The next morning, it’s something else. All the relatives, both local and from overseas, want to stop by and visit Savta. It’s three days until Succos and my house is flying, but… sure! Come on over! Except that my mother isn’t really in the right headspace for guests right now. My vivacious mother, who none of us really believes is in her nineties, is frustrated because her phone is still acting up… and she’s feeling overwhelmed by the flood of soon-to-be-arriving relatives… and now she’s fixated on finding a gift that she bought, which has mysteriously gone missing. She won’t come down until she finds it.

“Sari, dear. Can you help?” she calls downstairs.

I leave the chaos in the kitchen, the tugging at my skirt of my younger children, the incoming calls from my teens who are out running errands, and clamber up the stairs to help. I can’t keep this up, I think to myself. Something must change.

I needn’t have worried. Something does change. Boy, does it change.

Who knew that happiness could come in the form of a yellow and green fluffball with blue cheeks? Who knew that joy and comfort can tweet, chirp, and fly? Meet Tzippy the bird, who is Savta’s beloved pet.

She came into our lives three years ago, when I saw a posting on our community’s email list from a family who was giving away their budgie. There isn’t a lot of action in the house with the kids in school most of the day, so I thought to myself, wouldn’t a bird be a nice companion for my mother?

Bringing the bird back to my house was quite a feat, as my teenagers’ cries of, “This is socially off!” reached a whole new decibel. This bird was something else. She bopped her head like crazy and became obsessed with Abie Rotenberg’s “A Journey at Sea” within seconds, chirping along with the song the entire drive home.

We brought the cage into the house and then I panicked. How do I explain this new pet to my very quiet, clean, and tidy mother? A brilliant idea flashed through my mind: It’s all in the presentation, of course! Kind of like blending vegetables into the pasta sauce so the kids won’t notice they’re there. My mother is known for her black “Savta Simcha” bag filled with books and games that she takes when she visits the grandchildren, so following the book, we decide to call the bird Tzippy. My artistic children draw a picture of Savta Simcha and Tzippy and we tape it to the cage.

Our attempt to quietly bring the budgie into my mother’s apartment fails miserably. The bird is chirping madly and crashing the bells around her cage. Upstairs, we all chorus, “Savta meet Tzippy. Tzippy meet your Savta Simcha.” My mother takes one look at the cage, sets her jaw, and looks away. But a few moments later, she sneaks a glance at the fluffball in the cage. A hint of a smile appears and then she begrudgingly says, “Okay, you’re cute.” An audible sigh. “All right, I’ll take her!” (Thank you, Yaffa Ganz!)

It took a while for my mother to warm up to her new roommate’s perpetual chirping and squawking and the steady flow of feathers and seed casings that poured out of the cage on an hourly basis. Tzippy never learned to talk despite many lessons in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish, but my mother and Tzippy developed their own language.

She imitates my mother’s ever-ringing phone perfectly, warbling away happily with this newfound talent. She loves to sing along when my mother plays classical music. She learned to make adorable kissing noises whenever my mother goes anywhere near the cage. Every morning, Tzippy chirps along to Savta’s Modeh Ani, and purrs along with her Shema at night. In the evenings, the two share a snack together — a piece of chocolate for Savta, a sprig of millet for Tzippy.

Not that my mother will ever admit to loving Tzippy, mind you. “I really don’t like this bird,” I overhear her saying over the phone. I strain my ear to hear more. “She makes a mess with all her molting feathers and bird seed.”

Tell them how you sing to her every morning and night! I silently scream. Tell them how proud you are of all her tricks!

“Sari brought her home to keep me company, bless her soul,” the conversation continues. “You know, my Sari is amazing.” This part I know, though I don’t mind hearing it again. What I also know is that deep down, my mother has a connection with this bird.

