Ancient Things We Hold

Chapter 6

The Gift of Life

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When Hadassah first had her child, she was just seventeen and Hodaya thirteen. It was a dreary season, alive with fog and dew. Hodaya spent practically all of it helping cultivate the spring fields, as most girls her age did. She never liked the summer, for they were tedious to work in. With the sun beating down upon one's dark head and sweat falling alone one's neck, it quickly became an unpleasant experience. Therefore, she relished in the spring coolness at that moment.

With swirling mist, the sun was shaded away. Hodaya found that she could look upon into the sky occasionally and just breathe a moment of peace. Her hands had not grown as sore that summer as they had before. Towards the end, when summer was gone and the harvest was in full swing, the work was always most vigorous. However, they were already overwhelmed with fatigue even though it was only spring. She looked down at her hands- they were rough and raw. Callouses flaked her browning skin.

Nonetheless, she felt no pain. She could pull at the land and shift a thousand sacks of grain on her back and still feel little struggle anymore. After all, villagers soon grew accustomed to such a strenuous life.

She diverted her gaze to the side. Hadassah was hoisting up fistfuls of weeds from the ground, all with her squirming child strapped by heavy cloths over her shoulder. The little creature kept on crying. Therefore, Hadassah stopped for a moment and pulled the cloth over her chest, when she then began to feed him in the middle of the field.

After the child had been fed sufficiently, Hadassah sat back for a moment. Fatigue held onto her as she tried to summon the strength to continue working. She looked absolutely exhausted. However, she forced herself to stand up again and place the weight of the child on her back again.

Just as she was about to start work again, Hodaya moved over to her older sister and took the child into her arms. "Let me take him for a while. You go get some rest," she suggested.

"There is too much work to be done. I shall rest when I'm asleep. But you can go collect the berries for me. It's too warm in the woods for me at the moment, but I'm sure Anshel will appreciate it,"

"Certainly. Let's see if the woods will calm him down a little, shall we?" said Hodaya.

Hadassah thanked her endlessly. She clearly loved her little boy, but motherhood was not radiant upon her. She welcomed any chance of a moment away from him, for they were few and far between. In the short while she had been a mother, she had become haggard and overwhelmed. She didn't know what to do. When he cried, it took all she had to not start crying along with him. Their mother helped as often as she could, but she still had children to think about and a household to keep.

Therefore, her little sisters often tried to ease her way. After all, her husband did not notice that she was drowning. He was too preoccupied with his lovely, little son. He never got to see when the baby was being difficult and tiring, for that was the mother's responsibility. He only saw the perfect side.

However, Hodaya saw the dark circles of her sister's eyes and lifted the weight off her for a moment and passed it on to herself. It wasn't enough.

How could one be so young and so haggard? Hadassah was always so pretty, so radiant. Now she looked as though she was going to fall asleep at any moment. Hodaya didn't want children anymore, at least not with someone who would leave her to do everything at all hours. However, that was the truth; she would have to do everything.

She didn't mind looking after Anshel for her sister, though. He really was such a delight when he wanted to be. Hodaya carried him over to the woods, then placed him down on the mossy ground and watched him shuffle about in his stomach.

The ground was wet, but he seemed to appreciate its coolness compared to the humid air that the leaves trapped within them. It was odd how the open fields were whipped with wind, but the shelter of the woods covered them with a veil of warmth.

The sun came through to them in fragments, broken apart by the swaying leaves above them that sent the rays dancing back and forth. Anshel squeezed his eyes shut every time the light fell upon his face.

As she pulled at the bushes to collect the berries, Hodaya cast her gaze onto him every now and then and smiled at his sweetness. She lifted up her skirts and dropped the fruit in her lap. Occasionally, he managed to summon the strength to shuffle over to her, where he would knock against her and pull at her pinafore.

Therefore, eventually, she just gave up with the berries and turned to him completely. She tucked the bottom of her skirts into her waistband, then sat down gently to try not the crush the berries that were gathered on her lap.

She began talking to him. He stared up at her with a puzzled expression, his rounded blue eyes looking all over her face in curiosity. She didn't know if he could even measure that she was telling him something, but she adored the wonder within him.

"Your mama is tired and upset, but she loves you. Just try to make your growing up as easy for her as possible. Be polite and pious and kind..." she began to tell him, before noticing that he was growing restless again. Therefore, she picked him up and directed his gaze upwards.

"You cannot see much apart from the tops of the trees, but if you look in between then you can see the sky. When you're stronger, you can try to reach it by climbing the trees. They are my refuge. Oh, I hope you love the forest as I do. It really is the best escape," she said. Then, as a teasing after thought, she added, "I think Hadassah would like it if you came here often as well,"

He began squirming in her arms again. "So you do not like my embrace, then? That is okay. It is better to love the earth, to love its smells and textures. Allow your hands to run along the grass. Isn't it glorious? Look at me. There you go. What a clever creature you are! This is God's earth, created for us to treasure, so you must do so,"

He mimicked her movements as she ran her hands over the ground. Although he clearly had no idea what she was saying, he was soothed by her gentle voice. One day, he would also come to appreciate the artistic nature of her speech. Rarely did someone believe art and literature were so beautiful when alive within the mind of a woman, but even at that point she hoped that his sweet expression meant he could love his aunt with her adoration of arts. She believed they strengthened the character, whether one be a male or female (no matter what her village said).

"There is such joy in reading and music and paintings. I wish you could appreciate such things already, then we could talk," she lamented. He just gurgled, causing her to laugh. After all, she was being ridiculous. Perhaps she was still in mourning of losing her older sister to marriage, so she was clinging to her little child as if he was what was left of Hadassah. Tamar was doing the same thing; both her sisters missed her dearly.

Some of Hadassah's life had been passed onto Anshel when he was born. Is that what happened when one bore a child in a marriage without care? Once Hodaya thought her older sister was so lucky to marry the watchful, quiet Chaim. How naive she had been.

She was growing sick of the way the world treated women. She wished she could do something, instead of just offering a shoulder to cry on whenever someone she was close to felt trapped in the prison that had been built for them as women and as Jews. However, she was voiceless. What could she do? How could she end the suffering of those like her? Nothing.

At least Anshel was born from the sadness. For now, he cried for no reason other than his hunger and tiredness.

And, although Hadassah did not know it at that age, she would never experience the sadness of having a child again. Only the sadness of losing a child for, despite many more times of being in the family way, hardly any children survived outside of her and none past a few months. It was a sorrow she harboured throughout her life.