“These are the tools I gave you,” says the Creator to the created at the end of his ’workday’. “What did you do with them?”
Some receive bright, shiny state of the art tools. Others receive a bent screwdriver. Some tools are received in later years. Others are removed. Often the walls of Ezer Mizion gasp in wonder and admiration as they watch how those who were given an inferior set use it to grow to the heavens during their ‘workday’ aka Life.
Who is taking whom? A passerby may wonder as 5-year-old Elchanon cautions his blind father at the curb, “Be careful, Tatte.(Daddy) Don’t fall.” Elchanan understood what the word ‘blind’ means.. He also understood what half-blind means. His mother was half-blind. And he also knew that his mommy and tatte were the best parents in the world.
Who were the pair, the father walking so purposely across town, the child cavorting as five year old little boys are wont to do? The unseeing father was bringing his precious child to the clinic for treatment. He was the hero of the treatment center. Such a small child who stoically bore the scary needles with not even a whimper escaping his lips. “Of course, i don’t cry,” the child thought to himself. “I’m five years old.”
But the treatment soon came to an end when it negatively affected his tiny body. He began sleeping through the day, little more than a vegetable. His days were limited, the parents were told. “If he will die soon, let his last days be with me,” word`s that could only come from the lips of a devoted mother.
And so the days turned into months. Many months. The parents did not stop praying. It was two years later when the father brought his seemingly healthy child to the clinic. “The father is blind. He probably brought the wrong child, “the doctor whispered to a colleague. But it was soon ascertained that it was the same child. “How did this happen??!! Which doctor did you go to? How can I reach him?”
“How can you reach him? He is the creator of the world and can be reached anytime you call out to Him.”
A healthy little boy. His life once again revolved about his cheder (school). Smiles and tears depended on test grades, a ballgame at recess, a favorite sack forgotten at home. Until four years later, when a knock on his classroom door catapulted him into a new world. A funeral. His father’s. Orphanhood . No longer a child, he made a conscious decision. His father could see now. He could see him. He would do his best to make proud.
And he did. Bais Medrash (post high school) found him in a prestigious yeshiva, waving his thumb as he and his chavrusa(study partner) tried to understand the sugya.(current topic) Suddenly the letters of the g’morrah (Talmud)began to sway. They were flying every which way. Panic. The ghosts of his childhood seemed to join the letters taunting him as they danced across the pages of his g’morah, the pages of his life. “Don’t worry,” his chavrusa called out through the fog that now engulfed every fiber of his being. “You probably just need glasses.”
To be continued
