For the next two nights, I didn’t sleep.

Tuesday morning saw us sitting in Sarit’s office, waiting breathlessly. She greeted us, paused for dramatic effect, then asked: “What would you think about adopting twin baby girls?”

“But where’s our five-year-old boy with asthma?” came my husband’s reply.

No, he wasn’t deliriously confused. We had been told many, many times that because of the dearth of babies (defined as children two years old and younger) available for adoption in the relatively small population of the State of Israel, couples with biological children are automatically disqualified from the “infant roster” and placed on the “children roster.”

Moreover, many of these older children suffered from emotional or physical challenges, and over the course of their young lives, they’ve experienced multiple transitions. One of the steps in the adoption process was to fill out what I called the “What do you think you can handle?” questionnaire. We had to check off which issues we were willing to contend with in terms of our future adopted child’s personal status (e.g. Jewish or not), family background (including generational medical history), and physical/mental health conditions.

It was a delicate calculus: the more “issues” one was willing to accept, the more likely a child would be found for you. On the other hand, you had to be honest about what you could contend with. Our primary condition was that the child be younger than our daughter — her status as firstborn was immutable — and we had checked off the permutations we felt equipped to parent. And so the mythical “five-year-old with asthma” had become our mental profile of the child who would hopefully, one day, become part of our family.

But here were two healthy ten-month-olds, who since birth had been living with a loving foster family, waiting for determination of their long-term status. Were we interested?

“Can we have a few days to think about it?” Tzvi asked.

I glared at him: What if Sarit changed her mind? What if the judge changed her mind? This was our dream come true! Why did we need a few days?

But Sarit was already giving us until Sunday to get back to her and ushering us out of her office, where I could glare at my spouse less subtly.

“Two babies?” he replied to my unspoken question. “It sounds wonderful. But we need to think through whether we can do this. Do you realize,” he mused incredulously, “we’d be a family of five?”

Of course we could handle that, I answered in my mind. But I suppose it did pay to give such an important decision its due. So we talked and debated and discussed and tried to peer into the future.

Two days later, the potential father of twins announced, hesitantly at first but then with greater confidence, that he believed this was the right choice for us. There was just one problem: I was no longer so sure.

Our house was graced with delicate china dishes sitting comfortably on low shelves; an entire clay dog family crafted by our seven-year-old ceramic artist sat on the coffee table. Beyond the physical layout of the house, there was the matter of lifestyle: “It’s 7 p.m. All three of us worked hard today. We’re hungry. Let’s go out to eat!”

I wasn’t really making a decision based on our very occasional restaurant forays. But bottom line: These twins would need baby formula measured out, diapers changed, the kitchen cabinets locked up tight, a mother with endless energy. Could I go back in time and do that all again?

Discussions followed — with family, a close friend, our rav and rebbetzin. We mulled. We mused. We contemplated. Sunday morning, I rang Sarit. “We’ve given your offer serious consideration. And we’ve decided… that adopting the twins would be right for us. Our answer is yes.”

“Wonderful,” she said. “I’ll get back to you after the legal ruling, changing their status to ‘adoptable.’” I think we thought that our response would be followed by instructions for picking up the twins that afternoon. But we could show some patience, couldn’t we? We had no idea just how much our patience would be tried, and how much waiting would be required in the months to come.

We told no one except our parents and siblings that maybe, just maybe, our family would be expanding. It was too tentative, too uncertain, too elusive to share with anyone else. Except the one person who would be affected as much, if not more, than we would be.

We broached the subject one evening. “Emunah, darling. You know how we’ve talked about becoming mother, father, and big sister to an adopted kid? Now we may have the chance to do exactly that — for two kids! What do you think?” I wasn’t sure what her answer would be. Over the years, she had come to appreciate — we all had — what a special dynamic we were blessed with in our family of three.

Emunah pondered for a while. “Being an only child has been great,” she finally responded. “But now, it’s time to move on.”

