Dolly’s riches and my new-baby haze are improving Israel’s election season

And as usual, my eyes fill with cathartic tears when young Dolly doesn’t bow down under the ridicule, doesn’t reject her mother’s gift, but rather holds on to her truth with the devastating confidence of an unusually clear-eyed child:

“Do you understand what this line means,” I ask my 9-year-old son. Less than three weeks ago, he was the baby of the family; now, here he is, incredibly excited about his new role as a big brother, waiting to take his tiny sister away and let me sleep in.

He shakes his head no.

“It means that being rich or poor isn’t about having things. It’s about how you feel. If you’re happy about the things you do have. It’s like what the sages taught: ‘Who is rich? He who is happy in his share.'”

I look at my healthy, content baby and at my son.

“I feel very rich right now,” I tell him.

* * *

Sixteen years ago, when I first became a mother, caring for my baby didn’t make me feel rich. I felt harried and overwhelmed and constantly worried. Was I doing it right? Was I about to break him?

Every little difficulty seemed like a catastrophic failure, like a whispered “yes” answering the niggling question deep inside me: was I a defective mother?

The emergency C-section that brought my first-born into the world made me see myself as somehow unnatural, an imposter of a mother. The sleepless nights and challenges of the weeks that followed only deepened my worry that said impression was right.

I’ve changed a lot since those early months of parenthood. I worked through the trauma. I took ownership of my experience. I healed. Falling in love with my firstborn helped. Going through planned, calm C-sections with my next two babies helped too. And now, here I am, caring for my fourth baby, 16 years later, and the very tasks that overwhelmed me then feel like blessings. Night or day, holding her in my arms feels wonderful. Nourishing her, cleaning her, cooing at her – it’s all so simple, so immediate, and so very delightfully right.

But it’s not just right. It’s not just pleasant. It is also, and this is something I never realized before, a shield.

* * *

Outside of my little bubble of breastfeeding-changing diapers-eating-breastfeeding, election season is ratcheting up to new heights of ugliness. Ugly propaganda. Ugly mutual accusations. Cheap ad hominem attacks.

Normally, this atmosphere would crush me. But my preoccupation with my baby doesn’t let it get too deep under my skin. I glance at the news while I breastfeed, but how can vicious rhetoric compete with the smiling new person in my arms? I hear a speech here, an interview there, but how can angry words hope to penetrate my joy?

I’m not sharing any of this to gloat or boast. This calm isn’t an achievement. Rather, I’m sharing my experience because living through it made me realize something important.

The noise? The barrage of accusations and counter-accusations and ugliness?

They do more than hurt our hearts or irritate us. They actually make it harder to focus on the substantive claims and values and promises of each candidate. Like light pollution, they prevent us from seeing the equivalent of the true night sky: the actual questions that we should be asking of our would-be-representatives, and the answers they would often rather not be forced to give. Worse: by diverting our attention to all the ways in which we are divided, they make us blind to the deeper bonds of love, solidarity, and care that lie within.

My baby-haze doesn’t make me care less about Israel and the elections and where October 27th will lead us. But it dulls the meaningless noise enough that I find it easier to keep my eyes on the ball and focus on what matters.

And that is something that I will try to remember in the future, in times when life won’t offer me such a perfect “dulling” method. The noise will come, the invitation to be distracted and angry and needlessly antagonistic will come, but I am committed to remembering this election season, and I will strive in other ways to consciously achieve a similar effect to that of my baby now.

* * *

“I’ll miss you and your help when you go back to school next week,” I tell my 9 year old.

“But Ima, I only do two things. I take her and I change her diaper,” he protests. In someone else, this response might come off as fishing for compliments. But when it comes to this particular, wonderfully straightforward child, the incredulity is genuine. He really doesn’t think it’s a big deal.

“For me, those two things make a huge difference,” I tell him.

“They let me go back to sleep and that changes how I feel all day.”

He thinks for a bit.

“It’s like what you said about the coat of colors, Ima,” he concludes eventually. “I only do two things, but you feel happy about it, so you feel rich.”

I look at this wonderful child. I look at my baby. I think of my other children and my husband and my family and friends. I think of the three lasagnas we received this week, each one from a different friend who holds different political opinions and practices Judaism differently and will probably vote for a different party, but who loves us enough to have cooked for us. And I think of the haze of love that makes me see reality more clearly.

And I agree.

I am, indeed, quite rich.