The King Is in the Field... But Where Am I?

The ambiguity of loss in the face of love

I keep losing Gerties.

Gertie is the name we gave my daughter E’s giraffe lovey. For reasons that are only clear to the mysterious baby brains that we will never truly know, E loves, and has always loved, Gertie with a passion that she has never shown for her lovey elephant or stuffed camel. At this point, we have many Gerties. There is daycare Gertie and bedroom Gertie, living room Gertie and stroller Gertie—not to mention the backup Gerties I keep in E’s toy box, and the one Gertie that we have dubbed steroid Gertie because for some reason it has a giant head totally different than all the others. Over the course of the 20 months of her life, we have bought (or been gifted) at least a fifteen Gerties, but probably more.

The last time I lost a Gertie was a Shabbat in August. E and I were walking home from lunch at my parents’ house; my husband was stuck in South Africa with Covid. E had had a tough morning and I was tired from almost two weeks of solo parenting. Against my better judgement, I let her hold both stroller Gertie and her stuffed giraffe Georgina as we walked home. Perhaps inevitably, she wanted to suck her thumb, which led to her dropping Gertie, who then fell by the wayside somewhere on our walk home.

Georgina and Gertie, safe at home for now

Now, as I said above, we have many Gerties. We are lucky that E has formed an attachment to something that we can easily acquire from any number of stores, and that is not prohibitively expensive. She didn’t even notice Gertie was gone. And yet, as I retraced my steps, feeling increasingly frantic, I found myself filled with an unreasonable despair. We didn’t find her. I am, I was certain, a bad mother. After all, stroller Gertie was gone. Long live Stroller Gertie.

Even though it’s been more than a month since this happened, I can’t stop thinking about it. As I have written about previously, our path to E was not an easy one. When she finally arrived—miraculous and solid in my arms—I did not expect a feeling of loss to follow. I knew E would never replace the babies we had dreamed of and lost, but I imagined she would be a salve to those wounds, allowing me to rejoice in what I gained, rather than remembering what I lost.

E is the best thing I have ever done. Even on the hard days, even when she is whining, even when she is inconsolable about something totally incomprehensible, I have never regretted her for a single moment. I look at her face every morning, when I go to take her out of her crib, and am newly awash in love and awe that I helped create this extraordinarily beautiful person. But in the last few months, I have found myself dwelling on loss. Perhaps this is because of the time of year, or because I left a job I loved after seven years, or because we keep losing Gerties. Maybe it is because our attempts to make E a sister have only led to three more loses, each one breaking my heart a little bit. But, if I am honest—and society rarely allows mothers to be honest about such things—it’s because becoming a mother has also caused its own kind of grief and loss.

You see, I am afraid I have lost my Torah. Not my ability to teach text—thankfully, that remains with me, and continues to bring me such joy—but my ability to find and teach Torah from moments in my day to day life. That’s why this newsletter has gone quiet. I’ve opened up so many drafts, started writing, and then found the words were missing. Ideas remained fuzzy, just out of reach. I am afraid that my well has run dry. All I have left is this admission, as I bare myself and confront this fear face to face.

In less than a week, it will be Rosh Hashanah. I wish I could tell you that I suddenly realized something profound about the liturgy that made the Torah flow freely from my lips again and revived my sluggish, listless soul. I wish I could tell you that in the machzor, I found the balm for this increasingly aching wound. But I haven’t found my way there yet. In the month of Elul, right before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are told that the King—God—is in the field, ready to come close to us. But I can’t seem to find my way there. And so, all I can do is hope that God, my Torah, my spiritual self—that they will all wait for me. I’m running as fast as I can, but my path is still winding, and I do not know where it will take me.

I am hoping that the next stage this winding, uncertain journey will finally be able to begin now that I admit that I feel these loses. Not because I can’t count my blessings—they are abundant, more abundant than I deserve—but because we cannot know ourselves and others if we hide our grief. Shema koleinu, we cry out as part of the selichot. Please, hear our voices, even when we don’t know what to say.

I’m going to finish today with one more story, one that can hopefully serve as a tikkun for the one I began with. The Shabbat after we lost Gertie, I was walking home from shul with E. This time, I hadn’t allowed E to take Gertie, but she was holding tight to Georgina, who is bigger and therefore harder to lose. Until I looked down and realized Georgina, too, was gone. Again, I retraced my steps. But this time, after going back only one block, I found Georgina sitting on the base of a streetlight, where some good samaritan had put her so that her owner could find her, safe and sound. I gave her back to E, who squealed happily, and then we made our way home, with everyone found and accounted for.

May we all be as lucky as Georgina, E, and I were in that moment, to have people who see us even when we are lost.

Shana tova—my hope for all of you, and all of us, is that this be a year of abundant blessing, and of finding whatever it is that we are looking for.