“What,
no husband?” they would have asked her back home. “No children?” they would have shaken their heads in
reproach, adding, “And who will take care of you when you’re old?”
“Well,
I’ll just never grow old then,” her smiling reply would have met their scolding
looks; as adults do at a child’s idiocy.
And
when the high holidays would come around, she’d be the spare wheel, the address
for the sorrow of others. “And
no,” they would have firmly clarified, “we will simply not allow it; no one
should sit at home all alone on Rosh Hashanah!” The mere thought would have been equal to blasphemy, she
would have known and kept her lips sealed, sat quietly at the table, and wished
herself out of there and as far away as possible. Over the mountains, beyond the seas, filling the air with
her hurry. Away, away, she would
have urged her wings to stir harder.
She
reminds myself: She had left long
ago. Back home is far aback now.
Holidays spent in the freedom of
aloneness, she longs to sit among them all; listening to random fragments of
small talk, admiring the traditional delicacies, tipsy on table wine. Spare wheel and all.
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