Units of Exchange

The sun washes the sky outside of my Jerusalem window, painting the hills in streaks of gold and lavender, I breathe in the almost quiet of my salon. One child is babysitting, another is finishing trigonometry, a third is home coughing, and a fourth explores the wilds of a neighbor’s playroom. Some of the golden streaks deepen not so much to crimson as to periwinkle, the child with the cough rummages for a lap blanket, and the phone vibrates. Traffic, as seen from my perch, begins to congest on the main road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

In these transitional moments, I think about what my mother once said: “Small children step on your feet, big ones step on your heart.” I had no idea what she was talking about. In innocence, I grew up, got married, went to school, had babies, worked, and made aliyah. Decades of sunsets followed. My own babies grew up. Mom was right.

Periwinkle deepens to indigo. The last of the gold becomes gamboge and cerise. The traffic lights in the valley below become more distinct. At this stage, when I “know everything,” I merely need to nod to give over wisdom. In the same way, when “I know nothing,” no amount of kinetics can telegraph my perceptions. As for the gradations in between, my teens have yet to distinguish carmine from alizarin, or azure from Maya blue; they are still too young.

The sky deepens. I detect maroon, burgundy, and a bit of persimmon among the reds. I see sapphire, ultramarine, and cobalt among the blues. The children are not yet too old for extra chauffeuring, homemade soup, or time set aside for talking. They have not yet outgrown squishy hugs, bits of cheerleading, or bedtime visits, to surreptitiously tuck them in.