My Mother’s Aliya: A Pseudo-Pregnancy Journal
It has been as close as I’ll ever come to being pregnant.
For months I have been preparing for the big day when our family here In Israel will welcome a new addition: Mom. In the spirit of week-to-week guides for the expectant mother, I’ve kept a journal of this expectant son.
Week 1: Conception. New additions to the family don’t always come as quickly as we would like, and we dreamed about Mom’s aliya for a long time before it became a reality—the moment I learned my father had died.
Dad had no greater joy in life than hearing me talk about the writing projects I was working on, and I had no greater joy than seeing his. But when Dad died a little over a year ago, that depth of exchange hadn’t taken place in eight years. I had mourned without rituals, and now I would perform the rituals but without the mourning. Even at that moment, I couldn’t help but think of the possibilities now available: Mom had desperately wanted to be near us during the years of Dad’s decline, and now she could come. The sages nailed this one emotionally: when a man dies and his son stands to inherit a substantial fortune, then at the moment of death the son recites the blessing for good tidings. Dad had left us the best inheritance possible—Mom.
I had long imagined what it would be like to have Mom here. Where I live, status is important. Around here you accrue status by regularly being seen walking with your elderly parent with a cane, a walker or a wheelchair. I am surrounded by neighbors who are titans of the fifth commandment. I had dutifully whatsapped Mom every day. But I didn’t want to just talk the talk–I wanted to walk the walk. And besides, Mom is sharp as a tack and fun to be with.
Week 12 – You don’t tell anyone until you’re sure it’s going to work. Aliyah the way we all wanted it meant Mom living nearby and joining us for shabbat meals. But there is nothing to rent near us, and with the dollar plunging daily to new depths, the hope of buying something with her savings faded from view. Then, it hit me: Mom could live in the next neighborhood over, and with a two-seat scooter and a foreign aide join us for shabbat meals and return home. Spread the news: we are expecting my mother! Her due date? Late August\early September.
Week 20 – Telling everybody. Online at the grocer one day, an acquaintance lined up behind me, a therapist.
“Hey, what’s new?”
“Well, my mom is coming on Aliyah.”
“Is that good?”
Whatever umbrage is, I took it. Lots of it. How dare he? Apparently, he didn’t get the crib sheet everyone else had, with the approved plaudits: “You should have joy, mazal and nachas!” But he’s a shrink and cuts to the chase for a living. Sizing up the over-stuffed wagon in front of me, I decided to opt-in for check-out line therapy.
“I feel like I’ll need to be available 24/7. And I’m not good at saying ‘no.'”
“What happens if you say ‘no’?”
“I might get the look.”
He smiled wryly and shrugged his shoulders. “So? You’ll get the look.”
Week 24 – Discomfort and a scare. It would take seventeen documents for the Jewish Agency to approve Mom’s aliya, and all had to be sent by courier, or, as we took to calling it, Fed-Up. More seriously, Mom had a fall. She was checked out by doctors and, thankfully, everything was fine. Still, a scare like that has a way of puncturing the happy anticipation. Everything can be going just as planned, and suddenly you fear it could all come apart.
Week 30 – Time for nesting. I had my wife bring back a chip of the slate-green paint from my parents’ living room, to match paint for the living room in Mom’s new apartment. The paint guy at ACE gave good advice—when holding a chip of paint against the colors on the paint fan, cup your hand, so that the colors are in shade. The match was perfect and the empty living room radiates with my father’s memory.
Week 34 – More nesting. Mom wanted a recliner in black cloth upholstery. But I discovered that in 2026 black isn’t beautiful—at least not in the current styles for recliners. It took nine stores in three cities for me to find what Mom wanted. Meeting (yet another) delivery truck in the parking lot of her building, I felt like a mother bird with a twig in its mouth as we flew up to the seventh floor to lay the twig in place for Mom’s nest.
Week 36 – Anxiety. She’s almost here. Preparing Mom’s apartment is not the same as preparing myself for the changes in my life that will happen once she’s here: the sudden demands of time, the change in family dynamics—it’s all overwhelming. Time for C-breathing. I shared my anxiety with my son, a social work student. “Abba,” he said, “children have to learn to set limits for their parents.”
Week 39 – Preparing to travel to the US to escort Mom back, I take one final look at the apartment I have filled for her these past three months and feel a distinctly divine sense of satisfaction:
I beheld the kitchen and its appliances thereof;
I beheld the bedrooms with their beds, closets and tables
I beheld the TV, the recliner, the pantry and all its contents thereof
And behold, it was good.
It was very good.
Onset of labor: Setting out from my brother’s home in Bethesda for the 18-hour labor of travel to Israel, the feeling is surreal; this day is finally here. It dawns on me: Avraham Avinu was commanded to make aliya to distance himself from his parents—but we are commanded to make aliya to bring ours in our wake.
Delivery: Mom came through the whole process like a trooper, her excitement overcoming the length of the ordeal. The El-Al agent wheeled Mom through the customs canal and she exited the opened doors to the radiant morning sun flooding the arrivals hall and was immediately met by my three-year old grandson who gleefully collected the toy cars Mom had brought him. Bubbe was no longer an image on a cellphone. A picture is worth a thousand words. But a hug is worth a thousand pictures. Welcome home Mom!
