There could not have been a more perfect day for Shabbat. The blue sky over the hills of the Galilee was veiled in a haze of soft pink. A windless, warm spring day.

Now these pounding spasms had to go and spoil it all. I put a red queen on a black jack, and listened for Daveed’s heavy boots on the steps. He was on kitchen duty today; at dawn he had kissed my forehead and vanished into the gray mist. Now these stupid pains would thoroughly ruin the rest of the day.

Deena knocked and entered. She stopped and gave me a swift look. “What are you crying about?” She leaned over the bed. “Imagine a grown-up person crying over a losing game of Solitaire.”

“I have these pains,” I apologized, “but they’ll go away soon.” She ran out, slamming the door behind her.

A few What are you crying about?moments later, Deena returned with our doctor. “And what seems to be the trouble?” she yawned. I had yanked her out of a cozy Shabbat-morning sleep. I blinked and looked down at my cards. “She has pains,” Deena said, as though it was my fault.

The doctor, who had studied both psychology and family medicine in Chicago, ran her fingers through her tousled long hair and said thoughtfully, “I suspected something like this would happen. Much too small for the sixth month.” I smiled foolishly. At least my problem wasn’t mental. She told Deena, “Please find a truck driver.” Then she gave me a tentative smile. “Everything will be all right. I’ll follow closely behind in the Jeep.”

Tears floated down my cheeks. I reached for Deena’s hand. “Call Daveed,” I whispered. She nodded, and both women disappeared.

This was no way for a pioneer to behave. After all, I had abandoned “affluent society” to clear the wasteland. I had survived leaky roofs, hours of guard duty in the night, and black chicory every morning instead of Maxwell House. I had carried children to the underground shelters and sang cheerful songs to them while guns fired across the hills. I had cleaned public washrooms, scrubbed thousands of floors, scoured gigantic greasy pots . . . A little thing like losing a baby shouldn’t upset me. But my shameless tears refused to obey.

When I walked down the stairs, I held the banister and refused Daveed’s hand. How brave I am! I hoped the others noticed.

Moshe hugged the wheel and growled, “Shalom.” I had interrupted his sleep with some weird womanly business. “We don’t work on Shabbat,” he muttered, “but as they say, pikuach nefesh and all that.” We could drive on Shabbat if it meant saving a life.

Daveed jumped on the back of the truck while the doctor ordered Moshe to “drive carefully.”

“It’s a good hour’s drive to the hospital. Will we get there in time?” he asked. The doctor shrugged and leaped into the Jeep. In time for what? I wondered.

The truck snorted, bounced, and rolled onto the bumpy road. The wild hedges smelled bittersweet; the hollyhocks glowed among the newly risen poppies. But I carried death among the flowers.

Moshe The truck snorted, bounced, and rolled onto the bumpy roadmumbled, “Nice weather for this time of year. Usually it pours. Lucky for us.” I folded my palms on my heaving belly as our kibbutz disappeared behind the hills. Arabs stared at the truck, probably wondering what “business” we were up to on our holy Sabbath.

The truck, braking just in time, missed crushing the life out of a jackrabbit. The jolt threw me off the hot leather seat, and I fell into Deena’s arms. Moshe, now fully awake, apologized, “Rabbit’s got a right to live too.” I agreed.

Suddenly, I heard a wail of anguish, a loud lament, as of an animal brutally caught in a trap. I looked around and wondered which of G‑d’s creatures was suffering so. The creature moaned incoherently, “My baby, I want my baby.” I covered my mouth, ashamed and afraid. They carried me out of the truck, and I sat hugging a gnarled olive tree. Blue thistles on the roadside pierced my bare legs, then took on the rich color of blood.

I awoke in a strange bed surrounded by unfamiliar odors. An ancient hand like a branch of my olive tree put a sweet mint-like liquid to my lips. The blurred images of Daveed, the doctor, Deena and a Moroccan woman in a long colorless robe came to life. The woman’s lips carved a warm smile among the creases of her face. The sun’s rays filtered through the slats of the window shutters and lit up the dust on the fireplace. The straw mats and earthenware jugs cast strange shadows across the stone walls. I shivered, and the woman threw a sheepskin blanket over me. I watched her hand stir something in a large black pot, and I reached out for my own mother’s hand across miles of ocean. Again the shameless creature moaned, “Ma, I want my Ma.”

Daveed touched my cheek. “Everything will be all right,” he said.

“Who’s crying?” I asked.

His eyes clouded. “No one.”

“Is my baby crying for me?”

“No, no one is crying.”

After a week in the hospital, I was returned to my room at the kibbutz. Deena baked a welcome-home cake; she decorated my orange-crate table with cyclamen, fruit and candy. Everyone came to visit—the barn workers, the orchard workers, the chicken hands. Yossef brought his guitar Is my baby crying for me?and serenaded me with nostalgic folk songs. The kitchen staff dispatched special meals to my room—oranges, chicken, and lemon cake. The doctor insisted that due to my traumatic experience, I was entitled to a month’s vacation. My perplexed class had an eager substitute—a former scoutmaster who was happy to leave off digging ditches for a while.

Daveed promised to love me forever, even if we never had a child, and quoted, “Am I not more devoted to you than ten sons?”

During my recuperation period, I reflected on how our nation has gone through so many ups and downs—joys as well as challenges, good times and far too many exiles, tragedies and persecutions. As women, we carry the hope and pain of pregnancies, births, miscarriages, infertility. We have the inborn rhythm of ups and downs built into our very bodies, and are intimately familiar with it. And through it all, through our pure moments of joy and our bitter ones of loss, we continue moving forward.