“Oh, honey.” I could have predicted those words, but it brought on a fresh wave of tears. Rita, her perfume enveloping me as she opened her arms, smelled like love. She gave me a tight hug. No recriminations, no shame; just acceptance and understanding. “That door is mighty hard to open,” she remarked as an afterthought as we walked back to my mother’s desk, hand in hand.

It’s now years later. I have children the same age as I was that day trapped in my mother’s office bathroom. I don’t know where Rita is today. She left the firm long ago and my mother didn’t keep in touch with her. What I do know is that long ago, without any fanfare, Rita believed in me, ferociously, wholly. She touched the heart of a little girl.

Another person who will never know how they’ve shaped me is someone who died approximately two decades before I entered This World.

When boys’ names for girls were all the rage (think Sam for Samantha, Eli for Elisheva, Joey for Josephine), I often thought it would have been so cool if my parents had named me Henry, after my grandmother Henrietta. But my parents, in their wisdom, chose otherwise. What her name actually was isn’t clear (her kesubah says “Henna,” her matzeivah “Henya”). So Henny it became.

I felt a deep connection to this staid woman I knew only from a giant picture hanging over the couch in our living room: plump, a small smile playing on her lips, pearl earrings, hair swept up in a chignon. We would schmooze, she and I; I’d sit on the couch, telling her about my day.

When the heckling of my siblings and parents got the better of me, we switched to clandestine meetings, and I learned to whisper to her of my day, my struggles, my successes. Eventually these conversations diminished too, as I grew older and replaced her with living, breathing individuals who could respond.

But I’ve often thought about how she shaped me, as a nonjudgmental, listening ear.

The stories about her are few and far between, the background to a stronger, more attention-commanding husband. Theirs was a traditional marriage of the times; a hot dinner was waiting on the table for her husband after work, she kept house, nurtured her sons, did the sewing and mending. Beyond that, I know little else.

I do know she had two daughters before my father was born. One was a stillborn, the other was born ill and lived for just a few months.

What gave her the strength to keep going after those personal tragedies? Her face may have been soft, yet clearly she was made of steel.

When I was a child, I didn’t know of such things, and believed my father was the oldest. But perhaps I saw something in the glint in her eyes, knew she was someone who had undergone challenges and could empathize with a little girl’s struggles. For a lonely child who often felt misunderstood in the world, her camaraderie offered me hope and safety.

She listened. That was enough for me.

Decades apart, these individuals unknowingly impacted the way I interact with the children in my life. Both these women, in vastly different ways, taught me about parenting, about feelings, and expressing belief in a child.

When I give my seven-year-old son a knife to cut vegetables, I think of Rita. And when my four-year-old daughter cries about a classmate being mean to her, I listen, silent and empathetic, thinking of Grandma Henrietta.

And I hope that perhaps one day, in the not-too-distant future, my children will point to me as someone who has shaped them.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 739)