| Musings |

Wishing

By E. Mandel | May 25, 2021

I’m 26 years old, but suddenly I’m six again, staring mesmerized at a scattering of coins at the bottom of a wishing well

I’m collecting all the stray clothes that need laundering from the corners they hide in: pajamas under the kids’ beds, socks next to the shoe rack, and my husband’s pants from behind the bathroom door. Shower water has leaked across the bathroom floor, and I listen to the clink-clink as a cascade of coins pours out of my husband’s pants pocket.

The coins spin wildly across the tiles and roll into the pool of water. I stand stock-still, staring at them as they settle, the rolling eddies around them calming. They wink at me from under the surface of the now-still water.

I’m 26 years old, but suddenly I’m six again, staring mesmerized at a scattering of coins at the bottom of a wishing well.

I have a feeling the wishing well was in a zoo; I’m not sure why. A cousin took us — that I do clearly recall because when we came home and told our parents about the well, my father said disapprovingly, “We don’t believe in such things, you know that.” But I was six years old, and I didn’t quite know that at the time.

There was a pool of shallow water with an old tree bough inside, surrounded by a fence that we pressed our faces against. It was cold, and we were all wearing hats. My little brother’s looked silly because it didn’t fit him properly, and I told him so.

We climbed up the little wall to stare through the fence at the tree bough. Then we looked down into the greenish water. Visitors had dropped coins there — mostly pennies, a few pounds. I wondered how I could reach that money. I wondered why someone had thrown the coins away.

“It’s because it’s a wishing well,” my cousin said authoritatively. “When you throw pennies in, you can wish for something. Go on,” she ordered. “Wish!”

We children pressed our cold-reddened faces against the colder metal of the fence and stared down at the pennies. I remember how the water made them seem so far away. I thought wishing was silly, but just in case, I wished I could get all the pennies in that pond. Then I wondered what I would do with lots of wet pennies and wandered off to look at something more interesting.

I don’t know why these coins in my water-sodden bathroom have brought me back so intensely to my six-year-old self. But one thing definitely hasn’t changed: I still don’t know what to wish, or rather, what to daven for.

What do I want? Twenty years have passed, and I’m still stymied.

I no longer want the pond full of English pennies. I live in Israel now, they’d be useless. I do like agurot, though. “They add up!” I told my husband, who hates agurot.

“No they don’t,” he said. ‘They just pile up and up, and you can’t even give them to meshulachim because agurot are useless.”

Useless or not, I now have a bathroom sprinkled with them. I don’t want them. I don’t know what I want.

I thought I knew. Until recently, when I had a miscarriage.

I’d davened for a healthy baby, like always, and to have koach to work and care for the kids and be a good wife and keep the house in order and…

…and after I miscarried my baby, I didn’t know what to ask for anymore. I couldn’t daven for the first two weeks after the miscarriage, which was weird. I tried using my own words, but all I could say was: ‘Hashem… um, eh… I want my baby back!”

I want my baby back, that’s what I want. Is this really the first time I’ve been denied something I want? Have I always had whatever I wanted? I have, haven’t I? I loved school, had friends, aced everything, married young and happily, had kids, davened every day twice a day, and in all that time — in all those 26 years of life, I’d never ever wanted something in the awful way I do now. With all my heart and all my soul and all myself, I want my baby.

I can’t have my baby, I know that. It happens to every fourth pregnancy, I know that. Just another rite of womanhood; so I’ve been told. Someone pick up these coins and launder these pants and dry my wet robe, because I don’t want any of this, I just want my baby back.

It’s difficult, because I don’t know Who to ask. I know I want my baby back, but Hashem clearly wanted my baby back too, and I’d be silly to attempt a tug of war with Him.

My feet are cold, I’m shivering. I shift slightly, sending the agurot shimmying around me again. I want to go back to being six years old and easily turn my attention to different, more fun things.

My kids, so sweet in their sleep. I want them too, and I have them, bli ayin hara, don’t I? Did I never realize, in between dirty diapers and meltdowns, how much I want them? I do now. Maybe I should slosh into their room and kiss them in their sleep. No, that’s what perfect mothers in books do. Practical real-life mothers would never risk waking sleeping children.

I want to walk away from the fallen coins, the false wishing well, its lack of power, my own powerlessness. I want my baby back. I want to walk onwards, maybe carrying my baby with me, but I need to walk on, to begin wanting other things.

I’m capable and practical, and I’ll do this load of laundry even if I don’t want to, even if the knowledge that I can never have the first thing I’ve ever really wanted is making my feet feel leaden.

The glinting, clinking, useless agurot dance as I inadvertently swirl them; 26 years old and finally making my escape. They glisten in the water, twinkling up at me.

Wishing me well?

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 744)

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I’m 26 years old, but suddenly I’m six again, staring mesmerized at a scattering of coins at the bottom of a wishing well

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