I went out last week to run some errands. In the hallway of a building across the street from where I was shopping I saw a little girl who looked familiar.

“What are you doing here?” I said.

“We live here now. Two flights up.”

“You live here?!” I go up two flights. A young Filipina opens the door. I see my old friend sitting on

a couch in an airless room. Her husband’s lying on the couch across from her. He’s getting over the flu. My friend looks very thin. “How are you?” I ask already kind of seeing the answer. “Don’t cry” her husband says. I don’t know if he’s speaking to me or to her. I’m almost doing just that. “I can’t walk” my friend says looking down at her legs. “I can’t lie down either because blood goes into my legs.” She rocks back and forth on the couch. Her husband says “It’s so nice you came. She hardly has any visitors.”

“Would you like tea?” the Filipina asks. “No thank you.”

The couches from their beautiful old apartment are now torn and dilapidated.

The deluxe table that opened up to seat eight and folded back to a square is no longer the centerpiece of the living room but pushed into a corner to make space to walk around.

It seems as if everything has come to a stop in this place — the bubbling river of action the sounds of life. It’s raining outside. “This weather makes it even harder” my friend’s husband says. “When I see my wife suffering like this it makes me worse.

It affects my health.”

She moans.

“Where does it hurt?” I ask.

“The kidneys. If I walk it doesn’t hurt. But it’s hard to walk.”

“Catch-22” I say trying to be normal and to let her know I understand. “I’ll walk with you.”

“Mary helps me” she says. “She walks with me.”

“You know what we do for food?”

Her husband wants to share their trials of survival. “We order in. Every day at one they bring the food. Catered meat chicken.”

“I can’t eat it” my friend says. “Too much salt.”

I feel the pain of the insult to her husband though she only wanted to tell me her friend of her sufferings. “I’ll make you vegetable soup ” I say. “Without salt.” This idea makes her husband happy to hear that his wife might be happy. “I had four strokes. I can’t feel my legs ” she tells me staring straight ahead. “She needs to take a shower now ” the Filipina says and helps her up. My friend shuffles across the room. “She’s in so much pain ” her husband says. “It’s killing me. She has sores from sitting all day.” “She doesn’t take painkillers?” “No. They make her drunk; she can’t focus.” “They have special pillows at Yad Sarah.… ”

He phones immediately is frustrated at being put on hold for half a minute. They tell him they’re open till 7:00. He rushes out the door to Yad Sarah though he also can hardly move.

I wait for my friend. After about twenty minutes she comes out of the shower dressed in powder-blue pajamas and sneakers. “I’m sorry you have to see me like this” she says. “I can’t see without my glasses ”

I answer. “And I never wear them on purpose.” She laughs for the first time. “Why not?” “Who wants to see all the trouble in the world? I put them on once a day see what I need to do and take them off.”

“You were always funny” she says her face now lit up.

Then she moans. “I can’t—” she says the words rushing out as if from a bottle suddenly uncorked as

if waiting for the moment when they could be said. “I don’t want to go on living.”

“I understand.”

“I sit here from morning till night except to walk a little and shower. My girls

see me like this. I’m useless. I’m not a wife not a mother.”

I listen I hear and I see.

“I can’t really use my hands either.”

She shows me how there’s no pressure to her touch.

Her young daughter comes in. “Can I make a chocolate in the cappuccino machine?” she asks.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please … ”

“No.”

My friend stands firm. “It makes a mess and I said no.” The daughter leaves the room. I say

“You see — she needs you.” I see it clearly.

I try to get my friend to see it too.

We say goodbye. On my walk home I think:

Doing the dishes sweeping the floors — is that what makes a mother? A mother isn’t necessarily someone who runs all day. Cooking and cleaning buying and ordering. There are mothers who can’t clean and cook. There are mothers who can’t speak see hear o r walk. But G-d gave them the title “mother ” so somehow they get the power to be one.

A week later I visit my friend again. I tell her “I learned a lot from you last week.”

She stares at me. “I learned what it is to be a mother.”

She looks at me sideways. “Remember when your daughter asked if she could make a chocolate? And you said no’?”

She remembers. “You set boundaries for her. The borders. Rules. Straight and clear.

“It’s not about cooking and cleaning running and doing” I say to her. “It’s that you are here for them. That’s what makes a mother.