Indeed, Savta takes her bird-rearing responsibilities seriously. She believes in the importance of pet exercise, so she regularly opens the cage so Tzippy can fly around her place. The budgie’s wings aren’t clipped, so her landing pads have become the velvet yarmulkas on my husband’s and sons’ heads. That’s a detail that’s relevant to the next part of our story.

Fast forward to that fateful Sunday before Succos. Guests are on the way to visit Savta, who is upstairs taking her blood pressure. Her apartment door is wide open and unbeknownst to the rest of us, she has let Tzippy out of her cage to fly around.

So on this particularly insane morning, while the little ones are raising the roof with their creative pastimes, and my teenage girls are finishing davening so they can pick up the meat order, and my husband and the boys are outside wielding hammer, nail, and drill, Tzippy flaps her way downstairs and starts soaring silently above our heads.

The patio door opens and my husband, Sruli, walks in from the deck to grab something. A flash of yellow and green streaks across the kitchen and lands on his jacketed shoulder, without him noticing. Before I can process what is happening, my husband heads back outside, taking Tzippy from the safety of her daled amos to the big, wide world of open air. Another flash of blue and green, and Tzippy is suddenly chirping at us from the top of our neighbor’s succah.

We clap, we shout, and we whistle in her direction. We wave my husband’s velvet yarmulke in desperation. Calls of “Tzippy!” are echoing across the neighborhood, almost as loudly as her happy chirps of freedom. A concerned neighbor comes out asking if we lost a child. We kind of did, I think, imagining my mother’s reaction.

After ten minutes of this amusing show, Tzippy gives one final victorious chirp and soars over the trees down the street. My little one is in tears, my husband has never looked more guilt-ridden, and I want to cry. But this is no time for tears.

We race down the street, trying to spot her in the trees. Our efforts are useless. With unclipped wings, the entire neighborhood is her oyster.

Slowly and sadly, we troop back into the house. “Okay, everyone, it’s almost Yom Tov; Hashem wants us to be happy,” I announce. “We’ll tell Savta. Soon. Very soon. Just not now.”

How exactly am I going to break the news to my mother? She’s still upset about her phone, which isn’t working despite the many hours she’s spent talking to the supervisor’s supervisor of her phone company’s overseas tech-support team. I wish I could pretend that nothing happened, but my mother is eventually going to notice the uncharacteristic quiet in her apartment.

My heart is hammering as I walk upstairs. “Ummm… Ma?” I stammer, standing at her doorway. “Something a little crazy just happened. Tzippy flew downstairs and landed on Sruli’s shoulder, but he didn’t realize she was there, and he went outside to work on the succah and… ummm… Tzippy is very free right now. Like all the way down the street free.”

Savta doesn’t say a word. Her sad face just gets sadder.

My mother is going through way too much right now. Frankly, so am I. But Hashem is sending us a message. This much I am certain.

Downstairs, I snap back into reality. Three days until Succos and to make things even crazier, tomorrow night is a community challah bake and… guess who’s helping to organize it? My dining room table is covered with the packaged materials for 70 challah-baking kits.

Before this project takes over my mind, I do some hishtadlus to find Tzippy.

I send a message to the moderator of the email list that had originally brought Tzippy to Savta: Our budgie with yellow and green feathers and blue cheeks just flew away from our house. If you find her, please call. It’s a desperate attempt; I don’t expect any responses. We also leave Tzippy’s cage outside, filled with millet, hoping that if she accidently finds herself in our backyard again, she’ll take shelter inside.

Hours later, a frigid wind begins to blow through the neighborhood, followed by cold rain. “There’s no chance she’s coming back now,” the realists in the family say.

I remain optimistic. When my eight-year-old daughter asks, from time to time, where Tzippy is, I answer, “She’s warm and cozy in another home.” Out of my daughter’s earshot, my husband whispers grimly, “Geshtorbin.”

The sun rises. Another cold day. Forty-eight hours until Yom Tov, four hours until the challah bake. I put on my freshly washed sheitel, freshly applied makeup, and ta-da! I look put together despite my harried state. I wisely recruit my husband and children to help set up the event, and we schlep out of the house with boxes of flour, oil, sugar.

