I

t had been a long day, the sort you have when the kids are little and the days long and their needs incessant, but we’d made it, finally, to bedtime. We’d read the last bedtime story and said Shema, the kids still damp from their baths, faces scrubbed, cheeks clean, and I was just about ready to finally breathe, when Zevy jumped up and straddled the big old-fashioned hinged window in his bedroom, his legs hugging either side of the glass, exactly the way I’d told him not to. I was about to tell him to get off yet again, as the window drifted gently toward its frame, when suddenly, it fell off its hinges, shattering with a giant THUD! into a million winking diamonds, glass everywhere, and all of the breath was sucked out of me until—

“Eli did it!” Zevy cried from amid the shards, pointing at Eli who stood on the other side of the room, next to the — oh my goodness, the crib! The baby!

Somehow, miraculously, no one was hurt, I could breathe again, but there was glass on every surface. I brushed off the kids, carried them into the hallway, and assessed the room. It would take an hour, at least, and the kids were already giggling and sticking their feet into the room— “Look, I kicked the glass!”

I sighed, made up the beds in the guest room, set up the Pack ‘n Play, said Shema again (I drew the line at repeating bedtime stories) and, warning the kids to stay in bed, went back into the kids’ room to start the weary task of shaking out sheets and vacuuming corners.

I was maneuvering the vacuum hose into the corner under the crib while calling to Zevy to get back into bed when I noticed the light had turned golden and the shadows lengthened. It hit me: It was almost shekiyah! It was the day before Rosh Chodesh Sivan, a day when prayers for our children’s success in Torah carry a special weight, and I had just moments left to recite Tefillas HaShelah.

I dropped the vacuum cleaner and went to the dining room, determined to seize these last few precious moments. I took my siddur and sat down on the couch, narrowing my focus to its pages and beginning the prayer I knew almost by heart.

At some point, it struck me, the incongruity between what my lips were murmuring — they, their children, and their children’s children, until the end of all generations, for the purpose that they and I be engrossed in Your holy Torah — and what my head was thinking, Please Hashem, just make them fall asleep, please.

There’s always a gap between our dreams and reality, and that chasm looms large in motherhood. My teenaged imaginings were full of cherub-cheeked toddlers, whole wheat zucchini muffins, and bedtime stories. And we have those, baruch Hashem, but the cheeks tend to be smeared with ketchup, the muffins discarded in favor of Cheerios, and I’ve been known to hiss a short one at the child picking tonight’s bedtime book. It turns out that it’s much easier to have patience with the kids you babysit and counselor than to beam a peaceful smile at the kid who’s come out of bed for the fifth time.

As a teen, I was sure that, just like the gadol who’d been spurred to greatness by the memory of the tears his mother spilled each week by hadlakas neiros, my children would also see what truly mattered to me. And I do cry when I bentshlicht. Some weeks. But sometimes it’s hard to muster up kavanah: One child is tugging at my skirt and another is tantrumming at my heels, and the others aren’t at my feet because they’re at each other’s throats. And okay, fine, sometimes when I do cry it’s because I am that tired and Friday was that hectic. My kids don’t need to know that, do they?

Between the waves of chaos, though, there are moments that almost disappear between the swells of noise, but they’re there, moments that transcend it all, moments of eternity, of connection. Moments when I focus on the flickering flames, one for each child: May they light up Your world with Torah and good deeds.

A siyum, a siddur party, the Pesach Seder. The moment when my daughter tells me she started a gemach in her classroom as a zechus for my childless friend, when my son uses his hard-earned money to buy a present for his little brother; and it hits me maybe there’s hope.

Not all of those moments are milestones, or on my calendar, or photo album worthy. Some are almost swallowed by this crazy beautiful storm of life, but when I squint, really focus, I can summon them into sight, see them glinting, catching the light, and bouncing it back to me.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 644)