Emunah was right. On a Thursday night three weeks later, my cell phone rang once again. “I won’t be able to see the formal judgment in writing until Sunday morning,” Sarit’s voice filled the phone. “But I didn’t want to leave you in suspense over yet another Shabbat. I have it on unfailing authority that the judge has signed. Are you available on Monday morning? I’ll meet you in front of the twins’ foster home at ten.”

Of course we were available. We found the charming little house in a predominantly religious town a 90-minute drive south from our home. We entered tentatively, apprehensive at how we’d be welcomed by the couple who had received three-day-old twins nearly a year before and had been caring for them ever since. We were nearly bowled over by the force of their hugs and handshakes as they ushered us into their home to meet—

Two brown-haired, big-eyed, cuddly cubs, smiling as if they had been waiting for us all their lives. Perhaps they had. Our daughters. We didn’t know them yet, had never met them, had not even known of their existence; yet they were assuredly our babies. I have never believed in love at first sight — but at that moment, I was certain it was as real as the sunrise.

We held them and snuggled them. The couple who had calmed their cries, celebrated their smiles, and spent countless sleepless nights nursing them through fevers, began immediately, with ultimate grace and selflessness, to refer to us as Ima v’Abba shel hate’umot.

Two hours later, we reluctantly left. As we pulled out of the small street, we heard sirens. We were being pulled over by the police! “Step out of the car; license and registration please,” an officer told us. I had neglected to put on my seatbelt, and the police were responding with a heavy fine.

“Wait!” I addressed the female officer. “I need to tell you… I was so excited… I just met my babies for the first time — I mean, they’re going to be my babies, but first I had to be introduced to them. Because they’re adopted. We’re going to adopt them.”

Surprisingly, the young officer didn’t look a bit surprised. “You mean you were just at the Hallabis’ house?” she asked. “Hey, chabibi!” she called to her fellow officer. “They’re a Hallabi family!” Her partner gave a huge grin. “Mazal tov! How wonderful that you’re adopting a kid.”

“Not a kid,” I blurted out, unsure which reality we had somehow landed in. “Two kids!”

“The twins?” The female officer nearly jumped into my car to hug me. “You’re becoming the mother of the twins?! Well, hurry up — you’ve got a lot to do. Buckle up and get home safe,” she concluded. Her fellow officer stopped traffic to let us slide back into the busy road toward home.

The process of getting acquainted was meant to be a short one. The next visit, Big Sister was already joining us. Over the whirlwind next two weeks our regular visits were interspersed with the three of us rushing to baby stores, ordering two car seats, two booster seats for meal time, two bath seats to stabilize squirmy one-year-olds in the water, and a second crib to match the one that had been in storage for the last several years.

At work, I met with the human resources manager as we organized precisely when to begin my 17-week “maternity leave.” In the days before I was set to leave, my fellow writers even threw me a baby shower with a gift certificate to my favorite baby store.

Chanukah was fast approaching — as was the twins’ first birthday. I was disappointed to hear that we were scheduled to bring the girls home only two days after Chanukah. But Shabbos Chanukah was their foster mother’s birthday, and having one last Shabbos with them was the ultimate gift. My husband, daughter, and I went away together to spend our last Shabbos as a family of three. Six eyes shed tears as I lit three candles for the last time.

When Shabbos ended, we did something truly radical: We went public. Until then, we had told no one. Even Emunah — “Ima, keeping a secret is very hard” — had done her best to reveal our news to no one but her mechanechet, with whom we encouraged her to share her feelings about the upcoming upheaval in her life. And my officemates had kept my confidence as well.

Now, however, feeling secure in sharing our joy with our community, I crafted an e-mail in both Hebrew and English announcing the arrival of adopted one-year-old twin girls to join our family, and by extension, our kehillah. My inbox almost exploded from the response. E-mails continued to come in throughout the night and into the morning.

