Diary of a Fall

It’s a funny thing, how those moments that change your life slip up on you, discordant chords in the rhythm of life, that inflate into a storm.

Putting my barbie dolls in their drawer, coming downstairs for supper, my parents telling me, happily, like it’s a good thing, that we will be making Aliyah to Israel in the spring time. As if that didn’t mean leaving my home, with the rose bushes in the front lawn where I posed every year in my birthday dress, and the pair of trees in the back where my big brother kept promising to build me a tree house when he came home from Yeshiva, and the ancient trampoline where I could lie spread eagled and count the clouds, the weedy grass where I picked daisies in the summer,  the shul where the old man gave me raisins in a red Sun-Maid box. As if Aliyah didn’t mean leaving my friends, the complicated school yard games we had been leading since before we could remember, of who’s-who’s best friend, and hide and seek, fairies and witches, and running away from the naughty boys who fished in the puddles for worms, which they hung up on sticks and tried to stick in our faces. I was seven years old, but after that meal, the plans and questions and tears, over rice and meat and baked potatoes, I knew my life was changing.

Pulling into a forest on the side of the highway, so my sister could take a phone call. Chasing my nieces between the trees, pushing them high on the rusty swings, coming back to the picnic table to see my big sister in tears, being comforted by her husband, not telling me what’s wrong, Driving to a flat in the center of Tel Aviv, opposite Ichilov hospital,  hosted by a Chasidic family there to do Chesed, where my mother led me into a small room, and told me the doctors said my father had six month left to live, he had cancer and it had spread.

Lying on the sand, next to my friend, soaking up the August sun, blissful that first summer out of high school, seeing a woman in a long skirt, running awkwardly, clumping through the sand towards us. Recognizing my neighbor and sitting up, between the towels and ice cream wrappers and a white film covered sun-screen bottle, hearing her voice, quick and agitated, telling me I need to get  dressed, need to come quickly, my father is back in hospital, I need to be there. Taking my friend back to pack up her stuff and go home, forgetting in my laptop drive the CD of the movie she brought with for us to watch. The wedding planner. I don’t think I ever gave it back to her. I forgot to, after a week sitting in the ICU, watching drips and beeping lights and my father dying.

There were good chords too, the type that evolved into harmonies. Perching on a damask sofa, in the lobby of the King David hotel, watching a liveried doorman argue with a young man in a black hat, not wanting to let him in. Going to see if that was my date, the last in a long line of Shidduch dates,  thinking this young man was good looking, happy to find out he was the boy I was waiting for tonight. Discovering we both came from a long line of loyal soccer fans, that we shared this Yichus.  Enjoying the next two hours, not wanting the date to end, suggesting we take a stroll in the nearby rose garden.

Lying in bed, reading a magazine, trying to distract myself from the familiar waves nausea of early pregnancy, when the phone rings. Answering with a “what’s wrong”, since my husband never called in the middle of a soccer game, worrying he had an asthma flareup, hearing he fell, he broke his arm, I should come right away, they called the ambulance. Phoning a babysitter, getting dressed, forgetting to turn on the headlights as I drive, ignoring the honking cars, dreading a late night at Terem, a husband with an arm in a cast for weeks.

Thinking it was another mild annoyance, like the time my daughter broke her wrist or my son needed stitches. Never dreaming that this was a storm.

The moaning the in ambulance as it bumped over curves, a night in ER, sitting in a hard plastic chair next to the gurney bed, pleading and fighting and giving up to the insistent apathy. Accepting a release letter, not realizing we were returning home in no better shape than when we arrived.

I hear his words now, buried in between the groans and shrieks of pain- “my hand is tingling.”, “it’s all pins and needles”, “I can’t move it”, “I can’t feel my fingers”.

Days of nursing him, in between the restless kids and cranky toddler, and throwing up in the toilet. Propping him up on pillows, jumping when he screamed if I accidentally bumped the bed, which jolted the broken arm, on the phone with doctors and helpful rabbis, pulling every string I could think of.

The relief when surgery was scheduled, watching his bed being wheeled back into the hospital he shouldn’t have been dismissed from, thinking soon things would get better.

Surgery waiting rooms, hospital recovery rooms, weeks and weeks of juggling, being responsible for husband and children and work and money and the little life growing inside me.

Wanting to scream every time time anyone complimented me for coping, because – what choice did I have? And I wasn’t even sure I was coping, if it came to that, if I dug too hard, but I had to try.

Seeing the black and white paper with the bad results, launching into another round of waiting on hold for medical advisers.

Praying that this will be a dark cloud that will pass over us, and not a new and thorny path. Wanting to pray but remembering the other times I prayed, and what happened then. Scared to pray, scared to insert the line of “Refuaah Shleima”- complete recovery, into the silent Amida prayer. Scared to add a name into the prayer, a loved name, a name from my own family, scared of what that means, to us, and to our life.