I want to help my daughter. She just wants me gone

IT

makes no sense, when Miriam thinks about it, that children are only children for a decade or two. That those pivotal years, the ones that will define them, are so brief, just a flicker of time in their lives before adulthood. She still likes to think of Devorah as that freckle-faced five-year-old, her little fingers clutched around Miriam’s pinky as they first walked into her kindergarten class.

That image is all tangled up with Devorah as a teenager, rolling her eyes at homework and on the phone until after midnight. With Devorah as a beautiful kallah, standing beside a grinning Elchonon, her face glowing. With Devorah as a mother herself, lounging beside Miriam at the park near Miriam’s house, watching her five children shrieking with joy on the swings.

But Devorah will always be that freckle-faced five-year-old to Miriam, even if that comment makes her sigh long-sufferingly over the phone. “I didn’t even have freckles, Ma. You’re remembering it wrong. Shani was the one with freckles.”

No, Devorah had kept those freckles until adolescence, strong in the summer and barely there in the winter, until they disappeared in her teenage years. Miriam remembers it perfectly.

But with age comes wisdom, and the understanding that her conversations with Devorah are too precious to be wasted on disagreements. Shani and Rina call constantly, but Devorah has always been a little less willing to schmooze. Now that she lives across the country, the Friday calls are just about all Miriam gets of her.

“Maybe she was,” Miriam says easily. “Nu, tell me, what’s going on with the kids? How are the boys?”

“Running wild, as they always do,” Devorah says, laughing. “I see them when they come in for bedtime. Sarala has stopped playing with the boys on the block, though. She says they’re too crazy.”

“She’s really growing up into a little lady.” Sarala is five and freckled (just like her mother, mind you), on the verge of figuring out who she is outside of her older brothers. “And the babies?” Miriam can hear one of them kvetching in the background. The little ones are needy, always lingering close to Devorah, and Miriam remembers how her own daughters had been clingy at that age, too. “Send more pictures, will you?” Devorah comes every Succos and Pesach, her family spreading across her childhood house like a welcome tornado, and Miriam is only too happy to play the doting grandmother, but she misses the kids fiercely in the months in between.

She tries to imagine the children scattering across their own house, which she’s only visited once, when Devorah first moved in. Devorah’s Brooklyn house is small, and she prefers to fly to California instead of hosting.

Miriam doesn’t mind. Elchonon’s job is taxing, and Devorah works so hard. She can use the break. “Elchonon still working long hours?”

“Always. He tries to get home in time to do homework with the boys, but it doesn’t always happen.” One of the kvetching babies lets out a strident shriek, and Devorah sighs. “I’ve got to go. Talk to you.”

The phone clicks off, and Miriam holds on to it for another moment, thinking wistfully of that little girl who had once clung to her with absolute dependence.