“Mommy, is the table here fine?” my daughter asks.

“The sound system is done! I hope it actually works when we need it,” my bochur says nervously.

“Mommy, I’m picking up the sushi now,” says teenage daughter #1. “Do we need anything else while I’m out?”

“Mommy, there’s tons of extra chairs around the tables,” says teenage daughter #2 as she starts to reorganize.

My youngest is running around with the other organizers’ girls, loading each ingredient into the bowls. In the corner, curled up on a chair, is my younger son, who is just getting over pneumonia.

Lights, camera, action! The event is a success and after cleaning up, my girls and I load the empty boxes and dirty tablecloths into our minivan. I lean back in the passenger seat, trying to savor the short ten-minute drive home to relax. My daughter turns my flip phone off silent and it starts to buzz madly in the cup holder. My heart skips a beat when I read the missed text message:

SOMEONE FOUND YOUR BIRD! CALL ME!!!!!

Can this be for real? Budgies don’t usually get found. They typically don’t survive out in the wild, especially for a day and a half, especially in cold, wet weather. And this isn’t any old budgie — we’re talking about a bird who needs to be patted dry with a towel after a bath!

“We’re coming!!!!” I reply instantly.

“They found Tzippy!!!” I announce to my family. Instead of hearing shrieks of joy from the backseat, I’m met with dubious skepticism:

“It’s obviously the wrong bird,” says one child. “Everyone loses their budgies at some point.”

“They found her,” comments the Gemara kup. “They never said that they have her, so they probably just saw her.”

Dismissing their pessimism, I eagerly punch in the phone number of the Tzippy spotter. A minute of conversation later, I go from elated to deflated: this family had my bird, but gave her to a different family. We try again. New number, new phone call… no answer.

We pull into the driveway, and I start giving orders to the subdued crowd: “Everyone unload. Someone grab Tzippy’s cage. I’m calling one more time and then we’re just going to drive over there. I have the address.”

The “Socially Off” choir starts up in the back of the van, but quickly quiets when my husband reassures them that, “Of course, Mommy isn’t showing up at someone’s house at ten-thirty at night without calling.” Honestly, I’m not so sure about that, but I nod in agreement. Tzippy’s cage is loaded into the van, and all the children squeeze in. Apparently, our family is boring enough that our kids consider this to be an exciting outing.

With a little trepidation and a quick tefillah, I call the phone number once again and… they answer! I start by clarifying that we’re not PETA activists, just down-the-block-by-a-lot neighbors who are concerned about Savta’s bird, and I know it’s very late, but if it’s not a bother, can we please pick up Tzippy… like now?

“Oh, of course, I’m so happy we connected. The only thing is….” The young woman’s voice on the other end is hesitant. “My kids are sleeping and we just lost our budgies and they were so excited to find this one….” Her voice trails off.

I understand, I really do, but it’s hard to explain what has been missing in my mother’s life since this bird flew away, and what’s been going on in my house in general. I reassure the kind lady that her children are invited whenever they want to visit the bird. But Savta really needs Tzippy back. She’s lonely without her; she hasn’t been sleeping well. The kind lady and I reach a mutual understanding and, before she can change her mind, we zoom over to her house. In the back seat, the pessimists resurface:

“It’s probably not our bird,” says one.

“After all this, I hope it is,” mutters another.

The honor of carrying Tzippy’s huge, clanging cage, covered in bells and balls, goes to my husband and daughter. Baruch Hashem, it’s after dark or my post-seminary daughter would never have agreed, shidduchim and all.

“It’s Tzippy, right?” I hear my daughter whisper to my husband as she reemerges with the bird in the cage. The van door rumbles open and everyone starts talking at once. The bird goes ballistic. She’s bopping, chirping, telephone ringing and kissing all in one. It’s Tzippy, no question. She’s missing all her tail feathers but one, and her chirp is awfully hoarse, but even after 36 hours in the cold and rain, she’s still Savta’s Tzippy in all her fluffy yellow, green, and blue glory. For a small little budgie who thought freedom is the height of everything, well, I think she’s changed her mind.

