Chapter 75 - The Light We Lost

I boarded with the rest of the first-class cabin and found myself seated next to an older Orthodox woman. Her head was covered with a patterned silk kerchief, tied behind her neck. She smiled at me when I sat down.

I smiled back but was already concentrating on breathing slowly, trying to will away the nausea, trying to ignore the briny taste in the back of my throat. It didn’t matter, though. While the rest of the plane was boarding, I knelt down in the airplane bathroom and vomited. “Please don’t let this happen the entire flight,” I said out loud as I flushed and wiped my mouth.

“Okay?” the woman asked me in heavily accented English, when I sat down again. My face must’ve been pale.

“Pregnant,” I told her, placing my hand low on my stomach. Then added, “A baby.” I wasn’t sure how much English she knew.

She nodded and rummaged around in her purse. Then she handed me a bag of candy with Hebrew writing on it. “This helps,” she said. “I eat it on the airplane.”

I held one up to my nose and sniffed it. “It’s ginger?” I asked.

She shrugged. She hadn’t understood the word. “It helps.”

I figured I didn’t have much to lose, so I unwrapped the candy and popped it into my mouth. I sucked on it and actually did start to feel a bit better. “Thank you,” I told her.

“I have five,” she said, pointing to my stomach. “I was sick always.”

“This is my third,” I told her.

“You are Jewish?” she asked, I guess trying to figure out why I was pregnant and on my way to Israel in the middle of a war.

“No,” I said.

“Your . . .”—she searched for a word and then settled on one—“man is in Yisroel?”

I embraced her use of the word man instead of husband.

“He is,” I said. “He’s a journalist. And he’s in the hospital. He was hurt badly in Gaza.”

As I said it, I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Other than Kate and Darren, I hadn’t talked about you, about what happened to you, with anyone.

The next thing I knew, the woman had her arms around me and was murmuring words in Hebrew or Yiddish—a language I didn’t understand but found comforting just the same. It’s embarrassing to admit, but I cried on her shoulder, let her stroke my hair. When I finally pulled myself together, she held my hand. And then after our food came, she kept patting my arm, as if to say without words, It’s going to be okay.

When I woke up, having fallen asleep for a few hours, I found myself covered with an airline blanket.

“Thank you,” I said to her.

“God has a plan,” she said. “And a child is always a blessing.”

I’m not sure if I believe her about either of those things. I don’t like the idea that God had this plan for you. And I can think of instances where having a child may not be a blessing. But her belief and her quiet strength, they helped. There is an element of peace in believing that we’re only players on a stage, acting out stories directed by someone else.

Is this God’s plan, Gabe? Is there even a God?