Tefillos that hadn’t been answered in the way I’d wanted left me scared to try again

IT'S

2 a.m. and most of the family is asleep;

just my son and I are schmoozing, dressed to the nines. There are delicate chocolates on the dining room table that my new mechuteneste insisted I take home from tonight’s vort. I look at Yossi, the newly minted chassan, still quivering with excitement.

“Ma,” Yossi leans forward across the table, “do you remember last year’s Seder?”

The first Covid Pesach. The lights seemed dimmed then, all of us distressed and worried. We sat at the Seder, just our little family — three bochurim, uprooted from yeshivah too early, and one 11-year-old who was hearing too much. Absent was the rest of the family, holed up in their own bubble of fear.