She, who had numerous children and grandchildren, held my baby like she was a long lost diamond

In the winter frost the snowflakes fall, whirling around each other like miniscule fairies. We watch my children run across the seemingly endless expanse of white, trying to catch the flakes in their outstretched hands.

I haven’t seen my friend in years, but her crystal blue eyes still light up with that familiar twinkle from middle-of-the-night discussions in our college dorm. Then it had seemed like we had time to debate forever. About our purpose in life. About believing in G-d. About whether there could possibly be an objective truth in a world of subjective perspectives. I can remember only fragments of those conversations. Like when we both decided that the most important thing in life was to be real. We knew what real wasn’t. It wasn’t our designer shirts or high GPAs. It wasn’t a career or a house in the suburbs. But it’s a lot easier to know what truth isn’t. Which is why we never really stopped talking as we searched for ourselves in that enclosed, cushioned bubble of our university years. Staring out the windows of the rooftop lounge of our dorm, we watched the city lights sprawled out before us like millions of winking opportunities.

We speak now about what we have found since then that is real. I try to tell her what it was like to stand in the Kanievsky’s seforim room. How the rows of books looked like ribbons of leather and gold in the light of the Bnei Brak sun. How I couldn’t stop staring at the ancient Shabbos candles enclosed in their glass case on the wall. They were so real that I could almost hear the prayers that encircled them each week. I speak of how my four-year-old son clung to the Rebbetzin’s skirt like she was the source of sweetness itself. And when the Rebbetzin whispered words of Torah I could hear the sacred truth enveloping me. I didn’t want to leave the Rebbetzin’s smile even after she handed my son a treat and blessed us. I wanted another blessing. And another. I wanted to stay for a little longer, breathing the air of a home that is real.

And I speak of the Thursday evening when a famous Torah teacher called me to invite us for Friday night dinner. I couldn’t figure out who it was until the voice clicked. That was the voice from the countless beloved lectures that lit up my life. We went to their home that Shabbos with our three babies all under the age of three. The rebbetzin held my baby the whole dinner as if I was giving her some rare gift.  She, who had numerous children and grandchildren, held my baby like she was a long lost diamond. I have never since seen such a beautiful Shabbos table. The rebbetzin sat beside her husband like a queen beside her king as the children served the meal. Their home was so simple, and yet it sparkled in a way far richer interiors could never match. It was something real.

And I speak of the Erev Rosh HaShanah that I spent davening by Kever Rachel. How there was a woman beside me whose face I never saw that sang a song made of tears. No words, no music, but it fell slowly into my heart and broke open the walls of my soul so that I could sing too. I could reach a place inside of me that knew that there was truth even if it couldn’t always be named. And there was a way to find it even if it looked like the way was blocked.

Most days truth visits us in tiny, hidden spurts. Like the sky at dawn. Like a baby’s laugh. Sometimes it’s just a sentence or a song. But we can miss it altogether if we aren’t careful. Because most of the time, we look for truth in all the wrong places. My friend listens carefully as if I were handing her slivers of jewels that she must line up in her mind. And then we hear a shriek of delight and one of my daughters runs towards us with a tiny snowball in her hand.

“I made this. I made this. Look how beautiful, Ima!” She hands me the snowball, made up of just a few delicate flakes, and I gingerly hold the weightless, boundless treasure.

I see a wisp of a smile flicker on my friend’s face.

“I think you found it,” she says. “Something real.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 327)