I have children and sometimes they have problems.

Problems I can’t solve for them with a bowl of chicken soup and kneidlach.

And sometimes I get all clogged up about what to tell them because the pressure of their pain builds inside my heart so hard that it cuts off the air to my brain to remember what I’m here for to be their mother their Ima which comes from the same root as “emunah.”

Am I supposed to write stories and clean the house while I watch them flounder as if stuck behind thick aquarium glass?

I call my daughter’s new husband’s grandmother to ask her for her stuffed cabbage kishke recipe.

I really want something more like answers to ancient questions but I start with the cabbage.

At first I’m a little hesitant to call. You see she’s the type you see in Geula who you think you could never have anything in common with although you want to hear all about her life because she grew up in Jerusalem her grandmother lived under the Churvah shul in a family that never had a break in the links from Sinai and you grew up down the street from the Edison Memorial Tower in New Jersey.

But when you talk you feel she could also be your grandmother or your mother or your best friend.

I hear she’s happy I called that I got the message that her heart is open.

She gives me the kishke recipe explaining that she doesn’t cook with exact measurements.

I knew that already.

And she didn’t have to tell me how to soften the cabbage by boiling it a few minutes or how to close the ends without all the stuffing falling out. This much I’d picked up along the way.

After the recipe she asks about a particular issue we’d discussed the last time we met. The way she asks is so warm. You ever meet someone so nice it makes you cry?

I tell her there is no movement but there was a moment a window in time but circumstances closed it.

She says “Don’t worry.”

Then she gives over a mashal.

“You ever go down into a basement?” she asks. “Where it’s dark and you can’t see how to get out? Every day a person tries to get out from there. They take a small hammer and bang and bang. At first they see no progress. They continue to bang and bang. Each bang makes a dent and finally then a tiny hole appears. And one day one bang makes the whole wall crash down and bursts of light come through.”

Almost every moment from that conversation on I’ve held that vision in my mind and that recipe of hope in my heart.

Actually another image comes to mind when I think about this. While building our succah last year our irreligious neighbor who must have heard us banging and banging jumped over the gate between our houses and onto our porch saying “I want to bang in just one nail.”

How many months has it been between Succos and now? Six.

Six months later he now puts on tefillin every day and his wife wants to know about head coverings.

Just one nail just one more bang and walls can start tumbling down and bursts of light come through.

Nothing like old recipes.