A mother from shul says I do too much for Elijah, that if I keep coddling her she’ll never learn to stand on her own. My mother made me pack my own lunch from the age of four—and any time I woke in the night to ask her for a cup of water, she’d say, Ezri, you know where the tap is. Teddy bear in tow, I’d army-crawl to the kitchen, low to the ground so the ghost wouldn’t find me. She always did.
