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When her children are singing in harmony, Nechami loves the whole world with a passion. Bentzi is a young man already, with a pleasant tenor voice. Chanochi and Beri have this unspoken communication going, knowing just where to jump in with the higher trills.

“They’re just amazing,” Frumet says to her.

“Thank you,” Nechami says, and as usual, she feels alone here on the moshav. She has sisters-in-law to chat with, a nice shvigger, a cowshed to visit, and a park where she’s sure find a neighbor to sit with. But she can’t talk. She can’t explain why at these moments, when her three sons — a trio of princes — are singing, tears come to her eyes. Not tears of joy, but of pain, determined to spoil her pleasure.

She escapes to the kitchen. She’ll find something to do there.

“Don’t worry about the dishes, I’ll wash them soon,” says Frumet, following her like a good hostess. “Go sit down and enjoy the singing.”

“Yes,” her shvigger agrees, nodding from her place at the table. “Sit down and relax, Nechami. We’ll clean everything up after the meal.”

It’s been half an hour since they served the main dish. The plates are still on the table, along with wrinkled paper napkins strewn at odd angles. Glasses. Crumbs. Uneaten food. The flies will be coming for it soon. It would be nicer here if we cleaned up a bit now, Nechami thinks. But she keeps quiet. She’s a guest. And her sons are singing.

They’re singing the Chazon Ish’s lyrics about the man who merits to know the Torah, how he becomes more angel than mortal because of the Torah he holds within.

Hu holech bein anashim

V’nireh k’ven adam…

He walks among men

And looks like a man…

“Such nachas,” her shvigger sighs, kvelling over her grandsons — her son the talmid chacham’s sons. She’s already heard how well they’re all doing in their learning.  And when they sit down to learn with the shver, so adorably serious, and tell him excitedly what Reb Asher said in yeshivah, and about the latest contest in cheder, it nearly takes her breath away. She’s like a breathless maidservant, serving cakes and drinks, nosh and nuts.

“We were really young when the shver went out to work,” she tells Nechami. “His father also worked, and his zeide too, in Poilin, was a balabus.” She pronounces the word “Poilin” with a heavy accent. “He was afraid the Torah wouldn’t want to come to our house because it wasn’t her regular achsaniah — we already had three generations of working men. He said to me, we have to make an achsaniah for the Torah here in our house, so she’ll always feel welcome here. We have to make this a makom Torah.”

“And you did it,” Frumet says. “The Torah came.”

“Yes, she came,” Nechami agrees. She’s proud, as if she were the one who raised Shua here on this moshav, an only son among daughters. And again she turns her face away, because there’s no way she can explain to them what she sees.

Her three amazing boys, born one after the other, have turned into babies before her eyes. Bentzi’s hair is in a long, straight ponytail. Chanochi is one and a bit, and his asthma is acting up again. The little kitchen cupboard is full of inhalers, Ventolin, saline solution and steroids. Beri, the newborn, is crying. Why? She has no idea.

And there were so many nights like that. So many nights!

An inner voice says, “Why don’t you listen to your children singing, instead of obsessing over ancient history like a broken record?”

She listens. And remembers. On Erev Shavuos that same year, the drain in the milchig sink was stopped up. Again. With an hour to go before Yom Tov. The sink was full of dishes, and with every attempt to wash them, the level of murky water rose. Bentzi looked on worriedly, his thin peyos still damp from the shower.

“Ima, why are you lying on the floor?” he asked.

“I’m trying to see how to fix the pipe,” she said, with a mighty effort not to sound irritable.

“Can I help?” he asked, with a little boy’s innocence.

“No, sweetie. But thank you.” Soup and meat were simmering on the stove, and in the oven, a chocolate batter was slowly solidifying into a cake. Nechami removed items from the cupboard under the sink to give herself room to maneuver. Scrutinizing the plumbing, she saw pipes and connecting rings. It should be simple, her young, tired mind decided, to open the syphon, remove the blockage, and put it back together. She didn’t know then what happens when you open a syphon while the sink is full of an assortment of dirty dishes, including the mixing bowls used for the chocolate cake and icing, all steeping in water on a hot afternoon. Now she knows.

Aval b’emes hu malach

Hadar im bnei tmusah…

But he’s really an angel

Living among mortals

“Get out of the way, Bentzi!” she had screamed desperately. “And move Beri’s seat away from the water!”

The flash flood was brown, sticky, and nauseating. Carefully, Bentzi dragged the baby’s infant seat out of point-blank range, waking Beri up in the process. The freshly-scrubbed kitchen was now spattered, the floor awash with food waste in varying stages of decay.

Bentzi started to cry along with the baby. “Ou’ kitchen is all full of mud!” he wailed.

“Shhh. Let Beri go back to sleep,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’ll clean it all up.”

V’chai chayei atzilus

U’meromam al kol tehillah…

And he lives a life of nobility

And is elevated above all praise

When Shua came home from the mikveh to prepare the candles for Yom Tov, the kitchen was already clean. So why are you crying, Nechami, you silly girl, more than ten years later? Why are you getting yourself into such a state that he’s taking you out now for a Leil Shabbos walk on the moshav’s paths, awash with rainwater as they are?

“I feel bad that we walked out like this, without helping to clear the table,” she says in her normal voice. “And anyway, we have to get Yossi and Yehudit to bed.”

“It’s fine,” he says. “The boys know where the pajamas are. Don’t worry.”

“And what about your mother? She’ll think I’m a parasite.”

“No, she won’t.”

And so they chat about this and that, in their normal voices. He tells her who joined the kollel and who left, and what they’ve been learning. They pass by Yoshe’s shack. They continue in a new direction, taking a path they haven’t taken in a long while. Shua stops when they reach the end. A taut wire, strung on poles, is nearly over their heads.

“The eiruv ends here,” he reminds her.

“I’d like to keep going — that way,” she says, pointing toward the gray horizon.

“Check your pockets first,” he says, looking around for a place to leave whatever items she’s carrying. She takes out two tissues. She puts them down on a stone and they fly away immediately, lost in the wilderness. She crosses the boundary of the eiruv, into the open fields.

He’s singing the tune they’ve just heard.

“Beautiful song,” he remarks.

V’amnam ha’ish hazocheh

Liyedi’as haTorah

And truly, the man who merits

Knowing the Torah…

“You must be a malach,” she whispers.

“Why?” He looks at her with a shred of puzzlement, and after a moment, skepticism. “Oh, you mean because of the song?”

“Not the song. The Chazon Ish. He said so.”

“And if I’m not a malach, then…?” The whole past week flits before their eyes, strewn with flashbacks from years past. “What if there’s a person who really can’t master the Torah, even if he works very hard at it?”

“That’s the way I was raised,” she murmurs. “The chinuch they gave me.”

“They gave you very good chinuch.” He chooses his words carefully. “But we grow up… and things change. They become more real, take on deeper and more precise meaning.”

And this dream of yours, to live with an angel — does it make you value me more, or less? This, he doesn’t ask.

Over the horizon there’s a moon. It isn’t full. It’s only a thin crescent, receiving its light from the sun, and passing it on. It will wax, and it will wane. And it will wax again. Again and again, until it arrives at its happy ending.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 880)