Last week I had a big challenge.

I had to kind of send a child off for … let’s use the metaphor of an “operation” of sorts.

For days my stomach was inside out.

Until the day came.

The hour the moment came to send them into the operating room.

Today we have anesthesia. Just knock us out. We’ll deal with the pain afterward. But it doesn’t work like that for the mother sitting by in the waiting room.

I daven but it’s not hitting the spot today. I need a voice. A friend. Though I know it will be G-d speaking through them to give me the answer. And why it can’t come from a perek in tefillah I don’t know but I guess that’s why we need friends.

I call.

Usually this friend is not available in the mornings but I know in my soul the answer is there.

There’s no answer.

I leave a short message.

She calls me back but I am in the middle of davening again so I don’t take the call. But at least it’s a signal she’s available.

I call back as soon as I finish.

She asks “How’s everything?”

“Could be worse could be better” I say. I know she’s busy because her daughter just had a baby and they are staying with her so I give her the chance to get out of any deep conversation if she’s not up to it today.

We talk about babies for a few minutes. How cute how they cry. How they can keep a whole house busy.

She says she likes the action and she has patience for it.

I think about the beauty of how when a daughter comes home with a new baby her mother has the opportunity to share and teach her with her own experience.

I tell my friend about the “operation” which is scheduled to take place in ten minutes.

She just says “Oy how can you bear it?”

Her daughter’s baby starts to cry. It almost sounds like one of those battery-operated ones that don’t stop until you stick a pacifier in its mouth.

The cries alert my maternal instincts and invite in the kind of tension that settles in the back between the shoulder blades and stops your breathing until you realize you’re not breathing anymore.

I take a deep breath. I’m on the phone not there.

I hear her daughter Sarah getting totally nervous and the baby crying harder.

I hear my calm friend saying to her daughter “Sarah if you are calm the baby will be calm.”

My friend then gets back to our conversation.

“What can I say to you? You must be petrified.” She goes on a bit about what she can say to me.

“You’ve already given me the message I need. If I’m calm then my child will be calm.”

“Right” she says. “It’s the truth.” She then tells me about a rebbetzin who once told her that mothers send signals to their children’s souls with their thoughts and the child gets the message of what we are thinking and feeling even if we try to hide it with words.

“It’s so true” I say.

I gird myself and gather my strengths to come to a positive hopeful mindset not a trauma and drama one.

“I have to go” I say thanking my friend.

I go to bring my child to the car not like a weepy weak mom but one with strength. If I am in a right good straight place my child will also be.

It’s these messages that hit their marks without a sound.