Family Matters

“Careful,” Chani called to him. She was sitting next to Ma, and they were debating the virtues of adding applesauce and zucchini to potato kugel.

So like his father, I thought as I watched my nephew move from limb to limb with a light-footed sureness.

The rest of Chani’s kids were playing too: Meir and Tzvi tossed a ball, and in the driveway, Penina drew a hopscotch board with chalk for Ahuva. I sat in a far corner where I could watch without participating. An outsider would have assumed Ahuva was a sibling, not a cousin. An outsider would have seen a happy jumble of children, and nothing more.

I leaned back in my chair and looked up at the sky. Sometimes, I thought, you can have a block of time that feels stolen from the past, and free of pain, like now. If I didn’t think too hard, I could pretend that Henny and Menashe were on their way here to pick up Ahuva.