the beach

"should i make a sand angel?"

i sit on a pile of rocks on the shore, watching my five-year-old daughter dart gleefully in and out of the tide. it is one of those rare days when she and i are alone together; my boys still have camp, but hers has finished. the weather is gorgeous and we decided to come out to lake michigan together. it's her first time at the beach. as i may have mentioned, my two-year-old is a little nutty and has been from birth, so i never felt safe bringing all three of them out to the lake before.

it's the perfect mommy-and-me activity: the perfect place for a proudly grown-up little girl and her mother to spend the day together. because of corona, most people don't know yet that the beaches have reopened, and we have the whole stretch of sand almost to ourselves. the sky is cloudless; the sun glints on the water; sailboats float on the horizon.

my daughter is giddy with excitement. every time a wave laps at her feet, she shrieks and takes a step back, yelling, "can't get me now!" if the next wave doesn't touch her toes, she inches forward until it does, then screeches again. she digs through piles of rock and rubble for seashells; i don't have the heart to tell her you can't find seashells at a lake. she is enchanted by the smooth sand retreating waves leave in their wake. over and over, she walks through it, then turns around and watches as the lake washes away her footprints. "look, mommy!" she cries. "it's like i was never here!"

to my horror, i feel tears spill down my cheeks.

i should be happy. i want to treasure this pristine moment with my daughter. but a voice in my head says, the daughter that lived. the daughter that's alive.

sometimes, i feel like my body is too weak a vessel to hold emotions as intense as the ones i struggle with on that beautiful beach. love. love for my wonderful, exuberant eldest, always thrilled by every new discovery in life, every new sensation, every new experience. fulfillment. that amazing sense of joy that comes from watching a child embrace the wonders of the world ("do you know what causes waves?" i ask her. "i have a better question," she says. "do you know what causes lakes?") awareness. the knowledge that this moment will end and there is nothing i can do to freeze it in place and make it last forever, as i wish i could.

"take a picture of me by the ocean, mommy! take a picture of me and write on it, 'this is CT when she was almost six!' "

grief. the crushing, searing weight of knowing that menucha will never be six years old. i will never take a picture of her and write, 'menucha hecht, almost six' on it, or the name we hoped to use before we learned she had died. i will never see her face light up as a wave splashes over her toes for the first time. i will never see her dig for seashells on the beach. i will never comb the sand out of her hair.

longing. i knew about this gap between my daughter's camp and the boys' for a long time, and i planned these days in advance, but this is not what i thought they would look like. in my mind, i debated which carrier i would use to wear the baby down to the shore. i still find myself debating it when my mind wanders, when i forget that there is no baby to wear in it.

guilt. how can i be sad when i have so much to be grateful for? my poor 5-year-old. how unfair is it to her that i am crying during her special day with me? how can i let the pain of losing her sister so consume me that i can't summon the sense of fun and adventure to play with and truly enjoy the daughter right here with me?

i stare at my older daughter's disappearing footprints in the sand, blinking in the sun.

nesaneh tokef has been on my mind a lot lately. i imagine it is like this for most jews the first yom kippur after they lose someone they love. nesaneh tokef is one of the highlights of the yom kippur service; it is a prayer reminding the congregation that the new year is the time when God decides the fate of every being on earth - whether a person lives or dies, grows rich or poor, is happy or haunted.

and it reminds us, too, of the ultimate transience of humanity: man begins in dust and ends in dust. he is like grass that withers, like a flower that fades, like a shadow that passes, like a cloud that disappears, like a fleeting dream.

i guess one of the most difficult parts of life is learning to accept that in the end all our footprints - no matter how big, no matter how deep - are washed away by the relentless tide.

but I still long to see my younger daughter's beside her sister's in the sand, for the few minutes they might have been visible.