Happy to be confused

We just chose a preschool for our almost-four-year-old twins, and it was a difficult decision. My, how I’ve grown.

When I was 19, I knew my own mind. Around that time, a friend and I went to visit a Chasidic rebbe who granted us a yechidus, a private audience. I remember clearly that I had a laundry list of specific things for which I sought the rebbe’s blessing, but my friend had just a couple, and one of them was clarity.

Clarity? What kind of new-agey nonsense was that? Can’t make a decision? Think about it more. In the last years of my teens, I committed myself to Torah observance, went to Israel for the first time to study, moved across the country on my own and nudged a hesitant boyfriend until he married me (hi honey). I struggled with many things, but making decisions was not one of them.

What am I doing here?

It was 5 PM and I was trying to feed my kids dinner. All three of them were sick with the lingering cold we’ve been passing one to the other for weeks. The baby, B.A., was rejecting everything I offered him with an offended and incredulous glare. A.N. had opened a bag of slivered almonds all over the kitchen floor. Y.B. was howling, “I don’t want tuna, I want tuna fish!”

What does that even mean?

I ducked into the kitchen nook for a second to collect myself. On my fridge was a little pink scrap of paper where I had jotted the following reminder: