Fifteen minutes left of 5777. This quarter of an hour has been planned, written in parchment, last Rosh Hashanah

I’
m waiting on the platform to take the subway to the fertility clinic. I lean against the wall, wondering what that foreigner who’s making strange motions wants from me, only to realize that I’m blocking the map.

I move along the platform, stumble bleary-eyed on the train and off. A hundred appointments, maybe more. I lose count. It’s a mad scramble to make it to the clinic before work, in the middle of work, only to wait for the train. Other trains in other directions fly by. Chanukah, Pesach, summer vacation, roaring past. Sometimes I feel that more than the treatments, the medication that might work, will work, it comes down to this. Waiting. Waiting on the platform.

The summer air, hot and cloying, hits us as we walk off the train and on to home. Two weeks’ wait. Two weeks to get on with life, work, supper. To pretend that we’re not waiting, not hoping, not clutching onto the gossamer threads of a dream.

Because to hope is to open oneself to disappointment. Dreams that haven’t been nurtured cannot be dashed. As if. As if we haven’t been here before. But it’s different this time, it has to be. The two-week verdict is Erev Rosh Hashanah.

I wake up early to have my blood test done. “You’ll have the results by seven this evening,” the technician says.

Seven? That’s 15 minutes before Yom Tov.

I can’t. Can’t. What will I do till then, sit on my hands and urge the day by?

My husband insists we make some meals ourselves. To keep me distracted with soup and roast and dessert. I stand in the kitchen and the phone rings. A friend calling to wish me a gut yahr.

Year? My life stalls at seven this evening. But I respond to the prattle, where are you going for the meals, where are you davening, and breathe past the too fervent brachos at the end of the phone call. I love her, I love them all; I hate this.