And then, the phone rang. “There’s been a delay.” Sarit had never been one to mince words. “A few legal details need to be ironed out. The twins’ move needs to be postponed until next week.” Disappointment reigned, though mingled with relief. A few extra days of preparation would be helpful as we continued to count down to the bolded “Homecoming” notation (crossed out and re-noted one week later) on the wall calendar.

Until the next call. The judge needed a few days more; no, there was no specific new date, no need for us to call, they would be in touch when they had something concrete to tell us. We were expected to simply go back to childproofing and studying and working and waiting. Except for one problem: I was on maternity leave!

Every morning I bid my husband and daughter goodbye and faced the hours of the day alone, in a house filled with baby gifts and baby food and baby toys that peered out at me everywhere I looked. Leaving the house proved no respite: While our close friends had been updated and tried desperately to verbalize understanding of a situation that appeared in no one’s sympathy manual, far too many well-meaning fellow villagers, brimmed with excitement when they saw me out and about, further depressing me with their good wishes.

A new legal ruling denied us the right to see our babies, although no one suggested that they were, in fact, no longer ours. We were no longer a family of three, but not yet a family of five. What were we exactly?

And what was I? A month after I so confidently began my leave, I called my boss to ask if I could please “take the position of maternity-leave replacement for… myself.” She graciously encouraged me to come back to work and leave the baby-stuff-filled-but-baby-empty house behind me. My coworkers’ non-judgmental embrace turned my office into a haven.

Emunah, though, had no place to run and hide. The almost-but-not-quite Big Sister experienced the passage of each day with a child’s perception of time: endless. “Did they call?” she asked as she burst in after school every afternoon. Even her social interactions mimicked mine. Each day the girls on the bus, in the classroom, and on the playground would run up to ask: Have your twins arrived yet?

We had no answers for her. Adoption is a complicated process (we were politely reminded) and some of the intricacies of that complexity were still being worked out. E-mailing New York, I vented to one sister, herself a judge, about the legal system, heard from another sister, a child psychologist, about similar cases she’d seen in her caseload. But no one could actually help us.

I lay awake, reviewing our years of interaction with the adoption department of the State of Israel’s social services. It was 2006 when I submitted our first application to the Sherut. Over the next few months, we filled out medical and financial forms, wrote personal essays, chose just-the-right headshots, and then spent an entire day at an evaluation institute in Tel Aviv, rapidly responding to a series of questions (“when I am angry I…”) while remembering not to give the wrong answer (“scream and jump up and down” versus “calmly express my feelings”), drew pictures, and were interviewed by a team of psychologists. There was no cost — except for our time and energy and emotions — as we invested some of our hope in this avenue, while still pursuing all medical options in our quest to become parents.

In the winter of 2008 we received the long-awaited letter: The State of Israel had officially accepted us as potential adoptive parents. At that time, however, the news took second stage to other recent developments: We were expecting a baby! On the second day of Succos, our daughter was born. Our happiness was overwhelming; our lives complete. Surely, we would never want for anything again.

It was true: Our lives were complete. But somewhere along the way we discovered that one can be complete and incomplete simultaneously — and as the years passed, our yearning for another child, and the frustration over the one gift we could not give our beloved daughter, grew. So we re-applied to become adoptive parents and were accepted once again. And courteously told, once again, to wait.

The phone rang. It was the third Sunday in February, nearly three months later. “The judge signed this morning. Come on Tuesday to the foster family’s home. We’ll sign the papers and within a few days you’ll be bringing your girls home.” Sarit could not have known that when we signed a range of legal forms two days later, each one was dated with my birth date.

Meanwhile, we had one week to get all ready all over again. I had to take leave of my job, again. We had to organize the baby nursery, again. Install the car seats, stock up on baby formula, psych ourselves up, again. D?j? vu was at nearly overwhelming levels by the time the three of us returned to a vacation apartment for Shabbos. Once more, we lit three candles for the last time and 25 hours later, watched three stars come out as a family of three, for the last time.

