Shlomo had come home in a foul mood just before Yom Tov began. A police officer had fined him for littering.

“It wasn’t littering!” he said now as I stood up to head to bed. “I dropped my cigarette butt on the ground outside tachanah merkazit. A million people do that every day. What right did he have to fine me? Uch, I’m so annoyed, I can’t sleep.”

It was late. I would probably be dealing with the kids alone for much of the next day, while my husband caught up on his sleep. But something told me this was a moment that wouldn’t come back. Not a rare opportunity, an all but impossible one. I slipped over to the couch near where my son was standing and sat down.

Shlomo stretched out next to me, leaning against my shoulder as if he was a little boy. As if we always sat on the couch schmoozing. As if I hadn’t spent the last few years clawing desperately for more than the most superficial conversation with this child.

“Do you think there’s some way I can protest the fine? It can’t be legal to fine someone for that. It’s not like I threw garbage on the ground. It was just a little cigarette butt.”

Under normal circumstances, I would have pointed out that the world is not his ashtray. At that moment, though, my only interest was in trying to pull myself across the bridge between us.

“I’m sorry, boobah. I really don’t know. And there’s not much you can do about it right now, anyway.”

“How am I supposed to fall asleep like this?”

That was good. Relatable. Feeling too frustrated to fall asleep is a language I can speak. I felt comfortable just being myself, being real and honest as I empathized with Shlomo and shared the ideas that help me let go and fall asleep when I’m feeling wound up.

And somehow, miraculously, we kept talking.

I had so many questions, all variations of, “What did I do wrong?” and “Why are you like this?” but I didn’t want to break the magic spell. I let Shlomo keep talking, controlling the thread of conversation, interjecting only when I thought he would hear what I was saying.

I was surprised to discover my son didn’t think we were awful parents. “You know when you asked me why can’t I go to the same yeshivah as Chaim? His yeshivah is run by the revachah, social services. He’s there because they took him from his home. I have friends who get into fistfights with their fathers. I tell everyone I’ve got it good.”

Well, I thought to myself, not like he’s setting the bar very high. But Shlomo wasn’t finished.

“You think I badmouth you to my friends? You can ask any of them. I tell them my parents are awesome.”

Now, I could no longer restrain the question running through my head.

“If we’re such great parents, then why…?” I trailed off, not wanting to articulate the end of the question, but Shlomo understood.

“I can’t explain… you won’t understand. I know you and Tatty weren’t like this when you were teenagers, but it’s normal. A lot of kids do this. I need to grow up in my own way. I won’t be like this forever.”

I wish I could remember everything else we said. I don’t. What was said wasn’t as important as the fact that we were talking.

By 3 a.m., after talking for a mind-boggling hour and a half, Shlomo was calm and relaxed. We both stood up to go to bed and he fell asleep easily. I was in disbelief. Had Shlomo just spent all that time curled up next to me, just talking?

No matter how much it appeared I was only a footnote in his life, I realized that not only did he still need a mother, I was that mother.

I’d spent so many years asking myself what I’d done wrong. Had I not davened with as much kavanah as other mothers? Not cried enough as I begged vezakeini when I bentshed licht? Had I not gone to as many parenting classes? Read as many books? Tried as hard? Why had their chinuch lead to where it was supposed to, and mine had not?

But maybe I had it backward? Maybe Shlomo came into This World with the challenges he was meant to have, and Hashem gave him to me because I was the mother who could love and nurture him through those challenges? Because I was the mother who could cry and break as I watched him slide — and then pick myself up and believe in him? Because I was the mother who could see all the places his neshamah shines brightly?

There’s the Torah men go out and learn — black words on white parchment, laws and statutes. True and right and straight. And then there’s Toras Imecha.

When Shlomo tells me, “Don’t worry about my relationship with Hashem, I talk to Hashem all the time,” isn’t that Torah? When Shlomo drives to the other side of town for no other reason than to pick up his grandfather and give him a ride somewhere, isn’t that Torah? And the way he sits his little brothers on his lap and does their parshah sheets with them when his father is out of town — is that not the Torah he learned in my home?

Torah —

Big

Vast

Broad

Deep

Endless.

There are so many areas to explore, so many ways to grow, so many of my tefillos following him into his future.

Nashim b’mai zachyin? For the Torah we help our children learn.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 945)