“Listen, when the doctor comes, I want you to call me. I want to speak to him or her. Okay, Ma? Don’t forget”
AN ambulance raced by Ayala as she walked out of Bracha’s building, and the siren echoed inside her head as she rapidly dialed her mother.
No need to panic, Zev had said, but Ayala knew that this was exactly what her mother was doing right now. And her brother would be no help; he’d amble into the hospital, hear from some nurse that everything’s fine, ribs heal themselves, and then tell Ma to quit her worrying and just go home and relax. As if it were possible to shut off anxiety like a water tap.
Not that she could blame Zev; he’d been affected just as much as she had by growing up one of two siblings — two onlies, only boy, only girl — to two older parents. They’d just each reacted differently.
“I don’t get it. Would you rather not have been born?” the teenage Ayala would ask, when her little brother would complain yet again about having parents old enough to be grandparents, and why couldn’t they be young and normal instead of having dinner conversations about colonoscopies? “Hashem chose to only give them children in their mid-forties. It’s not their fault!”
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