Jennifer Hudak -- The Stolen Sabbath

Each Friday my mother unfolded the sabbath from where it had been hiding all week, snapped it out like a fresh sheet, and draped it over the weekend. I could never quite catch her doing it; one moment, the kitchen was just the kitchen, and the next, it was sacred. She told me not to think about it too much. She told me just to let it happen. She said that one day it would be my turn, and she’d teach me where the sabbath came from, how to unfurl it and smooth it out, and then how to fold it back up again and tuck it back in its place. But I was not a patient child:

 My mother told me this, too.

When the sun began to set each Friday afternoon, I looked all over for a secret cubby where the sabbath could hide. I dug through closets to see if another door had sprouted in the back wall. I ran my fingers along picture frames to see if they were concealing a portal. My mother laughed and said I was searching for metaphors. She said I was limiting myself by thinking in terms I already understood, and until I was willing to broaden my vocabulary, I’d never be ready to welcome the sabbath on my own.

I have already said that I was not a patient child. But I became even less patient as I grew older. I also became less interested—in my mother and the sabbath both. I was too intent on carving out my own secret spaces to bother searching the house for hidden cubbies or portals. On Friday nights, when the sun sank below the horizon, I fidgeted while my mother lit the candles, and I murmured the prayers without thought. I barely noticed the transition from secular the sacred. I did not wait for the candles to burn themselves out before leaving the house to spend my Friday with friends.

At some point, my mother stopped reminding me that it would be my turn, one day, to unfold the sabbath and shake it loose. She still performed the ritual each week, I assume, but she stopped asking me to join her.

And then, as all mothers eventually do, she died.

After the funeral, after the shiva, after the first yahrzeit and the unveiling, I bought some candlesticks and some thick white candles. It took me several tries to strike the match along the side of the box. When I reached for the sabbath, I imagined my mother’s hand guiding my own. But there was nothing to unfold, nothing to snap out. I pulled at empty air, and the kitchen remained the kitchen. It was as if my mother had stolen the sabbath. It was as if the sabbath had stolen my mother.

I slid down to the floor, smelling the acrid smoke curling up from the spent matches. I did not know, when I was a child, that I would miss the sabbath some day. That I would feel its absence in my body like a blank space I couldn’t map. I did not know that I would need it, the way I needed my mother, in spite of myself.

That night, while I was sleeping, my mother’s voice whispered to me: “Oh my dear child. You’re still searching for metaphors.”

I sat up in bed, surprised by the tears on my cheeks. I wondered, for the first time, if my mother hadn’t actually known where the sabbath was hiding each week. If she simply reached out anyway, believing it would be there when she did.

The next Friday, I lit a fresh pair of candles. I closed my eyes, and told myself to stop thinking about it too much. I told myself just to let it happen.

The sabbath I pulled out was creased and a bit dusty; it didn’t quite cover the secular, as if it had shrunk in storage. I smoothed it out anyway, as best I could. It wasn’t my mother’s sabbath, but it was here, even though my mother was not. 

On Saturday night I would wrestle the sabbath back into a small wad and stuff it away. Perhaps I’d never retrieve it again. But that night the house felt a bit less empty, if not quite sacred. I let myself sit, and hold it all inside me, and I didn’t get up until the candles had burned themselves down to puddles.