Home and Family
Soferet
by M. Steinberg

Greetings from Tsfat - writes Esther Susan Heller, who has appeared in our section before, as have several other gifted writers from that holy city. Must be something about the air up there, or is it in the ground? Talent abounds, and Mrs. Heller is announcing an "international collective of writers which will allow women, scattered and isolated in English speaking Jewish communities around the world, to communicate with other Orthodox women writers."

The first edition of a quarterly newsletter called "Soferet" is looking for fiction and creative non- fiction, poetry, journalism, interviews etc. [No affiliation or endorsement from Yated, just passing on the information.]

You can communicate with her at adh@kinneret kinneret co.il.

RIFCA GOLDBERG you've met already. She tickled our imagination a while back with a resurrection scenario at the ancient graveyard. She has stretched her imagination again with a PURELY FICTITIOUS worst-possible scenario of Erev Pesach. IT IS NOT TRUE. Take a deep breath, read it, and exhale. Then get started cleaning... Preferably to some lively, happy music.

FOR THE LOVE OF PESACH

Piles of old sweaters, a stack of unmatched socks, a single slipper and a complete vaporizer missing the all important rubber piece that regulates the steam, all sat at the entrance of Shula's room. She threw her head back, stretching her spine and rotating her head. Now that her closet was cleaned for Pesach, she had only to bag and dispose of the non-useful items gracing her floor, work on the dresser and drawers under the beds and do a thorough floor washing. But for now, having a chometz-free closet was enough. Lunch needed to be made. Shula arched her neck again, went and got a large garbage bag, put all her clutter inside, knotted it, and put it by the front door to take out to the dumpster `later'.

"Pesach cleaning," she muttered to herself, partially triumphantly, mostly wearily, as she headed towards the kitchen.

As she flipped the last shnitzel, the phone rang. It was Shmuel, her nine- year-old, calling from the office of his cheder.

"Mommy, my stomach hurts."

"Maybe it was something you ate?" Shula hung up her apron, feeling her own stomach tightening and wondering if it was something that she had eaten.

"I didn't eat."

"So - eat! You're probably hungry."

"I don't know, Mommy. I think I should come home."

"I'll come and pick you up, sweetheart. It's probably just a virus. Give me twenty minutes."

Shula wrote a note for her husband, Reuven, and was off.

In the taxi on the way to the cheder, Shula had time to think about how to organize the other children for the afternoon, clean the kids' closet, and what to make for dinner. "Well," she thought to herself lightly, "if Shmuel will be home with a virus, maybe he'll be able to lie on the couch and keep an eye on the little ones so I can finish cleaning my dresser and maybe even finish the mattresses and floor!"

Shula mounted the cheder steps to the office. The light feeling disappeared the instant she saw Shmuel's pinched white face. He was clutching his abdomen and moaning, his eyes clenched shut.

"No couch, no cleaning," mumbled Shula. "I'm taking you right to the emergency room."

Within twenty-five minutes, Shmuel was being wheeled into the operating room: diagnosis - appendicitis.

Shula went slowly to the waiting room, put her face into her hands and davened. "Please, Hashem, let Shmuel be alright."

"Mrs. Gorisky?"

Shula looked up into the concerned faces of her elderly nextdoor neighbors. When they heard what had happened, they knowingly told her it would be at least an hour until Shmuel woke up.

"We're here waiting for test results." Mr. Ben Ezra went with his wife to the end of the corridor and then returned.

"You can go home, Mrs. Gorisky, to give lunch to your little ones and make all your arrangements for them. We'll keep a steady vigil on Shmuel. If you're not back by the time he begins to stir, we'll call you right away."

Shula thanked them profusely.

She walked shakily to the nurse, explained where she would be and that she would return as soon as she could, and walked as quickly as she was able, on wobbly legs, to the bus stop.

As she entered her apartment, she noticed Sima and Avigayil's lunch boxes on the table. "It's awfully quiet, considering that both girls are home." Shula went to check on them with a feeling of foreboding.

There, in the girls room were three pillows sitting up, donned in three old sweaters, a single slipper swinging on the overhead lampshade, a broken vaporizer sporting as a helmet on one of the girl's dolls, and the twins under the bed giggling with an assortment of different socks on their hands and feet.