Tuesday morning, we dropped off Emunah at school; siblings were not permitted to attend the departure event. We headed south, made a slight detour to the foster family’s “neighbor” — the kever of the Baba Sali — and then pulled up at the house that had become our second home.

But despite having been there countless times, crossing the threshold into the foster family’s abode on this day was a completely new experience. The music was off. The table, usually filled with over-sweetened tea, fresh-baked challah, and home-roasted couscous, was empty.

The twins were dressed in their best. Their foster mother was trying her hardest to hold back the tears. Their foster father wasn’t even trying. “My babies, my little gozalim (ducklings) are leaving me.” His cries filled the room, a cacophonic disharmony pounding in the background as we hugged the twins, put their bags in the car, filled their bottles for the road.

His eldest daughter, along with the foster-care social worker, tried their best to calm him, but to no avail. Certainly we had no way to comfort him — we were the cause of those tears. All eyes turned to Sarit, who, as the adoption social worker, held the final authority for the transfer. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “We are going to make an exception and arrange for you to see the girls very soon. We will all” — she nodded toward all those present — “meet in my office in Jerusalem at a soon-to-be-announced date.”

The wailing moderated to soft moans of grief. The foster mother handed each of us two packages: the first, a poem reminding each twin of their months together and best wishes for their future years apart. The second was two small albums filled with photographs — the first ones I had ever seen — of our babies as newborns, cozy during their first winter, sunning themselves during their first summer. I had no words to thank the first mother my daughters had ever known.

Then, finally, we were on our way home. “Can you believe there are two babies in the back seat of our car?” was the constant refrain as we kept glancing behind us throughout the drive. I SMSed the neighbors I had grouped together that morning under the title “Double Trouble.” The message: “Heading home.”

Ninety minutes later, we pulled up in front of our house, the entrance of which was blocked by dozens of adults and children and balloons and colorful “Welcome to the Twins” signs. Tzvi and I exited the front of the car. Then we each turned around, opened a back door, and took out a twin. Our twins’ big sister was propelled to the front of the entourage. Cameras flashed, videos recorded, singing reverberated, mazel tovs echoed. We headed through the crowd to our front door. We were home: We were a Family of Five.

Six months later

Rosh Chodesh Elul marked six months to the day since we brought our twins home. It was also the day we brought them to the day care center for the first time. I had taken them inside and stayed for a while. Still, they cried when I prepared to leave. So did I.

An old-timer mother patted my shoulder. “Don’t feel bad,” she said, “all kids cry when they watch their mother go.” Precisely why I shed tears of happiness: My daughters’ sobs were proof of the bond we had forged over the last half year.

Over the past six months, “exhausting yet exhilarating” had become my mantra. Some days stood out: That first morning, when two little faces peeked out at me from their cribs, two voices squealed to be picked up, and I, who had never had to split my maternal ministering among even two children of different ages, had a flash of realization: I would have to let one of my daughters cry.

The first Shabbos, when I stood in shul holding my babies, watching their father be called up to the Torah to give new names reflecting our family legacy to his two new daughters. Hearing Emunah wax poetically of “my little sisters.” Hearing Emunah explain earnestly that “it’s sometimes hard, Ima, because I used to have all of your attention and now I need to share it.”

The first Purim — our debut as a Chinese family of five. The first Lag B’omer — our babies’ eyes glowing by campfire light.

I peeked back in through the window of the day care center to discover both girls already busy with toys. They were ready for a new chapter in their lives. Was I? In back of me stood the day care center. In front of me, the shul, where Rosh Chodesh Shacharis had already begun.

One month from this day I’d be inside, once again pleading to be remembered — for good health and happiness for my family of five — for no matter how many of our prayers are answered there is no limit to our needs, no end to our need for favor from the One Who Remembers.

But for now, what I needed most was to give voice to my overflowing joy. I had been remembered. It was time for Hallel: time to say thank you as the mother in a Family of Five.

(Originally Featured in Family First, Issue 513)