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Happy Birthday

By C. Schon | March 10, 2021

When I couldn’t smell the besamim, I curled up in my bed and waited for death to come

I’m not big on celebrating birthdays. My kids are. So when they start requesting birthday parties, I indulge them with a cupcake fest, with plenty of frosting. They lick the frosting and leave the cupcakes on the table.

First birthdays, though, usually pass quietly. The babies are too young to ask for cupcakes, and I’m too busy repacking the pantry they unpacked and scooping nonedibles out of their mouths.

Last week we celebrated my son’s first birthday. I made special dessert for Shabbos and wiped tears every time I looked at him. His birthday marked a year from the eruption of COVID.

He was a tiny five pounder, slightly premature, and spent his first week in the NICU (without a mask to be found!). In the kimpeturin heim, we griped about the stuff that wasn’t arriving from AliExpress; how would we make Pesach without the goodies from China? We also spoke about Purim plans and Pesach plans with a newborn. Yeah, people still had plans back then.

Then, I went home. And only one week later, when my baby was three weeks old, schools closed. One minute COVID was about AliExpress and the next it was about war. My sister was one of the first to test positive, and she came to my house in a mask. My toddler shrieked so loudly from fear, it took us a long time to calm her down.

When I couldn’t smell the besamim, I curled up in my bed and waited for death to come. I kept on breathing to check if I could breathe, and eating to see if I could swallow. Both were getting harder and harder to do.

I lay in bed with fever and a cough while Hatzolah sirens blared nonstop from outside my window and the kids fought. I held my baby and cried for a child born into a world that smelled of death. I had no energy to feed him, and when I looked into his eyes, I wasn’t so sure if I should bond with him at all because it was so temporary.

If the strongest of our nation were losing the fight, how could a tiny little bundle that couldn’t fill his newborn onesies survive?

Two of my students lost their fathers, and once again, I was plagued with the question of why Hashem gave me a baby when the world seemed thirsty for blood. Was this how women felt before the Holocaust?

Then I recovered. I’d survived, my baby had survived, and new life was blossoming. My tiny baby turned over for the first time and gave his first smile. The family oohed and aahed, and it was a good source of entertainment on those endless days.

I realized that if Hashem was making a tiny baby turn over with such precision, He didn’t really want us to die. Only He could give these little people the seichel to stretch their necks and muscles and grow. Oh, how we almost mashed him to mush when he started clapping his hands to the Shabbos zemiros and rocked on all fours for hours.

Slowly, I joined the fun. There was such relief to let go and let G-d. He took care of every tiny detail all day long — even his tiniest babies, who was I to doubt the Creator?

As much as I’d read on emunah and listened to shiurim on bitachon, biting into the number-one-shaped peanut chews with my baby gleefully clapping his hands was breathing it. And that’s a birthday worth celebrating.

We’ve lost so much, we’re all aching, but just for a moment, all of Klal Yisrael can take pleasure in celebrating the COVID birthday. It’s been a full year of exploration for everybody, of stretching muscles until they ached and finally falling into His embrace.

Happy birthday.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 734)

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When I couldn’t smell the besamim, I curled up in my bed and waited for death to come

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