Our Mothers as Red Thread — Hatikvah Magazine

Graphic art by Cloverlyn Willis

Our Mothers as Red Thread

a poem

By ANGELINA MORIN
Contributing WriterPub. 6 February 2025

Our mothers, our protectors.

My mom had a firm grasp on my wrist. Her sturdy hand and callused fingertips still and pinching as she clasped a red beaded bracelet onto me. She smiled and placed an identical bracelet on my sister. This will protect you from evil. I rubbed the smooth, small beads to instill the sentiment. I was too young to know evil yet.

When your mother calls out your name in Jerusalem,

I swallow at the raw sound of her pleas. I have been all too silent. When she screams your name, I know she is calling to you, but, as I watch her on my tiny screen, it feels as if she is disapproving of me. My lack of action, my paralyzing fear. Her tone makes me a child again, muddily playing in the forest my mother specifically told me not to wander into. I am running back home, towards her call in fear that I have been caught only to stop and remember that this is not about me. I replay the video.

She is calling for you, Hersh.

Mom teaches me that wishbones were made to dry out on windowsills then to be broken with the pull of our pinkies. With greased and glistening fingers, she would excavate the bone with the precision of a surgeon. Slipping her fingers into white meat to feel for the wish between neck and breastbone. In my cupped hands, she placed it. It sat up like two arches on my palm. Carefully, I washed it clean and perched it on the windowsill. First, we wish. When the bone breaks, the one holding the longer bit has their wish come true. Pinkie to pinkie, I ask her how to win.

There is no trick to it, baby.

I wish every day. I wish as my ringlets of curls wave over candles, as my lips blow air like kisses onto dandelions, as coins spiral to the bottom of fountains, as my lashes stick to my freckles that friends so gently pluck to present to me. But I will not break the wishbone, I cannot bear the short end.

When your mother tells you to survive, it is a command.

You know there is no point in arguing with mothers. So, I have been waiting for you. While I wait, I think of the life you will live upon your rescue. Will you miss the smear of ink when you learn to write with your right hand? Will you coach a children’s soccer team again? Will you tell your story when you embark on your travels across the world? Will your smile ache when you have not felt it, the tightness of it, for so long?

My mom knows the future, but she does not believe in the certainty of destiny. One morning, she told me that a pain struck her, she believed it to be a warning meant for me. That I would twist my ankle if I was not careful on my walk to school. She often had this instinct, this feeling of premonition. A part of her would ache and she would think of my sister and me. I was just a girl then, I believed in my mother. I stepped carefully, in sparkling cherry sandals, that day and the next. For all I knew, she spared me from every fall.

Your mother is resilient in a way I never want my mother to be. Your aches, your mother feels. Your cries, your mother makes. Once when I wandered into the forest, I tripped and cut my cheek. I dropped on the wet pine and wailed. My mother would come, she would feel the sound of my howl, the heat of the blood that pooled down my face, she would find me. Your mother is searching for you. So that one day, she might call out to you knowing you will come. Mothers say having a child is like having your heart outside of your chest. But we both know they give us their ribs too.

Mom has rituals. Mom picks up every penny. On busy streets in the middle of crosswalks to plastic ‘take a penny, leave penny’ bowls. No amount of wealth is insignificant. Her grandmother taught her that. When we walked together, she would point them out to me, let me collect and keep them. In the backs of public buses, I pulled them from my pocket and pressed those copper pennies to my tongue. I liked their sweetness. When we returned home, I placed them in jars that held my collection of pennies and shiny things. With each new addition, I would spill out the jar’s contents onto purple bed sheets to slowly count my lot. At one hundred and fifteen pennies we walked to the Dollar Tree.

Mothers so fiercely know
what we are capable of. When she said to survive, you did for as long as you could. We spend our whole lives collecting memories, Hersh. In the darkness did you pour them out, touch each one, taste them, and recall your mother’s laugh? Months ago, I began to string red beads on red thread onto my body and wore evil eyes around my neck for us, for protection. As if neither of us could die if one of us lived. This was a ritual that I thought would suffice for a post on my Instagram story. Or a conversation with goyim friends. Or a counter protest in DC. Or a prayer at a synagogue. Or Aliyah. The moment I found out about your death, I refused to know it, refused to believe it. I was useless to you, Hersh. Red threaded, evil eyed, useless.

In Shiva, your mother stood and called on you. You are finally, finally, finally free.
Still, she told you that you could not leave her, not yet.

I do not know what caused my mom to suddenly bestow this bracelet onto me. Just like I do not how my walls have become a Hamsa gallery. Perhaps, some of her premonitions are too worrying to share. Perhaps her fright took the shape of round beads and red thread resting on thick veins. My fright manifests as countless blue metal, clay, hamsas encircling my bed and swaying from my ceiling. After she adorned us with the bracelets, I watched her skillfully close a red beaded bracelet onto her freckled wrist. My protector in need of protection.

Mothers keep counting.

Heights, trophies, and days. She writes 332. These she tracks over her heart.
There is still so much left to protect.

Your memory is a blessing, I cannot forget it. I sit in a room with survivors.
I must know those that remain in captivity, the one hundred and one, the way I know you.
I must know their mothers, their dreams, the color of their eyes.

All my life mom grabbed my hand, kissed my lips then my crown of curls, enveloped me with her strong arms and her patchouli perfumed chest. I would wiggle out of her grasp, embarrassed to let her know how much I loved her. When I braced the school yard with my mother’s protection, I walked differently. My shoulders back, chest puffed, my nose graced the clouds, and I breathed deep to smell the trace of her perfume. I touched my beads to know that they were still there and then once more in gratitude. I stared into its ruby gleam beneath the recess sunshine. I knew safety, I knew love, I knew the feeling of it on my skin.

I must believe that is a feeling you could still remember.

Shana Tova, Hersh, Happy Birthday. The year comes back around to its end, to a new beginning, and I find myself circling. In DC, I cannot see the solar eclipse, yet I imagine it, I think of you. I scrap the sides of a ramen bowl, I think of you. I laugh until it hurts, I think of you. You should have turned 24. In a few months, I will turn 24.

On Rosh Hashanah morning, I will step alongside a pond, throwing glossy braided challah to the turtles, watching the heads of fish emerge from the water. The bread will float and disrupt the reflection of my body in the pond as the creatures break the surface to eat the crumbs of my sin. October 1st, I cry. October 3rd, I ask for your forgiveness, Hersh. I am so sorry. I have walked on the outskirts of intention for far too long. I have come back around to the truth, that I could have done so much more for you. On erev Rosh Hashanah, in synagogue, I listen to an Israeli woman talk of shalom. I listen to a Palestinian woman ask me to not be dishearten by her presence, to hear her, her ring of peace. She says we all come from the same God and therefore we all must return. Hersh, the synagogue crowd stood to sing The Prayer of The Mother’s. Your Mother says that she hopes to feel you with her on the night of Rosh Hashanah. Our mother’s our protectors, our mother’s our peace, our mother’s, Hersh, our red thread. They wrap themselves around us and place our days over their hearts. Our mothers call out to me. They call out to me, Hersh, and they ask if I am brave enough to wage peace. Your mother knows you were.

a poem

Building the global Jewish consciousness.