Shula began to scream, "Clean up this room! Right this second!"

She knew that they hadn't done anything so terrible but her head was pounding and she felt she couldn't take any more stress.

Once the girls were fed and placed by kind neighbors, Shula went outside to wait for the hospital bound bus. "I have ten minutes to wait. Perfect for saying Tehillim." She opened up her Tehillim and began reciting with deep kavona. She paused and looked up. Coming down the hill was a man with a bulky package in his arms. Shula couldn't make out his legs. "He must be going quickly." Reciting another perek, she looked up again. Now she could see that it wasn't just `a man.' It was Reuven. And the package wasn't `just a bundle' - it was Chezky - his leg dangling at a horrible angle. Shula stood up. Reuven was racing towards the house and hadn't even seen her.

"Reuven!"

He turned around, looking startled and confused.

The bus turned the corner.

"Come on over here. The bus is coming!"

Reuven did as instructed. Shula knew that to go home and wait for a taxi would take much longer then the five minute bus ride to the hospital. She tried to ignore the shocked expressions of the other passengers' faces.

"What happened?" she whispered.

Reuven's face was white. "I was passing the school yard when I saw Chezky at the top of the slide. Maybe he wanted to show off for me. I'm not sure, but he jumped down, rather than sliding down. It's too high a jump for a seven- year- old!"

"Oy," Shula gasped.

"I ran in, picked him up and was racing home with him."

Shula could see that Reuven was quivering and not thinking straight.

At the hospital, they arranged for both the boys to be in one room and with Reuven's consent, Shula dashed home to pack clothes, toys, books and anything else she could think of for the hospital, as well as to check up on the other children.

"I know I have some chocolate in one of these upper cupboards. I'm sure the boys would appreciate that," she thought to herself. Standing on a chair, she couldn't quite see into the back of the top cubpoard. "No time to get a ladder. I'll just stand on the counter.' It would have been all right, really, if there hadn't been a small amount of spilt oil on it. Shula slipped and twisted, her elbow smashing onto the faucet, which shot from the wall along with cascading water. Shula, already thinking at high speed, scrambled to her feet in the fast rising flood and ran to turn off the water main. "I can't believe this is happening. I just can't believe it."

She didn't know what to do next. She sat by the table and stared at the wall, trembling. Should she call a plumber or should she run back to the hospital and let Reuven take care of all this? Her feet were drenched. She got up mechanically and mopped the kitchen floor. "This is too much," she groaned. "What else could possibly go wrong?" Not a wise question to ask! The phone rang. It was Tuvia's rosh yeshiva. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Gorisky, but Tuvia has been disrupting the class again as well as misbehaving in the lunchroom. You'll have to come to yeshiva and take him home!"

Shula stood up abruptly. "Pleeeease let me talk to him on the phone instead. I have two sons in the hospital and a major flooding problem in my house! I can't go running to Haifa right now!" She sat down and began to cry. The Rosh Yeshiva's voice was soft on the other end of the line. "Mrs. Gorisky, I can hear that you're upset. I'll let you discuss Tuvia's behavior over the phone this time, but please make sure that he understands how to act in a yeshiva ketana."

"Yes, I will! Thank you!"

A twenty minute conversation ensued with Tuvia being lecured and bribed and finally told, in no uncertain terms, that for the next three weeks until the Pesach break, there had better be no more phone calls from the rosh yeshiva!

Three hours, a call to the plumber, rounding up a babysitter, making sandwiches for dinner, and two acamols later, Shula sat on Chezky's bed in the hospital room. Across from her, on Shmuel's bed, sat Reuven.

"What a day! What a day!" Shula looked at Reuven.

He just shook his head from side to side. "I'll need to go home soon," she noted. "The babysitter can only stay until ten o'clock."

"I'll take good care of the boys tonight. Don't worry too much about them." Shmuel looked at his watch. "The truth is, I can really stay here until tomorrow afternoon. What are your plans?"

Shula thought for a few moments. "If you're willing to stay here in the morning as well, then tomorrow I'd like to do something calm, quiet and relaxing."

"Like what?"

"Oh," said Shula, a haggard smile on her lips, "like Pesach cleaning..."

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