The door to your room remained shut the entire day. If you stepped out to use the toilet, I must have missed it. I knocked to summon you to meals, but you informed me from within you were not hungry. I left a tray on the floor outside your door, although I knew you kept a stash of sweet and salty snacks in the back of your closet, you would not starve. I set that tray down anyway simply to preempt you from concluding that I considered it just as well you were not eating, it wouldn’t kill you to lose a few pounds. From inside your room I could hear the familiar prayers from my childhood. You were listening on your laptop to cantorial videos, sometimes singing softly along, learning the words and tunes.

When you emerged at last I was already in bed for the night. You knocked and came into my room in your nightgown, which had become your sleepwear of choice since you had given up pajamas as well as pants and all articles of clothing that could by any inference be regarded as male apparel and therefore forbidden. “Didn’t you get dressed at all today?” I asked as you stood there just inside the entryway. You shook your head. “My mother, your grandmother, may she rest in peace, used to say, ‘if you don’t get dressed, the day didn’t happen.’”

You were silent for a respectful span to absorb this deep ancient wisdom, then you proceeded to deliver a little speech, as if you had rehearsed it; clearly it was for this purpose that you had come to my room. “I want to apologize for how I behaved today, Mommy. It was a sin. The Torah commands us to honor our mother and father. I should have listened when you called me to come out, to eat or whatever. I’m sorry. I know you’re worried about my falling all the time. If it makes you feel any better, I just want you to know that I’m never happier than when I fall, it’s the most amazing feeling in the world. The whole time I’m thinking—I’m going to fall, I can’t stop myself, here I go, I’m falling, falling—and then I fall, as if my knees, my legs, my limbs, my entire body from head to toe, has melted, it’s like I’m flooded with warmth and light. Malkie says that it’s like what happens to the chosen ones in the Torah, when God calls them and they fall upon their faces, and they answer, Here I am. She’s right, that’s exactly what it’s like—like I’m in God’s presence. I just wanted to tell you, so you wouldn’t worry.”