When we arrive home, we hear my mother upstairs, back on the line with her phone’s customer service. Hashem, please let this not be too shocking. We walk upstairs as a family, leaving Tzippy downstairs, so we can gently break the news.

“Want to hear a crazy story?” my teenager asks, laying a hand on my mother’s shoulder. She’s stroking my mother’s back slowly.

“I got a call tonight….” I interject. And then little by little, each family member shares a section of the story until my mother pieces together the puzzle.

“You must be joking!” she finally exclaims. “I just cleaned my apartment from all the mess.”

Undeterred, we bring out the cage and take a collective breath in. Tzippy takes one look at my mother and fluffs out all her feathers, bops her head up and down excitedly, and starts kissing Savta. Tzippy knows she is home. And my mother melts.

“Tzippy, you’re incredible! Tzippy, you’re amazing!” my mother coos. “Am Yisrael Chai. Oh, I can’t believe this.” For the first time in days, my mother’s smile returns.

Only later did we find out the true story of Tzippy’s adventure. After flying down the street, she flew around the neighborhood and remained in the wild all night. The following day, a family visited a nearby park (a ten-minute walk from our house) and as the children were playing, a budgie flew out of one of the trees and landed right on the father’s yarmulke.

The budgie proceeded to befriend the family, taking turns standing on each of them before taking a ride on the hood of the baby’s stroller home. (Clearly, she had learned her lesson and wasn’t interested in spending another day in the wild.) Tzippy happily went into their house, after which they found her a new (temporary) home. In the meantime, the mother of the family posted on the same ListServ that I had used about finding a yellow and green budgie. The moderators kindly made the shidduch that brought Tzippy home.

It’s Erev Yom Tov, a few hours before licht.

My mother’s phone problem has finally been solved: We unplugged and forwarded the landline to her cell phone, an old flippy that doesn’t even have voicemail set up. A low-tech solution that will enable her to speak for hours to family instead of customer service.

“This bird is incredible,” I hear my mother saying over the phone upstairs. “She came back home! It really reminds me of Am Yisrael Chai. There is so much going on now, but nitzchiyus Yisrael will always be an assurance.”

My mother is a different person. Her blood pressure cuff safely back in the cupboard, she happily putters around her apartment, singing to Tzippy as she tidies up and prepares for Yom Tov.

Thank You, Hashem, I silently say. Thank You for making the impossible possible and bringing Tzippy home. Thank You for showing me that even the unhappiest situation can bring good.

Downstairs in the kitchen, it’s still nonstop. Last-minute food prep, last-minute cleanup. Some kids are showering, some are decorating the succah, some are setting the table, one is picking up clothes from the cleaners. My phone rings, and I barely have a second to breathe, but I pick up because it’s my good friend Devora.

As I clean the counters and take out the trash, I regale her with the story of my mother and the bird. At the end of this tekufah, my children should still get shidduchim, amen.

“That’s incredible, Sari!” she says. “You’ve heard of the concept of yeridah l’tzorech aliyah? How sometimes we need to go down so we can come up higher? Hashem took away the bird and gave her back to you, giving your mother a new lease on life! It’s like it needed to get worse to get better.”

It wasn’t just for her, I know. It was for me, too; I also needed a new lease on life.

As I get ready to bentsh licht in our finished succah, I savor the cacophony of sounds around me: Tzippy chirping in her cage; my mother chattering with her grandchildren; the distant clatter from the garage as Sruli takes a few more things in and out of the succah; my older kids racing to finish their last-minute Yom Tov prep. I take it all in, all the noise, all the bustle, reveling in the strong feeling of Hashgachah that surrounds me.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 927)