He turned to us. “A burn unit doctor once told me to use potatoes on a burn until the professionals arrive, since they can absorb the heat of a burn.” He continued to coordinate care and comfort us until the emergency services arrived.

As the ambulance bundled up my beautiful boy to whisk us to the county burn unit, a thought crossed my mind, and I turned to our malach-in-residence. “Hey, I didn’t notice you in the restaurant. How’d you end up here?”

He shrugged. “I’m a tourist. I put in a take-out order, but just when I got here to pick it up, I got a message that the restaurant was so busy that they’d canceled my order. I was about to walk back to my car when you burst out of the restaurant with your son.”

The Hashgachah felt almost eerie; I don’t know what we would have done without him. Meanwhile, b’chasdei Hashem, my son’s beautiful skin was fine. By the time we got to the hospital, the fireman told me that it was no worse than a sunburn. No blistering, no drugs or intervention, just a very relieved and thankful set of parents, a parting gift of overpriced emergency room-billed Aquaphor and, of course, the ambulance and hospital bills looming on the horizon. At almost $2,000 after insurance, it was definitely in the running for the world’s most expensive bowl of soup.

The next morning, my husband went to the local minyan and discovered that we’d achieved celebrity status. After minyan ended, throngs of strangers came up to him to say they had been at the “soup scene” the night before and they’d been worried about our little guy ever since. One man told my husband he had even dreamed about our son that night. I was so touched by the outpouring of love and support.

“That’s beautiful,” I told my husband, “but did you pull our hero aside and thank him?”

“You know what,” my husband mused, “it feels like he was the only person from the restaurant who I didn’t see there….”

I brushed it off, confident that we’d have another opportunity to thank him. “No worries, we’ll run into him elsewhere.”

The only thing was that we didn’t. Over the ensuing days, people seemed to regularly approach us at other restaurants or local tourist attractions to inquire about our soup-sloshed-wonder, but we never ran into our hero. It was starting to bug me. I desperately wanted to thank him properly.

During a beautiful desert drive, after mulling it over again, I turned to my husband. “Do you think he was Eliyahu Hanavi?” I asked. “He appeared out of nowhere, helped us in the nick of time, and then disappeared! Isn’t that a classic Eliyahu story right there?”

My husband practically laughed me out of the car. “I doubt Eliyahu Hanavi had a New York accent.”

But after that conversation, I only half-teasingly kept referring to the mysterious man as Eliyahu.

Until we finally ran into him again — in line for aquarium tickets. “I guess you’re not Eliyahu Hanavi after all,” I said as I walked toward him and told him about our desert conversation. We shared a good laugh, but were glad to finally give him the thanks he deserved.

“The way you stepped in to our disaster and treated it like your own was other-wordly,” I told him. “May you get so much sechar for all the help and comfort you provided in such a scary situation.”

I thought about the incident for a long time, especially when I petted the smooth back of my four-year-old as I settled him in to sleep every night. Our story could have ended so differently. Was it the raw potatoes that had helped him or the ice water? Was it because we’d called 911 so quickly? Or was it the lone voice that had risen above the mass hysteria and coordinated our efforts?

Eliyahu Hanavi did not die, but ascended to Heaven alive in a Chariot of Fire. He perfected himself to such a degree that he was permitted to become a dual-citizen of Heaven and earth. His body remained as a garment he could don whenever he needed to return to Our World.

Stories in the Gemara involve him dressing up in disguise as an old man, fiery bear, ugly traveler, and doing everything from learning b’chavrusa with Sages, and taking mere mortals on visits to Gan Eden, to stepping in as a healer, rescuer, and advocate for us in the most precarious of situations. His memory accompanies our Havdalah, and he’s an honored guest at our brissim.

But where is he now? While I cannot offer a GPS location, I truly feel he is here, at least in spirit. Once we realize that nothing’s a random occurrence, we see Hashem is constantly putting helpers in our path in the right places at the right times. That is, until the real Eliyahu Hanavi returns. Rashi, in parshas Bechukosai, comments on “V’zacharti es brisi Yaakov” that there are five times in the Torah that Yaakov’s name is written with a vav, which parallel the five times that Eliyahu’s name is written without a vav. Rashi explains that Yaakov “took” a letter from Eliyahu’s name, holding it as collateral until Eliyahu brings the news of the final Geulah to Yaakov’s descendants.

If we look around, we’ll notice that we have “Eliyahus” in our own lives. It’s the stranger who offers up a wise one-liner in a difficult moment that gives us perspective. It’s the person who helps you when you’re buckling under the weight of a giant flat of water bottles you’re trying to load into your car trunk. It’s in the guy who has his take-out canceled right as he drives up to the restaurant, wondering why he schlepped all the way there for nothing, and then rushes into a crisis to help save your son’s skin.

And when we ourselves choose to don the role of a baal chesed and step up in another’s moment of need, perhaps we’ll remind Eliyahu that we’re waiting for him to come claim that missing vav.

As the pandemic rages, I’m still stuck at home. But there are malachim at my doorstep: the neighbor who drops school lunches on my front stoop, the friend who offers toys she doesn’t need anymore, the mother of the latest quarantine bar-mitzvah boy in my son’s class who dropped off T-shirts and mini-seudah meals to each classmate. “Why should all these boys miss out? It’s not only my son missing his bar mitzvah, it’s all the boys missing their friend’s celebration,” she explains.

I’m in awe every time I open the door and see another delivery of love, friendship, connection. We are lonely, but in a nation of Eliyahus, we are not alone.

And so, when you see your Eliyahu-suspect in line at the aquarium, what does it all mean? No need for a double take; it’s all part of an eternal story line, each scene bringing us closer to the glorious ending, to Eliyahu’s final mission: bringing us all home.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 695)