It starts with a slight tremor.

9:30. Yitzy’s sent home from school.

Her job needs her in today anyway.

Her shoe heels are hanging.

The cleaning lady has gone back to Moldavia.

Yitzy’s hungry. His head is hot.

Aunt Ruthie’s in the neighborhood. She’s coming for lunch.

The orthodontist is very sorry but he can’t take off Shuli’s braces until the entire sum is paid.

The day’s picking up speed.

Crashing speed.

It’s only 10:00.

Everything in the house looks stuffy and crowded when there’s no sun.

Yitzy’s coughing.

She can’t take noise anymore.

The sleepless nights of worrying. The tossing and turning.

Tutor’s payment schedules.

Everything hailing down on her in and out this way and that.

She dodges but she’s wearing down.

Anger. Frustration. Hopelessness. All wrapped together raining down.

Words she doesn’t want to say roll speedily out of her mouth.

She feels herself tumbling tumbling.

She bangs her fist in the air — punches boulders but her knuckles are sore and open.

She can’t catch herself.

She’s trapped in an avalanche of illogical yet logical emotions.

She doesn’t want to work anymore.

She doesn’t want to please anymore.

She’s banging her fists in the air. Screaming and shouting inside.

And now they’re sliding out — her stones of discontent.

1:00 – Ephraim her oldest comes in yelling “Why is the table a mess?”

He hates mess.

She hates yelling.

His behavior but more so hers — a mother needing to make excuses to a son — completely shakes her foundations. She realizes how out of control it all is.

The phone rings.

It’s her mother.

Ephraim’s still carrying on in the background.

She tries to make excuses to her mother why she can’t help him. But in her mother’s silence she realizes how much she’s lost sight of who she is and how it’s supposed to be.

She sinks into the three-piece leather recliner that she worked so hard to buy.

“Yaffeleh.” Her mother says her name with walls of strength and kindness which temporarily stabilize petrify her inner avalanche in place.

In her mother’s voice lives her grandmother from Morocco who shared the small bedroom with her and her four sisters in Ashdod who would kiss the mezuzah whispering a prayer each time she came in or went out.

Her father the rav the shochet.

The beit knesset small immaculate.

The simple dining room table and eight chairs.

The morning breeze through the thin pale blue kitchen curtains — while her mother peeled vegetables with a knife for the day’s soup.

Yaffa grew up with her masoret her tradition planted rooted by streams of water. Maybe because it was always so natural — a fact she didn’t know how to draw waters to access them when the land was dry when her soul was dry. How to reach down deep inside to replenish. Instead she went searching outside to quench her thirst: better jobs better clothes better decorating. A freezer full of meat and no one satisfied. Her mother’s two tomatoes sliced with cucumber had filled.

How would she how could she turn back the clock to those times?

Her work is buzzing her on call waiting. They want to know: Where is she?

She has to say a quick goodbye to her mother.

Yitzy’s crying; he’s thirsty.

Ephraim’s hungry again.

Someone’s knocking loudly and ringing at the door.

She runs to answer – almost tumbling over unseen Lego blocks left on the floor.

She’s made up her mind. When her husband gets home at 3:00 she’s going to leave as usual but not go straight to work .

Her husband arrives walking innocently into his wife’s avalanche. Some kind of pre-made monosodium glutamate lunch is in the oven.

He hands her the car keys — like every day when he comes back from learning assuming she’s going to work.

She strides out like a madwoman leaving her husband somewhat baffled. Gets into the car. Takes a quick right onto the highway — instead of the usual left. Through town Past Shaar Shechem past the Arab shuk into the Old City.

Just being within the Old City walls starts to calm her.

She parks at the very bottom of the hill and walks upwards towards the Kotel. The quiet and the pace and the fact that she’s on her way to G-d are helping. Pieces start to fall into place.

Punching stones doesn’t work.

Tears melt rocks.

The majesty and simplicity of the Kotel.

The breeze clean like the one through the thin pale blue curtains in her mother’s kitchen.

She kisses the Wall and her small hand presses up against the warm stones. She begins her pleas one after another.

Fears anger frustration have no gravity. The avalanche is reversed.