, taking pleasure in setting the table to perfection. After she bentshed licht, she would slowly say the name of every single grandchild and great-grandchild. Once someone suggested to her that perhaps she could leave out the chopped liver from the Shabbos morning seudah menu, as no one really needed it with her kiddush of cake and homemade potato kugel, then a seudah beginning with two kinds of fish, egg and onion, followed by cholent and meat and kugel and two artfully arranged salads. But Bobby wouldn’t hear of letting anything go from her traditional Shabbos menu.

“That is a slippery slope!” she said.

She was an intellectual and a principled person, but the warmth and the interest she showed us was a current of strength and love running through the entire family’s life.

Bobby was so happy when we visited that it was too hard to mar a visit by letting her know that we were basically stepping out of her life. We pushed off telling Bobby that our little family was leaving Eretz Yisrael for as long as we could, and longer than we should have.

When the day came, and we needed to actually say goodbye, we parked our little rental car in the crowded streets and went to see Bobby with our children for a parting visit, leaving her with our picture that we’d had printed on a mug for her tea. As usual, Bobby gave her walking stick to the children to play with and complimented them profusely as they jumped and hopped near her. There was such a sense of finality that as the afternoon faded, I could barely get myself to walk out of the little room on the second-floor corridor of the nursing home. I choked back tears as I kissed her and brought our little children close, wishing we could etch Bobby on their memories, so they wouldn’t fade with time and separation. Bobby sat in her chair, tiny and frail, but smiling serenely, staying strong in order not to make things harder for us. She wished us all the good in the world, from her whole heart, as she wished every time we left her. Be well. Be happy. Be successful in all that you do.

I wished I could somehow come back to visit, hold Bobby’s hand and speak again, but Bobby was 99, and we’d be settling down far away.

A few days later, we moved to the UK, and began all the teething difficulties of settling in a new city and acclimating. I missed Yerushalayim so much. This new place was cold, gray, so lacking in light and charm compared to Yerushalayim, and at first, it was pretty lonely. I knew I needed to phone Bobby, but with the distance, the time difference, Bobby’s hearing loss, and the two new jobs I’d begun, I struggled to maintain my resolve.

It was left to my husband to save the day. He encouraged me and then absolutely insisted that I go back to visit Bobby. How did we fit the trip into our post-move budget? How did he look after our three tiny kids? How did this dream actually happen? It did. He booked me a plane ticket that first winter of our new lives, and one gray Thursday, I stepped into a cab to the airport and flew by myself back to Eretz Yisrael to spend Shabbos with Bobby once again.

It was a brief and poignant visit. Bobby was so, so old, so much slower and frailer than the grandmother who had hosted me for the most perfectly made Shabbos years before, but she was still Bobby. It took her twenty minutes to chew and swallow a few bites of challah, and she nodded off at the seudah, but her Shabbos was still her Shabbos.

Bobby still listened and took an interest in everything I said, validating me and offering her opinion. She davened and bentshed slowly and carefully, and tapped her fingers along to the zemiros. Just the fact that it was Shabbos brought her so much joy, and she loved being in the circle of her family. I sat next to her and drank in her presence. Seeing her and spending time with her again felt like fulfilling a promise.

Once again, leaving was hard. I left Bobby’s room, walked to the end of the corridor, then went back to see her and wave again.  I cried. But coming back had softened the sting of parting and comforted me inside. It was possible to return to her. Perhaps I would even do it again.

I wouldn’t. Bobby passed away that summer, on Rosh Chodesh Elul, at the age of 100.

L’illui nishmas Shaindel bas Reb Avrohom Yosef

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1080)