After all she’d given my husband, it was my turn to protect her

As told to Raizy Friedman

This isn’t really happening, I thought for the 38th time. This can’t be real.

We were driving. For hours. From Philly. To Minnesota. On Erev Pesach. To get to a hotel. Hopefully before candle lighting.

It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.

But as the white lines flashed past me andas we sped on, I knew this was my current reality.

Another mile and another. Green signs with white letters. Interstate number this or that. The battery on my phone was running low. Waze was sending little orange warnings. We were almost a quarter of the way there.

My life’s journey seemed to be running a video playback in my mind as we passed yet another decrepit motel that lined the endless highways.

I’d grown up in rural Philadelphia. We were Jewish in name, but not so much in action. I found Yiddishkeit, or maybe Yiddishkeit found me, during an inspiring shul visit.

I’d now been frum for 18 years. Longer than I had been not-frum. I was married. (To a very special man, just saying.) I had three children, ranging in age from five down to five months.

During the second year of my journey to Orthodoxy, a good friend of mine showed me an advertisement for a Pesach hotel with a little note: looking for babysitters. It seemed to be an ideal win-win for my predicament of where to spend Pesach. My parents had stopped whatever minimal Passover rituals they’d done when we were young, and there was spring break at college, so I was essentially on my own. Tickets to the Midwest and crooning to adorable babies was a fair exchange for Pesach food and a Seder.

The experience was wonderful. I soaked in the atmosphere; the rav who led the Seder did a great job, and I was smitten with the toddlers in my care.

By the next year, I was fully frum, and my apartment boasted enough Judaic paraphernalia to make my own Seder. When the program director from the Pesach program called, I told him the tickets were expensive. He offered to pay. My presence was being requested by repeat attendees. I agreed.

It became almost de rigueur. I was promoted to Children’s Program Director, and I enjoyed the camaraderie and the accommodation.

I got married in August. My wonderful new husband took a liking to this little Pesach system of mine.

But there was one glitch. His not-yet-frum mother.