“I have to make amends to my mother” – Noa thought, staring vacantly at the empty winter beach.
“It’s been so many years. And after all, it wasn’t her fault. Probably. That’s what all the doctors say.”
And right away she folded in unbearable pain.
No, I can’t, she groaned, damned be that day, damned be her who…- but then she retracted, slapping herself on the lips and asking for forgiveness – from her mother, from the Heavens, from God…
“…for the waters have come up to my neck, I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold” * – she was mouthing silently, clinging to a hard crooked trunk of a tree growing at a cliff above the sea.
Back then, fourteen years ago, she was so happy and young.
But her blue-eyed Miri was just one month old when she fell on the stone floor. She was splattered face down, so unbearably tiny and helpless, and didn’t move. And Noa sprung towards her, like in a slow motion, not even having time to comprehend any of this, accompanied by a high-pitched shriek. That was her mother, who dropped Miri and froze with fear, and just kept shrieking…
She never forgave her mother.
When Miri was diagnosed with autism, a year later, and within five more years the doctors told her, avoiding eye contact, that she will never be independent, Noa cursed the day it happened and the woman she never talked to ever again.
All the doctors tried to convince her that the fall could never cause autism, that nobody knows why some people are born autistic, that autism isn’t a disease but rather a state of mind…
She was listening to them, staring stubbornly at the floor, and hated her mother.
She was offered to put her daughter in an institution, but she would have none of that.
Miri wasn’t talking, wasn’t looking people in the eye, wasn’t eating, couldn’t get dressed by herself.
Day after day she was trying to find her sweet girl in there, to see her smile, to look into her blue eyes. Day after day she would embrace her and hold her close, even though Miri was screaming in rage, refusing touch.
Day after day she was praying.
And today she finally realized she was exhausted. Exhausted of struggling, hating, hoping.
“…I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched…” – she mumbled, pressed against the tree as dry as her soul.
But suddenly the wind of spring tore the kerchief off her head, messed up her hair, swept her with fragrances of grass and desert flowers, and she smiled through her tears. “For behold, the winter has passed; the rain is over and gone” *– she remembered.
She imagined that she was at home, trying to brush Miri’s unruly curls and reciting, “The blossoms have appeared in the land, the time of singing has arrived, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land”*
And Miri, her precious little girl, lifts her ocean-blue eyes at her, and says, “Mo-mmy? Mommy…”
And she’s chocking on her tears of happiness, embracing her daughter and whispering, “Mirile, my Mirile! Everything is going to be fine now, just keep talking, please…”
A wild-haired woman clinging to an ancient dry tree above the empty winter beach is swaying back and forth, tears flowing from her eyes, and whispering, “Everything is going to be fine, my sweet darling, now everything is going to be fine…”
Translated by Diana Shnaiderman-Pereira
----------------------- *Psalms, 68 **(Song of Songs 2:12).