Soft and Crisp
| August 26, 2020I couldn’t give him a crisp, orderly life — but I could give him crisp sheets
I am ironing sheets. I hear there are women who do that. I am not one of those women.
And yet here I am, ironing sheets. Because my son is going off to yeshivah. And if I have not been able to provide him with a life that’s crisp, neat, and orderly, at least I can give him crisp, neat sheets.
Crisp but not stiff. Those sheets were so sharp when they came all vacuum packed, ready and at attention, uniformly nestled into the comforter. The elusive perfection, the gold standard that never lasts. They fit just so into the plastic bag they came in, and that bag fit so neatly into the packing box from Bed, Bath & Beyond.
My son never fit so neatly into anything. I could never contain him in the confines of the box. Could never vacuum pack the energy out of him. Never wanted to.
But where we’re from, yeshivos only come in a box. That’s why I’m sending him to a new yeshivah far from home. Far earlier than I ever intended to. Far earlier than I ever wanted to.
And there are no guarantees. No one can tell me that it will all be okay. No one can tell me this new experience won’t continue to be colored with old hurts. No one can assure me that the hard stuff that chased him here won’t follow him there. No one can promise me that this won’t just be more of the same.
The one thing I know won’t be the same is that I won’t be around to soothe him at the end of a long day. When he hurts there, he won’t be coming home to welcoming arms and listening ears who will tell him that it’s okay. That he’s okay.
He will curl up in his bed, made up with these sheets, and they will have to be his hug. So they need to be soft.
That’s why we had to wash them. Wash them to be soft, steam them to be crisp.
Because this is a new beginning. And new beginnings can’t start with crumpled sheets that already look defeated. New beginnings start fresh and crisp. Fresh new pencils and crisp new sheets. The crisp that comes from steam that is equal parts water and equal parts tears.
The tears will evaporate as they hiss into a wisp of condensation. The sound of that hiss, my boy, will be our signal that it’s time to stop lamenting your past and time to help you start building your future.
We will take you to your new dorm and make your bed with these sheets that tell the ongoing story of the balance we have tried so hard to achieve, which sometimes played out as ambivalence and confusion instead.
We send you with old love and new sheets.
And we daven that as you snuggle into them at night you will feel wrapped in the love that it took to send you so far away.
Shluf gezunt, sheifele.
(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 707)
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